The objective of The Invisible College is to put the donated images into action, and push them to a visible surface. They do it by developing empirical exercises that will create a new socially produced image. These images will enter the collection of The Society of Secret Images.
Departing from a series of images that will only be available for scrutiny during the next Event Horizon, The Invisible College is forging the first trio of experiences:
DEW HUNTING
Dew is a leftover of the subtle contact between air and the last skin of the earth crust. We define a surface by the specific moment when the contact between two bodies affect each other. Dew is a visible document of that moment.
Between the celestial and the terrestrial, dew became an important element of alchemist’s elixirs. From air to dew, and from dew to a dry soluble salt, it is possible to obtain ammonium nitrite. This element is used for the production of pure nitrogen. 78% of the air we breathe, and 3% of the human body is made by Nitrogen. Nitrogen contains an enormous amount of energy, more than oxygen and hydrogen. This energy can be utilized as a fertilizer.
The Invisible College will put into practice two ways of collecting dew. After the recollection, a drop will be analyzed at ENS laboratories, in contrast with air, rain water, running water and water from the Rhone. A picture of dew’s crystals will be taken at the lab, and of frozen dew as well. Finally, the dew will be depolluted and all of it will be transformed into ice.
The last stage of the experience is to drink the air we breathe. To use the ice for a cocktail at the garden where it was collected.
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SPACE CAIRNS
In reference to the circular water mirror observatories at Macchu Picchu, the astronomical center of the Inca Empire, the Invisible College will create an observatory of the southern sky in the circular central plaza of Cité Jardin. Analogous to the trip of Dante and Virgilio, the circular plaza will be a tunnel through the centre of the earth, to fulfil the wish to watch the other side of the sky.
From the windows of their apartments, the inhabitants of the Cité will penetrate the planet and become the ham & cheese of an astronomical sandwich.
To represent the invisible southern stars of some lost point at the Pacific Ocean, near Chatham Island - New Zeeland, the Invisible College will pull out the underwater and invisible stones of the Rhone. They will lug them to the circular plaza of the neighborhood and paint them with luminescent pigments, so the stones will be charged with the energy of our nearest star.
With the direction of an astronomer, The Invisible College will set the sky in the Plaza in a collective rendezvous. Some days after, the glow in the dark stones will be spread in different points of the neighborhood, without a calculated map.
THE TORMENT OF THE METALS
The experience is related to the recent history of Fagor-Brandt, but also to the Industrial Age at Lyon in general. Phytorremediation flora is used to clean polluted soils and water, by a non-chemical and natural way to extract heavy metals. With the help of flowers, The Invisible College will pull out to the surface what could be hidden in the underground.
As a metaphor of what is buried in the past and what can life bring about, The Invisible College will design a garden of phytoremediation flora at Fagor-Brandt, to later on cultivated that garden and research the plants to observe what they have absorbed.
The first step is to plant the needed flora for different metals in an already chosen, open space, of Fagor Brandt ex-factory. Four month later, the second step is to cultivate the plants and put them under a process of extraction, to see if they have absorbed something. This is possible to do it by burning the plants or by electrolysis. The third step is, if something had been extracted something, to produce an image with it or out of it.