In a new exhibition The Dazed Gallery presents work by 30 artists in their final year at the Royal College, LCC and Central St. Martin's marking the 100th anniversary of a controversial scientific experiment in which one Dr. Duncan MacDougall claimed to have identified the physical weight of the human soul.
What exactly is a soul, do we all possess one and what happens to it when our physical apparatus gives up the ghost and we kick the proverbial bucket? That question is one that has always been integral to every single belief system on this planet, scientific, esoteric, religious or otherwise.
From Taleban Preachers to Catholic Priests via DMT Smokers and Robert Anton Wilson enthusiasts, all 'believers' share the common notion that there is something more than this physical plane to which we shall return, if only for a brief respite, for as the Persian Mystic Rumi suggested some centuries ago, "Whoever bought me here... will have to take me home."
Theories of course abound; the ancient Egyptians believed that seven souls left the body upon death, three of which were eternal and four of which had to then traverse the ominous sounding 'Lands of the Dead', the beat writer William Burroughs postulated that the soul was an 'electromagnetic force-field' that could be destroyed by an atomic blast and the ineffable Peter Cook painted the all time worst pearly gates scenario, "Sorry can you go and do it all again? Nothing came out on the rushes..."
Theories however are just not enough for some people and one hundred years ago a God fearing Christian doctor from Massachusetts set out to 'prove' the existence of the soul by weighing a dozen dying hospice patients as they passed through to the 'other side', and by poisoning a few dogs for good measure.
Ben Freeman
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His name was Duncan MacDougall and his controversial experiment consisted of weighing the dying bodies and eliminating all possible causes for their weight loss, such as the evaporation of respiratory moisture or residual air in the lungs. In doing this he came to the conclusion that there was 'an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce' in all his subjects, his human subjects at least, the dogs fared not so well (which fitted rather nicely into his religious doctrine that animals did not possess souls).
This weird experiment kick started some years of debate culminating in the New York Times running a front page on MacDougall in 1911 in which it was printed that on top of the reported weight loss 'MacDougall is convinced from a dozen experiments with dying people that the soul substance gives off a light resembling that of the interstellar ether'. Far out.
More pertinently however the experiment has inspired a large group of artists at The Royal College of Art, LCC and Central St Martin's to mark it's 100th anniversary with an Easter Show at the Dazed Gallery entitled '21 Grams' comprising of illustrators, designers and fine-artists whose works involve amongst other things sound, light projections, hair and cakes. You can see a selection of this work below:
If you hover your mouse on the works above you can also see a sentence in which each artist give us their own definition of the human soul.
And as if that wasn't enough underground surrealist rockers 'White Russians' have provided the show with it's very own soundtrack 'Dr. Dougall & The Misers'.
So Happy Easter, go easy on the chocolate, don't die just yet and if you should see Lazarus out and about tell him, quite firmly, to go home.
21 Grams at Dazed Gallery
16th March - 15th April
10am - 6pm Monday to Friday
112-116 Old Street, London, EC1C 9BG