Mirror

This piece was exhibited in a collaborative project bringing together artists, scientists and curators in conjunction with the Wellcome Trust and the Science Museum, London.

Selected artists were invited to collaborate with scientists and explore aspects of perception, neurology and other brain sciences with the intention of producing new artworks.

My contribution, 'Mirror', consisted of two stereoscopes each with paired images made in response to my research. I also brought together artefacts from the collections including stereoscopic images of the brain and an early Wheatstone stereoscope from the 1830s. These were displayed in conjunction with 'Mirror' and my own text which gave an overview of my research.

Earlier preoccupations with illusion and stereo perception informed my investigations into neurological conditions such as 'visual neglect' where one side of the visual field is apparently not perceived, despite its physical reception in the relevant areas of the cortex. The exhibited work refers to this absent 'half' through the disposition of objects in a computer-generated environment.

This project built on my earlier PhD research interests, relating 'eccentric' types of representation to an analysis of perception and optical space and to the experience of working with new technology. The exhibition contributed to the ongoing debate concerning the relationship of art and science and its juxtaposition of artworks, texts and historical objects was productive in terms of probing the relationships between research and practice.

Tim O’Riley
Current Research
I am interested in the complex and eclectic relationship between art, science and literature and between the still and the moving image. Work has been centred around computer technology - specifically modelling and animation - but is informed by an underlying interest in painting, photography and writing. Over the past few years, I have been visiting and documenting various scientific establishments in Europe and the USA, combining a reasoned approach to science and its history with one in which serendipity and speculation play an equally significant part. I am intrigued by the idea of parallel or alternative spaces, dialogue and the relation between observer and object. I am particularly interested in Vilém Flusser's philosophy and critique of the 'technical image' and his speculations on virtual worlds.
Recent projects have been spurred on by a chance encounter with a memento from the Apollo 11 lunar mission, a small Irish flag which had travelled aboard the historic spacecraft and which resides at an observatory in Dublin. This prompted research into various fictional journeys to the moon stretching back almost 2000 years, the more recent history of the space race and the lives and opinions of astronaut Michael Collins and Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Ireland from 1827-1865, who lived for much of his life in the building where the flag eventually ended up. In the light of this serendipitous encounter, I have recently completed a 118-minute animation of a real-time orbit of the moon together with an artist's book bringing together some of the material I have found relating to the observatory, lunar exploration and fictional, imaginary journeys.

• http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/headon/inde...
• http://www.timoriley.net
• http://www.houldsworth.co.uk/exhibition_...
• http://www.rubicongallery.ie/exhibitions...
• http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/195
• http://www.newmediacaucus.org/journal/is...
• http://www.icfar.co.uk