Delighted to have both my artists books In/Out and Unbound accepted into the Art, Science and Creativity exhibition curated by Liverpool Book Art at Liverpool Central Library in the autumn. The starting point for this exhibition is a quote from Albert Einstein:

“Where the world ceases to be a stage for personal hopes, aspirations, and desires, and we stand before it as free creatures, full of admirations, questions and contemplation, we enter the realm of art and science. If we describe what we see and experience in the language of logic, we do science; if we convey connections through forms that are inaccessible to the rational mind, but intuitively recognisable as making sense, we do art.”

Open Studios 2024 – showing the two channel video installation Radical Pair in my studio.

In Thames-side Studios Gallery showcase of studio holders works I presented one of the sculptures from the Instruments of the Anemoi series.

Work in progress on hybrid sculpture Belly of a Rock adding spirals of crushed mussel shells to the crusted casing that will house a monitor screen. Earth rotates faster at the Equator than it does at the poles causing spiral convection currents in the liquid iron outer core. Earth’s magnetic field is created in this swirling outer core where magnetism is about fifty times stronger than it is on the rocky surface of the Earth.

Trochus (sea snail) shell buttons seen at Borders Textile Towerhouse, Hawick. The buttons made from these molluscs found in warm waters are used for the Borders quality knitwear industry. Genuine shell can apparently be identified from imitation by touch, it always feels cool even in hot temperatures.

We do not yet know another form of life other than carbonaceous life. All life on Earth uses the same biochemistry of carbon.

Reminded by the solstice, I finally installed some solargraph pin hole cameras at Hogsmill Nature Reserve. I have had the tins prepared for a long while so not sure if they will work. The lagoon was worryingly green.

A recent Royal Society research article reveals that extreme solar events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections can release bursts of energetic particles towards Earth which are found preserved in the rings of partially fossilized trees as huge spikes in carbon-14. Through the individual analysis of ancient tree rings from subfossils found in the Drouzet River in the Southern French Alps, scientists discovered evidence of a giant solar storm dated to around 14,300 years ago. This event appears to have been enormously more powerful than the Carrington Event of 1859 when fires broke out in telegraph offices.

Radiocarbon is produced in the upper atmosphere as cosmic rays collide with particles in the atmosphere. It is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis and enters the food chain of organisms and because it decays at a known rate, scientists can use it to determine when the organism died using carbon dating processes. Solar storms tend to deflect the number of energetic particles coming from outer space but a violent storm will create much more radioactive carbon-14 which will subsequently be absorbed by life on Earth. Radiocarbon dating is not exact because the atmospheric ¹⁴C/¹²C ratio varies due to cosmic ray activity, nuclear explosions and solar activity. Still from Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe.

For scientists using the radiocarbon dating technique it is important to know the carbon-12 content of the contemporary atmosphere. A calibration curve of carbon-12 in the atmosphere is provided by an international body using many archive records but the most precise and accurate are based on dendrochronologically dated tree-ring series. Stills from Time Crystals.

Other evidence of this major radiation storm 14,300 years ago is also seen in ice cores having a higher concentration of an isotope of beryllium extracted from Greenland. These incredibly powerful geomagnetic storms are known as Miyake events. Nine Miyake events have been identified in the last 15,000 years, the most recent being around 774 CE.

Radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel while working on a series of experiments on phosphorescent materials in 1896. Cosmic Rays were discovered by balloon enthusiast Victor Hess in August 1912. He went almost 5.5km up in a hydrogen filled balloon with a balloonist and a meteorologist equipped with an electrometer which could read the level of radiation. This expedition was to determine the source of radiation which was bewildering scientists working on radiation such as Marie Curie who found some radiation registered on their equipment when they removed the source of radiation and even when instruments were shielded by a lead casing. C.T.R. Wilson was also baffled by apparent radiation seen in his cloud chamber, which he had developed to study atmospheric phenomena. One of the first images from Wilson’s cloud chamber –

A cloud chamber is a box containing a supersaturated vapor. As charged particles pass through, they ionize the vapor, which condenses to form droplets on the ions. The tracks of the particles become visible as trails of droplets, which can be photographed. In 1911 Wilson presented his first rough photographs of particle tracks at the Royal Society in London. In 1929 Hans Geiger and Walter Müller developed a gas filled ionization detector that registers individual charged particles and was ideal for studying high-energy cosmic rays. Bruno Rossi further developed the Geiger counter and demonstrated that the Earth’s magnetic field bends incoming charged particle showers. In 1936 Seth H. Neddermeyer and Carl D. Anderson discovered the Muon as most common cosmic particle in cosmic ray showers. In 1938 Pierre Auger observed showers with energies of 1015 eV – 10 million times higher than any known before.

