COSMIC OUROBOROS

 

  

Cosmic Ouroboros Oil on linen 120 x 150 cm

 

 

Regular readers will know that I have previously written about the age-old transcultural/religious symbol of the ouroboros when I wrote about my painting Ouroboros  [bottom]. The ouroboros symbol is a snake eating its own tail, representing the continuance of life. My new painting [above] Cosmic Ouroboros delves into similar interests, by again combining the ouroboros with the age-old transcultural/religious symbol, the tree-of-life. The tree forms the snake's body, which is the fertile ground for more trees...and life. As I have previously written, I 'see' the tree-of-life as a symbolic template for all of life's systems, pre-human and post-human, nano and vast.

 

I am particularly interested in the appropriation of the ouroboros by modern cosmologists as a visual descriptor of the relationship between the quantum and cosmic worlds. Its age-old symbolic meaning refers to the constant, but simultaneous, consumption and replenishment of life. The cosmic ouroboros extrapolates this to the relationship between the vast and intimate realms of the universe. Nobel Prize winner [1979] , physicist Sheldon Glashow was the first to suggest the ouroboros as a visual descriptor of the connection with, and unification of, the extremes of size and scale.

 

Below is an image from 'Just Six Numbers', by Lord Martin Reese, astrophysicist and Royal Astronomer. This is an image of the ouroboros with its cosmological descriptors and numbers. On the left the numbers and small diagrams represent the microworld, subatomic or quatum world. On the right they represent the various aspects of the Universe 'out there', from humanity to scales beyond the cosmic horizon.

 

In my new painting Cosmic Ouroboros I have included the numbers and small diagrams, with humanity situated at the bottom centre. The ouroboros seems to float in an indeterminable space/place. Is it outer space? Is it an intimate crease in time? Is it everything, anytime, anywhere?

 

 

 

 

Phycisist Prof. Joel Primack and his wifw, lawyer/philosophe Nancy Abrams, also use the ouroboros to visually describe quantum and cosmic realtionships. Primack and Abrams often work and publish together. A good start for you is to visit their site The New Universe And The Human Future: How A Shared Cosmology Could Transform The World

 

What I really like about the work of Primack and Abrams is their desire to help people understand humanity's place within the Universe, from its smallest to largest scales. They comment, quite rightly, that when asked about the Universe most people will think of it at its most enormous scale rather than envisioning it as something small, as well as large. Regular readers will know why I am fascinated by this...it ties in with my belief that seeing multiple perspectives, even simultaneously, is important in a globalised world in which we live locally...and in a world where cosmological research reveals new horizons.

 

Here is a quote from Primack/Abrams

 

Why is this symbol useful? People asked to visualize "the universe" will far more often think of the largest thing they know of than the smallest. Few realize that the universe exists on all scales, everywhere, all the time. This is a truly extravagant thought. Largeness is by no means the most important characteristic of the universe. Focusing on it makes people feel small, not because they are, but because they are simply ignoring all scales smaller than themselves in thinking about the universe. On the Cosmic Uroboros, as I call it, if the mouth swallowing the tail is drawn at the top, humans (at one meter or so) fall more or less at the bottom -- i.e., at the center of all the size scales in the visible universe. Many students are so stunned by this apparently special place that they refuse to believe it and insist it must be a result of some tricky choice of units. I don't know if the center of the Cosmic Uroboros is in fact special, but finding themselves there certainly strikes a chord with most people. Perhaps it hearkens back to the soul-satisfying cosmology of the Middle Ages, where earth was truly the center of the universe. ...

Nancy Abrams is a great advocate for the arts [all of them], as a way of communicating how new cosmological horizons can be meaningfully understood and thus integrated into sustainable and enjoyable living. Symbolism is an integral part of arts catalytic agency and age-old symbols hold truths that can potentially speak to each millenia. By virtue of being age-old their potency burns, otherwise they'd be, what I call, transient symbols. We just have to search for contemporary relevance, meaning and resonnance. I believe the appropriation of the ouroboros by cosmologists is an excellent example of age-old potency being recognised and released. For me, the tree-of-life has the same potential.

 

 

Auroboros Oil on linen 122 x 153 cm

 

  

 

Cheers,

Kathryn

www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com

OUROBOROS

Ouroboros Oil on linen 122 x 153 cm

Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake or dragon eating its tail.

Please see links below for more information. 

MY Ouroboros

I have painted the body of the snake as a tree...yes...the tree-of-life. For me, the symbol's mutability means that it is capable of signifying the cascade across the nano and vast. Regular readers will know of my interest in the tree's vascular qualities...life giving systems, whether they be blood vessels, Earth's water systems or as yet undetected energy systems powering the Universe and more. My visual explorations of perspective often incorporate the tree-of-life, which can translate into 'scapes' of land, the cosmos or intimate places witnessing life's first impulse. The tree-of-life has helped me 'see' multiple perspectives, even simultaneously.

