Archives for posts with tag: The breath of stars

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

Categories Uncategorized

formation

August 5, 2024 //

In search of huts. I have been on a mission to locate and document the remaining huts from a cosmic ray detection experiment at Haverah Park on the Pennine moorland in North Yorkshire.

When high-energy cosmic rays enter the atmosphere, they set off a chain-reaction particle cascade known as an extensive air shower. The Haverah Park experiment was home to one of the largest extensive cosmic ray air shower arrays in the world.

It was operated by the Physics Department of the University of Leeds for 20 years, closing in 1987. An array of over 200 water-Cherenkov detectors covering 12 km2 were active during its operation and many 1000’s of extensive air showers were recorded, including ones of such size that the cosmic rays that generated them had energies previously unthought of, adding to the mystery of where they come from.

The large energy density of cosmic rays is close to that of starlight, adding their own glow to the sky as they blast across the universe. Cosmic rays are the atomic nuclei of elements ranging from hydrogen to uranium accelerated to high energies, with half being protons and most positively charged.

Much of the technology used to observe cosmic rays has changed little over the decades since first inventions and still plays a role within newer technologies.

It appeals to me that the excitement of observing particles from other galaxies happened at these unassuming structures.

Sharing the landscape of Haverah Park cosmic ray air shower detector array huts are the striking white radomes that shield secret radar equipment at RAF Menwith Hill. The spy station has been there since the cold war space race began in the mid-fifties. Little is known about what goes on here but broadly it is said to gather electronic intelligence and is operated by US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). As satellite technology has increased so has the number of radomes which now number 37 at the site. It is worth noting that satellites are vulnerable to unpredictable space weather and cosmic ray interference.

The total number of particles detected in a shower can be used to estimate the energy of the primary cosmic ray. Some particles contain the highest energy form of radiation known to exist anywhere in the universe and their origin is one of science’s greatest mysteries. Air showers of secondary particles generated from a primary cosmic ray hitting the Earth’s atmosphere are spread over many kilometres when they hit the ground so it is useful to have detectors spread over a large area. The difference in the time of arrival of recorded particles at multiple detectors can be used to estimate the arrival direction of the primary cosmic ray. However, this does not necessarily reveal the origin of the particle as magnetic fields within the galaxies bend their trajectories so that the memory of their original direction is obfuscated.

The cosmic ray detectors I made for the The Breath of Stars use a block of plastic scintillator which emits a short burst of UV light when a charged particle passes through it which is picked up by a single-photon-sensitive device. The detectors used at Haverah Park are water Cherenkov detectors. These are large steel tanks of purified water with photon sensitive detectors in the water.

While the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant its speed through a material may be significantly reduced as it is slowed by the medium. A particle passing through a material faster than that at which light can travel through the material loses electrons thereby emitting light. When cosmic rays pass through the water tanks, they emit Cherenkov radiation because they travel faster than the speed of light in water. Cherenkov light is similar to the production of a sonic boom when an airplane is traveling through the air faster than sound waves can move through the air. Pavel Cherenkov along with Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm discovered and demonstrated this phenomenon in 1934, astonishingly, it had been predicted in 1888 by Oliver Heaviside, and in 1910 Marie Curie had noticed a strange blue glow from her radium experiments.

Some of the huts from the Haverah Park experiment are no more than a concrete shadow of where they once stood.

Other huts from the Haverah Park experiment are in a state of collapse.

One hut proclaiming ‘You Are Being Watched’ was as impenetrable as Menwith Hill. Not a gap to peep through and securely barred. Only cosmic rays can enter here.

There are so many high energy particles hurtling around the universe that they almost equal starlight in energy density. Cosmic rays travel at almost the speed of light and because they are charged particles most cosmic rays are confined, spiralling within our galaxy for a million years or more, by the magnetic fields which permeate it.

Five million cosmic rays pass through your body each day. Some will collide with atomic nuclei. A particle passing through a material at a velocity greater than that at which light can travel through the material emits light. Maybe we glow a little.

Following the disappearing trail. Haverah Park hut with an intriguing hexagon tank.

