‘The Book of Sand, Julie F Hill

HS Projects is delighted to present The Book of Sand by Julie F Hill, an edition of prints from an ongoing series of works on paper exploring crystal growth generated by a machine learning algorithm trained on a dataset created from an encyclopaedia of crystals and minerals. The work contrasts the time of lived experience with the geological and technological.

Images are generated by sampling points in a machine learning model’s ‘latent space’ – the potentially limitless and unknowable space of the algorithmic imagination. The unfolding and refolding of geological material – or fundamental matter – through deep time cycles, is also potentially infinite.

Titled after the short story by Jorge Luis Borges that features a book with infinite, incomprehensible pages: ‘The Book of Sand … because neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.’

The Book of Sand
Digital print on archival paper
100 x 100 cms
unique edition print (left)
unique edition print (right)

Hill studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, and was Fellow in Digital Print at the Royal Academy Schools (2017–20). She took part in Land Art Agency’s Sustainable Futures: Outer Space residency series where she was partnered with environmental anthropologist Dr Valerie Olson (2021). In 2020 she was awarded the inaugural Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation as part of the Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year, Royal Museums Greenwich with her work being exhibited at The National Maritime Museum (2020–21), Jodrell Banks (2021) and Fox Talbot Museum (2021–22).

Hill was awarded an Arts Council Developing Your Creative Practice grant for her project Through Machine & Darkness, which has been looking at the use of AI and machine learning in examining astronomical datasets (2019–21).

Hill’s solo and 2 person exhibitions include: A Stone Sky, Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London, (2023); Earth, Water, Night, The Stone Space, London (2023); Uncertain Ruins, commissioned by Camden Council for Swiss Cottage Gallery (2019–2020), The Space Out of Time, Terminal Creek Contemporary/Capture Photography Festival, Vancouver, CA (2019); Of Stars and Chasms, ArthousSE1, London (2019).

Group shows include: Seeing Stars, The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK (2022); Aora VI: Light curated by Jen Ellis online (2021); The AI Gallery, National Gallery X & National Gallery, online (2021–); Pokey Hat, VERBureau at Glasgow International Festival, Glasgow, UK (2016) and Single-Shot, Tate Britain,
London, UK & touring (2007).

‘The Book of Sand’ is at 5 Marble Arch from July 2024 to January 2025.