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https://theunfilteredhistorytour.com/

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An unofficial guide to the disputed artefacts of the British Museum

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My project is about the White horses carved into the hillsides in England. This website talks about the mythology that surrounds the oldest white horse in Uffington.

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In art, there have been movements, such as surrealism and cubism, criticised for being nihilistic, and others, like Dada and Situationism which openly embrace it. The Situationist International (1957-1972) can be considered a good example of a political/social/artistic movement that was deeply rooted with nihilistic views and ideas. The Situationists abolished the earlier concepts of both Dada and surrealism by attempting to deconstruct the whole notion of 'art' as a separate form, subject or entity.

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Different angles and photos of the white horses - it looks very different from above and below. Only aerial photos can show this difference.

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Book on reminiscence for elders who travelled to Britain 

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Book on reminiscence for elders who travelled to Britain 

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This is from a book called 'Surfacing' by Kathleen Jamie. She writes about going on archeological digs and all the people she met while digging for artefacts.

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Drawings showing the progression of the oldest white horse through time and how it has morphed. This narrative is shown visually and clearly in this format

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A Lineage of Spectres Part 1 - From Hauntology to Hypnagogic Pop: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 19/52

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Although not exclusively so, hauntological orientated work tends to use and refer to British culture from approximately around the late 1960s to the late 1970s, to be a re-imagining and misremembering of reference points and that era's music and other culture to create work that seem familiar, comforting and also often unsettling and not a little eerie.

The resulting work often conjures a sense of parallel worlds that are haunted by spectres of our cultural past (to loosely paraphrase philosopher Jacques Derrida).

One of the possible reasons for the hauntological work focusing on/drawing from the above time period often quite specifically is that from the late 1970s onwards there could be seen to have been a swing towards the right politically, socially and economically within Britain. The starting point for that movement is often considered to be the 1979 election of Margaret Thatcher's right-leaning government in Britain.

Within hauntological work there is often a mourning for lost progressive futures, sometimes overtly and sometimes as an underlying cultural trope or atmosphere, which essentially demarks the above time as a tipping point for an ending of the prevalence of related hopes and dreams - hence the cutoff of the late 1970s in terms of points of reference and inspiration within much of hauntological work.

Although, as I have mentioned before, author David Peace has commented that:
"...people often talk about 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher as a sea-change. But these things rarely take place overnight. And I still think her re-election in 1983 represents the clearest marker of how far things had changed. And of what was to come..."
The 1980s could be seen as a transitional, liminal period which involved ongoing conflict and rearguard actions from older, progressive/social consensus ways of thinking.

This could allow for a less era delineated sense to hauntological work, less of a quite well defined cut-off point than the late 1970s. Hauntological-esque spectres and parallel world refracted reimaginings could well draw from a later period.

Which leads me to...

Work such as hypnagogic pop shares a number of similiarities with hauntology - it also utilises misremembered, re-imagined cultural memories/reference points and creates a parallel cultural world the draws from past eras and often creates work which David Keenan called "pop music as refracted through the memory of a memory".

However, it is American rather than British culture orientated and it draws from the 1980s and early 1990s and in this sense it illustrates that hauntology could be seen as being part of a continuum or broader lineage of such work.

(A brief definition of hypnagogic pop from Wikipedia: "Hypnagogic pop - sometimes used interchangeably with "chillwave" or "glo-fi" - is a 21st-century style of pop music or general musical approach which explores elements of cultural memory and nostalgia by drawing on the music, popular entertainment, and recording technology of the past, particularly the 1980s. The genre developed in the mid to late 2000s as American underground artists began reaching back to retro aesthetics remembered from childhood, such as 1980s radio rock, new age, MTV one-hit wonders, and Hollywood synthesizer soundtracks, as well as analog technology and outdated pop culture.")

One of the signifiers of hauntology is an interest in and utilisation of the signifiers of previous era's recording media and its related audio artifacts - such as vinyl hiss and crackle, tape wobble etc - with such aesthetics being used in order to create or conjure a spectral, edge of memory sense of the past.

The use of such signifiers is also present within hypnagogic pop but in its case these are more likely to be the likes of video cassette, 1980s-esque computer graphics and early internet aesthetics.

In contrast to hypnagogic pop, hauntology does not tend to be all that pop orientated - it may draw from areas of pop culture such as 1970s childrens' television dramas but it is more likely to be presented in for example the form of Radiophonic-esque/inspired electronica.

However, "traditional" hauntology does not have one overarching musical style - rather it is defined by a shared music and cultural approach than a shared musical style, something which critic Adam Trainer has also identified in connection to hypnagogic pop.

Which brings me to synthwave...
Hypnagogic pop at Wikipedia Elsewhere at A Year In The Country:
1) Day #183/365: Steam engine time and remnants of transmissions before the flood 2) Day #162/365: Hauntology, places where society goes to dream, the deletion of spectres and the making of an ungenre
3) Day #125/365: Journeying through The Seasons with David Cain (or maybe just July and October)4) Chapter 3 Book Images: Hauntology - Places Where Society Goes to Dream, the Defining and Deletion of Spectres and the Making of an Ungenre
5) Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 17/52: David Peace, Texte und Töne, The Stink Still Here and Spectres from Transitional Times - Part 2
To be continued in Part 2 of this post... coming soon...

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A Lineage of Spectres Part 1 - From Hauntology to Hypnagogic Pop: Wanderings, Explorations and Signposts 19/52

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Although not exclusively so, hauntological orientated work tends to use and refer to British culture from approximately around the late 1960s to the late 1970s, to be a re-imagining and misremembering of reference points and that era's music and other culture to create work that seem familiar, comforting and also often unsettling and not a little eerie.

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I’m trying to find several everyday heroes in Postman‘s park and find their chivairy from their brave deeds and share with audience.

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In our basic survey of world views, we have looked at three so far: Theism, Deism and Naturalism. We have considered the basic assumptions espoused by these world views and their affect on culture and specifically upon art. By way of reminder, the basic assumption of theism is that "God is here". This world view asserts that the Creator is present and wants relationship with us. Deism asserts that God is "out there somewhere" (not here). He, she or it exists (order we see in the universe would suggest that) but that God is distant and a personal "relationship" with him/her/it is not possible. Naturalism states that to debate whether or not God exists is pointless, because the only way to determine the truth of something is to be able to prove it scientifically (hypothesize, predict, test, repeat). Since the existence of a deity is impossible to prove scientifically, the notion of God is therefore dismissed. Nihilism is the natural and obvious next step in the evolution of western thought. Nihilism is a philosophical position which argues that if naturalism is indeed correct, then it stands to reason that human existence is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value.

So Nihilism simply looks at naturalism and draws the natural conclusions. For instance, if there is no deity, no "judge", no absolute standard of right and wrong, then there is no point in us judging anyone or anything because the notions of right and wrong are purely human constructs. A strict nihilist therefore could not say "racism is wrong" or "sex slavery is wrong" or "mass murder is wrong". They may say it's painful, but they could not say it's "wrong" if the concept of "wrong" is in actuality non-existent.

Nihilism has profoundly affected western civilization, and its effect can be very clearly seen in the arts.

Personally, I find Nihilism fascinating, but fascinating like studying the Ebola virus would be fascinating (deadly but fascinating). This is a really powerful (and incredibly influential) world view, and when it was propagated by philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, it was unique as a world view in that it offered no future hope of things made right. We are left with the "rule of the jungle" -- the strongest tyrant rules -- and what he or she does or does not do matters nothing, because nothing has ultimate value.

A strict Nihilist would say that finding "meaning to life" is an opiate to get you through this existence with at least some semblance psychological health, but that's all it is (an opiate) because real "meaning" is non-existent. Nihilism asserts that we are all here by chance and in a few billion years when the sun explodes there will be no trace we ever existed and so nothing anyone does ultimately matters at all.

What kind of art would you expect to be generated by an artist with this world view?

You might assume that such a pessimistic world view would have not really caught on, but you would be wrong. Nihilism has profoundly affected western civilization, and its effect can be very clearly seen in the arts. So many people coming into my studio in Asheville's River Arts Distrct have said things like "I really don't 'get' most art" or "I look at some artwork that's supposed to be great and think 'this makes no sense at all! A four year old could have thrown the paint onto this canvas! And this is supposed to be 'art'? It's pointless!" See, this is where you must consider the world view of the artist in order to understand what he or she was trying to communicate with the art. I mean, what kind of art (painting, sculpture, prose, poetry) would you expect to be generated by an artist with this world view?

by Friedrich Nietzsche

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

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World View #4: Nihilism - St. Claire Art

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In our basic survey of world views, we have looked at three so far: Theism, Deism and Naturalism. We have considered the basic assumptions espoused by these world views and their affect on culture and specifically upon art.

