Moving forward into the gallery, the first thing you will approach is the curatorial text.
“Invisibility: Powers & Perils” is written in all caps in dark gray, against a light gray background. Underneath to the left the exhibition dates are written: September 17-February 22.
To the right of the exhibition dates is the list of exhibiting artists, written in a white font. The artists’ names are listed in two columns organized alphabetically by last name:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Underneath the exhibiting artist list is additional text regarding the works in the exhibition, which reads:
“This exhibition also includes ephemera related to rare invisibility amulets, first edition books by H.G. Wells and Ralph Ellison, specimens, and images either provided or produced by Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC), Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), LIFE Magazine (Gordon Parks & Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man issue), Occidental College Moore Lab of Zoology, Occidental College Special Collections, and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.”
This is the end of the exhibiting artists wall text.
To the right of the exhibiting artists wall text and underneath the exhibition title and dates is the curatorial text.
The curatorial text reads:
“The condition of invisibility—and its counterpart, hypervisibility—has long played an important role in science, literature and the arts. More recently it has become the locus of some of the most pressing struggles of our time. Vulnerable populations around the world have long borne the effects of both invisibility and hypervisibility—increasingly so in the digital age of drone warfare, facial recognition and surveillance. The politics of the invisible also permeates the planet’s ongoing environmental destruction by human beings. Even if we have begun finally to acknowledge the reality and consequences of climate change, the complex invisibility of its causes and its incremental, often hard to see impacts–species extinction, sea rise, desertification—remain a constant challenge.
Invisibility demands that we both recognize and attempt to think beyond our current conceptual limits. It is what science encounters when it confronts phenomena such as black holes. Ninety-nine percent of the universe, namely dark matter and dark energy, is invisible to us. Indeed the world is shining with things we cannot see. Once grasped as a challenge to an all-too human-centered worldview, invisibility can teach us to discover a multiplicity of exquisite visibilities–such as those of bumblebees, mycelium, and birds– that reveal the myriad blind spots of the human sensorium.
This exhibition highlights the work of artists and scientists striving to render visible the people, histories and planetary conditions that have been erased within the cultural mainstream, helping to make legible the limits of our own conception of the invisible and its ecological and humanitarian ramifications.
This exhibition is curated by Yael Lipschutz and presented in collaboration with Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide.”
This is the end of the curatorial text. This is the last of the text on this wall.
Then, moving counter-clockwise in the gallery you will approach the first work in the gallery.
The first work in the gallery is Dreaming at Dusk by Ix Shells. The work is an rectangle electronic screen oriented vertically with many black squares and rectangles on a off-white background. The shapes flash quickly into different spots on the screen, creating a static-like effect. The screen is surrounded by a wide black frame. The black squares/rectangles vary in size, but do not get larger than a small portion of the screen. Lighter gray squares/rectangles populate the perimeter of the off-white background.
The wall label reads:
Ix Shells (Itzel Yard, b. 1990)
Dreaming at Dusk, 2021
Digitally born generative work created with TouchDesigner, mp4 file
Minted as an NFT, or Non-Fungible Token, on the Ethereum blockchain
In honor of the TOR protocol, the open source privacy network that enables anonymous web browsing, computational artist Ix Shells created Dreaming at Dusk using the private key of TOR’s first so-called onion service, ‘Dusk’, as the starting point for her digital abstraction. Tor—short for The Onion Router—uses multiple layers of secure, encrypted protocols, like layers of an onion, to ensure users' online privacy. Tor works by redirecting web traffic through a series of different routers, called nodes, which hide IP addresses and browsing activity.
Tor’s core principle was developed in the mid-1990s by the US Naval Research Laboratory to protect American intelligence communications online. Onion routing is implemented by means of encryption in the application layer of the communication protocol stack, nested like the layers of an onion. The alpha version of Tor was launched in September 2002. The first public release occurred a year later. In her utilization of the Ethereum blockchain in the creation of Dreaming at Dusk, Ix Shells seeks to further shed light and draw parallels to the powers of encryption deployed in today’s blockchain.
This is the end of the wall label.
On another wall to the left of this artwork is the second piece in the gallery.
The second piece in the gallery is DukeMTMC Datageist by Adam Harvey. This work is a digital photographic print on dibond. It is a black-and-white photograph of a building at Duke University in 19th century eastern United States collegiate style. There is one larger building to the left attached to a walkway with three visible arches. The building is partially obscured by trees. In the middle of the photograph is a vertical infrared blur of various shades of blue, green, red, yellow, and orange. The warmer colors are centralized in the middle of the blur. Towards the left edge of the photograph is another spot of red, orange, and yellow. The blur almost reaches the left edge of the photograph. It does not reach as far towards the right edge, but still encroaches upon it. The edges of the blur are dark blue.
The wall label reads:
Adam Harvey (b.1981)
DukeMTMC Datageist, 2019
Visualization of surveillance camera 6 from the now revoked DukeMTMC dataset
Custom software, digital photographic print on dibond
Known for his long running investigation into surveillance, Harvey critically examines the data powering the rise of biometric surveillance technologies. In this work, Harvey maps the afterglow of images from the DukeMTMC re-identification dataset.
