ART MEETS THE APOCALYPSE

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Broadly speaking, this exhibition in the Science Gallery, in Pearse Street, explores artistic, conceptual, or fictional responses to the end of the world or its threat.

Some exhibits mock efforts to prevent Armageddon while others post unworkable ways of surviving it. It is all meant to provoke the visitor into thinking about the environment, be it biological or political.

Below are just a few of the items that appealed to me.

This is the Doomsday clock which marks how near we are to the end of the world.

It was started after WWII and is adjusted backwards or forwards according as threats increase or recede.

It is currently three minutes short of midnight which is when the whole place goes up. Mind you, as it's an analogue twelve hour clock, you could be forgiven for thinking it was nearly high noon, if nobody told you otherwise.

This, believe it or not is a modern Noah's Ark.

The little ball in the glass case on the left contains the biological base from which new life could evolve. It is shot into space in the satellite on the right and comes back down again when earth's environment has recovered sufficiently to support new life.

This one is simply to help you survive air pollution.

The left element goes on your back and you fit the mask on the right over your nose and mouth.

The plant on your back is supposed to make the oxygen for you to breath.

The impracticality of this is that you'd probably need half a forest on your back to make any difference.

This one has sort of given up the ghost and is just documenting the demise of species as they exit stage left.

The idea is to have a drawing dating from the time they expired, cut them out of the picture like this ...

... or like this, and then ...

... burn (cremate) the cut-out image and store it in one of the urns above.

And finally the bees.

We know they are dying off due to pesticides and whatever. When they're all gone we'll die because there will be nothing left to pollinate the plants and they'll die out.

Well, this guy here is not going to go without a fight and he has hocked up this gadget to do the pollination and save the world.

I don't think Grace, my host(ess), also in the picture, is all that impressed.

But she did let me in on the secret that this exhibit is really a criticism of short term engineering solutions designed to mitigate the effects of disasters instead of finding their root causes and dealing with them.

Grace is in final year science in TCD and is just one of the many students who put in time explaining the exhibits to visitors. She enjoys this as it keeps her mentally on her toes and introduces her to other people's perspectives. And, at the end of the day, she enjoys meeting people.

You can visit the whole thing on line through the link below. Much better to drop in, if you're around, and take the tour with one of the many students on duty there. The live interaction is much more fun.

Link to the exhibition on line

THE EVOLVING UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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What am I doing going to a talk on the evolving university library? Haven't I left all that behind me long ago?

It's true that in UCD studying politics, in the last century, I had to get a note from my tutor to get out a book which the Catholic church disapproved of and which was stored behind the librarian's counter on a very high shelf indeed.

Well, apparently all has changed, changed utterly and a terrible beauty of sorts has been born.

The challenge is immense: from the need to digitise existing resources, through how they are then made available both to researchers and the wider public, to how are we going to digitally conserve the present for future generations.

You might think that in today's digital world this could be achieved at the mere push of a button.

Sandra Collins

Not so. And nobody knows this better than Sandra Collins, Director of the National Library of Ireland. Sandra introduced Helen Shenton, Librarian and Archivist at TCD, who was going to lead us through this complex territory, explaining the global challenges and how TCD is responding to them.

First, though, I have to recall Sandra's recent TEDx talk in UCD on this very subject, where, in simple language, she explained the parameters of the enormous task facing us.

Helen Shenton

Helen Shenton came to TCD in 2014 and she was well aware of the task ahead. She was, however, undaunted having worked miracles already in the V&A, the British Library and Harvard. Her experience was vast and she was now bringing it to bear on this institution.

She is not only dealing with digitising what is there, she is also busy figuring out how to use the spaces that become available when material is digitised and the physical copies are then consigned to storage.

TCD Long Room

She is unlikely to strip the Long Room of its books, which at this stage are almost part of the structure of the building. She has already told us how much she is in awe of this wonderful room and how she has given up explaining it to visitors. She just steps back and lets the visitor experience the sheer wonder of it.

