Aóratos

A site specific participatory installation with fire and film presented at Allenheads Blacksmith’s Forge. Visitors are invited to burn offerings of negative energy to power a ‘wormhole’. Special paper tokens are provided for people to write or draw on. These offerings are burnt in the forge hearth releasing any negative energy to the 'wormhole portal' above. Visitors then ascend the stairs entering the portal to the vortex video installation. The video work explores hidden landscapes, the distortion of space and the permeability of barriers such as force fields and human skin to the unseen particles that constantly teem at near light speed across the universe. As part of this project I am working with students from Imperial College Space Society in attempting to launch a cloud chamber in the payload of a high-altitude balloon. A cloud chamber enables us to see ionising trails made by radioactive and charged particles. Cosmic particles continuously collide violently with the Earth’s atmosphere then break up and shower down upon us. Aóratos translates as ‘unseen’.