Stroke data

An experimental performance exploring lightning, tenderness, and the many ways we try to stay afloat produced as part of an artist-in-lab postdoctoral residency with Wits School of Arts and Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory.

On average, lightning strikes fifteen times per square kilometre per year in Johannesburg. This is an example of ‘stroke data’ – that is data concerning strokes of lightning ⚡️. Upon hearing this term repeatedly during their position as postdoctoral artist in residence within Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory, Huge Sillytoe (also known as Dr. Hugh Sillitoe) began to consider parallel forms of ‘stroke data’ regarding other types of strokes such as the stroke of a caressing hand, swimming strokes, lack of blood supply to the brain, and, of course, the brushstrokes of an artist.

Through fifteen rapid happenings in the space of an hour, echoing the average of fifteen strokes of lightning per square kilometre per year in Johannesburg, this participatory performance explores a multiplicity of forms of stroke – from lightning to love to the twelve strokes of a dusty grandfather clock at midnight – as interlaced expressions of ever-moving and ultimately inexplicable energy. This builds on Huge Sillytoe’s interdisciplinary research and artistic practice concerning the inexplicable and the absurd across the arts, social sciences, and now natural sciences and engineering too.

The performance also features a mechanical stroking hand combining 3D printed parts with the wooden fingertips of an artist’s mannequin produced in collaboration with the biomedical lab within Wits School of Electrical Engineering. Special thanks are due to Dr. Abdul-Khaaliq Mohamed and his talented student Ioanna Klapsinos for their assistance with this process.