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orbital

March 3, 2024 //

“A powerful solar flare hitting Earth is entirely plausible, and in the Internet Age would have a massive immediate effect that would go on to wreck the world economy. Satellites in low Earth orbit as well as communication devices on Earth would be destroyed – the ‘Internet Apocalypse’, causing blackouts, riots and supply-chain disruption, as well as ruining your last-second eBay bid”. Tim Marshall The Future of Geography

The dramatic increase in the number of satellites being launched into low Earth orbit unfortunately coincides with the current Solar Cycle 25, which is predicted to peak between January and October of 2024, with more solar storms of greater intensity and therefore a larger hazard for critical technologies and services. A growing risk awareness is evident as three new geomagnetic observatories have been installed across the UK in the last year to monitor space weather. They hope to predict solar storms and alert operatives to manage situations such as that in February 2022 when a Coronal Mass Ejection led to 38 commercial satellites being lost. Solar plasma from a geomagnetic storm heated the atmosphere, causing denser gases to expand into the satellites’ orbit, which increased atmospheric drag on the satellites and caused them to de-orbit.

Despite the unpredictability of our star’s activity, national space agencies and an increasing number of private companies are forging ahead with space based technology. There is a joint plan between space agencies (not including China or Russia) to construct a Lunar Gateway Space Station near to the moon where astronauts will live and conduct experiments for up to 90 days between visits to the moon. Gateway will be exposed to much higher levels of radiation than the ISS which is in low Earth orbit and so must be built to shield against higher levels of cosmic ray bombardment.

As of January 3rd 2024, the satellite tracking website “Orbiting Now” lists 8,377 active satellites in various Earth orbits. Communication and Earth observation make up the majority. The USA still outstrips all other operators but other nations are eager to catch up and within the past two decades, satellites from 91 new space-faring countries reached orbit.

It is not only radiation from space weather that is a threat to satellite dependent infrastructure. As witnessed following the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space by the USA in 1962, which lit up the sky with Auroras, knocked out electricity in Hawaii 900 miles away, created significant magnetic field disturbances and an artificial radiation belt which damaged or destroyed several satellites and persisted for a decade. Nuclear detonations in space could make space unusable for satellites.

Work in progress on a new video installation for upcoming exhibition Life Boat at APT Gallery. Taking the lifeboat as a metaphor for precarity, eight artists respond to current uncertain times of ecological and social change and shifting landscapes from both local and global perspectives.

The video looks at the interaction between space weather and Earth’s magnetic field and the risk solar storms pose to satellites and related infrastructure.

The ancient walled city of York was a great host venue for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2024 exhibition and the Future Now Symposium. Grey February is dispelled by the inspired decision of the local council and shops to keep the Christmas lights on.

There are many artists alongside myself in the Aesthetica Art Prize longlist, and it was great to meet up with familiar faces as well as make new contacts at this event. With so many artists, the digital showcase of our work in York Gallery was on quite a long loop, but I felt happy to be in such good company.

A link to my Aesthetica 2024 longlisted artist online profile is here

Private view of finalists work. Shortlist here

The winners of the main prizes, Maryam Tafakory for Nazarbazi [the play of glances], which explores love and desire in Iranian cinema, where depictions of intimacy between women and men are prohibited. and Emerging Prize-winner Gala Hernández López, were well deserved with powerful, timely work.

The Future Now Symposium threw up some interesting and potentially disturbing questions about AI despite some speakers such as Dr Suzanne Livingston and Marian Ursu, positive spin that AI could herald a new utopia of knowledge production and collaboration to solve the world’s problems. The panel discussing ‘The Impact of New Technologies’ were all in agreement that it is already too late to change or avert the learning bias of AI systems reflecting and perpetuating human biases, as the early modelling is embedded too deep in systems that no one really understands or can control. There was encouragement to welcome the new technologies such as chatGTP and text prompt generative fill software as new tools to be used to expand on what we can create rather than seeing these as taking over the creative thought process.

The myth surrounding the deception of the judges by Boris Eldagsen’s now-infamous AI-generated piece, The Electrician, which won a Sony World Photography Award in 2023, was laid to rest by Edgar Martins on the ‘Photography in Focus’ panel. The winning image had been entered to the competition as an AI generated image and was judged on that basis, there was no cover up but certain media sources sparked heated debates around our trust in images, giving the impression that the judges had been misled. This doesn’t mean to say that there isn’t a problem with image authenticity in the news and especially on social media as AI generated images are shared ubiquitously without the relevant acknowledgement.

I very much enjoyed Sarah Perks in conversation with Heather Phillipson who describes her works as “quantum thought experiments,” which unfold in absurd and complex ways. Interesting to hear how her ideas develop from 2D sketchbook/collages, straight to full large scale 3D installation with no small scale models in between. Making such large work is a problem when it comes to storage, so some pieces have to be relinquished and then recreated if necessary, as it was for her Turner Prize nomination.

Margaret Salmon was another fascinating speaker with her quietly moving films that expose and elevate the minutiae of human experience. She showed a short film zooming in on the invasive ravaging nature of trawling the sea bed, indiscriminately gathering up everything in the haul, interspersed with a Whitstable trawlerman speaking about his life on the boats where this was just seen in terms of hard or easy work and how the day played out. It reminded me of the taped interview I have of Aunt Millie, a close elderly neighbour from my Suffolk childhood, who talked about mending the fishing nets piecemeal as a young woman when the village still had an active fishing industry. Fragile histories to be remembered.

The panel discussion ‘What does it mean to be an artist today?’ was tempered by Ori Gersht accounts of his personal experience as a jew during the current conflict, both here and as witness to atrocities in Israel. How to respond.

Gallery Visits

Freya Gabie Duet at Danielle Arnaud. Great to hear Freya’s own account of her time spent as artist in residence on the Mexican/U.S border at one of the teatime talks hosted at the gallery. The shocking inequalities and water poverty that she witnessed are sensitively explored through her work. The ease with which she could cross back and forth was denied those indigenous to the Mexican side who live in the shadow of a shiny wealthy city that they would never visit.

‘The exhibition explores the landscape of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez as a repository of shared connections and experience. Giving the land voice to both remember and carry the complications, contradictions, and beauty of the place; the way these nuances act in harmony, and the notes of discord they strike. For this exhibition, Freya Gabie draws out threads that weave the two cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso together. Approaching the intricate back and forth of economic, social, and medical journeys that take place between the people and objects of the border, and examining how the border both generates the flow of goods, services, and people and dams it, revealing the ways the resulting impacts are felt.‘

Agata Madejska Grand Habitat Horror Vacui at Flat Time House. The works evoke the personal intimacy and mess of domestic life lived at odds with prevalent power structures. They embody feelings of fragility, and exposure when a home must be constructed from fragments as seen in the small personal objects secreted in pockets or spilling across the floor, an accumulation of detritus that together makes a life, chafing against the world like grit in Vaseline. Due to my own current preoccupations, the dark padded grid of the entry room floor, that gave under the weight of mass and was strewn with discarded silver objects, read as low earth orbit littered with space junk, but was in fact a reference to the Chanel brand handbag.

DISSONANT BLOOM a group show with works by Nancy Allen, Mauro Bonacina and Héloïse Chassepot at Sundy. Enjoyable tactile sculptures with interesting materials and painting to get lost in with no point of focus.

‘As a concept ‘Dissonant Bloom’ refers to our vexed relationship with nature but it also suggests that growth and flourishing are possible amidst unfavourable conditions. In the same way that the coexistence of competing species ultimately fosters biodiversity and ecological resilience. In the same way every work in this exhibition embodies aspects of blooming, either aesthetically or conceptually, but they do not necessarily do so in harmony with each other.‘

Fragments of a Lost Future with Karen David, Lana Locke, Liz Elton, Mimei Thompson, Susie Olczac at White Conduit Projects. In a time of climate crisis the works question hope for the future as a fantasy, or only for the non-human.

“The Planet’s mineral, energy and agriculture resources have been efficiently, and even ruthlessly, exploited… They have harnessed energy of the atom, deciphered the molecular codes that oversee their own reproduction… Despite these achievements the people of this planet have in other respects scarcely raised themselves above the lowest level of barbarism. The enjoyment of pain and violence is as natural to them as the air they breathe. ” J.G. Ballard [“Report From an Obscure Planet”, 1992]

‘The fears of the near future described in J.G. Ballard’s science fiction novels are now our reality.‘

‘When corporations and politicians are busy monopolising airspace and arguing amongst themselves, whose voice will communicate this urgent crisis. We go about our daily lives with our heads partly buried in the sand, often too busy to fully engage with our current polycrisis. Activists rightly convey outrage, but can we embed these urgencies into our everyday lives? In ‘Report from an Obscure Planet’, Ballard describes the critical state of the Earth as viewed from another place. White Conduit Projects brings together these five artists who bravely and playfully incorporate this sense of crisis into the core and surface of their work. Starting with their everyday surroundings, they attempt new ways of communication, quietly bringing a Ballardian nuance to artworks that inhabit our domestic space.‘

Loose Ends is a group exhibition at Thames-side Studios Gallery exploring connections and the interwoven poetics of material and the body by ten artists working across ceramics, textiles and performance.

Blown away by the sheer elegant beauty of Alex Simpson‘s impressive new ceramic work traversing across latex covered foam blocks.

Robert Good Saturation Point Sunday Salon 29. Responding to Richard Brautigan’s 1967 ode to a coming technological utopia ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ Robert explores what a cybernetic meadow might look like. Here he presents six digital artworks that hum, whirr, click and miaow with the first stirrings of a new digital landscape – one of computer vision, compromised identity and permanent connectivity. This meadow is not brought about by the unfathomable AI but is hand sown and nurtured with the level of technology we can still engage with; it is a human scale materialization of the inner workings of the digital world.

OUTSIDE IN at SET Ealing, a dynamic group show curated and including beautiful, stitched painting by Anna Lytridou, with works by Anja Aichinger, coloured paper clay forms by Eleanor Bedlow, fossil like forms by Anna Joy Reading, delicate folded brass mesh geometric forms by Brigitte Parusel, paintings of collapsed breasts by Jennifer Nieuwland, explorations of genealogy through painting by Jillian Knipe, abstract and evocative paintings by Linda Hemmersbach and Stacie McCormick and subtly coloured sculpted paper forms oscillating between stone and the night sky by Julie F Hill contemplating interconnections between the organic and the inorganic.

Listening

In Our Time Panpsychism – Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that some kind of consciousness is present not just in our human brains but throughout the universe, right down to cells or even electrons. This is panpsychism and its proponents argue it offers a compelling alternative to those who say we are nothing but matter, like machines, and to those who say we are both matter and something else we might call soul. It is a third way. Critics argue panpsychism is implausible, an example of how not to approach this problem, yet interest has been growing widely in recent decades partly for the idea itself and partly in the broader context of understanding how consciousness arises.

The Life Scientific – Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and the Director of Foundational AI Research at the Alan Turing Institute Michael Wooldridge on AI and sentient robots – Humans have a long-held fascination with animating an inanimate object, but the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often perceived as a dystopian threat: from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, through to the Terminator movies. We still often think of this technology as ‘futuristic’: whereas in fact, it’s already woven into the fabric of our daily lives, from facial recognition software to translator apps. He believes this will be a watershed year for AI development.

It might be interesting to consider if and how AI and technology might impact human evolution. Medical advances may already have influence. A 300,000-Year History of Human Evolution – Robin May The species we recognise as our own – anatomically modern humans – has existed for only 300,000 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. And yet during that time our species has been shaped by strong evolutionary forces, often unwittingly as an indirect result of human activities.

Tags Aesthetica Art Prize, Agata Madejska, AI, Alex Simpson, Anna Lytridou, cosmic rays, evolution, Freya Gabie, Future Now, Heather Phillipson, Julie F. Hill, Lana Locke, Life Boat, Liz Elton, low Earth orbit, Lunar Gateway, magnetic field, Margaret Salmon, Nancy Allen, panysychism, radiation, Robert Good, Sarah Perks, satellites, solar flare, solar storm, space weather, Susie Olczac, technology, The breath of stars, Tim Marshall, York

Categories Uncategorized

dimensions

February 3, 2024 //

Delighted to share the news that I have been longlisted for The Aesthetica Art Prize 2024. A live recording of The Breath of Stars will be included in the digital showcase at York Gallery. The Aesthetica Art Prize celebrates contemporary art across a range of media and I’m looking forward to joining the Future Now conference for critical and cultural debate running alongside the art prize exhibition.

The Breath of Stars (Cosmic ray detectors, mini computers, wooden box (20×20 cm), video projection; live duration) is a digital video work activated in real time by the passage of cosmic rays through a pair of scintillator detectors. Cosmic rays from exploding stars or other extreme events, power across the universe, collide with atoms in the Earth’s atmosphere, break apart, and shower down upon us. Some particles silently interact technology on Earth. In this work, particle detectors and mini computers are connected to a projector. Every time a cosmic ray passes through the plastic scintillator blocks inside the detectors, its energy is recorded, and a starburst video is displayed.

