Machine entrails and the mysteries of modern artefacts

This might seem incredibly trite ...... but I was thinking recently that much of the machinery we use in our everyday lives is hidden from us by shells and bodies and casings. Like clocks, cars, and microwaves ovens, and air-conditioners, fridges, washing machines, and mobile phones, cameras, computers and televisions. We can't see the mechanical bits working because they're covered by white metal or grey plastic.  

This is the insides of an air-conditioner. Just look at all those bits.

For an archaeologist of the contemporary past, this means that even though we are very familiar with what these machines do and their social role in our world, we might not necessarily recognise the bits of one if it were deprived of its outside and falling apart on a site. Perhaps I assume too much here, but I certainly can't automatically identify bits of modern machinery. I'm probably more expert in early colonial artefacts and lithics.

Artefact from Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station, 2010.  I mean, what is this? Is it part of an air conditioner?

Up until the point where machines left big factories and became part of domestic life, most decaying buildings had easily recognisable artefacts which didn't have hidden insides, like ceramics, nails, cutlery, buttons, bricks, bones; I could go on but you get the picture. Stone tools, faunal remains, all that stuff we are taught to identify and record as students. No-one teaches us what the parts of a television are. This isn't even starting on specialist machinery, electronics, and the fact that these technologies change over time.

Some experimental work is needed, possibly involving a hammer and some op-shopping. Any volunteers? (Possibly it also involves acquiring manuals for these things. Hmmm. Not looking forward to reading those).

Space heritage and the Dublin Principles for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Sites, Structures, Areas and Landscapes

Last year, the 17th ICOMOS General Assembly approved the 'Dublin Principles' for the the Conservation of Industrial Heritage, Sites, Structures, Areas and Landscapes. The Principles are the joint work of the International Council on Monuments and Sites and the International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). This is naturally of interest since it covers the material culture of space exploration, which, despite the romance of rockets and astronauts, is about as industrial as you can get. You can find the final text here.

So what are the principles?  They start with a definition:

The industrial heritage consists of sites, structures, complexes, areas and landscapes as well as the related machinery, objects or documents that provide evidence of past or ongoing industrial processes of production, the extraction of raw materials, their transformation into goods, and the related energy and transport infrastructures.

This definition is both broad enough and precise enough to apply to space complexes consisting of terrestrial and orbital/planetary/interplanetary components. The interdependence of 'multiple site operations or systems' is emphasised in a few places in the Principles, and I think this is important, both as a feature of industry in a globalised capitalist world, and as a management principle - you can't just consider a site in isolation: the connections are part of its significance.

The definition does not mention time frame, but the introduction makes clear that the focus of the Principles is the heritage of the Industrial Revolution and the modern world.

Note also that documents are both sources of information, and part of the evidence: both artefact and research tool at the same time.

The significance and value of industrial heritage is intrinsic to the structures or sites themselves, their material fabric, components, machinery and setting, expressed in the industrial landscape, in written documentation, and also in the intangible records contained in memories, arts and customs.

A frequent question I get when I talk about space stuff to non-archaeologists is why we need to keep the actual material when we have (often) the maps, plans, photographs, documents, etc. The answer is simple. Words and drawings can lie. Well, they can be inaccurate, or represent something only from a particular perspective (both in the drawing sense or the point of view sense), or omit critical information. (These inaccuracies, perspectives and omissions are themselves interesting to study). And anyone who still thinks that a photograph in some way represents an objective reality needs to get with the programme. That's not to say that photographs are not incredibly important as historical documents; only that to see them as standing in for the actual object or place is very naive in a 19th century spiritualist kind of way. Yes, scientists, I'm talking to you, with my humanities hat on.

So the fabric, the physical stuff, is important. Where a document of any kind does not tell us what we need to know, or we want another perspective, we need to go back to the original thing. This statement also picks up on the importance of the setting (following the Burra Charter) and the intangibles. 

Here is the first action statement: I. Document and understand industrial heritage structures, sites, areas and landscapes and their values. This research and documentation should include human skills and knowledge, should be interdisciplinary, and should include consultation with stakeholders. All this is standard fare for heritage managers, but the following is perhaps a departure, and as a recommendation for practice, has all kinds of implications:

Research and preservation of documentary records, company archives, building plans, and specimens of industrial products should be encouraged. The evaluation and assessment of documents should be undertaken by an appropriate specialist in the industry to which they relate to determine their heritage significance.

This is about encouraging corporations and industries to value their own history and heritage, and preserve the company archives. I've certainly had the experience of contacting a manufacturer to enquire about particular documents or archives, only to find that someone has chucked them out just the week before because they were taking up space, or they've got lost in some building move, or a recent employee isn't even aware of the company's history or significance. The second part of the statement above acknowledges that modern industries are so complex and specialist that a heritage manager can't, by themselves, hope to gain a good understanding of what documents mean and why they might be significant: an industry specialist should not only be consulted, but should evaluate and assess these documents.

II. Ensure effective protection and conservation of the industrial heritage structures, sites, areas and landscapes.

This protection should occur through legal, policy and administrative measures, while remaining aware of the rules for corporations and investments, trades or intellectual property such as patents, and standards applicable to active industrial operations. In other words, the relationship of the heritage to the contemporary industry. Not something you really have to worry about with other kinds of heritage.

Are there legal measures for the protection of space heritage? It depends where you are. Some countries have heritage legislation that only covers things of a certain age, for example, over 100 years old. So contemporary industrial heritage may only be protected by legislation when enough time has passed, by which time sites may have been demolished and built over, vandalised, recycled, etc, and the knowledge, customs and memories associated with them have passed away with the people who worked there. (See below for more on time frames).

Heritage legislation may also not cover the extra-planetary components of a place or site, if we consider them to be connected, which we do. This is where heritage, which is usually legally protected at the national level, comes up against the Outer Space Treaty 1967, which makes it impossible for national jurisdiction to be extended into space. There is a legal, administrative and policy gap here.