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This is a show about some ideas between roots and human colonial expeditions ended in the August, but quite interesting.

https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/YZeNOxEAACQAXM-0

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Artist records late grandfathers tool shed 

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Artist records late grandfathers tool shed 

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https://www.boredpanda.com/grandfather-died-illustrations-tools-shed-project-lee-john-phillips/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

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Talented artist Lee John Phillips has undertaken a project of epic proportions to celebrate the memory of his late grandfather. Phillips estimates that it will take him about 4-5 years to draw all 100,000+ items left behind in the shed by his grandfather, who passed away roughly 20 years ago. Everything from large tools to jars full of nails, nuts and bolts will be covered!

Phillips has been numbering each object in his meticulous project, and has drawn nearly 4,000 at this point. He has spent so much time drawing recently that it has taken a toll on him; "I already have to have physio for the toll it's taking on my body. About 5% done so far!" he writes on his Instagram.

Be sure to follow his Instagram to keep up with his extraordinarily devoted project! Despite the massive undertaking, he manages to slip in the occasional unrelated drawing as well, and they're all wonderful works of art.

More info: leejohnphillips.com | Instagram | Twitter (h/t: mymodernmet, twistedsifter)

"My grandfather past away... and my grandmother treats [the shed] as a mausoleum"

"The things he salvaged and collected in jars are amazing, they should be seen. That's why I'm putting myself through this"

"Neither she or the shed will be around forever. I'd like to preserve it for my family"

"Some days I've done 15hrs, others, I've snatched 10 minutes. But it is every spare second I have"

"So, so bored! Sometimes I get tested. I know I'm being tested but it doesn't make it any easier"

"Then I finish a jam jar and it feels great. I see them lined up, tagged, numbered and ready to go home. It makes it easier to push on"

"I already have to have physio for the toll it's taking on my body"

Phillips will draw every nail, nut and bolt in the shed!

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Artist Celebrates Late Grandfather By Drawing Each Of The 100,000+ Items He Left In His Toolshed

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Talented artist Lee John Phillips has undertaken a project of epic proportions to celebrate the memory of his late grandfather. Phillips estimates that it will take him about 4-5 years to draw all 100,000+ items left behind in the shed by his grandfather - everything from large tools to jars full of nails, nuts and bolts!

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A drawing that records the stone circles in Avebury, but also embellished them to seem perfect, which they are not

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Stonehenge - the unknown history that many people aren't aware of. It was constructed to look like it does today in the 20th century - before that the rock lay flat and fallen. This photo shows the workers creating the arches we see today

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The Time That Remains, Part I: On Contemporary Nihilism - Journal #28 October 2011 - e-flux

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The growth trajectory of plants is different, and I'm trying to anthropomorphize them.

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I remember this mobile floating above my bed from my childhood. The memories float around like these objects float in the air

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The most famous knight in the Temple Church is William Marshal, and I’m trying to find some of stories about his chivalry, and I want to understand what knights do when faced with choices and difficulties, how they embody their chivalry…

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In a world gone mad, what can the few sane people left do? What can someone say when there are no words that seem up to the job? How can anyone hope to express ideas so terrible when doing so will only reduce those ideas?

These are some of the things that inspired the Dada movement, and in its absurd, surreal, and chaotic nonsense, we find the voice of the voiceless.

The origin of Dadaism

Dada was a response to the madness of World War I. Reasonable, intelligent, and sensitive people looked at the blood and mud graveyards of the trenches and wondered how any meaning or goodness could ever be found again. How can someone make sense of a world where millions of young, happy, hopeful men were scythed down in a spray of bullets? How could life go back to normal when returning soldiers, blinded and disfigured from gas, lay homeless in the streets? Out of this awful revulsion, there came one bitter voice, and it said: "Everything is nonsense."

Dada is the art of the nihilist. It smashes accepted wisdom, challenges norms and values, and offends, upsets, and provokes us to re-examine everything.

And so, the Dada movement expressed itself in absurdity. Tzara, the closest you get to a Dadaist philosopher, put it like this: "Like everything in life, Dada is useless. Dada is without pretension, as life should be." Dada rejects all systems, all philosophy, all definite answers, and all truth. It is the living embrace of contradictions and nonsense. It seeks "to confuse and upset people, to shake and jolt". It aims to shout down the "shamefaced sex of comfortable compromise and good manners," when actually "everything happens in a completely idiotic way."

In short, Dada is a response to the world when all the usual methods have broken down. It's the recognition that dinner party conversations, Hollywood blockbusters, and Silicon Valley are not how life actually is. This is a false reality and order, like some kind of veneer.

The Dada response to life is to embrace the personal and passionate madness of it all, where "the intensity of a personality is transposed directly, clearly into the work." It's to recognize the unique position of an artist, who can convey ideas and feelings in a way that goes beyond normal understanding. Art goes straight to the soul, but the intensity of it all can be hard to "enjoy" in the strictest sense.

Where is this Dada?

For instance, Dada is seen in the poems of Hugo Ball who wrote in meaningless foreign-sounding words. It's in Hausmann, who wrote works in disconnected phonemes. It's found in Duchamp's iconoclastic " Fountain" that sought to question what art or an artist really meant. It's in Hans Richter's short film " Ghost before Breakfast," which has an incoherent montage of images, loosely connected by the theme of inanimate objects in revolt. And, it's in Kurt Schwitters' "psychological collages" which present fragments of objects, juxtaposed together.
Credit: Kurt Schwitters / Public Domain via Wikipedia
Dada is intended to shock. It's an artistic jolt asking, or demanding, that the viewers reorient themselves in some way. It is designed to make us feel uncomfortable and does not make for easy appreciation. It's only when we're thrown so drastically outside of our comfort zone in this way that Dada asks us to question how things are. It shakes us out of a conformist stupor to look afresh at things.

The paradox of Dadaism

Of course, like all avant-garde art, Dada needs to address one major problem: how do you stay so provocative, so radical, and so anti-establishment when you also seek success? How can maverick rebels stay so as they get a mortgage and want a good school for their kids? The problem is that young, inventive, and idealistic artists are inevitably sucked into the world of profit and commodity.

As Grayson Perry, a British modern artist, wrote: "What starts as a creative revolt soon becomes co-opted as the latest way to make money," and what was once fresh and challenging "falls away to reveal a predatory capitalist robot." With Dada, how long can someone actually live in a world of nonsense and nihilistic absurdity?

But there will always be new blood to keep movements like Dada going. As the revolutionaries of yesterday become the rich mansion-owners of today, there will be hot, young things to come and take up the mantle. There will always be something to challenge and questions to be asked. So, art movements like Dada will always be in the vanguard.

Dada is the art of the nihilist. It smashes accepted wisdom, challenges norms and values, and offends, upsets, and provokes us to re-examine everything. It's an absurd art form that reflects the reality it perceives - that life is nothing more than a dissonant patchwork of egos floating in an abyss of nothing.
Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular Instagram account called Mini Philosophy (@philosophyminis). His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

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A canvas of nonsense: how Dada reflects a world gone mad through art

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In a world gone mad, what can the few sane people left do? What can someone say when there are no words that seem up to the job? How can anyone hope to express ideas so terrible when doing so will only reduce those ideas?

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Marcel Slodki, Poster for the opening of the Cabaret Voltaire on 1916-02-05, lithograph

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Dadaism began with a group of artists and poets who were associated with the Cabaret Voltaire. Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings founded this political, performance space on February 5, 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland. Though it closed soon after, this space was pivotal for the inception of the Dadaist movement.

The Cabaret Voltaire held spoken word, dance and performance art shows. They were experimental and relatively strange, breaking artistic norms while trying out new forms of poetry and movement. These experiments would come to be known as Dada art.

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https://eu.eventscloud.com/website/5317/2022-sessions/history-and-memory-the-contemporary-artist-as-archivist/

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History and memory: the contemporary artist as archivist

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Kurt Schwitters，Merz -drawing 85，Zig-Zag Red，1920 

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Kurt Schwitters，Merz -drawing 85，Zig-Zag Red，1920 

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This are William Marshal’s sculptures, I trying to using a new form to create some new sculpture for him, and tell his story with narrative illustration in sculpture to everyone.

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Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science

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Introduction

I am from Whalsay and remember on clear and frosty nights about thirty years ago the 'pretty dancers' (as we called them) coming in wide yellowish streaks in the N. E. sky. They would flit to and fro, making a noise as if two planks had met flat ways-not a sharp crack but a dull sound, loud enough for anyone to hear. We boys got so used to this that we never heeded the noise when the pretty dancers came out to clap their hands.