The kaleidoscopic video images that appear are created from mirrored footage of cosmic ray trails filmed during my cloud chamber experiments. Cosmic rays are subatomic – smaller than an atom – they are protons or the nuclei of an atom which has had its electrons ripped away. We can’t see the actual particles but we can see the trails of condensation they leave behind as they whizz through a cloud chamber.

Cosmic rays arrive at Earth randomly, and this can be witnessed by the sudden flurries and silent gaps of the video imagery. The kinetic energy in just one particle can be equivalent to the energy of a cricket ball bowled by the fastest bowler on the planet – so much energy squeezed into one tiny particle gives it a huge velocity. Light travels a thousand billion kilometres in one year – a light year – no object with mass can travel at the speed of light but an ultra-high energy cosmic ray would only lag behind the photon by 100^th of the diameter of human hair. Most cosmic rays heading for Earth are deflected by the planet’s magnetic field – without this protection, life on Earth, as we experience it, could not survive this bombardment of radioactive matter.

Around 95% of the universe is ‘dark’ to us, formed of unknown and possibly unknowable matter. Phenomenon such as dark matter may be inaccessible to us, but cosmic rays offer a more tangible contact with outer space as they have mass. Although too small to see, we can witness their effects via technology, such as that used in The Breath of Stars, which affords us the opportunity to gaze beyond and between the stars to gain an insight into the structures of the cosmos and imagine what might be hidden in those dark spaces.

I am very excited that Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe is showing at the super brand new Science Gallery Bengaluru in their inaugural exhibition CARBON: under pressure.

Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is part of the Science Gallery International Network pioneered by Trinity College Dublin. The exhibition explores the ubiquitous nature of carbon, its energy history and the potential futures it enables. Given its unique capability to form bonds and compounds carbon is a foundational element of both life and non-organic matter and its properties have been harnessed as fullerenes, graphene, nanobuds, nanotori, nanocones, and nanohorns, enabling the creation of new screens, batteries, ultra-fast computers, ultra-thin sensors and cables of braided nanotubes. Carbon-14 in organic materials serves as the basis for radiocarbon dating, and Carbon-12 was the standard Dmitri Mendeleev used to determine the atomic weights—and now mass—of all other elements. Carbon dioxide is used as the standard to understand and regulate the flow of exchanges between ecology and economy. Industry driven by coal and oil-fired productivity have triggered alarming climatic effects and created a chasm between geo-biological time as shaped by the material memories of the planet and historical time—that shaped by human action. Carbon is an archive of buried sunshine, bridging the divide between substance and phenomena; caught between the finitude of nature’s resources and the near infinite wonderous potential it holds.

Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe offers a glimpse into a subatomic world where cosmic rays travel from distant galaxies to collide and silently interact with atoms and technology on Earth. Cosmic rays are particles that move extremely fast. They are raining down on planet Earth all the time. Although they are called rays they are not like photons, as light is made of, because they have mass, but they do travel at nearly the speed of light. Cosmic rays go through a violent process of creation, transformation and decay. From the heart of stars or the depths of black holes these particles power across the universe with unimaginable energy colliding with life on Earth and triggering other processes such as cell mutation, computer data corruption and carbon-14 formation. Above our heads where cosmic rays collide with atoms in Earth’s atmosphere radioactive carbon-14 is formed. This radioactive carbon-dioxide in our atmosphere is absorbed by plants and enters the food chain. The radiocarbon decays while an organism is alive but is continually replenished as long as the organism takes in air or food. When an organism dies no more Carbon-14 is absorbed and that which is present starts to decay at a constant rate. By measuring the radioactivity of dead organic matter, the carbon-14 content can be determined and the time of death established. Cosmic ray activity gives us carbon dating techniques. It is an incredible journey that cosmic rays make, blasted across space, spiralling along magnetic field lines to end up entangled with carbon in our bodies.

The James Webb Space Telescope selfies of its own light searching mirrors shows cosmic ray activity impact. Space weather can have serious implications for technology. Satellites are particularly vulnerable. and can be sent off-orbit or suffer electrical interference. The satellite population orbiting Earth has more than doubled since 2020, and with more satellites launched in the past year than during the first thirty years of the Space Age, reliance on this technology is increasing at a rapid rate.

I am making new work looking at information insecurity caused by space weather for an upcoming group show at APT Gallery which takes the lifeboat as a metaphor for precarity. Participating artists: Rachael Allain / Caroline AreskogJones / Beverley Duckworth / Liz Elton / Susan Eyre / Kathleen Herbert / Kaori Homma / Anne Krinsky.

Life Boat brings together artists with a shared interest in exploring precarity as a site of dynamic transition. Each takes an investigative approach to the environmental, social and historical themes evoked by the lifeboat, as a means of addressing ecological crisis, liminal landscapes, close and distant horizons, boundaries and displacement, lines of rescue, navigation and transformation.

The gallery location in Deptford, once a major departure point for maritime trade and scientific expeditions from Deptford Dockyard, resonates with the exhibition’s concept of being ‘at sea’, in the sense of negotiating the unknown. Research into local histories and ecologies informs work created for the exhibition and is further expanded upon in the accompanying events programme. There will be a low tide river walk led by Creekside Discovery Centre in collaboration with artist Anne Krinsky who has an ongoing project looking at wetland vulnerability. A group discussion – Fieldwork as Practice hosted by artist Caroline AreskogJones who has invited a skipper from Sail Britain, a principal curator from The Natural History Museum and an environmental historian to join the conversation. Artist Kaori Homma will lead a hands on workshop to reveal the secrets of invisible ink and fire etching, links to espionage and the geopolitical nature of the meridian line explored via her Homma Meridian Project.

In tackling concepts of the perilous, the vulnerable and the lost, Life Boat raises the alarm on the passive position of waiting for rescue and encourages urgent action in troubled waters.

“How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.” Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Gallery Visits

Tania Kovats as above so below at Parafin. She says: ‘I make drawings more than I draw drawings.’ There is something captured in the simplicity of her work, a haptic viscerallity that is very emotionally stirring.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine at Hayward Gallery. Beautifully crafted, astonishing work. Hard to believe his models are waxworks or museum taxidermy dioramas, not living subjects and that it is his studied use of light that so cleverly activates his images. I particularly like the Theatres series where he set his camera on an exposure equal to the length of the film being projected into an otherwise dark and empty cinema. The resulting images of a blinding white screen bleeding light like an opening to heaven are remarkable records of passing time. I also loved the work stemming from his interest in mathematics and optical sciences and his experiments with different electrical discharge tools. Sugimoto discovered that he could produce shapes that looked like amoeboid organisms, so he set out to recreate the conditions of the ocean from the time that life began. Using rock salt from the Himalayas (today’s mountain range was once the ocean floor), he mixed his own primaeval seawater. Submerging electrically charged film into the water, the artist was amazed to see light particles move across the surface like microorganisms.

SEISMIC: ART MEETS SCIENCE at GIANT Gallery, Bournemouth, a collaboration with SEISMA Magazine curated by Paul Carey-Kent who was leading a tour of the works when I visited. Artists: Uli Ap, Edward Burtynsky, 0rphan Drift, Peter Matthews, Claire Morgan, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, Lisa Pettibone, Shuster + Moseley, David Rickard, Troika. Scientists from corresponding fields of interest are called upon to comment on the work of the curated artists. I was curious to see David Rickards Cosmic Field (3.7mHZ) – a commission by Seisma magazine – which sees cymbals clash when a cosmic rays passes through a hidden Geiger counter. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to witness the full effect as the detector mechanisms hadn’t been charged up, and so only one cymbal was responding with an occasional clash. There are some clever maths in the title and references to John Cages silent composition and the oscillations of the sun. I would like to have learnt more about how the Geiger counters can be sure they are recoding cosmic rays and not just background radiation. It was interesting to read about how stars have sound trapped within and resonate at natural frequencies, like waves inside a wind instrument. Astrophysicist Dr William Chaplin refers to this process as gentle breathing which can be seen in periodic changes in brightness as the stars breathe in ( compressed and bright ) breathe out (relaxed and darker). Other work in the show included Lisa Pettibone’s Truth to Illusion a screen that appears to show a digital undulating image is revealed through a peep hole to be caused by a rotating light and glass mechanism. Light can reveal and mislead in the quest for an understanding of reality. Jewell of Space by Claudia Moseley and Edward Shuster is a mesmerising moving sculpture of light refracting and scattering across a constellation of glass, shadowing the lensing effects of light across the galaxy. Clare Morgan’s Heart of Darkness – a grid of bluebottle flies – a comment on complexity in a system and the importance of each individual to create a whole. Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva’s animal organs given new context – the body turned inside out (cow’s stomach) – the unseen revealed (lamb intestine).

The Accurate Perception Available When Our Eye Becomes Single at The Cut, Halesworth, Suffolk. A lucky chance to see another iteration of this impressive collaboration between Richard Ducker (video) and Ian Thompson (sound). This atmospheric multi-screen installation transports you to the remote otherness of Orford Ness with its innate aura gained from status as a top secret military site and atomic development centre of the 1950’s.

Holding Cosmic Dust: An Almanac, a video installation at The Swiss Church in London by Hot Desque. I enjoyed their previous theatrical inspired installation at Thames-side Studios Gallery where lighting played a key role in creating atmosphere. Again lighting was key, this time very low lighting meant identifying friends at the event was unpredictable. This installation is partnered with an intervention within the permanent, archaeological collection of the Corinium Museum, in Cirencester, positing a speculative archaeological dig in which a matriarchal society is uncovered. The installation draws out connections between archaeology, history and fantasy. There was in conversation with historian Frederika Tevebring about the speculative nature of archeology and evidence of matriarchal societies, but due to challenging acoustics and lighting much of this fascinating talk was lost. I would have liked to hear about the cosmic ray connections. Was it to do with Carbon dating? Participating artists: Holly Graham, Rubie Green, Rebeca Romero, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Abel Shah and Suzanne Treister.

Reading

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthoney Doerr. An extraordinary evocation of the depths of human tenderness and cruelty and the power of knowledge. This is a beautifully written fiction spanning the decades from the 1930’s into the 21st century when advances in radio technology went from a being a source of public information and enlightenment to a weapon of war. Through the wonder of the young protagonists in discovering the magic of radio transmissions, the author also stirs in the reader a reminder that it is invisible waves crisscrossing our world, carrying information vast distances, across political and geographic boundaries. I loved this book.

The Future of Geography: how power and politics in space will change our world by Tim Marshall. Clear and accessible writing takes the reader through the history of the space race to the ubiquity of orbiting satellites and on to the era of astropolitics, military strategy and the battle for future resources. The stakes are high.

Entangle: Physics and the Artistic Imagination edited by Ariane Koek, written in conjunction with an exhibition at Bildmuseet in Sweden. The book is filled with fascinating essays from both artists and scientists giving personal perspectives on their interest in and interaction with particle physics. The importance of an open imagination, the thrill of the unknown, the quest for knowledge that may never be accessible, are relevant to all participants. The common ground between art and science, and the benefits to both fields of joint conversations, is increasingly being acknowledged. Scientists offer the abstract theories, controlled experiments or new technologies that feed artists imaginations, throwing up new questions for both to consider and relate to the human experience.

Watched the deeply moving film by Werner Herzog, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser – a fictionalised documentary of a teenager suddenly released from an existence of inexplicable confinement chained in a cellar with no human contact other than his captor. The film follows the internal struggle of Kaspar as he is subjected to the demands of society, and take on the current belief systems of the Church. His confusion at the world and despair at how much he doesn’t understand is an allegory for the limitations of human knowledge. The film spotlights the failure of logic and science to provide answers to the human condition.

Tags Abel Shah, Aesthetica Art Prize, Amba Sayal-Bennett, APT Gallery, carbon, carbon dating, carbon-14, Claire Morgan, Cloud Chamber, Cosmic Chiasmus, cosmic rays, David Rickard, Deptford Dockyard, Edward Burtynsky, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Holly Graham, Hot Desque, Ian Thompson, James Webb Space Telescope, Life Boat, Lisa Pettibone, Orphan Drift, Paul Carey-Kent, Peter Matthews, Rebeca Romero, Richard Ducker, Rubie Green, satellites, Science Gallery Bengaluru, Seisma magazine, Shuster + Moseley, space weather, Suzanne Treister, Tania Kovats, The breath of stars, Troika, Uli Ap

Categories Uncategorized

A Stone Sky

December 12, 2023 //

‘A stone sky rotated above our heads’ – Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

The culmination of two years work – A STONE SKY duo exhibition with Julie F Hill opened at Thames-side Studios Gallery – Reimagining the idea of an observatory – the exhibition proposes a cavernous realm of real and speculative possibilities that arise from beyond the limits of human perception. Engaging with the extended sensory range offered by technologies such as orbiting space telescopes through to the ability of birds to ‘see’ the Earth’s magnetic field, the artists’ reveal intimate connections between earth and space.