This is a very practical bit: Integrated inventories and lists of structures, sites, areas, landscapes, their setting and associated objects, documents, drawings and archives or intangible heritage should be developed. So we need to know what's there, and we need to integrate the documents with the physical stuff and with the intangible stuff. This recognises the complexity and interconnectedness of industrial processes, as well as the distinct nature of the contemporary past: as Harrison and Schofield (2010) have pointed out, something that characterises the contemporary archaeological record is the superfluity and abundance of information and artefacts of all kinds. Because the passage of time has not yet removed massive chunks of the record through decay and destruction, we have so much stuff that needs to be understood; almost too much stuff. 

For ongoing industries, heritage management should be integrated with their operation and recognise that this operation may in fact carry heritage value.

The machinery, fittings and related objects are just as important as the actual buildings. This is crucial, as frequently such places are approached from an architectural perspective only, and the movable stuff gets sold, scrapped or recycled elsewhere. Not to say that these options might not sometimes be appropriate - there is something nice about the re-use of industrial materials - but losing them may diminish the significance of the buildings too.

Time frames are very important:

Legal and administrative frameworks should be developed to enable authorities to respond quickly to the closure of operating industrial heritage sites and complexes to prevent removal or destruction of significant elements such as machinery, industrial objects or related records.

I'm not sure quite how we would do this, but it is a kind of rescue archaeology or salvage at its most immediate. What is not explicit here is the assumption (for which we have plenty of evidence, however) of how little value people place on industrial heritage. If intervention is not performed, then the stuff will be lost to us, because industries will not of their own volition take care of their own heritage. So we need to be proactive: to have some idea beforehand of the likely value of a company's resources, and be at the ready when they go under and liquidate their assets. Heritage management through the financial news pages .......

The classic example of this is the Woomera launch site in South Australia. At the end of the Europa and Apollo programmes in the early 1970s, infrastructure was demolished, sold for scrap, reused by the Centre Nationale des Etudes Spatiales at the Kourou launch site in French Guiana, and sometimes destroyed in frustration and despair by those whose dreams of space had been sold down the river by the perfidious Brits.

III. Conserve and maintain the industrial heritage structures, sites, areas and landscapes.

Adaptive reuse is highlighted as a way to sustain an industrial place while respecting the fabric. Following the Burra Charter, physical interventions should be reversible and documented. If places or machinery have to be dismantled, they should be thoroughly documented and oral histories done.

IV. Present and communicate the heritage dimensions and values of industrial structures, sites, areas and landscapes to raise public and corporate awareness, and support training and research.

This also is standard fare - interpretation is an important part of heritage management, for many reasons: to justify the resources used in undertaking heritage work; to give a product back to the community; to engage the community in their own heritage. Here again we see the view that companies (corporations) do not value their own heritage and need to be supported in this.

Public awareness is, in the context of industrial heritage, of a different order to other kinds of heritage. The industrial is often constructed as opposed to some kind of generalised bucolic idyll that is unconsciously held to be more related to the 'natural' human spirit than the gritty, filthy, coal and disease-ridden industries that existed only to screw profit out of people and the earth. I think there are social memories of the industrial revolution that evoke negative responses to industry, even now. I guess I am articulating this for the first time in my head, so I haven't fully thought through what this means, but I think there is some kind of truth in it. Industry is the opposite of what many people consider heritage to be. And yet, in terms of working lives, industry engages and mobilises huge numbers of people who have knowledge, memories, practices, rituals, and frequently great pride in their work. They just don't necessarily think of it as having heritage value.

Finally, the principles conclude with this statement:

Programmes and facilities such as visits of active industrial heritage sites and the presentation of their operations as well as the stories and intangible heritage associated with their history, machinery and industrial processes, industrial or city museums and interpretation centres, exhibitions, publications, websites, regional or trans-boundary itineraries should be developed and sustained as means to raise awareness and appreciation for the industrial heritage in the full richness of its meaning for contemporary societies. These should ideally be located at the heritage sites itself where the process of industrialisation has taken place and can be best communicated. Wherever possible, national and international institutions in the field of research and conservation of heritage should be empowered to use them as educational facilities for the general public and the professional communities.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Random thoughts about gravity and science

Saturday night. A quiet one in - I have a number of graduate students' thesis and report drafts to work through, and I'm thinking I might catch a bit of Graham Norton later in the evening. Debating whether to open the bottle of red I ended up with at the Flinders Archaeological Society's Quiz Night at the Adelaide Gaol, Wednesday last week. Might not help me appraise the students' data analysis with acuity, though.

On Thursday I got a new book, Robyn Arianrhod's Seduced by Logic. Emilie du Chatelet, Mary Somerville and the Newtonian Revolution (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2011). I'm a sucker for a bit of mathematics, and with some girlie brainboxes thrown in, a good read is sure to be had by all. (Also, it features Voltaire).

A few years back, I was cheeky enough to write about gravitation myself (The Gravity of Archaeology, 2009, Archaeologies 5(2): 344-359). I'm sure I'd never get anything about gravity published in anything other than an archaeology journal, despite an invitation from the Journal of Modern Physics to contribute to a volume on cosmology and gravitation! I guess what fascinates me most about gravity is just how mysterious it really is.

In high school physics, you learn about mass, gravity, velocity, acceleration, entropy, etc, and have to solve endless tedious problems about them. As a kid, you don't really question any of it. Years (and years) later, I find myself troubled by these questions. I mean, what is mass, really? And force? If you called them something different, would you think differently about them?

I suppose one of the values of literary excursions into the history and philosophy of science is that they afford you new ways to conceptualise things and make the links between them.  Reading Arianrhod's book, I found myself musing that one of the virtues of Einstein's general relativity was that it explained the spooky action-at-a-distance aspect of Newtonian universal gravitation.

