Materialising deep time: spatial investigations into light and fibre

This practice-led research project examines how material negotiation can be realised through installation-based artworks that expand the experience of deep time and enhance perceptions of ecological interconnection. The research seeks to understand how the materials of fibre and light can be used to create new perceptions of deep time through physical spatial encounters. Deep time is approached as a cosmological and geological reality, relevant to environmental climate challenges. A series of installation works were produced using fibre and LED light drawing on craft traditions, including crochet and DIY electronics. The installations investigate the agency of materials and how the relationship between artist, material and audience can be understood as an expanded concept of interconnection and collaboration - a material negotiation. The aim is to foreground the nonhuman (fibre and light) and to recognise the artist/audience situatedness within a posthuman context. The human/nonhuman relations are considered as interconnections and negotiations drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's (2005) ideas of becoming and assemblage and Rosi Braidotti's critical posthumanism (2013 and 2019). The research reconceives deep time as an ecological consideration through an acknowledgement of material agency.