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Archive for November, 2015

Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month: November 2015

By Mark Carnall, on 30 November 2015

The sound of mince pies is in the air. People with awful moustaches are getting a free pass this month. This can mean one of only two things. Either the annual conference of British Pie Awards and The Handlebar Club have booked the same conference venue* or it’s November. Delete as appropriate. What this may mean is that it isn’t October anymore, so it’s time to welcome you to another underwhelming fossil fish of the month, our monthly foray into the world of uninspiring fossil fish. UK museums have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of fossil fish in their collections and they get a hard time. They aren’t used in exhibitions, they don’t feature on lunchboxes, they aren’t the subject of Hollywood films.

Well, normally that is. This month, due to a mix up at the email sorting office, I’ve been wired a rather interesting and semi-famous fossil fish. You’ll probably instantly recognise it from the photo below. It’s going to be hard to play this one down, this one has been featured on stamps. I know, I’m going to get letters for highering standards. (more…)

Specimen of the Week 216: European Plaice

By Dean W Veall, on 30 November 2015

Hello dear Specimen of the Week readers, Dean Veall here. This week I shall be bringing you a very fishy (again) Specimen of the Week, how can I possibly top the three toothed pufferfish you may be asking yourself? Well, I believe I have for two very good reasons. Firstly the fish I have chosen is one of the asymmetrical marvels of the natural world. Secondly, has one of the most curmudgeonly comical faces of all animals (I challenge you to find me an animal that beats this specimen). And finally, has recently featured in the events that have accompained our Glass Delusions exhibition. This week’s Specimen of the Week is…..

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Agriculture and War : Seeds and Death -what does it all mean ?

By ucwehpi, on 24 November 2015

In our continuing series to document the process behind next year’s exhibition in the Octagon, Mark Peter Wright and Helena Hunter  were chosen to work with curators and academic researchers from UCL on this new exhibition led by Helen Pike, Public Programmer at The Petrie Museum. Mark is an artist and researcher working across sound, video, assemblage and performance and Helena’s practice spans performance, text and moving image. The blog offers a chance for ideas to be presented and hopefully engage comment and conversation !

 

“Is there a form of theory that can acknowledge a certain ‘thing-power’, that is, the irreducibility of objects to the human meanings or agendas they also embody?”

Jane Bennett, Agency, Nature and Emergent Properties: An Interview with Jane Bennett. Contemporary Political Theory 8, 90-105 (February 2009).

 

 

Throughout October and early November we did a tour of curators and their collections. First up was Alice Stevenson, curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archeology. We discussed the agricultural tools and equipment dating back thousands of years on display and how such items evidence the development of mechanistic technologies that began to enter and change landscapes and civilizations, both physically and psychologically. We’re interested in tracing cartographies around such material cultures: extending an appreciation of the “thing” outwards, towards broader relationships and speculative assemblages, and their political and ecological consequences. Interestingly, Petrie himself produced a book called “Tools and Weapons”, a detailed analysis of items from an Egyptian expedition in 1916 and which nests agriculture and war, seeds and death in close proximity.

Next was Prof. Simon Lewis from UCL Geography department. Simon is at the cutting edge of Anthropocene debates and with Prof. Mark Maslin co-authored the recent paper “Defining the Anthropocene” (March 2015, N. 519) for the influential Nature Journal. We discussed the difficulty of pinning this contingent epoch to a specific start time. Our conversations focused upon two of the “Golden Spikes” that Lewis and Maslin identify as geological specificities, or points of “origin”. One being 1610 at the point of the collision of old and new worlds by way of colonialism and trade, the other being 1964 as a result of increased levels of radioactivity produced through nuclear weapons testing.

 

Our heads now spinning, we visited Nick Booth, curator of the Geology collections. We were interested in drawing out connections between the earth and technology, primarily through rare earth minerals. These physical elements, mined from the earth, make up parts of our so-called “immaterial” culture such as phones and laptops. Along with rare earths and a host of other items including a Chirotherium fossil footprint and Sir William Ramsay’s original set of discharge tubes, we were drawn to a collection of micro fossils and the deceptively large impact they have in relation to oil exploration.

