© Lucy Helton, installation image from QSL, 2023

Every year we ask the previous Top 25 Lenscratch Student Prize Winners to interview a hero or a mentor, offering an opportunity for conversation and connection. Today Lucy Helton and Nika McKagen are in dialogue. Thank you to both of the artists.

I first came across Lucy Helton’s work after having checked out her book Actions of Consequence from the artist book collection at the Kohler Art Library in Madison, Wisconsin. As many special objects tend to do, it offered itself to the world in the form of a mystery. The cover bore a series of numbers that felt vaguely longitudinal, and the pages followed in suit by offering a set of black and white images that felt only somewhat of this world: a set of overlapping whispers which hinted at the bare, complicated earth, something celestial, and an indistinct line between past and futurity. In this book, as in her more recent work, Helton appropriates images from various contexts and thus confuses the positional link that might have once employed that image in a power structure. Her practice of rearranging, capturing, constructing, and sending offers an insightful perspective on communication and transmission in our ecological present, as well as hints at partially dystopic understandings of our shared future.

Mette Sandbye, in her fantastic essay It Has Not Been – It Is. The Signaletic Transformation of Photography, writes that photography might be “a practice of making cuts in the flow of imagistic data, of stabilizing data as images and objects.” She argues that the photography today is based more in a relational performance with the world rather than in the indexical freezing of a single image in time. Helton’s recent installations, constructed at the intersection of image, technology, photography, and performance, seem to gesture toward Sandbye’s description of photography. Helton creates her own transmissions and image systems that point toward a networked, rhizomatic understanding of the world that is at once mysterious and completely grounded. It was a real pleasure speaking with her for this interview.

Lucy Helton creates artworks that address contemporary environmental concerns by linking her concepts to her process, materials and final object. Situated at the intersection of art, science and technology, she creatively explores the significance of our present actions, as well as the legacy we leave behind by using unexpected technologies to create published artist made books and sculptural prints. After spending 18 years in New York, she returned to London to pursue a practice-led PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art / University College London focusing on human environmental impact in outer space. She received a masters degree in fine-art photography from Hartford Art School, CT in 2014. Seeing visual arts as a means of engagement, she collaboratively tests the boundaries of art and technology by making both long and short-range radio image transmissions to amateur radio operators and nautical marine faxes. Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Paris Photo – Aperture First Book Award 2015 and held in the collections of the Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Library, MoMA Archives and Library, MET Watson Library, Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs in the New York Public Library, Houston Center of Photography, Hirsch Library at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts Leipzig, Germany, Texas State University’s Alkek Library, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK and the Tate Library Special Collection, London.  She is a recent member of the Artist Book Coopertive (ABC) .

Follow Lucy on Instagram: @lucyhelton

© Lucy Helton, installation image from QSL, 2023

Nika McKagen: In your statement on your work QSL, which combines image, transmission, machine, and photo in order to create a visual work that explores weather conditions and climate change, you write that “Reminders of automation, intention, and distance are constant as photograph (as signal) is converted into a real-time RF transmission…” I’m curious about the relationship between the photograph and the signal in your practice. Under what conditions does the photograph act as signal in your work? What are the consequences of considering the photograph as such, rather than as a steady, singular image?

Lucy Helton: Typically the photograph is the signal and the signal or radio transmission being sent and received is a photograph, one that’s been converted from image to sound and back to image. Usually, the transmitted photograph evidences climate change, a signal the environment of the planet is changing for the worse, a signal human beings need to stop stripping it bare and consuming it to death – a signal of warnings. The main consequence of the image transmission process is loss – the loss of information but I am using this process to discuss the loss of earth’s thriving natural environment. Another consequence (although I am understanding consequence as negative whereas I see the loss in the transmission process as a positive) is the loss is visually detectable. We are left with the loss evidenced in the received image, apparent in the form of glitches, gaps, static – essentially mistakes that occur in the image. This visual reminder means to take the viewer back to the original concept – human communication over long distances weaving across space and time regarding our place and future in the universe. The consequence of photograph as different types of signal (transmission, warnings) in the work, is to constantly remind viewers of the conceptual message – the future of our environments on and off our planet.

