HOWZAT

Last week, the centre’s latest big project, The Dark, opened. Created by Braunarts — a team consisting of Terry and Gabi Braun — it is an utterly dark space. Twelve people in at a time, and then, for 13 minutes, they are bombarded with sounds, the direction and intensity of which are controlled by a sophisticated computer programme. The effect is scary and disorientating. People hallucinate and lose track of time. I thought I had walked into a wall, when in fact I had just been hit by a wave of sound. Most people don’t notice that they are being told a story (about slavery in the 18th century and the life of the radical poet Edward Rushton). They just spend their time trying to get a grip on the experience of seeing nothing with their eyes open.

The obvious point about this installation is that it’s art, not science. Previous projects were science with art overtones: this is just plain art. The Dark involves a lot of audio and computer technology. It also uses the web — you can see an alternate internet version of the installation at www. thedark.net. And you could, at a stretch, argue that the subjective effects induced by the installation cast light on the science of perception.

“We discussed with Braunarts how it dovetailed into what we were trying to do,” says Lisa Jamieson, programme co-ordinator. “I’ve never seen anything like The Dark before. It’s innovative and unusual, and it makes full use of the science. The web element is also interesting. It all helps people think about their experiences and their senses. I don’t think we are veering towards being an art gallery — each event is very individual.”

This is a complex point. The technology is not actually what is on display, and if Cézanne doesn’t make you think about your senses, you’re just not fully awake. A Cézanne illuminated by computer-controlled lights would, therefore, be a valid Dana Centre exhibit. Furthermore, as with art, there is no attempt to explain the effect. There is no demonstration of the technology. We are simply immersed in an experience and left to work it out for ourselves.

On top of that, Braunarts themselves seem slightly bemused by the venue. For the pair, it’s a perfect space and a golden opportunity. But Terry Braun is seriously anti- scientistic. “I’m completely against this whole idea of the reduction of human experience and trying to explain a work of art in scientific terms,” he says. “It can’t be done.”

Appended to the exhibition notes is an anti-reductive quotation from the science-fiction writer Ursula Le Guin: “We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.” The Dark and Le Guin are saying the same thing: that experience is irreducible and, therefore, inexplicable. Science has its limits.

Whether this is true or not, it is unquestionably the issue of our time. It is an issue that is evaded by the kind of middlebrow sentimentality that dreams of a unification of all knowledge. Somehow, think the middlebrows, it is all the same. Look at Leonardo da Vinci, they say: he was a great artist and scientist. Indeed, Leonardo crops up in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager as an emblem of the unity of wisdom. He would have been appalled.

The Dana Centre, to its credit, is not saying this. It is simply working on the basis that its job is to interest the young in science, and that if they won’t come to the mountain, the mountain will have to go to them. That means seducing them in the same way that they have been seduced by artists: through the body and through an immersive sensation rather than contemplation. The danger is that it will now be expected to do those things and be forced to become a sort of high-tech fairground ride. We’ll see.

We are in the midst of a temporary peace. Science and art are managing a stiff, awkward embrace. They have agreed to like, though not yet love, each other. It won’t last. The Treaty of London is full of holes. The next battle is long overdue. Meanwhile, there is the enigmatically well- meaning Dana Centre.

The Dark, Dana Centre, SW7, until April 30, Monday-Friday, noon-8pm

www.danacentre.org.uk
Links to the 3-D online version of The Dark