Installation shot by Ben Deakin Photography.

Susan Eyre seeks to navigate a path across time from the first human encounter with the magical qualities of the lodestone to current understanding of the interaction of the magnetic field with terrestrial life. Her works respond to the architecture, instruments and materials, found at a magnetic observatory while scientific objectives are expanded to include natural navigation techniques and extra-sensory methods used by the non-human realm, to form the basis of speculation as to the ability for humans to perceive the Earth’s magnetic field. Installation, sculpture and moving image works include a reimagined observation hut operating as a sensory hub with video screens suggesting portals into a web of neural pathways; an obelisk of layered recycled paper echoing Earth’s geological and magnetic history secreted in sedimentary strata of rock and a digital video work activated in real time by the passage of cosmic rays through a scintillator detector.

Images by Ben Deakin Photography

Julie F Hill explores the entwined darknesses of earth and cosmos. Crystalline and mineral substances from the deep earth fuse with astronomical data to suggest the deep-earth as an instrument for coming to know the cosmos. Crystalline and mineral substances formed in the continuum of deep earth and deep space allow us to peer back into cosmic time, both through the technologies created with them and the geological record they hold. Whilst darkness often indicates uncertainty and lack of knowledge, Hill asserts that it’s through darkness when we can be most perceptive to the interconnectedness between earth and cosmos. Through it we are able to extend our kinship with the inorganic and expand consciousness of what constitutes nature. Works include a large-scale sculptural print installation made from James Webb Space Telescope data that is reworked into a cavernous space, providing an experience of intimate immensity alongside more smaller sculptural and photographic works.

Images by Ben Deakin Photography

We both had ambitious large scale works to install and were grateful for the help we received from our partners (both Kevins), friends and technicians. Trevor Neale was magnificent in constructing The Absolute Hut. Anne Krinsky patiently helped apply double sided tape to the roof structure ready for the Suminagashi paper tiles and Caroline AreskogJones energetically painted the hut white and neatly edged the two way projection window. I was thrilled that, as a result of a wet few weeks, moss had started to grow on the wooden boards of the north facing wall in time for installation.

A big thank you to everyone that made it to the opening night, we were super chuffed with the positive responses.

At the private view Julie’s large scale print installation was activated by a vocal performance conjuring abyssal voices of deep, cosmic time, performed and devised with Eleanor Westbrook whose voice produces incredible hauntingly beautiful sound.

I was particularly excited to share The Breath of Stars, digital video work activated in real time by the passage of cosmic rays through a scintillator detector. After two years in development it was so exciting to watch the random starbursts appear in real time as witness to the unseen activity of cosmic rays passing through the gallery.

The kaleidoscopic video images that appear for every particle recorded by the detector, are created from footage of cosmic ray trails filmed in a cloud chamber.

The interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric electrical fields influences the unpredictability of the magnetosphere and this random activity can be witnessed by the sudden flurries and silent gaps of the live video imagery.

These subatomic visitors from outer space power across the universe with unimaginable energy, coming from the heart of exploding stars or the depths of black holes; some may come from phenomena yet to be discovered or even from other dimensions. Travelling at close to the speed of light cosmic rays spiral along magnetic field lines, strike the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, break apart and shower down upon us. Some particles collide and silently interact with atoms and technology on Earth. Most cosmic rays heading for Earth are deflected by the planet’s magnetic field and without this protection life on Earth could not survive this bombardment of radioactive matter. The interaction of cosmic rays and the solar wind with atmospheric electrical fields combines to influence the unpredictability of Earth’s magnetosphere, impacting the functioning of GPS satellite technology and computer processors on which humans have come to rely in daily life.

My research trip to Hartland Magnetic Observatory in North Devon was a catalyst for this body of work centring around a north facing observation hut aligned with an obelisk as a fixed azimuth mark. I am very grateful to The British Geological Survey for allowing me access to the site and particularly to Tom Martyn who shared his knowledge and gave a fascinating tour of the observatory.

The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) is a reimagining of an obelisk erected at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in the late 1950’s near the site’s northern boundary. Viewed through the window in the north wall of The Observing Building (also known as the Absolute Hut) it acts as a permanent azimuth mark from which the drift of the magnetic north pole is monitored. Currently almost hidden by undergrowth, the observatory’s concrete azimuth mark has been replaced by a digital GPS position. Much as the Earth’s geological and magnetic history is secreted into the strata of sedimentary rock, this sculpture also expresses the passage of time through the layering of recycled paper prints and drawings whose history becomes embedded within the stacked layers.

The Absolute Hut (of action potential) operates as a sensory hub with video screens suggesting portals into a web of neural pathways where a range of actions and processes are running concurrently reflecting on the dynamics between the Earth’s geologic structure and navigation using the magnetic field.

The title refers to the way neurons send information electrochemically around the body. The signals they send are called action potentials which is a temporary shift from negative to positive within the cell caused by certain ions entering the cell. Action potentials can be triggered by an interaction with the magnetic field causing a reaction in the body.

The installation is conceived from a combination of features, impressions and functions of the observing building and instruments at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in North Devon and the observation huts built in the 18^th century at The Kings Observatory in Kew for meteorological and magnetic observations.

Topological contours of suminagashi marbling and plasma cut copper reflect the fluid motion of the Earth’s molten iron core and the pulsating alpha waves of the human brain when subjected to magnetic fields.

‘the internal skies have their own birds’ Italo Calvino Cosmicomics

The fascinating and perilous journeys made by migrating birds has been a natural wonder for centuries with the first records of this phenomena made more than 3,000 years ago. The innate knowledge of migratory birds is mentioned in Job and Jeremiah and the ancient Greek writers Homer, Hesiod and Aristotle noted their passage.

Job 39:26 Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom and stretch her wings towards the south?

Wintering light two way video projection of migratory pink footed geese filmed at RSPB Snettisham on the North Norfolk coast.

Research has proven that birds and many other animals can use the earth’s magnetic field for navigation. There are two ways this happens. In birds there is a protein in the retina of the eye – (cryptochrome molecules) which trigger action potentials enabling them to visualise the magnetic field. In other animals and magnetotactic bacteria tiny crystals of magnetite respond to the field. This may also be true of humans as we do have these crystals in our brain cells.

Birds use three different compasses to navigate across the globe; the sun, the stars and the magnetic field.

Birds are also able to detect rapid movement such as individual flashes or flickering of a fluorescent light which humans see as a continuous light. Hawks which pursue other birds through dense forests at high speeds, follow the movement of their prey while avoiding branches and other obstacles. To humans travelling at this speed, the fleeing prey, branches and obstacles would just be a blur.

Degrees of Variation considers what it might be like to have the sensory powers of a bird where a protein in the eye is excited by polarised light making it possible to see the magnetic field and follow a visual navigatory cue in an accelerated world. The video imagines flight over water and through woods while being guided by the force of a magnetic field.

Calvino’s story The Stone Sky is wonderfully descriptive of the volatile geological structure of the Earth. This fluidity is what makes life on Earth possible. Only planets with fluid cores have magnetic fields. The geological interior generates a field that reaches into outer space offering a protective shield.

internal skies : external spheres video sequences within concentric circles mimic the geological structure of the Earth to explore the relationship between Earth’s magnetic field and various methods of navigation including via magnetoreception and celestial observation. Sequences include star trails around Polaris (the current north star), birds and bees that use the magnetic field for navigation, magnetotactic bacteria, magnetised iron filings, aerial views of the coastline around Hartland and early morning polarised light which excites the cryptochrome protein in a birds eye.

The Earth’s geomagnetic field is created by a combination of three separate fields and timescales. The main field is generated in the earth’s molten iron core. Observing the field gives clues to the planet’s deep interior which is inaccessible to direct observations. Changes are measured in the annual drifting of magnetic poles. Secondly electrical currents caused by solar weather and cosmic rays bouncing off the Earth’s main field charge the surrounding ionosphere causing fluctuations in the field. This field changes by the micro second as we orbit the sun. The Earth’s magnetic field also acts as a shield against most potentially harmful charged particles from outer space. Finally the residual magnetisation of the geology of the rocky mantle and crust, measured in deep geological time also offers clues to the geological history of Earth.

The understanding of the world surrounding us forms in the darkness of our skulls.

interference – a panel of 12 small video screens inside The Absolute Hut (of action potential), showing images of the human brain filmed by using polarizing filters to create pulsating birefringence colours, relate to the narrative pinned to the outside of the hut.

The narrative is a mix of fact and fiction based on a real experiment carried out at Caltech where scientists found Alpha waves in the human brain do respond to Earth’s magnetic field and other research suggesting that it could be possible for the magnetic field in one animal’s brain to transmit information to another animal’s brain by triggering action potentials creating the same thoughts and emotions.

Instruments of the Anemoi are a set of dodecagon tablets cast in Snowcrete, a non-magnetic cement, as used in a magnetic observatory. Suggestive of the pedestals that support various instruments used in monitoring the Earths’ magnetic field they also respond to an ancient anemoscope “table of the winds” carved in marble around eighteen hundred years ago and inscribed with the Greek and Latin names of classical winds on each of its twelve sides. Envisaged here as speculative objects, instruments and schematics wrought by the wind gods, the first emissaries of navigation and orientation.

One tablet holds a copper bowl with a ‘silver fish’ floating in water. The shape of the ‘silver fish’ is based on the oval shaped compass needle (illustrated in Breve Compendio de la Sphera de la arte Navegar by Martin Cortes 1551) and refers back to wafer thin fish shaped iron leaves used by 11th century Chinese geomancers.

Nails and iron filings on the second tablet reveal an embedded magnetic field recalling a legend that the discovery of the lodestone was made by a Greek shepherd who noticed the nails in his boots were attracted to the rock (magnetite) beneath his feet.

The third tablet is embedded with copper etched with images and names based on associations and attributes of the twelve Greek wind gods set in a traditional compass rose.

Domain of the Devil Valley Master uses industrial directional magnetic steel, sanded and etched to reveal the Goss texture of rolled iron silicon alloy crystals. The jigsaw pattern of magnetic domains give this material exceptional magnetic properties. The simple evocation of a spiral described in geologically informed polygons draws upon many references, from the shape of our own Milky Way Galaxy sculpted by vast cosmological magnetic fields and the spiralling molten dynamo generating Earth’s magnetic field, to the inner pathway of spiritual growth and the route to the symbolic omphalos (navel) at the centre of the world where the sky entrance and the underworld meet. The title of this work originates from an ancient Chinese manual on the skills of persuasion, The Book of the Devil Valley Master, containing the first known mention of a compass, known at the time as a south-pointer.

The exhibition closed with an afternoon event launching our publication which includes the essay Dark Nights and Signs of Unseen Things by Anjana Janardhan. There was also a live cloud chamber demonstration of mesmerising cosmic ray trails, artist tours and informal readings.

Publication available – DM via blog comments box for more details or visit Julie’s shop

Tags A Stone Sky, action potentials, alpha brainwaves, Anjana Janardhan, azimuth, Ben Deakin Photography, birefringence, Cloud Chamber, compass, copper, cosmic ray detector, cosmic rays, Cosmicomics, Degrees of Variation, directional magnetic steel, Domain of the Devil Valley Master, Eleanor Westbrook, geomancers, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, human brain, Instruments of the Anemoi, interference, internal skies : external spheres, Italo Calvino, Julie F. Hill, legend, lodestone, magnetic, magnetite, magnetoreception, magnetotactic bacteria, marbling, Martin Cortes, moss, obelisk, pink footed geese, polarised light, RSPB Snettisham, silver fish, snowcrete, spiral galaxy, suminagashi, table of the winds, Thames-side Studios Gallery, The Absolute Hut, The Absolute Hut (of action potential), The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge), The breath of stars, Wintering Light

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causation

October 18, 2023 //

Photoshoot with Warren King Photography resulted in some great images of my work ready for the press release and promotion of A STONE SKY – the upcoming joint exhibition, with Julie F Hill, that we have been working towards for many months. The exhibition will be at Thames-side Studios Gallery 11th – 26th November 2023 with a private view on 10th November 6-9pm.