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Relic, 2026

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Relic, 2026

NM: In many of your installations, a performance of technology is taking place; and in recent works, you act as a choreographer of machines that would now be classified as fairly ancient (like the fax machines). What is the role between image and performance to you? Which types of technologies are you drawn to working with, and why?

LH: Wow this question is so appropriate. The role of image and performance in my work came from the non-archival materiality, the non-archival nature of the thermal paper fax machines use. Once I stopped trying to figure out how to make my printed work archival – thinking about the commercialisation of the art world – I realised the photographic prints I had made were performative. The thermal technology creates instability, meaning they changed over time, much like the environment I am discussing. I decided to embrace the change, so instead saw my work – the printed image as a performative. I was advised by a gallerist to sell the documentation of the performance instead. I use what I call analogue technology (rather than ancient) – using technologies from our past places a question mark of time in the work. Which also happens as the fax machines prints the images slowly line by line. Older technologies are much easier to use and to understand how they function- they’re not like our mobile phones, a mysterious black box. I hope the older technologies also pose the question, have we learnt from the past? A recent mechanical installation I built called Relic – presented fax machines themselves as technological relics, possible technofossils – man-made objects that become part of Earth’s future geological record. This installation printed book pages live, the book then became a document of the installation and the performance. I have to say live performance is extremely stressful, especially for someone who hates public attention! But an experienced friend said no-one knows what the performance should be, the public have no idea if you’ve done something wrong.

© Lucy Helton, Transmitted decoded CCSDS frames structure, visualisations of audio transmissions from a Mars Orbiter Mission 18. 262,570,622km away, 2024

NM: The nature of communication now often operates on a highly globalized network, with data being constantly transmitted across large swaths of land, ocean, and air like a litany of invisible numerical bullets. It appears that both reinterpreting global data transmission as well as creating your own closed systems of data transmission plays a large role in your work. What do you think the current role of transmission is in this world? What do you hope to achieve with creating your own systems of transmission?

LH: Transmission comes in many forms – however, the role of transmission in my work takes the form of communication. It’s interesting you highlight I am creating my own systems of transmission  – at first I read this as ‘closed systems’ of transmission. What I have stopped doing is making or sending transmissions (which includes to myself which would be a closed system) and now I only receive. I found by sending transmissions I was just adding to the noise, adding to global data streams. I now convert received data transmissions in unexpected ways – repurposing technological systems that already exist then translate and transform the data into artworks. If humans live off-planet we would rely on radio transmission to connect as it’s a cheap and fast way to communicate. Transmitted information is a metaphoric signal of our future out in the universe, it’s the only way our mechanical and human scientific exploration of other planets, rocks and stars can take place. Transmitted data allows scientific discoveries of the environment of space, the solar system’s history and hopefully to understand how life began on our planet.

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Lost in Transmission, 2023

NM: Your work often takes on the task of translating data to images, or providing context to data through the use of images. What does this process look like for you – how do you visualize data?

LH: There are so many ways to visualise data! And that really is the basis of my PhD – the many conceptual ways to visualise invisible data. Firstly, I see making digital photographs in the landscape a type of data collection. My more recent work and ideas have been to visualise data as printed static patterns – receiving live data transmissions from passing satellites and printing them out using a radio fax, or to build sculpture from transmitted binary code translated as pattern holes punched in archaic computer tape, or to make images of the TV signals crossing the Sun in space by heating objects and laying them on thermal paper. The list goes on. I can’t imagine running out of ideas around the different ways to visualise data artistically.

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Lost in Transmission, 2023

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Lost in Transmission, 2023

NM: There’s an interesting tension between the factual and the fictional in your work, especially in regard to climate change, ecology, and speculative futures. I’m curious to hear more about your thoughts on the importance of the role of artistic interpretation around these topics, which are often denied by certain powers that be, and thus sometimes under pressure of appearing “perfect” scientifically. How do you walk this line?

