Archives for posts with tag: Roger Caillois

mineral vision

July 5, 2025 //

The Geological Unconscious had a wonderful six week run at Hypha HQ, Euston. Responding to Jason Groves’ inquiry into the mineral imaginary in his eponymous book, as well as the ‘Writing of Stones’ as proposed by writer and mineral collector Roger Caillois, the exhibition exposes the complex entanglements between the organic and the inorganic; the human and the lithic.

Very happy to receive lots of positive feedback for my video installation Lithos Panoptes. People were very engaged with how the work reveals itself in stages, from the kaleidoscopic imagery displaying on the two way suspended screen to discovering the board of distorting lenses behind the screen and finally stepping back to see the original film from the human perspective before it is transformed by the lenses.

Referencing a many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, Argos Panoptes (always eyes still awake), the work considers the perpetual vigilance of rock as record keeper and witness. Video of human activity projected through distorting optical lenses transforms the anthropocentric position to imagine the perspective of the rock.

The pattern of lenses is informed by the molecular structure of magnetite, a mineral found in magma and metamorphic rock in Earth’s crust as well as in meteorites and the cells of organisms.

Through actual and metaphoric lenses, the relationship between the organic and non-organic is explored.

_{Lithos Panoptes 2025, Optical lenses, wood, steel, projector. Video 09:27 min Sculpture: H172 × W170 × D50 cm, Rear projection screen: H180 × W180 cm.}

_{Photography by Benjamin Deakin}

Mined magnetite is used in industrial and mechanical processes and its use in combustion engines and vehicle braking systems is releasing nanoscale pollutant particles into the air which are finding their way into human brain cells, vastly overwhelming the innate magnetite present, causing concerns linked to the development of degenerative brain diseases.

As well as referencing an ever watchful, many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, Lithos Panoptes also considers the numerous eyes (ocelli) of the chiton (a species of mollusc) whose rock crystal lenses have evolved over many millions of years to keep watch along rocky coastlines across the globe.

The only creature with eye lenses made of mineral and not protein, the chiton is also unique in having rows of teeth primed with magnetite which allow chomping on the hard rock surfaces it clings to. Some chiton’s teeth also contain the recently discovered mineral santabarbaraite, named after the mining district Santa Barbara in Italy where it was found – it is one of the few minerals named after a woman.

I was surprised to discover that the benedictions of Saint Barbara are still sought today, with shrines installed at tunnel entrances at Crossrail and even at CERN, the epicentre of scientific rigour. Before the boring machines were set in motion, services seeking her blessings were performed by local priests, with some even being winched down excavation shafts to carry out their duties.

Saint Barbara, who is associated with sudden death from fire, lightning and explosions, including military armaments, was adopted as patron saint of miners and tunnellers when the use of explosives in mining escalated during the 1600’s.

As the statues of Saint Barbara installed at these tunnel entrances are now buried, I have substituted images of my mother Barbara, coincidently born within hours of this Saint’s Day, in my video installation Lithos Panoptes.

Tucked into a dark recess of the gallery, Belly of a Rock suggests an imagined place of chemical conversations at the intersection of the organic and inorganic. A hybrid between rock, mollusc and technology this video sculpture responds to an early lifeform’s emerging self-awareness, desire to communicate and urge to create as described by Italo Calvino in his story ‘The Spiral’. We don’t always know what we are creating.

Thrilled to show these works alongside Julie F Hill @juliefhill, Rona Lee @ronaleeartist, Charlie Franklin @charlie__franklin and Deborah Tchoudjinoff @deboraht_ff

Julie F Hill’s sculptural print installation Parent Body uses scanning electron microscope imagery of samples recently returned from asteroid Bennu. The cave-like entrance, provides an embodied experience of the data and invites intimate contemplation of expanded scales. The ambiguous rock-like yet flowing forms echo the words of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen ‘stone is fluid when viewed within its proper duration’. Hill’s miniature work Return, considers the chemical and molecular cross exchanges between earth and space and in a gesture of reverse sample return (scientific missions and human extractive processes both take), a bead of Iridium is returned to the belly of asteroid Itokawa. Her small-scale embroidery work Water and Night, is based on observational studies of moonlight on water, continuing her explorations of water as the eye of landscape as proposed by Gaston Bachelard.

_{Julie F Hill, Parent Body, physically manipulated soy-ink print on tissue, chalk and clay pigments, chrome metal, water, clamp, funnel. c. W3 × H2.2 × D2.5m. 2025. Return, 3d print of asteroid Itokawa cast in plaster-of-paris, Iridium, 20 ×11× 8mm. 2024. Water and Night, silver metalized embroidery thread, 5.3 ×11 cm. 2025}

_{Photography Julie F Hill (1+3) Benjamin Deakin (2)}

Deborah Tchoudjinoff’s moving image installation work The City of Gold (with sound in collaboration with Joe Farley) considers vast, beyond human, geological timescales when continents have once again become as one. Starting as a short fiction text, Deborah began to form an imagined world of cities in a future Amasia. The fictional cities are named after minerals that are heavily sought – rare earths, copper, uranium, gold, and coal – hinting at a narrative of an Earth depleted of the resources we rely on. The City of Gold is one of the five imagined cities. In a world where these natural resources are no longer, she questions what it would look like and who would be the inhabitants.

_{Deborah Tchoudjinoff, The City of Gold, video with sound, sculptural installation, 2m × 4m × 2m. 2025.}

_{Photography B J Deakin (1) Julie F Hill (3)}

For Litho/Domous Rona Lee has chosen to work with book plates originating in the post-war period of the ‘great acceleration’ – a time in which population numbers, use of natural resources, popular consumerism, technological dependency and environmental degeneration burgeoned. Unified in their varying representations of the geologic but broking no contradiction between their celebration of extractive processes such as tourism and industrialisation and idealisation of the ‘wild’, the images selected by Lee conjure a pre-fall world in which imaginaries of lithic instability are firmly suppressed.

Two handfuls of silt (the residue of scientific samples collected at a depth of 4,000 meters), squeezed into the artist’s hands, fired and then gilded, form Rona Lee’s I want, I want, I want (2012), the title of which references William Blake’s engraving of the same name, wryly conjures the possibility of reaching down into the ocean’s depth, as though into a rock pool, while simultaneously cautioning against the folly and voracity of such ambitions.

_{Rona Lee, Litho/Domous, light panels, bookplates. 2025. I want, I want, I want, fired and chromed handfuls of sediment, 2012.}

_{Photography B J Deakin}

The sculptures presented by Charlie Franklin, Landform and FRAGS, are lumpy, solid looking forms that speak of geological debris or ruins. All three pieces were soaked in the waters of the North Sea, on the easterly edge of the UK. This process allowed the natural elements to determine their individual patination or colouring, along with indentations and scuffs, where materials have been worn away by salt and stone. Cave Drawings (Aladdin’s Cave, Series of Grottos, Marble Curtain, Fairy Grotto, and Solomon’s Temple) are a series of five found postcards depicting the caves at Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, UK which have been hand coloured by the artist. Franklin is interested in how the addition of colour can provoke a personality or aura within each cave interior, allowing for grand experiments to be realised on an intimate scale.

