Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon
Starts Saturday 13 October 12 noon
Ends Sunday 14 October 3 pm
Saturday 13 October, 12 noon - 11 pm
Sunday, 14 October, 10 am - 3 pm
Tickets available on the door on a first-come-first-served basis.
Watch the 24-Hour Long Relay writing event now by clicking here.
Click here to view the Serpentine Gallery 24-Hour Experiment Marathon live blog
Last year’s, now legendary, 24- Hour Interview Marathon was expanded in scope. The 24-Hour Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon 2007, introduced by Julia Peyton-Jones and presented by Olafur Eliasson and Hans Ulrich Obrist, took place in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007 and featured experiments performed by leading artists, architects and scientists.
The experiments explored ideas of time, space and of reality through models, vibrations and perception, investigating Eliasson's assertion that 'What we have in common is that we are different.'
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24-HOUR SERPENTINE EXPERIMENT MARATHON BLOG
Day 1
Click here to view Session 1
Click here to view Session 2
Click here to view Session 3
Day 2
Click here to view Session 1
Click here to view Session 2
All images © 2007 Alistair Fyfe and Robert Murray. Courtesy The Serpentine Gallery
DAY 1
Introduction by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Olafur Eliasson
"...it has only just begun... There are marathons within marathons... online projects, science projects..., the Laboratorium archive..., table-top experiments..."
"People will be coming and going today. Let's go for some equations of what constitutes reality."
Olafur Eliasson
Israel Rosenfield: Where do colours come from?
There is no colour in reality - it is a construct of the brain to make sense of the world and to make it appear stable. It is the brain that makes colour - the eye does not see it.
Angela Sirigu: How the brain thinks about movement
Audience members put their hand into the mirrored box to experience what it's like to have a phantom limb.
Olaf Blanke: Leaving the body behind?
"In most instances of everyday life we are blind to the self. Here is a visit to a neurological world when things start going wrong and people start to see the self and the world as it is and the body as localised. The brain starts painting self portraits."
Olaf Blanke
Beau Lotto: Sky in a bottle and white shadows
"In the atmosphere space is black and the sun is white. On the ground the sky is blue and the sun is yellow. Why this is has been debated for many years and I'm going to demonstrate why. It's the air that make the sky seem blue..."
Beau Lotto
"Olafur, please add more milk so it looks like the sun is setting..."
Beau Lotto
"He's [Olafur Eliasson] learning a new reality." Laughter. "He's got to go back to his normality. Oh, er... I can feel a lawsuit coming on."
Beau Lotto
Luc Steels: Fluid Language Game Experiments with Autonomous Robots
"Then this is a real piece of meat and a real dog [audience laughter] so you can see the Turin test does work for dogs..."
Luc Steels
Oscar Vilarroya: Both sides of fear. From aversion to pleasure
"'Voodoo Death' was death from pathological fear that would normally last one second, but in this it lasts for many hours..."
Oscar Vilarroya
Paul Drew: Perceptions of.... relationships in interaction (How we are who we are to one another)
Audience on 'Yo Blair!' clip: "I think he was overcompensating."
The audience takes a written test.
Marina Abramović: Cleaning the House
"Imagine we are all in the preparatory room of a space ship. I propose cleaning the house; the inside house."
Marina Abramović"
"Shit... where you shit, how you shit and what is the consistency of your shit."
Marina Abramović
Now please put your hand on your sex. I know for British people this is difficult; this is why I draw it."
Marina Abramović
Spartacus Chetwynd: Geodesics - Where I Went Wrong
"I'm going to show you a metal joint - how do you feel about it?"
Spartacus Chetwynd
Simon Forti: Small Hand Dance. Score performed by Gill Clarke
Peter Cook
"There's a mythology that architects spend all day drawing."
Peter Cook
"The architect of this room [Kjetil Thorsen] was a student of mine for about a whole week."
Peter Cook
Pedro Reyes: Conditioned Tactile Interchange
"We could spend the rest of the night like this. This experiment was first enacted in a stadium... just like this but more hysterical."
Pedro Reyes
Tomas Saraceno: Micro-scale, Macro-scale and Beyond: Large-scale Implications of Time-Scale Experiments
"You control some parameters, but the result is unexpected."
Tomas Saraceno
"Incredible how pre-Columbian culture built a balloon to make a drawing on the ground they couldn't even see."
Tomas Saraceno
Tris Vonna Michell: The Trial: Act 7, 2007
A table in the room and another on the screen, with speed narration and an egg timer.
Andreas Slominski
Photos of the creation of 'Candle' made from the wax of skis that were skied in to the Serpentine Gallery.
Quiet laughter from the audience.
