Ailie Rutherford

Scotland

transit station
edinburgh 2006

ganzfeld telepathy experiment
video stills

In an age of scientific dogmatism, Ailie’s experiments explore (in a less than scientific way) our fascination with the paranormal: things beyond the scope of reasonable explanation.

She sees drawing as the manifestations of thought shapes, and uses drawing in her collaborative practice as a means of recording events and as a method for collective decision making.

ganzfeld telepathy experiment - drawing

"Imagining the human machine that absorbs those directions, that voice, the light, the space, your dream last night, her smell, his scent, those sweets, and the transformations it makes before going anywhere.
In the middle somewhere, sometime, left or right, Ailie Rutherford is there, trying to make sense of it all, trying to communicate how we make sense of it all, how we transform sensory impressions, desires, dreams, thoughts, ideas, and everything else that flesh is heir to, into coherence and perception, an incommunicable process, starting in the middle, somewhere, sometime, that nevertheless demands to be communicated, trying to hold open the doors of perception in order to see how we make sense of it all, and there we are, sensual, desirous, dreamy, thoughtful, a million different people from one moment to the next, filtering our impressions, left or right, trying to make sense of it, trying to evaluate an incommunicable process that nevertheless demands to be communicated, recording, registering all that incommunication, all those impressions, desires, dreams, thoughts and ideas, all that imperception, all that incoherence, a process that is only ever in the middle...."

David Hill (2006)