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The artwork was first shown at Goldsmiths (Making A Difference, 2012) under the title Singularly Assured Destruction, where Ele Carpenter made a short film (4:07) demonstrating the relative counts per second of different objects. Loosely inspired by Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen, Ele names and demonstrates the Geiger counter as a semiotics of radiation. 

The full sculptural installation has been exhibited at: the V&A Museum in South Kensington (2020), NEoN Festival Dundee (2017); Objects of Transcendence, Watermans Art Centre, London (2017), Curated by Irini Papadimitriou and Jonathan Munro; and Geoweek, Cumbria Institute of the Arts (2022). Each installation presents the glass in a different light and context, using a different geiger counter or radon monitor to measure the MicroSieverts emitted. 

The Goddess of Uranium is Angry, A Pecha Keucha talk by Ele Carpenter about the geo-political context of uranium (7minutes) https://creativedundee.com/2017/10/pecha-kucha-night-vol-19/

The Laboratory for Variable Risk Perception artwork is an amateur laboratory measuring the radioactivity of 100 pieces of uranium glass to consider the variable risk perception of radiation. Each time the work is on public display the activity of each piece of glass is measured and recorded in a log-book. Using different radiation detectors reveals the complexity of measuring the behaviour of alpha, beta and gamma emissions using different scales. The artwork highlights the need for a wider understanding of the behavior of radioactive isotopes in the environment, and the importance of standardizing radiation measurements internationally.

Combining Nineteenth century alchemy with concerns for nuclear safety and the intergenerational responsibility of storing radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years, the project contributes to the evolving discourse of the nuclear arts and humanities. Uranium Dioxide (uranium salts) has been used to colour glass since the early 19th Century, and the earliest glass in this collection dates from about 1870 including items produced by Davidsons in the Northeast of England. For nuclear advisors it has been an example of safe radiation levels, whilst others are alarmed by its radioactive content (Skelcher, 2002). Today the glassware is commonly available in charity shops and antique centers. The production of Uranium Glass using depleted uranium, a by-product of the nuclear industry, has yet to be fully researched and documented.

Our nuclear culture starts with uranium, a naturally occurring element as old as the earth, which has fuelled an extraordinary technology whose effects will outlive the human race. Nuclear fission for weapons and energy has produced millions of tons of radioactive waste without a long-term storage solution. In the twenty-first century radioactive waste agencies are vitrifying high-level waste in glass, and are planning to bury it deep underground in the fossil record in geologic repositories. This process will create a geological strata of radioactive isotopes suspended in glass that will be detectable for millions of years. This radiological strata, along with fallout from atomic testing, forms the anthropogenic marker of the nuclear Anthropocene.