(And it was Newton who made space empty - because he had to get rid of ether as an explanation for the motions of the celestial bodies. But what are stupid gravity particles if they're not ether? Anyway I don't think gravity can be a particle. It has to be a movement).

And that thought recalled to my mind a book I haven't finished reading yet, by famous Australian postmodernist Elizabeth Grosz. Can't remember what it was called even, it's buried under a pile of papers in my office. (Actually it might be this one: Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, 1995).

In one passage, Grosz is talking about scientific theories. She describes how Einsteinian gravity replaced Newtownian gravity, as if they were just so many Kuhnian paradigms. And I thought (earlier in the year as I was reading it), that's not right. One didn't replace the other, that's not how we think about it. We don't study Newton as a historical curiosity. (And I was already constructing myself as part of the 'we', unconsciously, no Lizzie, you're not one of us, you don't understand).

Then I thought more about it and wondered if I was wrong. That there was some fundamental incompatibility between the two, rather than perhaps a slightly uneasy sliding of frames of reference sometimes. I always thought it was just that you used the equations or the approach that suited the problem at hand, you didn't just declare Newton was WRONG and get all quantummy about it. And, by implication in Grosz's book, science was also wrong, as we just couldn't get anything right the first time.

OK, so this is a caricature of Grosz' description; but the main thing that struck me, assuming the understanding I had of these things since a kid wasn't itself totally off the mark, was that she just didn't get how it worked.  Maybe you don't question it at school, but if you grow up in the sciences, then there are ways of approaching things that you don't even know you have until something calls it into question. From this I conclude that it can be really hard to understand science if you have not already been steeped in it. 

Lordy. I think I will open that bottle of red after all.

Dr Space Junk in the Venus Transit Lounge

And Venus was her name ....

Well it was all a bit exciting really. Unfortunately I had a lot of trouble with the Australian feed from Alice Springs, and not just because a road worker had accidentally cut the cable. Even though they were supposed to be getting the best quality images, all I could find when I checked the site was pictures of someone's car boot.

So we watched the Hawai'i feed in my Transit Lounge here at Flinders University. The Hawai'ian dudes had some interesting commentary and I liked their casual approach.  People dropped in and out of the Venus Transit Lounge throughout the day. I wouldn't say I was any kind of expert on the Transit of Venus, despite it being my favourite planet, but all the same I found myself explaining various points and features to the assembled science lovers.

Jennifer McKinnon took this photo and supplied the caption!

The Transit of Venus at Flinders University

In Humanities Room 281, all day!

Performing the Moon: Tranquility Base and témoignage

Sometimes simple thoughts can take a long while to catalyse.

Last year, Dr Jonathan Bollen, Head of Drama at Flinders, did a joint seminar with me based around the ideas in Michael Shanks and Mike Pearson's Theatre/Archaeology (2001). Among other things, I remember talking about the spectacle of the rocket launch and the fact that a rocket is actually a very ephemeral entity, only being assembled prior to the launch, and disintegrating during it as the various stages separate. All of this is watched by people in control rooms, tracking stations, and at the launch site, as you see in the photo below.

Lyndon B. Johnson and Spiro Agnew watch the launch of the Apollo 11 Saturn V. NASA/Science Photo Library

On Tuesday this week I gave a guest lecture to a Screen & Media class about Indigenous media. For this, I looked at how Aboriginal groups in Canada and Australia had used satellite television creatively to support their cultures. As historical background, I mentioned the concomitant growth of global television with the use of the geostationary orbit, as exemplified by the estimated 600 million people who watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969.

And today, I'm having a 'mini writing retreat', locked away in a bare seminar room with one of my students. I'm reading a PhD thesis by Fiona Campbell and Jonna Ulin called Borderline Archaeology. A practice of contemporary archaeology - exploring aspects of creative narratives and performative cultural production (Gothenburg Archaeological Thesis No 29, Goteborg, Sweden, 2004).

Two quotes discussed in their book really spoke to me. In 1899, Canadian historian William F. Ganong made a remarkably prescient statement about how archaeology should be done:

Unlike some other phases of history, archaeological studies .... should be undertaken as soon as possible after the events have occurred, for their evidence is found not so much in documents reasonably sure of long preservation, but in perishable materials and alterable localities.

Spot on, I thought. There is no necessity to wait around for the place or the junk to acquire some archaeological credibility - we should be leaping right in after the last participant has left the site and collecting their garbage! This kind of thing was the topic of conversation on the CONTEMP-HIST-ARCH email discussion list after the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. A few people thought this was a lost opportunity to do some really creative contemporary archaeology on the streets where swarming crowds of people gathered to watch and celebrate, precisely the kind of thing that we ought to be all over .... but alas, contemporary archaeologists were glued to the telly with the rest of the world ....

Campbell and Ulin's referencing is a little patchy, so I'm not precisely sure where the next quote came from.  They say 

David Schneider has described performance as 'organised human behaviour presented before witnesses' (Campbell and Ulin 2004:26).

I was thinking of Tranquility Base while reading all of this, particularly as Beth Laura O'Leary and I have recently finished writing a piece where we talk about the archaeological value of Tranquility Base as a site. I thought to myself: the entire Apollo moon landing was a performance by this definition, being organised to the most minute level, and witnessed by the largest audience in human history. And in fact, looked at from this perspective, the structure of the site is dictated as much by the requirements of the performance as the actual scientific work that was to be carried out there. Or perhaps it is truer to say that the actual scientific work cannot be separated from the performance of being the first humans on another planet.

There's also, I think, a fine dividing line between being witnessed, and being surveilled. The astronauts' bodies were being constantly monitored, as were their every action and word; they had a tight script for all actions they undertook and what they said was of the utmost importance.  The stage and the prison of their suits and lander were one and the same.

This perspective makes me see a new dimension to how one might analyse the actual traces left at Tranquility Base, the bootprints, tracks, furrows, pits, discarded materials. I would always have argued that this was an archaeological site like any other, that can be mapped and analysed (well, if one could do this remotely), but exactly what we could learn from this, I wasn't entirely clear. One obvious thing is the difference between what the astronauts actually did and what they said they did, but I don't know why we want to know that ... and of course there are no similar sites to compare. Maybe this is partially the problem.  