The DukeMTMC was a large-scale collection of video footage from Duke University, which became the most widely used source of images for developing multi-target multi-camera (MTMC) surveillance algorithms in the world. To understand its significance to the surveillance industry, Harvey and his team mapped the dataset to track how it moved from the campus to thousands of academic and commercial research labs globally. Their work revealed that over a thousand students had unknowingly been surveilled on camera and their likenesses distributed into a global data supply chain, exploited by major A.I. companies and government research labs. These included Microsoft, IBM, Megvii, SenseTime, IARPA, US Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which also funded the project.
In 2019, Harvey’s research was published in the Financial Times, leading to a moment of reckoning in the A.I. surveillance industry. Duke University responded with a formal apology. The dataset creator retracted his dataset. It was the first time the existence of a major A.I. dataset had been publicly challenged and defeated, pushing the issue of data sovereignty into the spotlight. Harvey’s research helped change public attitudes on this issue as well as retract other problematic datasets including HRT Transgender face recognition dataset, Brainwash, MegaFace, MS-Celeb-1M, VGGFace2, and Unconstrained College Students.
In this work, using custom software, Harvey composites the full data stream from one of the six surveillance cameras, visualizing the paths students walked as they were captured into the dataset. The work manifests the ghostly trails of images that will continue to haunt global surveillance technologies for years to come.
You can learn about the history of the DukeMTMC dataset and many others at the project's website: https://exposing.ai
This is the end of the wall label.
Moving counterclockwise, you come to another wall connected to the previous one.
This wall features two components. On the right side, closest to the previous work, is a set of black headphones. The headphones are playing the sound of two black holes colliding. On the left side of the wall is the first image of the Black Hole located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole appears as a blurry yellow-orange circular formation emitting a dark-red glow against a black background. There are three points in the circle with yellow-white oval shapes.
This is the beginning of the wall label for the headphones on the right side of the wall.
Sound of Two Black Holes Colliding
Observed by LIGO Laboratories, (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory laboratories), 2015
It may seem that black holes are by definition invisible, but we can still detect them through the way they interact with other objects thanks to their strong gravity. This is the sound of two black holes colliding and merging. Where did this sound come from? A long time ago, in the distant universe, two black holes, each about 30 times the mass of our sun, were locked in orbit and spiraling towards each other. The only visible traces of this spinning cataclysm would have been the way their gravitational fields warped the light of distant stars. Even as they collided and merged there wasn’t a flicker of light to be seen. The real and very violent action in this system was in the forms of gravitational waves; ripples in the very fabric of space and time. These waves were constantly draining energy from the black hole orbits, leading to their ultimate collision and merger to form a single black hole. At that instant the power of the gravitational waves was fifty times greater than that of all the stars in the universe combined. That pulse of gravitational waves, lasting only a fraction of a second, expanded through the universe passing unimpeded through countless galaxies. About 1.3 billion years later it reached earth, where it was recorded by the LIGO laboratories.
This is the end of the wall label.
Placing the headphones on; you will be able to hear two black holes colliding. It sounds similar to static constantly playing while every second you can hear what seems like two water droplets hitting the surface of a porcelain sink. The noise is reminiscent of being underwater where all sounds are slightly muffled and you can hear the faucet drop the remaining water.
This is the beginning of the wall label for the photograph on the left side of the wall.
First image of the Black Hole located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy
Photograph by Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, 2022
Scientists had previously seen stars located about 27,000 light-years away orbiting around something invisible, compact, and very massive at the center of the Milky Way. Known as Sagittarius A*, the object was strongly suggestive of a black hole, a phenomena that earned its name through its ability to trap light. In 2022, astronomers successfully captured visual evidence of it. While the black hole itself is completely dark and invisible, the surrounding gas reveals a telltale sign: a dark center “shadow,” surrounded by a bright ring. This view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun.
This image was produced by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, a global research team using observations from a worldwide network of radio telescopes which linked eight existing observatories to form a single “Earth-sized” virtual telescope. It yields valuable clues about the workings of such giants, which are thought to reside at the center of most galaxies. The EHT observed Sagittarius A* on multiple nights, collecting data for many hours in a row, similar to using a long exposure camera. The breakthrough follows the EHT’s 2019 release of the first ever image of a black hole, located at the center of the more distant Messier 87 galaxy.
This is the end of the wall label.
Moving Counter-clockwise, you come upon a small room built into the wall.
This room contains the work Soft Evidence by Operator. This room has three components: a red typewriter with a piece of paper in it in the room’s left corner, and two videos playing on the wall opposite you when walking in.
The piece of paper in the red typewriter reads as follows:
‘Appearance Release.
This appearance Release (“ Agreement”), dated as of July 24, 2021 (the “Effective Date”) is by and between Operator, LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company with offices located at 1309 Coffeen Avenue STE 1200, Sheridan, Wyoming 82801 (“Company”), and the individual named below with a residence at the address set out below (“I,” “me,” or “Participant”) in connection with Company’s audio-visual synthetic media artwork entitled Soft Evidence (the “Artworks”). Company and Participant agree as follows:
For _____(USD) and other good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which I hereby acknowledge, I irrevocably give Company my permission, and grant to Company the right, to film, record, and photograph me and to otherwise make audio-visual recordings of me (the “Recording”).’
