Chromatrope

This artwork is a collaboration between artist Sophie Michael and researcher Ingelin Testad. Through a series of conversations, they shared their different practices and discovered parallel experiences. In different ways they both harness intuition as a tool to access a different form of communication. Sophie relates to intuition in the art making process, while Ingelin relies on it in her research into care work.

Simultaneous to these conversations, Sophie started to collect magic lantern slides; 19th century glass plates which were projected to audiences for news and entertainment. She is particularly interested in our contemporary connection with magic lantern shows, as a spectacle that is too old for anyone to have experienced the first time around. We can only share second hand or retrospective memories of this very early form of media– for some people they may trigger connections with childhood toys or kaleidoscopes, for others stained glass in places of worship. But most of all, Sophie and Ingelin wondered if, like Snoezelens (sensory rooms), colour and light could be used as a material to create a shared phenomenological experience between two people, that belongs above all in the present.

The giant chromatrope on display in the exhibition invites people to work together intuitively, trusting each other, to rotate the discs and create patterns and discover new modes of communication. You could say that this trust, this connection with the unknown could be perceived as working magic.

— Beyond Memories press release

2017

Wood, vinyl and perspex

240 x 243cm

Spins upon request

Commissioned by London Brain Project

Made with researcher Ingelin Testad

Funded by NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at SLaM and IoPPN, Kings College London. Semi-permanently installed at Kings College Hospital, Wohl Cafe

Installation views at 10 Thurloe Place as part of Beyond Memories exhibition, 2017