The Moon and The Sun.
Having seen the Moon in Durham Cathedral, back in 2021, ( see Sunday Ishmael 31/10/21),
Orkney is keen on Festivals, as a means of attracting external funding and visitors bringing in even more funding. To be fair, there are disproportionate numbers of Art Botherers in Orkney - well, 25% of the population are over 65 and there are many, many more women than men, so what do you expect? And most of them consider themselves to be artists, freed from the daily trauma of going to work to earn the old daily bread. "Oh, the light", one such elderly incomer enthused to me, "the light, as important as breathing, for an artist like me...." I grumpily riposted, "Orkney has only 40% of the light levels recorded at Kew Gardens, so for a gardener like me, that's pretty shit. It's dark for most of the year, apart from three months when the grass doesn't stop growing." Undeterred, my acquaintance fought back: "I don't garden, but I gaze at the sea a lot. The luminosity informs my palette". Me: "I suppose that's the reflections from the perpetual cloud cover..." Her: "And the air - the sweet sea air.." Me: "It certainly does move around a lot. Fast."
There's the St. Magnus Festival, of course - international music event, there's the Blues Festival, the Drama Festival, the Folk Festival, the Story Telling Festival, Norwegian Constitution Day, the Festival of the Horse, and the Science Festival. This year, the Science Festival ran from the 7th to the 13th September, and I usually avoid its rag-bag offerings of why oats and bere are better than wheat, how to spin flax, tattie tasting, northern lights, walks around the Ness and the Ring of Brodgar, hydrogen ships and how to make whisky.
But, this year, the Sun came to Orkney.
Not the real thing, of course - that, as ever, was hidden by the metres-thick perpetual cloud cover. No, this is a 6-metre-diameter installation, created by solar physicist Professor Robert Walsh of UCLAN and artist Alex Rinsler.
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This model projects images from NASA spacecraft, speeded up to show storms building and massive flares looping outwards.
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The data from NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory is presented in 360 degrees, with smoke effects to mimic the sun's outer atmosphere, depicting 10 weeks of the sun's life in 12.5 minutes, showing it cycling through ranges of temperature from 4,500 to 10 million degrees.
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This will take 11 and a half minutes of your life and you have to be in the right mood for it, but it does evoke those eternal mysteries better not dwelt on for too long by our limited meat-brains. The blurb says: (a) blend of electronic sounds with instruments and voices to create work of elemental power and ethereal beauty....A meditation on the Solar System, Harmony, Light and the Passing of Life.
I suspect that St. Magnus Cathedral was not the best place to display it - it looked rather confined by its surrounding sandstone arches. This is how it appeared in Blackpool.
There don't appear to be any more dates or venues for this touring art installation - but if it becomes available at a venue near you next year - I recommend it.
8 comments:
That looks fun, mrs i, and as you say better not constrained by a few stones of a cathedral.
It did, mr mongoose, look a little like a huge balloon squeezed into the Cathedral and about to pop and shower the congregants with confetti and sweets.
I did have a small thought about these depictions of the Moon and the Sun displayed in 3-D glory in the ancient places of worship - did not the God of the ancient Hebrews, that God of the Old Testament who fathered Christ who inspired all these fabulous cathedrals, say: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." and again: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" and here we go, raising graven images to the even more ancient gods of the Moon and the Sun, in impious hubris.
Just as well the cathedral builders didn't use RAAC.
Well, it's His Creation, isn't it, mrs i? In the days before politics, folk relied on the natural world and were perhaps grateful when the sun shined or the rain fell at the expected times and within reason. Then all that was swept away and busybodies turned up with rules and whatnot. We are back to it though. What is the climate hoohah but a theology for the simple folk?
You're right, mr mongoose - one of the many theologies now in currency. There's also the trans-orthodoxy, the heretical teachings of the feminists, and the clean eating philosophies of the Fearnley-WhittingWorrallOlivers. There's also the sustainable clothing heterodoxy.
Trying to maintain them all at once is the problem. Eat only food grown locally, but also eat avocadoes, coconuts and chick peas brought from thousands of miles away. As for growing more food locally, forget it; we have to rewild farmland, that is when we’re not covering it in concrete. Cotton clothes bad but bamboo clothes good. Plastic is wrong, except for vegan shoes. A chap can be a woman by just saying he is, but womanhood is just a social construct. There are too many people, so having kids is selfish, but we need more people, so we need mass immigration. I know there have always been mutually exclusive ethical standards throughout human history, but we seemed to have reached a new level of irrationality.
I like the sound of the sun model, but in the confines of the Cathedral it looks like the balloon thing from The Prisoner.
Yes! That's it, mrs narcolept, I was looking for the perfect metaphor and you've got it. The balloon thing from the Prisoner was, objectively, the most ridiculous thing, and one wonders why Patrick McGoohan didn't just get out his Swiss Army knife and burst it - but back in the day, it worked, what with the spooky music and all.
You realise I'm now visualising the Sun bouncing down the steps of St Magnus Cathedral and smothering all the cruise-lining tourists!
As for all the conflicting ideologies - it is a bewildering array of mirrors - but put a foot wrong and you'll be de-platformed and not invited round for dinner parties - which, is, I guess, a desirable outcome. As mr ishmael used to say - What?? Let other people make my food? Are you maaaad??
Dinner parties are hideous. Always hated them. I love people staying for lunch or supper, sharing whatever we’re having, but deliberately organising it - no. Fortunately, and I am sure to no one’s surprise, we already don’t get asked to many, so a bit of extra Shunning would barely be noticeable.
I've done a fair bit of that organising dinner parties thing in my past, but found it so stressful I'd always have too much wine before, during and after, which rendered not only the event itself hideous and embarrassing, but then one had to cope with a hangover and protesting liver. The house cleaning! The shopping! The cooking! The serving and whisking away the dirty plates, then the washing up, all the while thinking of intelligent and/or funny things to say, wondering if anyone had noticed the cook's bottle of wine behind the kitchen curtains, and sending telepathic messages to the guests - Go Home Now.
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