Relating vivid tales of audible aurorae from thirty years prior, this extract from a letter written by Shetland Islander, Peter Hutchison, was published in The Shetland News on 20 May 1933. Although unusual in its characterization of auroral sound as loud and easily discernible, persuasive reports such as this bolstered belief in the notion that, under the right conditions, noise could be perceived emanating from the northern lights. It was submitted in response to a call from the editor in tune with the heightened interest in the possibility of auroral audibility during the Second International Polar Year (IPY).

This paper discusses the late nineteenth and early twentieth century debate as to whether the apparent sound of the aurora, recorded by residents of northern latitudes and a small number of auroral researchers alike, was imagined, illusory, or objective. For decades it was a highly contentious issue, one that divided opinion, provoked lively discussion, and puzzled those who were enthralled by the mystery. The auroral sound debate had consequences for understandings of the altitude of aurorae and therefore knowledge of the composition of the upper atmosphere as well as the verification of folkloric stories, but it also captivated and intrigued on an aesthetic level. The First and Second IPYs of 1882-3 and 1932-3 acted as nodes wherein discussion of the possibility of auroral sound increased considerably. Within the anglophone IPY literature, the clearest articulation of the auroral sound debate is found in the national reports and official surveys of the First IPY and within two contrasting textual forums during the Second IPY: the academic journal, Nature, and a local Shetland Island newspaper, The Shetland News. The Nature articles reveal the formalized boundaries of the debate, while the letters to the editor style forum captures the curiosity of the aural phenomenon and the multiplicity of local testimony.

The two IPY enterprises, which took place fifty years apart, were collaborative transnational endeavours carried out to investigate the meteorology, geomagnetism, atmospheric electricity, ocean currents, and auroral phenomena of the polar regions. Twelve countries participated in the First IPY, with twelve stations set up in the Arctic and two in Antarctica, whereas forty-four countries took part in the Second IPY, with twenty-seven stations established in the Arctic and none in Antarctica due to financial limitations resulting from the Great Depression. The aurora was a transnational research theme as a phenomenon that did not respect national boundaries. A chain of northern stations could also yield useful information by connecting the phenomenon with various meteorological and magnetic factors, whereas a single station could not provide comparable data.

Having consulted all First and Second IPY reports, it is clear that notes referring to the elusive sounds of the aurora are few in number and considered peripheral to the primary visual investigation of the phenomenon. The principal means of examining the intangible aurora in the 1880s were to make illustrative sketches and fill logbooks with details of its displays. For the Second IPY, the main methods included the collection of photographs from various Arctic stations, while auroral spectroscopy was put firmly on the programme's agenda. An allied concern as to whether the aurora could be captured accurately by pencil, painting, or photography existed within the visual IPY programmes, though this underlying anxiety did not influence an alteration of methods used to reproduce the phenomenon or investigate its properties.

Within the First IPY expedition reports, it was Sophus Tromholt and Major Henry Dawson who addressed the issue of auroral sound most ardently. In 1882, Tromholt, a Danish schoolteacher by training, established a base at Kautokeino, a Norwegian village close to the Finnish-Norwegian border, where he spent the year on his own, separate from the primary Danish expedition led by Adam Paulsen to Godthaab in Greenland. Although in direct contact with Niels H. C. Hoffmeyer, director of the Danish Meteorological Institute, and Henrik Mohn, director of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Tromholt was largely considered an outsider to contemporary Scandinavian scientific society. As such, the Danish government did not fund his IPY expedition, but Tromholt did receive support from the Norwegian Parliament, albeit only a quarter of his salary as a teacher, and his expedition was privately sponsored by Captain I. C. Jacobsen and the Norwegian businessman, C. Sundit. Dawson led the British expedition to Fort Rae, an old outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company on the northern tip of Great Slave Lake in Northwest Canada. Three men accompanied him for the duration of the First IPY from 1 September 1882 to 31 August 1883.

Interest in auroral audibility continued into the twentieth century, a testament to its enduring ability to enchant and perplex. Approaches to the auroral sound debate were remarkably similar in both the First and Second IPYs, with surveys of the local inhabitants of northern latitudes and the attentive listening of IPY researchers constituting the primary methods of research. The auroral scientist who addressed the problem most fervently during the Second IPY was Balfour Currie, a Canadian meteorologist and member of the department of physics at the University of Saskatchewan, who occupied a station at Chesterfield Inlet on the western shore of Hudson Bay in Northeast Canada with several of his colleagues, including Frank Davies. Carl Størmer, professor of mathematics at the University of Oslo, was the foremost auroral scientist of the 1930s and spent most of the Second IPY at various stations in southern Norway. Although he did not directly investigate auroral sound during the IPY programme, his articles on the topic, published in the 1920s and 1930s, were influential, altering the ways in which aural accounts were received. Sydney Chapman, one of the world's leading geophysicists and later President of the Special Committee for the IGY, and George Clark Simpson, who became President of the British Meteorological Society in 1940, were deeply involved in the auroral sound debate of the early 1930s. Additionally, Clement J. Williamson, an amateur astronomer and resident of Scalloway, on the Atlantic coast of mainland Shetland, was one of the few non-professional voices of authority on the matter in the twentieth century.

I argue that the embodied senses were used exclusively to register the sounds of the aurora across the First and Second IPYs, despite developments in sound recording technologies, faith in mechanical objectivity, and instruments transported to the polar regions for the photographic and spectroscopic investigations of the phenomenon. I explore the aurora as an experiential phenomenon-as it was conceived of by the IPY scientists of the 1880s and 1930s-examining the way its impressions were sensed and communicated in each of the two periods, although its aural characteristics were transient, liminal, and difficult to elucidate. Moreover, this paper seeks to interrogate the broader position of bodily senses in Arctic fieldwork, especially since, as Martin Mahony and Samuel Randalls have recently pointed out, 'corporeality has often been missing from, or unevenly present in, our spatial histories of science'.

Research in the fields of cultural geography and anthropology has confronted this discrepancy wholeheartedly. Emerging in the early 2000s, sound studies, focusing on the 'production and consumption of music, sound, noise and silence', have now become a dynamic area of interdisciplinary research. Much work in the domain of sound studies has concentrated on the technologies of sound production. Alexandra Hui explores the impact of recorded music on the types of listening which came into being in the twentieth century. Emily Thompson similarly charts behavioural changes in early twentieth century American society in response to the new 'soundscape of modernity'. The Oxford handbook of sound studies, edited by Trevor Punch and Karin Bijsterveld, is self-consciously ordered by different sites including the laboratory, clinic, home, and field, and interrogates how noise within these various spaces has been staged, reworked, edited, and consumed. Together, these works argue for the consideration and reconfiguring of the relationship between sound, body and space. This theme of the literature is one that I will take up, in relation to the aurora, a phenomenon experienced through the senses and intrinsically tied to the polar regions.

Auroral sound in the First International Polar Year

In the preceding decades before the First IPY, the negative accounts relating to auroral sound were many. In fact, Alexander von Humboldt, acting as a barometer for the most up-to-date scientific thought of his time, concluded in 1845 that, 'the northern lights have become more silent since they have been examined more carefully with the eye and the ear'. Just one year before the First IPY, George Burder-who had also written on the possibility of daylight aurorae, rainbows, and the optical illusion of witnessing stars disappear from view while observing even brighter stars-asked in an article printed in Nature whether apparent auroral sound could be a physiological phenomenon. At a time when concerns about the objective reality of auroral noise were coming to the fore, Burder proposed a subjective cause for the apparent sound, akin to the hissing the brain conjures when a meteor is witnessed. His suggestion was not explicitly discussed by the auroral scientists of the 1880s, but Burder's article signalled what was to be a recurring tension in the literature on the topic: a deep uncertainty as to the sound's objective reality and a sceptical attitude toward accounts claiming it to be anything more than a psychological effect.

The aurora, after all, was a powerfully iconographic object of fascination in the public realm, inspiring poetry and art, a subject of folklore and weatherlore, and intrinsically connected to ideas of national self-esteem and identity. It was also deeply embedded within the discursive framework of the Arctic, a literary and dreamlike space entangled with spiritual ontologies, on which fantasies were projected within the popular imagination of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Arctic was perceived as an enigmatic location, where mirages and illusions were rife and the project of creating knowledge was often ambiguous or uncertain. Indeed, Naval Officer John Ross was famously misled by a mirage appearing to show mountains, which he named the Croker Mountains, within Lancaster Sound during his search for the Northwest Passage. Moreover, as Michael Bravo remarked in North Pole: nature and culture (2019), 'as all polar navigators learn, senses and instruments in high latitudes often prove unreliable, observations and measurements constantly uncertain.' Naturally, this framework made it all the more vital to the IPY enterprise that reports of auroral sound could be trusted.

