A new exhibition has opened in London for fans of art, photography and the natural world. Outernet has teamed up with LA-based photographer and artist Maggie West to launch a time-lapse photography exhibition featuring sand, stars and multicoloured plant life. The exhibition is separated into three distinct sections – Terra, Pools and Ultraviolet.
The Terra Exhibit
As mentioned, the whole exhibition is split between three parts and Terra is the first of them. Hosted out of The Now Building, Terra is supposed to show what night on Earth looks like across its many different climates.
For art’s sake, there’s a big focus on plant life and how it changes between regions. According to its description, the exhibit covers everything from lush tropical rainforests to arid deserts filled with cacti. It features exotic scenes that can’t be seen anywhere in the UK but are also popular in other kinds of digital media. For example, iGaming sites often feature landscapes from around the world to make their slots more appealing. The result is games like Sahara Riches Cash Collect, inspired by North African culture and the largest desert in the world. In this new exhibition, similar landscapes are presented through moving displays of sand and leaves.
In Terra, artist Maggie West photographed every featured plant individually under multicoloured lighting. Those photographs captured them as they bloomed. Those photos are then chained together into a digital collage, while combined with astrophotography. As explained by How Stuff Works, astrophotography is used by researchers and artists alike to explore the night sky.
The Pools Exhibit
Hosted out of the Now Trending space, the second part of the exhibition is called Pools. Unlike the previous display, this one is described as taking inspiration from the smallest parts of nature. That means things like individual grains of sand, as they band together and absorb water that’s poured onto them. Since the display is presented through a massive digital display with coloured lighting, it views like a kaleidoscopic look at nature at its closest.
Each exhibit, including Pools, is accompanied by a score by American composer Matt Nordstrom. To match its natural imagery, Nordstrom’s score is described as ethereal and dreamlike, but it also includes the real, pleasant sounds of wildlife like bird calls or insect chirping.
The Ultraviolet Exhibit
The third and final exhibition is Ultraviolet, hosted out of Outernet’s Now Arcade. This exhibit goes back to focus on plant life as seen in Terra, but also focuses on the way that they absorb water as Pools did. To capture plants in the process of drinking water, Maggie used fluorescent ink that lights up when hit by ultraviolet light. Several natural things glow when hit by UV light, described here by Cosmos Magazine, but plants need a little help using special ink.
Maggie photographed pale white flowers that would stand out when their veins were illuminated by black light. The footage has been arranged into a digital collage that shows, through a time-lapse, how plants drink using a complex structure of veins in their leaves and petals. The result is a bright, neon-illuminated garden under dark light.
Describing her artwork for the whole exhibition, Maggie West explains: “By capturing these movements through vivid, colourful lighting, my work falls somewhere in between documentation and fantasy.” Outernet’s Director of Creative and Content Alexandra Payne focused more on the technology involved, saying that it uses “one of the largest and most advanced canvases in the world.”
All three exhibitions are available for free, for those who can make it to Tottenham Court Road after August 8th. Each exhibit is open all day after 10 AM, with a consistent 11:30 PM close