LH: The work in Actions of Consequence for example, speculates despotically on earth’s future and incorporates the genre of science fiction to do this. When defining the genre Rod Serling, best known for 1950‘s TV series The Twilight Zone states, “fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible.” Science fiction is a wonderful medium to deliver a hard message. However, making work about the environmental debate for years, I now find offering inspiration and hope a harder but more effective approach. My question has always been, how do I bring people back to this overwhelming conversation they want to turn away from? I try to visually seduce them and then deliver the message. Having studied photojournalism and documentary photography, I found we become desensitised to hard hitting stark photographs of traumatic events – so I wanted to adopt a different visual strategy yet still make the ‘concerned photograph’. I also try to instigate the viewers imagination through image and more recently sound or noise – abstract experimental sonification that creates images in our mind. In regards to ‘perfect’ science –  I’ve learned from working with many scientists, all science is based on assumptions. I would argue perfect doesn’t exist in the world which includes science. I’m sure you know this but all the colour images we see of the universe and galaxies are falsely coloured, so in a sense, these perfectly beautiful scientific representations are fake.

© Lucy Helton, Actions of Consequence, 2014

NM: It’s clear that you have a general curiosity about the world as well as the interlocking systematic operations of nature and humanity. What role does research have in your work?

LH: I see the progression of our technologies as a human trait, as part of our humanity – technological advancement is a part of our nature. The evolution of our species and the evolution of our technologies go hand-in-hand, this is the interlocking system you mention. However, so many contradictions lie within. The detrimental side-effects technologies can have on our planet’s environment yet without these advancements many scientific discoveries wouldn’t be made. We need to keep developing space based technologies for example, will help us understand the big questions in science. This contraction lies at the core of my research, so plays a very important role. Research itself is the basis of my work – it provides the foundation from where all my ideas come from. To produce the work I’m either working with scientists or engineers as the processes I choose to make work are always outside my artistic skillset.

© Lucy Helton, installation image from Lost in Transmission, 2023

NM: How have you seen the role of photography in culture change over the course of your career?

LH: I’ve seen the technology of photography change over the course of my career. When I worked as a photo-assistant photographers were still using film, slide film, polaroids, film labs etc. With the invention of the digital camera I saw many nervous commercial photographers worry that anyone could now do their job as the process of making pictures was now easier. What will never change though, with the advent of citizen journalists working under the banner ‘we are all photographers now’, is the difference between the depth of the work made by a trained documentary photojournalist and a citizen journalist who happens to be in the right place at the right moment in time. The work is incomparable. What I would like to see though is the art world taking photography more seriously – photography has always been painting and sculpture’s poorer cousin. But just as much time and training that goes into understanding what a good image is, finding your own personal style and then making the work. To tackle this I try to make the image and print unrepeatable, just like a painting or piece of sculpture. Photography is a science and I think a good photographer works like a scientist (making many experiments using darkroom chemistry for example) and as an engineer – we are essentially using machines to make our artwork. There’s a huge difference culturally between photography as art and science to the photographic image that is used for social media and other online activities. The latter doesn’t concern my practice in the slightest. I have the mindset to embrace technological inventions and not be scared of them, they are just tools.

Nika McKagen works with traditional darkroom processes, sculpture, and essay. She is particularly interested in what goes on both underground and in the dark. Her work, largely based in field research in caves and mines, addresses the literal thresholds between the aboveground and the subterranean worlds, as well as the mythic, cultural, and environmental consequences that occur when humans transgress those boundaries. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a recipient of the Film Photo Award, Photolucida Critical Mass’s SPAO Award, and the Sonntag Grant. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She works as an Assistant Professor of Photography + New Media at St. Olaf College.

Follow Nika on Instagram: @1889__lover

© Nika McKagen, openings.txt, 2026

© Nika McKagen, Conduit I, 2026

© Nika McKagen, Untitled (gate), 2026