No acoustic recording devices were included in the itineraries of any of the First IPY expeditions, due to their novelty, expense, and concerns over their durability. Instead, drawing on long-term practices, the bodies of the various expedition members were relied upon to hear accurately and communicate their aural perception. Expedition members, who had been trained in auroral observation practices, would sit alone in silence for hours on end within either an auroral observational shelter, most commonly made from earth and corrugated iron, or a more permanent hut among the meteorological and magnetic instruments, watching, listening, and waiting for the aurora.

Tromholt was among the very few auroral researchers of the late nineteenth century who took reports of the evasive noises seriously. His willingness to accept the possibility of auroral sound likely stemmed from his relationship with his father, Johan Tromholt, who himself claimed to have heard the lights in the 1830s and 1840s. A customs clerk by profession, Johan Tromholt kept comprehensive notes of any aurorae he witnessed in his home town of Copenhagen and later in Jutland and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Somewhat unusual for an amateur at the time, he even published an article in the journal Wochenschrift für Astronomie, Meteorologie und Geographie in 1860, detailing three occasions on which he perceived the sounds, indicating a true passion for the subject. Johan Tromholt used the analogy of the quiet but rapid rubbing together of two pieces of paper to describe the unusual noises heard from northwest Copenhagen on 16 September 1838, 21 December 1840 and 6 May 1843 respectively.

Despite his father's encounters with the sound of the aurora, Sophus Tromholt ( figure 1) never experienced the phenomenon first-hand. He stated in an 1884 Nature article about the aurora borealis in Iceland, which he visited to extend his research directly after the First IPY in October 1883, that 'neither here or in any other place have I heard the mystic auroral sound'.24 During his time at Kautokeino during the IPY, Tromholt listened earnestly for the aurora in vain and spent much of his time calculating the height of the phenomenon to analyse the likelihood of soundwaves produced by the displays reaching the surface of the earth. To achieve these measurements, he worked with researchers residing at the Norwegian IPY station, led by Askel S. Steen and situated at Bossekop in Finnmark. Tromholt and members of the Norwegian expedition would identify prominent arcs to be observed simultaneously, determining the apparent height of the phenomenon using the position of the stars at each station before comparing their results. As the stations were situated at a known displacement, an estimate for auroral height could then be calculated. Although Tromholt admitted that the rapid movement of aurorae created considerable uncertainties in his calculation method, he also announced in 1884 that the aurora borealis lay at a height of at least 100 km above the earth's surface in the Kautokeino-Bossekop plane.25

This result not only situated the aurora at too great an altitude for soundwaves emanating from the phenomenon to be transmitted and heard with human ears on the surface of the earth, but also put Tromholt into direct conflict with Paulsen, his Danish IPY counterpart in East Greenland. Paulsen claimed to have measured eight cases of the aurora between 19 and 68 km above the earth's surface and fourteen cases between 0.6 and 9.8 km during the IPY, significantly lower than displays observed in Norway.26 Paulsen asserted that he and his companions had witnessed aurorae below the clouds first-hand, which Tromholt rejected as impossible.27 Furthermore, in 1893 he published a drawing of an aurora observed on 15 November 1882 ( figure 2) in contact with the hills southwest of the Godthaab station, visually bolstering his claim to have seen low aurorae with no indication of its abnormality in the accompanying caption, even by his own reckoning. Height measurements were just one aspect of their dispute, which came to a head in Paulsen's 1889 letter published in the Bulletin of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. In it, he critiqued Tromholt's theories about the variation of the aurora with the seasons and the sun's activity.28 Nevertheless, despite the friction with his Danish colleague and his newfound scepticism with regards to auroral heights, Tromholt remained committed to the investigation of auroral sound.

Nevertheless, Dawson's testimony was an exception rather than the rule, posing him a major challenge. No other auroral researcher of the First IPY claimed to have heard the noises, and observers stationed at Point Barrow-the northernmost point of Alaska and Spitzbergen, an island within the Svalbard archipelago-explicitly stated that no sound was heard despite preferable conditions in 1882-3. Despite Dawson's sincerity and reputation, he did not influence a wholesale shift in the way the auroral sound debate was approached in the period directly after the First IPY.

Although not a primary feature of IPY auroral research, the issue of apparent auroral sound was contemplated extensively in the years surrounding the First IPY. The period saw the first systematic studies of the aural phenomenon, with surveys collecting and assessing local experiential knowledge and several official IPY reports including examinations of auroral sound, albeit with only Dawson writing in the affirmative. There remained, however, a sense of scepticism towards testimonies of auroral noise; there was neither a consensus over the form the noises were alleged to take, nor an agreed-upon explanation for the elusive sounds.

Auroral sound in the Second International Polar Year

By the time of the Second IPY of 1932-3, the problem of auroral noise was still unresolved. In his 1932 outline of the work scheduled to take place during the Second IPY, Malcolm Rigby wrote for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that auroral sound was 'one of the most disputed points not only among scientists but among laymen as well', revealing the strength of the debate as well as its enduring mystery. The incidence of audible aurorae was understood to be rare; it was estimated among observers who believed in the sounds that only 5% of violent northern lights displays produced them. It was hoped, therefore, that the thirteen-month IPY would provide some answers. Chapman considered the Second IPY a unique opportunity to research the connection between auroral sound and unusually low aurorae. He asserted that 'with the better organisation of auroral observation which it is hoped will be achieved during the proposed new Polar Year, there is more chance that opportunities for critical examination of these appearances will occur'.

With a more closely focused geophysical agenda than its predecessor, the Second IPY aimed to 'provide strictly comparable observational material' of 'meteorological, magnetic, auroral and atmospheric electrical phenomena'. Auroral photography had advanced significantly since the First IPY. A camera built specifically for capturing the northern lights was designed by Ole Andreas Krogness, with the help of Størmer, and put to use in the 1910s. The photographic atlas of auroral forms and scheme for visual observations of aurorae, published by the International Geodetic and Geophysical Union, stated that 'the method which gives the most complete and exact results is the photographic one, and this method should be used if there is any possibility of doing so'. Both the atlas and the Krogness-Størmer camera were sent to every station participating in auroral observations during the Second IPY.

Auroral spectroscopy, too, saw progress in the intervening fifty years between the two programmes. Various spectroscopes, some of particularly high dispersion and light-gathering power, including two installed on the roof of the Tromsø auroral observatory in northern Norway, were transported to the various Second IPY stations to find the frequencies of auroral radiation. Although considered of secondary importance, listening out and documenting any strange noises associated with the lights was a practice integrated into the IPY undertaking. Significantly though, it was still the bodies of expedition members travelling to the Arctic which constituted the primary medium by which auroral sound was to be registered, despite the transportation of these other advanced instruments to the polar sites. This is more surprising than the reliance on the senses during the First IPY, considering that acoustic technologies had also advanced since the nineteenth century.

Currie also kept a diary of unusual optical and acoustical phenomena throughout the Chesterfield expedition, clearly hoping to hear the aurora himself ( figure 3). He included second-hand accounts of 'whistling' or 'rustling' accompanying some displays, and he even retold a story of the aurora descending so low that it killed a small number of people, which he noted could have been due to the destructive effects of lightning.51 Crucially though, no one involved in the survey had heard the aurora in the winter of 1932-3, leading Currie and Davies to conclude that they had resided in the region during a particularly 'quiet' year. The exception was the account of John Rae, an assistant observer on the Canadian IPY expedition, who claimed to have heard auroral sounds on 20 March 1933, asynchronous with the phenomenon's movement.52 Both Currie and Edwards were engaged in parallactic photography at the time and listened unsuccessfully for the sounds, although they witnessed the 'brilliant greenish-white flashes' darting overhead. Introducing another subjective factor into the debate, they noted that they may have been unable to perceive the sounds 'due to less sensitive hearing', compared to the 23-year-old Rae.53 The height determinations calculated from the photographs on the night showed no unusual displacement of the phenomenon. No further comment was addressed to Rae's record, presumably because the Chesterfield team was awaiting supporting evidence from other research groups involved in the IPY.

