A paradigmatic ontology

A paradigmatic ontology

From Andes to Mars and back

Talking at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich about astronomical observatories high in the Andes Mountains while looking at the ‘Anvilled Stars’. Forged and polished meteoritic mirrors placed in the display cases amongst both historical and current astronomical instruments. The fist sized iron meteorites that landed in the north of Argentina, 6 thousand years ago, witnessed by the local native people. After 4.3 billion years travelling in space now sitting on the ground. Stone’s throw away.

Thinking about J. Nasmyth and his huge home-made telescope, now in the Science Museum, assisting his beautiful detailed drawings of the moon. At that time, in 1850’s, photography was too weak. His plaster cast models made from the drawings and lit for detailed photographs illuminating the mistaken fact of geology back in his studio. This was the truth then…. another paradigm.

Flying over the endless mountain landscape of the Andes. Home-coming of sorts. Talking of the mountains under the mountains while driving over and through them and past the La Silla Astronomical Observatory. Talking of the native shaman’s knowledge of entities in the earth and the rocks.

Talking to the geologist, at Imperial collage who helped guide and advise the building and deploying of the Mars rover. The Andes as foster planet, for its astral journey. Imagined. Place in space here. Detailed digital photography scanning the landscape. Closer inspection reveals a fist-sized meteorite sitting on the ground, in space from outer space…

Here is out of space…

Quickly made instrument back in the studio, built using intuition and a compass and trusted body proportions.
A mirrored optical devise denying forward view, a non-camera, an instrument to split the mind and divide the body. Bringing here and there together.

Modelling clay mountains. Divided in woven manufacturing of the whole. Struggled out of bicameral confusion. Fact and fiction welded by the act. Done to bring together. Synaptic gap. Imagined landscape. A quantum field…

Matthew Luck Galpin. 2017

(matthewluckgalpin.com)