Anthronauts: Trilobite. Corten steel and glass. Chatsworth House


Anthronauts: Songbird. Steel, mirror and telescope. Chatsworth House


Anthronauts: Hawk. Leather, wood, telescope. Painted Hall, Chatsworth House
 
Anthronauts is series of three works Trilobite, Songbird and Hawk that invite us to see in a non-human way. Journeying to the edge of our abilities asks us to be more aware of the lived reality of other life forms, and the limits of human perception.

The differing focal lengths of the lenses in Trilobite prompt the viewer to take an active role with the work, bringing fragments of the landscape into focus through the varied lenses as they move. Trilobites are marine animals that appeared 520 million years ago and have been extinct for 250 million years. They commonly developed large crescent-shaped compound eyes, whose lenses were composed of crystals of a rock we know as Iceland spar. The image from these lenses was not resolved as a single image, but as a way to sense movement in the horizontal plane. In its curved form Trilobite gestures to the land art of Richard Serra, the glass lenses opening a porosity in the curved metal and inviting a more curious connection with the environment and with other viewers. 

Human vision has an angle of view of 190°; with Songbird we can imagine their 300° view looking down from a cedar tree.

Hawk is perched on the balcony of the Painted Hall in Chatsworth House and imagines how a hawk would see the hall through the two lenses of a hawk eye - simultaneously in close up and widely.