LIFE Now

LITHOPS

The experiments with stones are slow processes – not to be hurried. In between times, while I’m waiting and thinking, I’m also doing this.

THE STONE

Blog entry from 3^rd October 2013: “Meanwhile, I will need to do more research, more experiments, more reading and learning to try to understand the combinations of chemistry and energy that might just make my stone grow.”

So the time has come to start gathering the equipment I will need. I‘ve learned a lot in the last few weeks and begin to feel confident that I can make progress with my work. Now I need to begin to bring together parts of an apparatus that can create that crucial combination of elements which might provide the conditions to kick-start new life in my Stone. As always there will be some improvisation involved – I don’t have the resources to employ experts or invest in expensive equipment. However, I am inspired by the ingenuity and imagination of Thomas Thwaites’ endeavours in The Toaster Project.* Admittedly I may not have the skills which he has, but I have others which might prove useful and I’m learning how to re-use and adapt everyday objects and appliances to do the jobs I’ll need them to do.

I’ve been searching for The Stone for some time now and yesterday it presented itself to me. It’s a difficult size – bigger than a heart, smaller than a brain. I can carry it in one hand, just. It is heavy. It is a Flint.

According to my ageing Observer’s Book of Geology, “Most chalkpits contain nodules of Flint… a form of the very common mineral silica (silicon dioxide). Like the chalk, it is derived from material in the bodies of sea-living creatures.” Interesting (though perhaps not so surprising) that it has already had a life. Look at it – with its scars and gashes – this Stone has seen some action.

I carried it home and looked at it and photographed it. Now I have carefully packed The Stone away until everything is ready. It is in a glass vitrine, wrapped in a double layer of black lining material, covered in foil and sealed in polythene. It is dormant.

I went to a talk once by Professor Susan Kuechler in which she talked about immanence and stones which take on a sort of metaphysical life of their own. I didn’t really understand it but it’s in my mind.

I remember I have worked with a stone before – The Stone of Melancholy which formed the core of a piece of work entitled Cyst, in The Discovery Room. You can see it here in this X-ray. It’s the cold, dense object at the centre of the cyst.

*http://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/ In The Toaster Project (or a heroic attempt to build a simple electric appliance from scratch) (2009), Thwaites personally gathered all the materials and undertook all the processes necessary to make a toaster from scratch – from mining and smelting the iron ore for the steel components in a home made furnace to making a mold and casting the plastic case for it.