technology timeline: Mariko Mori: From stone circles to stardust

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

(Image: Tom Na H-Iu II, 2006 glass, stainless steel, LED, real-time control system, 450 x 156.3 by 74.23 cm, courtesy of and ? Mariko Mori; Photo: Richard Learoyd)

The Japanese artist's new exhibition tethers human history to the life of the entire cosmos

See more in our image gallery: "Mariko Mori: The cosmos in a gallery"

A GHOSTLY monolith pulses, its varying colours the only source of light in the room. Shades of purple and red waft over its surface, and it almost seems to be breathing, keeping time with the rapt crowd.

But this is no biological rhythm, it is something on a greater scale. The light playing across the 4.5-metre-tall standing stone is that of cosmic particles as they dance through the Earth's atmosphere. Or rather, as they are detected at the Super-Kamiokande observatory at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Cosmic Ray Research in Japan.

This work, Tom Na H-iu II (pictured) welcomes you into Japanese artist Mariko Mori's solo exhibition, Rebirth, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The sculpture uses a live feed from "Super K", transforming incoming data into the ethereal glow of the sculpture. The varied hues reflect the different particles that are detected in the huge water tank at the Japanese facility: pale pink muons are rare; multicoloured neutrino bursts from the deaths of distant stars even rarer.

This celestial dance is a theme throughout Rebirth, which showcases some of Mori's key works from the last 11 years. The exhibition explores death and rebirth by linking our transient existence to the natural rhythms of the cosmos.

Take Mori's sculpture Transcircle, made of a circle of acrylic standing stones atop a bed of pebbles. Lit from within, the hue and brightness of each varies as time passes, reflecting the transit of different planets. In a 9-minute cycle, Mori has condensed the movements of the solar system over the course of a year.

The familiar imagery of ancient stone circles anchors the movements of the heavens to our own human history. "Our life was inherited from our very remote ancestors and given to us now, and we will transfer it to future generations," Mori says. The chain of life reaching back through history, and our ancestors' reverence for the natural world, are strong themes in the artist's work - reminding us how interwoven we are with our environment. At the entrance to the gallery, a sound installation makes the point explicit. "We are nature," Mori's voice echoes. "We are sustained by nature."

Where the exhibition begins with the death of stars, it ends with birth. The elegant installation White Hole draws you down a spiral passageway into a small, round, darkened space. The only light comes from a circular porthole in the angled ceiling, from which a slowly moving white glow spirals outwards. Aiming to create the inverse of a black hole, Mori calculated these spirals in collaboration with astrophysicist Shin Mineshige at Kyoto University. "I was using the formula of how a black hole has been fed, a circle stretched into a spiral form," she says. Yet her aim was not to create a true depiction of a white hole - if such a thing even exists - but to convey the idea of a place where the "spirit or soul of the star is born again".

Conceptually multifaceted yet aesthetically simple, Mori's art is informed not only by physical sciences and archaeology but also her explorations into the workings of the mind. "When you come to a deeper consciousness you acknowledge your life, other living beings, atoms and subatomic particles. Those things are all here in our bodies," she says. "I try to visualise how we are connected in the physical world from the very small primal particles to a greater universe."

And she succeeds: Mori's works not only illuminate connections across all levels of existence, but they put that existence in context - urging us not just to take care of our world, but to savour our time in it.

Rebirth, Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 17 February, including Mariko Mori in conversation with Brian Cox, 8 February