Digital r/p/m (revolutions per minute)

Proposition #2: Octagon Room

On 31 January 2023 we launched the second of four virtual installations in our current weather report, Digital r/p/m propositions by Paul Cullen Archive. 

This interactive, virtual project realises a speculative proposal made by artist Paul Cullen in 2011 to install works from his r/p/m (revolutions per minute) series around the globe at historical centres for scientific study (sites that the artist had visited and researched). 

In Proposition #2: Octagon Room, Cullen proposes situating four r/p/m sculptures with motorised rotating components, including plastic gherkins, orange, pear and a bucket at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. In 2011 Cullen said of the project, "this proposition locates four of the Revolutions per Minute sculptures in the Octagon Room: r/p/m (3), Orange Theory, Fox Circle and Brains Pear Sculpture. Each sculpture proposes, though fails to perform, some kind of rational purpose such as demonstration, observation, or measurement."

Established in 1675, the Royal Observatory Greenwich was Britain's first purpose-built scientific research facility, constructed primarily from recycled materials. The Octagon Room is the oldest part of the Observatory, with high windows designed to provide astronomers with a panoramic view of the night sky. It once contained equipment that aimed to solve the problem of determining longitude at sea during colonial expansion before satellite navigation. Outside, a line on the ground marks the position of the Prime Meridian, but due to seismic movements, this location is no longer exact. Today, the Royal Observatory operates as a museum, archive and library.

Using LiDAR and photogrammetry, the archive has created 3D models of artworks in Cullen's former studio and collaborated with international creatives to realise scans of the observatory sites. The r/p/m virtual installations explore how notions of space are simultaneously anchored within a given moment while also interlaced with historical traces of weathers left behind.

Visitors can experience the Octagon Room installation in virtual reality using the open-source platform Mozilla Hubs. More information, including documentation of Digital r/p/m, is available on the Te Tuhi website.

Paul Cullen

Paul Cullen (1949–2017) studied various disciplines, all of which informed his artistic practice and methodology. He graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Science in 1971, a Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) in 1975, a Master of Arts in 2000 and a PhD in Fine Arts in 2007. Cullen was a sculptor and installation artist. His celebrated career has seen his work exhibited nationally and internationally and he was the recipient of several awards and residencies including: Mot et Chandon Artist Fellowship, France (1996) and a Senior Fulbright Award at Auburn University, Alabama (2012).

Cullen's career spanned 40 years and he exhibited across Australasia. In the last two decades of his career he pursued exhibition and itinerant projects in numerous international centres including Manchester, London, Halifax, Stockholm, Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul, Chung-Buk, São Paolo, Cheongu, Alabama, Los Angeles, Marfa, Munich and Berlin. 

Paul Cullen Archive was established in 2017 to continue an archival process of artworks started by the artist in 2016. The archive also explores alternative archival modes to generate explorative methods and categories for structuring content, including the creation of 3D models of artworks and speculative publications.

Commissioned by Te Tuhi and curated by Janine Randerson. Supported by Creative New Zealand

Visit the project on Te Tuhi's website here; part of the weather station: Te Moana Nui A Kiwa, Aotearoa (Great Ocean of Kiwa, New Zealand) - find out more here.