_{Charlie Franklin, Landform, Cardboard, found fabric, gaffer tape, gouache, scrim, plaster, adhesive, acrylic paint, copper leaf, sea water residue, 87 × 26 × 30cm. 2025. Cave Drawings, felt tip on found postcards, 14 × 9cm. 2025. FRAGS, cardboard, rope, gaffer tape, scrim, oil paint, aluminium leaf, plaster, adhesive, acrylic paint, copper leaf, seawater residue, work in two parts, 29 × 22 × 28cm / 12 × 29 × 23cm. 2025.}

_{Photography B J Deakin, Julie F Hill}

A highlight of our events was an Urban Geology Walk led by geologist Ruth Siddall.

“The gravel pit, like other mining holes, is the reverse image of the cityscape it creates — extraction in the aid of erection.” Lucy Lippard

Ruth lead a group walk to explore the geology of the local built environment around Regent’s Place and Fitzrovia. Her knowledge of geology is astounding and her passion for stone infectious. Everyone came away incredulous, having their eyes opened to the deep time history of the rocks that build our city. The deep, black, Archaean dolerite from Mashonaland in Zimbabwe that Ruth points to is 2.2 billion years old. The large block of polished stone shaped like a giant pebble, itself crammed with pebbles of other rocks, is a sculpture by John Aiken, Monolith & Shadow. A patchwork of Jurassic limestone from southern Spain is crowded with the spire-shaped fossil shells of the gastropod Nerinea, stained red and yellow with ochres.

After the walk Ruth joined us for a tour of the gallery – it was fantastic to hear her insight and corroboration on some of the research that fed into the artworks.

I offered Lithomancy drop-in sessions on Friday afternoons as part of a programme of events for The Geological Unconscious. Visitors were invited to throw gemstones with specially assigned characteristics onto a wooden board divided into geologically themed sections. They are then given personal interpretations based on the position of the cast stones by drawing from the esoteric ritual of lithomancy which seeks to divine the future from the reading of stones.

This performative experience proposes insights into the power and allure of stones emanating from the symbolic meanings attributed to them and exposes the entangled relations between the human and the geologic found in our language and desire to align the human condition with the lithic.

We had many interesting visitors to The Geological Unconscious and have made some wonderful new contacts. Not least among these was meeting Melanie Wheeler who has recently completed a residency in the UCL Geology Department where she worked with the technician to re-curate the rock room. Julie and I were lucky to be taken on a tour of the newly curated collection and receive gifts. So excited to have a beautiful sample of magnetite.

In ancient Greek, magnetite was known as “magnes lithos,” meaning “stone from Magnesia” – the region in Thessaly, Greece, where magnetite was first discovered, supposedly by a shepherd who noticed the nails in his boots were sticking to the rock under his feet.

As an additional daily drop in activity during The Geological Unconscious we offered cheong tasting. Chef Moonhyung Lee explored human-mineral entanglements through digestion using stones to create cheong (Korean fermented syrup). The use of weighing stones helps create the environment for preservation, a process which amplifies the bioavailability of minerals in food. Moonhyung Lee is a food designer with a background in graphics. She is currently based in London and works at zero waste restaurant Silo.

It was great to have so many people join us for our Closing Event artist talks and the launch of the exhibition publication with preface by Jason Groves and short essay by Ruth Siddall.

We also had the microscope set up at the closing event to look at some crystal growth in solutions prepared by Julie who works extensively with crystals.

I had tried some ‘Vitamin C’ crystal growing microscopy experiments at home. These images use a polarising filter under the microscope to reveal the vibrant colours. Next step will be to set up a timelapse of the crystals growing.

Summer Solstice 2025. The shortest night of the longest day brought an awful darkness. Collected the last two solargraphs I had installed at the Hogsmill Nature Reserve. These have been collecting light from the sun for a whole year, recording every sunrise and sunset. May the light shine through.

I was delighted that my video Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe was included in CARBON: Under Pressure, at the Mazumdar-Shaw Advanced Research Centre as part of Glasgow Science Festival 2025, in a special exhibition partnership with Science Gallery Bengaluru.

The video 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. Alongside the screening of the video I was also invited to give an artist talk and cloud chamber demonstration. It was great to share the wonders of the cloud chamber with visitors who were able to see cosmic ray trails for themselves.

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.

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 and combine with oxygen to create radioactive carbon-14 which enters our atmosphere. Plants absorb it during photosynthesis, and it is incorporated into their carbon skeleton, which we then eat. While plants and animals are alive, carbon-14 is continually replenished as the organism takes in air or food. But 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 current carbon-14 content can be determined and the time of death established. Cosmic ray activity gives us carbon dating techniques.

Reading

The Geological Unconscious – Jason Groves. Returning to this book that sparked the ideas we explored in our exhibition. A redirection of geology to consider a type of connection between things that are not in themselves geologic. Stones that stare, stones that speak. An image of the human could develop through geologic processes, becoming part of the mineral consciousness. Quoting Heather Sullivan ‘There is a difficulty for biology and philosophy to maintain a reliable distinction between life and non-life.’

The Writing of Stones – Roger Caillois. A paean to the capacity of minerals to form images within the imagination, which in turn is considered to be nothing more than an extension of matter.

The Performances of Sacred Places: crossing, breathing, resisting – edited by Silvia Battista. I read this for some background research while thinking about how I might make work responding to the abandoned sites of the cosmic ray detector huts at Haverah Park on the North Yorkshire Moors.

‘An horizon stands, in modern hermeneutics, for what is possible to see from the position of a specific observer. That is, not only a location in space but also a position in the cultural and historical apprehension of the world.’ Silvia Battista

The book opens by questioning relationships between the site and its ascribed attributes, which may be mercurial qualities not easy to define or quantify. It reflects on the performativity theories of Karen Barad which argue that matter, in its complexity, is an active participant in our relationship to the world and Jane Bennet’s call to recognise the ‘vitality of matter’ that crosses the human non human divide. In the section on ‘crossing’ the sensitive work of Louise Ann Wilson explores ritual around death, grief and loss through walking in rural locations echoing walking an interior landscape of memory. Walking the labyrinth and the pilgrimage are also considered as journeys that take place in physical and metaphysical space.

Tags Advanced Research Centre, air pollution, Argos Panoptes, art, Belly of a rock, carbon, carbon-14, Charlie Franklin, cheong, chiton, Cloud Chamber, Cosmic Chiasmus, cosmic rays, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, gemstones, Greek mythology, Hypha HQ, Jason Groves, Julie F Hill, lenses, lithomancy, Lithos Panoptes, magnetite, Melanie Wheeler, microscopy, minerals, mining, Moonhyung Lee, ocelli, Roger Caillois, Rona Lee, Ruth Siddall, Saint Barbara, santabarbaraite, solargraph, solstice, spiral, The Geological Unconscious, The Writing of Stones, traffic, urban geology

Categories Uncategorized

The Geological Unconscious

June 10, 2025 //

‘What truth could be more unexpected ….than the one in which the mineral envisions while also being envisioned.’ Jason Groves, The Geological Unconscious

‘This is the blueprint of nature itself; both hidden and revealed in a nodule of silica.’
Roger Caillois, The Writing of Stones

The Geological Unconscious opened with an exceptionally busy Private View. It was a fantastic evening with lots of great feedback. With a multi-disciplinary approach, large-scale installations and sculptural works sit alongside embroidery, video, expanded print and photographic work, to create material intimacies that help situate us in scales beyond the human.

