The Harmony of the Unpredictable. 

An interview on Research Methods with José Angelino. 

by Veronica Di Geronimo, July 2023

Veronica Di Geronimo: In Italy, interdisciplinary education programs focusing on artistic practice intersecting scientific research are rare, or even non-existent. In fact, you pursued artistic and scientific training in parallel and in different contexts. When and how did you realize that the paths could converge?  

José Angelino: Rather than a convergence, I find a parallelism and some common areas in which art and science emerge and develop. Soon after an art residency in Iceland in 2016, where I had the opportunity to observe a manifestation of the aurora borealis, I conceived my first series of luminous works, in which I tried to reproduce the natural phenomenon. My scientific background was crucial in the conception and realization of the project, it became a tool to work with and a resource to draw on. 

Concerning the interdisciplinary education involving art and science, it's a complex matter given the boundless and unconstrained nature of both fields. In my opinion, individuals should be granted the freedom to forge their own unique perspectives on these disciplines and to build their personal journey through the intertwining of the two. My own immersion into the world of art began during the university years, interacting and socializing with artists who offered me a glimpse into their universe.  

The first time we met, you suggested me to read The Laws of Chaos by Ilya Prigogine, a text in which the author tackles dissipative structures and chaos, themes that recur throughout your projects. How have these concepts influenced your artistic poetics? 

In Ilya Prigogine's text, Bénard's instability experiment is mentioned by the author as an example of non-equilibrium. I wonder if these kinds of experiments in hydrodynamics inspired Swing (2015). Could you tell us more about this work? 

In Swing a drop of distilled water is placed on a very hot surface, that, thanks to a special system, evaporates and it is replaced in real time. At the point of contact between the droplet and the plate, a thin layer of vapour is formed; the vapour lifts the droplet making it free to vibrate. Thus, heat is converted into motion. With the right amount of water and the right temperature, the interference of its internal motions produces a shape similar to a star, like a kind of resonance. In fact, I think it is a dissipative structure, and something very similar happens in Bénard's instability experiment. However, Swing was born while cooking on cast iron electric stoves where water had accidentally spilled. 

Sintonie (2022), a site-specific work created for the Chapel of Santa Caterina on Bisentina Island, is a very articulated project with drum cymbals that reflect the sound of the lake, a Schumann wave generator, luminous works with Carrara marble and pumice stones that are excavated from the inside by electromagnetic fields. Could you tell us about this work in its various stages of realisation?  

The Chapel of Santa Caterina is one of the most evocative and inaccessible places of the island, situated on a cliff overlooking Bolsena Lake. The exhibition, curated by Maddalena Pelù, is meant to create a place where one could pause to be inspired, embarking on a journey of reconnection with nature. My intention was to make an energetically alive place, no longer isolated but connected to everything around it, and constantly traversed by different forms of energy such as electromagnetic, light and sound waves.

Sintonie is made up of a brass structure, that reflects the octagonal plan of the church, and some blown glass pieces in which electric discharge flows. Inside the glasses, quantities of crushed Carrara marble have also been placed to obstruct the energy flow, disturbing the natural passage of the discharge and force it to change its trajectory with other compatible paths, thus creating a continuous and endless adjustment. 

The brass structure is shaped like an antenna on which an electromagnetic wave generator is placed at the frequency of Schumann resonance, a natural electromagnetic pulsation characteristic of the planet.  

Vertical sculptures made of brass cymbals are in the niches next to the chapel's altar. They vibrate reflecting the oscillations of the lake, which are recorded by a hydrophone located under the surface of the lake. Finally, on the altar there is a pile of pumice stones. Holes have been created into the stones to host micro-magnets. These magnets, while vibrating under the influence of an electromagnetic field, erode and carve the stones from the inside, as if they were being attacked by woodworm. The frequencies used to stimulate the crumbling and consumption of the stones are again those of the Schumann resonance. The entire installation was powered by a solar energy system for the entire duration of the exhibition. 