But hang on. We do have similar sites, just on terrestrial landscapes. We do have places where humans landed in hostile, unknown environments and carried out a series of actions, frequently with some scientific objective (eg Cook and Banks, that French bloke in Tasmania), and sometimes watched by Indigenous and other inhabitants. Would it be interesting to compare the use of space in such places? Did the strangeness of the environment make people move carefully and always within view of each other, for example?

But to get back to my main point, if I think of Tranquility Base as a performance dictated by the needs of the witnesses, then the trails left by the astronauts tell us something about the expectations of those witnesses, scientific, political and public, rather perhaps than the agency of the astronauts themselves. In this sense, can we compare their movements to those of robotic missions on Mars? Are there any similarities or differences between human and robotic engagements with planetary landscapes and is there anything interesting to be learnt from this comparison?

Beth O'Leary makes the point that at Tranquility Base we have a well preserved site which can be viewed remotely, together with the documents of the mission AND the film footage. This is a rare opportunity, then, to study the site as a performance: to compare the experience of different witnesses who have access to different versions (the astronauts see each other, the public see it on television, the tracking station and NASA staff see the raw data, the journalists edit and re-represent it), taking as one of those versions the site as it becomes after the astronauts leave: a flat, two-dimensional record of a multi-dimensional event which took place over many hours, a lasting trace of ephemeral movements and intentions.

Well, we're only fifty years or so late to realise the archaeological potential of Tranquility Base, but we're working on it.  The next time people go to another planet, perhaps we should mobilise a bit earlier ......

References
Ganong, William F. 1899. A Monograph of Historic Sites in the Province of New Brunswick. Proceeding and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 2.

Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks 2001 Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge

Space-craft: rockets, jetpacks, and other DIY space paraphernalia

I do love a bit of space craft. These delights have popped up on my radar over the last couple of days as I have been confined to bed, the result of some pre-winter disease, and with my brain unable to process anything work-related (until this morning), there has been quite a bit of mindless internet roaming and DVD watching going on. (And more toast and Nutella than a person really needs).

This beautiful rocket bookcase was made by Jesse Harrington, who is, according to their profile, a 31-year old robot. If you're lusting after this as much as I am, you can find instructions about how to make it at Instructables.  I fear it is a bit beyond my skills.

This, however, is more like it. Over at Doodlecraft, Nat has made a wonderful rocket-powered jet pack out of two plastic drink bottles, coloured felt, silver paint, tape, cardboard and hot glue. This would gladden any space nut's heart.

For some serious geekery, check out Greg B's Apollo astronaut costume:

If you want to have a go at making this costume, full details can be found here.

This one is hardcore: Sputnik in a biscuit tin.  

1. Tomy baby monitor - transmitter and aerial

2. Wireless router - backup transmitter and aerial

3. Mercury thermometer - temperature sensor

4. x4 large batteries - power supply

5. Balloon - pressure sensor (expands and pops if case punctured)

6. Power-pack - backup power supply

7. Domestic thermostat - activates fan and changes radio signal

8. Battery powered fan - moves heat to casing (once tin lid is on)

9. Biscuit tin with foil - houses components and reflects solar radiation

In 2007, the BBC News Magazine issued a challenge to create the equivalent of a Sputnik satellite using just stuff from about the house:

There are transmitters in mobile or cordless phones, wireless internet routers and baby monitors, and you may well have a thermometer in the medicine cabinet.

A party balloon can act as a simple pressure switch of sorts - a partially inflated one would certainly expand and burst if the pressure outside dropped to zero. And temperature switches can be found all over the house, including in the thermostat for the central heating system, or in the electric oven or washing machine. 

Electronic gadgets contain batteries, and fans can be found in home computers or the kitchen extractor. The only thing you may have trouble laying your hands on is a large metal sphere with whiplash aerials poking out. 

This is where your biscuit tin comes in. No whiplash aerials, but it makes a spiffy housing for all the components. As Paul Rubens, the author of this article, said, it really is incredible that technology which barely existed 50 years ago is now part of every household (well at least in some parts of the world). 

And finally, you wouldn't know you were chez Dr Space Junk unless there was a splendid rocket cake.  This one is truly ....  something else.  

Apparently, they are meant to be rockets. Of some kind. This cake was made for a Fourth of July celebration in the USA and comes to Space Age Archaeology courtesy of the marvellous Jen and her team over at Cake Wrecks (When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong). Freud could go to town on this one.

Well, now it's time for me to venture out of bed and persuade myself that fruit is a better option for a sick person than more toast with lashings of butter and Nutella. Wish me luck.

Presencing absence: cable ties and what's left behind

Thanks to Nicolas Laracuente (@archaeologist) for sending me this rather atmospheric photo of some cable ties on a lamp-post in Frankfort. Once, a poster or notice was attached using them. What it was about we'll never know (a concert or theatre advertisement? Wanted poster? Changes in bus timetables?): all that remains are the cable ties.

So cable ties really are the quintessential artefact of the contemporary past: they are always used to contain or fasten or attach some kind of thing, but we frequently find them unattached themselves, having become separated from the thing as it decayed or was taken apart or moved on to other uses, other occasions. Their very presence implies the absent thing.

On my reading list: Satellite!

It's all in the exclamation mark, and the beautiful dust jacket design.

Dr Space Junk: the logo

This is it, my new logo, launched at the Digital Humanities Australasia conference in Canberra last week.

Translation: Dr Space Junk says "Save our space heritage".