Susan Eyre, Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge), paper, concrete, patinated copper, 2023 (detail) Photo Warren King Photography
Julie F Hill, Cave, physically manipulated print of infrared James Webb data of barred, spiral galaxy NGC 5068, 2023 (detail). Photo Julie F Hill

A Stone Sky brings together the works of multi-disciplinary artists Julie F Hill and Susan Eyre who traverse cosmic layers from the deep earth to deep space, exploring manifestations of darkness and its associations with the unknown and undiscovered. Reimagining the idea of an observatory, their sculptures and installations reach for scales and orders that surpass the human, revealing the cosmic at our feet. The exhibition proposes a cavernous realm of real and speculative possibilities that arise from beyond the limits of human perception. Engaging with the extended sensory range offered by technologies such as orbiting space telescopes through to the ability of birds to ‘see’ the Earth’s magnetic field, the artists’ reveal intimate connections between earth and space.

It was great to meet Anjana Janardhan who we have commissioned to write an essay for a publication which will be launched on the final weekend of the exhibition. We are also planning to give some informal readings, tours of the work and I will be running the cloud chamber so visitors can see the trails of cosmic rays – a way of visualising these unseen visitors from the stars.

The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) sculpture is an almost 3m tall reimagining of the obelisk erected at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in 1955 as an azimuth mark to be viewed from the Observing Room or Absolute Hut to monitor the drift of the magnetic north pole.

I have obtained an old wooden trolley to put the cosmic ray detectors and projector on for the digital video work The Breath of Stars. This feels in keeping with the original furniture used at Hartland Magnetic Observatory. The Breath of Stars directly interacts with cosmic rays – as each cosmic ray particle strikes a plastic scintillator its energy is recorded and a starburst image video is projected. The interaction of cosmic rays and the solar wind with atmospheric electrical fields combines to influence the unpredictability of the magnetosphere. Most radioactive particles heading for Earth are deflected by the magnetosphere. Without the Earth’s magnetic field deflecting the majority of cosmic rays, life on this planet could not survive.

The 48 paper tiles for the roof of The Absolute Hut (of action potential) are made using the suminagashi technique of marbling with a colour to reflect both the sky and the patinated copper roof tiles of the Observation Hut at Hartland Magnetic Observatory. The paper is Japanese Osho Select and is very fragile when wet so has to be pulled from the water tray using a supporting mesh. Topological contours of suminagashi marbling reflect the fluid motion of the Earth’s magnetic dynamo and the pulsating alpha waves of the human brain when subjected to magnetic fields.

If you place a polarising filter over a screen that emits polarised light and use a polarising lens on the camera, then any plastic, photographed in this method, especially injection-moulded plastic, reveals stress points with a kaleidoscope of colours known as birefringence. Cryptochrome, the protein molecule found in a birds eye that enables birds to ‘see’ the magnetic field is excited by polarised light. Polarisation may also reveal the existence and properties of magnetic fields in the space medium light has travelled through. Research suggests that human alpha brainwaves react to a changing magnetic field. These ideas are brought together in a video work speculating on human magnetoreception via magnetite crystals in brain cells.

This video work will be shown on multiple small screens inside The Absolute Hut (of action potential) alongside two larger monitors showing companion video pieces exploring dynamics between the Earth’s geologic structure and navigation using the magnetic field.

I have replicated the experiment I saw at the National Physical Laboratory, dropping a magnet down a copper pipe to see how the magnetic field generated slows the magnet down considerably. I filmed this and added a tiny led light with the magnet.

Finally dark skies and fine weather coincided so I was able to go and make a time lapse of the stars rotating around Polaris.

Instruments of the Anemoi is a set of three dodecagon tablets cast in Snowcrete, a non-magnetic cement, as used in a magnetic observatory. Suggestive of the pedestals that support various instruments used in monitoring the Earths’ magnetic field they also respond to an ancient anemoscope “table of the winds” inscribed with the Greek and Latin names of classical winds on each of its twelve sides.

Hand cut copper pieces to be etched with images based on associations and attributes of the twelve Greek wind gods.

Sugar lift solution is screen printed onto the copper pieces.

These are then dipped in bitumen and immersed in hot water where the sugar slowly dissolves to reveal the image.

They are then left to dry before being etched.

These were etched for 2 hours in an Edinburgh Etch solution, made with ferric chloride, citric acid and water to get a deep etch. The detail in the bitumen held very well. I constructed a collagraph from card to attach them to for casting in concrete. Once etched the detail areas were painted with a soy sauce solution before being placed in an ammonia vapour bath.

After a few hours patinating they are removed to dry before being cleaned up.

Positions are marked out on the collagraph and double sided tape is used to secure the pieces in place face down. The collagraph is then placed in the silicon mould ready for casting with Snowcrete – the same non-magnetic concrete used at a magnetic observatory.

This is the third of the tablets to be cast for the work Instruments of the Anemoi. The first holds a copper bowl with a ‘silver fish’ floating in water based on the oval shaped compass needle (illustrated in Breve Compendio de la Sphera de la arte Navegar by Martin Cortes 1551) as symbol of the silver fish – wafer thin fish shaped iron leaves used by 11th century Chinese geomancers.

The second has embedded magnets in a pattern revealed by old nails and iron filings over the surface. One legend on the discovery of the lodestone recalls a Greek shepherd who noticed the nails in his boots were attracted to the lodestone (also known as magnetite a naturally occurring mineral).

The tablets will be shown on adapted wooden theodolite or telescope tripods in the spirit of equipment seen below during my research trip to Hartland Magnetic Observatory.

Gallery Visits

Seismic Mother curated by Charly Blackburn and Holly Birtles at Hypha Space – an exhibition of 20 artists whose work attempts to communicate the seemingly incomprehensible nature of the earth’s magnitude and magnificence, temerity and resilience as it endures, regenerates and struggles to survive through the slow violence of ecological catastrophe. I visited for the book launch and performative reading from Stephen Cornford whose book, Petrified Matter, I bought. It’s an enlightening read on the links between photography and fossils through mineral, chemical and data recording processes, going on to speculate on future geology and the impossibility of reversing the extraction process by separating minerals used in mobile phones and other technology to return these back to the soil.

Tags A Stone Sky, Anjana Janardhan, azimuth, birefringence, Cloud Chamber, Collagraph, concrete casting, copper etching, copper patination, cosmic ray detector, dark skies, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, Hypha Space, Instruments of the Anemoi, Julie F. Hill, magnetic, magnetite, magnetoreception, Martin Cortes, National Physical Laboratory, navigation, obelisk, Polaris, polarising filter, Stephen Cornford, sugar lift, suminagashi, Thames-side Studios Gallery, The Absolute Hut, The breath of stars, topological, Warren King Photography, wind gods

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transformation

September 3, 2023 //

Over the centuries many wind roses have been designed with varying numbers of wind directions from four to thirty-two cardinal points. The contemporary compass rose has its roots in the ancient classification of the winds.

Working on the sculpture series of tablets titled Instruments of the Anemoi after the gods of the winds. Twelve sided non-magnetic concrete tablets suggestive of the plinths that support various instruments used in monitoring the Earths’ magnetic field and the ancient anemoscope “table of the winds” carved in marble around eighteen hundred years ago and inscribed with the Greek and Latin names of classical winds on each of its twelve sides.

Testing an inked collagraph for concrete casting.

The first tablet in the series is cast with a collagraph which takes the commonly used oval shaped compass needle (illustrated in Breve Compendio de la Sphera de la arte Navegar by Martin Cortes 1551) as symbol of the silver fish – wafer thin fish shaped iron leaves used by 11th century Chinese geomancers.

The weather made the casting process a little precarious with the heat drying the concrete faster than ideal. The result has some fine cracks but overall I am pleased with the result. I used a convex glass lens to create a dip for a copper bowl to sit in. The glass had to be dremelled out after unmoulding. It left a very shiny surface. I made the copper bowl by hand at the London Sculpture Workshop. The ‘silver fish’ is cut from a silver gilding sheet.

The next tablet I am working on will contain embedded magnets. An elaborate frame is in construction to suspend the magnets in the concrete while it sets.

I will also add crushed shells as aggregate, so more pounding shells in the garden is necessary.

Continuing work on The Absolute Hut (of action potential). The Absolute Hut is structurally conceived from an amalgamation of features, impressions and functions of the Observing Building and instruments at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in North Devon and the observation huts built in the 18^th century at The Kings Observatory in Kew for meteorological and magnetic observations.

Cutting old featherboard planks to length and hammering them to the frame of the north facing wall with copper nails. These panel sections are now left facing north to gather some moss before the exhibition.

Exciting copper patination tests for the pyramidion to sit on top of The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) sculpture. The sculpture expresses the passage of time; made from recycled paper prints and drawings whose history is embedded in the stacked layers, much as the Earth’s geological and magnetic history is secreted into sedimentary strata of rock.

The copper is cleaned first with whiting and ammonia solution. For the test strips I used parcel tape, water based and spirit based varnish, salt and vinegar solution, soy sauce and seaweed plant food. These are applied to the copper which is then placed suspended in a sealed container with a little ammonia. Effects are immediate but I left this overnight.

The next day they are taken from the tank and left to dry.

Both types of varnish interacted with the ammonia fumes, either going dark or puckering and crazing. The parcel tape left a clear band of copper when removed. The salt and vinegar mix gave a light blue patination and the soy sauce and plant food varying greens as copper where it was left raw. The colours continue to develop.

Preparing and patinating the copper triangles I had laser cut to size for the pyramidion. Applying strips of parcel tape to match up at the corners. Setting up a cat defence for drying the plates outside.

Once dry the colours continue to develop. I wanted to spray the surface with Golden archival acrylic spray but it was out of stock everywhere so I got Lascaux archival varnish with UV protection and gave it four light coats. It still continues to change though and flake off a bit adding to the effect of geological, topographical transformation.

I used Sugru, mouldable glue, building it up in stages to fix the sides while the pyramidion is supported in a frame.

Making use of the communal lounge at Thames-side Studios to test some paper template layouts for Domain of the Devil Valley Master. A sculpture using directional magnetic steel laid in a simple spiral which draws upon many references, from the shape of our own Milky Way Galaxy sculpted by vast cosmological magnetic fields, the spiralling molten dynamo generating Earth’s magnetic field, to the inner pathway of spiritual growth and the route to the symbolic omphalos (navel) at the centre of the world where the sky entrance and the underworld meet.

As research for new video work I am looking at experiments performed by Caltech geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink and colleagues investigating human magnetoreception. They found evidence that rotations of Earth-strength magnetic fields produce strong, specific and repeatable effects on human brainwave activity in the alpha-wave band. Alpha waves are always present, but are more prominent when at rest. The experiment, carried out at Caltech, mimicked how a person might experience the Earth’s magnetic field when turning their head. Although many migrating and homing animals are sensitive to Earth’s magnetic field, most humans are not consciously aware of the geomagnetic stimuli that we encounter in everyday life. Either we have lost a shared, ancestral magnetosensory system, or the system lacks a conscious component with detectable neural activity but no apparent perceptual awareness by us.

Friends from the north visiting London, told me about Haverah Park which is just up the road from where they live in North Yorkshire. The Haverah Park experiment was a cosmic ray air shower detection array consisting of water Cherenkov detectors distributed over an area of 12 km² . The experiment began in 1967 and was operated by University of Leeds for 20 years before closing. During its operation, many thousands of cosmic ray events were recorded including four exceptional events with energies over 10²⁰ eV. The abandoned huts remain and I am very excited about visiting the site to investigate further.

Gallery visits

Anselm Kiefer Finnegans Wake at White Cube Bermondsey – “the artist’s new paintings, sculptures and installations respond to (that is, struggle with and transform) James Joyce’s novel of 1939. Kiefer first read the Irish writer as a young man, devouring Ulysses (1922) and embarking on a slow and spiralling relationship with the later, more exacting, Finnegans Wake. It is a book of circles and echoes, more or less overt or secret; its riverine movement begins in the midst of things, and turns back on itself on the final page.”

The weight and the scale of his work as always is overwhelming.

In my early research wondering what the building blocks of the universe looked like I found myself reading about Quarks and Leptons. I found the language of particle physics to be quite like that of mythology – inhabited with mysterious characters like the charm quark and strange quark, the muon and the tau governed by fundamental forces that cannot be seen or explained other than by their attributes – like the mythical gods. The name “quarks“ was chosen for the three fundamental particles of all matter from a nonsense word used by James Joyce in the novel Finnegan’s Wake:

“Three quarks for Muster Mark!“

Finnegans Wake seeks to inhabit a commonplace but elusive realm of human experience – the language is more like poetry than prose and should be read intuitively – the first sentence of Finnegans Wake completes the end of the last sentence – the book’s circular structure embodies the theories of the 18^th Century philosopher Giambattista Vico, who viewed human history as cyclical along with the natural cycles of the earth such as night and day, life and death, rise and fall. Vico believed that there was a poetic wisdom in legends which gave an insight into the relationship between the divine, the natural and the human worlds. He was interested in how myths began from common primordial experiences of the forces of nature.