Lending some credibility to the theory of auroral sound, Størmer published two letters that he had received from his colleagues claiming to have heard the noises in 1926 and 1938, respectively. On 15 October 1926, Hans S. Jelstrup was observing polar stars atop Voxenaasen hill near Oslo. In one of his breaks, he witnessed one of the 'most splendid' aurorae he had ever seen; a photograph taken of the phenomenon at 19h 5m 45s on the night from Oslo to the west is represented in figure 4.54 Hans Jelstrup and his assistant, G. Jelstrup, went outside to watch the yellow-green fans of the light display at 19h 15m GMT and both noticed a 'very curious faint whistling sound distinctly undulatory, which seemed to follow exactly the vibrations of the aurora'.55 Their description alludes to the almost imperceptible nature of the sounds. Returning after they had finished their astronomical work, the noises had ceased and they noticed 'that the atmosphere was as if swept clean from statics and disturbances'.56 Published in 1927, this narrative may have motivated interest in the phenomenon and emboldened IPY scientists to more readily believe aural reports, given that Størmer, an authority within the auroral science community, endorsed the account. Størmer also published an article in Nature in 1938 detailing the experience of his assistant, Mr Tjönn, hearing the lights at the Njuke Mountain station in Tuddal, Norway. On 25 January 1938, Tjönn claimed to have heard a sound like 'burning grass or spray' for approximately ten minutes following the movement of the aurora.57 This second account, approved by Størmer, likely also reinforced belief in the possibility of auroral audibility in the latter half of the 1930s.

Størmer's retelling of Tjönn's experience was invoked by Williamson in the auroral sound debate which played out in The Shetland News. Williamson was a well-connected Shetland Island photographer, writer, and amateur astronomer, residing in Scalloway ( figure 5). He corresponded with astronomers at the Mount Wilson observatory as well as with the author H. G. Wells on the subject of time travel. As one of the few amateurs directly involved in the auroral sound debate during the 1930s, Williamson's contribution was taken seriously by some of the leading scientists of the era. Having received a letter from Størmer in 1938, Williamson recounted Tjönn's description in a letter to the editor of The Shetland News, revealing that it was deeply 'gratifying' to relay the report in support of his own belief in objective auroral sound.58 Williamson had previously submitted a report to The Shetland News, following an appeal by the editor in 1933 to receive accounts of the noises from the region and beyond, at the height of interest in the phenomenon during the Second IPY. Recalling a still night in October 1926, he asserted that he had heard 'the sound a cane makes when drawn swiftly through the air, just a low murmuring swish, drumming and continuous'.59 Unusually, Williamson did not claim to perceive the sound simultaneously with the flashes of light.

Williamson's account was published in The Shetland News, among a multitude of others in 1933. Using wording similar to that received by Tromholt in his survey, one letter alluded to the gentleness of the sound, likening it to the noise of 'rustling silk'. This anecdote was penned by Shetland Islander Edward Dixon, having heard the sound on the island of Orkney in 1917. Mrs MacBride, another islander, wrote in about her experience living in Ottawa for a number of years where she remembered hearing a faint 'crackling noise' accompanying the more brilliant displays. By contrast, the extract from a letter by Peter Hutchinson, with which this article opened, spoke of a more intense sound 'as if two planks had met flat ways-not a sharp crack but a dull sound, loud enough for anyone to hear'. This description of a louder noise, uncommon among the aural testimonies, is suggestive of the inescapability of auroral sound, perhaps because conditions were optimal for its transmission. These vivid and personal recollections, written in the experiential idiom and all somewhat congruent, constituted a substantial piece of evidence in favour of auroral sound during, and in the years surrounding, the Second IPY. It is significant that experiences from previous decades were still relevant in the 1930s; the rarity and liminality of the aural phenomenon meant that its nature could only be uncovered over a number of years.

A further discussion focused on low aurorae took place between Simpson, Chapman, and Axel Corlin, a Swedish physicist working on cosmic radiation at the Lund Observatory, in Nature between April 1931 and November 1932. Corlin began by detailing an aurora he had witnessed on 16 November 1929 at Abisko, Sweden, which he claimed appeared 'below the clouds ... only a few thousand meters above the ground'. Although he heard no noise, the example suggested a potential explanation for auroral sound. Published one month later, Simpson's paper attributed Corlin's narrative to an ocular illusion, citing his own experience witnessing aurorae at Karasjok, Norway, between October 1903 and September 1904. Although Simpson relied on observations taken twenty-seven years earlier, he claimed to be able to recollect the circumstance perfectly and argued that the illusion he experienced was 'practically identical' to that which Corlin recounted. The aurora appeared to be positioned below the clouds, illuminating the cloud where the two met, whereas in reality the bright patches were openings in the cloud, through which the stars could be seen. In recounting his experience, Simpson appealed to the virtue of careful observation, mentioning that it took 'a long time to make quite certain of this'.

The auroral sound debate resolved?

Without referencing Chant's work, Størmer tentatively put forward a similar theory in 1927, asserting that electrostatic discharges in the Arctic surroundings, including trees and antennae, could be responsible for the sounds. Nevertheless, despite the fact that surveys and crowdsourcing formed a crucial part of the exploration of the phenomenon, Chant's 1923 paper in the well-respected Journal of the Royal Society of Canada was entirely overlooked in the literature of the Second IPY; no mention of brush discharges was made within the IPY publications whatsoever. Nor did Chant's obituary, written after his death in 1956 by John Heard, include any mention of his auroral sound hypothesis, indicating that it was a peripheral aspect of his scientific career. Indeed, Chant's article has only been cited six times, the first of which was as late as 1973 by S. M. Silverman and T. F. Taun. Silverman and Taun revisited the evidence of auroral sound and analysed all the causes put forward since the nineteenth century, concluding, much like Chant, that brush discharges were the most likely explanation.

Conclusion

The exploration of auroral sound during the First and Second IPYs was undoubtedly an embodied practice based exclusively on the corporeal senses. It was the inherent experientiality of witnessing the aurora borealis, its apparent evasion of reproduction and the rarity and liminality of its sounds which prompted this focus on the human body. The fundamental otherworldliness of polar phenomena meant that the senses were intrinsically implicated in their construction because occurrences such as the aurora could not be captured meaningfully without the affective emotions and bodily sensations which were experienced with it. Despite the development of acoustic technologies and the dominance within the physical sciences of epistemologies based on mechanical instruments, eliminating the interference of human interpretation, the bodies of researchers and northern populations were solely relied upon to register the phenomenon during the 1882-3 and 1932-3 programmes.

Perhaps much more surprising, the Second IPY saw no advances or alterations in the practices of detecting auroral noise, even though equipment was transported to the Arctic for spectroscopic and photographic investigations of the lights and sound recording devices had advanced considerably in the 50-year interim. This could be said to reflect the secondary importance of the auroral sound debate, but more likely, given the volume of literature produced on the issue, researchers of the Second IPY trusted the methods of fifty years prior and hoped to expand the surveys and chances of detecting auroral sound corporeally. The body became an instrument, a credible source of knowledge creation-more so than any technological device, despite, or perhaps because of, the place of the Arctic as a realm of illusion and uncertainty in the western imaginary. The significance of the aural sense in this study lends credence to the view that the body mattered to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century physical sciences, at the crossroads with Arctic exploration-a notion more commonly 'restricted to the history of medicine and the science of life and human difference.'

The two IPYs acted as nodes for the auroral sound debate, constituting two moments wherein the ethereal noises were discussed in journals, reports, and letters to a much greater degree than during the intervening years or before or after the period in question. The First IPY saw the issue recorded not just as an object of mythology but as a real possibility; the aurora emerged as a phenomenon to be known, documented, and understood. Nonetheless, the debate attracted greater attention in the 1930s, with high-profile scientists engaging with the topic and discussion spreading beyond merely the IPY reports. Both the more local Shetland News and the academic journal Nature acted as forums for the serious discussion of auroral sound during the Second IPY. The debate was more open to amateur participation than ocular investigations of the aurora, both in terms of the contributions of Tromholt in the First IPY and Williamson in the Second as well as crowdsourcing practices within both endeavours. The extreme location of auroral observation widened participation to some degree by involving a select few experts with lived experience insofar as they could engage with western scientific discourse, although of course restricting access to those without the means or desire to travel to high latitudes.

Concerns regarding the objective nature of the noises remained at the forefront of IPY auroral discourse in both the 1880s and 1930s, with possible explanations for the phenomenon put forward including the psychological conjuring of the sounds and polar illusions. The aurora's elusive and mysterious nature, alongside its ability to deceive and be sensationalized, made the veridical perception and communication of its aural features all the more crucial. The credibility of auroral sound reports hinged on both the perceived trustworthiness of observers and their conformity with the growing literature on the topic. It was the knowledge produced from IPY expedition members, temporary male inhabitants of the land, which was trusted with verifying the accuracy of local testimony. Although sought through surveys and calls for letters to the press, the experiences of local individuals were devalued, even when together they represented a significant and corroborated body of evidence.

