Space inside your head

Sleep machine: inside the ‘hibernaculum’

This scientific impulse provides part of the inspiration for an event in London this September, where science and art are set to intertwine in ambitious and thought-provoking ways.

‘Space Soon – Art and Human Spaceflight’ takes place at Camden’s Roundhouse, and includes an innovative experiment involving scientists from the University of Leicester. In the SpaceBaby installation-experiment, two artists will sleep in full public view in a ‘hibernaculum’ – à la Alien – while being tested by the scientists.

The Leicester team will extract blood samples from the artists during both normal and disrupted sleep in order to measure the effect of different amounts of light and dark on the human body clock. In turn, the artists will construct animated ‘gene expression portraits’ from the test results.

“In technical language, we will be undertaking Affymetrix oligonucleotide microarray analysis of blood taken from the sleeping artists,” says Dr Marcus Cooke, heading the Leicester team. “We’ll be present to interact with the public visiting this installation, to explain what we are doing.”

Cooke explains that his team have been considering ways to make their gene expression data more accessible to the public for some time. Having noted the collaboration of a physics group at Leicester with arts organisation London Fieldworks, they realised they had found an ideal partner.

Rear view: the hibernaculum nerve centre

“We’re really excited to be working with these artists, who have a proven track record for this kind of work,” says Cooke. “This is giving us the opportunity to present our data in a way to engage the public in science. The onus is on scientists to try to catch the interest of the public, which will lead to a better understanding of science – including that scientists don’t have all the answers.”

These are themes that will be echoed elsewhere at Space Soon. A Mars base-type habitation – Space on Earth Station – will be used to explore our own ‘terrestrial neighbourhood’ from a reverse perspective.

Meanwhile Gravity by the artist Aleksandra Mir will turn the Roundhouse’s former engine room into a rocket factory for a ‘rocket that is going nowhere’. Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon – and the only one to have become a professional artist on his return to Earth – will discuss his experience in space and how it relates to his art.

SpaceBaby has been commissioned by The Arts Catalyst, the UK science-art agency. and has received funding from Arts Council England. It is part of a programme of research supported by AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) with sponsorship from Affymetrix and Ambion.

Images: copyright University of Leicester

Space Soon – Art and Human Spaceflight takes place between 9 - 13 September 2006 at Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, Camden, London.