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“Look Both Ways” – a unique art/science collaboration

CLARITY research showcased at the European Council

CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies based in DCU under the lead of Professor Noel O’Connor, in collaboration with visual artists Cleary/Connolly, presented their ground breaking collaborative art exhibit ‘Look Both Ways’ at the European Council in Brussels on 4 May. This was followed by the two day ‘Building Europe’ festival on the square of the City Hall in Paris to celebrate Europe Day 2013.

‘Europe Day’ is celebrated each year by all the Member States of the European Union on 9 May, and this year the European Council offered a varied programme for the whole family in both Brussels and Luxembourg. On 9 and 10 May, the City Hall in Paris then went on to host the 7th ‘Building Europe’ event bringing together European institutions, associations, media and discussion workshops on the theme of the European construction. The artwork featured at both events.

One of the most popular exhibits from this unique art/science collaboration is the “Real-time Rolling Shutter”. The piece was developed by Dr David Monaghan in CLARITY in DCU based on the original artistic vision of Cleary/Connolly.

“The exhibit is a form of digital mirror, created using a camera, a computer and some image processing software.” Said Dr David Monaghan, a postdoc in CLARITY who leads the scientific aspects of the collaboration. “When you stand in front of the digital mirror, it reflects your movements back at you, but in a way that distorts time, allowing you to twist and bend your entire body into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes, just by small movements of your body.”

This innovative multimedia installation was inspired by a photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue, dated 1912, which shows distortion due to the rolling shutter technique used at the time. The photograph allows us to see the passage of time as geometry. We begin to understand that time is a dimension like any other, another axis against which we measure movement and change. “The exhibit is a fun interactive way of experiencing the interplay between time and how we perceive the world around us. It’s like a funfair mirror for the digital age, motivated by a decades old scientific mystery” says Prof Noel O’Connor.

The piece has previously been on display with the rest of the exhibition for 6 months in Farmleigh house. It was unveiled to the French public on 9th May by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, in the presence of Mr Dinny McGinley, Delegate Minister of State for Arts Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and the Irish Ambassador to France Mr Paul Kavanagh.

A free smart phone app that accompanies the exhibition was developed by Conor Gallagher and can be found on the iPhone app store and the android play store under the name “Look Both Ways”.

Science and Innovation: CLARITY

CLARITY is a Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) and is a partnership between University College Dublin, Dublin City University and Tyndall National Institute. It is a research centre that focuses on the bringing together two important research areas - Adaptive Sensing and Information Discovery. The overarching theme of CLARITY's research programme is bringing information to life- helping to ensure that everyone has access to the right information at the right time.