This paper has drawn attention to a key episode in auroral history-a subject to which much time and effort was afforded during the 1880s and 1930s and one which has been very little discussed in the secondary literature of the IPY or more widely. It has bridged the gap between sensory registers and IPY research, although much room is left to explore embodied practices within histories of polar exploration. An interesting avenue for further research may also be the longer history of auroral sound within high-latitude mythology and folklore. Overall, the auroral sound debate complicates the straightforward notion of polar science as a purely professional practice based on the use of precision instruments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in tune with the popularity of mechanical objectivity and trends within the physical sciences. The Arctic came to be seen as a space in which the body, specifically the western male body, could be relied upon to produce valuable and sometimes remarkable knowledge of phenomena that were so ambiguous and strange that they could only be made sense of in a way that was wrapped up in human corporeal perception.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Richard Staley and Professor Simon Schaffer for their invaluable guidance and advice on various iterations of this paper. I would also like to thank the archivists and museum coordinators at the Shetland Museum and Scalloway Museum, especially Bill Moore and Mark Smith, who helped in my search for information about local Shetland perspectives and information about Clement Williamson. Finally, I owe many thanks to two anonymous reviewers for Notes and Records, to whom I am most grateful.

Footnotes

Ms Amery's article was the winner of the 2021 Notes and Records Essay Award, open to researchers in the history of science who have completed a postgraduate degree within the past five years.

2 Niels H. De V. Heathcote and Angus Armitage, 'The First International Polar Year', in The histories of the International Polar Years and the inception and development of the International Geophysical Year: Annals of the International Geophysical Year (ed. Sam Stuart), pp. 7-100 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2013); Cornelia Lüdecke, 'The First International Polar Year (1882-83): a big science experiment with small science equipment', Proc. Int. Commission Hist. Meteorol. 55-64 (2004); Roger D. Launius, James Fleming and David DeVorkin, 'Rise of global scientific inquiry in the International Polar and Geophysical Years', in Globalising polar science: reconsidering the International and Geophysical Years (eds Roger D. Launnius, James Rodger Fleming and David H. DeVorkin), pp. 1-9 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010); Aant Elzinga, 'Through the lens of the polar years: changing characteristics of polar research in historical perspective', Polar Rec. 45(235), 313-336 (2009); Susan Barr, Louwrens Hacquebord and Cornelia Lüdecke, 'Some IPY-2 Histories', in The history of the International Polar Years (IPYS) (eds Susan Barr and Cornelia Lüdecke), pp. 175-210 (Springer, Berlin, 2010); Cornelia Lüdecke and Julia Lajus, 'The Second International Polar Year 1932-1933', in The history of the International Polar Years (eds Susan Barr and Cornelia Lüdecke), pp. 135-174 (Springer, Berlin, 2010).

3 Carl Størmer, 'The Aurora of October 15, 1926, in Norway and sounds associated with it', Nature 119, 45-46 (1927); Carl Størmer, 'Photographic measurement of the great aurora of January 25-26, 1938', Nature 141, 955-957 (1938); Carl Størmer, 'Progress in the photography of the aurora borealis', Terrest. Magn. Atmos. Electr. 37, 475-477 (1932).

19 Robert Marc Friedman, 'Making the aurora Norwegian: science and image in the making of tradition', Interdiscipl. Sci. Rev. 35, 51-68 (2013), at p. 56; Patricia Fara 'Northern possession: laying claim to the aurora borealis', Hist. Workshop J. 42, 37-58 (1996), at p. 38.

26 Adam Paulsen, 'On the height of the aurora borealis', Nature 29, 337-338 (1884), p. 337; P. Stauning, 'Danish auroral science history', Hist. Geo- Space Sci. 2, 1-28 (2011), at p. 12.

33 Daston and Galison, op. cit. (note. 30), p. 139 and for the disciplinary shift towards technoscientific methods within psychology in the United States in the 1880s: Deborah J. Coon, 'Standardising the subject: experimental psychologists, introspection, and the quest for a technoscientific ideal', Technol. Cult. 34, 757-783 (1993); Deborah J. Coon, 'Testing the limits of sense and science: American experimental psychologists combat spiritualism, 1880-1920', Am. Psychol. 47, 143-151 (1992).

37 British International Polar Year Expedition, Observations of the International Polar Year expeditions, 1882- 83: Fort Rae (Tribuner & Co., London, 1886), MBLWHOLI Library, p. 253.

53 Ibid., p. 856; Frank Davies, 'The Canadian Second Polar Year expedition to Hudson Bay, 1932-33', University of Saskatchewan, University Archives & Special Collections, J. E. Kennedy fonds, MG 102 additionals, box 10, at p. 2-3.

79 Unto Kalervo Laine, 'Auroral Acoustic Project - a progress report with a new hypothesis', Paper presented at the Baltic-Nordic Acoustic Meeting BNAM, 1-8 (2016), at p. 1.

82 Kate Bissell, Karin Lehmkuhl Bodony and Matthew Burtner, 'Between the ears: songs of the sky', BBC Radio 3, first broadcast 24 December 2020 ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qhj3).

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The disputed sound of the aurora borealis: sensing liminal noise during the First and Second International Polar Years, 1882-3 and 1932-3 | Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science

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I am from Whalsay and remember on clear and frosty nights about thirty years ago the 'pretty dancers' (as we called them) coming in wide yellowish streaks in the N. E. sky. They would flit to and fro, making a noise as if two planks had met flat ways-not a sharp crack but a dull sound, loud enough for anyone to hear.

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This article is taken from the May 2021 issue of Fraternal Review titled, "The Middle Chamber".
Central to the idea of the Middle Chamber of King Solomon's temple is the very notion of middle-ness itself, what in anthropology is known as liminality.

Based on the Latinate for threshold, the adjective "liminal" refers to those conditions which occur, to quote British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner, "betwixt-and-between" normal states of being [1]. It is a largely undefinable state which is 'neither this nor that,' 'neither here nor there,' but 'somewhere' or 'something' between one state of existence and another.

RITE OF PASSAGE

Coined in 1909 by the French folklorist Arnold van Gennep, liminality is especially significant regarding his concept of the rite of passage, where the liminal state serves as the second of three distinct phases of being.

The three phases of Van Gennep's rite of passage are: separation from the profane, transition (the liminal state proper), and incorporation into the sacred [3]. Separation serves to isolate one from his normal, every-day, waking life; from the "profane."

A STATE OF BEING

Incorporation constitutes one's successful penetration into the new, uncharted state of being; into the "sacred." The transitional or liminal phase, then, may be said to be something of a neutral state, where one exists only in a condition of pure, unrealized potential.

He is neither alive nor dead; awake nor asleep; male nor female; he has neither category nor quality. Indeed, at the point of the liminal crisis, the candidate undergoing a rite of passage simply ceases to exist in the normal meaning of the term.

In the rite of passage that is constituted by the three degrees of Ancient Craft Freemasonry, the transitional or liminal phase proper is perhaps best illustrated by the Fellowcraft's own rite of passage-namely, by the ritual of his "Passing" between the two pillars of King Solomon's temple. This "threshold" state is then translated into the Middle Chamber itself, which, as we've seen, is an apt symbol of liminality in its own right.

CHRISTIANITY & LIMINALITY

In Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the liminal phase may be said to be constituted by the catechumen stage, which occurs after a hearer or inquirer into the religion has declared himself, and has undergone the corres- ponding ceremony. While this ritual indeed separates him from the profane, by making him a member of the Orthodox Church, he is not able to partake of the Eucharist until he has been through chrismation and baptism by the priest, thus incorporating him into what The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom calls "the Faithful." Until that time, he is liminal.

An illustration of liminality may even be drawn from the very image of the crucifix itself, where the Christian savior appears suspended on a crux between paradoxical opposites: He is man, yet He is God; He is alive, yet He was crucified; the Theotokos is mother, yet virgin; God is immanent, yet transcendent; the Eucharist is common bread and wine, yet they are also His veritable body and blood.

CHARACTERIZING LIMINALITY

The liminal state is one which exists outside the normal categories of being and is thus not always easily defined. Indeed, liminality is characterized by its very lack of definition.

One might liken the liminal state to Kabbalist Isaac Luria's concept of Tzimtzum [4]. Hebrew for contraction or constriction, Tzimtzum alludes to the creative process whereby an infinite Deity might restrict Himself, creating a space of not-Self, so that Self-as- other might have the benefit of the appearance or simulation of a separate, independent existence. God's activity of Self-contraction in effect created a liminal space wherein the act of creation was rendered a real possibility.