In 1947 Patrick Blackett presented a paper in which he suggested that Pierre Auger emitted by high-energy cosmic rays contributed to the light in the night sky. In September 1952 a simple experiment by Bill Galbraith and John Jelley allowed the first observation of Cherenkov light produced by cosmic rays passing through the atmosphere. By the end of the decade, observation of Cherenkov radiation in the atmosphere had been developed further as a means for studying cosmic rays. I will be looking further at Cherenkov radiation in the coming weeks as I begin research on the historical site of Haverah Park in North Yorkshire, the site of an extensive cosmic ray air shower detection array which led the world for two decades in studies of cosmic rays of the highest energies. Haverah Park array used water Cherenkov detectors. I will also be looking at the cosmic ray detection innovations of Astronomer Royal Sir Arnold Wolfendale

A visit to Malta. Architecturally beautiful, bathed in golden light, the palimpsest of Malta’s history is fascinating to uncover. 20,000 years ago after the last Ice Age, the sea level in the Mediterranean was 130 metres lower than today and Malta was one land mass connected to Sicily.

Due to its geographic location Malta was a contested site for naval and trade powers for hundreds of years, yet before the first empire builders arrived there is no evidence of conflict between communities found at the archaeological sites for the first 5000 years of settlement.

Evidence of first settlers dates to about 5900 BC. These people were hunters and farmers who kept domestic cattle and built temples. The earliest remains found at the Neolithic subterranean temple and burial site of about 7,000 individuals – The Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum – the only known European example of a subterranean ‘labyrinth’ date from about 4000 BC.

The whole system, which in places replicates the architecture of temples above ground, was cut into the limestone using just stone or antler tools. Some of these deep underground chambers are decorated with spiral and chequerboard patterns in red ochre. A highlight of the visit is the acoustic demonstration of a deep resounding echo filling the chamber when someone with a low voice speaks softly into a small, excavated niche. The particular acoustic frequencies measured throughout the chambers suggests a deliberate design and a potentially important cultural role for making music. Archaeologists believe the dead were probably left exposed until the flesh had decomposed and fallen off before the bones were buried in mass graves along with copious amounts of red ochre but so much is unknown.

Photography is not allowed in the labyrinth of tunnels, so I have no images inside the ancient site where so many people were buried, but saw skulls found here, known as the long skulls, at the Museum of Archaeology.

Also at the museum is the famed clay figurine of a ‘sleeping woman’ discovered in the Hypogeum.

The ancient temples and early artworks hint at past cultures we have no way of understanding.

Many figures were found at other temple sites. Although some figures are female and there are many phallic figures, it is not clear of the gender of the ‘fat’ figures some of which appear to allow for interchangeable heads.

The Tarxien Temples complex of megalithic monuments with intricate stonework date to approximately 3150 BC.

In about 3850 BC new settlers arrived, also farming and building temples but after 1,500 years suddenly disappeared from the landscape. New research using carbon dating, pollen from earth cores, tree ring and human bone analysis, and the location of sediment embedded molluscs, suggests a society battling with soil erosion from felling all the trees, subsequent dietary deficiencies, and a major climate catastrophe around 2350 BC, possibly a dust cloud from volcanic eruptions, which may have led to their ultimate demise.

Malta suffered so much war, stretching back hundreds of years, war after war, so many wars, so depressing. A colossal amount of armour, some so intricately detailed, is held at the Grandmasters Palace Museum.

The Phoenicians arrived in Malta around 870 BC from Lebanon, and Malta subsequently came under the control of the ancient city of Carthage as a strategic trading post right up until the Romans take it in 255 BC bringing with them the Roman Catholic religion. A Cathedral was founded in the 12th century (according to legend it was built on the site where the Roman Governor met St. Paul when he was ship wrecked on Malta) was damaged by a huge earthquake in 1693 and rebuilt in the opulent Baroque style.

