Are You Living Comfortably ?

McCoy Wynne were selected as Artist in Residence in early 2021 for the University of Salford Energy House project, in collaboration with University of Salford Art Collection and Open Eye Gallery. Through visiting the Energy House and conversations with the scientists McCoy Wynne sought to interpret the research to make it engaging and accessible to the public.

Are you Living Comfortably? is an example of how the imagination of artists can interpret scientific research. Conversation, curiosity and observation are three important features in both art and science. Recognising the similarities of systematic investigation and artistic creativity, McCoy Wynne took a step-by-step approach. Each area of their research is cited in the final artwork whilst they also explored beyond the Energy House for information and ideas.

McCoy Wynne diversified their own practice beyond the purely visual: measuring their carbon footprint whilst working as photographers; planting their own vegetables from seed and further researching issues of sustainability, the importance of trees and green spaces in the urban environment.

The Energy House was created in a laboratory chamber; like a lab rat the house is tested, measured and its changes analysed. The rooms are filled with wires, sensors and equipment to detect every temperature and atmospheric change. Anyone working in the house, including the two photographers, became part of the monitoring process - recorded by the heat they radiate and the C02 they exhaled. Using a thermal imaging camera, McCoy Wynne visualised the heat they emitted and incorporated this into the images, with temperature scales referencing the thermal colours.

For many years McCoy Wynne have photographed property awaiting re-development or for sale. In this context the Energy House felt familiar, like another empty property awaiting refurbishment and new residents. McCoy Wynne have given the house a new imagined life, dressed as if ready for sale or rent, with views from its windows and set within its own gardens. The details of this imagined world are semi-opaque to give a new sense of reverie to scientific study. By carefully assembling details from the photographs they took of the Energy House, with photographs of other domestic interiors, exteriors and specific furnishings, they have made the laboratory house recognisable as a home.

Front exterior

It was a strange prospect to walk down the corridors of a University building through a series of doors to find a humble ‘two up two down’ in what appeared to be a warehouse.

We went through another series of steps when approaching how to photograph the project but one pathway from our initial reactions prevailed; the house felt melancholy, abandoned, unloved. We are used to home being synonymous with comfort and safety, we decided to make Energy House a colourful, recognisable and loved home. We introduced gardens, an urban view with city street trees and milk on the doorstep; a signifier of community that is regaining popularity for its recyclable credentials.

Living Room

To play with the idea of what is real within the rooms and what is constructed we printed and framed some of our infrared research pictures and physically hung them on the walls of the house.

Thermal comfort was key in our dialogue with the Energy House team. We chose to include a contentious woodburning stove once seen as a positive addition to any comfortable home but as with all fires it is a source of small particle air pollution. The living rooms non-view of the chamber wall has been replaced with that of an urban woodland, an edge-land and maybe a potential source of fuel?

Bedroom

There are a plethora of magazines and television programmes devoted to home improvements and decoration. The bedroom is often cited as being ‘your place of luxury and escape’. To reflect this, we included a large bed that was photographed in a new Manchester apartment ‘dressed’ for sale. A further sense of luxury is implied by the bespoke ‘wallpaper.’ The layered image (wallpaper), on the walls, is of an exquisite springtime garden at RHS Garden Bridgewater, bringing both Salford and the cultivated natural world inside the Energy House.

Bathroom

The seeds and the plants we cultivated can be found throughout the pictures. The Florists Dill visualised on top of the bathroom cabinet would happily germinate and grow in the warm damp environment of a bright bathroom.

The door of the cabinet reflects an infrared image of a contractor working on site pitting the reality of the house as a piece of research against the unreality of the towels, toiletries and a just used shower.

Small Bedroom

Through the window of this small bedroom we reimagined as a nursery, is a view of Peel Park. If the walls of the chamber were removed this famous Salford vista would be visible from some of the Energy House windows. We chose to give the Energy House these views, as parks, gardens, woodland and all green spaces are important for the health and well-being of city dwellers.

On the cot there is a small camera to watch a sleeping child, it is faced by an infrared image depicting the photographing of Energy House. We are often all under some form of surveillance; at Energy House we were traced by the heat sensors and CO2 monitors, and it felt appropriate to include them in the artwork.

Loft

All the interior pictures include a temperature scale from an infrared camera, that indicates heat in an image by virtue of its colour. The pictures are layered with these corresponding colours; the cold of blue visible across the apex of the roof whilst the warmth of the yellow bursting through the hatch from the room below. Stored Christmas decorations and suitcases along with all the domestic details in the pictures were introduced to reflect that this could be a recognisable real home and not just an experiment.

Stairs

We introduced many details that place us as the artists in the pictures to correlate with our being monitored whilst in the house, with our shoes on the stairs and a hand on the wall. The psychedelic colours of the framed picture make an abstract artwork; the range of colours denoting the temperature changes from inside to out. A flush of the warm colours moves up the stairs imitating heat rising from the radiator up through the house.

Kitchen

Very little of this room was recognisable as a kitchen, so we placed a sink, oven, coffee pot, pans and cupboards into the scene. On the work surface and draining board are some of the harvested broad beans grown from seed during the residency. The sensor on the window is measuring the potential heat loss through the glass. However, the view through the window is a romance; outside it is a warm, sunny, day, in the Kitchen Garden at RHS Garden Bridgewater.

Rear Exterior

The retrofitting of the house is almost complete. We have given this warm comfortable home a verdant garden complete with, flower beds, a lawn and a pet tortoise! The internal walls of the chamber have been replaced by common brick garden walls veiled in roses and ivy. Two of the contractors, barely there, remain to complete the insulation. The broad beans are fully grown, with most of the crop now harvested. Inclusion of the bicycle refers to the importance of green transport and how we all need to look to reduce our carbon footprint.