The art of Dr Space Junk #1: the Cosmic Sieve

Years ago, I was a young archaeologist-about-town in Sydney, working mainly in Indigenous heritage management, but sometime historical stuff too (eg First Government House). I also held various positions on the Australian Association of Consulting Archaeologists, such as NSW State Representative and Newsletter Editor. It was while doing the latter that I made a number of illustrations to accompany particular stories or to fill in empty space. These were all drawn by hand in pen and india ink; there were no scanners or illustrating programs in those days.

I found this one in a portfolio of other archaeological illustrations, section drawings, lithics, site plans, etc. When excavating, all the deposit must be put through sieves, usually nested, to separate all the artefactual or cultural material from the soil for bagging and later analysis. We did an awful lot of dry and wet sieving in those days. A day on the sieves could be truly tedious if you weren't finding much.

This is the idea behind this picture, done in 1992.  This was long before I had any inkling that I would end up as a space archaeologist, so I think it's a bit prophetic. (And thank god I spelt "sieve" right in it!).

The wages of procrastination: a Skylab word cloud

The patron saint of astronauts - the surprising story of the "Flying Friar"

This is how it happened. Dr Mick "Cheekbones" Morrison, the President of the International Year of Having Fun 2012 Kitty Sutcliffe, Dr Junk herself, Darlene McNaughton, and me, Dr Space Junk, are sitting around the kitchen table with perhaps a modicum of red wine already consumed, and fullish glasses in front of us. (You didn't know there was also a Dr Junk, did you?). Somehow, the conversation turns to saints, and one of us (maybe me, but not necessarily) wonders who the patron saint of aerospace, or spaceflight, or astronauts, is.

This is a problem quickly solved in this day and age. The iPhone of Dr Cheekbones invokes Wikipedia and we have our answer: it is a clerical dude called Joseph of Cupertino, who has this honour because he was a bit of a levitator.  Which makes perfect sense.

He was a bit of a few other things too, as I found when I consulted my trusty Oxford Dictionary of Saints back at home. (The reason I own such a book is because I once studied icon painting - not because of any religious convictions, being an atheist, but basically because I'm easily distracted by shiny things and a sucker for gold and gilt [without the "u", note].  My icon painting teacher, Michael Galovic, was very well known, and I loved the discipline of the art form, and the precision and uncertainty of mixing colours, and many other things. But that was another lifetime ago, when I lived in Sydney and was basically an itinerant digger and lithic analyst).

Anyway. Getting distracted already. It has to be said, upon reading the entry for St Joseph of Cupertino (or Copertino), that aspects of his life and character do not always reflect well on the astronaut class. I shall summarise.

In 1603, near Brindisi in Italy, Joseph was born in a garden shed because his father had to sell the house to pay debts. As a young boy, his nickname was 'The Gaper' because he would wander around open-mouthed.  He was also very religious, but did not make a good impression on the orders he tried to join: 

... after eight months with the Capuchins [MONKS not monkeys] when he forgot to do what he was told, dropped piles of plates and dishes on the floor, and neglected to tend the all-important kitchen fire, he was dismissed (Farmer 1992: 270).

But his growing devotion and spirituality paid off and in 1625 the Franciscans allowed him to join as a novice.  

Although very backward in his studies his extreme good luck in examinations enabled him to be ordained priest in 1628. His life thenceforward was distinguished by extreme austerity, many ecstasies [religious transportations NOT drugs] and apparently supernatural healings. ... Perhaps the most famous are his repeated levitations ... of which seventy instances were recorded during his seventeen years at Grotella.  The most spectacular were his flying to images placed high above the altars and helping workmen to erect a Calvary Cross thirty-six feet high by lifting it into place in mid-air 'as if it were straw'. Ten men had previously failed to lift it.  Such feats earned him the nickname 'the Flying Friar' (Farmer 1992:270-271).

Sabina Mac Mahon, “The Levitation of St. Joseph of Cupertino” (2010).  She says: "My current practice involves the reinterpretation of the lives of the saints through the creation of fictional narratives that are presented as factual documents through a combination of photography, video, found objects and installations. I am interested in how saints are depicted in both fine art and votive images, the use of attributes in traditional hagiographical iconography and how these relate to biographical accounts of the lives of the saints, many of which exist somewhere between factual historical accounts and legendary fictions" (http://www.mart.ie/artists/s-z/sabina-macmahon)

He had a rather difficult career, running afoul of church authorities but also gathering a popular following. He died in 1663, and his feast is celebrated on the 18th September. He wasn't sanctified for the levitation thing: it was actually for 'extreme patience and humility' (Farmer 1992:271).

A life of extremes, it seems.

I'm struck by a few things here.  Firstly, what exactly constitutes this "extreme good luck" in examinations?  The answer lies in this rather gorgeous little prayer, reflecting a combination of desperation, naivete and outrageous cheekiness:

O Great St. Joseph of Cupertino who while on earth did obtain from God the grace to be asked at your examination only the questions you knew, obtain for me a like favour in the examinations for which I am now preparing. In return I promise to make you known and cause you to be invoked.

Secondly, the plate-dropping episodes, not to mention the cross-lifting, sound to me like he was half in and half out of terrestrial gravity. I'm not quite sure how to describe it. When he drops the plates, it's like the experience recounted by numerous astronauts on returning to Earth after stints in space: they become so used to the absence of gravity, that when they have finished using a tool or toothbrush or whatever, they simply let go of it, knowing it will stay where it is. In lifting the heavy cross, it's like he is in microgravity when everyone else is still in normal gravity: he's in some kind of tiny wormhole, lifting the cross as if it were in orbit where it would be weightless, rather than on Earth. It seems to me that these aspects of the story are more significant in the space sense than the actual levitation, which is a common enough thing among saints, mystics and shamans. (And dreams. Don't flying dreams just break your heart?).

And look - an actual icon of St Joseph of Cupertino! Perhaps I shall come out of retirement as a painter. This comes from http://www.patriotic-jewelry.com/st-joseph-of-cupertino-medal.htm.