St. Paul’s catacombs located outside the walls of the ancient city of Melite is a system of underground galleries and tombs dating from the third to the eighth centuries CE.

The Byzantines of Malta fought off an invading Arab army for many weeks but the capital city of Melite fell in 870AD and all inhabitants were massacred. The city was rebuilt as Mdina by the Muslim conquerors. The Normans invaded Malta in 1091 to little resistance and this paved the way for the reintroduction of Christianity. Next came the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, colonising Malta in 1530. The Order of St John was given Malta as a fief for the annual donation of a peregrine falcon, better known as the Maltese falcon. It was kept and trained in a great hall of the Grandmasters Palace where owls, song birds and other exotic birds were kept.

The Knights ran a strong naval fleet and knew the importance of astronomy for navigation. They established an astronomical observatory at the Grandmaster’s Palace. Also a meridian line, inlaid in marble, ran across the floor of one room with a hole in the ceiling above – noon was marked as the sun crossed the line.

The Order of St John capitulated on the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. During his week on Malta Napoleon abolished slavery and instigated free education but there were other changes not so beneficial to the population and after two years of French rule an uprising led to Malta becoming a protectorate of the British. The magnificent printing press in the administrative hub of the Grandmasters Palace was manufactured by Londoners Harrild and Sons (founded 1809) of Farringdon.

Malta played a vital role providing a strategic location for hospitals during the first world war and was heavily bombed during the second world war. Discontent on British commitment to supporting Malta’s economy and hikes in imported food prices eventually led to riots by the population and came to a head on 7th June 1919 when British troops fired into the crowd, killing four and injuring 50. Relationship souring, Malta finally gains independence in 1964, becoming a republic in 1974.

While in Malta I was reading Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, a novel that whisks you across time and space as characters inhabit times from the 1453 Ottoman siege of Constantinople to a spaceship escaping future Earth. It resonated with a land whose history is still so present and helped set markers across the centuries to cross reference what was happening in different parts of the world at the same time.

In Cumbria earlier in the year I visited Bewcastle, site of a Roman out post fort. The Anglo-Saxon Bewcastle Cross from the 7/8th century, hewn from a single piece of sandstone stands at 4.5m in the splendid village churchyard of St. Cuthbert’s Church. The head of the cross is missing and the carving very worn but features an intriguing mix of religious and non-religious figures, reliefs and inscriptions in a runic alphabet. The oldest carved sundial in Britain can be seen on the south face of the shaft, this medieval timepiece was carved at a later date, after the cross was erected, and is missing the indicator. From the late 7th century, around when this cross was being commissioned the Byzantines were busy building defence walls around Malta to counter a growing Muslim threat they feared.

Gallery Visits

Pia Östlund Sea of Love at No Show Space. Really enjoyed my visit to this beautifully curated exhibition. So nice to have a gallerist take time to talk about the work. The nature printing explored in this show is an involved process of imprinting dried seaweed under pressure between polished lead sheets, taking latex moulds from the imprints which are then made conductive by coating in graphite and electroplated with copper to make a printing plate. Pia Östlund spent two months at BORCH Editions in Copenhagen, working with the master printers on refining the platemaking process of nature printing. Nature printing is an intaglio printing technique from the mid-19th century that makes it possible to make direct impressions of the surface of natural objects.

Sensory overload at The Cosmic House, a ‘built manifesto for Post-Modernism’. The original 1840’s residence has been remodelled by Charles Jencks into a complex system of symbols that embrace the creation of the universe, the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, day and night, the seasons, the elements, the understanding of science, and the history of architecture.

It’s like entering a kaleidoscope, mirrors everywhere, shifting perspectives, glimpses through to other spaces, optical illusions, and all saturated with vibrating colour.

The latest addition to the house is the museum gallery, which Jencks designed but did not live to see completed, with mirrored ceiling plaques on all my favourite things like magnetic fields, solar flares and gravity waves. Amazing place to visit.

There is currently an exhibition THE WORLD TO ME WAS A SECRET: CAESIOUS, ZINNOBER, CELADON, AND VIRESCENT by Tai Shani here whose theatrical colourful works suit this setting.