TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

This is to report and curate an emergence of sensory orders, sets of materials and materialities brought about by research practices operating in extended registers of visibility.  The proposal begins by uncovering a paradoxical state in which technical ensembles that produce operational, invisible visuality (Paglen 2019; Mackenzie, Munster 2019) are simultaneously born into the realm of sensing much more than a strip of rainbow produced by a Newtonian prism. This is where, new aesthetic affordance emerges. As the registers of visibility extend into adjacent ultraviolet, near-infrared and far-infrared frequency bands, the realm of colour and form merges with the configuration of material emissivity and reflectance.

I invite to study and creatively expand practices founded on the discovery of spectral signatures - fingerprints of matter - first understood in the famous experiments of Gustav R. Kirchoff and Robert W. Bunsen in 1859. Kirchoff shone light through a flare of burning salt and used the spectroscope to observe its yellow glow. Large-scale projects measuring the spectral signatures of the Earth's surface from satellites, such as the Landsat Multispectral Scanner System of the 1970s, propagated a particular way of thinking about the sensory qualities in terrestrial structures (Schowengerdt 2007:3). After a few decades of routine measurements, piles of recorded spectral signatures prompt a spontaneous formation of aesthetically intriguing objects. These are conglomerate lists of materials and surfaces that collocate emissivity and reflectance values for commonly measured structures. In these purely technical indexes, reflectance and albedo values establish an unexpected proximity between freshly fallen snow and river sand. Contrast both with moorland and tarmac. Emphasise the similarities between human skin and paper. Compare black bodies-like vantas and emissive mirrors of polished gold, aluminium, and silver.