Inside Hut no. 7 is a dumping ground. Waste is a big problem in space as well as on Earth. The thickening shell of space junk in low Earth orbit, if left to accumulate, could cause a conductive shield to form, weakening the effectiveness of the magnetosphere, which protects life on earth from most cosmic radiation.

A decaying wall map of the entire Haverah Park experiment is just visible through a window of one of the huts in the central hub, but not much else remains inside.

It looks like these huts have been recently emptied into a skip which, by chance, was collected while I was there. Unfortunately, the driver had no enlightening information for me about the future of the huts.

Cherenkov radiation is a form of energy that gives off a blue glow when electrically charged particles are moving at speeds faster than light is able to travel through the same medium. The experimental physicist Blackett, who received the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics for his investigations into cosmic rays, believed that extensive air showers should produce flashes of light that could be perceived by the human eye when lying down and looking upwards under dark skies. Whether he achieved seeing this phenomena himself is not known, but he inspired colleagues Galbraith and Jelley, in 1952, to devise an experiment to detect light from air showers using a rubbish bin painted black on the inside, a recycled searchlight mirror and a small phototube. With these simple items, they made the first observation of Cherenkov light produced by cosmic rays passing through the atmosphere. Not all the twinkling in the night sky is starlight.

During the Haverah Park experiment, the water Cherenkov detectors deployed across the moors were connected by underground cables and transmitted information to the control huts via radio signals in the microwave frequency range. All communication is now severed. Cut cables coil in rain filled tanks. The cosmic rays are still pounding down upon these new unwatched ecosystems but the detectors have moved elsewhere.

I am looking forward to meeting Professor Alan Watson FRS here in the autumn. He is eminent in the field of cosmic rays and helped initiate the extensive air shower project, working at Haverah Park for 25 years. He has kindly agreed to meet and share his insider knowledge of the history and operations at the site.

The idea to build a truly giant shower array was launched by Alan Watson and Jim Cronin shortly after Haverah Park was decommissioned and thanks to the ground breaking work undertaken in these huts, it evolved to become the vast Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, named in honour of the man who first discovered extensive air showers.

Peering into the darkness, trying to fathom the structures of the universe or what’s inside the hut, and the nature of that relationship.

The ultra high energy particles detected at Havarah Park and new arrays across the globe are very rare, possibly less than one per square kilometre per century, so it is big news when one arrives. Because they have such high energy, it is thought they shouldn’t be affected by galactic magnetic fields, and therefore, the direction of the particle could be determined and the source located. The Amaterasu particle, named after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, the second most powerful particle to be recorded, appears to have emerged from the Local Void, ana area with no astronomical objects that might produce such a particle. There is no explanation of where these particles come from, just hints of bigger mysteries to unfold.

Many water tanks remain around Haverah Park, stripped of their purpose as water Cherenkov detectors they now reflect the sky in the rainfall they collect rather than record showers of particles from space.

During operation, huts were built in groups of three, each with six large galvanised steel tanks lined with white plastic to diffuse the light and filled with local purified water. Each tank was monitored by extremely sensitive photon detectors which recorded the Cherenkov light emitted as particles passed through the water. At the end of the large array experiment, one of the detectors was opened, and the water was found to be crystal clear and good enough to drink. The proof that water could be kept bacteria-free in a sealed container for over 25 years gave confidence in using the same technology for a future larger cosmic ray detector array to be developed.

Haverah Park was once one of the largest extensive air shower arrays in the world, with an area of 12 km2, but in the end, it just wasn’t big enough.

When Alan Watson and Jim Cronin proposed building a new 3000 km2 shower array, the question from funders was, ‘why do you want to make the array so large?’. The answer is, of course, to discover those known and unknown unknowns, but funders don’t usually like unpredictable outcomes. Luckily their plea was bolstered by the Fly’s Eye Cosmic Ray Detector Array out in the Utah Desert recording the Oh-My-God particle in 1991, it’s energy was 40 million times greater than that of any particles ever produced in any terrestrial particle accelerator. This and other evidence of extremely high energy particles sparked interest in the field of astrophysics and validated the discovery of similar particles at Haverah Park, which had not been taken seriously at the time. This ambitious proposal gained momentum during the 1990s to become the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, with the detector design developed from the water Cherenkov tanks so successfully operated at Haverah Park. The huts here may be in ruins, but their legacy lives on at the world’s largest extensive air shower detector array, which is edging closer to answer the question ‘Where do ultra-high-energy cosmic rays come from?’

