Let There Be Light at the House of Electronic Arts Basel is the first solo show in Switzerland of the British artist duo Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, alias Semiconductor.
The recurring theme in media art of the combination of art and science can be encountered in fascinating ways in Semiconductor’s output. Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt illustrate in their video pieces and installations the influence science has over us experiencing and observing the physical appearance of the universe. Jarman and Gerhardt create spaces of imagination that move within the gray zone between documentation and animation.
The artistic transfer from scientific material to aesthetic audiovisual forms and structures creates new dimensions of scientific research. The artists hereby speak, in reference to Science Fiction, of “fictional science”.The exhibition at the House of Electronic Arts Basel focuses on a series of recent works, with a main focus on Worlds in the Making (2011).
This video installation entwines documentary material with animation of volcanological research work, the result of a residence on the Galápagos Islands, where the artists accompanied a group of scientists in an active volcano landscape. In other works, such as Some Part of Us Will Have Become (2012), the duo reacts to environmental disasters, like the scandal of the oil platform Deepwater Horizon.
In a more pictorial approach, the work 20Hz (2011) converts the acoustic recording of a geomagnetic storm in the Earth’s outer atmosphere into beautiful abstract pictures. Semiconductor is an artist duo founded in 1997, consisting of Ruth Jarman (*1973) and Joe Gerhardt (*1972) who both work and live in Brighton (GB).
Their works have gained Semiconductor a lot of attention on international festivals, such as the Biennale di Venezia and the Sundance Film Festival (USA), and exhibitions at the Royal Academy London, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Their installations have won a number of awards.