Some parts of the text are blocked by the type-bar. The rest reads as follows, now in bold:
‘the rights to digitize, modify, alter, edit, adapt, create derivative works, create Synthetic and Manipulated Media (no matter how created, including but not limited to Synthetic and Manipulated Media)’
End of typewriter paper text.
The screen closest to the typewriter on the right side of the wall features a black-and-white video of a woman with short hair staring into a camera. The camera cuts closer and farther away from the woman at intervals. The woman is visible from her shoulders above. She blinks rapidly, and speaks at intervals, saying “That’s not me” and “I wasn’t there.” She wears a black turtleneck sweater and a flower broach. The screen on the left side of the wall features a woman in a blue dress reading a newspaper in a laundromat. The laundromat is small and has its doors open. The dominant color in the scene is blue; the doors of the laundromat are blue, as are its walls. The woman sits in front of the front desk on a stool close to the entrance. Throughout the video she turns the pages of the video and eventually puts it down.
Outside the small room on the left wall of the entrance-way is a wall label. The wall label reads:
Operator [Ania Catherine, b.1990, Dejha Ti, b.1985]
Soft Evidence, 2021 [excerpt]
Two-channel video, deepfake algorithm, A.I., typewriter
Supported by Media Futures and Horizon 2020 (EU’s research and innovation program)
What does it mean to see a video of events that never happened, yet feel like they are actual memories? How can artists and activists reveal the invisible forces, ethical issues and biases at play in the algorithms, Large Language Models, and deepfake tools currently shifting our lived experiences?
Soft Evidence is a synthetic cinema series depicting fabricated events in vignettes using only A.I., with no trace of audio visual manipulation. Soft Evidence considers two key issues: 1) the ability to fabricate someone's actions, location or words, and conversely, 2) the introduction of plausible deniability (‘the liar’s dividend’), which enables people to escape accountability for their actual actions caught on photo/video.
To highlight these problems, the artists created their own data set of a source subject shot over five days in Mexico City, using a body double and capturing facial data. Additionally, they engaged in a legal exercise, inventing a “Synthetic and Manipulated Media” contract to obtain approval for their use of face-swapping and synthetic media techniques. While the artists’ process is not posing as a solution, it underscores the significant labor, time, and consent required when data isn't “free.”
End of wall label.
Moving counterclockwise from this label, there is a small thin hallway from this wall, where the artwork is the wallpaper on both walls, enclosing you as you stand in it.
This on-site artwork is PRE.TEXT/VOR.WAND by Juergen Mayer H. The walls are covered almost to the ceiling with a print of magnified collaged envelope pieces and their interior confidentiality patterns. The pieces are cut in rectangular and ripped shapes and composed at all orientations. The different patterns of the envelopes are muted corporate shades of blues, grays, and desaturated reds, and vary from chevrons, hatching, and stripes to indeterminate noise, scribbles, and repetitive text. Identification numbers and text boxes with greetings and messages in German printed onto the envelopes are scattered throughout. Also present are rounded rectangles cut into the patterns on each scan that resemble artifacts of clear envelope windows.
On the left wall is a label. The wall label reads:
Juergen Mayer H. (b.1965)
PRE.TEXT/VOR.WAND Getty PST Art, 2024
Found data protection patterns, envelopes, wallpaper dimensions variable (site-specific)
In the early twentieth century, desire for information control birthed the Data Protection Pattern (DPP), a visual method for veiling the content of print media. In a DPP system, letters and numbers, the basic ingredients of meaning, are used in excess to cloak valuable text in “noise,” rendering content invisible. Transformed by artist/architect Juergen Mayer H. into wallpaper, one stands in this DPP hallway as if sandwiched between two interior folds of a security envelope, occupying a state of invisibility normally reserved for the envelope’s contents. “The infinite spectrum of specific data protection patterns from letters, numbers, and logos, to organic, camouflage, and ornamental graphics, can be read as a ‘primordial soup’ for our times,” says Mayer, who encourages us to consider the DPP as a model for carriers of today’s digital information, where a new global network of unsecured data transfer remains to be resolved.
This is the end of the wall label.
Moving counterclockwise, past the next wall with a black curtain and against a black wall is the next artwork, a sculpture on a black pedestal at chest height.
This artwork is Transposing a Form by Sarah Rosalena. It appears to be a coil ceramic pot that is caving in, warping, and folding at the center where a hole is formed through to the other side. The sculpture’s surface is wavy and ridged. Towards the unwarped back of the pot, the ceramic is a red-brown terracotta color, and approaching the hole it gradients into a silver metallic glaze.