Whatever about all the digital and virtual stuff, Helen is also a great respecter of physical space and she envisages the function of the library in the widest sense possible. It is not just a place for reading but for learning, networking and socialising. People also learn from each other so socio-academic space is vital.

Library and College's central location

While TCD's physical space is limited by the surrounding streets, the whole digital revolution opens up the possibility of re-conceiving existing space as it is freed up and there can be new premises acquired off campus. All this without losing TCD's great asset of a city centre location.

And, of course, developments go beyond the boundaries of this one college. Each university/college needs to have its own place of excellence in the scheme of things. Substantial duplication, for which there may have been some justification in the past, needs to be eliminated and the capacity released put to creative use.

Helen & Sandra, all smiles

This is just giving you a flavour of what Helen is at. If you are curious for more, the whole thing is spelled out in detail in the library's strategy, the cover of which is reproduced at the top of this post.

And so, after an enthusiastic and fast moving talk from one librarian, hosted by another "librarian", we call a halt with smiles all round.

[Talk was at the National Library of Ireland at 1pm on 19/1/2017]

Waterloo

Peter Snow launching into battle
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This is the second event in this years Dublin Festival of History that I've attended. More high quality stuff. This time in the Edmund Burke theatre in TCD.

People will know Peter Snow from his appearances on ITV and then BBC over the years. It may not be quite so widely known that he is a war historian and has produced a number of books and programmes on this subject in recent years. Waterloo is a joint production with his son Dan.

He was on his own in TCD last evening to take us graphically through the battle of Waterloo.

Two worthy adversaries

While the two main protagonists, Wellington and Napoleon, are well known, Peter took us through some of the lesser known leaders, not all of whom were up to scratch.

As he warmed to his subject the pitch rose and the battle flowed one way and then another. The excitement mounted to such a stage that you were inclined to forget your history and wonder who was going to win this very closely fought contest.

The message at the end was that Napoleon, tired and ill, lost it rather than Wellington winning it.

Your country needs you

The Q&A afterwards was quite engrossing and Peter showed he had clearly mastered his subject. I got a fright when I saw him pointing straight at me, Kitchener style, and wondered for a second, if I was being chosen to be part of the blood and gore he had just outlined so graphically. Fortunately he was pointing at someone beside me who had their hand up with a question.

When is a farm not a farm?

Then there was the fella in the audience who questioned Peter's description of a building as a farmhouse. It was nothing of the sort, the fella said, it was actually a fortress, he had been there and actually seen it.

Well, it appears Peter had also been there and he demolished the fortress bit without too much effort.

Full marks to Dublin City Council and their collaborators for staging this excellent festival.

Zero Gravity

I mentioned MAKESHOP in an earlier post. And in a comment I listed all those "science based" toys that I remembered from my youth which are still around.

One of the two which were a source of wonder to me in my youth, and which are no longer around, is the zero gravity toy (above). In this plastic frame, little plastic balls appeared to defy gravity and float in mid air. As I remember it was made in Israel, a country currently in the forefront of much scientific experimentation.

As it happened, the toy actually had as much to do with static electricity as with zero gravity. The apparent defiance of gravity came from the mutual repulsion of statically charged little plastic balls.

And if you look closely at the sides of the frame you will see that the balls are also trapped between layers of perspex so that the mutual repulsion drives them further upwards and keeps them apparently suspended in mid air.

The default position has all the balls resting at the bottom of the frame. So you shake the shite out of the frame to charge the balls. Just like rubbing an inflated baloon off your sleeve to make it stick to the ceiling, or a comb to make it pick up bits of paper.

God be with the days.

MAKESHOP

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I was passing what used to be one of my favourite shops, Lennox Chemicals, in Clare St., Dublin, when I noticed a new makeover. Lennox has long closed and one half of it is inhabited by Insomnia Coffee from a while back. The other half is now taken over by Makeshop. So I went in for a look.

