Yesterday, February 9th, was the opening of the 6th Cambridge e-Luminate Festival. Members of the Ordered Universe team were delighted to be asked to give an afternoon of talks, demonstrations and interactive activities as part of the opening events. Seb Falk (Cambridge), Jack Cunningham (Bishop Grosseteste University), Josh Harvey (Oxford), Giles Gasper (Durham), and Alexandra Carr (Multi-Media Sculptor), presented a tour of Ordered Universe questions and subjects, organised around the theme of e-Luminate 2018 – colour and light. We introduced Grosseteste to the full audience at the Guildhall in Cambridge, the treatises On Colour and On the Rainbow, his theological vision, musings on glass, contemplation of the fall of humankind, the artistic work his treatises have inspired (Alexandra’s installations from last summer during her artistic residency and the sculpture Empyrean and the exhibition with the National Glass Centre), how a rainbow really forms, and the importance and science of the stars in the medieval period. A lot of variety, but essentially ordered!
The activities included a new series of photographs by Rosie Reed Gold Perspicua based on pieces at the National Glass Centre exhibition, Illuminating Colour; some new light-painting pictures from Alexandra Carr; and demonstrations of rainbow caustic formation, and how to use an astrolabe by Josh and Seb. And then, we went to see the fantastic light installations, including the headline on Senate House by Ross Ashton ‘I see’, designed in collaboration with Ordered Universe research, especially from Hannah Smithson on visual perception. If you’re in Cambridge over the next few days, do make time to see the installations.
We are very grateful to the e-Luminat Director Alessandra Caggiano, and to Florence Tong, for making the Ordered Universe part of the festival, and for welcoming us so warmly.