A different kind of immersion – made from light rather than lead. Sarah Sze The Waiting Room at Peckham Rye Station, an Artangel project, is a captivating spectacle of colour and movement. It might be a lesson in attention spans and ubiquitous digital media but it still holds all the joy of being at the centre of a rotating fairground carousel.

“I’ve always been interested in certain times throughout history where our relationship to the way we experience time and space in the world speeds up radically. The invention of the aeroplane, the invention of the train, you see really interesting work coming out of that time, in film, visual arts and writing. We are in the middle of an extreme hurricane where we are learning to speak through images at an exponential pace.” Sarah Sze

Dear Earth at The Hayward Gallery is inspired by artist Otobong Nkanga’s suggestion that ‘caring is a form of resistance’. Bringing together 15 artists from around the world, the exhibition explores the interdependence of ecologies and ecosystems, as well as our emotional connection with nature.

Day trip to West Wycombe Park; “one of the most theatrical and Italianate mid-18th century buildings in England” surrounded by “the most idiosyncratic 18th century gardens surviving in England”. Sir Francis Dashwood built West Wycombe to entertain, and there has been much speculation on the kind of entertainment he provided for his guests at the house and the nearby hellfire caves.

A surprise discovery in the gardens was The Temple of the Winds, a stucco and flint faced octagonal tower, aligned with its main walls facing north, south, east and west. Erected in 1759 and used as an ice house, its design was inspired by the ancient Tower of the Winds in the Roman Agora in Athens of which Vitruvius wrote

Some have chosen to reckon only four winds; the East, blowing from the equinoctial sunrise; the South, from the noon-day sun; the West; from the equinoctial sun-setting; and the North, from the Polar stars. But those who are more exact, have reckoned eight winds, particularly Andronicus Cyrrhestes, who on this system erected an octagon marble tower at Athens, and on every side of the octagon, he wrought a figure in relieve, representing the wind which blows against that side: the top of this tower he finished with a conical marble, on which he placed a brazen Triton, holding a wand in his right hand; this Triton is so contrived that he turns round with the wind and always stops when he directly faces it; pointing with his wand over the figure of the wind at that time blowing.

Reading

Ursula Le Guin The Winds Twelve Quarters (volume ii) – a collection of short stories, chosen for the title’s relevance to the sculpture series – Instruments of the Anemoi (wind gods).

The story The Stars Below is particularly interesting, written to interrogate the question – what happens to the creative mind when it is driven underground? Le Guin found that ‘you don’t go exploring the places underground all that easily’ as simple symbols took on unexpected divergent meanings and rather than the repression of science or art it was the abyss of the psyche she was fathoming. Le Guin later came across a passage in Jung likening the depths of ego-consciousness to ‘being surrounded by a multitude of little luminosities..[ ].. The star strewn heavens, stars reflected in dark water, nuggets of gold or golden sand scattered in black earth’

Tags absolute hut, Anselm Kiefer, Cherenkov detectors, Collagraph, compass rose, concrete casting, copper patination, directional magnetic steel, Finnegan's Wake, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, Haverah Park, Instruments of the Anemoi, Joseph Kirschvink, Kew Observatory, magnetoreception, magnets, Martin Cortes, Otobong Nkanga, oyster shell, pyramidion, Sarah Sze, silver fish, spiral, temple of the winds, The Winds Twelve Quarters, tower of the winds, Ursula le Guin, Vitruvius, West Wycombe, wind gods, wind rose

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time

August 5, 2023 //

It is within my mind then, that I measure time. I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time, I am measuring something in the present of my mind. St. Augustine of Hippo, 397

The many layers of paper comprising The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) sculpture have been prepared ready for final assembly. The next step will be patinating and assembling the copper pyramidion. This sculpture is a reimagining of the obelisk erected at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in 1955 which is now almost hidden by undergrowth. Although manual readings via a theodolite are still taken from the Observing Building north facing window, this concrete permanent azimuth mark has been replaced by a GPS position. The sculpture expresses the passage of time, made from recycled paper prints and drawings whose history is embedded in the stacked layers, much as the Earth’s geological and magnetic history is secreted into sedimentary strata of rock.

What is below our feet can be as much of a mystery as what is above our heads. The furthest humans have drilled below the surface of the Earth is just over 12 km but it is 6,370 km to the centre of the Earth. One way of exploring the Earth’s core is by studying geoneutrinos. Geoneutrinos are neutrinos, the lightest subatomic particle, released by the natural radioactive decay of potassium, thorium, and uranium in Earth’s interior. By studying geoneutrinos, scientists can better understand the composition and spatial distribution of materials in the mantle and core. Neutrinos can pass through matter uninhibited and are not affected by magnetism. Geoneutrinos are low-energy electron antineutrinos, and scientists need to use large detectors to record them but because they are so elusive, they don’t capture very many events each year. Some of the heat emanating from the interior of our planet comes from this radioactive decay and is responsible for everything from creating the molten iron core that generates Earth’s magnetic field to the spread of the sea floor and motion of the continents.

At the centre of the Earth is a hot sphere of solid iron which has its own ocean of molten iron, surging and churning with hurricanes and whirlpools powered by the Coriolis forces of Earth’s rotation. These complex motions generate our planet’s magnetosphere. The turbulent dynamo process also means the magnetic field is in a constant state of change and the poles are always on the move. From James Clark Ross first locating the magnetic north pole in 1831 to when Roald Amundsen found the pole again almost a century later it had moved at least 50 km since the days of Ross. Both poles continue to wander as varying speeds. Magnetic stripes around mid-ocean ridges reveal the history of Earth’s magnetic field for millions of years and record magnetic field reversals in the magnetism of ancient rocks. Field reversals come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years with the last one 780,000 years ago. Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time the magnetic field does not vanish but becomes twisted and tangled with magnetic poles appearing in unaccustomed places. Although in a state of turmoil with possible weak areas it can still protect us from space radiation and solar storms.

I took up membership of London Sculpture Workshop supported by a professional practice and creative development bursary from The Artists Information Company. Great to have access to the facilities here to work on sculptures responding to research visits to magnetic observatories. I had a couple of sessions cutting copper with a plasma gun. The intense heat colours the edges of the metal with blues, yellows and crimsons. Unfortunately some of the colour gets lost when they are lacquered so I have left some without coating this time to see if they lose the colour anyway. These topographical contours which are destined for the installation The Absolute Hut (of action potential), reflect the fluid motion of the Earth’s interior and also the pulsating alpha waves emanating from the human brain subjected to magnetic fields.

I have started editing and gathering together video footage for The Absolute Hut installation. Inside the hut I am planning to have video screens suggesting portals into a modulated web of neural pathways and one larger window with a two way projection film of the migratory pink footed geese at Snettisham in Norfolk. Natural navigation techniques and extra-sensory methods used by the non-human realm will form the basis for speculation as to the ability for humans to perceive the Earth’s magnetic field.

Following on from concrete casting tuition with Anna Hughes as part of my a-n creative development bursary I have been testing casting concrete with embedded magnets. I had an idea to try removing bubbles from the concrete by putting it on an exercise vibrating plate. The motion is quite violent and undulating and my mix was quite loose so it had an effect like a small wave machine sloshing side to side – there were no bubbles in the results though. These tests are towards making a series of dodecagon tablets cast in Snowcrete, a non-magnetic cement, as used in a magnetic observatory. Suggestive of the pedestals that support various instruments used in monitoring the Earths’ magnetic field they also respond to an ancient anemoscope “table of the winds” carved in marble around eighteen hundred years ago and inscribed with the Greek and Latin names of classical winds on each of its twelve sides.

Lichen boundaries seen on a trip to Somerset reminded me of the magnetic domains of the directional magnetic steel when sanded and etched to reveal the Goss texture of rolled iron silicon alloy crystals. The jigsaw pattern of magnetic domains give this material exceptional magnetic properties.

I had a great time interacting via zoom with volunteer mediators who will serve as conversationalists for visitors who come to the Carbon exhibition at Science Gallery Bengaluru where my video Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe will be shown later in the year. Mediators are an integral part of each exhibition-season at Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB). By providing each visitor the unique opportunity to deeply engage with the exhibits, events, and programmes, the mediators are at the backbone of our commitment to public engagement at SGB.

The session was designed to gain an understanding of the work to be shown, the process behind its creation, and the key concepts explored in it. Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe offers a glimpse into a subatomic world where cosmic rays travel from distant galaxies to collide and silently interact with atoms and technology on Earth. Not only is all life physically permeated by cosmic rays with the potential for nuclei collisions but some cascading particles smash into atoms of nitrogen to create carbon-14. Carbon-14 then combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to create radioactive carbon-dioxide – this is ingested by plants and animals through the food cycle. In making the film I was interested in exploring the interconnectedness of ourselves to our wider environment, even outer space and the influence intangible phenomena such as cosmic rays can have on everyday life and human technology. It is an incredible journey that cosmic rays make, blasted across space, spiralling along magnetic field lines to end up entangled with carbon in our bodies.

Most years have twelve full moons, but as our calendar is not perfectly synchronized with astronomical events, every now and then there is more than one full moon in a month which can be known as a blue moon. It takes the moon 27.3 days to orbit the Earth but about 29.5 days to go through all of its eight phases waxing from new to full and waning back again. We can hope to see a super blue moon next month.

Carey Young’s Plato Contract – only gains status as an artwork once it has been installed, following explicit instructions, in the impact crater, Plato, on the moon.

Royal Society Summer Lates – Interesting new research in the search for dark matter from UCL High Energy Physics team using quantum sensors. Tiny glass spheres levitated in a vacuum and super cooled means these are extremely sensitive to any slight gravitational interaction should dark matter be made of very light particles. Instead of a vast tank of Xenon installed in a disused goldmine this new search for dark matter is quite a contrast in scale.

Also got to cause gravitational lensing with my own body mass and enjoy some splendid cocktails with surreal smoke bubble topping. Love Royal Society events.

Melanie Jackson Rouge Flambé at San Mei Gallery with a fascinating accompanying essay by Esther Leslie. Rouge flambé is a red oxide ceramic glaze with a long history of use, spreading across the globe from its origins in China. Together these works celebrate forces that hold a primordial fascination – fire, colour, alchemy which bridge the scientific with the mythological.

Angela Palmer Deep Time: uncovering our hidden past at Pangolin London. The exhibition explores time through the material history of Great Britain – charting its 3-billion-year lithic timeline to arrive in our current age of the Anthropocene. Featuring the UK’s 16 geological periods, starting with one of the world’s most ancient rocks, the 3-billion-year-old Lewisian Gneiss from the Outer Hebrides. Further stones include 2.5-billion-year-old White Anorthosite sourced in the Outer Hebrides that was also found on the Moon by the astronauts of Apollo 15 in 1971, as well as 66-milion-year-old Northern Irish Black Basalt marking the extinction of the dinosaur. The exhibition also includes teak sculptures salvaged from the ocean where it lay for a century while marine boring insects carved into its surfaces. Many of these works have minimal intervention from the artist in their presentation. The work has been done in the sourcing and extraction.

I attended the UCL Space Domain Summer Celebration. The event was introduced by Victor Buchli – Co-Chair of the UCL Space Domain which draws in researchers from across disciplines whose work touches on space exploration in some way. Guest speakers, artist Lisa Pettibone and poet Simon Barraclough, gave presentations on their work and involvement with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory and subsequent inclusion of work on the Euclid Spacecraft (launched on 1st July 2023) in the form of a plaque depicting ‘The Fingertip Galaxy’ a collaborative project created with hundreds of mission scientists and engineers’ painted fingertips, along with specially commissioned lines from Simon’s poetry. We were privileged to see the very first image sent back from the Euclid Space Telescope whose mission is to map out the dark side of our universe by analyzing billions of galaxies that reside up to about 10 billion light-years away. Every point of light is a galaxy.

Reading

Compass – a story of exploration and innovation by Alan Gurney. Full of fascinating historical anecdotes charting the invention of the magnetic compass for navigation at sea from lodestone floating in a bowl of water to the precision marine liquid compass, gyrocompass and fluxgate compass used today. Although early experiments came under the auspices of scientific expeditions the compass cannot be untangled from its commercial propagation and employment in colonialism and the slave trade. The first ship charted solely for a scientific expedition, The Paramore, launched from The Royal Dockyard at Deptford in 1694, to compass the globe and measure magnetic variation. It was however approved for funding by The Royal Society, Queen Mary and The Admiralty based on the benefits it would bring for navigation and trade. One of the many delays in launching the Paramore was the novel decision of how many guns should be fitted in a ship bound for scientific research. Pirates were at large and nation wars would flare up while ships were out at sea so a friend at launch might be a hostile force at the next harbour without the means for the crew to receive this news before it was too late. Many many lives were lost at sea during these turbulent times through aggression but also shipwrecks from the poor quality, misuse or misinterpretation of the ship’s compass. Magnetic variation, deviation and iron introduced onto the ships meant the compass needle could not be relied upon to show true north. It took centuries to comprehend the unpredictable power of magnetism and the Earth’s magnetic field.

