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Grey Goo Publication

GREY GOO
Thomas Bayrle, David Cotterrell, Gordon Cheung, Tom Humphreys,
Pil and Galia Kolletiv, Kinke Kooi, Tommy Stockel

16.10.04-28.11.04

'Grey Goo is a wonderful and totally imaginary feature of some dystopian sci-fi future in which nanotechnology runs riot, and microscopic earth-munching machines escape from a laboratory to eat the world out from under our feet.'

[Guardian, July 2001]

Kinke Kooi, Sunny Day, Happy Moment
acrylic on photograph

(plinth and right wall) Thomas Bayrle, Brush 2004 aluminum, plaster
(Left wall) Tom Humphreys, Untitled 2004 mirror, acrylic sheet on canvas

Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Europe After the Rain 2004 video

(Foreground) Tommy Stockel, Some day Great futures will be pasts 2004
(Background) Gordon Cheung, Crater 2004, ink acrylic, paint on canvas


David Cotterrell, Gods eye view III 2004
real-time computer generated projection

The exhibition’s title is taken from K Eric Drexler’s 1986 Engines of Creation. Drexler proposes a doomsday scenario in which self-replicating nanobots become so successful in their proliferation that all other forms of life are extinguished within a matter of hours. While Drexler suggests the possibility of other, more positive applications for nanotechnology, it is the fear of ‘grey goo’ that has begun to capture the collective imagination of a society concerned more with the effects of genetically modified crops and biological weapons than the possible benefits of human stem cell research or cryogenics.

A black & white publication featuring artists’ images, texts and micrograph images from Cambridge Nanoscale Laboratory will accompany the exhibition. The publication will includes essays from Jordan Kaplan and Pil and Galia Kollectiv.