'G A T E T O T H E D A R K'
A collaboration with European Space Agency
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A project evolved as a creative concept for a movie and live intermedia performance event, in collaboration with European Space Agency's "Euclid" Space Mission which launched on SpaceX, from Cape Canaveral in 2023, on a quest to discover the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter and dark energy constitutes 95% of everything, yet we do not know what it is.
​All we perceive is the remaining 5% ... people, planets, stars, nebulas and galaxies.
​Our association with ESA initially began with Euclid's Project Manager, Giuseppe Racca, involving a series of latin vocal pieces that Richard composed, called 'The Beauty of Science', based on extracts of text from Sir Isaac Newton's book of scientific law - 'Principia’, (published by the Royal Society - 1687).
​What followed, involved meeting like-minded creative, film-maker & photographer Benedict Redgrove (benedictredgrove.com), and with input from Giuseppe and his team, a seed was sewn for an ambitious creative project in collaboration with ESA.
Focusing on ESA's Euclid mission as the foundation for our project, we created music and images to inform an audience with a blend of both artistic and scientific language, a piece about the knowledge we have of ourselves, the universe and our place in it. From the darkness and a dot of light in the beginning to the ultimate darkness and fading of light at its inevitable end.
The Euclid mission takes its name from the ancient 300 B.C. Greek mathematician and father of Geometry - Euclid. ESA Project Scientist René Laureijs is heading a team that is attempting to define the geometry of space, in a search for the mysterious 'dark matter and dark energy'.
Benedict filmed content for the project from 2019 until 2023, following the ongoing construction of Euclid's stunning Korsch space telescope at Airbus in Toulouse, the optical mechanism later being housed inside the space vehicle, and eventual launch.
Lucas Vieira, Brazilian physicist and scientific illustrator, (currently undertaking a PhD in Quantum Foundations at IQOQI in Vienna) came on board as a consultant ... and our ambition to create a genuine collaboration of art and science, consolidated around the Euclid space mission.
Nature Magazine refers to Euclid "one of the most important scientific endeavours of our time".
​The mission is a billion-dollar project to map the geometry of the universe, with the scientific team putting one of the best telescopes ever built, into a million-mile Lissajous earth orbit ... a dance that will trip the light fantastic around the sun, the moon and the earth.
As the images and research data began their transmission from Euclid, a European-led consortium of more than 1200 people in over 100 laboratories, in 16 countries ( Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Canada, and the US ) started work correlating and analysing the data.
Our creative collaboration aimed to culminate in an immersive live performance celebrating the launch. However due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Euclid lost it's planned Soyuz launch window, costing an extra $100 million to fund a launch on Space X.
As a consequence, there was no longer funding available for a launch event, and ESA kindly funded a short promotional film using some of our work and whilst we, the creators, retain full rights and ownership of the material, we are seeking funding for post production and a live event, intended for presentation at science & arts festivals :-​​
Diary footage Richard recorded on his phone, whilst Benedict was shooting footage at the Euclid hanger in Toulouse during construction of the space craft:-
