Pearl John from Physics and Astronomy will be showing an exhibition of her work at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2012.
The Summer Science Exhibition is an annual display of the most exciting cutting-edge science and technology in the UK, taking place from 3 to 8 July.
Pearl’s exhibition ‘In Time’ is an exhibit based on scientific data, which visually explores different periods of elapsing time.
The eight microlens art works produced for the exhibition are inspired by scientific data taken from scientists and astronomers working with lasers, magnetism, astronomy and particle physics.
Pearl John, who is the Public Engagement Leader and South-East Physics Network (SEPnet) Outreach Officer for Physics and Astronomy at the University, is an artist who uses holography and lenticular imaging to illustrate passing time. Pearl is also a PhD student in the Modern Holography Group at De Montfort University, Leicester. www.pearljohn.co.uk
In this exhibition, she has worked with representations of very short periods of time through to aeons. Some of the data shows records of “pico-second” laser pulses – produced in trillionths of a second – whilst other images are produced with data from events which occurred millions of years ago in a black hole.
Pearl says: “Working with scientific data is fascinating to me. I am interested in how passing time is represented in two and three dimensions both in science and art.”
SEPnet commissioned the art works for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.