I also like that this saint is no genius. He's a bit of a klutz, he's not that bright, he just fails to impress all round except when he's floating about in the air or having an eccie.  So, sans floating, he's more like you and me than the heroic, brilliant, manly astronaut of popular culture. The take-home message: believe you can do it.

Well there you go.  Instead of doing all my urgent tasks this morning, marking assignments, writing two conference papers, etc, I've spent a couple of hours mucking about with a bloody saint. Make of that what you will.  I blame the company I keep.

References

Farmer, David Hugh 1992  The Oxford Dictionary of Saints.  Third Edition.  Oxford: Oxford University Press

Prayer to St. Joseph of Cupertino for success in Examinations: http://www.dcruz.in/prayers/prayer-to-st-joseph-of-cupertino/ [Viewed 11 March 2012)

Adelaide bids to host the 2014 International Astronautical Congress

Earlier this month, Australia submitted its bid to host the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, 2014.  The bid documents were hand-delivered to Paris by Michael Brett (until recently Chair of the Space Generation Advisory Council, and currently working for Aerospace Concepts in Canberra).  

As a resident of Adelaide, I'm naturally very excited by this prospect. Here are more details from the Space Policy Unit:

Each year since 1950, an International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is hosted by an International Astronautial Federation (IAF) member nation.  Facilitated by the IAF, the International Academy of Astronautics, and the International Institute of Space Law, each IAC brings together space industry professionals, policy makers, students and researchers from around the world.  This provides opportunities to discuss space-related issues, learn from each other, celebrate success and form links for international collaboration.

Adelaide’s bid to host the 65^th IAC gives Australia an opportunity to showcase its developing space policy, highlight the achievements of the Australian Space Research Program and form new international partnerships.  The Space Policy Unit is a key part of the CSIRO-led bid. 

Adelaide is an Australian hub for large engineering and defence projects.  The University of South Australia is also home to numerous Australian Space Research Program projects, including the Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Program, the space-based national wireless sensor network project, and it is working with the University of Queensland and other consortium members to research new hypersonic scramjet technology.

A summary of Adelaide’s bid to host the 65th IAC, including details of the city of Adelaide and introductory videos, are available at the bid website. 

If you're a member of the IAF, and haven't yet seen the newsletter about Adelaide's bid, please contact the chair of the IAC for Australia Bid Committee, Brett Biddington, at bbidding@tpg.com.au.

The art of the cable tie

OK, I've already admitted I'm obsessed. But I really can't resist sharing these wonderfully creative uses of the cable tie. A few weeks ago, I bought a book on the basis that it had instructions on how to make one of those cafe-style fly curtains out of cable ties (I'm not actually going to do it, I just like the idea).  Here is what some other people have done with them.

Mia Mulvey, an artist based in Denver, Colorado, has made ceramic sculptures incorporating cable ties. She says she is influenced by "the intersection between art and science, its history, advancements and tools".  In the work you see below, she has tethered flying things like birds and butterflies to a tree with cable ties.

Heather Skowood is a contemporary jeweller and designer. Here are a couple of things she has made with cable ties.  You can read her blog to find out more about her philosophy.

Finally, even the cable tie itself can be designed so that it is both beautiful and functional (WHY can't they make watches and diaries like that. They are always one or the other but never both). My friend the Mess Goddess has sourced these gorgeous Italian cable ties with a leaf on the end. She loves cable ties as much as I do, but for different reasons.

I'm sure there are many more examples of exceptional cable tie creativity out there. Let me know if you find any.

How telecommunications technology affects our conceptions of space

I often think about how our conceptions of space have changed as we look deeper into the far reaches of the universe, and as satellite navigation technologies influence the way we move on the surface of the Earth.

Oliver Sacks once wrote an article about how a man blind since early childhood fared when he recovered his sight. Vision created such a profoundly different way to apprehend the world than touch and hearing alone. As Sacks explained it, when we look at a cat, we see all its constituent parts at once: the head, ears, tail, legs, torso, fur, whiskers. We see that the right kinds of bits are there in the right kind of relationship to each other and in the right proportion. It is a simultaneous way of knowing. If you had to identify what kind of animal it was by touch alone, though, how would you do it? His patient would touch each part separately, and would only know if it was a cat if, after feeling enough of them, this was the most logical conclusion. So this is a chronological way of knowing.I found this a very compelling description.

I think something similar has happened to people who now rely on navigation devices in their car, like taxi drivers. Whereas once you might have had some kind of map projection in your head, where in your mind's eye you could visualise your destination and then think of a way to get there, now it seems that you listen to the instruction and then follow it, bit by bit, just like the Sacks' patient. "In 500 metres, turn right". It's more like touching than seeing. So it produces a different conception of space: in fact a more closed-in one, where you are only aware of your immediate environment.

Perhaps this works for the much-speculated-about ability of Aboriginal people to paint or represent country from an aerial view, when they haven't seen it from the air.  It's hard for us to comprehend this because even before GPS, our way of interpreting spatial relations was based on maps with Cartesian coordinates.

So you can imagine I was very interested to see this Scandinavian project looking at the way the telegraph changed people's conceptions of space in the late 1800s. This is how they describe it:

Distant news and local opinion: How the Telegraph Affected Spatial and Temporal Horizons in Northern Scandinavia, 1850-1880

Image courtesy of CMYBacon

The electric telegraph lines constructed across Europe starting in the late 1840's profoundly changed conditions for long-distance communication in the region. This project analyses the effects of the electric telegraph on northern Scandinavia.

Focus is on the relationship between time and space in 7 newspapers from Norway, Sweden and Finland. By investigating 1) the motives behind extending telegraph lines to these regions, 2) the ideals associated with the technology itself, 3) the representation of time and space in the news and 4) the spatial and temporal references of the concept “public opinion”, the study gives a new perspective on the development of communications in this area. Using the spread of technology as a lens through which we may observe societal change, this work will produce a transnational history relating the idiosyncrasies of northern Scandinavia to the common developments affecting Europe during the second half of the 19th century.

