Archives for posts with tag: Life Boat

Negotiating Precarity

April 14, 2024 //
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I am extremely grateful to a-n Artists Newsletter for the professional practice and creative development bursary that allowed me to visit Kielder Observatory in Northumberland and Eskdalemuir Observatory, Dumfriesshire to research how space weather impacts Earth’s magnetic field. I am also grateful to Claire Brown, site manager at Eskdalemuir Magnetic Observatory, for her time showing me around the site and explaining the many measurement processes that happen here. Despite the first survey of the site at Eskdalemuir, by the National Physical Laboratory in 1903, reporting back that “the weather was wet and stormy, and somewhat unfavourable to “field work” an observatory was established in this remote location, and recordings monitoring Earth’s magnetic field have been made from this site for 120 years.

I was able to visit the East Absolute Hut, the Underground Chamber, and the Seismic Vault along with the main building and museum rooms. The interaction of space weather with magnetic currents in the surface of the Earth is monitored here, and there is a camera on the roof to record visual aurora on a loop which is then sent to the British Geological Survey research teams in Edinburgh for analysis. Meteorological observations are also made here, along with solar radiation, atmospheric pollution, and seismological activity. The monitoring of radiation pollution was inaugurated here after the Chernobyl incident in 1986 when explosions at the nuclear plant scattered radioactive elements over a wide area across Europe.

95% of Earth’s magnetic field comes from the swirling outer core of the Earth and changes are due to convection pattern turbulence. As compasses have been used for over 400 years, and records kept of magnetic declination, there is a long history of measurements to refer to. The magnetic north pole had been drifting westwards at about 55km a year up until 2020 but has recently slowed to 45km. Consistency of observations is very important for magnetic field modelling, which is why many of the instruments at Eskdalemuir are located underground to maintain an even temperature.

Manual observations of the direction of the magnetic field are taken once a week from the East Absolute Hut. A small sliding window in the wooden hut is pulled back to reveal a distant fixed azimuth mark, not always easily visible during inclement weather. The mark, viewed through the fluxgate theodolite, must be lined up with the north south meridian line until the reading on the digital recorder is at zero. At the same time the digital clock must read zero. These numbers fluctuate rapidly but once both machines read zero a measurement of the position of the magnetic north pole can be recorded. A separate recording is taken through a series of 12 angles on the theodolite to give an accurate position. The instrument is very sensitive and the operator wears the same clothes each time with no metal fixings etc to ensure consistency in the records. The measurements are then plotted on a graph which usually follows a smooth line describing the drift of the magnetic north pole. Sudden deviations alert the operator to errors in the recordings or dramatic movement in the field known as a geomagnetic jerk.

The instruments in the underground chamber measure the strength of the magnetic field in three directions.

Surface readings are also taken automatically from instruments in small enclosures in the back field. During my visit these instruments were used to record data rather than those I came in close contact with.

In the vault, seismograph readings are made of vibrations in the bedrock. Seismic activity around the UK is fairly low level but sensitive structures can still be effected. These instruments pinpointed the magnitude 4.7 Longtown earthquake on Boxing Day 1979, and a swarm of tremors in the Dumfries area in 2001. The network also detected the air crash at Lockerbie in 1988, accurately recording the time of impact for crash investigators.

The museum holds a wonderful collection of mysterious instruments.

I attended Aurora Night at Kielder Observatory, established in 2008 under some of the darkest skies in Europe, to learn about how solar activity interacts with Earth’s atmosphere and creates the Aurora. The skies were very dark but also cloudy, and the sun was quiet, so no chance of seeing any aurora or even stargazing. However, we were given fascinating presentations on what causes the ethereal coloured lights seen at Earth’s poles and further towards the equator when solar activity is peaking.

We were also given some cool meteorites to handle including a carbonaceous chondrite, one of the most primitive objects in our solar system.

The sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles and this causes disruption in its magnetic field. The solar flares that we see loop out from the surface of the Sun are caused by localised incidents of polarity, where plasma and particles loop around what could be thought of as areas acting like independent bar magnets. Millions of tons of plasma and chunks of magnetic field can be ejected during one coronal mass ejection and this matter hurtles out into space, if we are in the line of fire we will be bombarded with energetic particles and Earth’s magnetic field will be disrupted. The solar wind brings the particles from the Sun that envelop Earth and are drawn to the polar regions by the geomagnetic field. The aurora is caused by the interaction of these high energy particles (usually electrons) with neutral atoms in the earth’s upper atmosphere. The particle collisions that occur in the upper atmosphere cause photons of light to be emitted. The Earth’s geomagnetic field is not symmetrical and changes as the Earth rotates, it responds to the disturbance of particles coming from the Sun and as the field adjusts to this disturbance, magnetic energy is released, thereby accelerating charged particles to high energies. These charged particles are forced to stream along the geomagnetic field lines which is why the aurora lights can appear in vertical columns or other dancing shapes depending on where in the magnetosphere they entered the atmosphere. The colours of the lights are dependent on which atmospheric gas is being excited by the solar particles, oxygen emits either a greenish or a red light and nitrogen gives off a blue light.

Solar activity is monitored and space weather forecasts are posted online. To be in with a chance of seeing the Aurora in the UK, the KP level should be 5 or above as this index increases as the aurora’s southern edge moves southward. It can take up to three days for the particles ejected from the Sun in a CME to reach the Earth. The lights are fainter than sunlight so a dark night sky is needed to see them. It is also often the case that the greater photo sensitivity of a camera can capture lights that are barely visible to the human eye. The aurora is more likely to be visible during the spring and autumn equinox because of the angle of the Earth’s magnetic field in relation to the Sun, not because storms are more frequent.

2024 is predicted to have a high number of solar storms so there may be opportunities to see the Aurora but it also comes with the risk of severe space weather that could cause havoc with our reliance on satellites and related technologies.

The connection between solar activity and the impact on technology was made during the 1859 Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history. Strong auroral displays were reported globally and even seen in London, while sparking and fires occurred in multiple telegraph stations.

Satellites are vulnerable to space weather which can cause ongoing degradation or single event upsets where a charged particle can trigger a command in the satellite. During space weather events the ionosphere can become enhanced making it harder to communicate with satellites. Errors can occur in precision navigation and timing situations. Aviation crews are at risk to higher doses of radiation during solar activity and the HF radio communication system can have interference. Induced geoelectric fields in the ground can cause currents to flow in power grids and railway lines damaging transformers.

During the 2003 ‘Hallowe’en’ solar storms, when the largest single solar flare ever recorded was followed by severe storms, over half of all Earth-orbiting spacecrafts were impacted, disrupting satellite TV and radio services, GPS systems, damaging a Japanese scientific satellite beyond repair, sending several deep-space missions into safe mode or complete shutdown, and destroying the Martian Radiation Environment Experiment. The solar storms also led to communication problems for flights passing over the North Pole and Antarctic science groups had a full communications blackout for several days.

In acknowledging these risks we can gain an awareness of our vulnerability to the forces of nature and a respect for the power of the sun, the protection offered by our home planet and the interconnectedness of the universe.

Life Boat at APT Gallery

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.

Very happy to be exhibiting with Rachael Allain, Caroline AreskogJones, Beverley Duckworth, Liz Elton, Kathleen Herbert, Kaori Homma and Anne Krinsky.

We had a fantastic opening night.

I was showing submīrārī (earthbound) and a new video installation Orbital – these works both consider transient landscapes, ecological landscapes on the cusp of disappearance and the digital landscape at risk from obliteration by an extreme solar storm.

submīrārī (earthbound), 2018, steel, earth, water, sublimation printed textile, 12 pieces dimensions variable approx. 200 x 200 cm. Reflections of a no longer certain world hover in pools fluctuating on the cusp of disappearance. The ethereal images float or submerge revealing the hidden activity of water which also refracts light across the surface prompting the viewer to repeatedly shift perspective. Donna Haraway, drawing from Latour, proposes the ‘Earthbound’ as those humans who are ready to rethink and create new narratives with Gaia at the centre, who recognise the entanglement of society and nature and aim to pursue a ‘nonarrogant collaboration with all those in the muddle’. The shift in perspective embraced by the ‘Earthbound’ embodies a grief shared with other species at loss of habitat and disappearing landscapes. It is not a nostalgia for paradise lost but a reappraisal of what paradise could be.

Orbital, 2024, Back projection video, mini screen array, board, installation 122 x 200 x 50 cm, video 05:44 min. An exploration of the potential risks of space weather on human technology and infrastructure and non-human navigation.

The Sun is about 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) from Earth, but space weather can affect Earth and the rest of the solar system. It can cause damage to satellites and electrical blackouts on Earth. Small satellites have come to dominate low Earth orbit, and we have become reliant on this technology for communication, military strategy, and data gathering.

