Another roadblock. Simon and I just got back from an interview with Bill Josla from the Antarctic Sun, lasted over an hour. We are at our Crary Lab and received a scribbled message from Lionel relaying a message from Keith from Science Cargo telling us that they had moved our crates from where we had left them to the other side of the road! Great. Now they are saying the crates have to be at least 100 yards from the road, which means it will move the edge of our site 200 yards from the road, and the outer edge, 400 yards, which complicates things since we are only allowed to have it 100 yards from the road. This is a typical bureaucratic nightmare where one department has a request, which contradicts another department's request. Hope this does not delay us any further. It means I am going to have to go out there this afternoon and have them set them in the position I want them in so they do not get in the way of cameras.
To be at the Crary Lab at this hour is a luxury, this was our down day, but I will have to go out there this afternoon as well as tonight where will set out after dinner and hopefully set the largest sphere down, Sirius. We decided to wait to set up our tent until after then, as we are all very anxious to see one sphere up. There are also some people who are leaving tomorrow who want to see it. We will take them on a midnight ride out through the sea ice on skidoos.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
STELLAR LOGISTICS
McMurdo station: Loading the crates of spheres to transport onto the ice
First crate heading out to... somewhere
90% perspiration
The spheres have landed
And keep landing
Sophie, the birthday girl - and her ice cake
"What are you people up to?"First day to take out the crates to our site. With the equipment we have we can only take one crate out at a time. It takes two to three hours per trip at 10 miles an hour, and we have a total of six crates. We have to hitch a trailer to the Piston Bully, then forklift each crate weighing anywhere from 300 to 600 lbs, onto the trailer, then driving out through the sea ice via the short cut to Pegasus road. Lionel and Simon take the first load, Sophie, Jean and I are supposed to leave at the same time on our skidoos which should take us less than 30 minutes, but we got delayed trying to figure out how to work the skidoos, our lesson was not hands on, and this is taking awhile. By the time we get there, Lionel and Simon had been there way before us, but we had fun speeding on the ice, driving these things in the middle of the sea covered in ice is, to say the least, a great thrill.
I locate the exact site, and we unload the first crate onto the ice. Jean tells me that all I need to do is shoot the crate in the middle of Antarctica and I would get an instant exhibition in a museum. I have to admit, it's tempting...
On our way back I am so immersed in the experience of driving the skidoo at great speed on this flat icy surface that I miss the turn off and find myself almost all the way to the Pegasus runway! Jean is furious with me and is afraid we will run out of gas before we make it back to McMurdo. We make it back and manage to spill gasoline over the entire skidoo, "everything here is a learning curve"Jean mumbles. It is true that in our extreme weather gear and all the safety precautions we have to take it feels like we are moving in molasses.
Back at McMurdo I meet with Jane from recreation and work out an entire program for the Solstice. We work out the logistics of ninety nine people coming out in two shift from 6:30 p.m. to Midnight when they will start performing the movement of the stars slowly rotating clockwise in concentric spiraling concentric circles. This we will shoot from a helicopter.
I meet Jean and Lionel at dinner, while Simon and Sophie do the third run of the third crate for the day. After dinner Debra Zabarenko from Reuters interviews us at the Coffee House where we have lattes laced with Jameson’s. Simon has it set that we have to have four crates out by the end of the evening and he and Sophie take off for a late night run over the sea ice with the fourth crate. Jean, Lionel and I go back to crary lab and find an email from Jane saying our plan for December 22nd, is no good, as they will have to close the short cut to Pegasus road because of the sea ice deteriorating. This is now a roadblock in our plan. We continually have to respond to very complicated logistics. I stay in the lab way past midnight and on my way to find a midnight snack run into Debra who just came back from the Andrill site, and shows me the Library upstairs. Amazing views of all the mountains at the edge of the horizon where the sea ice is. Inside, special collection books on Antarctica, Antarctic research, astronomy, any science you can find. I find myself mesmerized by an Atlas of the galaxies published by NASA in 1988. I better go to sleep, even though it is bright light outside, just beautiful light, want to stay up and keep going.
