Scotland’s longest-standing artist-run gallery, established in 1983
Our best scientific models divide reality into distinct “levels”, including the microphysical, chemical, biological, psychological, and sociological. Each level is composed of entities peculiar to that level, such as atoms, molecules, cells, minds, and societies. But how are we to understand how these levels fit together? If everything is ultimately made up of subatomic particles and forces, why do we need anything other than physics to model reality? And what even is a “level of reality” exactly? These and many other questions are of keen interest in the philosophy of science. When those questions are addressed, visual representations are sometimes used to convey the idea of what a level is, or this or that philosophical problem that arises when the nature of levels is investigated. One example is William Wimsatt’s sketch, pictured below.
However, such examples are relatively limited in number and artistic scope. The Levels of Reality funding call is for artists who are interested in producing artistically ambitious work which explores, in a philosophically and scientifically informed way, levels of reality.
Timeline: application deadline Friday 9th of October; outcome communicated to artists by 23rd of October; Levels of Reality exhibition in Transmission from February 20th to March 13th 2027; publication TBD.
Support available (dependent on number of artists selected and scope of work proposed): honorarium of minimum £500 up to £1000 per artist (for between 3-6 artists); material and fabrication costs covered up to £500 (though this may be negotiable in exceptional cases); access to the gallery space and use of wood workshop during making of work or related activities; publication costs associated with the exhibition fully covered by Transmission.
Curation and collaboration: the conceptual and visual content of the exhibition will be curated by John Donaldson & Kimia Witte who will also be available to collaborate with artists in the development of their work for the exhibition, upon request.
Constraints and possibilities: proposals will be assessed in terms of their conceptual quality and artistic ambition. Any artistic medium will be acceptable as a proposal. Depending on the concepts developed throughout and during the exhibition, we are open to offering a solo exhibition, at a later date, for an exhibiting artist, backed by more substantial financial support.
Ideas: though this should not be taken to be prescriptive in any way, the following may be of use to artists in the process of application. We are intrigued by the possibilities of:
(1) a large (i.e. room-sized) sculpture or installation that creatively represents a significant range of levels of reality;
(2) work that explores the nature of different scientific equations used to describe distinct levels of reality, such work could use visual, poetic, or other representations of those equations;
(3) how performance, music, and sound in general could be used in the exhibition;
(4) work that focuses on the boundary between particular levels, such as psychological-neurobiological or the boundary between non-living (e.g. molecular) and living levels (e.g. cellular);
(5) work that explores the different ways in which we can come to know about levels, such as the difference between empirical and non-empirical methods;
(6) work that demonstrates creative engagement with central philosophical problems that arise when considering how levels hang together, such as the causal exclusion problem, the truth of reductionism versus non-reductionism, or the nature of inter-level phenomena like realisation or emergence.
How to apply: submit a short proposal via the following link:
https://forms.gle/yc9VdjmyDphQeYiP6