LONDONFIELDWORKS

About Little Earth.....

Rejecting didactic and documentary techniques for the idioms of contemporary music and literature, LITTLE EARTH is an audiovisual poem reflecting how the 'last of the natural philosophers' became the first of the 'big scientists'. As technology and instrumentation begin to replace human intuition and perceptual faculties, LITTLE EARTH offers an opportunity to consider the implications for our future exploration and interpretation of the natural world.

The LITTLE EARTH project identifies two physicists, CTR Wilson and Kristian Birkeland, as significant contributors to 'big science'. Both researchers were stationed at mountaintop observatories studying natural phenomena at the end of the 19th-century. They relied on naked-eye observation and simple instruments in extreme environments and were perhaps the last of the natural philosophers. Associated with the mountaintop experiences of Wilson and Birkeland are two celebrated machines: Wilson's famous 'cloud chamber' and Birkeland's lesser-known 'terrella'. The instruments promoted understanding of phenomena at the micro and macro scale - signaling new frontiers for exploration.

After his experience at the Northern Lights Observatory, on Haldde Mountain in the Norwegian Arctic, Kristian Birkeland built a 'plasma universe' in his laboratory incorporating a 'terrella' (or 'little Earth'), which simulated the aurora and demonstrated its link with solar flare activity. Wilson's experience at the Ben Nevis Weather Observatory led to the development of his 'cloud chamber', which enhanced the study of sub-atomic particles and was acclaimed by Nobel Laureate Lord Rutherford as "the most original and wonderful instrument in scientific history."

The work of these scientists helped to establish the study of a wide range of phenomena, such as solar flares and cosmic rays, which can affect the Earth's atmosphere and damage communications satellites in space, as well as probing the sub-atomic world of radioactive nuclei and elementary particles. The work of these two scientists, starting in the 19th century, led to two branches of 'big science' in the 20th and 21st centuries, namely space science and solar system exploration, and particle physics and the fundamental structure of matter, respectively. The diminutive naked-eye observer standing on the mountaintop has been left far behind.

Little Earth installation, Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London
Photo: LondonFieldworks 2005