Listening

The End of the Universe Gresham Lecture from Professor Katherine Blundell. The relocation of matter. Spacetime is expanding ever faster due to dark energy. Galaxies do not expand as they are held together by gravity. It is the space between galaxies that is getting bigger and will continue until in some distant future astronomers in one galaxy will not be able to see any other galaxies. Black holes eventually evaporate.

Also from Professor Katherine Blundell Cosmic Vision: Fast & Furious.

Cosmic rays are particles that move extremely fast. They are raining down on planet earth all the time. Although they are called rays they are not like photons, as light is made of, as they have mass but they do travel at nearly the speed of light. The kinetic energy in just one particle can be equivalent to the energy of a cricket ball bowled by the fastest bowler on the planet – so much energy squeezed into one tiny particle gives it a huge velocity. Light travels a thousand billion kilometres in one year – a light year – no object with mass can travel at the speed of light but an ultra-high energy cosmic ray would only lag behind the photon by 100^th of the diameter of human hair. Some ultra high energy cosmic ray particles that arrive on Earth have 1000 billion times more energy than particle colliders on earth can generate. These ultra high energy particles are very rare – with only about 1 per square metre per century. We know many cosmic rays come from supernova explosions in distant galaxies especially from what are called starburst galaxies where lots of supernovae are happening. Supernovae expand very very fast into the interstellar medium of their galaxy – this causes shocks as the plasma expands and where there are compressed magnetic fields particles can be accelerated to very high speeds. There is a formula called the Hillas Criterion which states – the maximum velocity a particle can be accelerated to depends on three things – the strength of the magnetic field – the speed of the plasma – and the size of the region over which the acceleration can take place. New research shows that ancient Radio Galaxies such as Centaurus A – which is over 1 million light years across or the smaller Fornax A Galaxy are good candidates for the propagation of the ultra high energy particles as these galaxies have the huge size necessary to allow the particles to gather speed in the giant regions of radio emission which extend well beyond the galaxies visible structure.

Tags Angela Palmer, artists information company, azimuth, Blue moon, carbon dating, carbon-14, Carey Young, compass, Cosmic Chiasmus, cosmic rays, Dark Matter, directional magnetic steel, Edmund Halley, Euclid, galaxies, geoneutrinos, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, James Ross, Katherine Blundell, lichen, Lisa Pettibone, London Sculpture Workshop, magnetic field, Melanie Jackson, obelisk, plasma gun, quantum sensors, Roald Amundsen, San Mei Gallery, Science Gallery Bengaluru, sedimentary, Simon Barraclough, strata, UCL HEP, UCL Space Domain

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significant number

July 1, 2023 //

The Breath of Stars is a digital video work activated in real time by cosmic rays. These subatomic visitors from outer space are created during super nova explosions or by phenomena we are yet to discover. This work has been a long time coming and the fact that it is working in real time now is thanks to coding genius Jamie Howard who has managed to get a number video files to play simultaneously on one screen. We had to ditch the Raspberry Pi for a Panda Latte to cope with the processing needed. Cosmic particles strike the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, break apart and shower down upon us. Some particles collide and silently interact with atoms and technology on Earth. In this work particle detectors and mini computers are connected to a projector. Every time a cosmic particle passes through the plastic scintillator block inside the detector its energy is recorded via a Silicon photomultiplier and a starburst video is displayed for twelve seconds. The kaleidoscopic video images generated are created from footage of cosmic particle trails filmed in a cloud chamber, split and mirrored twelve ways. The particles arrive randomly and this can be witnessed by the sudden flurries and silent gaps of the video imagery. First test run and the cat loved it.

The South Atlantic Anomaly is a region where the Earth’s magnetic field is at its weakest. The intensity of the field here is about one third of that near the magnetic poles. This affects how close to the Earth energetic charged particles (cosmic rays) can reach. This area, which spans the southern Atlantic and South America, is deepening and moving westwards. Could this be the beginning of the overdue magnetic field reversal?

The classical compass winds were named to reflect geographic direction as conceived of by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Ancient wind roses typically had twelve winds and thus twelve points of orientation. The Anemoi (from Greek “Winds”) were wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction.

Supported by a professional practice and creative development bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company I have been privileged to have expert tuition in mould making and concrete casting from Anna Hughes based at Thames-side Studios. I have really enjoyed these sessions. Anna has given me the skills to go forward and experiment and I am excited by this new process. I prepared a dodecagon (twelve sided) shape cut in MDF to make a silicon mould and a double box mould for the base of my obelisk sculpture plus some small shapes for testing.

To continue the notion of sedimentary layers as signified by the layering of recycled paper in the body of the obelisk sculpture, I made collagraphs to line the box mould to give a texture of strata. Limestone, a sedimentary rock, is often formed from crushed seashells, compressed over eons. I used crushed oyster shells to use as aggregate for the base.

I am super pleased with how the base turned out.

I also tested using verdigris pigment mixed into the concrete or in the grooves of etched aluminium to leave an imprint. The plate tests didn’t come out so clear so need more testing and I next plan to try embedding the etched plate face up in the concrete.

Open Studios at Thames-side Studios 2023.

At a distance was installed in the main gallery group show. This work looks at remote methods of communication and relates this to the mysterious twinning of electrons in quantum entanglement where particles link in a way that they instantly affect each other, even over vast expanses. Einstein famously called this phenomenon ‘spooky action at a distance’. Filmed on 29th March 2019 (the first proposed Brexit date), in Cornwall as the iconic Lizard Lighthouse powers up its lamp, solitary figures using semaphore flags sign ‘We Are One’ out across the ocean in the hope the message will be echoed back. Drawing on the physical language of print that embodies touch, separation and mirroring the flags have been printed using hand painted dye sublimation inks applied via a heat press. This process transfers the ink from a paper matrix onto the substrate textile. The image passes momentarily across space in a dematerialized state as vapour before being reformed as its mirror opposite.

In my studio there was recent magnetic work Pole Receptor, along with work in progress Belly of a Rock hybrid sculpture plus some works from the archive such as screen prints from the StrataGem and everydaymatters series. I spent the weekend preparing for my concrete casting tuition in between chatting to visitors. Thanks to Caroline AreskogJones for the studio portrait.

The StrataGem series of screenprints on textiles imagines the possibility of the formation of geological strata created from the waste of plastic food packaging trays.

Informed by the discovery that the matter we know, that which is visible to us and includes all the stars and galaxies is less than 5% of the content of the universe, dark matter making up about 27% and the remaining percentage being dark energy, everydaymatters dissects landscapes to discover the hidden structures of the universe. Images taken from everyday prosaic paradises, such as Paradise Industrial Estate in Hemel Hempstead, are split into constituent parts of what is seen and unseen.

Studio progress on The Azimuth Obelisk of Sedimentary Knowledge – all the paper is now torn down but lots still needs to have a hole drilled through to feed onto the frame. This sculpture is a response to the obelisk erected in 1955 at Hartland Magnetic Observatory, near the site’s northern boundary as a permanent azimuth mark viewed from the north facing window of the observing hut (also known as the absolute hut). I have been sorting out if I have enough old boards for the north wall of The Absolute Hut and have been donated some old monitors and screens to see if I can get them working to use inside. I am thinking of having several screens playing video in the hut – as in the brain – a sensory hub there are different activities and processing going on in different locations. More paper clay forms have been added to The Belly of a Rock sculpture framework to house the video screen – this hybrid sculpture is a place of chemical conversations at the intersection of the animate and inanimate.

Gallery Visits

Fabulous tech and plaster sculptures from Tessa Garland in Postcards From the Volcano at Thames-side Gallery.

Light Being curated by Jonathan Miles of The Wild Parlour at Lychee One.

We were talking of such things: shadows, obscure illumination, folds within substance, but all without a schema that would serve to cohere. Then someone interjected about the rootmeaning of the word for being human as being an entanglement of light, thinking, and being. This would then generate a sense, like something in the air, but also a generation of a spacing for work. Rather than being an exhibition with a theme, instead a tonal poetics and with it a letting be or presentation of an accord would emerge. – Jonathan Miles

Mesmerizing performance from Chudamani Clowes – Choral Coral Cuts. Performance cutting linoleum to produce a song of coral for coral.

Transport delays meant I missed the first performance but did also catch Kate Howe read The Infinite Intimate which accompanies her sculptural Kraft paper installation and Jessica Mardon recite The Recovery of Meaning.

When numbers weren’t just a unit, a system of measurement, but were symbols that had meaning, it was their meaning that provided structure, not structure that provided their meaning. – Jessica Mardon

Tags Anemoi, Anna Hughes, at a distance, bursary, Chudamani Clowes, Cloud Chamber, Collagraph, compass winds, concrete, cosmic ray detector, cosmic rays, dodecagon, Jessica Maron, Jonathan Miles, Kate Howe, magnetic field, obelisk, oyster shell, paper clay, screen print, sedimentary, semaphore, silicon, spooky action, Tessa Garland, The breath of stars, Twelve, verdigris

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Order (and randomness)

June 3, 2023 //

I am very grateful to a-n The Artists Information Co for awarding me a professional practice and creative development bursary to expand on my research and respond to the many ways Earth’s magnetic field impacts life on earth. The award will be used for a research trip to the remote location of Eskdalemuir Magnetic Observatory and Kielder Dark Skies Observatory. Fingers crossed for an Aurora experience. I will also gain expert tuition in concrete casting and mould making from Anna Hughes and make use of the facilities at The London Sculpture Workshop.

Domain of the Devil Valley Master – work in progress. It is likely that compasses were first used in China to divine an alignment of order and harmony for important sites and rituals. Jade hunters discovered they could also help to keep them from getting lost long before Europeans used them for navigation. The first mention of a south-pointer is in a fourth-century BCE text – The Book of the Devil Valley Master, and it is this that I am referencing in the title of this sculpture. Other references in the work are the rotation of the Earth’s core and geological formations of polygonal prisms. A magnetic domain is a region within a magnetic material in which the individual magnetic strength and orientation of the atoms are aligned with one another and they point in the same direction. The work uses directional magnetic steel stripped of its industrial coating to reveal the jigsaw pattern which comes from rolling single crystals of an iron silicon alloy into thin sheets to minimise magnetic losses for use in industry. The sheets have been sanded, etched, guillotined, treated for rust and sealed.

The Earth’s core is made almost entirely of iron and nickel. Siderophiles are elements that form alloys easily with iron and are concentrated in the Earth’s core. When the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago from the collision, accretion and compression of matter it was rock all the way through. Heat from the massive violence of formation and radioactive decay caused the planet to get hotter and hotter. After about 500 million years of heating up it finally reached the melting point of iron. As the iron liquified lighter material rose to the surface becoming the mantle and crust and the heavy metals like iron and nickel fell towards the centre becoming the core. The siderophiles that descended into the core are gold, platinum, and cobalt along with around 90% of the Earth’s sulphur. Hence the smelly sulphur vents around the volcanic regions.

Belly of a Rock – work in progress. Making paper clay discs to build the surface of this hybrid sculpture and crushing mussel and oyster shells to use as texture.

The geographic north pole lies in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, covered in shifting sea ice, where the sun rises and sets only once per year. All lines of longitude converge here and hence all time zones. It is known as true north to distinguish it from the magnetic north pole. However, as the Earth’s axis of rotation wobbles slightly in an irregular circle, even this pole is not fixed. The magnetic north pole, also called the magnetic dip pole, is where the planet’s magnetic field is vertical and a compass needle here would dip and try to point straight down. The north and south dip poles are not found directly opposite each other. These dip poles are located by experiment in the field but as they are found in the most remote and harsh regions of the planet they are not easy to track. Also they can move around over considerable distances during each day, tracing out oval shapes as they are acted upon by dynamic electrical current systems of the magnetosphere, which are in turn defined by the activity of the solar wind. There is an equivalent (but fictional) magnetic dipole at the centre of the Earth assigned from global modelling of the geomagnetic field. These geomagnetic poles are an approximation arrived at by reducing Earth’s complex and varied magnetic field to that of a simple bar magnet. The north dip pole lies in Northern Canada, the northern dipole is roughly off the northwest coast of Greenland.

The Absolute Hut – work in progress. This installation is a reimagining of the Absolute Hut at Hartland Magnetic Observatory where monitoring of the Earth’s magnetic field takes place. Topological contours of suminagashi marbling also echo fluid magnetic field lines. Testing scale and alignment in the gallery space. Collecting planks for the north facing wall. Prepping the round window. Suminagashi experiments on different Japanese papers. I want to consider the hut as a sensory hub.