On the wall behind the piece, there is a label. The wall label reads:
Sarah Rosalena (b. 1982)
Transposing a Form, 2020
Ceramic 3D print with MMS-2 Enhanced Mars Soil Simulant, bentonite clay, aluminum based glaze
Referencing the largely invisible phenomena of black holes alongside the idea of an Indigenous Puebloan vessel, Rosalena’s ceramic sculpture transposes, collapses and contorts our conception of the black hole, urging us to question the epistemological frameworks that shape our knowledge of such cosmic objects.
Created on a 3D printer using NASA’s “MMS-2 Mars Soil Simulant,” a substance representing space colonization, Rosalena views her object as “an exit point for time, land, and technologies that signal future settler colonialism.” Like LIGO and the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, used to capture images of the distant universe, the Mars Mission speaks to the vast imperial arm of interstellar research, a field as political as it is academic. Contrasting such technological endeavors with less resource-intensive Indigenous scientific histories, Rosalena reveals the cryptic, often hidden material machinations of the contemporary space race.
This is the end of the wall artwork label.
To the left, there is a grouping of six artworks on the wall, small prints of the same size in identical silver rectangular frames slightly above chest height.
These artworks are Pechblende (prologue by Susanne Kriemann. Each image is overwhelmed by black color with various spots and shapes of white peaking through. The images are not identical in subject matter yet the first and last images echo each other. The silver frame highlights the white elements in the images while the wall itself is all black connecting to the blackness of the prints.
To the left of the pieces are two wall labels. The first reads:
Susanne Kriemann (b.1972)
Pechblende (prologue), 2016
3 samples of 52 archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo rag 308 gr
2 archival reproductions by Kriemann from Herman Yagoda’s 1949 book, Radioactive Measurements with Nuclear Emulsions
How can we understand unseen phenomena like nuclear radiation? Reflecting on the literal and political invisibility of such forces, Kriemann worked with scientists to produce various versions of an “autoradiograph”– a unique type of photograph that is the result of directly exposing light-sensitive paper to radioactive pitchblende (or uraninite) specimens. Extensively mined in the Ore Mountains of the former German Democratic Republic between 1946 and 1989, this radioactive mineral made the GDR the third largest uranium producer in the world and helped facilitate the nuclear armament of the USSR. Today, this region is being transformed into a landscape with few visible traces of the still-radiating industrial worksites and the documented health threats to the miners who worked there. Kriemann’s images are testament to this increasingly forgotten and hidden history.
This is the end of the wall label.
The next wall label reads:
Left to Right
Susanne Kriemann
Pechblenden (1), AMNH
American Museum of Natural History, New York, 2015, Test 1/1
Herman Yagoda
“Radiocolloid in a radium-loaded emulsion,” (image re-printed by Susanne Kriemann from Yagoda’s 1949 book Radioactive Measurements with Nuclear Emulsions, p.158. Fig. 28.)
Herman Yagoda
“Alpha-ray patterns of uraninite specimens” (image re-printed by Susanne Kriemann, from Yagoda’s 1949 book Radioactive Measurements with Nuclear Emulsions, p.178. Fig. 33.)
Susanne Kriemann
Pechblenden (2), AMNH
American Museum of Natural History, New York, 2015, Test 2, 1/4.
Susanne Kriemann
Pechblenden (3), MfN
Museum of Natural History Berlin, 2016, Test 3, 3/10
Susanne Kriemann
Pechblenden (5), AMNH
American Museum of Natural History, New York, 2015, Test 2, 4/4
This is the end of the wall labels for these artworks.
Moving through the doorway, you will enter a large room. The walls are painted white. As you walk into the middle of the space, you approach a desk sitting on a round ledge with a large book beneath the glass case.
This glass case contains The Encyclopedia of Invisibility by Tavares Strachan.
On the bottom of the round ledge is a floor label. The floor label reads:
Tavares Strachan (b. 1979)
The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, 2018
Leather, gilding, archival paper, maple, felt, and acrylic
Published by Isolated Labs, Inc.
Collection of Michael Rubel and Kristin Rey
The book is displayed on a stand; the stand has a small open drawer with text printed on felt fabric.
The text in the drawer reads as follows:
Foreword
This book is the first even encyclopedia to focus on the topic of invisibility. The fifteen thousand entries that follow describe people, places, objects, concepts, artworks, and scientific phenomena that are hard to see and difficult to ascertain. Some of the topics of these entries are rare or intangible, existing only through their replication in literature or cultural references; some have been changed or altered beyond recognition. Much like the format of the encyclopedia, they have gravity and weight.
Although it doesn’t seem that way, encyclopedias(even online versions) have authors, who determine what is important enough to write on or to make searchable. But who decides what is important? What facts, stories, or ideas do we pass on to the generations to come, and what happens to all the information that is left out–or that never made it into a standard reference book to begin with? Was the first person to reach the North Pole really the person listed in your library’s encyclopedia? Which ancient cultures developed techniques of encryption? How do anthropologists determine what constitutes as indigenous tribe? Is there a name for the assumptions that govern our knowledge?
Ralph Ellison reminded us that invisibility comes from a refusal to see. As it turns out, learning to see again can take time. This book represents five years of research: library-sourcing, note collecting, interviews, bar conversations, and Google searches. It’s a book to read (in whatever order you choose), an object to view, and a sculpture to live with. I hope you can think with it, through it, and beyond it.