This is an extension of the shop attached to TCD's Science Gallery. But it is more than just a shop selling little artefacts that illustrate scientific principles. It is a workshop which invites individuals or groups to come along and have a go at making science stuff themselves.

The fist thing that attracted my attention was a 3D printer (above). I sort of knew these existed but it was all a bit of a mystery and I really hadn't got my head around it. In fact I was residually sceptical about the whole thing.

But now, here was one in front of me. How did it work and what could it produce? Did it bear any relation to the coffee/food machine in Startrek, for example?

It turned out to be a fascinating object. In this particular one, a thin string of plastic (above) is fed down from the top to the printer head which is fixed but under which is a platform which can move in all directions (below).

As the plastic is fed downwards the platform's movements are directed by a sort of CAD programme in the computer to which the printer is hooked up. The object is then slowly built up, layer after layer.

This is a 3D version of the impossible knot (above) and small bust of a lady (below). They were a little difficult to photograph with my particular camera (obligatory automatic focus) but you can take it from me that they were extraordinary little objects.

If you look closely you can see the individual layers in the final product.

If you want, you can increase the "resolution" and the layers are then much thinner, until, like your favourite piece of calculus, they approach zero thickness, you can no longer see the layers and the result looks like a normal plastic object with a perfectly smooth surface. Magic.

From there I went up to the Science Gallery itself and spent most of the afternoon there checking out the demonstrations of the properties of new nano materials. Well worth while dropping in.

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I was back in the shop for a second visit (18/10/12) and found another item in the window. It was a representation of Dublin City centre, made up of electronic components on a great big motherboard. It really made me smile, and is well worth dropping into the shop to see, if you get a chance. The pictures below can be enlarged by clicking on them.

You can see the Phoenix Park at the near bottom left of the board, and at the very far end the Pigeon House chimneys (before decommissioning!). The Spire is about two thirds way up towards the centre, and just behind it is Liberty Hall, the Beckett Bridge and the National Conference Centre.

A more look down view of the central section of the board. At bottom right is the Guinness brewery with the Tower. The thin blue and white wires snaking up the centre is the River Liffey. The brown rectangle two thirds way up on the right is an autumnal St. Stephen's Green with Merrion Square Park just beyond it on it's left. The Aviva Stadium (Landsdown Road to you) is at top right, while Croke Park is two thirds way up on the left.

This is just to give you an idea of the quality and imagination which has gone into this. The Beckett Bridge with the National Conference Centre behind it.

And this is a straight overhead view which may be easier to relate to the map. The blue line across the centre is the Liffey. The Phoenix Park is in the top left hand corner and the Aviva Stadium in the bottom right.

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Today's Halloween Workshop: Crochet yourself a Pumpkin

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I'm looking forward to my next visit to this wonderful Aladdin's Cave.

Bricking the Camel

I was at an economists' conference, in Trinity College, Dublin, yesterday, on the present economic and financial crisis.

In introducing his presentation, Patrick Honohan used the image of the camel. I thought he was going to dwell on the traditional view of the camel as a horse designed by a committee, and then go on to point out the many shapes the proposed NAMA might take. But no! CAMEL is an acronym of the headings under which banking performance is assessed.

Nevertheless, this poor unfortunate animal may well be an accurate representation of where we are now at. We don't have a unique solution to the current problem. Economists are offering varying elements towards one, but nobody seems to have a complete handle on the wider picture.

It's a case of onward and upward, per ardua ad astra, brick the camel and set out to cross the desert regardless.

For those not familiar with the process of bricking the camel, I should explain. You take two large bricks, one in each hand, and when the camel is drinking in his supply of water, you apply the bricks to his testicles in one sharp clap. The resultant intake of breath, and consequently of water, ensures the camel is adequately provisioned for the long journey ahead.


Honohan's presentation can be found here (4MB pdf) and links to the other presentations and papers here.