Nick Smyth - Iron Sculptures

Ferric Fantasia : Alone in Space

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Price: £175

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About this piece

A worn-out drive pulley welded onto a piece of pipe is now a spaceship, hurtling towards a distant star, having left Earth countless billions of miles away. The occupants have long since lost touch with their mother planet. Signals from the radio aerial, represented by prongs from a grass rake, are bent over signifying their uselessness, plus the remnant of a final, desperate attempt to contact Earth by Morse Code, (the grass rake prong spacer.)

The base, which is part of an Edwardian stove, represents Earth, where scientists have resigned themselves to their signals no longer being acknowledged. The grass rake prongs sticking up from the base are bent over as if the signals are falling back to earth, unable to reach the impossibly distant spacecraft.

As the travellers become used to the inevitable isolation from their home base and the "entertainment" they have brought with them palls, the "noise" of the 21st century, which has enveloped them since childhood, dies completely away. They begin to sense emanations of a new kind, originating in the depths of Space around them. These are signified by the "signals" going straight into the spacecraft, instead of entering via the radio aerial.

They are becoming true "Spacemen" and "Spacewomen" and their children and grandchildren will grow up as such from the first, aware of the Universe around them in a way not experienced by Homo Sapiens since before "civilization" gradually atrophied Western man's awareness of his surroundings but which "Primitive" people such as the bushman in Africa still possesses.

In the Neolithic era, some similar ability to detect basic energies must have assisted Stone Age man to set up the amazing alignments of standing stones, so well represented in this beautiful region of coastal Meirionnydd. Such skills are still latent in all of us.

Would total isolation in space reactivate this awareness? If it were to and then the news of this reawakening, followed by some understanding of it could reach Earth, it might be the salvation of the species Homo Sapiens.

How come? And how could this "news" be transmitted back to Earth, now out of radio contact?

The basic transmission medium could well be something akin to the "bush telegraph" (it really does exist, I grew up with it in Africa and it always appeared to be instantaneous). A message of this kind could be received immediately and not be subject to the time delays associated with the ubiquitous electromagnetic spectrum currently dominating our culture. Although quick, radio signals travel at (only) 11,000,000 miles per minute. It takes a radio message at least 909 minutes (15.25 hours) to travel one billion miles and 10 times this amount to reach the Oort cloud, the furthest reaches of just the Solar System and YEARS to reach even the nearest star.

Perhaps a "bush telegraph" type signal would take no time at all.

Understanding and tapping this medium would enable the space probe support party on Earth to maintain contact with their charge. Because this is a "natural" energy, understanding it would, in the longer term, help mankind the better to appreciate and live more in tune with the natural mechanisms by which our planet continues to support us, so that we do not misuse it so badly.

Dream on, Spaceman!