I am looking forward to developing work responding to the legacy of the Haverah Park experiment and building on my experience of creating The Absolute Hut (of absolute potential) New surfaces to explore, more moss, and also lichens here.

‘The Belly of a Rock’ video has waited a long time for its crusted shell. A hybrid between rock, mollusc, and technology inspired by the chemical conversations and urge to create described by Italo Calvino in his story ‘The Spiral’. We don’t always know what we are creating. Within ‘the belly’ 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 core births rock and lifeforms acted upon by the drag of the oscillating magnetic field.

I have acquired a large number of photochromic optical lenses. These I have sorted by diameter, thickness and distortion. Initial thoughts about their use include using them as petri dishes to grow crystals which are embedded into small concrete hexagonal pillars of differing heights with reference to the geology of giants causeway. Using them to create composite windows into a new hut structure filled with video projections referencing the fly’s eye cosmic detector array.

A good workout on the guillotine making 201 cuts in copper sheet in preparation for a new concrete tablet in the Instruments of the Anemoi sculpture series.

Gallery and other outings:

Beverley Duckworth’s installation Surplus at Goldsmiths MFA final show. Beverley’s work is grown through a diligent process of care. Found materials are literally given new life in the seeds which are embedded into them, which then transform and colour them. The installation includes an intermittent sound element of recordings of the melody played by waste trucks in Taiwan to call people to bring out their rubbish.

Apparently I wasn’t the first person to be struck by similarities to the landscape of Yangshuo near Guilin China. I visited in 1984 and think it is no longer a quiet little village.

It was the first time I had been back inside the Ben Pimlott building at Goldsmiths since by own graduation, a scary twenty years ago. The building was brand new then and the views with little visible green fed into my installation Re:construction – a large screen print with tiny viewing hole to a tiny oasis amidst the grey, albeit a synthetic one.

Yinka Shonibare Suspended States at Serpentine South. Horrors of war and colonialism are filed under dazzling colour, birds on the brink of extinction stare in plea or accusation, beacons of light in the darkness come from miniature replicas of sanctuaries.

Yinka’s socially engaged inclusive practice spills over into real help for artists and communities. The exhibition celebrates Guest Projects and G.A.S. Foundation in Lagos. Guest Projects is such a generous idea and I have been so lucky to benefit from it with the project Laboratory of Dark Matters

Being awarded a month’s residency at Guest Projects was crucial to the success of Laboratory of Dark Matters as a site for developing ideas and subsequently touring the project. Wonderful to meet Yinka and also to be part of the selection committee for the next round of projects.

Judy Chicago Revelations at Serpentine North. The highlight of this show is the video documenting The Dinner Party (1974-79) installation and the preparatory drawings and sample plate. What a shame the actual installation wasn’t here, I will have to visit the Brooklyn Museum, New York sometime to see it. The research, collaborations, crafts and designs that went into creating it was phenomenal.

Saw Complicité’s excellent Mnemonic at The National Theatre, 25 years after first seeing it at Riverside Studios. ‘A body is found in the ice, and a woman is looking for her father while a man searches for his lost lover. Mnemonic is as much about origins as it is about memory, and remembering what is lost. Mnemonic asks us: what is our place in the natural world? How have human relationships with the environment shaped patterns of migration? Who are we, and where do we come from? ‘

Visited the delightful mellow brick country home and extensive gardens of pioneering naturalist Gilbert White at Selborne. His book ‘The Natural History of Selborne’ (1789) has never been out of print since it was published more than 230 years ago. He was brought to many people’s attention, including mine, during the pandemic and lockdowns of 2020 when writer Melissa Harrison included his diary readings in her podcast The Stubborn Light of Things.