My video installation Lithos Panoptes imagines a view of the world from the perspective of the rock via the molecular structure of magnetite. Referencing a many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, Argos Panoptes (always eyes still awake), the work considers the perpetual vigilance of rock as record keeper and witness.

Video of human activity projected through distorting optical lenses transforms the anthropocentric position to imagine the perspective of the rock.

Magnetite is a mineral found in magma and metamorphic rock in Earth’s crust as well as in meteorites. Magnetite nanoparticles are also found naturally in organisms and are known to aid magnetoreception, a
means whereby animals and birds orientate themselves by sensing polar direction.
Through these actual and metaphoric lenses the relationship between the organic and non-organic is explored. Imagery includes allusions to scientific research into the dramatic overwhelming of innate magnetite in human brain cells by nanoscale pollutant particles of magnetite released into the air by traffic; the unique qualities of the chiton, a mollusc with hundreds of tiny eyes made from rock rather than biological material and teeth primed with magnetite and containing recently discovered mineral santabarbaraite; Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners and tunnellers, adopted when the use of explosives in mining escalated in the 1600’s and whose benedictions are still sought today with shrines installed at tunnel entrances at Crossrail and even at CERN, the epicentre of scientific rigour.

Also showing the video sculpture Belly of a Rock – describing an imagined place of chemical conversations at the intersection of the animate and inanimate. Under a crusted shell, surfaces slide and scrape along lines of fissure, distended innards ooze and rocks moan as they are distorted by untold pressure. The turbulent spiralling of the molten core births rock and lifeforms which are acted upon by the drag of an oscillating magnetic field.

Julie F Hill’s large-scale sculptural print installation Parent Body, uses scanning electron microscope imagery of samples recently returned from asteroid Bennu. The data features detail of carbon-rich and organic ‘nano-globules’ which have been theorised as ‘proto-cells’. The sculpture evokes astro-geological-biological material lineages across deep space and cosmological time. In a contrast of scale, Julie is also showing Return, 3d print of asteroid Itokawa cast in plaster-of-paris with a bead of Iridium. Iridium is an rare-earth element more abundant in asteroids than the Earth’s crust. This miniature work considers the cross exchanges between space and earth and in a gesture of reverse sample return (scientific missions and human extractive processes both take), a bead of Iridium is returned to the belly of asteroid Itokawa.

Charlie Franklin’s work considers control, physical experience and memory within the natural landscape. Her research includes how formations such as standing stones, grottos and geological debris remain or change across time. With a particular interest in materials and the properties they hold, she is experimental in her approach to making. Everyday items including cardboard, plastic sheeting and gaffer tape are repurposed to build the foundations of her sculptural work. Franklin also collects found imagery such as postcards and photographs, which she reworks to become something else.

In Litho/Domous, Rona Lee layers photographic plates from mass produced ‘coffee table’ books onto lighting panels, utilising the ‘bleed’ between them that this reveals, to evoke the tectonic instabilities of
contemporary eco relations. Originating in the post war ‘golden age of capitalism’, and designed as statement pieces for home display, the aspirational focus of these image-rich publications on culture, travel, landscape, can be said to prefigure the arc of the smartphone in making the world consumable. At the same time titles such as The Mineral Kingdom and Library of Nations speak to the legacies of the Enlightenment project, offering up an order of things in which Mankind / the Anglophone world is positioned as ascendant and Nature – along with ‘other’ cultures – is ‘put on the table’.

Deborah Tchoudjinoff’s video installation The City of Gold takes a speculative look at Earth in the far future. Her work considers vast, beyond human, geological timescales where continents have once again become one. Past supercontinents create room to speculate upon future ones if we understand Earth as shifting, moving matter. Starting as a short fiction text Tchoudjinoff began to form an imagined world of cities in a future supercontinent of Amasia. The fictional cities named after the minerals that are heavily sought – rare earths, copper, uranium, gold, and coal – hinting at the narrative of an Earth depleted of the resources we rely on. The City of Gold is one of five imagined cities.

An accompanying events programme includes an urban geology walk with Geologist Ruth Siddall, discussing the origins of the local built environment; Cheong tasting by chef Moonhyung Lee who explores human-mineral entanglements through digestion; a crystal growing workshop led by Julie F Hill and I will be offering visitors lithomancy readings every Friday afternoon. The reading of stones proposes insights into the power and allure of stones emanating from the symbolic meanings attributed to them and exposes the entangled relations between the human and the geologic found in our language and desire to align the human condition with the lithic.

Once I start thinking of minerals as something we swallow to make our body function, I also start to think of how our body comes to be composed of these minerals, and that when we gradually decay after death we become mineral components again. So, the gesture of swallowing a tablet or vitamin pill is as magical, or let’s say as supernatural, as we want, because we really are swallowing a stone. – Otobong Nkanga

Link to Marina Walker essay The Writing of Stones published by Cabinet Magazine.

London once had many stones. They made convenient landmarks for gatherings and councils, or else marked boundaries or distances. As a result, they often crop up in place names – Link to The Londonist ‘Lost Stones of London’.

Gallery visits

Mónica Alcázar-Duarte in Cultural Reforesting Exhibition at Orleans House Gallery. In this exhibition, the artists remind us that we not only have a relationship with nature but also that we are nature. We are human animals. Together, with our more-than-human neighbours, we are a growing, singing, howling forest.

Under the big Suffolk skies of Orford Ness. Walking landscape that bears the scars, physical and emotionally resonant, of years of intense military top secret experiments. Here radar was developed, the aiming of bombs was refined, material vulnerability was tested with destructive, explosive projectiles under simulations of attack and famously it is the site of environmental tests during the late 50’s, early 60’s, in the development for detonation of the atomic bomb.

The weight of the shingle shored up around the buildings and on the roofs used to dampen the explosions.

There is a lot to respond to. It is now a spectacular nature reserve but apparently not so many birds here this year. We were lucky to see a short eared owl hunting and some gangly spoonbills in flight.

Kaori Homma Silent Echoes at The Watch House, Orford Quay – Inspired by Orford Ness, the UK’s only site of atomic experimentation, this exhibition explores the hidden histories and lingering memories within its landscape. Through the unconventional method of Aburi dashi or fire etching, the artist explores not only the visible remnants of the secret history of Orford Ness, but also the unspoken memories that linger in the air. Unlike ordinary drawings made by the pigments on the surface of paper, Homma’s works are made by fire which etches the images into the body of paper as a burn mark.

