“The Analysis of Beauty” by Disinformation

Talbot Rice Gallery
The University of Edinburgh
Old College
South Bridge
Edinburgh EH8 9YL

0131 650 2210

Reception + preview 12.30 (lunch-time) 15 Nov 2014
Sound installation 15 to 29 Nov 2014

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“The eye hath this sort of enjoyment in winding walks, and serpentine rivers, and all sorts of objects, whose forms, as we shall see hereafter, are composed principally of what I call the waving and serpentine lines. Intricacy in form, therefore, I shall define to be that peculiarity in the lines, which compose it, that leads the eye a wanton kind of chace, and from the pleasure that gives the mind, intitles it to the name of beautiful…” William Hogarth “The Analysis of Beauty” 1753

In 1753 the Georgian artist William Hogarth self-published his magnum-opus, “The Analysis of Beauty” – the book in which Hogarth expounded an aesthetic system based on analysing the virtues of the Serpentine, S-shaped, waving and snake-like lines. The Serpentine Line that William Hogarth discussed is identical to what modern nomenclature refers to as the sine-wave – the mathematical function whose geometry finds physical expression in oscillatory motion of musical strings, in pure musical notes, and in many phenomena of engineering, physics and communications science, signal processing and information technology.

In context of the architect William Playfair’s design for the Georgian Gallery at Talbot Rice, sonic and visual arts project Disinformation presents a minutely-tuned assemblage of pure musical sine-waves, which extend and extrapolate the visual aesthetics of Hogarth’s analyses, manifesting throughout the Georgian Gallery as a gently-hypnotic, immersive and dream-like sound-world. The installation is created using signals from laboratory oscillators, which manifest in-situ as standing-waves (the audio equivalent of stationary pond-ripples), through which visitors move as they explore and interact with the architectural acoustics of the exhibition space.

“The Analysis of Beauty” sound installation is accompanied at Talbot Rice by the video of the same name, in which musical sine-waves are fed into and displayed on the screen of a laboratory oscilloscope. These signals visually manifest as a slowly rotating rope-like pattern of phosphorescent green lines, strongly reminiscent of the geometry of DNA. This earliest version of “The Analysis of Beauty” installation was exhibited at Kettle’s Yard gallery in Cambridge, in 2000, where the Disinformation exhibit was set-up alongside works by Umberto Eco, Marc Quinn and the artist project Art & Language, and directly alongside one of Francis Crick & James Watson’s earliest working-models of DNA.

“The Analysis of Beauty” forms part of the “Gap in the Air” installation series at Talbot Rice, programmed by Dr. Martin Parker of The Edinburgh College of Art, in conjunction with Talbot Rice Gallery.