Tags Alan Watson, Amaterasu particle, atmosphere, Belly of a rock, Beverley Duckworth, Cherenkov radiation, Complicite, copper, cosmic ray detector, cosmic rays, Eskdalemuir Magnetic Observatory, Fly's Eye, Gilbert White, Goldsmiths, Guest Projects, Haverah Park, Igor Tamm, Ilya Frank, Instruments of the Anemoi, Italo Calvino, Jim Cronin, Judy Chicago, Laboratory of Dark Matters, lenses, magnetic field, Marie Curie, Melissa Harrison, Menwith Hill, Mnemonic, moss, Patrick Blackett, Pavel Cherenkov, physics, Pierre Auger, radiation, space junk, spiral, starlight, technology, The Absolute Hut (of action potential), The breath of stars, University of Leeds, Yangshuo, Yinka Shonibare

Categories Uncategorized

orbital

March 3, 2024 //

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Private view of finalists work. Shortlist here

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery Visits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listening

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

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

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

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

Categories Uncategorized

dimensions

February 3, 2024 //

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery Visits

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

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

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

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

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Uncategorized

A Stone Sky

December 12, 2023 //

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

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

Installation shot by Ben Deakin Photography.

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

Images by Ben Deakin Photography

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

Images by Ben Deakin Photography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Uncategorized

causation

October 18, 2023 //

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar lift solution is screen printed onto the copper pieces.

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

They are then left to dry before being etched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery Visits

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

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

Categories Uncategorized

significant number

July 1, 2023 //

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

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

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

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

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

I am super pleased with how the base turned out.

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

Open Studios at Thames-side Studios 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery Visits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories Uncategorized

volition

February 4, 2023 //

Super happy with the beautiful box, with walnut burr veneer, made by the skilled hands of Bruce Watson to house my cosmic ray detectors for cosmically interactive work The Breath of Stars. Bruce has a workshop opposite my studio at Thames-side Studios. The attention to detail is immaculate.

The Breath of Stars is a digital video work activated in real time by the passage of cosmic particles travelling from distant galaxies. These subatomic visitors from outer space are created during super nova explosions or by phenomena we are yet to discover.

Work in progress continues with tearing down paper squares for the Azimuth Obelisk.

Single vertical forms embody a primitive power. Etymologically, an obelisk should be made from a single quarried stone. To quarry one enormous piece of rock without it fracturing required power and money. To erect it required complex engineering skills. Since the first obelisks were raised in Egypt, often in gateway pairs with gilded tips for the sun god Re to anoint, they have escaped the confines of their original meaning. Originally a motif of immortality and communion between heaven and earth, its phallic symbolism has been co-opted by many nations, institutions and companies for its crude assertion of male power. Mystics shape crystals into obelisks as symbols of pent up negative energy in need of release. Perhaps the many memorials to the dead, marked by an obelisk usually cast in concrete, attempt to embrace the notion of immortality through remembrance in those carved names.

I don’t know why an obelisk was chosen as the azimuth marker at Hartland Magnetic Observatory. It’s hard to establish its actual shape as it can barely be seen now through the woods. Perhaps one day I will go back with binoculars.

I have imagined my obelisk sculpture as sedimentary rock with the layers holding clues to the fluctuations of the Earth’s magnetic field it stands as constant sentinel to. Made from recycled prints it is also a memorial to all the images buried in its form.

Looking North.

After unsuccessfully trying RHS Wisley for a book or advice on growing moss I have got some guides from the Field Studies Council. Hopefully these will help me choose the sort of moss that will be appropriate to use for the north wall of the Absolute Hut Installation. I am also beginning to collect wood to grow the moss on. The exhibition is several months away but I think it can take a while for moss to get established. The advice seems to be to liquidise some moss with yoghurt and spread it on the surface you want it to grow on.

The geographic north pole lies in the middle of the Arctic Ocean covered in shifting sea ice where the sun rises and sets only once per year. All lines of longitude converge here and hence all time zones. It is known as true north to distinguish it from the magnetic north pole.

