THE MESSAGE
TWO SCREEN, PROJECTION-MAPPED VIDEO WITH SYNCHRONISED LED LIGHTING
ELYSIUM GALLERY, SEPTEMBER 2022
“There is some indication that artificial intelligence elements and biological life elements are not just mathematical constructs… but that they describe one another” (Beardsley, 2022)
Partly instigated in response to composer/producer Max Cooper’s A Model of Reality (2022) and reflecting on our 2015 work Aequabilitum, The Message is a reflection of individual belief systems and interpretations of 'knowledge', ‘truth’ and 'reality'.
The Message is a large-scale audio-visual installation, drawing the viewer in to a point of centrifugal reference. Travelling through a series of star fields composed of organic landscapes, the work draws on the writings of Ian Beardsley, who studied Physics at the University of Oregon and whose research interests include Mathematics, Astronomy, Gypsy Anthropology and Shamanism. The work invites viewers to consider their own knowledge and belief systems, and to acknowledge the 'reality' that scientific fact relies on consensus. As political theorist Chantal Mouffe proposes, ‘consensus is created by eliminating pluralism’ (Mouffe, 2013, p. 163) - in other words, it relies on the silencing of the minority voice.
Beardsley’s own system of facts indeed seems, at times, far-fetched, based on apparent encounters with Shaman and circumstantial Mathematics. Abstract connections which seem at odds with our learned systems of logic, knowledge, and what constitutes ‘truth’ from inaccuracy, ‘fact’ from fiction.
“It is rather abstract thinking, but just as the moment we define truth and as a result it reverses, I think we can treat problem solving this way” (Beardsley, 2022)
As Mouffe writes, ‘Things could always be otherwise and every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities’. (Mouffe, 2013, p. 21)
Ian Beardsley’s name appears on several papers in the Astrophysical Journal.