End of drawer text.
The book itself is open to the pages on…
Beginning counterclockwise from the room’s entrance, the wall has two alcoves and a glass case between them.
The alcoves are painted a deep green. On a shelf in the center of each alcove, a small incense stick is placed upright among a pile of previously burnt ashes. On the left inner wall of the alcoves is text in circles that list ingredients for each incense.
Left alcove text circles reads:
The First Forest
Cairo, the oldest known forest that lived 385 million years ago by the Hudson Valley, New York, USA
From biggest to smallest circle:
Lycopsid
Smells of wet grass, hay. The aroma has a hint of bitterness. The hay element smells of late summer grass meadows after a rain shower – sun-dried grasses are moistened. The crushed leaf has a very clean, green aroma, like torn baby lettuce leaves
Quiet
Rain and wind in the vegetation would have been the only sounds
Rotting vegetation
Clay
Stream water running through silty clay mud. The aroma is earthy, a little like the smell of freshly turned soil
Soil
A warm, rounded smell of rich humus and loam
Humidity
Ferns
Sweetly vegetal edged with woodsy spiciness
Dry
Liverwort and Moss
Deep green lushness with an acerbic tone
Green
Quartz sandstone
Swamp
Sea water
Merivesi
Algae
Levät
Fungi
End of left alcove circle text.
Next to the left alcove, the wall label for both incense reads:
Katie Paterson (b.1981)
To Burn, Forest, Fire, 2021
Bespoke incense
Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery
[left] First Forest [right] Last Forest.
Employing the invisible sense of the olfactory, Paterson’s bespoke incense transports us back in time to explore the Cairo Forest, which existed in New York’s Hudson Valley over 300 million years ago. Created with scientists, Paterson’s so-called “First Forest” incense stick includes scents ranging from algae, clay, liverwort, moss, and the scent of Cladoxylopsida, believed to be one of the planet’s most ancient trees. Paterson contrasts this with a second incense: “Last Forest,” referencing the endangered Amazon. She describes the odor as, “similar to what you’d experience in a well-planted greenhouse: the combined smell of vegetation, moisture, soil, and decaying plants and wood. It’s the scent of life.” OXY ARTS staff will ceremoniously burn the incense weekly—schedule available at the front desk.
“My fundamental drive is to create artwork that heightens awareness of the sixth extinction the world is living through. We share a quarter of our DNA with trees, they are our life source, yet Earth has lost more than half of its trees since humans first started cutting them down.” – Katie Paterson.
This is the end of the wall label.
In-between the alcoves, there is a glass case in the wall. This is the next art piece.
There are three taxidermy birds in the case: In the bottom left, on a small platform is a small black bird specimen, laying belly-up with a long beak and a patch of deep blue-violet feathers under its throat. There are white fluffy feathers by its feet, and a yellowed paper tag attached. The middle taxidermy bird is perched highest on a branch elevated by a golden rod. This bird is light blue and gray, with darker blue wings and tail. It is posed alertly and has glass eyes. The larger bird specimen on the right is a parrot with a hooked beak, green body and cobalt-blue head. There is a patch of dark gray on its chest and specks of orange and red throughout. Its wings and feet are tucked in, and stuffing is visible where eyes were. Two tags hang down from its feet.
On the wall left of the case is the label for this work. The label reads:
Moore Lab Birds:
Blue-headed Parrot, Pionus menstruus, Specimen collected from Ecuador.
Black-breasted Puffleg, Eriocnemis nigrivestis, Specimen collected from Ecuador, endangered.
Blue-gray Tanager, Thraupis episcopus, Taxidermy, Native to Mexico, C. America and S. America.
Collection of Moore Laboratory of Zoology, Occidental College, Los Angeles
Birds are able to perceive gradations of color not visible to the human eye and have extra cones in their retinas which allow them to see hues undetectable by humans, prompting us to consider what lies in the blindspots of our human-centric understanding of the universe. Even the beautiful blues in their plumage is something of an illusion, originating from a microscopic protein structure in their feathers which reacts with light waves to reflect brilliant shades of blue back to the human eye.
These museum specimens and taxidermy are on loan from Occidental College’s Moore Laboratory of Zoology, which houses over 65,000 specimens and the world's largest Mexican bird collection. Of the three you see here, the exquisite Black-breasted Puffleg is now on the endangered species list. Its habitat, along with those of the other species exhibited, are threatened by human activities such as logging, construction and cattle ranching.
This is the end of the wall label.
Moving to the right, you approach the second alcove.
