Silent Signal

Silent Signal is an ambitious group exhibition that brings six artists working with animation together with six leading biomedical scientists, to create experimental animated artworks exploring new ways of thinking about the human body. These six new commissions explore how the immune system functions, how disease is spread and how our genetic code can be manipulated. Each work is the result of an artist having collaborated closely with a scientist for two years to produce an artistic response to their scientific research.

The six new commissions:

AfterGlow by boredomresearch with Dr Paddy Brock (University of Glasgow) reveals the intimate relationship between disease and its environment, using gaming engine software and mathematical modelling data to explore the relationship between infection transmission and environment.

Sleepless by Ellie Land with Professor Peter Oliver (University of Oxford) is an exploration of the links now being discovered between sleep and mental health. Its rhythm is inspired by the circadian cycle and displays visual icons rooted in the science of sleep.

Battle of Blister by Genetic Moo with Dr Neil Dufton (Imperial College London) is an immersive film that takes the viewer on a fantastic voyage through the inflammation process, charting the escalation from fly bite to full scale engagement.

Loop by Samantha Moore with Dr Serge Mostowy (Imperial College London) is about what can be seen and what cannot, how scientists imagine their work and how they describe it.

Immunecraft by Eric Schockmel with Dr Megan MacLeod (University of Glasgow) adopts the form of a video game trailer to present a fictional game which gives users agency over a real life cell culture to compete against opponent players, raising questions about bioethics.

The Signal and the Noise by Charlie Tweed with Dr Darren Logan (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute) exposes the parallels between computer coding and genetic coding in humans and animals, and draws upon the latest advances in DNA sequencing technology to question the ethics of fixing genetic code.

Curated and produced by Animate Projects with a range of partner organisations and supported by a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award, Silent Signal opens at QUAD Derby in February and tours to Vivid Projects, Birmingham in March.