Poetics of (Outer) Space, my sound installation in Perrott’s Folly, Edgbaston is reviewed in this months edition of The Wire magazine. Excerpt below from Mark Hancock’s review in The Wire 376 Deep Cover issue:

It seemed appropriate to visit Caroline Devine’s installation for Poetics of (Outer) Space on the day of the solar eclipse and spring equinox: a day loaded with mythology that draws us away from our logical, empirical classifications of everything in the universe and back to our primitive reactions to it. In the darkening of the late morning sky, it was just about possible to imagine our own moon and sun as objects we could scale down and hold in our hands with pinhole cameras and other improvised instruments.

So it is with Devine’s installation at Perrott’s Folly, commissioned by Ikon gallery. Devine has taken data from NASA’s Kepler missions to create individual compositions that occupy each floor of the 29 metre high tower, built in 1758. Each composition can be thought of as a subset of data, and a mapping of the range of frequencies and information gathered by the missions to a more manageable, human scale. The compositions from each star’s data are positioned according to their age, frequency range and the number of exoplanets they host, moving upwards through the tower, which could almost have been custom made for the installation.

…As you ascend through the building, you’re also moving light years through the universe, outwards towards the different solar systems with their exoplanets and changing resonances. Just as musical instruments resonate with frequencies, so can the stars and planets, and it is this resonance that Devine has scaled for the human ear.

…The creation of the compositions and installation within Perrott’s Folly (and the effort required to climb the stairs) feels like a more satisfying response to the glut of data visualisation installations that have sprung up over the past few years. Poetics of (Outer) Space reminds you that it’s still possible to factor in human imagination and physical presence to our understanding of the universe, something that’s missing from so many other big data projects.

Mark Hancock, The Wire