Electric Dreams at Tate Modern celebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who pioneered a new era of immersive sensory installations and automatically-generated works. This major exhibition brings together ground breaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation.

Desmond Paul Henry used a repurposed bombsight computer, designed to drop bombs more accurately, as developed at Orford Ness, to make a drawing machine which he then hand embellished.

The Pleasure of Misuse curated by Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek and Maria Hinel at Royal Society of Sculptors. ‘The humour that springs from manipulating or referencing the mundane is paradoxically self-reflexive – appropriated objects suddenly appear anthropomorphic, our laughter becomes directed at ourselves and the intermittent absurdity of the human condition. The Pleasure of Misuse explores the mechanics and psychology of humour in the everyday, considering its potential to heal and its power to disarm, creating the sense of complicity and the space for self-reflection amid these anxious times.’

Images – Andy Holden, Ty Locke, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Cornelia Parker, Richard Wentworth

Samuel Zealey, Angela Eames, Tony Fleming, Charlotte Guerard, John Strutton and Kate Fahey in Heavenly Skeletons at Coleman Project Space – six contemporary artists whose work repositions drawing as an expanded multidisciplinary field. Heavenly Skeletons is a dynamic investigation of how drawing translates abstract concepts into tangible form…

Gorgeous show with thoughtfully chosen works that like Samuel Zealey’s vertiginous sculpture balance perfectly.

Tags Aburi dashi, Andy Holden, Angela Eames, asteroid, Belly of a rock, Charlie Franklin, chiton, Coleman Project Space, Cornelia Parker, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, Electric Dreams, Hypha HQ, Hypha Studios, Indira Dyussebayeva-Ziyabek, Jason Groves, John Strutton, Julie F Hill, Kaori Homma, Kate Fahey, lithomancy, Lithos Panoptes, magnetite, Maria Hinel, minerals, Orford Ness, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Richard Wentworth, Roger Caillois, Rona Lee, Ruth Siddall, Saint Barbara, Samuel Zealey, sculpture, Tate Modern, The Geological Unconscious, Tony Fleming, Ty Locke

Categories Uncategorized

partial variations

April 9, 2025 //

Spending time in the print studio layering up magnetometer lines describing fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field. Using sheets of Japanese paper with Suminagashi ink swirls to evoke both ocean and magnetic currents. The lines are printed in metallic inks, relating to the idea of a lode, which in geology is a deposit of metalliferous ore that is embedded in a fracture in a rock formation or a vein of ore that is deposited between layers of rock.

The bands of magnetometer lines are used to signify the last three magnetic pole reversals. The most recent at 42,000 years ago (a short 500 year blip), then 780,000 years ago (continued for 22,000 years) and 1,000,000 years ago (continued for 40,000 years). This history of these reversals is stored in the ocean floor as magma flows up between cracks in the Earth’s crust, spreads and solidifies, capturing the direction of the poles in the orientation of the minerals.

Work in progress on Mineral Visions, a video sculpture with a particular focus on magnetite/magnetism and human relations. Editing video of Jepara seen under the microscope. This is a magnetic pallasite meteorite with an interior structure of densely packed olivine and iron-nickel, discovered in Indonesia in 2008. Pallasite meteorites formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They’re made up of minerals and remnant materials from the first few million years of the solar system, forming at a time when planets were only just coming together.

A very special research trip with fellow artists exhibiting in the upcoming show at Hypha HQ, The Geological Unconscious, to visit la Galerie de Géologie et de Minéralogie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Hosted by the curator of minerology we were privileged to see a selection of stones in the museum vault. The museum holds Roger Caillois’ stone collection as featured in his book The Writing of Stones. The photographs of this extraordinary collection do not compare to seeing them up close, from every angle. Must larger than anticipated, they are extracted from their snug foam packaging for yet another scrutiny of the human gaze. Caillois wrote at length about each stone, allowing his imagination to conjure metaphor and analogy from the syntax of the ancient crystal and sediment. He was fascinated by his own fascination with the stones which he saw as a desire to connect with the more than human and lose oneself in the enormity of the universe.

Roger-Caillois Malachite Photo Julie F. Hill

We also got to see some meteorites in the collection including a large one containing diamonds that had belonged to Caillois. The Canyon Diablo meteorite originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and crash landed into the Arizona desert approximately 49,000 years ago, with the force of more than 100 atomic bombs. The crater it left is nearly a mile across and 600 feet deep. Fragments were flung over an area of over 11 sqm from the point of impact where the main mass vaporized on contact. In the force of collision small diamonds formed from graphite and are found inside the highly recrystallized meteorite fragments at the rim of the crater.

I was also interested to a slice from one of the world’s largest specimens of pallasite, the Imilac pallasite discovered in 1822 which exploded over the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, possibly in the fourteenth century.

This spring Severn bore had been forecast to be a 4* event but arrived earlier than expected as more of a ripple. Not enough rain from the Welsh hills and no uplifting wind meant it was a more gentle, leisurely wave. It was still exciting to witness the change in the river from the slow glassy seaward flow to choppy, muddy turbulence carrying logs and assorted debris inland as the tidal wave rose into the channel. Such a beautiful morning to be on the river bank.

Gallery Visits

Glorious sunshine spot lit exuberant work at the Winter Sculpture Park hosted by Gallery No32 at a former Thamesmead golf course along the banks of the River Thames.

Clinging On, an exhibition of wall based sculptures curated by Poppy Whatmore at Glassyard Studios SW9. Instability is growing across the world, as we cling to liberal norms, ideas and values; these works connect a feeling of uncertainty to the physical, defying a gravitational pull or some internal force. These are physical, material or conceptual investigations of precariousness and the accompanying need to hold on. A packed PV means I have few images but I did capture the excellent Ocean Chasms/Crystal Chasms by Julie F. Hill and Caught Moon by Jane Millar.

Moving Landscapes at Jeu de Paume, Paris. This exhibition brings together photography, literature and science to address environmental questions but also those of identity or migratory flows; the landscape thus becomes a living and constantly changing territory. Artists include Mounir Ayache, Julian Charrière, Edgar Cleijne, Ellen Gallagher, Yo-Yo Gonthier, Laila Hida, Eliza Levy, Julien Lombardi, Andrea Olga Mantovani,Mónica De Miranda, Richard Pak, Mathieu Pernot, Prune Phi, Léonard Pongoa and Thomas Struth.

Events

More Life By Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman at Royal Court Theatre. Asking the question ‘what is life?’ but also what is the quality of life you would accept if you discovered you were a computer file. What constitutes real human experience? A brain sliced, scanned and rebuilt in the future to be transplanted into a new synthetic body holds memories of a past life and feels emotion but has limited access to new physical sensory experience – no need to eat or sleep. Does the urge to live, live on? Is it possible the first person to live forever has already been born?

Great to see Alan Watson again, after visiting Haverah Park with him last year, to hear more about Searching for the Origin of the Highest Energy Particles in Nature. This water being sampled in the image below had been in the tank for nearly 30 years yet was still clear and drinkable.