Right alcove text circles reads:
The Last Forest
The Amazon Rainforest,
Tiputini Biodiversity Station,
Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, Ecuador
From biggest to smallest circle
Humidity
The choking-like air of the forest’s humidity
Algae, moss, lichen
Algal and miss aroma in the understory. The high humidity means that every twig and leaf is coated with a film of living algae, moss, and lichen, producing an aroma sometimes of clean chlorophyll and sometimes with an almost briny or iodine tang
Inga tree
A genus of small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs
Garlic vine
A sweet, medicine smell
Wet clay, mud, earth
A smell like fresh peanuts
Volatile organic compounds
Guava tree
The alcoholic fizz of fermenting fruitsweet bitter, acidic, like edible perfumes
Tree leaves
Folded layers of green tree leaves often have a bitter or acrid aroma when broken or rubbed. Revealing their extensive chemical defenses – like the sharp, chemical odour of a bottle of cocktail bitters
Animals
The scent of animals active in the forest: howler monkeys (the smell of a cow pasture, with a perfumy note on top), armadillos (a smell like cilantro or spoiled raspberries), peccary pigs (concentrated, salty broth), bed bugs, and tiger beetles (bubblegum)
Copal
Tree resin
Decaying vegetation
Wood
A treebark smell of nutmeg
End of alcove text
Moving counterclockwise, farther left past the other alcove and to the next wall, there is an artwork hanging on the wall.
It is an aerial landscape of glowing orange and red in clusters that have the shape and texture of trees. There is a central brighter cluster in the center of the photograph, and a more red cluster in the distance, dappled against brown and dark gray hills towards the bottom of the photograph. There are bodies of dark blue and reflective purple water, one curving around the bottom-left corner and another in the horizon. Light gray roads curve through the landscape from the top-left to the bottom.
To the left of the framed photograph is a wall label. The label reads:
Richard Mosse (b.1980)
Still from Broken Spectre XIII, Rondônia, 2022
Digital C-print,
Courtesy Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco
Broken Spectre is a still from Mosse’s dreamlike film documenting deforestation in the Amazon. Captured with a multispectral camera, this photograph depicts what would normally be invisible to the human eye: a nocturnal view of Rondônia—located in the so-called “Amazonian Arc of Deforestation,” a rapidly disappearing tropical forest belt.
“As in past projects, the media I have chosen to tell these stories is embedded with complex, invisible layers of the systems involved, on international, governmental, and local levels. And I’ve used these media to make a Western, because the fraught iconography of the Western film carries uncanny echoes of the reality that I encountered in the field — a natural paradise and its Indigenous population being colonized by pioneer settlers with the righteous zeal of Manifest Destiny and a distinctly Texan style of cowboy culture. ” — Richard Mosse
This is the end of the text.
Moving left, another wall comes out at a slight angle. In this wall are 4 alcoves, divided by a doorway to a different artwork in the middle.
Each alcove has a violet cloth panel obscuring its interior. These reveal framed photographs inside when lifted. Golden text is written on each flap, illuminated by square spotlights.
Moving right to left, the first alcove’s covering has text that reads:
Amuletic necklace believed to render the wearer invisible.
This is the end of the covering text. Under it, there is a photograph hanging on the wall of the alcove.
The vertically-oriented photograph under shows a top view of a necklace laid out, arranged to fill the frame in an ellipse. It is made of twine, and at the bottom are strung six long wrapped beads of alternating browns and white colors. There is an identification tag tied to the top.
The next alcove’s panel has text that reads:
By mounting the night horse, members of the mbatsav secret society believe that they become invisible and able to travel long distances at night.
This is the end of the covering text.
The horizontally-oriented photograph shows a small stylized horse figure, made of a stony black material, with thick, rounded legs and a large glassy eye. It has a crescent form on its back like a saddle. The mane, saddle, body, and front legs are covered in small square felt patches that are beige, red, and green-gray. A strip of leather is tied around its neck with five swirling wire beads of gray and copper color.
Moving left past the doorway in the wall, the next alcove’s text reads:
Ahumu head-band worn by Asante priests. The wearer of this ahumu can see what is invisible to others.
This is the end of the covering text.
The framed photograph is filled by a brown necklace laid out on a white background in a flowing shape with two outward curves at the top. The cotton twine necklace is wrapped and has knotted details all around it, and a central rounded rectangular bead on the left side. A white cowrie shell is embedded in the brown bead, and an aged tag is laid in the center of the necklace’s loop describing its materials and significance.
You come upon the next alcove to the left. The golden text on the fabric reads:
A piece of ‘dammar’ or resin. When burnt those who sit near the fumes are rendered invisible to evil spirits.
This is the end of the covering text.
A piece of mineral-like hardened plant resin is framed at the center of the photograph, on a white background, taking on a triangular form with both rough and rounded edges pointing upwards. The resin stone is colored with swirls and gradations of chalky grays, browns, and dark reds, with patches of white. A deposit of a brighter orange color passes through the center of the resin and curves to the other edge, where a small crack crawls at the top of the resin.
To the left of all of the alcoves are more detailed wall labels for each, describing from left to right. The first label reads:
Invisibility Amulets:
Exhibited here are images of four amulets intended to bestow the power of invisibility. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as charms worn to prevent against things such as evil and disease, these amulets, from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England are part of a collection of nearly 6,000 such objects. Often made by learned medicine practitioners and shamans, they were often non-Western in origin, and dismissed as ‘non-scientific’, despite their roots in complex knowledge systems—employing plants, herbs, and animal materials.
