Winter [ Science ]
Humankind struggled through scores of prolonged Ice Ages that occurred at forty-thousand to a hundred-thousand year intervals, mastering fire somewhere along the way to maintain body temperature against the bitter cold. Why did only humans, out of all the animals so instinctively afraid of flames, come to claim fire for our own? The answer seems to lie in our unique fascination with danger, a curious ambivalence that pointed the way to skill acquisition. With fear and trepidation we approached where lightning struck and carried home a flame from the resultant forest fire. We deduced the causal relationship between lightning and fire, which led to reasoning, an awareness of time, and eventually an understanding of our natural surroundings—the birth of the rational mind as we know it.

Scientific spirit thus harks back to the origins of human consciousness, far predating the Renaissance. Exhibited works include images from the Lightning Fields series that re-enact lightning strikes, as well as from Polarized Colours inspired by Sir Isaac Newton’s Opticks (1704) and a re-creation of Michael Faraday’s electrostatic shielding Faraday Cage (1836).

Hiroshi Sugimoto