He began his lecture at The Royal Astronomical Society with a short history on the discovery of cosmic rays, taking us right back to 1785 and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb who discovered that bodies with like electrical charges repel and if they have different signs, the force between them makes them attract. In his experiments testing electrical charge with two metal balls suspended on silk threads to easily repel or attract he was surprised to find that even if his experiment was very well insulated the charge still leaked away. It took over a century before it was realised that the air was being ionised which spurred physicists to discover the source of this ionization. In 1912 Victor Hess made his famous balloon flight to over 5km with a rudimentary Geiger counter and no oxygen to discover that ionization increased with altitude and must have an extra-terrestrial source. Over another century on and cosmic rays still present a mystery as to their origin and how they gain their enormous energies.

Alan is interested in the ultra high energy subatomic particles from extragalactic sources with energies about a million times as high as the energy reached by human-made particle accelerators. To put these energy scales in context – a laser pointer has an energy of about 3 electron volts, which is also typical of the photons that come from the sun. The molecules in the air are rushing around at 300m per second with an energy of 1/40 eV. A low energy cosmic ray, the sort that passes through your body a million times in a night, has an energy of 1 giga-electron volts, a proton created at CERN ( the European Organization for Nuclear Research) has around 7 tera-electron volts. If there was a race between a CERN proton and a high energy cosmic ray (over 10¹⁸ eV ) starting at the centre of the galaxy, by the time the cosmic ray had reached Earth the CERN proton would not even have reached the moon.

The ultra high energy rays are very rare. To detect these particles physicists rely on observing extensive air shower arrays to amplify the arrival of the particle. By recording the secondary particles that are produced when a cosmic ray hits the upper atmosphere the energy of the particle can be calculated. The showers arrive is a disc like formation with footprints of around 1sqkm so it is necessary to have detectors spread over a large area. The detectors measure the arrival time of the secondary particles and this can help determine the direction of the particle to within 1 degree. The trajectory of the cosmic ray is affected by galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields making it very difficult to find the origin of the particle.

The shadow of the moon can be seen in data recordings of cosmic ray arrivals.

There are a few different methods of detecting cosmic rays. This can be done using scintillator plastic which gives off a flash of light when a particle passes through the medium. Using Cherenkov radiation is another method – this takes advantage of a naturally occurring electromagnetic shock wave giving off energy as light when a particle passes through a medium faster than light can travel through the same medium. The speed of light through water is only 3/4 as fast as when it passes through air, a cosmic ray with much more energy will travel through water at almost the speed of light. This phenomenon can even be seen with the naked eye if the location is dark enough. Astronauts experience flashes of light in the eyes from particles directly hitting the retina but also from particles passing through the vitreous fluid and causing Cherenkov radiation.

Another method is to detect the excitation of nitrogen, the same process that produces the aurora. This light is in the ultra violet spectrum.

By the end of the 1980’s when Haverah Park closed the discovery of the origin of high energy cosmic rays was still a long way off. What had been established was that at the very high energies, only one particle would fall within one km per century. To make further progress a much larger area of detection would be needed. The Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina at 3000 sq km is about twice the size of Surrey with many hundreds of water tanks. These tanks hold 10 tonnes of water but are the same depth as those at Haverah Park at 1.3m which turned out to be the optimal depth for the water tanks. Charged particles generated during the development of extensive air showers excite atmospheric nitrogen molecules, and these molecules then emit fluorescence light. The Cherenkov detectors at Pierre Auger are supplemented by fluorescence detectors installed at four elevated observation sites with 24 large telescopes specialized for measuring the nitrogen fluorescence in the atmosphere above the array.

The most exciting discovery came in 2017 when a convincing anisotropy in the arrival direction of cosmic rays of a certain energy was determined with some evidence that Centaurus A might be a source of these cosmic rays. There was also evidence of particles clustering close to the super galactic plane, an enormous, flattened structure extending nearly a billion light years across.

The galactic year is the duration of time required for the Sun to orbit once around the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy equivalent to approximately 225 million Earth years.

Art After Dark cosmic takeover around Piccadilly and Leicester Square from Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian. I saw the iridescent asteroid-sized moon rocks and inflatable UV reactive sculptures inspired by Schrödinger’s famous quantum physics paradox in bright sunshine

Book launch at Matt’s Gallery – Aqueous Humours Fluid Ground, edited by Kirsten Cooke published by Matt’s Gallery and the Poorhouse Reading Rooms. A night of experimental nonfiction, fiction, diagram, scent and moving image. An evening that activates a watery mapping, which denatures cartography through practices of immersion, aquatics, time travel and the posthuman lenses of geological, animal and machine vision. With contributions from Linda Stupart, Harun Morrison, Ezra-Lloyd Jackson, Melanie Jackson, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Charlie Franklin, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Lucy A. Sames, Maggie Roberts, Carl Gent. I was only able to stay for the first half of the evening but this gave a wonderful flavour of the book which I look forward to dipping into.

Listening

Journey to the Centre of the Earth – an Infinite Monkey Cage podcast with guests seismologist Ana Ferreira, geologist Chris Jackson and comedian Phil Wang. The immense pressures and searing temperatures that present engineering difficulties of ‘going into the Earth’s crust’ to explore what lies beneath are discussed along with the relationship between the tectonic plates and a stable atmosphere and new evidence of hidden subterranean shifting globular continents.

Reading

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. My initial reaction to this book was surprise that it was so engaging, but a few elements in, I was surprised to find the chapters shifted from autobiography to fiction with dubious and misogynistic content. I have persevered as the chapter on Carbon, which was recommended to me, is the last chapter in the book and I thought I should start at the beginning not the end. This final chapter is written with a different emphasis, with the explanation that carbon cannot be treated like other elements as it is not specific to one story but is everything to everyone. ‘Every two hundred years, every atom of carbon that is not congealed in materials by now stable (such as, precisely, limestone, or coal, or diamond, or certain plastics) enters and renters the cycle of life, through the narrow door of photosynthesis.’ The story of one atom of carbon is relayed but it is noted that the author ‘could tell innumerable other stories and they would all be true…. the number of atoms is so great that one could always be found whose story coincides with any capriciously invented story’.

Tags Alan Watson, Aqueous Humours Fluid Ground, asteroid, carbon, CERN, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Charlie Franklin, Cherenkov radiation, cosmic rays, Haverah Park, Jane Millar, Jeu de Paume, Julian Charrière, Julie F Hill, lode, magnetic field, magnetic stripes, magnetometer, meteorite, mineral visions, More Life, Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian, pallasite, Pierre Auger Observatory, Poppy Whatmore, Roger Caillois, Royal Astronomical Society, Severn bore, The Geological Unconscious, The Periodic Table, Victor Hess, Winter Sculpture Park

Categories Uncategorized

intrinsic

December 7, 2024 //

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, meaning 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.