However, as the Earth’s axis of rotation wobbles slightly in an irregular circle called the Chandler wobble this pole is not fixed. Where Earth’s rotational axis meets its surface is known as the instantaneous north pole and the north pole of balance, lies at the centre of this circle. The celestial north pole is where the axis line of the Earth extends into the night sky.

The magnetic north pole is where the planet’s magnetic field is vertical and a compass needle here would dip and try to point straight down – hence its other name: the magnetic dip pole.

The north geomagnetic pole is the northern dipole of the planet. When looked at from space the Earth may look like a bar magnet with two dipoles, but the geomagnetic poles are an approximation arrived at by reducing Earth’s complex and varied magnetic field to that of a simple bar magnet. The north dip pole lies in Northern Canada, the northern dipole is roughly off the northwest coast of Greenland.

The magnetic field lines of the Earth flow from south to north magnetic pole which is the opposite of a bar magnet where the lines flow north to south. The north magnetic dip pole is where the earth’s magnetic field lines pull toward the planet, acting like the south pole of a bar magnet. The north pole of a bar magnet is attracted to the magnetic north pole of the Earth, not resisted as two north poles on magnets repel one another.

The extraordinary paintings in the Lascaux Caves of southwestern France may include representations of constellations and therefore be the earliest star maps dating back to nearly twenty thousand years ago. The dots set around an Aurochs eye in the Hall of Bulls may be the Hyades star cluster around the star Aldebaran as the eye of Taurus. Other dots are similar in configuration to the Pleiades. Now sealed off from the contamination of human breath the public can visit a replica site to gain a sensory experience of the scale and artistry. Painted on to the wall of the shaft is a bull, a strange bird-man and a mysterious bird on a stick. which according to Dr Rappenglueck, form a map of the sky with the eyes of the bull, birdman and bird representing the three prominent stars Vega, Deneb and Altair. Around 17,000 years ago, this region of sky would never have set below the horizon and would have been especially prominent at the start of spring.

The Pleiades visible to the naked eye from almost anywhere on Earth appear as a small asterism of six or seven stars. At a distance of about 444 light years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth. Chased by Orion the seven sisters were transformed by Zeus and flung into the sky to escape the hunter. Through a lens, we can now see there are a lot more sisters drifting through a cloud of interstellar dust which scatters the light into a misty blue cloak. Image by Emil Ivanov.

A third research trip to Snettisham.

This time I shared the experience with good friends Ruth and Odile and we joined an RSPB group visit which allowed parking nearer the viewing site avoiding the usual long walk in the dark. The drive along the narrow potholed track, with no headlights which would alarm the birds, is a challenge and I was grateful for another car who had visited before leading the way. It was a chilling -7 at 7am making it difficult to use the camera with frozen fingers.

Eventually the sun cut through the low mist giving us stunningly beautiful skies to watch the skeins of pink footed geese leave their roost to go in search of sugar beet fields.

Having spent the night on the mudflats to avoid predators they leave at dawn in family groups. If there is a bright moon shining, they might not return from the feeding grounds at night as they can see if there is any danger approaching.

Before leaving Norfolk we visited Welney Wetland Centre, Britain’s largest area of seasonally-flooded land and the setting for mass winter gatherings of many thousands of wild ducks, geese and swans. Each winter thousands of Bewick’s and whooper swans make their winter migration to the UK, to escape colder countries.

They have popular swan feeding sessions and talks about the site and the work they do to protect the wildlife here such as liaising with the electric companies to hang reflectors on the overhead cables to make them more visible to flying birds.

Walking around the frozen fens reminded me of the James Turrell installations of diffuse light that makes it hard for the eye to focus.

The light-sensitive molecules that allow perception of the Earth’s magnetic field, could also influence other responses such as control of circadian rhythms and tracking the difference between night and day. In birds, Cryptochrome molecules are located in photoreceptors in the eye and react to the Earth’s magnetic field when excited by blue light enabling orientation and navigation. Light sensitive molecules can also be found in cell nuclei and may influence physiological processes, such as fattening and migratory motivation, working as a trigger for changes in behaviour.