Other exciting news is that APT Gallery have selected a proposal for an exhibition which will take place in March 2024. The exhibition will consider the lifeboat as a metaphor in relation to uncertain times, ecological and social change and shifting landscapes as viewed from the land and the sea. The artists in this group show share an interest in exploring precarity as a site of dynamic transition. I am so happy to be working with these wonderful artists – Rachael Allain, Caroline AreskogJones, Beverley Duckworth, Liz Elton, Kathleen Herbert, Kaori Homma, Anne Krinsky.

In celebration of World Metrology Day, NPL opened Bushy House and gardens to the public. A chance to see and hear about ever more accurate ways of measuring the physical world. Bushy House was the residence of William, Duke of Clarence (William IV) and his mistress Dora Jordan from 1797, and was offered to the Royal Society by Queen Victoria in 1900 as a location to establish The National Physical Laboratory. The impressive apple tree is from an offcut of one from Newton’s home estate. The magnetic laboratory here is concerned with devising and standardising the instruments used by magnetic observatories such as the one at Hartland that I visited last summer. I saw the 1kg sphere of single crystal silicon, with the smoothest polished surface of any made object and notoriously hard to photograph. The application of a strong magnetic field during the crystal growth process reduces contaminants giving a purer silicon crystal. Developments in technology bring new units and definitions of measurements.

From early concepts of number, patterns in nature (symmetry, branching, spirals, cracks, spots, stripes, chaos, flows, meanders, waves, dunes, bubbles, foam, arrays, crystals, and tilings) magnitude, and form came mathematics, meaning subject of instruction. This has evolved into complex theory from an understanding of negative numbers to imaginary numbers which combined with real numbers have been found necessary to describe quantum mechanics.

The colour coding of Saturn’s rings according to particle size used radio occultation to determine the different regions. Radio signals were sent from the Cassini spacecraft during orbits which placed Earth and Cassini on opposite sides of Saturn’s rings. This remote sensing technique measures how the radio waves bend around the matter they encounter to assess the physical properties of a planetary atmosphere or ring system. The purple colour indicates regions where most particles are larger than 5 centimeters. Green and blue shades indicate regions where there are mostly particles smaller than 5 centimeters and 1 centimeter. The white band is the densest region where radio signals were blocked preventing accurate representation in this area. The radio observations showed that all rings appear to have a mix of particle size distribution right up to boulder sizes, with several many meters across.

Gallery Visits

Georgina Sleap Now and here and there together at Cable Depot. A residency undertaken in collaboration with Neil Cheshire, Olive Hardy, Mercedes Melchor, Agnieszka Szczotka, Derek Horton, Farida Youssef and Niamh Riordan. A wonderful installation conjured from simple materials and experimental technology, both analogue and digital that blur the here and there of time and space. Sounds of everyday street noise live from the artist’s Cairo balcony are streamed into the gallery where suspended torches project still slide images onto the wall or inside elongated sculptural forms. A loom for weaving a plain coffin shaped carpet hangs like a hammock next to CCTV recordings of yogic performance while a camera obscura style intervention casts shadows, bringing the local outside in.

The Shape of Things by Clan, a collective of multidisciplinary artists – Caroline Penn, Liz Lowe, Ashley Goldman, Nicky O’Donnell at Gallery 3, a delightful Georgian property in Margate. The artists examine issues of loss, both personal and environmental, that are balanced by ideas of hope and regeneration. A nice use of recycled and sustainable materials including netting from fruit and cable ties.

Beatriz Milhazes at Turner Contemporary. Perfect for a summer’s day at the seaside. Exuberant.

Opening event for the new photography centre at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Interesting to hear about the process Noémie Goudal undertakes to create her ambitious illusionist photographic sculptures such as Giant Phoenix VI from the series ‘Post Atlantica’ which has been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum for their photography collection, housed in a new dedicated gallery. This work was inspired by her interest in shifting landscapes, the movement of tectonic plates and how landmasses join and separate over millennia. There was also the chance to see her video Inhale Exhale along with behind the scenes footage of her technical team and the scale of the resources involved. Tarrah Krajnak has also had work acquired by the museum and read some of her poetry at the event. Her interests are also in discontinuity, severance and cataclysmic events but on a human scale. Being born from an act of violence she puts her own identity forward to explore power relationships.

Reading

I have really enjoyed the breadth of information delivered so beautifully by Hettie Judah in her book Lapidarium – The Secret Lives of Stones. The character described and stories told of each geological layer, formation, rock and gem brings to life a world often perceived as static, perpetual and dry. This book is a great resource and has been particularly appropriate for me in the run up to the exhibition A Stone Sky with Julie F. Hill as we explore the intimate connections between the rocky planet earth and space.

Tags Anna Hughes, APT Gallery, Ashley Goldman, Beatriz Milhazes, Bell House, Belly of a rock, bursary, Cable Depot, Caroline Penn, compass, directional magnetic steel, Domain of the Devil Valley Master, Earth's core, Eskdalemuir Magnetic Observatory, Gallery 3, geographic north pole, Georgina Sleap, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, Hettie Judah, Jane Millar, Julie F. Hill, Kielder, Lifeboat, Liz Lowe, London Sculpture Workshop, magnetic domain, magnetic north pole, National Physical Laboratory, Nicky O'Donnell, Noémie Goudal, paper clay, Sarah Sparkes, Saturn's rings, shells, siderophiles, silicon crystal, south-pointer, suminagashi, Tarrah Krajnak, The Absolute Hut, Turner Contemporary, Victoria and Albert Museum

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Quantify

May 7, 2023 //

At Hartland Magnetic Observatory and other magnetic observatories around the world solar activity is examined daily and forecasts are given if this is likely to have any geomagnetic effect on Earth. The main geomagnetic field is also constantly changing due to convection flows and waves in the Earth’s core. As this change cannot be predicted, uncertainty slowly increases over time.

Most of my work at the moment is towards the exhibition A Stone Sky, with Julie F. Hill at Thames-side Studios Gallery later in the year. Very excited to be working alongside Julie and to have space to be ambitious in scale.

The Absolute Hut installation, reimagining the magnetic observatory room, will be a combination of planning to build the structure and unpredictability through processes used for the surfaces. Measuring for the north facing wall to be built in sections for easier transportation. Testing scale and coverage of field contour shapes cut in copper with a plasma gun.

I am hoping the north wall structure can be made up soon and the boards attached. I will then keep it outside facing north until the exhibition in an attempt to grow some moss on its surface. I have only had some very small success so far growing moss, despite trying a new culture recipe and being very diligent misting every morning and evening.

The topological contours of suminagashi marbling, which also echo fluid magnetic field lines, have inspired me to experiment with this idea for The Absolute Hut roofing. I have bought a sumi ink stick in whiteish green, an ink grinding stone and some verdigris pigment from Cornelissen in preparation to try this idea out. In this process the magnetic field lines appear embedded into the fabric of the hut that monitors (senses) the emanations from the Earth’s core.

Through the north facing window of The Absolute Hut, The Azimuth Obelisk (Obelisk of sedimentary knowledge) will be viewed. The sculpture is formed by tearing, drilling and layering sheets of paper. As sedimentary rocks build over time, so the obelisk has a lot of time invested in its making and conceals the history of past events in the hidden layers of the recycled prints and drawings.

I am still working on etching the Directional Magnetic Steel pieces. It can be a frustrating process as some batches work well and some do not etch well at all but come out dull and patchy and I’m not sure why. My idea was to use these pieces to draw a line across the gallery floor signifying the westward drift of the magnetic field from geographical north but now I am thinking more about mapping out a spiral shape in shaped pieces to echo the rotation of the Earth’s molten core.

All information about the Earth’s core has come from studying seismic data, analysis of meteorites, lab experiments with temperature and pressure, and computer modelling. Seismometers convert vibrations due to seismic waves into electrical signals. The velocity and frequency of seismic waves changes with pressure, temperature, and rock composition. The discovery that Earth has a liquid layer beneath the crust and a solid inner core has come from detailed analysis of the different types of waves that pass through the body of the Earth. Looking at the composition of meteorites, fragments of asteroids, formed about the same time, and from about the same material, as Earth provides clues to what minerals the core might contain. Diamond anvil cells are instruments used to recreate the pressure existing deep inside the planet by squeezing materials between two diamonds surfaces. A combination of this data is used to in complex computer modelling programs resulting in detailed animations of the geodynamo, a process powered by the convection of heat in the outer core along with the rotation of the planet.

Also a few more layers of papier mâché have been applied to the sculpture that will house a screen with video for the work Belly of a Rock.

Other work in the research stage looks at the first use of a magnetic compass, the cardinal points of navigation and the compass predecessor the wind rose.

In classical antiquity, a time stretching from Homer to the early middle ages, geographic orientation usually referred to landmarks or astral phenomena to determine direction. Eos meaning dawn, and Hesperus, evening were named for sunrise and sunset with north (arctos) being marked by the constellation Ursa Major and later the Pole Star. The winds also became associated with direction, and named in accordance with their qualities such as hot and humid or cold and dry. In Greek mythology Astraeus, the god of dusk, and Eos, the goddess of dawn, gave birth to many sons of the twilight including the Anemoi, the four gods of the winds, each ascribed a cardinal direction. Boreas being the god of the cold north wind, Notus the god of the hot south wind, Eurus from the east and gentle Zephyrus from the west.

The number of points on a wind rose began with the four cardinal points which were added to and refined over time. The winds were often given names that referred to a particular locality from where they seem to blow, so different places came up with various local names. Aristotle designed an asymmetrical 10 point wind rose which was later refigured by Timosthenes who is credited with inventing the system of twelve winds and using this more for navigation than for “the study of things high in the air.“

Classical wind roses were eventually replaced by the modern compass rose during the middle ages.

The “Vatican table” is a marble Roman anemoscope dating from the 2nd or 3rd Century CE, held by the Vatican Museums. Usually an anemoscope would be topped with a weather vane. Divided into twelve equal sides, each one is inscribed with the names of the classical winds, both in Greek and in Latin.

At a quantum scale, all matter is underpinned by uncertainty. My fascination with particle physics began from simply wondering what everything was made of when you looked really closely. I looked up ‘fundamental building blocks of the universe’ and was blown away by this mysterious other world, so far away in terms of scale I can comprehend, yet a part of me and everything I interact with.

Quanta is a discrete unit that cannot be divided. Quantum physics is the study of energy and matter at the most fundamental level. The chemical reactions in a birds eye that allow it to ‘see’ Earth’s magnetic field involves the quantum entanglement of radical pairs of electrons. These electrons are excited by light, particularly the blue of twilight.

Photography was the first available demonstration that light could indeed exert an action sufficient to cause changes in material bodies. William Henry Fox Talbot

The subject of the photograph (the sun) has transcended the idea that a photograph is simple a representation of reality, and has physically come through the lens and put it’s hand onto the final piece. Sunburn Chris McCaw

This month NASA announced a new planetary defence strategy to protect Earth from an asteroid impact. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) on 11th October 2022, changed the orbit of the Dimorphos Asteroid in the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology.

This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object.

“An asteroid impact with Earth has potential for catastrophic devastation, and it is also the only natural disaster humanity now has sufficient technology to completely prevent,” Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer. First any potential collision objects must be identified. This will be the job of the Near Earth Object Surveyor, along with ground-based optical telescope capabilities, to find the still undiscovered population of asteroids and comets that could impact our planet.

A magnetometer is being sent on an eight year journey to Jupiter. It was launched this month from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) has magnetic and electric field sensors on the end of the magnetometer boom. The boom is folded in three parts and packed against the side of the spacecraft for launch. Once unfolded in space, the sensors will extend clear of the main body of the spacecraft, allowing very accurate measurements without magnetic interference from the spacecraft itself.

The boom’s instruments will measure Jupiter’s magnetic field, its interaction with the internal magnetic field of Ganymede, and will help study the subsurface oceans of the icy moons.

Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system known to have its own magnetic field. The magnetic field causes auroras, which are ribbons of glowing, hot, electrified gas, in regions circling the north and south poles of the moon. Because Ganymede is close to Jupiter, its magnetic field is embedded in, or lies within, Jupiter’s magnetic field.

The discovery of the moons orbiting Jupiter by Galileo Galilei in 1610 was the first time a moon was discovered orbiting a planet other than Earth. The discovery eventually led to the understanding that planets in our solar system orbit the Sun, instead of our solar system revolving around Earth.

Gallery Visits

Peter Doig at The Courtauld. My highlights were the luminous moons, moon bathing and an etching of a cave.

Jitish Kallat Whorled (Here After Here After Here) at Somerset House had a romantic premise with a prosaic aesthetic. I love the concept and the theory and it’s certainly a jarring juxtaposition to be directed to celestial destinations by motorway signage. Routes through the work map circular movements through space and time. Is this the Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy?

Mike Nelson Extinction Beckons at Hayward Gallery.