Liminality is perhaps best summed up in the following quotation from Victor Turner:

"The essential feature of [liminality] is that the neophytes are neither living nor dead from one aspect, and both living and dead from another. Their condition is one of ambiguity and paradox, a confusion of all the customary categories. Jakob Boehme, the German mystic whose obscure writings gave Hegel his celebrated dialectical 'triad,' liked to say that 'in Yea and Nay all things consist.' Liminality may perhaps be regarded [...] as a realm of pure possibility... [1]"

1. Turner, Victor. "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage." The Forest of Symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967.

2. Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. London, UK: Routledge, 1995.

3. Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 2019.

4. Vital, Hayyim. The Tree of Life: The Palace of Adam Kadmon-Chayyim Vital's Introduction to the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. New York, NY: Arizal Publications, 2008.

Written by P.D. Newman

REFERENCES

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The Liminal Chamber - Southern California Research Lodge

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This article is taken from the May 2021 issue of Fraternal Review titled, "The Middle Chamber". Central to the idea of the Middle Chamber of King Solomon's temple is the very notion of middle-ness itself, what in anthropology is known as liminality.

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St Paul's Cathedral, is the cathedral church of the diocese of London, the seat of the Bishop of London, and was recently voted the nation's favourite building by the general public of this country.

The present St Paul's (the fifth to stand on the site) was designed by the great British architect Sir Christopher Wren. It took 35 years to build, a relatively short time frame as far as cathedral building is concerned, and, although the whole construction was overseen by one architect, the period of that construction, 1675 - 1710, spanned the reigns of five monarchs.

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Memories relate to the past. Some artists make work about their childhood, others make work about a particular person, place or event they remember.

Memories of the past

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Two women sit in a small boat tearing up navigation charts: how many died crossing the water ... can the past be replayed ... can the future be different?

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Making memory physical

How memory functions and selective memory is the theme Emma Kay explores in her work. In Worldview she tries to write down the history of the world using only her own memories as a reference.

Both Ibrahim el Salahi and Agnes Martin have created works look at memory in relation to spirituality. El-Salahi frequently draws on childhood memories and visions experienced during meditation for inspiration. In Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I El-Salahi captures the fleeting and dramatic moments when memory and dreams past and present collide. Happy Holiday is one of a series of Martin paintings where she uses titles to evoke happy memories from the past. Her quiet and serene paintings were products of personal and spiritual struggle in her inner emotional world.

This Turner work is a literal representation of a past event, created from memory. It was made after the artist attended the funeral of the portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence. Turner has remembered many small details, and the work evokes the chill air of a cold January day.

Memories of people

Many artists have used artworks as memorials to people that were close to them. Tracey Emin's work May Dodge, My Nan features a collection of objects which relate to her grandmother. A page of handwritten text from the artist addressing her grandmother pays tribute to their loving relationship.

In , artist Gavin Turk creates a memorial to himself. This blue plaque was made for the artist by one of the companies who make the plaques with which English Heritage marks the homes of distinguished people. He uses the idea his death and the commemorating his life as the subject of the work.

Susan Hiller's Monument explores memory, death, history, heroism, representation and time. The work incorporates forty-one photographs of memorial plaques the artist came across in a London park. There is one photograph for each year of the artist's life (at the time the work was made). Each plaque commemorates an ordinary man, woman or child who died while performing an act of heroism.

Fading memory

Artists' treatment of their memories often have a dream-like quality. This suggests the idea of the memory as faded or not being as real as the present. Rachel Whiteread 's casts of now demolished buildings have a melancholy quality. They appear as ghosts of their original structures.

Angus Fairhurst has created works that try to physically erase the memory of man. He has manually blanked out man-made objects in geographically important places. This makes us think about memories of the earth before man, and the effect humankind is having on our world.

Peter Blake is a pop artist interested in a wide range of cultural forms. These include everything from high art to pop music and children's toys. This work suggests a sense of nostalgia for the objects related to his childhood. He creates memories of his younger years with his collection old toys and related images.

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Memories relate to the past. Some artists make work about their childhood, others make work about a particular person, place or event they remember. Memories of the past Artists like Lubaina Himid and Christian Boltanski address a more general history of the past that is part of our collective memory.

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Comic as a memoir for vietnamese diaspora

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Comic as a memoir for vietnamese diaspora

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This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called:
' The Impossibility of Truth' .
Updates will be posted here.

Acrylic on canvas.
150x150cm
Title: the nihilist's stroke

Click image for higher resolution
©2013 Pablo Saborío
Mixed media on canvas.
100×100 cm
Title: portrait of a man waiting for the Answer

Click image for bigger view
©2013 Pablo Saborío
This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called ' The Impossibility of Truth' . I will be publishing updates here.

Acrylic on canvas.
150x150cm
Title: of all men alive, who knows anything
(excerpt from an ancient Babylonian psalm)

Click image for bigger view
©2013 Pablo Saborío
This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called ' The Impossibility of Truth' . I will be publishing updates here.

Acrylic on canvas.
150x150cm
Title: life is an absurd interval between two blind eternities

Click image for bigger view
©2013 Pablo Saborío
This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called ' The Impossibility of Truth' . I will be publishing updates here.

Acrylic on canvas.
150x150cm
Title: Futile Breath (Hofmeyr Skull)

Click image for bigger view
©2012 Pablo Saborío
This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called ' The Impossibility of Truth' .

Title: memento mori (remember you must die)
©2012 Pablo Saborío
This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called ' The Impossibility of Truth' that will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in the coming months. have created a page to post subsequent works an.

Acrylic on canvas.
150x150cm
Title: nothing can be known
©2012 Pablo Saborío
80x100cm.
Acrylic on canvas.
Name: Self-Portait.
©2012 Pablo Saborío
Acrylic on canvas. Name: swallowed colors. Click for bigger view
©2012 Pablo Saborío
Acrylic on canvas. Name: Breast. Click for bigger view
©2012 Pablo Saborío

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This work is part of a 7½ piece exhibition called: ' The Impossibility of Truth' . Updates will be posted here. Acrylic on canvas. 150x150cm Title: the nihilist's stroke ©2013 Pablo Saborío Mixed media on canvas.

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This is a clay map I had make last week and I using  this form to tell peoples my experience in this city. This project wasn’t completed but I thought I will use this way to draw a story about one of heroes in my project.

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'Rooted Beings' invites you to embark on a meditative reflection on the world of plants and fungi. The exhibition considers what we might learn from plant behaviour, and the impacts of colonial expeditions on the exploitation of natural resources and indigenous knowledges.

You'll see botanical archives from Wellcome Collection and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew displayed alongside works by artists Gözde İlkin, Ingela Ihrman and Joseca, with new commissions by Patricia Domínguez, Eduardo Navarro, RESOLVE Collective and Sop.

Plants sustain life on earth. They are sensitive, complex and interconnected beings, playing surprisingly active roles in ecosystems and human societies. 'Rooted Beings' asks if we can become more rooted, attentive, flexible and caring - and attain vegetal enlightenment.

The exhibition is curated by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz with Emily Sargent.

'Rooted Beings' is a collaboration between Wellcome Collection and La Casa Encendida, Madrid. Commission partners: Delfina Foundation, De La Warr Pavilion, West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.

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'Rooted Beings' invites you to embark on a meditative reflection on the world of plants and fungi. The exhibition considers what we might learn from plant behaviour, and the impacts of colonial expeditions on the exploitation of natural resources and indigenous knowledges.

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Timber being sold in the Lidl, a supermarket located in London

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Timber being sold in the Lidl, a supermarket located in London

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From time to time I hear some contemporary representational painters being labeled "nihilists". Often this accusation comes from other artists. Painters like Jenny Saville or John Currin are frequent targets. When one artist is labeling another a "nihilist", it's usually because the work they make appears in opposition to some value or belief the accuser holds dear.. Frequently the work being called such is not factually nihilistic. It may be exploitative, or ugly, or exploring some ugly or exploitative topic, This does not make it nihilism.

Nihilism is a complex philosophical idea, but the label is often applied in Homer Simpson fashion to suggest that the art in question is in some way a lesser art than the accusers own value system represents. There are many flavors of nihilism; metaphysical nihilism, mereological nihilism, epistemological nihilism, probably even low-fat nihilism. Nietzsche and other philosophers have thought and written about nihilism a great deal.For purposes of this conversation, I'll use a commonly understood form of nihilism: existential nihilism, which is the essential belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.Pessimism, skepticism, hopelessness, despair, recklessness, and rebellion are some traits found in an existential nihilist's behavior.

Existential Nihilism has been around a long time, as it reflects a part of the human condition. The darker, brutal, instinctual side of life and its by-products can contribute to nihilistic thinking and behavior.The ancient philosopher Hegesis(c.250 BC) argued that "miseries vastly outnumber pleasures", so happiness is impossible. Therefore, he advocated suicide. ​Nihilism is not singular to our time or culture, and it is not a product of the 20th Century.

​Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) is one of the celebrated artists in the canon of Western painting. He was rewarded and acknowledged in his own lifetime, fell into obscurity, and is today once again recognized for the high art that he produced. Apprenticing first with Simone Peterzano(a student of Titian) and later working in other studios, Caravaggio amplified the practice of Chiaroscuro painting to a level of expression that had profound impact on the Baroque era and many future painters. This extreme chiaroscuro painting is known as Tenebrism.

A tenebrist painting depicts a strong light, often a 'divine' light emitting from no visible source. Darkness and shadow is the critical foundation of the painting, as it holds and supports the light. Darkness is of at least equal importance to the light. Physically, a viewers vision is always drawn to the light, but the shadow is always present, unnoticed and unconsidered, anchoring the light. Without the dark, the light cannot be held to reveal form or elicit meaning. The fact that Caravaggio understood and expressed this so dramatically through heightening the extremes was not necessarily an isolated painterly device, but perhaps a metaphor for the way he viewed existence. In Tenebrist paintings, the dark takes up more surface area than the light: "miseries vastly outnumber pleasures."

Beyond chiaroscuro, if you study Caravaggio's choices for the depiction of his subject matter you will notice nihilistic tendencies. A cheating cardsharp, worm-holes in his apples, his unique portrayal of the execution of John the Baptist with his own signature in the puddle of blood, and his self-portrayed execution and self-destruction in one version of David and Goliath. These were not usual conventions to include in these works and reflect Caravaggio's world view. The visual clues are there: skepticism, recklessness, despair, hopelessness. A reality understood from how he lived, with "one foot in the light and one foot in the dark".

In his early years Caravaggio ran the streets of Rome with a group of like-minded individuals who adopted the motto "Nec Spe, Nec Metu" which means "Without hope, without fear." If there''s a better motto to express existential nihilism, I'm not sure what it is. In Rome, Caravaggio rejected the accepted viewpoint for art as perfect form and ideal beauty. He refused to employ these devices in his works or to convey a vision of divine perfection.

To the dismay and criticism of Classic standard bearer's such as Gian Pietro Bellori, Caravaggio refused to draw sculpture or copy master works. He used models from the street. He portrayed the immediate, the here and now. His self-portrait as " Sick Bacchus" is a clear denial of transcendent beauty and spiritual meaning. Bacchus, the eternal god of pleasure, is depicted by Caravaggio as sickly, dirty, raw, human. Pure visual nihilism.

Was Caravaggio an existential Nihilist? The label can be applied and might fit more snugly than it fits other painters accused today. I f Caravaggio can be labelled a nihilist whose paintings express actual nihilistic qualities, then it follows that magnificent art can indeed be nihilistic. This does not suggest that all nihilism is magnificent art any more than all beauty is magnificent art, but it supports the fact that powerful art is not about transcendence alone.

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Does Caravaggio's Style Reflect Nihilism?

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From time to time I hear some contemporary representational painters being labeled "nihilists". Often this accusation comes from other artists. Painters like Jenny Saville or John Currin are frequent targets. When one artist is labeling another a "nihilist", it's usually because the work they make appears in opposition to some value or belief the accuser holds dear..

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The group rechalking of the white horses

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Using traditional tools to rechalk the horses

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All ages help out - generation to generation

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https://turf-projects.com/london-road/london-road-online-treasure-trail/

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Use the activity London Road Treasure Trail activity guide as a template to make your own treasure trail. If you have a printer at home, you can print out this map and fill it in. Tune in to our London Road Audio Tour and complete the activity guide while you listen.

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Children of the Stones 1977  Episode 01 - Into The Circle

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The children's TV show set around the white horses and stone circles of Wiltshire and Avebury. This helped establish this area as quite an eery, mystical place.

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Children of the Stones 1977  Episode 01 - Into The Circle

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Video art project about the White horses

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The Museum of the White Horse was a personal response by artist Tania Kovats to our historic and ongoing fascination with the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire. Bickerstaff's documentary follows Tania to White Horse Hill, Newbury Races and the Natural History Museum, where she speaks about the concepts behind the development of the Museum and her continuing engagement with drawing and landscape.

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Some old iron age coins depicted horses similarly to the Uffington horse - dissected and alien. This helps to age the monument

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A map which I drew down the line from camberwell to Cutty Sark last month, I think it is quite like a way to record the memory of city history.

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Lorna Simpson 1960 Born and works USA

Then & Now 2016

12 panels, ink and screenprint on clayboard

Simpson is known for her engagement with race and identity politics. This work was created by screenprinting two found photographs, after which the artist worked on the surface by hand. The photographs were taken during the Detroit Rebellion in July 1967, which began after police attempted to arrest all 82 customers in an unlicensed bar. Over the next five days, 43 people were killed, 1189 injured and over 2000 properties destroyed. Made at a time when police violence against African American citizens continues to dominate the headlines, Simpson's painting connects the events of 1967 to the present day.

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Nancy Spero 1926-2009 Born and worked US

Sheela-na-gig/Artemis: Totem 1 1985 Handprinted ink on paper

This work features powerful female archetypes from across history, including the Sheela-na-gig, the Celtic goddess of fertility and destruction, based on a sculpture at Kilpeck Church, Hereford c.1120-30, and Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting, childbirth and the moon.

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Nancy Spero: 'These images are not about the past. They use images of women from the past to speak of the present and the future - with, of course, a lot left out.'

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After joining the Black Lives Matter protests in London in Spring 2020, photographer Liz Johnson Artur was motivated to show solidarity with and photograph protestors in Vauxhall, Westminster and Trafalgar Square. Artur decided to print the work on pages from braille editions of two novels she collected: Iris Murdoch's The Red and The Green (1965) and John Harris's Ride out the Storm: A Novel of Dunkirk (1975), both of which contain references to difference, conflict and resistance.

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'It was crucial for me to give those people their reference in time in a physical way, this is why printed the photographs. I hope they can see themselves as part of this important moment in British history. - Liz Johnson Artur

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LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR

'I use time but in a different way, I create my own way to deal with time.'

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'I never went digital, it is not tangible for me. I need to be able to go back to what is an actual original. Each photograph being backed up with a negative. This is something that is very important for me, in a physical, but also symbolic way.

I always look for more than the perfect picture, I try to capture a presence and look for stories through photographs.' - Liz Johnson Artur

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Pat Steir 1940 Born and works USA

The Wave - From The Sea - After Leonardo, Hokusai and Courbet 1985 Drypoint and aquatint on paper

In this complex print, Steir reinterprets images of water by artists from the past. The top image refers to a drawing of a whirlpool (1507-9) by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. The central image is based on a woodcut print (early 1830s) by Japanese printmaker Hokusai. A painting of waves (1869) by French artist Gustave Courbet inspired the bottom image. However, for Steir, these works also carry a feeling of emotional terror. Coming to terms with the recent death of her mother, Steir observed that The Wave had more to do with 'fear and death, terror of death, than image'.

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“I painted them in order to remenber, in order to be able to keep[what happened] in mind.”

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JIMMIE DURHAM

Using wit and humour, Jimmie Durham's art subverts the foundations of modern western culture.

Durham began his artistic career as a response to the civil rights movement. Using assemblage techniques and the poetics of language, Durham's art playfully upturns the political and intellectual foundations of Western culture. These include the separation between the natural and the human-made worlds, and the linear narrative.

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Jimmie Durham

He presented a series of sculptures that resemble guns and surveillance devices, alluding to modern methods of control and domination. These were crudely assembled using found objects and materials he had collected in his then-studio in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Durham then affixed texts with passages from Western literature. He described the final works as looking like a science fiction-type weapon as much as anything.

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León Ferrari 1920-2013 Born Argentina, worked Argentina, Brazil

L'Osservatore Romano 2001, printed 2007 Digital prints on paper

L'Osservatore Romano ('The Roman Observer') is the daily newspaper of the Vatican. It reports on world events from the point of view of the Catholic Church. For these works Ferrari took headlines from the Spanish language edition. He then added found images, many of which depict hell and punishment.

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León Ferrari 1920-2013 Born Argentina, worked Argentina, Brazil

L'Osservatore Romano 2001, printed 2007 Digital prints on paper

Other images show instruments of torture, the Argentine military and condom wrappers. Ferrari accused the Church of doing nothing to stop the murders and persecutions committed by Argentina's military regime. These works compare this silence to the violence of its traditional belief in eternal punishment.

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Textile often carry personal, cultural and familial meaning.