FLUORESENSE

Nedyalka Panova (Bulgaria)

THE MCMANUS. PART OF THE GROUP EXHIBITION FUTURE ARTIFACTS
Albert Square
Meadow side
DD1 1DA

Soft Synthetic Rocks are not usually found in nature. They are the subject of prototyping and imagination. Artist and Scientist Nedyalka Panova has created fluorescent synthetic rocks, exact replica of non-fluorescent rocks occasionally found by the artist. For the process, she has used polymers and chemically synthesised fluorescent materials in a University laboratory facility. These fluorescent rocks will biodegrade over time but are no less ‘real’ than their geological counterparts.

The artist writes: “The archetype comes from geology where fluorescence is due to a failure or a defect in the periodic structure of the solid rock. A small gap or excess in this structure can make the material expand or collide around the defect. Defects in structure that occur in large distances have a weak force strength that starts slightly to deform the material. Slowly the defects start sensing and attracting each other. When they approach each other the force becomes stronger and in the end they couple. One of the defects causes absorption, the other emission.”

With thanks to Leisure & Culture Dundee

About the Artist:

<Nedyalka Panova (Bulgaria) works at the boundaries between art and science. Her ongoing research titled ‘Artist as a material scientist and the extended phenotype’ has placed her in a series of collaborations with different research groups in UK and Ireland since 2013 when she graduated with an MA in Art and Science from Central Saint Martins, London. Her most recent project FluoreSense with the Organic Semiconductor Centre at the University of St. Andrews crossed the line between organic and inorganic materials. The artist’s exploration of organic (plastic) semiconductors used for humanitarian demining, organic LED, organic solar cells, Li-Fi communication and organic lasers entangles with the origin of fluorescence in nature and offers an imaginative walk through a newly-built material landscape.