Image of the month

This giant structure, measuring 9 metres squared, is Space Trumpet by Conrad Shawcross, currently the Science Museum’s artist-in-residence. Shawcross describes his recent appointment at the Science Museum as a “dream come true”: he has long been interested in how science and technology influence our understanding of the world, as Space Trumpet demonstrates. First unveiled in 2007, it hangs in the centre of the Unilever building in London, and rotates each day at noon, on a three-month cycle—ensuring, Shawcross says, that “people sitting at their desks have a different spatial relationship with it every day.”

The work was inspired by sound locators from the 1930s (below), which were used as detection devices before radar. For Sound Trumpet, Shawcross recreated the sound locator’s parabolic cones to resemble petals or horns from gramophone record players. Among other things, this illustrates how scientific discovery alters our perceptions of objects (and indeed reality) over time.

The artist, who is the son of writers William Shawcross and Marina Warner, is now exploring the Science Museum’s vast archives, with the aim of curating an exhibition, sometime in 2011, that uses art to explore our evolving relationship with science and empirical knowledge.

For more information visit www.sciencemuseum.org.uk