How To Know The Starry Heavens
A reading from Edward Irving, Skinningrove Mining Museum
How To Know The Starry Heavens is the umbrella title for a number of projects that investigate the astronomical sublime and what makes us go 'Wow'. My interest in the vastness of the night sky was re-ignited by the chance finding of Edward Irving's 1905 book of the same name, dedicated to "All true citizens of the Great Cosmos, and all who wish to become such" in which he describes the wonders of the universe with both a scientific rigour and a childlike wonder. On any page he may be talking not just about far distant galaxies and the speed of light, but also about the priests of Odin, the eruption of Krakatoa or Eruptive Calcium Flocculi.
Projects
How To Know The Starry Heavens (digital animation, extract)
Digital animation, 23'48"
2021
text by Edward Irving, Apollo 11 mission recording, python code
Digital animation, 23'48"
2021
text by Edward Irving, Apollo 11 mission recording, python code
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How To Know The Starry Heavens (digital animation)
exhibited at Dark Skies Festival, Australia 2021 Animated phrases from a book by Edward Irving with an audio recording of a monologue spoken by one of the Apollo 11 ground crew during the original mission to the moon in 1969, in which he relates his life history to the crew as they head into space. |
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Dr Good Investigates... Art and Science
CultureLab, Newcastle University 2019 |
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The Allenheads Cluster
Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Northumberland 2018 A star map based on the local place names in the vicinity of the North Pennines Observatory at ACA |
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How To Know The Starry Heavens
Billboard, text extracts 2017 Exhibited at Skinningrove Mining Museum as part of the Laboratory of Dark Matters |
Extract from Laboratory of Dark Matters exhibition catalogue