Amulets, like modern anti-surveillance tools, are connected to political power structures. They were used by disenfranchised groups as a survival strategy, and conversely by those who held disproportionate power, for unimpeded, illicit, and sometimes harmful actions.
Honoring their power and fraught position in colonial-era museums, the curator has chosen to exhibit not the amulets themselves, but their photographs behind curtains, so that visitors can have an intimate, intentional experience with them and the ideas they hold—inviting contemplation on how these older objects might offer a wider lens on our contemporary dialogue with the concept of invisibility.
* Please lift fabric panels to view amulets
This is the end of the first label. The next label reads:
[LEFT]
Invisibility amulet, ‘Pemuta Antu,’ a piece of 'dammar' or plant resin (date unknown)
Collected in Saribas, Sarawak—present day Borneo, Malaysia
Given in exchange for a shield of rattan work in 1903, purchased from Mr E Bartlett, through Stevens Auction Rooms
Image Courtesy The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England
Accession #: 1903.41.1.24
From the medicine basket of an Iban, or Sea Dyak, medicine man. When burnt those who sit near the fumes are rendered invisible to evil spirits.
This is the end of the second label. The next label reads:
[LEFT CENTER]
‘Ahumu,’ Amuletic headband, Asante, Ghana (date unknown)
Collected in 1925
Image Courtesy The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England
Accession #: 1925.12.4
Ritualistic headband, or ahumu, comprised of large lumps of dufa (medicine) with a cowrie shell embedded in it. Intended for Asante spiritual leaders, who upon donning the amulet, can see what is invisible to others. The Pitt Rivers’ records state that this amulet originated in a “collection of suman, or 'fetishes' which formerly belonged to an Asante spiritual leader, or okomfo, who became a convert to Christianity and handed them all over to a native pastor for destruction. They were rescued from the flames by Captain Rattray. The information about these suman was obtained from another 'priest' not the original owner.”
This is the end of the third label. The fourth label reads:
[RIGHT CENTER]
Horse invisibility amulet, Nigeria (date unknown)
Mbatsav secret society, Tiv tribe, Nigeria
Confiscated in 1931 by the British Anthropological Officer, R.C. Abraham, who was stationed in Benue Province in northern Nigeria, then under British colonial rule
Amulet entered the collection of the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1932
Image courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England
Accession Number 1932.18.21
This amulet comprises a rubber horse with a saddle, decorated with small square pieces of red, green and yellow textile. It has a leather thong around its neck with small ‘charms’ consisting of pieces of wound metal wire. The horse’s eyes are metal nails. It represents a ‘night horse' and was used in the rituals of the mbatsav secret society of the Tiv people of Nigeria. One of the beliefs of the society was that they could mount this horse, become invisible, and travel long distances at night.
This is the end of the fourth label. The final label reads:
[RIGHT]
Amulet necklace believed to render the wearer invisible, Thailand (date unknown)
String threaded with inscribed copper and lead rolls
Originated in Trang province, Thailand
Collected in 1902 by British anthropologist and founding director of the Zoological Survey of India, Thomas Nelson Annandale; subsequently entered the Pitt Rivers Museum
Image Courtesy the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England
Accession Number 1902.41.4
This is the end of the wall labels.
Moving left around the slight corner to the next wall, the next piece is displayed on a long horizontal floating white shelf at chest height.
On the shelf, dozens of clear glass microscope slides are scattered, with many lined up leaning vertically against the wall and shelf, while the rest are fallen and strewn across the shelf, collapsing over each other at different angles. Printed on the slides are black and translucent gray organic lines and squiggles,interconnected and crawling in both dense membranous clusters and more stray sparse lines. A focal group of slides at the center of the shelf appears more organized and their lines denser than the ones on the periphery.
To the left of this shelf is the wall label for the artwork. It reads:
Nene Humphrey (b.1947)
Searching Close #4, 2019
Ink on glass microscope slides from LeDoux Neuroscience Lab, NYU
In Searching Close Nene Humphrey traces neurological patterns in the brain, revealing processes invisible to the naked eye as they shape and control seemingly intangible phenomena such as human emotions, behavior and memory. Created at NYU’s LeDoux Neuroscience Lab, where Humphrey has been a long term artist in residence, these drawings were made by tracing neurons from slices of the brain's amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure located in the medial temporal lobe, in front of the hippocampus. A key part of the limbic system, the amygdala controls emotions, behavior and memory, and makes up about 0.3% of the brain's volume. These particular works were in response to studies of the neuroanatomy of emotion.
This is the end of the wall label.
As you turn left at the corner, the next artworks, Thought Forms, are displayed on the next wall panel.
There are three vertical prints hanging on the wall held up by golden hooks that show abstract drawings on rectangular stark black backgrounds, printed with white borders.
From left to right, the first print is comprised of two drawings. The top drawing centers on a round amorphous yellow blot with a grainy, fuzzy glow bleeding out onto the black background. The bottom shows an irregular green blob, extending to the bottom right with a rounded growth, with slight shifts in blue and yellow hues. Both drawings have a small number “18” printed in dark golden serif text on their bottom left corners.