The number of points on a wind rose began with the four cardinal points that were added to and refined over time. Aristotle designed an asymmetrical 10 point wind rose for “the study of things high in the air” (meteorology) which was later refigured by Timosthenes, a 3rd century BCE Admiral and geographer, naming a system of twelve winds and using this as a tool for navigation. The contemporary compass has its roots in the ancient classification of winds.

Freshly excavated. A new tablet for the series Instruments of the Anemoi, replacing a previous one based on the idea of a wind rose and set with etched copper markers, the designs of which are influenced by characteristics of the gods (anemoi) represented by each of the twelve winds.

Instruments of the Anemoi are a set of dodecagon tablets cast in Snowcrete, a cement with no magnetic minerals, as is used for instrument pedestals at a magnetic observatory. They also respond to a twelve sided anemoscope “table of the winds” carved in marble around eighteen hundred years ago and held at the Vatican Museums. Releasing the cast from the mould and collagraph is a rewarding process – if all the pieces have held their position during the concrete pour and vibrating to release trapped air bubbles. Luckily this time was a success.

The other two sculptures in the series. A hand beaten 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 155. Wafer thin fish shaped iron leaves were also used by 11th century Chinese geomancers. Nails and iron filings reveal an embedded magnetic field and hark back to a legend on the discovery of the lodestone, a naturally magnetic mineral, which recalls a Greek shepherd who noticed the nails in his boots were attracted to the rock beneath his feet.

Unsettling to find it is already one year on since A Stone Sky duo exhibition with Julie F Hill opened at Thames-side Studios Gallery and this work was first shown.

Around 95% of the universe is ‘dark’ to us, formed of unknown and possibly unknowable matter which may be inaccessible to us, but cosmic rays offer a tangible contact with outer space.

Giving The Breath of Stars a run to see if the cosmic rays are still there These images are stills of live action.

Cosmic ray detectors, mini computers, wooden box (20 x20 cm), video projection; live duration.

The Breath of Stars is a digital video work activated in real time by cosmic rays. These high energy particles arrive from outer space, interacting with life and technology on Earth. Coming from the heart of exploding stars or the depths of black holes, cosmic rays power across the universe with unimaginable energy. Some may come from phenomena yet to be discovered or even from other dimensions. A kaleidoscopic animation is projected every time a cosmic ray is recorded passing through the detectors. The animations are created from footage of cosmic ray trails filmed in my cloud chamber.

This cold damp weather is stimulating the moss regrowth on the apex pinnacle of The Absolute Hut (of action potential) that found a space in my garden after The Stone Sky exhibition this time last year. I had spent weeks preparing the recycled fence boards to make the North facing wall of the hut, painting them with various mixtures of buttermilk and yogurt blended with moss and was so excited when it began to grow. During the exhibition I would mist it every day. The beginning of my fascination with huts!

The Absolute Hut (of action potential) Wood, moss, paper, copper, video projection, video monitors ; 200 x 300 x 375 cm

Operating as a sensory hub 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. Neurons in the brain and nervous system 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.

A year on and the pyramidion that sits on top of The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) is evolving. The patination, which involved a variety of chemicals being applied to the copper in layers, is an ongoing process.

Sedimentary rock holds a geological history of the Earth’s magnetic field within its mineral components. The geomagnetic field, generated by the Earth’s molten core, varies through time; the magnetic poles migrate, go on excursions, or reverse polarity. During these periods of flux, the strength of the magnetic field changes, and this phenomenon is recorded in archaeological artefacts, volcanic rocks, and sediments. Limestone, a sedimentary rock, is often formed from crushed seashells, compressed over aeons. Crushed oyster shells were added to the obelisk base cast in Snowcrete.

This sculpture also embodies the passage of time, and a layering of information, in the months of collecting paper donations or scavenging the recycling bins, weeks tearing down the hundreds of prints and drawings into squares decreasing by 1mm every 50 sheets, drilling holes through the centre and hours to build the almost 3m stack. I’m very grateful to everyone who donated some of their work archive. These images are now secreted within the layers of the sculpture, hinted at where edges are exposed, echoing the Earth’s sedimentary knowledge.

The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge) Paper, steel, Snowcrete, oyster shells, patinated copper; 30 x 30 x 270 cm

This work is a reimagining of an ‘obelisk’ erected at Hartland Magnetic Observatory in the late 1950’s to be viewed through the north facing window of The Absolute Hut, it acts as a permanent azimuth mark from which the drift of the magnetic north pole is monitored. I am excited that this sculpture is being considered for exhibition in 2026 at the Royal West of England Academy in Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space curated by Ione Parkin with some amazing artists in the line up whose work I admire.

I first came across directional magnetic steel in the Electronic & Magnetic Materials Group open day at the National Physical Laboratory. Intrigued, I wanted to know if I could get hold of some to work with. I was put in touch with Union Steel Products who were very helpful in supplying a small amount (to them) of the material, but they import the product, and it arrives with an indeterminate protective matt grey coating. This was my challenge. It took many days of sanding and gently etching each sheet to reveal the pattern. It was a very temperamental material to work with, the pattern might appear but quickly tarnish and muddy over. So much of the work in the resulting sculpture was about the process of exposing an internal mechanism.

The dramatic Widmannstätten patterns found in meteorites due to their slow evolution through heat and pressure are also revealed through being cut, polished, and etched.

These secrets are not revealed lightly.

Domain of the Devil Valley Master

This work 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.

Work in progress. Mapping a response to the crystal structure of magnetite. Magnetite is the most magnetic of all the naturally occurring minerals on Earth found in igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. Nano-particles are also found in the human brain, heart, liver, and spleen and the cells of many other organisms, with some creatures using this for navigation techniques.

Magnetite crystals from road traffic pollution caused predominantly by vehicle frictional braking systems can outnumber natural magnetite in the human brain by 100:1 – this is a worrying trend as these crystals could be involved in our perception, transduction, and long-term storage of information in the brain.

Returning to my conversation with Alan Watson on the history of Haverah Park Extensive Air Shower Array.

The motivation for the Haverah Park project getting off the ground came largely from the British physicist Patrick Blackett, who won the Nobel prize in 1948 for his discoveries in the field of cosmic rays. The director of The Rutherford Lab (where the British atomic bomb was being developed in the 50’s), John Cockcroft (known for splitting the atom), decided there should be fundamental science going on as well as bomb building, so outside the security wire they built an air shower array to monitor cosmic rays. When this experiment was shut down, Blackett was keen to see work with shower arrays continue, and to be within reach of a university so that scientists could combine research with teaching. Blackett was working at Cavendish Laboratory with Ernest Rutherford, but moved to Birkbeck which did all the teaching in the evening so he could do research work through the day and teach in the evening. Here he met J G Wilson, also with an interest in cosmic rays, so when J G Wilson later moved to Leeds, Blackett suggested he set up an air shower array there, which was how the Haverah Park Project came about. Land was rented from local sheep farmers to install the observation huts.

Alan Watson took a lectureship job at Leeds in 1964 and began working for J G Wilson, becoming a leading member of the UK Extensive Air Shower project until its closure in the early 1990s.