I locate the exact site, and we unload the first crate onto the ice. Jean tells me that all I need to do is shoot the crate in the middle of Antarctica and I would get an instant exhibition in a museum. I have to admit, it's tempting...
On our way back I am so immersed in the experience of driving the skidoo at great speed on this flat icy surface that I miss the turn off and find myself almost all the way to the Pegasus runway! Jean is furious with me and is afraid we will run out of gas before we make it back to McMurdo. We make it back and manage to spill gasoline over the entire skidoo, "everything here is a learning curve"Jean mumbles. It is true that in our extreme weather gear and all the safety precautions we have to take it feels like we are moving in molasses.
Back at McMurdo I meet with Jane from recreation and work out an entire program for the Solstice. We work out the logistics of ninety nine people coming out in two shift from 6:30 p.m. to Midnight when they will start performing the movement of the stars slowly rotating clockwise in concentric spiraling concentric circles. This we will shoot from a helicopter.
I meet Jean and Lionel at dinner, while Simon and Sophie do the third run of the third crate for the day. After dinner Debra Zabarenko from Reuters interviews us at the Coffee House where we have lattes laced with Jameson’s. Simon has it set that we have to have four crates out by the end of the evening and he and Sophie take off for a late night run over the sea ice with the fourth crate. Jean, Lionel and I go back to crary lab and find an email from Jane saying our plan for December 22nd, is no good, as they will have to close the short cut to Pegasus road because of the sea ice deteriorating. This is now a roadblock in our plan. We continually have to respond to very complicated logistics. I stay in the lab way past midnight and on my way to find a midnight snack run into Debra who just came back from the Andrill site, and shows me the Library upstairs. Amazing views of all the mountains at the edge of the horizon where the sea ice is. Inside, special collection books on Antarctica, Antarctic research, astronomy, any science you can find. I find myself mesmerized by an Atlas of the galaxies published by NASA in 1988. I better go to sleep, even though it is bright light outside, just beautiful light, want to stay up and keep going.
Monday, December 11, 2006
MEASURING SPACE
Action!
Mapping out possible scales for the installation
Pawow
Stellar team: Jean, Lita, Sophie, Simon & Lionel
Visiting Scott's Discovery hutSaturday, December 9, 2006
LANDING IN ANTARCTICA
LITA ALBUQUERQUE - DECEMBER 7, 2006 7:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
What stands out on this plane is the fact that all the grantees are given EWG (extreme weather gear) including The Big Red (Parka) which gives a visual continuity and a visual rhythm to the greyness of the hull. Red is what unites us, red the color of passion and love and desire. Red that signals fire and heat, heat which is life itself.
So it is in the big red that we recognize each other, that we realize we are part of a coveted group, that we are all here because we have wanted to be here, because we love adventure and travel, but most of all because our passion has brought us to a distillation of our life’s work and curiosity.
And now as we land on the continent, the curiosity and passion rolls out of the plane as the door of the grey military plane opens onto the vastness of Antarctica, and one by one the big red starts populating the vastness of the white, one by one the red descends the stairs, into blinding white light, red into reflective white snow all around, peripheral vision all white except for the red that is already on the ice, white on the periphery, white horizontally below the feet, white circularly around the horizon, white up the mountain ranges that encircle us.
The red of us descending onto the white of the whiteness, for one moment, gasping. The whiteness of it all, the blinding light as if indeed we have landed on another planet, as if indeed we are weightless in our bunny boots and red parkas like the astronauts on the moon. And so it takes a minute or two to take it in, we are overwhelmed, we have lost our senses, we have another set of senses, maybe. We simply are in the white, and we surrender to the sensations that engulf us.
What stands out on this plane is the fact that all the grantees are given EWG (extreme weather gear) including The Big Red (Parka) which gives a visual continuity and a visual rhythm to the greyness of the hull. Red is what unites us, red the color of passion and love and desire. Red that signals fire and heat, heat which is life itself.
