cosmolog

dish

The "prototype" for "The Centre of the Universe" continues to take shape. The dish, like the tower, again constructed flat pack style, slotted together from pieces of ply and a central hub, perches provisionally atop its spiral tower, awaiting its chicken wire lining and hillbilly electronics.

One sad fact of scale is that the beautiful curving spiral, made in this version from strips of hardboard, will not be possible on the larger version to be built in the park. There it will revert to flat panels due to the restrictions of the budget.

library of nothing

This is the library (otherwise known as the void) . . .

Bizarre economics dictate that the library be scattered to diverse points of the department. Nooks and crannies sprout shelves while the space formerly known as the library sits empty. Some astrophysicists can be found, lost, wandering the corridors, trying to locate a shelf that may contain a clue to the whereabouts of a crucial tome (more than likely in storage awaiting re location), but most seem unperturbed, floating down the infinite shelves of cyberspace.

Another nail in the coffin of the tactile, file under entropy. The scholar of the future will need only a mouse finger and an eyeball.

flat pack radio telescope

Building a prototype "Centre of the Universe" with Ollie Smith, Henry Garner and Simon Lewis at the Ruskin.

The frame is made from the bones of Mike Nelsons desert in "Triple Bluff Canyon", the rest from salvaged bits and pieces, save an 8 by 4 foot piece of hardboard, £ 5.06.

The original model, coffee stirrers and a pencil . . .

no heads are better than one

O - MAP in the museum

Saturday afternoon in the Museum of the History of Science. (see also 21st October 2004, 18th, 24th January, 4th March and 7th April 2005)

bow down at the feet of the cosmic sheep

Some of the "shrines" of the Astrophysics department, to be found in various offices, probably transported from continent to continent, a little nomadic personal space.

speculative universe

O - MAP goes to town

O - MAP set up shop in the Westgate Centre . . . . (see also 21st October 2004, 18th, 24th January and 4th March 2005)