Delicate Instruments | Vitrine | 2023

 

Visitors to Delicate Instruments (Vibrating Stillness) at Vitrine, Exeter 2023

“A vibrating stillness like that in a vitrine”

Edmund de Waal quoting Rilke in ‘The Hare with Amber Eyes’ (2010)

Shifting between scientific and psychical thinking, Delicate Instruments suggests new ways to tune into hidden signals from the more-than-human.

Originally shared at the Devon & Exeter Institution as a public participatory event, this iteration was made specially for Vitrine, a shop display cabinet c. 1900 which hosts a series of occasional installations by UK and international artists in the Exeter home of artist and arts educator Sarah Bennett.

Obscured by a veil, the vitrine initially withholds its contents. A closer look reveals them as objects held in unstable equilibrium and sensitive to the slightest stimuli: from trembling paper cases balanced on the points of nails, to indigo carbon paper primed to register subtle touch. The cabinet also contains a number of found objects with the potential to make a sound in response to vibrations in the air – an oboe reed, a lead whistle, a tuning fork.

Some of these instruments are drawn from the realm of psychical experimentation, where they might have been placed in a sealed cabinet to isolate them from air currents and other physical influences. However, on the lowest shelf we set up a miniature electric fan that disturbed the air inside the cabinet sufficiently to cause lighter objects to tremble and spin. It also vibrated quietly, filling the room with a just-audible hum.

We took our title from a description of the famous medium Eusapia Palladino (1854 –1918). Oliver Lodge, who went to investigate her for the Society of Psychical Research, told colleagues it was better not to think of her as a person but as "a delicate instrument". The idea of “unstable equilibrium…sensitive to the slightest stimuli” comes from Richard Noakes quoting William Barratt (1867) in ‘Physics and Psychics’ (2019).

Delicate Instruments (Vibrating Stillness) was made In collaboration with Megan Calver. It was installed at Vitrine, Exeter 25th November - 21st December 2023 and shared with visitors by invitation and appointment on 25th November, 5th December, 9th December and 19th December, as well as informally with Sarah Bennett's family and friends.