Wonderland - What happens when art meets science?

Wonderland is a project about transformations, the metamorphosis of ideas, things and people. It is an investigation into what is possible when artists and scientists talk to each other, uninhibited by a lack of knowledge.

An important part of this dialogue has been explaining to each other what working artists and scientists do. For an artist it is very hard to be creative without wanting to redress the problems the planet faces in some way. For a scientist, developing materials that can be used creatively to raise environmental awareness, stimulates us to find answers to questions that had not occurred to us before.

Our joint belief that drastic new thinking is required to address today's environmental issues, coupled to the dynamic environment engendered by this cross-cultural collaboration, has already created four new products - including the disappearing bottle and a revolutionary water purification pillow.

The dissolving bottle - is a technological answer to the question of what happens to the things we buy after we've finished with them? With Wonderland, however, we are trying to go beyond the 'technical fix', to extend awareness of the environmental implications of waste, and encourage people to solve this problem for themselves.

To do this we required a focus for the exhibition, a subject that would exert a strong pull on the public imagination. After some discussion, it was decided that fabrics and the fashions they go to make could provide such a focus.

The disappearing dresses developed from this idea are the most remarkable visual element of the Wonderland exhibition. These have been created in collaboration with Patricia Belford (University of Ulster), and are made from soluble fabrics developed for the project at the Sheffield Polymer Centre.

During the exhibition these dresses are slowly lowered into enormous glass bowls, where they react and dissolve- after a while all that comes out is the clothes hanger. The material, the dress, has changed forever...

For more about the Wonderland concept, and the Helen Storey foundation, please see the following links:

Wonderland at the Helen Storey Foundation

Showstudio - review and current events to do with Wonderland

We are grateful to the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council for initial funding for Wonderland. Additional resources are now being sought to ensure the initiative reaches its maximum potential.

EPSRC