Brian Deggar
BEYOND
Beyond'ing
The process of going beyond requires a leap that ultimately connects back. Science instrumentation allows us to go beyond the limits of human perceptions, a bootstrapping of making things to see things that enables us to make better things to 'see' things. I am interested in how this extension of the mental gaze informs our ideas of the world, how the concentration of thought on a subject makes that concrete. That results in an instrument that waits to detect a gravity wave or confirm their existence. Or a telescope that will see a black hole.
As a concrete experience I would like to explore the possibility of catching a glimpse of the human habitated space station from the observatory at Allenheads.
As an workshop/ I want to find water bears/tardegrades.These are small organisms that have characteristics that would be very useful in humans that explore space. They are fairly radiation proof and can survive low pressure and boiling. They are the extremeophiles of the extremeophiles and extremeophiles really are beyond. Can we find them on rocks around allenheads? One way to find out. Doing the experiment.
Planets seen: 2 (Jupiter and Saturn)
ISS: Did not sight this time
Satellites: 1 human and 2 planetary around Saturn
Waterbears found this time: 0
Random Thoughts
Contaminated lands in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty "In Nenthead we watched a villager stand by, while a tire burned, launching billions of soot particles into the sky."
Exercise in futility, of designing an experiment that almost certainly will fail, and not in a particularly interesting way. [This too is similar to science when things don't work]
Density of concepts - conceptual overloading to break bridges and randomise thought glue
Tangential think making - thought process on a roulette table roundabout
5 days(+2 for travelling) is not one of my favourite lengths,paradoxically too short and too long.. still ..... a working week.
"The ambition to reconnect science with a material that is not inert" - Rachel Armstrong
Final Presentation
A triangular table, moss, water, containers, eye dropper, lamp, a small crowd, an absence of observable water bears (Tardigrades).
Serendipity: Thinking Against Logic
Geographies of Serendipity? 'Lucky' path-finding in Science and elsewhere. Serendipitous occurrences can seem uncanny. Coming off a plane, I noticed a couple ahead of me, for some reason, I think I should know them, but definitely don't. They look like my friends look. Somehow I struck up a conversation. It was true...they do know my friends from Zagreb, they are my peers, digital nomads. You ask yourself what are the chances? Actually they were fairly high. It is my hunch that events like this actually reflect a unexplored geography in the world. It was a consequence of close observation, of being aware of your surroundings, and starting a conversation. Scientists and Artists are particularly adept in generating Serendipity. The serendipitous example that will be examined Alexander Fleming and identification of antibiotics, that came from a long chain of fortunate failure's.