We also talked about the mesmerizing power of a cloud chamber. As well as it being considered one of the most important developments for progression in the understanding of particle physics it is also emotionally and aesthetically captivating. Alan reminisced about a time at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition when a large commercial diffusion cloud chamber drew so much attention they were asked to turn it off, as mesmerised visitors blocked the entrance to the exhibition. It’s been a few years since I visited the Institute of Physics to see the large cloud chamber in the foyer, I wonder if it’s still there. I love the fact that I can build my own cloud chamber to see these cosmic visitors.

J G Wilson writing on the study of cosmic rays from his book About Cosmic Rays published in 1948, of which I have a copy:

‘It has its spectacular side, for the only laboratory which has been found big enough for its investigations is the whole of the universe to which men can win access. Most refined measurements have been made under conditions of difficulty and hazard, deep in mines and on icebound mountains, in the watses of western Greenland and cramped in the tiny gondola of a stratosphere balloon. These exploits, which are outstanding even in one of the most brilliant phases of experimental physics, are an unambiguous indication of the importance which is attached to the problems which are being studied.’

The following images from the same book show particle trails photographed in a cloud chamber -showing extensive showers and particles passing unhindered through metal plates.

J G Wilson writes about cosmic rays ‘…it is interesting to speculate on their previous history, for before it is overtaken by the catastrophe of hitting the earth, each particle is likely to have had a placid life for years, even millions of years, cruising through the wide open spaces of the universe’.

*Cosmic Chiasmus: crossing the universe* 2021 (video still)

The primary detectors used at Haverah Park were water Cherenkov detectors. These are large water filled tanks filled with a photomultiplier suspended in the water to capture flashes of Cherenkov light emitted by high energy cosmic rays as they pass through. The light is emitted because the cosmic rays pass through water faster than photons of light are able to, and as they do so they lose electrons thereby emitting light. The speed of light is only a constant within a vacuum, when it passes through other materials it get slowed down.

There were four 34 m²detectors at the centre of the array in the main hut, with three detectors located 500m from the central detector. Signals from the three distant detectors were sent along buried cables to the central hut, with the signal from the central detector passing down 500 m of cable buried underground so that all signals arrived at about the same time. When signals from the central one and two of the others arrived within ~2 x 10^-6s (called a coincidence), the signals from the photomultipliers in the 34 m² detectors were displayed on four oscilloscope screens and photographed by one camera which had its shutter permanently open. About 20 feet of film could record around 150 events. Developed and manually scanned by Alan, or a senior colleague, the film was checked for quality and to look for any large events (ultra high energy particles arriving) which were always exciting to find. The developed film was then sent to Leeds University Physics dept for measurements.

When there was a coincidence event at the centre of the array, a signal was sent by microwave to the distant detectors set across the moorlands (on average about 2km from the central hut), the signals from these distant groups of 4 x 13.5 m² were recorded digitally with the data going onto paper tape which was collected once each week.

Along with the oscilloscope traces being photographed, the number on a counter was included which gave the time of each event to the nearest half minute. In the 1960’s when this project began the time counter was advanced by a pendulum clock. Counting time in half minutes the team found that there are roughly one million half-minutes in a year, which gave a good excuse for an annual party.

There were some brief periods in the early 1980s when a small number of scintillator detectors were also used to make cross-checks of the results from the water Cherenkov detectors against those from projects in the USA (Volcano Ranch) and Yakutsk (Siberia). The scintillators retrieved from Imperial College’s Holborn project were brought to Haverah Park for an experiment to look at much lower energy showers.

Both types of detectors register flashes of light.

Blackett was the first person to work out the details of Cherenkov light produced in the atmosphere. According to a memoir on Blackett, written by astronomer Bernard Lovell, who knew him very well, Blackett attempted to see Cherenkov light from cosmic ray showers with the naked eye but there is no mention of whether he succeeded. In 1962, physicist Neil Porter who built the first water Cherenkov tank in the UK at Harwell in the 50’s, did an experiment with some volunteers who were asked to recline on a coach in a dark room with a small Geiger telescope attached to a pair of darkened goggles and acknowledge if they saw a flash of light when a cosmic ray was known to pass through the googles. The observers did seem to experience a flash of light but results were ambiguous as to whether this was Cherenkov light being emitted as the particle passed though the crystalline lens or vitreous humour of the eye or a direct excitation of the retina. The experiment was a collaboration with the Psychology dept at the University of Dublin and published in Nature under the Psychology heading giving an impression that the lights were perhaps a figment of the imagination.

Astronauts are very aware of this phenomenon. During the 1970 Apollo 13 mission to the moon the power supply was damaged and the astronauts sat in the dark for several days waiting to return to Earth. They experienced flashes in their eyes and realized that some of this was Cherenkov light. Some flashes were caused by particles directly hitting the retina but Cherenkov light caused by high energy particles travelling through the matter of the eye faster than light, is much brighter. The energy is proportional to the square of the charge of the particle that comes through, so if you have an iron nucleus which has a charge 26 x the charge of a proton, you get 26 squared or 600 times as much light emitted. Out in space there are many more of these high energy particles and so the astronauts would become very familiar with these flashes, even using them to line up accelerator beams by putting their head in the particle beam to see the flashes.

An astronaut once told Alan that he was convinced that the very first people fired into space probably saw these flashes, but didn’t like to tell NASA in case it turned out to be a physiological defect of theirs and they would be taken off the space programme.

Recently, a professor friend of Alan’s who is aware of this phenomenon, has unfortunately had to begin radiation treatment for a brain tumour. He has found due to the position of the tumour and angle of treatment he can see Cherenkov light flashing in his eyes as the electrons bombard the tumour.

When we met, Alan was just back from a conference in Italy discussing a paper titled ‘Ultra high energy cosmic rays: The Disappointing model’. They called it the disappointing model because they believed that the Auger results with particles at the highest energy were heavy not protons. I’m not sure I understood why it was disappointing although Alan did his best to explain: ‘It’s difficult to measure the mass of the particles of a certain energy. A deduction had been made that they have a mean mass, probably the same as nitrogen but mass changes in quite a complicated way as a function of energy. It’s to do with how deep the showers develop in the atmosphere.

The techniques aren’t good enough to separate the particle’s mass on a one by one basis, we can only do averages. It looks like the average mass is much heavier than protons, which everybody had believed for a long, long time. Protons would be at a much lower energy. As the nucleus is travelling through space, it sees photons from the microwave background radiation and the photon will chip off a neutron or a proton, if it chips off a neutron, the neutron decays into a proton, so you can get protons this way, but they will be of lower energy. The energy reduces roughly by the mass of the particle, so an iron nucleus has a mass of 56, if you chip off a neutron or a proton that proton will have an energy, which a 56th of the energy that the nucleus has – so it goes down in energy.