I think this is really interesting stuff. I don't know if I would have chosen newspapers as the primary source to address the spatial/temporal - but the point about newspapers is that they will, presumably reflect public sensibilities, and the news reported will change radically as events further away become reported more quickly. So what people read will shape the boundaries of their conceptual world. Herodotos for the 19th C, and perhaps with as many marvels.

The modern ruin: trace fossils of high technology

As I've mentioned before, science fiction writers seem to be particularly good at grasping the heritage issues of the present and future.  Frequently in these stories, the decay of high technology is used as a metaphor for a postmodernish dissolution of identity. (One of my favourites in this regard is J.G. Ballard's Terminal Beach. I still have trouble seeing him as anything other than a science fiction writer).

The following comes from the short story Open Veins by British writer Simon Ings. It is an uncannily accurate description of a number of former military or space sites that I've been fortunate enough to visit.

The site bore little mark of its military past.  The hardened bunkers, the offices and barracks, had been ripped out years ago.  The radar arrays and satellite dishes had all been dismantled, leaving large, low concrete platforms, their smooth grey surfaces punctuated by rusted spars, irregular brick walls, depressions and score-marks: the tracks and spoor and burrow-mounds of artificial life. The single concrete runway was crazed and weed-lined and there were shreds of cable rotting in the verges. (Ings 1997, reprinted in Dozois (ed) 1998 p 546)

Cables or worms? Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station, ACT. Author's image.

(What's that, I hear you ask? Does he mention cable ties? Well no, but I'm sure he was thinking about them).

He could easily be describing the former Orroral Valley NASA tracking station here, a site characterised by the concrete footprints of long-gone satellite dishes and interferometry arrays, which appear smooth and featureless until you start to examine them closely. Then you see the grooves left by blades on earth-moving machinery; holes where pipes, cables and wires vanish under the floor, weathered ledges and grooves where walls once were. Ings likens these to the phenomenon known as the trace fossil: the preserved remains, not of some ancient creature, but of the impressions its activities leave in the deposit that becomes transformed into stone. They're signs, not the thing itself.  It's an appealing metaphor, to imagine the cables as polychaete worms burrowing into ground, the bolts left on the antenna footings as anchors for some floating jellyfish in its sessile phase, the hardened bunkers as coral polyps.

This flourishing fauna has come to a sudden end, ripped out and dismantled.  It's not just abandoned but actively flattened down to ground level. This level of destruction is frequently the fate of modern industrial sites, a major contrast to ancient ones which are more likely to be just abandoned. Or at least, this is argued to be one of the things that makes the archaeology of the contemporary past different. On the other hand, it's the same middle-range theory, the same taphonomy, that all archaeologists grapple with. While Ings says that his fictive site bears little mark of its military past, the signs should be there for those who know how to read them.

References
Ings, Simon 1998  Open Veins. In Gardner Dozois (ed) The Mammoth Book of New SF 11.  London: Robinson pp 544-558

Surviving space junk re-entry: a beginner's guide

Given how frequently space junk re-enters the atmosphere, it's surprising that there is not more information about what to do in this event. So I am putting together here a small guide just in case you happen to be in this situation.

1. Don't panic: it is highly unlikely to actually fall on YOU.

You'll have heard all the commentators saying this, but it really is true: the odds of it being YOU that is the site of impact really are extraordinarily low. In the entire history of human space exploration, there is only one recorded instance of someone being hit by space junk. According to the Centre for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) this was Lottie Williams of Oklahoma, who was hit by a piece of a Delta II rocket as she was taking a walk one day in 1996. She was unharmed. When Skylab re-entered over Western Australia in 1979, there were no claims for property damage made and no-one was hurt. There's just so much ocean, desert and ice - and this is usually where stuff lands.  There has never been a recorded re-entry over a city or town.  

The problem is, of course, that it is very difficult to predict re-entry points as there are so many variables to take into account. So it's not easy to be prepared.

But let's just say you are likely to be in the debris footprint area. Here's what you can do.

2.  Secure your pets or animals

It's just like fireworks: animals don't like it very much. The fragments may be traveling at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour as they come screaming into the upper atmosphere (which then slows them down until they fall vertically). The pieces are compressing the air into pressure waves and the energy builds up until it creates an exploding sound or sonic boom. The sonic booms can be frightening for humans too. Take the same precautions for household pets that you might on New Year's Eve. Keep them inside if possible, and remain calm around them. Don't use a chain or slip collar to restrain them. Some recommend playing them classical music (or something else soothing) as a distraction. There are many websites where you can find out more about this.

3.  Do not touch fragments of re-entered spacecraft.

In its journey through the atmosphere, the spacecraft ,or the pieces of it, are subject to extreme heating caused the friction of the atmosphere, through which it may be travelling at hypervelocity. Depending on the materials, some may still be burning when they land. Even when cool, there may be jagged and sharp edges that easily cut you.

Moreover, there are many toxic or radioactive elements that may be part of the fuel, the structures, or the experiments flown on board the spacecraft. If you handle them without knowing what you are doing, they may poison you. These include the fuel hydrazine and the metal beryllium. Let the authorities deal with it.

You're probably pretty safe with a titanium or steel pressure spheres, the most common spacecraft part to survive re-entry. However, despite titanium's traditional reputation as an inert metal, there is some recent evidence that the corrosion products of titanium may be harmful.  Don't take unnecessary risks.

4.  Be ready for fire

If burning fragments are falling all around you, it's not impossible that one may land on your house or the building you're in and set it alight. And when you go outside, there may be more. Do what you would normally expect to do in such an emergency: call 000 (or the fire department in your country); make sure you know where everyone is; evacuate the building (it will be safer outside) and do not go back inside. If you have a fire plan, put it into effect. This may if course involve removing animals or releasing them.

