Andrew Anderson talks to Al Holmes and Al Taylor (AKA AL and AL) and curator Bren O’Callaghan about black holes, sci-fi and why their career is set to soar into the stratosphere…
What do you picture when you think of sci- fi? If you’re anything like me, it’s a 1950s version of the future where people travel in hover cars, shoot one another with lasers and live entirely off meals-in-a-pill. Or perhaps you’re imagining something more like Star Trek, with humans travelling across the cosmos to meet aliens that look rather like us – only with crinkly foreheads and oddly shaped ears. Either way, while these visions of the future might be fun, they’re not exactly mind expanding. And that’s what sci-fi at its best should be: something that makes you look at the world in a new way and maybe, just maybe, causes your jaw to drop. Something like Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse, HOME’s new exhibition from filmmakers AL and AL.
Named after the theory that we exist in multiple parallel universes, Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse is an enticing mix of film, performance, art and installation. It embraces big ideas like black holes, tackles tricky subjects such as the origins of life and deals with the destiny of mankind, dragging sci-fi out of the 20th century and pushing it on to where it belongs: the future.
While not yet household names, AL and AL’s reputation has been on the rise for some time and, as curator Bren O’Callaghan puts it: “Their career is about to soar into the stratosphere.” The North West-based Al Holmes and Al Taylor have already had one piece commissioned by HOME – 2012’s The Creator, part of the Alan Turing centenary celebrations – and have recently collaborated with acclaimed musician, Philip Glass, and celebrated scientists such as Brian Greene. Now, with Incidents of Travel, they’re tying together all the elements of their work to date.
“It’s really an exploration of everything we’ve been thinking about in the last few years,” says Taylor. “It looks at how science is replacing myths and what that means for our culture.”
That sounds like heavy stuff, but fortunately AL and AL have broken their work down into three separate stories; or, to put it in sci-fi parlance, they’ve made a trilogy. It begins with Icarus at the Edge of Time, a musical, multimedia performance that explores the origins and importance of black holes through a reimagining of the Icarus myth. Instead of a wax-winged Athenian who flies too close to the sun, however, here we have a boy who explores the awesome power of black holes in a spaceship.
“The text is by the physicist Brian Greene – who wrote a children’s book with the same name – and it has a new score by Philip Glass,” says O’Callaghan. “AL and AL have made a film to go with it, using incredible CGI graphics. The piece has played all over the world but never in the North West.”
Icarus at the Edge of Time will be scored live by the BBC Philharmonic in an opening night event at the Royal Northern College of Music.
The second installment is The Creator, the aforementioned Alan Turing film that imagines the computer pioneer being visited by ‘thinking machines’ from the future as he lays on his deathbed. The film will be installed inside the HOME gallery along with props, storyboards and other materials taken from both this film and Icarus at the Edge of Time.
A third cinematic journey, The Demiurge, deals with the code of life itself: DNA. AL and AL have worked closely with nanobiophysicist Bart Hoogenboom, who created the world’s first ‘real’ images of DNA, to make a CGI sci-fi spectacular that will receive its world premiere at HOME in February. Starring Sophie Linfield, The Demiurge fuses fact and fiction to explore everything from creating a cure for death to the theory that life first arrived on earth via an asteroid impact (in other words, that we’re all aliens). “If you talk to AL and AL for long enough, you’ll find your mind gets blown,” says O’Callaghan.
With the installation, film screening and live performance, Incidents of Travel certainly checks all the boxes in HOME’s effort to create cross-platform work. But what makes this trilogy special is that it also crosses disciplines, bringing art and science together in a way that AL and AL believe is essential.
“Science asks the most important questions of our time: where is DNA nano-technology taking us, how can we travel 10,000 years across space to reach our nearest neighbours, what will artificial intelligence become?” says Holmes. “With art we can bring these stories to life, giving them an emotional element and creating a human connection – that’s incredibly important.”
“But we don’t just illustrate the concepts that scientists tell us about,” interjects Taylor. “We use them as a jumping-off point: we’re astronauts setting off to make discoveries in a virtual world.” One discovery they’ve made is that the careers of artists and scientists are more similar than they ever imagined.
“You’re thinking of ideas, trying to get them funded and you never know where your next work is coming from,” says Taylor. And beyond the simple career similarities lies a shared passion for discovery.
“Scientists love studying nature, coming to understand the unknown. What we do isn’t so different – it is all based on a love of understanding. In fact, all three journeys in Incidents of Travel are really love stories: they explore a love of art, a love for one another and a love of exploration.”
These ideas are a perfect match for HOME’s first year of programming, which has had the overall title Transactions of Desire.
“Our opening exhibition, The Heart is Deceitful, dealt with desire in terms of heartbreak and falling out of faith,” says O’Callaghan. “But this is about something that might be even bigger – our human desire for meaning and understanding.”
AL and AL: Incidents of Travel in the Multiverse opens in our gallery on Sat 6 February and runs until Sun 10 April.