Some particles could come from Centaurus A, which is a relatively close radio galaxy, it is thought that the jets from radio galaxies provide conditions to accelerate the particles, but the problem is, because the cosmic rays are charged, they get deflected in the magnetic field of the Galaxy so you can’t track them straight back to where they came from. In terms of heavy particles that’s more of a problem because being charged means they bend even more. So one of the disappointing things is that cosmic ray astronomy is not going to be very easy. The Pierre Auger observatory has really been very successful in changing the picture quite a bit but because there are so few ultra high energy particles recorded it is slow progress. There are hopes to expand the observatory even more and also a plan to launch a satellite with detectors to pick up fluorescence light in the shower as it passes through the atmosphere, a similar phenomenon to aurora light.

Exhibitions

The Vinyl Factory: Reverb at 180 The Strand, a multimedia exhibition exploring the intersection of art and sound with artists including Theaster Gates, Es Devlin, Julianknxx, Kahlil Joseph, Caterina Barbieri, Stan Douglas, Virgil Abloh, Cecilia Bengolea, Jeremy Deller, William Kentridge, Jenn Nkiru, Hito Steyerl, Carsten Nicolai and Gabriel Moses. Fabulous show, shame I can’t share the sounds here. Loved Jeremy Deller’s takeover of a sixth form politics class. Some of the works I had seen before but that was fine as they are worth extra viewings.

Reading

I am beginning research reading for The Geological Unconscious exhibition Julie F Hill and I are co-curating at Hypha HQ Euston opening in May 2025.

Ursula Le Guin The Winds Twelve Quarters, a collection of profound short stories each introduced by the author reflecting on the intention within.

Long after I wrote the story (The Stars Below) I came on a passage in Jung’s On the Nature of the Psyche: ‘We would do well to think of ego-consciousness as being surrounded by a multitude of little luminosities…Introspective intuitions…capture the state of the unconscious: The star-strewn heavens, stars reflected in dark water, nuggets of gold or golden sand scattered in black earth.’ And he quotes from an alchemist, ‘Seminate aurum in terrain albam foliatam’ – the precious metal strewn in the layers of white clay. Perhaps the story is not about science, or about art, but about the mind, my mind, any mind, that turns inward to itself.

Roger Caillois The Writing of Stones 1970 is a tribute to the collection of extraordinary stones Caillois acquired and which now resides in The National Museum of Natural History Paris. In these poetic chapters he describes in detail each of the stones and his fascination with the images and associations they conjure in his imagination. Questioning and celebrating the allure of the mineral and the stories hidden and revealed over millennia.

I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the centre of things; a dim, almost lost memory. or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.

Tags A Stone Sky, Aóratos, action potentials, Alan Watson, Apollo 13, astronauts, Bernard Lovell, Centaurus A, Cherenkov light, Cloud Chamber, compass rose, copper patination, cosmic ray detector, cosmic rays, crystal structure, directional magnetic steel, dodecagon, Domain of the Devil Valley Master, Ernest Rutherford, extensive air shower, Goss pattern, Haverah Park, huts, Institute of Physics, Instruments of the Anemoi, interference, Ione Parkin, J G Wilson, Jeremy Deller, Leeds University, magnetite, meteorology, moss, Neil Porter, obelisk, oscilloscope, Patrick Blackett, Pierre Auger Observatory, Roger Caillois, Royal Society Summer Exhibition, sculpture, sedimentary, snowcrete, spiral, The Absolute Hut (of action potential), The Azimuth Obelisk (of sedimentary knowledge), The breath of stars, The Geological Unconscious, twelve winds, universe, Ursula le Guin, water Cherenkov detector, Widmannstätten patterns, wind rose

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A place

July 28, 2013 //

My visit to the Venice Biennale was marked by my receiving news that I had a place at the Royal College of Art for the Autumn. A great start to a very inspiring few days.

It does feel a bit like I am going to be launched into space. Exciting and an amazing opportunity but also not knowing what to expect with anxieties that I will be lost or unable to cope.

Bedwyr Williams ‘The Starry Messenger’ and Sarah Sze’s Triple Point both explore feelings of place within the universe. Very apt for my frame of mind.

Wales in Venice

‘The Starry Messenger’ explores the relationships between stargazing and the individual, the cosmos, and the role of the amateur in a professional world.

Inside the former church and convent in a darkened room there is a small observatory with a door ajar through which we can see the starry cosmos. There is the sound of a man weeping, just like Kevin does when he thinks about the vastness of space and his own insignificance. Moving through the installation you walk under glass with household objects placed on its surface above your head which I took as a possible reference to Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing ‘A cloudburst of material possessions’. Maybe it is space debris.

Bedwyr Williams The Starry Messenger

There is a film with a Mighty Boosh style protagonist who represents a character trapped within a mosaic mural.

Bedwyr Williams The Starry Messenger

From the geological formation of stone out of oozing mud through its journey and subsequent use in a mural to the demolition of the building and its return to the earth. From looking out at the stars through a telescope to ‘staring into space’ the outer and inner worlds collide in a wonderfully amusing narrative encompassing the life the universe and everything dialogue.

Bedwyr Williams The Starry Messenger

Sarah Sze explores the desire to locate our place within a disorienting world.

Sarah Sze Triple Point

Her fragile sculptures echo the balance and chaos of the world around us.

Sarah Sze Triple Point

They appear to spin or be in the process of expansion, beautifully mysterious like the working of the atom or the universe they are full of wonder.

Sarah Sze Triple Point

Playing with pattern, order and taxonomy she creates a laboratory busy in its own pursuits which makes us feel we are close to understanding something great.

Sarah Sze Triple Point

I was excited to see she had used moss a lot throughout this installation, even turning its image into wallpaper.

Sarah Sze Triple Point

Triple Point refers to the phase when gas, liquid and solid form of a substance are all in equilibrium, her use of natural forms keep our ideas grounded in our surroundings while drawing us into the mysteries of evolution.

The extraordinary collection of stones once owned by artist Roger Caillois were on display in the Central Pavillion.

Roger Caillois Stones

Caillois believed that nature should be examined as something other than as the utilitarian force that Darwin purported and that aesthetics and the need for decoration should be considered integral to our understanding of the natural world.

Roger Caillois Stones

He considered the beautiful patterns within ancient natural forms were a sort of cryptic ‘universal syntax’, a unifying aesthetic language.

Roger Caillois Stones

He wanted to understand the mysteries of the subjective experience through its relationship to factual reality.

I find it fascinating trying to understand the aesthetic experience.

Gerhard Richter’s tapestries at Gagosian, Davies Street emanate pure aesthetic pleasure, colours and form coalesce erupt and fade.

These works are based on Abstract Painting (724-4) (1990). The visual effect of the tapestries is a Rorschach-like multiplying of the forms and colours of the original canvas.

Gerhard Richter

Like entering a hypnotic state, like staring into space both literally and metaphorically you are transported to a place where it feels familiar and strange at the same time.

Gerhard Richter

Venice was a perfect location to think about mysteries, the sacred and the wonders of the world.

Tags aesthetics, Bedwyr Williams, cosmos, evolution, moss, pattern, Roger Caillois, Sarah Sze, space, stones, universe, Venice Biennale, wonder

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The Geological Unconscious

partial variations

A place

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