A blast of high energy particles hitting Earth during a solar storm can interfere with Earth’s magnetic field, confusing birds that use this for navigation. In America, pigeon racers postpone the big race if bad space weather is predicted. There is also new research that might suggest the number of satellites orbiting Earth and the growing satellite space junk graveyard could weaken Earth’s protective magnetic field, making us even more vulnerable to space weather and cosmic radiation.

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. It was Deptford Dockyard that Edmund Halley set sail from to make the first circumnavigation of the Earth to map the declination of the magnetic field. The ship that he captained, the Paramour, was the first vessel built specifically as a research vessel and launched in April 1694.

Other video and mixed media works in Life Boat draw on material gathered from the Arctic Ocean in the Svalbard Archipelago, The Sea of Hebrides and Long Beach Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest, to reflect on disappearing, threatened and polluted landscapes. Other fieldwork undertaken feeds into work that considers the human experience of dislocation from nature and the need for faith, hope and resilience.

Rachael Allain’s current doctoral project ‘Above and Below the Horizon: A practice-led investigation into liminal thresholds of bodies of water’ has been undertaken in response to various aquatic locations. The work shown in this exhibition documents mapping aspects of an unexpected journey of discovery made in the upper reaches of the Arctic Ocean during an international art and science expeditionary residency in the Svalbard Archipelago during midsummer 2022. ‘Circumnavigation of a ‘Bergy Bit’’ is a film with sound of a close and intimate encounter with a section of an iceberg, calved from its mass and found beached and melting close to shore in Eolusneset, Sorgfjorden in the Bay of Grief.

In 2019 Caroline AreskogJones spent time on the Sea of Hebrides making a series of responses whilst researching more viscerally the ocean as a site of ‘field research’ and gathering recordings. ‘Sounding Line’ (2024, sail, audio/video single channel as projection 07:32 min. Sail courtesy of Sail Britain) was created in deliberate wave format being inspired by Jean Painleve, whose hybrid films overlaid with jazz soundtracks occupy the uncertain space between art and science. Oskar Jones was invited to create the sonic composition in response – the saxophone being a wind instrument of extraordinary virtuosity.  Since 2023 Caroline has been visiting the Natural History Museum Cetacean Archive – at the invitation of Principal Curator, Richard Sabin. Through conversations including those with environmental historian Sophia Nicolov, her research has broadened and this updated presentation includes recordings of the two remaining Orcas who inhabit the Sea of Hebrides courtesy of the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust.

Anne Krinsky Boiling Seas Acid Seas (Work-in-progress), 2024, Video, 12:26 min, filmed on location at Long Beach Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest.

A History Of The Receding Horizon (2015, HD Video, 16:9, sound, projection, 28 min) is a digital film installation by Kathleen Herbert, exploring different concepts of time within the landscape. Based upon Kielder in Northumberland, the narrator whose script was developed from the artists research interviews with environmental historians, astronomers at Kielder Observatory and local people from the area, leads the viewer through the film weaving together past, present and future timelines. The Chaplin (2006,  standard HD video, 4:3, sound, monitor, 07: 20 min) is a film installation recalling a conversation held between the artist, Kathleen Herbert, and the Port Chaplin based at the Mission to Seafarers centre in Avonmouth docks. The Port Chaplin boards every ship as it enters the docks, his role is to provide emotional and practical support to seafarers while they are in port. The piece was produced while Kathleen was based at the centre researching for a new commission by Picture This Moving Image and Situations Bristol. Her research at the centre culminated in a 3 day voyage aboard a cargo ship in which she took her camera and the extracts of film from this journey provide the visual background of the film.

Fragility and vulnerability are embodied in layered works on paper, a large suspended sculpture made from delicate compostable material and living installations incorporating transient elements that transform over the exhibition period.

Anne Krinsky has been working on a research-based project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change since 2018. Coastal wetlands worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels caused by climate change, while inland watersheds are threatened by heat, drought and agricultural runoff. These ecosystems are critical to the plants and animals that inhabit them and to human survival. She is drawn to biodiverse habitat edges – where water meets land or where fresh water meets the sea and is interested in recording both the beauty of – and human impacts on – fragile habitats. She uses documentation as an archive of raw materials to generate work in other media, including site-responsive print and video installation and tactile work on paper. In responding creatively to wetlands and watersheds, she wants to raise public awareness of climate threats to these life-sustaining habitats. Before They Vanish, 2024, 24 small works: paper, mylar, acrylic, digital print, mixed media, 150 x 300 cm.