Microfossil Image_Miracle_UCL-2

Close up of a micro fossil credit UCL Geology 

Our final visit of the day took us to Paolo Viscardi, curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology. If the desire for energy drives the Anthropocene then it seems petroleum oil/plastics are one the central material actors within this story. Stemming from such materialities are the consequences on species such as the giant tortoises of the Galapagos. These animals were exploited for their oil rich bodies in addition to suffering from the clearance of their natural habitat for agricultural purposes. Like the microfossils these museum artefacts (in this case, giant shells) project a powerful grafting of non-humans and humans, technology and the earth, extinctions and possible futures.

 

To conclude this post, and in response to Jane Bennett’s opening quote at the top of this blog, we would say that although “thing-power” may productively recognize the intensities of material things in and of themselves, we are more interested in mixing vibrant matter with their geopolitical contexts: to drawn a cartography of consequences rather than a type of material awe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Specimen of the week 215: the sparrowhawk taxidermy

By Will J Richard, on 23 November 2015

Hello zoo-fans. Will Richard here, throwing words at the page to bring you this specimen of the week. And what a specimen I’ve chosen. Graceful, elegant, deadly and now stuffed. Slightly wonkily. Case 17’s finest…

LDUCZ-Y1549 female sparrowhawk taxidermy

LDUCZ-Y1549 female sparrowhawk taxidermy

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Some More Favourite PanoptiCam Views

By Nick J Booth, on 19 November 2015

My last ‘Favourite PanoptiCam Views‘ blog post was way back in June, so an update is long overdue.

Summer is usually a quiet time for the auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham. There are less staff and students around and, although he does receive a regular stream of visitors, summer is often a time to pause and take stock of the past academic year. Infact it is very easy to forget just how busy UCL can be when the students return, however when the new academic year starts again…

'Looking at me, looking at you' - one regular summer visitor to the auto-icon gets into the spirit of the PanoptiCam Project.

‘Looking at me, looking at you’ – one regular summer visitor to the auto-icon gets into the spirit of the PanoptiCam Project.

The start of term witnessed some long queues for registration...

The start of term witnessed some long queues for registration…

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Specimen of Week 214: Fossil Vertebrae

By Tannis Davidson, on 16 November 2015

LDUCZ-X1111 Dimetrodon vertebrae

LDUCZ-X1111 Dimetrodon sp.vertebrae

In the spotlight this week is a specimen that is currently experiencing it’s ‘busy season’. The Grant Museum collection is widely used in teaching at UCL and the Museum is home to many specimen-based practicals. For example, during term 1 in 2014, there were 34 practicals using over 600 specimens by 1400 students.

Amidst this flurry of activity, certain specimens catch the eye. Is it that they are finally freed from the safe-keeping of their fossil drawers and have their moment to shine? Could it be that they are used over and over and over again to illustrate a turning point in evolution so critical that repeat viewings are essential? Or is it that the specimen is quite simply, an attractive object in itself, perhaps a worthy contestant in a specimen beauty contest?

This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

Where are we now?

By ucwehpi, on 10 November 2015

Mark Peter Wright and Helena Hunter were chosen to work with curators and academic researchers from UCL on this new exhibition project. Mark is an artist and researcher working across sound, video, assemblage and performance and Helena’s practice spans performance, text and moving image. In this series of blogs running from now until the exhibition opens, the two will discuss how they are finding the process of research and discuss the ideas that are emerging.  The blog will stand in as the space of thinking for the exhibition

Helen Pike – Public Programmer

 ‘The fossils of the future are the ones we live among’.

Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media, 2015, p.123

By Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright

 

As part of our research for the forthcoming Octagon exhibition we visited neuroscientists Aman Saleem and Matteo Carandini and at The Institute of Ophthalmology. We were introduced to methods and practices from their research that focused upon navigation and cognitive mapping. The main content of our discussions centred upon the ‘hippocampus’ – a region deep within the brain that  resembles a seahorse.  It plays a vital role in how both humans and mammals navigate through space, in addition to both short and long term memory function. As a multi-sensual area of the brain it differs from the visual cortex that has a more singular visual pursuit, offering a reception for sensory input that gives recognition but not clarity as to what we are seeing. The hippocampus is a plural, multi-sensory region in the brain accommodating a dualistic appreciation of place: the point we are physically located in and the place we may be relating to at a distance. Like the blue dot on Google maps, it resembles a pulsing area where the process and production of where we are, or think we are in the present is activated.

