Michael Hanna

Michael Hanna

Michael Hanna is an artist based in Craigavon, Northern Ireland. His recent work has taken the form of social and sensory experiments with himself as the subject. His research centres around ideas of utopia, error, and how to live.

Exhibitions include PhotoIreland Festival (2022), Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2022), Chennai Photo Biennale (2021), Freelands Foundation, London (2021) and The MAC, Belfast (2020). He has recently completed a residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris (2021), and the Freelands Artist Programme (2019-21), a 2-year fellowship with PS², Belfast and Freelands Foundation, London. Michael is a co-founder of AMINI, an artist-led initiative for the promotion and critical discussion of artists’ moving image in Northern Ireland.

Pi Wrong Tattoo

“It is one of those serendipitous symbols that surfaces by happenstance in nature and which seems to be part of an inherent system of principles that connects mathematics to reality.” Marcel Danesi (2020) Pi (π) in nature, art, and architecture: Geometry as a Hermeneutic Science, Brill.

The number pi is intertwined deeply throughout the world and universe. It can be found in calculations ranging from how stars curve space and time with their gravity, to rhythms of infant breathing. It is present in probability and statistics, the division of cells, and the winding of rivers.

The history of pi tracks civilisation. It appears twice in the Old Testament where it was estimated as 3. Over time increased levels of accuracy were reached, now far beyond any practical necessity. Last year it was announced that it had been calculated to 62.8 trillion decimal places. (For reference, to calculate the circumference of the observable universe accurate to within one atom only 39 decimal places are required.) The reason these vast calculations continue is to test, and perhaps more importantly showcase, the computing power of new hardware and software.

The work ‘Pi Wrong Tattoo’ continues from the artist’s practice of instituting small changes in the world. These have taken the form of social and sensory micro-disruptions, which function as experiments into how the world might be different.

Image: Michael Hanna, Pi Wrong Tattoo, 2022. Archival pigment print, 122 x 81 cm. Edition of 3 + AP