Later this month Six_a will send four artists to the House of Natural Fiber in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to undertake the third and final residency in Next Wave’s Invisible Structures residency program. Here, the artists outline their project, and detail some of the things they plan to undertake through May.

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There’s plenty of room at the bottom is a celebration of creative thinking in regards to scientific problem solving. 

There’s plenty of room at the bottom was the title of a paper given in 1959 by Cal Tech physicist Richard P Feynman. It was an examination into research that we now know as nanotechnology. 

In it, Feynman describes these micro technologies through a series of questions that ask the audience to suspend disbelief and search for solutions that might exist out of the established line of current reasoning.

In one memorable point he suggests “It would be interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon. You put the mechanical surgeon inside the blood vessel and it goes into the heart and ‘looks’ around” through the construction of progressively smaller mechanisms which Feynman proposes to “wire them to my original levers so they each do exactly the same thing at the same time in parallel. Now, when I am making my new devices one-quarter again as small, I let each one manufacture ten copies, so that I would have a hundred … at 1/16thsize.”

From here Feynman describes the ever expanding, ever shrinking army of mechanical devices that allow (eventually) for the machine to access the material on an atomic level, and be able to reconfigure the atomic structure as required. He calls this ‘Swallowing the Doctor.’

At the paper’s conclusion Feynman sets an open challenge to scientists and students to exceed his vision, and it is partially this, and his left-field visualisations that form the basis for this exhibition and residency.

Six_a is sending Tasmanian artists Astrid Joyce, Amanda Shone, Mish Meijers and Tricky Walshto develop a series of experiments/mechanisms/inventions that explore solutions for significant global concerns. Their fields of research will be built upon radical theories that will ask the audience in turn to suspend their disbelief. For example - Could we cool the climate by melding a species of animal with snow molecules so that as they shed their coats in summer they dispense ice everywhere? Or Can I harness electrical storms to recharge my iPod? where the range of disbelief goes from completely fanciful to potentially legitimate. 

The exhibition There’s plenty of room at the bottom will be presented with allusions to a science fair where each artist will present the visual explorations of their concept (maquettes, drawings, video works, etc) and also provide a realised sculptural work which acts as a scientific prototype of their invention without losing its contemporary art integrity.

Also while on residency, the artists would additionally like to host ‘egghead’ workshops for local children. They are seeking to brainstorm alongside the children these solutions that come from the unadulterated moment of pure invention and creativity that is not restrained by a perception of ‘impossibility’ and which glorifies in the lack of connection to reality as we perceive it.

Depending on the outcomes of these workshops, the outcomes may or may not be exhibited as part of the overall exhibition. 

Astrid Joyce, Amanda Shone, Mish Meijers and Tricky Walsh 

April 2011

The Y3K guys put together THIS pdf newsletter (2.7mb) about their exhibition last month.

Christina Chua is a Singaporean arts writer who a reviewed Boxcopy’s current Invisible Structures residency project The Boxcopy Publics Carriage Office of Singapore (BPCOS) in her home city.

Download the new exhibition text for Y3K artist James Deutsher’s current exhibition at Tokyo’s Art Centre Ongoing here. (In English and Japanese.)

Invisible Structures was recently featured in Singapore’s online art journal Artitude.

Brisbane’s Boxcopy are currently in Singapore on their Invisible Structures residency, and Artitude commented on their project and the Invisible Structures exchange/residence program as a whole:

“There is a great sense that these exchanges are not purely directed at establishing reputations or, as Robyn Archer put it, “simply touring our product there or importing theirs here”, but about eliminating the geographical isolation of artists and creating authentic relationships beyond borders.”

Read the full article here.

Next Wave’s Artistic Program Manager, and Curator of Invisible Structures, Ulanda Blair writes in her catalogue essay to the program that Invisible Structures asks the participating artists to ‘engage directly with unfamiliar cities and their citizens, and in the process make visible the ever-mutable and often unseen structures.’

Download Ulanda’s entire catalogue essay in English (pdf, 160kb) and Japanese (pdf. 370kb).