These perspectives are not only external to me, but also those that lie within. The tree-of-life's symbolism reaches into the psyche, stirring imagination, stimulating human race memory...with the ultimate realisation that intimate places are vast in possibility, thus linking the nano and cosmic in a dance echoing the high drama and the intimate frisson of a Tango.

In Ouroboros the tree's significance is that it embodies the magnitude of all time, and all existence. It 'speaks' to the instance of life's first flutter and to cosmic resonnances, it collapses perspective revealing hints of the 'ultimate synthesis'. In this painting the snake consumes its body of life, fueling the eternal propulsion.

The ouroboros is painted against a cosmic-like background, its circular appearance creating a portal which seems to promise spaces beyond, at the same time as possibily reflecting places already been. It appears to float in an indeterminable place that seems familiar.

                                                           Youtube Video 'Ouroboros'

BACKGROUND

I have had a lot of fun creating this new painting Ouroboros. I first encountered the ouroboros, as a visual descriptor of quantum and cosmic worlds, in Royal Astronomer, Lord Martin Rees's book 'Just Six Numbers' [1] which I read in late 2010. [See image below] I was very excited to read Rees's thoughts on the relationship between the nano and vast.  Whilst I'd seen the motif over the years, I had not paid it any real attention, until I read 'Just Six Numbers'. Nobel Prize winner, physicist Sheldon Glashow was apparently the first to use the ouroboros as a visual descriptor of the connection and unification of the extremes of size and scale.

Since initially writing this post, I have been alerted to the Yale University 2009 Terry Lectures, all given by husband and wife team, cosmologist Prof. JOEL R. PRIMACK and NANCY ELLEN ABRAMS. In the first of the four lectures they superbly explain the 'cosmic ouroboros'. Please check out this YouTube video http://youtu.be/vgr1CozVlrQ  The website for their jointly witten book 'The New Universe and The Human Future: How Shared Cosmology Could transform the World' is http://new-universe.org/

Regular readers will know of my long and induring interest in perspective and distance, the play between the intimacies of vastness, within and without, nano and cosmic. They will also know of my focus on the age-old transcultural/religious tree-of-life symbol as a way of exploring the potencies of age old symbols and the secrets they hold. The ouroboros is also a transcultural/religious symbol, which through history and across continents has 'spoken' meaningfully to people about life.

Below is an image of the ouroboros in 'Just Six Numbers'. The caption in the book  is:

The ouraboros. There are links between the microworld of particles, nuclei and atoms [left] and the cosmos [right]. [2]

In the text Rees writes, Symbolized 'gastronomically' at the top, is the ultimate synthesis that still eludes us-between the cosmos and the quantum. [3]

Here are two links to presentations where Lord Martin Rees mentions the ouroboros and his .

1. Presentation at Melbourne University 30 March 2010.

2. TED Talk Our Final Century

Here are some links to more information about the ouroboros and its history.
http://sybilarchibald.com/blog/category/ouroboros/
http://www.morbidoutlook.com/art/articles/2000_08_ouroborous.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
http://ouroboroscycle.com/blog/?cat=9

1. Rees M., Just Six Numbers, Basic Books, NY, 2000
2. Ibid., P. 9
3. Ibid., P. 8

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UPDATE

My talk last week at the University of Queensland's Women's College went well. My topic was Beauty Art and You. In my last post Beauty Has No Antonymn I touched upon some of the things I spoke about.

And, in 2012 I painted Cosmic Ouroboros The Post for this painting is the most popular on my BLOG!

Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com 

RISK

I am currently working on a large painting which I'll be able to load up on the BLOG soon. This new painting causes an oscillation of perspective...and as regular readers of this BLOG know...I am fascinated by perspective and distance. But, until then I am going to introduce you to RISK!

RISK, above, is from my series looking at water and the various issues that surround this fundamental life giving and sustaining gift to the planet. My last post 'Airspace and Phantoms'  http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/08/airspace-and-phantoms.html showed you some of my recent works on paper that also look at issues of water ie: irrigation, entitlements, coal seam gas industry [CSG] and so on.