The middle print is filled by a single vertical drawing with a black background that is symmetrical down its center. At the top is a cell-like elliptical form, with a magenta-pink border encircling its green fill that glows lighter at the center. Below it is a circular form, shadowed at one edge like a globe, bottom half magenta and the top covered in a grainy green texture and irregular bloblike patterns. The drawing is labeled with a subtle serifed ‘33’ printed in the bottom left corner.
The rightmost print is comprised of two stacked drawings like the first. The top drawing, labeled with a number ‘8’ in its bottom left corner, focuses on a round inklike pink form on a black background, bleeding and glowing outwards. The form of the drawing under is slightly larger and wider, with a dirtier orange and brown color about its outer edges and darker, black and purple grain towards its interior. This bottom drawing is similarly labeled with a faint golden number ‘9’ printed in its bottom left corner.
To the left of the artwork is a wall label. It reads:
Thought Forms
Annie Besant (1847-1933)
C.W. Leadbeater (1854-1934)
18. Vague Intellectual Pleasure
33. At a Street Accident
8. Vague Pure Affection
9. Vague Selfish Affection
1905 Facsimile, Images Courtesy of Sacred Bones Books
These drawings come from the 1905 occult book, Thought Forms, co-authored by theosophists Besant and Leadbeater and published in London by the Theosophical Publishing Society. Besant and Leadbeater said that the images emerged from second-sight trance states in which the authors viewed auras, vortices, etheric matter, astral projections, energy forms and other expressions from the unseen world. They conveyed these to visual artists who translated them into paintings.
Thought Forms, as well as the images included in C.W. Leadbeater’s previous book, Man Visible and Invisible (1902), is widely acknowledged as one of the sources that mobilized several modern and avant-garde artists toward abstraction, including Piet Mondrian, Hilma af Klimt, and Wassily Kandinsky, a member of the Theosophical Society who owned his own copy.
This is the end of the wall label and this artwork’s description.
As you move to the left, you find the next work that contains two components: a dress hanging from the ceiling on a clear form, and a large horizontal glass case underneath. This is Cosmic Bitcasting.
The dress is made from light gray plastic-like fabric that hits right above the knee. A gray cotton fabric with rainbow polka dots was used for the zipper lining, the three-quarter sleeve trip, and a small pocket on the right side of the dress. There are 2 single chevron patterns on each side of the dress that are a copper color. These copper elements connect to a wire that lights up sporadically. On the left shoulder of the dress is a small circuit that glows red. On the right side, there is another small circuit that comes out of the pocket. Below the hanging dress is a large case with the tools that made the dress placed under the glass. In the case, you will be able to see various pliers, wires, and circuits. Under the pliers and wires is a piece of paper mapping out how the circuits work. On the far right side of the case, is a sheet displaying the different types of sewing stitches that were used in making this form. Under the stitches is a prototype of the copper wiring that went into the dress. There are sewing tools on the left side. Additionally, there are photographs on the left side of the case that show a model wearing the dress while posing in different scenarios.
To the left of this glass case is the wall label for the artwork. It reads:
Afroditi Psarra (b. 1982), Cécile Lapoire (b. 1985)
Cosmic Bitcasting, 2016
Installation with wearable cosmic radiation detector, textile muon detector, and miscellaneous electric components
Courtesy of Afroditi Psarra and Cécile Lapoire
A collaboration between Afroditi Psarra and experimental physicist Cécile Lapoire, Cosmic Bitcasting connects the human body with the invisible universe that surrounds us. The dress serves as a wearable interface that provides sensory information on gamma radiation, x-rays, and alpha and beta particles that pass through our bodies, triggering a series of embedded actuators that light up and vibrate each time unseen radiation is detected.
End of wall label.
Turning around and walking past The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, in the center of the room, you will find an opening in the wall between the invisibility amulets. This is a small enclosed space with two projections playing and two benches for you to sit on. This is the last artwork in the exhibition.
The video on the right wall displays a single person dancing frantically around in the corner of a room. The walls and floor in the video are white and the figure is also in white. On the left wall, there is a similar projection being played. Both figures seem to be glitching, with only the outline artifacts of their bodies’ digital erasure and their unerased black hair continuously visible.
On the left side of the space is the wall label for this artwork. It reads:
Sondra Perry (b. 1986)
Double Quadruple Negative Etcetera Etcetera I & II, 2013
Two-channel high-definition video (color, silent), runtime 9 minutes
Courtesy Sondra Perry, Bridget Donahue Gallery and Electronic Arts Intermix
“The preoccupations of my work are around technologies of representation, technologies of lenses, surveillance, how Blackness or Black culture show up in those spaces, how they navigate, and how they explode representation altogether.” – Sondra Perry
In Sondra Perry’s Double Quadruple Negative Etcetera Etcetera I & II two performers dance against bright white walls that mysteriously swallow and blur their bodies, leaving all but their hair invisible as they move. Utilizing Photoshop tools that attempt to automatically “fill in” or erase parts of an image using A.I., the result are mirror images in which the subjects appear both luminously spectacular and barely visible, dissolving or even going underground.
End of wall label
This concludes the screen reader guide.