So it is in the big red that we recognize each other, that we realize we are part of a coveted group, that we are all here because we have wanted to be here, because we love adventure and travel, but most of all because our passion has brought us to a distillation of our life’s work and curiosity.
And now as we land on the continent, the curiosity and passion rolls out of the plane as the door of the grey military plane opens onto the vastness of Antarctica, and one by one the big red starts populating the vastness of the white, one by one the red descends the stairs, into blinding white light, red into reflective white snow all around, peripheral vision all white except for the red that is already on the ice, white on the periphery, white horizontally below the feet, white circularly around the horizon, white up the mountain ranges that encircle us.
The red of us descending onto the white of the whiteness, for one moment, gasping. The whiteness of it all, the blinding light as if indeed we have landed on another planet, as if indeed we are weightless in our bunny boots and red parkas like the astronauts on the moon. And so it takes a minute or two to take it in, we are overwhelmed, we have lost our senses, we have another set of senses, maybe. We simply are in the white, and we surrender to the sensations that engulf us.
Friday, December 8, 2006
WHITE HORIZONS
Antarctica...
Lita: The talent has landed!
Survival camp: Lionel, our cinematographer, settling down
Not time for the stars yet: Lita digging her survival trench (survival camp)
Captain Simon Scott emerging from his snow hole
Survival field camp
Lionel dreaming of French food and his own Italian wine...
W-221... Over...
Not star gazing: White-out simulation...
Thursday, December 7, 2006
C17 GLOBE MASTER
LITA ALBUQUERQUE. DECEMBER 7, 2006
I am writing from the hulled out C17 globe master military jet. The engines are revving up and we are about to take off from Christchurch, New Zealand on our way to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. This morning has been one of the most exciting so far, all the National Science Foundation grantees gathering at 3:30 a.m. at our bed and breakfast in Christchurch to go to the International Antarctic Center to put on our cold weather gear, pack our carry on bag with one outfit for the city in case we "boomerang" and have to come back to Christchurch due to weather, and board the military plane that is taking us to Antarctica. The International Antarctic Center is full of photographs of the scientific research being done there. Simon, Sophie, Jean, Lionel and I are meeting all kinds of scientist working on some of the most cutting edge research being done on the planet. We are meeting a number of physicists, geologists, molecular biologists who will spend the whole year there, they are called “winter over” scientists. Once through the security, we are outside the center and there, on the runway, sits the C 17, the grey air force military jet that will take us there. We are taking off !
I don't know how long it has been, I have fallen asleep, Jean is lying down on the floor, Simon is on his computer, Sophie is shooting the video and Lionel is awake in his chair a little distance from us. Being on this military jet is, like Sophie said, "enough right here". Honestly. We came in late so we missed the four rows of real seats, or any of the side seats with empty space in front of them, instead we are in the middle of the plane with tons of cargo no more than two feet right in front of us, we are staring at tons and tons of beer kegs, which makes Simon deliriously happy. A bunch of people are sleeping on the floor, others like us, are either reading or sleeping...
The moment is getting nearer and I am beginning to sense an extraordinary and profound experience about to happen. The sense I get from the others who have been there is the feeling one gets being around expert explorers, feeling their confidence and their sense of well being and the feeling that they are deeply within themselves, that they have accomplished, and are living a life that is full of realized dreams and accomplishments, fit of mind, body and spirit, having lived extreme conditions.
A little while ago, before I fell asleep, a big, burly, guy, with long , grey hair whom I had seen earlier at the center, walked by me, ruminating, on his jacket was embroidered.... Swedish Antarctic Polar Research...
I realize that I have very little idea of what awaits me, and yet, it is beginning to dawn on me.... the true adventure and uniqueness of this.... and the privilege! That we are here on a grant from the National Science Foundation, and that everyone is also, no wonder the feeling is that this is not just an ordinary group of people going on vacation, these are all scientific grantees on a mission, doing important research, going to the most pristine environment in the world. To be able to be part of this rarified world is intoxicating. Needless to say everyone feels it, and that is what is in the air on this hulled out military jet with the hundred of beer cans wrapped up in front of us.