But, RISK, whilst still inspired by water issues, is a work where I wanted to question how risk is analysed. For instance, the Coal Seam Gas [CSG] industry promotes itself as a provider of  'cleaner' energy...reducing emissions etc. This declaration has been questioned, particularly when the entire CSG process is examined. Plus there is the fact that methane is a more dangerous contributor to warming than carbon dioxide. In the process of extracting gas, there are concerns being voiced by farmers, scientists and environmentalists with regards to the potential degradation of prime and strategic farming lands, and the depletion of underground aquifers. In the gas extraction process underground water also comes to the surface. This water is a 'by-product' of the extraction process. It has to be stored as there are no immediate broad usages for the water due to its salt content. I recently wrote about this issue in a post called 'Salt' http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/07/salt.html  Soil salination is a major worry.

Open cut mines are also a great concern for farmers and environmentalists who are not convinced that prime agricultural land can be rehabilitated, after the lifespan of a mine, to re-instate the richness of soils. A mine's life maybe 20-30 years, whereas some of the farmland in Queensland, which is in jeopardy, could produce food for thousands of years. Farming in Australia has become increasingly ecologically driven. As a farmer's daughter I have witnessed the evolution of farming from often unsustainable practices to sustainable ones. Most farmers love their land, and if they have stock, they love them too! Most farmers are not anti-mining, but they are anti mining on prime and strategic farm land, plus mining without due consideration of water issues.

So, there are a few issues to be examined. A broad one is whether the so called 'cleaner' energy provided by CSG is worth potentially degrading the prime agricultural land which produces food for a growing global population. Is it killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Alternative fuel is a much more attractive idea than alternative food! In this day and age where food and culinary programs on tv, books etc seem to swamp us, I doubt that many people would enjoy the thought of eating alternative food, just so mining could strip the land for so called cleaner energy. 

Back to water...farmers are required, by law, to adhere to strict regulations with regards to pumping and using water. I've written about this many times before. Water infrastructure is complex and the legalities are not well known in the general population. However,  the mining industry does not fall under the strict regulations required by government water resources departments and legislation! So, whilst a farmer needs to comply with rules regarding pumping from rivers and aquifers, the CSG water 'by-product' does not. Farmers are worried that the water extracted during the CSG process will deplete water levels in the underground aquifers and destabilise pressure, thus restricting use by farmers for such things as drinking water for stock, some irrigation, and domestic use on remote properties/stations and municipal use in remote communities. The potential for across aquifer contamination and introduced contamination is a major concern. Please look the Basin Sustainability Aliance site http://www.basinsustainabilityalliance.org/ for predictions on how much water will be potentially extracted from underground aquifers. It is enormous.

RISK
So back to risk! It seems to me that risk is a highly nuanced consideration. If I want to jump out of a plane I need to take account of the risk to me, and the potential impact on my family and friends if I smash to the ground. However, the risk is not far reaching beyond the sadness of my family. The risk of degrading prime farmland goes way beyond the 'now' to future generations and their food supply. The risk of depleted or contaminated aquifers is not just about impacts on farmers and communities now, but also into the future...for all.

I am reminded of various things Lord Martin Rees, Royal Astonomer and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, wrote in his book 'Our Final Century' . I have previously written about this book and its influence on my work. http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com/2010/04/idea-sketches.html

The book is essentially an examination of risk. On pages 7-8 he writes,

It may not be absurd hyperbole—indeed, it may not even be an overstatement—to assert that the most crucial location in space and time (apart from the big bang itself) could be here and now. I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilisation on Earth will survive to the end of the present century. Our choices and actions could ensure the perpetual future of life (not just on Earth, but perhaps far beyond it, too). Or in contrast, through malign intent, or through misadventure, twenty-first century technology could jeopardise life’s potential, foreclosing its human and posthuman future. What happens here on Earth, in this century, could conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.
Martin Rees, Our Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in This Century—On Earth and Beyond (New York: Basic Books, 2003) p.7-8

RISK, gouache on paper ,30 x 42 cm is painted with little $ signs to question 'value'. The underground water, the river depression and the rain falling from the sky are all $ signs. The word RISK is also painted with $ signs. These are red to make an almost SOS or DANGER statement.

Currency, [playing with all ideas of currency] and value are not the same...especially when one thinks of the future...ha!..currency can really only mean NOW. 'Currency' is a play on the idea of money, flow and being current ie: contemporaneousness. If you read Martin Rees's quote, consideration of the future is vastly important.

A scientific risk analysis is very different to one business would consider. Would business ever consider a .05% risk too much? NO. But, in certain circumstances, science would. My impression is that the rush to extract gas and increasingly larger amounts of coal [and other resources] has more to do with business risk than a scientifically based one. My impression is that governments and other players are even applying a business type risk % parametre when considering environmental, health and sustainable food production impacts. However, surely these should be scrutinised with a stringent scientific analysis?

Added 28-1-12
This painting sold just before Christmas.
Cheers,
Kathryn