Caroline AreskogJones Float 2023, Paper lithography on shoji, 60 x 120 cm forms part of a series of works inspired by the Natural History Museum Cetacean Archive, rendered onto Shoji paper, used in museum conservation.

Liz Elton begins in landscape and still-life painting to explore the potential of waste and the recycling of matter.  Her ephemeral work is often made on compostable ground, coloured with kitchen waste and embedded with seeds. Showing Habitat, 2024, Compostable cornstarch food waste recycling bags, household textiles from a house clearance, vegetable dyes from kitchen waste, water colour, silk, soil from various locations and gleaned from vegetables bought in the market, vegetable seeds saved from food preparation, seeds of varieties of self-seeding edible plants typically found on the wasteland around Deptford creek, found wood, Approx. 360 x 250 x 150 cm (variable).

Working with living sculpture and installation, Beverley Duckworth creates spaces and moments which connect the smallest, poetic actions of plants with precarious issues facing humanity. Her practice centres on the afterlife of the discarded and is rooted in small acts of reparation – sewing scraps together, watering fragile seedlings and nurturing the regenerative power of composting from waste materials. Works include Husk, 2024, Discarded cardboard, thread, flax, seeds, water, 90 x 70 x 280 cm; Raze, 2023, Discarded clothes, binder, 48 x 51 x 10 cm.

Etchings and spatial interventions explore the use of the natural world as human resource and land as a site of geopolitical conflict.

Kathleen Herbert Lost Dimensions I, II, III, 2022-23, Photopolymer Etching on Somerset Satin Paper, 75 x 57 cm.

Kaori Homma’s multi-site Homma Meridian project asks us to reconsider and to challenge the cartographic demarcations that govern so much of our world and that we so frequently take for granted. With the deceptively simple move of ‘repositioning’ the Greenwich Prime Meridian, the artist radically shifts our perspective, as well as our sure footing, both figuratively and even literally. At each of its iterations (which have included Budapest, Margate, Wales, Paris, London and Pennsylvania) the artist and participating audiences draw an impermanent line running north-south, always using ephemeral materials, as a substitute for the ‘Prime’ meridian. The project’s act of displacement and its ephemerality work to highlight the imaginary nature of boundaries and to shake up our perception of our position on the earth as it spins on its titled axis. Works include Homma Meridian, Deptford, 2024, Vinyl Letters, tape, dimensions variable; Floating 0 degree Longitude, 2024, Abrudashi Fire Etching, Water, Bucket, 60 x 38 x 25 cm; Four corners of the earth, 2024, Aburidashi Fire Etching on Paper, 50 x 80 x 3 cm

Alongside the exhibition we held a series of events including a Low Tide Walk in Deptford Creek – led by Anne Krinsky in partnership with Creekside Discovery Centre followed by refreshments and a tour of the Life Boat exhibition at APT Gallery just two minutes from this amazing natural habitat in Deptford.

FIELDWORK AS PRACTICE – A live sonic performance by Oskar Jones and a conversation led by Caroline AreskogJones bringing together Oliver Beardon (Founder and Skipper of ‘Sail Britain’) Richard Sabin (Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum, London) and Sophie Nicolov (AHRC Early Career Research Fellow, Natural History Museum, London) for a discussion around the potential overlaps between ‘field’ and research, artistic practice and ecological activism.

Homma Meridian and the Secret of Invisible Ink/Fire Etching Workshop where Kaori Homma shared her technique using Invisible Ink as part of the Aburidashi/Fire Etching process, historically used for espionage, she also gave a fascinating presentation on the history of this process and how it relates to her own art practice and 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.

Gallery Visits

Women In Revolt at Tate Britain. A lot of documentation here of social history. Many texts, posters, zines, not so much art but a great piece from the inimitable Susan Hiller, with personal incites accompanying images of her ever increasing pregnant belly such as: – She writes, one is born into time. And in time introduced to language….Or rather — one is born. And through language, introduced to time…Perhaps even — one is born, in time, through language.

Mary Yacoob, captivates with astonishing precision of detail as always in Brutal Space at Bobinska Brownlee exploring the subject of future adaptations to life in space.

Listening

A webinar from British Geological Survey on how we measure the magnetic field, everyday applications and mitigating the threats of space weather. From the Earth’s core to outer space: understanding the magnetic field

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orbital

March 3, 2024 //
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“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.

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dimensions

February 3, 2024 //
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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 100th 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.

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