The short film The Darkness and the Light explores a gedanken, a thought experiment,  scripted by Grace Weir and astrophysicist Ian Elliott.

‘…The outside light pentrates the interior space of the observatory’s dome in the darkness and the light, (2002). The scale of the physical world is brought into realisation through a silent observation of the sun projected onto a sheet of blank A4 paper through the lens of the observatory’s telescope allowing the distance being brought to view.

The same sheet of paper is then used to illustrate a sense of descending scale, from a halfway cut via the splitting of the atom to the melting and blending of energies which eventually (theoretically at least) leads to the notion of ‘superstring’; an visible force uniting space and matter. As the cloud thwarts Elliott’s study of the sun spot, an element of frustration enters the scenario. This feeling is similarly reflected in the next sequence; the reduction of matter through the paper cuts falls from physical possibility towards the certainty of impossibility…’

Extract from David Osbaldeston,  A fine line catalogue, Cornerhouse, 2003

Related Essays

Experimental Conversations, Francis McKee

The shaggy dog in the river, Graham Parker

The shaggy dog in the river, Graham Parker

The darkness and the light

Experimental conversations
by Francis McKee

The shaggy dog in the river
by Graham Parker

The shaggy dog in the river
by Graham Parker