5. Notify the relevant authorities

There's a few people who need to know. Your local, regional or state government may have to play a role in coordinating relief, or recovery of debris, so let them know. It's also a matter of international relations. The country it lands in will have to notify and communicate with the launching state about recovering fragments (these are used to analyse what happened) and perhaps to talk about compensation. If your country has a space agency, they also need to know.

Debris is often found months or years later; and when it's not a high profile re-entry like Skylab, UARS or Phobos Grunt, it may not be obvious which re-entry it came from or who owned it. It's up to the government to find out. (Dr Space Junk has provided this service on occasion).

6. Assist in the scientific analysis

Your experience can be very useful. The colour of fragments falling through the sky tells us something about their temperature and sometimes what they are made of; the number and timing of falls helps map the debris footprint; the size and nature of the fragments may indicate what part of the spacecraft they came from and how it broke apart. While you most certainly shouldn't touch recently fallen material, or move it, you can take photographs and GPS coordinates, and estimate the dimensions of the pieces. What you see and experience can have some value when put together with information gathered from other sources.

7.  Be aware of the legal situation

There are two international conventions that you should be aware of.  One is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which imposes liability for damage caused by space junk on the launching state, and the other is the Space Liability Treaty 1972, which requires that the launching state pay compensation for any damage caused.  I don't know, however, if that includes emotional damage - there is some latitude for interpretation. Keeping in mind safety considerations, if you or your property have been harmed by falling space debris, document it as you would for insurance purposes.

The other critical part of the Outer Space Treaty is that the re-entered material is still the property of the launching state, so you cannot sell it on eBay. In the ideal situation, the launching state will try to recover material for analysis. Be co-operative and don't try to pass fakes off as real space junk - they'll know the difference!

OK. This is very rough and ready, but it's a start. One of the sources for these recommendations is the experience of Western Australians when Skylab re-entered in 1979. It was inspired by my series of #Reentrytips on Twitter.

Star Voyager: Exploring Space on Screen at ACMI. Review by guest blogger Dan North

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s exhibition Star Voyager: Exploring Space On Screen is a celebration of the historical and future relationship of space exploration and the moving image. Compiling a vast collection of film and archives from the late 1800s until present day, the otherworldly exhibition tells the tale of art informing science and in turn, science informing art.

Descending the stairs into darkness, one arrives amid the moving pictures and parlour tricks of the early 20^th century. It is a world of fantasy and magic where voyagers to Georges Méliès' moon bring their top hats and umbrellas to be shot from a canon into space. Mars is host to an array of space operas, involving benevolent giants, and is home to the elaborate constructivist metropolis of the mysterious and beautiful Queen Aelita. 

Alongside these fantastic voyages and tricks of the eye are the writings of rocket pioneers Tsiolkovsky and Goddard, documenting the early beginnings of real space travel.

With the first occurrence of a countdown to zero before launch, the startlingly accurate 1929 film Frau im Mond by Fritz Lang is considered the first serious portrayal of space exploration. Lang employed rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth as technical advisor to provide an authentic as possible illustration of multi-stage rocket travel. A scene depicting the crew staring back at earth evokes a similar reaction the Apollo 8 astronauts would have had almost 40 years later as they saw their first earthrise. Despite scientific inaccuracies (such as the moon having a perfectly breathable atmosphere) the film was considered so accurate that the Nazi government confiscated Lang’s research and model rockets. A young Wernher von Braun was to be so inspired by Frau im Mond that he painted the film’s logo on early V-2s.

Moving on through other films and artifacts, a Russian film from the 1950s depicts what life on a soviet space station would be like. It’s a strange mash-up of antiquated phone exchange and a submarine - however space is not without it’s creature comforts -  everyone has an apartment with a view of the earth. Even your pet-comrade cat sits oddly purring at the window as the stars drift past. The film is presented as a sober documentary - this was to be the future for the USSR. This fictional Russian space station with its rotating wheel design was to be influential on Stanley Kubrick when thinking of his space hotel seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The exhibition design by Minifie van Schaik Architects makes strong reference to the visual vocabulary of real spacecraft. In orbit around walls of gold mylar you’ll find satellite-like pods displaying rare footage of cosmonauts and astronauts, John F Kennedy’s ‘We choose to the go the moon!’ speech at Rice University, unedited footage of Neil Armstrong climbing tentatively down the ladder of the Lunar Excursion Module (you’ve likely seen it a thousand times before, but unedited and without soundtrack or sentimental narrative, the raw video of that boot planting on the lunar soil is still quite awe-inspiring). There’s newsreel footage of astronaut poster-boy John Glenn and various depictions of the space race in film - Apollo 13, The Right Stuff and Space Cowboys. 

The space race was also the era of the vinyl record. Curators Emma McRae and Sarah Tutton appear to have collected every space related album cover imaginable from Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet to the soundtrack of Plan Nine From Outer Space.

Unique to the exhibition is the short film On Mars 3D. It is too short. You want to see more. The Martian valleys and mountains look incredible and a little unbelievable. Is this really what the surface of Mars looks like? It makes Tatooine look boring. Planetary astronomy was never so cool.

Down a corridor reminiscent of the Discovery set from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (there’s a suspended model of the Discovery in there) you’ll find costumes, props and models from Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Total Recall and Moon amongst others. Contrasting with their real-life, used-in-actual-space counterparts, you get a sense of how science has influenced film and vice versa. It’s definitely a reciprocal relationship.

Amongst all the relatively familiar imagery, one exhibit is particularly fascinating for it’s unusual visceral qualities; presenting the smell and the sound of our own star, the sun. Eerie and absolutely alien, artists Joyce Hinterding and David Haines have simulated what we could never possibly experience- a solar scratch and sniff.

The overall effect is a montage of original artifacts, props, film, and photographs- an artistic and scientific orgy of everything that is great about imagining or actually going into outer space. Highly recommended.

Star Voyager is on at ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne, until January 29.

Dan North is a Sydney-based architect. He is also an amateur astronomer with a life long interest in the history of space exploration and set and prop design for science fiction films.