Light vibrates up and down as it travels in waves and these vibrations can be vertical, horizontal, or at any angle in between. The waves that make up sunlight are evenly distributed across all angles but polarised light is made up of waves with the vibrations at only one angle. Polarising lenses absorb horizontal light while letting through the vertical waves reducing the overall intensity of the light that passes through. Light also becomes partially polarized when it reflects at an angle from a surface such as when the sun is low in the sky. Research led by Rachel Muheim has shown that birds are better able to use their magnetic compass when the direction of polarised light exciting the cryptochrome molecules is parallel to the magnetic field. She suggests that it is more useful for birds to sense the magnetic field during sunrise and sunset for orientation to determine their direction before migrating or leaving the roost. In the middle of the day, when the polarised light is approximately perpendicular to the magnetic field, it can be an advantage that the magnetic field is less visible, so that it does not interfere at a time when visibility is important to locate food and to detect predators.

Gallery Visits

Sarah Kent and Claire Loussouam performance interacting with iterations of the work Graft at the finissage of Liz Elton’s Work in Progress residency at Fitzrovia Gallery. Great to see the gallery filled with these delicate wafting landscapes made from biodegradable materials and natural dyes.

Strange Clay at Hayward Gallery explores the possibilities of thinking through making.

The exhibition features works by Aaron Angell, Salvatore Arancio, Leilah Babirye, Jonathan Baldock, Lubna Chowdhary, Edmund de Waal, Emma Hart, Liu Jianhua, Rachel Kneebone, Serena Korda, Klara Kristalova, Beate Kuhn, Takuro Kuwata, Lindsey Mendick, Ron Nagle, Magdalene Odundo, Woody De Othello, Grayson Perry, Shahpour Pouyan, Ken Price, Brie Ruais, Betty Woodman and David Zink Yi.

Stand out favourites were the dark volcanic and glistening contrasting surfaces of Salvatore Arancio’s work and the extraordinary and impressive scale of the squid in a pool of corn syrup and Japanese ink by David Zink Yi

Abraham Kritzman A Hand Beneath The Hills at Danielle Arnaud. I was intrigued to visit to see the small pillar structures and the interesting use of ceramics. Kritzman doesn’t like to give a lot away about his work so impressions are not pre-directed. The camouflage paintwork on the sculptures, crenellations and frenetic lines in the prints had a war like ambience. The influences however appear to come from the insect world of metamorphism, burrowing and speed.

Reading

Being a Human by Charles Foster. I got this book as I thought it might offer some points for discussion at the upcoming debate Being Human in relation to the night sky to be held at Allenheads Contemporary Arts. Unfortunately it didn’t have any useful insights and was rather judgemental and smug despite some clever and comic attempts at self effacement. The sort of smugness that emanates from those of devout faith where the judgement is on those unfortunate enough not to share or even aspire to the same definitive experience as that of the author. It also has some of the smugness of the parent loudly interacting with their offspring in public to show off their parenting skills/precocious/cute child. I did appreciate it was well written and researched. Acres of endnotes and a huge reading list which could turn out to be useful. Some points were well made about the edge as the site of all change and the idea that what is imagined is no less real but the packaging just wasn’t for me.

Listening

The Magnetic Mystery – investigate the mysterious power of magnets, with the help of wizard-physicist Dr Felix Flicker and materials scientist Dr Anna Ploszajski.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001h49f

Tags Abraham Kritzman, azimuth, Bruce Watson, Charles Foster, circadian rhythms, cosmic ray detector, David Zink Yi, geographic north pole, Lascaux Caves, Liz Elton, magnetic north pole, moss, north geomagnetic pole, obelisk, pink footed geese, pleiades, polarised light, RSPB Snettisham, Salvatore Arancio, Snettisham, swans, The breath of stars, Welney Wetland Centre

Categories Uncategorized

formation

orbital

volition

Follow Blog via Email

Recent Posts

Archives