Of Immeasurable Consequence
By Pale Blue Dot Collective
Commissioned by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art
All Saints Church, Aldwincle, Northamptonshire, England
2024
‘Underneath the dark skies above, and through our human eyes, we observe the light of galaxies and stars, ancient light falling softly on our retinas. In the darkness, animals rustle through fallen leaves, waves crash around the coastlines of vast land masses, and tectonic plates grind and shift the lithosphere. Insects make their homes in narrow crevices, and great aquatic creatures meander through deep blue seas. In the darkness of the forest, one owl calls to another as star light reflects from the Moon onto the heaving trees below. In the great expansive darkness, Jupiter’s gravity catches occasional Earthly bound comets and the Moon pulls the oceans creating tides.
To be in the presence of this life, from the depths of the oceans to the upper atmospheric winds, is the consequence of a 13.8 billion year concatenation of events.
Through the darkness we can begin to see the cosmic significance of life on Earth.’
In Of Immeasurable Consequence, Pale Blue Dot Collective use installation, photography and sound to examine our place within the universe, framing the impact of the climate emergency through the eyes of evolution and the immense time period it has taken for each form of life to arrive at this point.
Funded by Northamptonshire Community Foundation’s Creative Climate Action Fund, the work combines images, sound and light to transport the viewer to an imagined forest environment. With the artists’ interest in the deep time nature of our existence on the planet, they have developed an installation that explores both the fragility and the miraculous nature of life on Earth.
Sound recordings from Fermyn Woods, made with a variety of homemade and professional microphones, are combined with their own archive of field recordings collected from around the world. The final composition transports the audience to a forest outside of our experience. Images taken under moonlight during their residency are installed in the central body of the church, juxtaposed with their own astronomical imagery that prompts us to consider our place in the wider cosmos.
Of Immeasurable Consequence was launched with an interactive telescope viewing session and talk with astronomer Paul Fellows.
Listen to the soundscape below.
