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María Ignacia Edwards, ESO, Ars Electronica

Biography

María Ignacia Edwards (CL), born 1982, is an artist from Santiago, Chile. After getting her Arts bachelor degree from Finis Terrae University in Santiago and her Diploma in Cinema, Art Direction and Photography from the University of Chile, she lived and worked in New York City from 2009 to 2012. During this time she also did an artistic residency at the School of Visual Arts and in the Lower East Side Printshop. In 2012, she received an invitation from the Arts Cultural Center in Mexico, Reinosa/Tamaulipas, to perform an individual exhibition, In Between, within the Tamaulipas International Arts Festival. The artworks of María Edwards were also exhibited in Chile, Spain, USA, Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. She has participated in international fairs: Pinta Art Fair in New York, ArteBA in Buenos Aires, Art Lima in Peru, and ChaCo in Chile. She was awarded the honor prize Art for Science, granted by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) in Santiago, Chile. María I. Edwards was the first artist in residency in the framework of the European Art and Science Network. www.aec.at/artandscience

Encounters for Mobile Instrument of String and Air

María Ignacia Edwards works with equilibrium, lightness, and weightlessness of objects that she brings into balance by deploying their own weight or counterweights. Though, at first glance, her works are perceived as purely aesthetic, artistic objects, it soon dawns on those who behold them that these constructions are the result of elaborate mathematical and physical calculations. Based on her experience at the ESO observatories La Silla and ALMA, María created a Mobile Instrument that is able to capture the movement of pieces located at distant places by a mechanism as a reference to time and the motion of the universe.


(Source: The Pratice of Art & Science, p. 37)

Report at the Beginning

The first art & science residency goes to María Ignacia Edwards (CL). She was selected from among the 140+ applicants from 40 countries who responded to the open call. The decision was reached by a 10-member jury made up of representatives of Ars Electronica, the European Southern Observatory (Fernando Comerón) and the seven cultural institutions that make up the Art & Science Network. María will be spending the residency at the European Southern Observatory in Chile and at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.

Self-sustainable pieces

In María Ignacia Edwards delicate, three-dimensional sculptures the objects seem to hover. Her sculptures consist of a multiplicity of objects suspended by fine wire from the ceiling of an exhibition space, that are perfectly balanced solely by their physical form and their own weight, rotate on their own axis and all of which are somehow interrelated. And sculptures composed of hundreds of thin wooden rods with their ends bound together to form three-dimensional geometric bodies. Though, at first glance, her works are perceived as purely aesthetic, artistic objects, it soon dawns on those who behold them that these constructions are the result of elaborate mathematical and physical calculations.

María Ignacia Edwards combines Art and Mathematics

María Edward’s artistic work originated in her striving to assume the position of an active observer of the world – an observer both of things that take place about her as well as of her own experiences, whereby that latter endeavor entails, above all, consciously questioning her own subjective perceptions. María Edward’s interest is focused primarily on relationships among human beings and their coincidental encounters, the highly diverse experiences she’s had during long outings by bicycle, the trajectories of the stars and the movement of the universe, science as a whole and philosophy in particular.

The upshot of all these considerations and observations was that she, at some point, came upon the idea of representing all these interrelationships in the form of a latticework – actually, a wide-ranging, tightly-meshed fabric of three-dimensionally arranged, interconnected points. And she came to the conclusion that such a visualization of all causalities and correlations on Earth bears an astounding resemblance to a map of stellar paths and constellations of stars. Her notes on blackboards, her entries in notebooks, her artistic works and mobile constructions – she regards all of them as markings on a mental as well as physical map testifying to her experiences and her whereabouts in the world and the universe.

Statement of the Jury

“The artist works with space, endeavouring to maintain the balance, suspension, lightness and weightlessness of objects, which are sustained by their own weight and counterweight. The constructions are the result of exquisite prior calculations, mechanisms, solutions and interventions. María Ignacia Edwards calls these pieces self-sustainable because they require no more than their own weight to exist, and the objects tend to rotate constantly around their own axis. The artist invites beholders to observe each object as if they were stars in the firmament. While, at first sight, her approach might seem purely plastic, it transcends science and particularly physics and mathematics, and in the jury’s view, it is especially attractive for the potential it offers for the residency. The artist makes a great effort to connect both the inspiration and the outcome of the work to characteristic features of astronomy: isolated objects in weightlessness. The work is thus intended to evoke astronomy-inspired awe. The presentation is very well elaborated and clearly transmits the idea of the project, though it also promises great potential for development in both residency venues.”


(Source: https://www.aec.at/artandscience/en/artists/mariaignaciaedwards/)

Art and Science: A Cosmic Inspiration

Together with Fernando Comerón, the ESO’s representative in Chile, and Claudia Schnugg, the artist’s mentor at the Ars Electronica Futurelab, María Ignacia Edwards took an inspection tour through Chile in mid-May 2015. The aim of her first journey of inspiration was to reconnoiter potential locations for her residency in Chile and to get to know the scientists and technicians working there as well as the technology behind this huge endeavor.
The “big sky country” of the Atacama Desert about a one-hour drive from Antofagasta in northern Chile is the home of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and an especially wonderful spot from which to peer into outer space. The VLT in Paranal is the world’s most advanced optical instrument. It consists of four unit telescopes with main mirrors 8.2 meters in diameter that can be operated individually or can work together to form a giant interferometer.
Here, the staff gathers data that’s indispensible to scientific research on the cosmos. Scientists from all over the world gather in Paranal. Each is the lucky recipient of one of the precious positions on the staff of this high-tech data production machine. Garnering “observing time” is no simple matter, but the potential rewards are tremendous. For example, the oldest star in our Milky Way galaxy was identified with the help of the VLT. And it also took the first picture of a planet outside our solar system.

María Ignacia Edwards visited ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. At 5,000 meters above sea level, the world’s largest radio telescope has 66 antennas spread out across this arid expanse to scan the sky in all directions.

“ALMA inspires me: There is the power of the desert, the sun, and the illusion of understanding and witnessing the mechanism in action with all those antennas moving at once… the harmony in the accuracy of the movement, which is one of the essential elements that inspire my work.”

In the 1960s ESO built the first observatory La Silla. This facility includes several telescopes, which are operated by ESO as well as other institutions.

“The visit to La Silla was overwhelming, I found a place that seems suspended in time and over the clouds, with the beauty and the weight of past time on things, it touched me deeply. I could feel a nostalgia and melancholy for what it used to be and that somehow still is, moving at its own time and rhythm. A place apparently full of stories.”

The artist spent a few weeks at the scientific institution and derived inspiration from her mentors and their scientific work. Subsequently, she spent an additional residency at Ars Electronica Futurelab, where mentors assisted the artist in the creation and development of new works that were inspired by her previous residency at ESO.

The outcome of the residency, Encounters, was then showcased as part of the Elements of Art and Science exhibition that premiered at the 2015 Ars Electronica Festival. María Ignacia Edwards conceived her work in such a way that the main portion of the project remained in Linz and other parts could be presented at the other European Art and Science Network member institutions.

Text: Claudia Schnugg, Martin Hieslmair/Ars Electronica
www.aec.at/feature/de/cosmic-inspiration


(Source: The Pratice of Art & Science, p. 33-36)