The impact is in the SCALE. Punchdrunk meets abandoned engineering.

Tags Anemoi, Aristotle, asteroid, Belly of a rock, Chris McCaw, copper, directional magnetic steel, Etching, Ganymede, geomagnetic, Hartland Magnetic Observatory, Jitish Kallat, Julie F. Hill, Jupiter, magetometer, magnetic compass, Mike Nelson, moon, moss, NASA, obelisk, Peter Doig, quantum, Rebecca Solnit, seismic, solargraph, suminagashi, Thames-side Studios Gallery, The Absolute Hut, Timosthenes, William Henry Fox Talbot, wind rose

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Relative

April 9, 2023 //

Nothing truly exists – except in relation to other things. Carlo Rovelli

Work in progress.

Building the azimuth obelisk made from layered re-cycled paper. This sculpture is a response to the concrete obelisk erected in 1955 at Hartland Magnetic Observatory as a permanent azimuth mark from which to measure the drift of Earth’s magnetic field. Deep time geology holds the sedimentary knowledge of magnetic activity, from the degrees of variation between the magnetic and geographic north pole to the cataclysmic impact of pole reversals.

Etching Directional Magnetic Steel to reveal the jigsaw pattern which comes from rolling single crystals of an iron silicon alloy into thin sheets to minimise magnetic losses for use in industry.

The copper sulphate etching process creates a very thin, fragile layer of shiny copper under the red residue

Magnetism embodies magical qualities which have fascinated humans since the first encounter with a lodestone. These rare and enigmatic fragments found scattered across the surface of the Earth are created when lightning chances to strike the mineral magnetite.

The Lodestone, from Plato to Kircher by D. W. Emerson lists various historical references to the lodestone. The writer concludes – Lodestone, being very unusual, greatly impressed previous generations. Despite its unattractive appearance it was an admired mineral type more precious than pearls, it was celebrated in persuasive Latin hexameters, it was an analogue for the power of deities, it took a witch to subdue it, it was deemed explicable by Epicurean atomic theory, it was involved in a rather tenuous argument for eternal punishment of wicked persons, it meant doom for unwary mariners, it furnished fodder for folk lore, it resided in the arsenal of the apothecary, it helped to demonstrate the earth’s magnetism, and it assisted navigation. What other mineral has such a record? The lodestone was quite a remarkable rock; it still is, and oddly, yet to be completely studied and documented.

Pliny the Elder (AD 23/24 – 79) :

What is more amazing (than this stone) or at least where
has nature shown greater devilry? She gave rocks a voice
answering, or rather answering back, to man. What is more
indolent than the inert character of stone? Yet nature has
endowed it with awareness and hooking hands. What is
more unyielding than the harshness of iron? On it nature
has bestowed feet and a mode of behaviour. For it is drawn
by the lodestone, and the all-subduing substance hastens to
something like a vacuum, and on its approach it leaps
towards the stone, is held and kept there by its embrace.

Claudius Claudianus (AD fl. 395):

There exists a stone called lodestone; discoloured, dingy,
nondescript. It does not lend distinction to the combed
locks of kings, nor to the fair necks of girls, nor does it
gleam on the showy clasps of sword belts. But in fact if
you pay due regard to the strange marvels of this dark rock
then it outshines elegant adornments and anything, on far
eastern shores, that the Indian looks for in the weed of the
Red Sea (i.e. pearls).

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430):

We recognise in the lodestone an extraordinary ability to
seize iron; I was much perturbed when I first saw it. The
reason is that I clearly saw an iron ring grabbed and held
up by the stone. … Who would not be amazed at this power
of the stone?

Generating a magnetic field.

The dynamo theory states that to generate a magnetic field, a body must rotate and have a fluid core with an internal energy supply that is able to conduct electricity and drive convection. Earth fulfils all of these requirements. It rotates faster at the Equator than it does at the poles causing spiral convection currents in the liquid iron outer core which is an excellent electrical conductor, powered by the energy released as droplets of liquid iron in the outer core freeze onto the solid inner core.

Any variations in rotation, conductivity, and heat impact the magnetic field created.

Mars has a weak magnetic field as it has a totally solid core. Venus also has a weak magnetic field for although it has a liquid core it rotates too slowly to create convection currents. Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field in the solar system, with a metallic liquid hydrogen core and fast rotation, it has a magnetosphere so large it begins to deflect the solar wind almost 3 million kilometres from its surface.

Highlights from a trip to Japan which offered many poetic and spiritual experiences.

Active sulphur vents of the North South Hakone volcano arc boundary dividing Japan into East and West….also used to cook eggs. The beautiful markings on the eggshell were gone the next day.

As Tristan Gooley says in The Natural Navigator, ‘There is a commonly held belief that “Moss grows on the north side of trees and buildings.” It does, sometimes, but will also grow on every other side. However, lots of satisfyingly north facing moss growth on the trees in this Tokyo park.

Moss tending in the rain, some splendid moss in the gardens of Kanazawa.

Inspiration for an absolute hut. The “Gassho-zukuri Village”, a World Heritage Site set in stunning mountain scenery, has more than 100 gassho-zukuri thatched rural buildings with wonderful steep pitched A-frame roofs.

To Discover the Meaning of Being Born as Human Beings. Higashi Honganji Temple

Moss heaven.

To visit Saihoji Kakedora Temple (the Moss Temple), you must send a postcard by mail to request a visit. On arrival, you spend time in the temple at a low table quietly copying sutras with a calligraphy pen to calm the mind before entering the garden.

The garden is built around the Ogonchi Pond shaped like the Chinese character, meaning heart and blanketed in over 120 species of moss.

master of persimmons

treetops are close to

Stormy Mountain

The poem stone tells the story of Kayori who had 40 persimmon trees in the garden laden with fruit which he intended to sell, but the night before they were to be picked a huge storm arose and in the morning not one persimmon was left on the trees. Kyorai was enlightened by this experience and called the hut Rakushisha – the cottage of the fallen persimmon.

Many famous haiku poets, disciples of Basho and including Basho himself, stayed here.

Home of the cloud dragon. Zen garden at Tenryu-Ji Temple, Kyoto.

The tour through the womb of the Zuigu-bosatsu. The darkness of the journey through the womb was absolute. The stone floor ice cold on bare feet. Rosary beads the size of grapefruits led a winding path to the softly lit zuigu stone and on to the light to be reborn. Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto

Kaname-ishi, keystone at Seikanji Temple, overlooking the city of Kyoto, spread like a fan before it, is believed to grant wishes if touched.

Rivers in the sky. Theories about crown shyness range from being caused by friction as new shoots are eroded in a windy forest to sensing the shadow or warmth of a neighbour.

Binzuru (Pindola Bharadvaja) was one of the sixteen arahats and is said to have excelled in the mastery of occult powers.

In Japanese mythology, the god of thunder arrived in Nara riding a white deer. The deer have lived here for centuries and are revered as emissaries of the gods of the Kasugataisha Shrine.

They have learnt to bow to be rewarded with special deer biscuits, which you can buy to feed them.

Discovering the works of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Mexican media artist exhibiting internationally with a background in physical chemistry who creates large scale interactive work exploring and exploiting human interaction with technology to create an impressive catalogue of works from tethering a blazing sun to a face briefly echoed in a wisp of cloud. I was drawn to his work Atmospheric Memory inspired by Charles Babbage’s philosophy.

Whilst the atmosphere we breathe is the ever-living witness of the sentiments we have uttered, the waters, and the more solid materials of the globe, bear equally enduring testimony of the acts we have committed. Charles Babbage

Gallery Visits

Undertow at Unit 1 Gallery a group show with a subtle and astute use of material, quietly smoldering with agency.

Artists: Alex Simpson, Alison Rees, Isobel Church, Lauren Ilsley, Nicholas Middleton, Sarah Wishart and Tana West.

‘Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.’ – Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2004/2016

Michael Taylor The Last Man at Standpoint Gallery. I really loved this luminous body of work.

Richard Slee Sunlit Uplands at Hales Gallery was a wonderful conveyor belt parade of glistening mini utopias.

“We can see no detail, we can see nothing definable and it is, I know, simply the sanguine necessity of our minds that makes us believe those uplands of the future are still more gracious and splendid than we can either hope or imagine.”

The Discovery of the Future, H.G. Wells 1902

The quote “sunlit uplands” has been used as political ideology, as an assurance for better days to come most recently the phrase has been linked to the promises of Brexit, with politicians leaning on this rallying rhetoric.

George Henry Longly Microgravities at Nicoletti. I found the slick production values, very shiny like outsize circuit boards of these works exposing sci-fi cliché and subverting popular space movie tropes sat very close to the ideas they are parodying. Microgravity – ‘the condition in which people or objects appear to be weightless’, according to NASA’s website – is responsible for metabolic and behavioural changes for space travelers. Some interesting theory behind this show about the human cost of living in space as our gut microbiome reacts to a weightless environment. I liked the reflection cast on the floor from the mirrored circle left exposed as a planet on the widescreen landscape.

On Failure group show at Soft Opening with Olivia Erlanger, Cash Frances, Jordan/Martin Hell, Kelsey Isaacs, Maren Karlson, Sam Lipp, Chris Lloyd and Narumi Nekpenekpen. While certain works function as indexes of failed attempts at control, others recognise the perceived failure of the human body, positing that from a spiritual perspective: if perfection is nonexistent, then failure is all we have, all that is real. One or two of the hanging pieces are reminiscent of the votive offerings at holy wells or the love lock bridges festooned with padlocks.

Bridget Smith Field Recordings at Frith Street Gallery. Natural material processes, simply presented. The weathering of bulrushes, the materiality of analogue photographic techniques such as ambrotypes and tintypes, the simplicity of a moon rising over the sea.

Daniel Shanken The Cascades at Stanley Picker Gallery. I was excited to see this show as the randomness within the work is derived from radioactive decay and I thought the title may refer to cascades of comic particles but perhaps it refers to cascades of data. The aesthetic was very game based and the randomness not explicit in origin. I liked the set up though with the projection onto the floor creating an abyss to gaze down into from an industrial style walkway.

David Blandy Atomic Light at John Hansard Gallery Southampton. Four films circumnavigating the fallout from the atomic bomb massacre at Hiroshima. The body of work is inspired by a family history, a grandfather, a prisoner of war in Singapore – held by the Japanese but felt himself saved by the detonation at Hiroshima. The golden hour light is so perfectly captured and reflected in The Edge of Forever which gives voice to the children, accusing, watchful and alone. This was filmed by his partner and features his own children. Soil, Sinew and Bone is a collaged documentary of archival material, mirrored so that the central area of the film takes on the shape of an a atomic bomb. In Sunspot two scientists, one in Japan, one at Mount Wilson Observatory are monitoring the activity of sunspots, the flares that can erupt and disrupt radio signals as the particle filled solar wind and magnetic turbulence blasts across the magnetosphere. The film Empire of the Swamp has a wonderful rich narration embodied in the voice of an ancient crocodile who remembers the mangrove swamps before the war and the arrival of the white man.

I enjoyed the Art Fictions podcast with guest Jennifer Higgie discussing her writing practice via the 2009 novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. I was then lucky to see Complicitie’s excellent interpretation of this novel on stage at the Barbican directed by Simon McBurney.

‘this is a tale about the cosmos, poetry, and the limitations and possibilities of activism.‘

Complicitie’s production employed the same blinding flash technique as Alfredo Jaar used in his work The Sound of Silence which I saw in 2006 and still remember vividly. Sitting in a dark space a story of one photograph, taken in Sudan 1993, is told in simple sentences on a large black screen. The photograph is shown momentarily before a blinding flash of light scores the retina. You are left blinking in the afterglow. The image won a Pulitzer Prize, but the South African photographer Kevin Carter committed suicide at 33 after struggling to come to terms with what he witnessed, and the public response for not having intervened to save the child’s life. In the novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina, the eccentric ‘older woman’ does not hold back from intervening when she sees injustice to any living thing. She is also vilified, but for showing compassion for the animals.

I also dredged up the memory of having seen the film Spoor at the 2017 BFI LLF also based on this novel. Finally I have bought a copy of the novel. A circuitous route to the original text.

I am very much enjoying reading Rebecca Solnit A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Her writing is like a torchlight illuminating one idea after another, sweeping across a multitude of topics with an infectious energy to explore and experience the unknown.

How will you go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you? – Meno

Tags Alfredo Jaar, azimuth, Bridget Smith, Charles Babbage, crown shyness, Daniel Shanken, David Blandy, directional magnetic steel, Etching, gassho-zukari, geology, haiku, Japan, lodestone, magnetic field, Michael Taylor, moss, moss temple, obelisk, Occult, Olga Tokarczuk, omplicitie, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Rebecca Solnit, rebirth, Richard Slee, sacred stone, sculpture, Simon Mc Burney, undertow, zen

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