Gustav Metzger: Lecture/Demonstration
"Inherent significance will transmit through the chaos. There is a significance in each element."
Gustav Metzger
Kim Gordon, a score performed by Polly Brannan and Irene Revell
"Strum very fast for another minute."
Kim Gordon
"Lie down on the ground, play the guitar any way you want."
Kim Gordon
"Roll around."
Kim Gordon
Simone Forti, a score performed by Cerith Wyn Evans
Marcus Coates: A Heligoland for Souls
"I'm here working for the audience... Artists often say they are interested in posing questions. I'm here to answer questions."
Marcus Coates
Back to the top of the blog
Bridget Nicholls: Bat night light and flight exploration: an exploration into the way bats navigate their environment
"Close you eyes and listen to the dark and you will see through sound."
Bridget Nicholls
"It's written in the very stardust, that created everything, that everything is connected. This is why we need to stay different to maintain equilibrium. But the nighttime is the time to think differently..."
Bridget Nicholls
Joseph Grigely: Longitudinal Study Addressing the Question of Whether or Not a Monkey Can Catch a Fish
"What does it mean to catch a trout?"
Joseph Grigley
"I was more interested in [trout] flies than fishing."
Joel Anderson (Interviewee)
Gloria Friedmann: Play Back of Eden
"Nowadays man is more of a monkey that any other monkey."
Gloria Friedmann
"All life is life that wants to live in the middle of other lives."
Gloria Friedmann
Fia Bäckstrom: To whom it may concern
"There is nothing more common in a group than myth."
Fia Bäckstrom
"Communion is not communication."
Fia Bäckstrom
Paul Fryer and Colin Dancer: Art and Science: A star in a jar
"Physics is going on in your TVs. It's amazing, but it's reduced to technology no one looks at."
Colin Dancer
"It sure is pretty."
Paul Fryer
Olafur Eliasson: Co-Producer Experiment (Co = Colour)
"What's really art here? A reflected hand, but what we feel is our own hand."
Olafur Eliasson
Sophie Fiennes: Playing Panchette
"Hello Jeremy and Teresa. Welcome to the Pavilion."
"Once the supernatural starts happening you have very little to say."
Sophie Fiennes
END OF DAY 1
DAY 2
John Brockman: Serpentine Gallery and EDGE project. 'What is your formula? Your equation? Your algorithm?'
Seirian Sumner: A cooperative foraging experiment - lessons from ants
"[The ants] can have up to 8 million workers in a colony... I want you to get in touch with your inner ant."
Seirian Sumner
Timothy Taylor: The Tradescant's Ark Experiment
"These are the beginnings of the world's technologies and everything that makes you able to sit here today... the technological adventure began with these. These stones are our first knowledge."
Timothy Taylor
Simon Baron-Cohen: Do women have better empathy than men?
The answer? Check back soon to find out the results of the Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon test.
Armand Leroi: The Song of Songs
"Songs can survive hundreds of years of geographical and cultural separation."
Armand Leroi
Steve Jones: Some Like it Hot
"Edgar Allen Poe and Lewis Caroll only became famous after stopping working on snails."
Steve Jones
"Two out of three [snails] will die of something determined by genes."
Steve Jones
Neil Turok: What Banged?
"Cosmology rests on mathematics."
Neil Turok
"The universe is comprehensive: the same laws of physics that apply to this room apply to the universe."
Neil Turok
Lewis Wolpert: How Our Limbs are Patterned Like the French Flag
"Sorry to give you a lesson in embryology, but you should know how you develop."
Lewis Wolpert
"What I'm telling you know is slightly controversial... but the other people are wrong."
Lewis Wolpert
John Baldessari
"Everybody out there that believes in telekenesis raise my hand."
John Baldessari
Steven Pinker in conversation with Marcy Kahan
"Overt language is a very efficient way to convert knowledge; the most powerful way to transform a relationship."
Steven Pinker
"We refuse praise in order to be praised twice."
Steven Pinker
Introduction by Francesca von Habsburg
"Taking courage from experimentation, learning by not being worried about being right all the time."
Francesca von Habsburg
Matthew Ritchie, Neil Turock, Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch: The Morning Line
"The universe is like a picture. We are a map of everything - there is no volume, only area."
Matthew Ritchie
"No experiment is a failure. It is a way of articulating the world."
Matthew Ritchie
Roger Hiorns
The long experiment. The result of Hiorns placing a big magnet into a tank to crystallize during the weekend, in the hope that the directions that crystals would grow in would have been affected by the magnetic field. It was taken out of the solution in the tank to mark the end of the Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon 2007.
3.30PM: SESSION ENDS
