Exhibition ‘To The Edge of Time’ KU Leuven, (2022).
Photography by Dirk Pauwels.
Photography by Dirk Pauwels.
Null Object: Gustav Metzger thinks about nothing
Linking neurophysiology, psychophysics1 and manufacturing technology to produce a sculptural object in Portland stone.
Null Object: Gustav Metzger thinks about nothing (2012) produced sculpture from translations of 3D shape information generated from EEG recordings of Gustav Metzger attempting to think about nothing. Making reference to a relational database of recordings made from members of the public,2 Metzger’s brain data was translated into instructions for a manufacturing robot to carve out the interior of a block of stone to create a void space. Inspired by Metzger’s environmental and political activism, this project is concerned with the idea of ‘nothing’ as a productive category.
[...] Metzger is no lone genius with a chisel, though. Null Object, by harnessing a creative inactivity, by showing an artist colonised by technology, and by then erasing him from his work [...]Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian, November 2012
LFW produced a book of the same name with Black Dog Publishing, including an introduction by the artists, a text by Gustav Metzger and four contextualising essays by Bronac Ferran, Hari Kunzru, Nick Lambert and Christopher Tyler. These leading writers across the fields of literature, art, science and technology explore the diverse historical and conceptual grounding for and broader implications of Null Object’s production process. Made with the participation of Gustav Metzger; software designed by Jonny Bradley; CAD/CAM by Yaroslav Tenzer. Supported by funding from Arts Council England & The Computer Arts Society.
Images below from The Negligent Eye, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, (2014), curated by Jo Stockham, photography by Jon Barraclough; To The Edge of Time, KU Leuven, (2022), curated by Prof. Dr. Thomas Hertog and Hannah Redler Hawes, photography by Dirk Pauwels. All other images courtesy London Fieldworks.
1 Psychophysics is a sub-discipline of psychology dealing with the relationship between physical stimulii and their perception.
2 Drawing from the psychophysics of Béla Julesz and Christopher Tyler, the Null Object project database comprised EEG files recorded from participants in various venues (1999-2012) while in the act of stereopsis—perceiving depth shapes within random dot autosterograms.
2 Drawing from the psychophysics of Béla Julesz and Christopher Tyler, the Null Object project database comprised EEG files recorded from participants in various venues (1999-2012) while in the act of stereopsis—perceiving depth shapes within random dot autosterograms.