But where are we now?Hippocampus_small[1] This deceptively simple question has opened up many trajectories for us. Where are we in terms of physical space? Political or ecological contexts? Subjective and collective identities? What happens between the here and there when binaries collapse? What errors, frictions and fictions may emerge?

The Anthropocence is the current condition that underwrites such broad questioning of ‘where are we now?’ The term, coined by scientists, marks out a new geological epoch. It is an umbrella within which to describe how the human (antropos) has become irrecoverably grafted into every aspect of global-techno-animal life. Its consequences are read primarily through the current climate and ecological crisis. It also speaks towards the impact of advanced capitalism and our relationship to non-human agents – from animals to rocks. It is debated that we have been in this “now” since the industrial revolution, perhaps even further back. (See: Parikka, 2015). Alternative hybrid formations of the term, pinning specific areas of inquiry, have also been proposed (See: Braidotti ‘Capitaloscene’; Haraway ‘Chthulucene’; Parikka ‘Anthrobscene’).Seahorse Fossil

[1] We are reluctant to speak of a “we” in terms of one homogenised collection of (human) people. When “we” is evoked we are therefore talking from our subjective and relational positions firstly, but also wish to extend a sense of collectivity and agency to non-human others.

Within this matrix of connections and contexts we want to ignite a set of opening questions: can the hippocampus provide a methodology to navigate the present within archival collections? Is it possible to way-find between the here and there? What repetitions and differences might we discover? What possible fictions and futures may emerge in the errors and glitches along the way?

 

Who turned out the lights on Jeremy Bentham?

By Nick J Booth, on 9 November 2015

The auto-icon of Jeremy Bentham is 183 years old and counting. Over this time it has attended parties and UCL council meetings, had its heads (wax and mummified) stolen by students, twice visited Germany and also taken a ride in a red Morris Marina. It’s fair to say that Jeremy Bentham has led an active after life, and UCL Museums are committed to ensuring that it survives for another 183 years and more.

Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon.

Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon.

During recent conservation work it has become apparent that although the auto-icon appears safe and secure it is actually subject to a very damaging environmental factor – high light levels (Cue dramatic sounds and possibly someone screaming in the distance).

Ok so actually of all the risks the auto-icon faces this doesn’t sound like a particularly bad one, especially compared to fires, wars, insect infestation and the afore mentioned head thefts (all of these the auto-icon has survived at one point in its life). But high light levels are a huge danger to the auto-icon, and can cause irreparable damage.

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Specimen of the Week 213: The Enigmatic Gibbon

By tcrnrh1, on 9 November 2015

Hello Grant Museum blog readers and zoology enthusiasts, it’s Rachel Bray here. You may be wondering who I am, unless you saw a Specimen of the Week blog by me back in May when I temporarily joined the Museum for my MA placement. I am very lucky to be back at the Grant until Christmas to work with the Museum’s wonderful learning and events programme. As part of my return I’m pleased to be getting back into the Specimen of the Week swing of things by researching this week’s candidate which is…

Photograph of the grey gibbon specimen

LDUCZ-Z475 Hylobates sp.

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Hello! I’m the new Grant Museum Curator

By ucwepwv, on 6 November 2015

My name is Paolo Viscardi and I’m the new Curator of the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL.

PV_Case19

I have a background in biomechanics and comparative anatomy, with a particular fondness for bones, which I’ve been writing about since July 2009 on my personal blog Zygoma. In my spare time I am Chair of the Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) and I run the science communication event Science in the Pub (or PubSci for short). My passion for communicating science also keeps me busy giving talks and getting involved in all sorts of events and performances, from immersive theatre to providing a scientist’s response to art. (more…)