At the closing event of your exhibition Resistenze at the National Gallery of Rome, you spoke about the similarities between artistic and scientific research. Could you illustrate your thoughts on this topic? 

On that occasion, I had the opportunity to organise an open dialogue with the art historian Ester Coen and the physicist Giovanni Organtini to analyse possible similarities and correspondences between artistic and scientific research. Having been involved in the world of scientific research long before venturing into the realm of art, I realised how much these fields have in common. Intuitive insights, mistakes, false assumptions, and chance occurrences can become starting points for new and unexpected journeys. Both fields equally seek synthesis, elegance, and a plausible and comprehensive interpretation of the reality we experience.  

A very interesting aspect that emerged during the meeting was the importance and role of visual representation in both fields of research. Both the scientist and the artist need to move to the level of representation to gain a deeper understanding of their research developments. Moreover, science often uses narrative structures to imagine what is happening in the world, temporarily detaching itself from the rigorous language of mathematics. Schroedinger's cat is an example of a scenario invented by a scientist to explain a core concept of quantum mechanics through a narrative description. When for a microscopic system (electrons, atoms, photons) multiple different states are possible, it is in a state of superposition, that is, it exists simultaneously in each of the possible states with a defined probability for each of them. Only when a measurement is made, the system become one of the possible states. In Schroedinger's imaginary experiment, a cat is placed in a hermetically sealed box. Until the box is opened, the possible states of the cat – if it is alive or dead - coexist and overlap in characterizing the known reality inside the box. 

There are countless other examples of science using narrative and/or representation to analyse and construct its disciplinary language. For example, in the introduction to Experimental Researches in Electricity Michael Faraday, a great scholar of the phenomena of electricity and magnetism, who interpreted long-distance electrical interactions in terms of lines of force, wrote about the need to abandon rigorous reasoning in favour of speculation, and its relevance to the study other natural phenomena: 

They [speculations] must always be taken with the benefit of the doubt, and are liable to error or change, but they are wonderful aids in the hands of an experimentalist or mathematician. For not only do they serve to give concreteness to a vague idea, by giving it something like a definite form, but they may, by deduction and correction, lead to the discovery of new phenomena, and produce an advance in real physical truth, which, in contrast with the original hypothesis, becomes certain fundamental knowledge (Schettino2014, 20). 

In One Mile After, you used an astronomical telescope for a fixed shot of the seashore at sunrise. Why did you use the telescope? Is there a certain interchangeability between artistic and scientific instruments? 

The use of an astronomical telescope allowed me to connect two different and circumscribed places, and to focus on a portion of the reality. In my research, I'm interested in details that are right under my nose, where I see great significance and starting points for reflection and keys to interpreting the world in which we live. It's a sort of exhortation to look nearby rather than far away, to reduce or limit the worry of having to search elsewhere, and to suggest that the world offers clues in all its places to reflect upon itself. Indeed, my focus on details comes from a deep conviction that the part and the whole are similar. If we enlarge a picture of a landscape, the resulting image will be another landscape that is different but that can be assimilated again into a landscape. We can repeat this an infinite number of times. For this reason, in my practice, I use enclosed small worlds and details to reconstruct everything around it, and to offer a reflection on the structure of the reality we perceive. 

To answer your question about the interchangeability between artistic and scientific instruments, I believe tools are conceived, designed, and especially produced to satisfy specific needs, but they can continue to be tools even when used for different purposes and on different levels. 

In some of your works you have used neon, argon and other noble gases. I would like to ask you how the study of physical matter relates to aesthetics. 

Fortunately, the matter and its attitude offer many sparks for constructing an aesthetic. In the case of my luminous works, the use of noble gases and knowledge of their behaviours were a tool that allowed me to give colour to the flow of electricity, unlocking additional possibilities that culminate in a crystallized and coherent structure.