A transit of Gaia
Sep. 1st, 2023 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustTwo years ago, I posted about seeing Luke Jerram's Museum of the Moon in Durham Cathedral. Yesterday we went back to see his new piece, Gaia:
Things I never expected to hear myself ask about the Earth: "Is it bigger than the moon? Or just nearer?" According to the dedicated websites, both pieces are seven metres in diameter, so if the Earth looked larger, maybe it's because it hangs at the west end of the nave, and you look up and see it as soon as you enter the cathedral (well, as soon as you've navigated the cash desk). People were treating this as an invitation to photograph each other standing beneath the globe, arms outstretched and partly raised, holding up the Earth.
Most of what I thought about Gaia I've already said about the Museum of the Moon. If anything, whether because of the change of position or for some other reason, I felt Gaia engaged less with the setting of the cathedral than the earlier work. For example, here's one I made earlier:
The learned gentleman (who is James Britton, headmaster of Durham School) has only to look up to see the moon. Whereas now:
he shows no sign of knowing the Earth is there.
I askeddurham_rambler "What did you think of it?" After a short pause, he answered "I'm glad to have seen it." Me too.
Things I never expected to hear myself ask about the Earth: "Is it bigger than the moon? Or just nearer?" According to the dedicated websites, both pieces are seven metres in diameter, so if the Earth looked larger, maybe it's because it hangs at the west end of the nave, and you look up and see it as soon as you enter the cathedral (well, as soon as you've navigated the cash desk). People were treating this as an invitation to photograph each other standing beneath the globe, arms outstretched and partly raised, holding up the Earth.
Most of what I thought about Gaia I've already said about the Museum of the Moon. If anything, whether because of the change of position or for some other reason, I felt Gaia engaged less with the setting of the cathedral than the earlier work. For example, here's one I made earlier:
The learned gentleman (who is James Britton, headmaster of Durham School) has only to look up to see the moon. Whereas now:
he shows no sign of knowing the Earth is there.
I asked
durham_rambler "What did you think of it?" After a short pause, he answered "I'm glad to have seen it." Me too.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-01 06:01 pm (UTC)That's great.
Both of them look, in photographs, so oddly spliced in, as if they are not objects but images.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-02 10:31 am (UTC)Not just in photographs!