I have started reading "The Ice" by Stephen J. Pyne very poetically written "it is a lustrous, magical and elegiac piece of writing. This is a book which has about it the structure of the Ice itself: it is a massive edifice, built up out of repeating units and variations in pressure...one of the greatest written on the cultural history of the earth ever"
I am pinching myself, there are only four tiny "hublot" (French word) tiny circular windows no more than 10" in diameter, I went to one out in the back of the plane, stepping over sleeping bodies, and looked out.... at first I was blinded by the intensity of the light, then it felt that I was looking at the clouds below me, then I started perceiving some shifts and through he clouds started to see an awesome sight, ice, ice expanding from horizon to underneath the plane, only perceivable by the breaks within it, huge sheets of ice, some small, like a cracked dry desert bed, but floating in a deep still sea. Looking out the window, my nose pressed to the glass, standing on the tips of my rubber booted toes, I started dreaming, my body started to float, knowing it was seeing something it had never seen before, a wide expanse of white, just white, only my mind knew it was ice punctuated by a midnight blue between the cracks. My peripheral vision captured a totality of an experience, engulfed me in what I was looking at, bathing my body with sensations that my eye was taking in as physical matter, as light, translating it into sensations, into an enveloping sense of well being. I am being caressed by what I am seeing.
It is getting colder in the airplane, people are starting to mill around, stretching their legs, and we are wondering how much longer we have to fly. Those who have already been there were very happy to see that we were not going in the Hercules which would have taken us over eight hours, they were also surprised that this was to take us four and a half hours, normally it is six, so it is a short flight. The view out of the window has prepared me a little for what Simon keeps saying to me "I can't wait to see your face when you step off that airplane" I think I have just gotten a taste of it. My heart leapt in complete surprise for a moment there when my eyes took me to the edges of the window and to what I could see below It is definitely a sense of something one has never seen before rather not experienced before, and that is what I am trying to get at, that the eye experiences, that we experience through the eye way beyond the sense of vision, in a place like this it is even more apparent.
I am dreaming again, floating again, I decided to look out the window again and this time we are over the continent! Soft, soft powdered snow covering mountain range after mountain range, row upon row of mountain peaks pushing through the snow, looking like waves cresting in an ocean of white. More extraordinary views out of the window, but we are landing! we have to get off.
I am writing from the hulled out C17 globe master military jet. The engines are revving up and we are about to take off from Christchurch, New Zealand on our way to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. This morning has been one of the most exciting so far, all the National Science Foundation grantees gathering at 3:30 a.m. at our bed and breakfast in Christchurch to go to the International Antarctic Center to put on our cold weather gear, pack our carry on bag with one outfit for the city in case we "boomerang" and have to come back to Christchurch due to weather, and board the military plane that is taking us to Antarctica. The International Antarctic Center is full of photographs of the scientific research being done there. Simon, Sophie, Jean, Lionel and I are meeting all kinds of scientist working on some of the most cutting edge research being done on the planet. We are meeting a number of physicists, geologists, molecular biologists who will spend the whole year there, they are called “winter over” scientists. Once through the security, we are outside the center and there, on the runway, sits the C 17, the grey air force military jet that will take us there. We are taking off !
I don't know how long it has been, I have fallen asleep, Jean is lying down on the floor, Simon is on his computer, Sophie is shooting the video and Lionel is awake in his chair a little distance from us. Being on this military jet is, like Sophie said, "enough right here". Honestly. We came in late so we missed the four rows of real seats, or any of the side seats with empty space in front of them, instead we are in the middle of the plane with tons of cargo no more than two feet right in front of us, we are staring at tons and tons of beer kegs, which makes Simon deliriously happy. A bunch of people are sleeping on the floor, others like us, are either reading or sleeping...
The moment is getting nearer and I am beginning to sense an extraordinary and profound experience about to happen. The sense I get from the others who have been there is the feeling one gets being around expert explorers, feeling their confidence and their sense of well being and the feeling that they are deeply within themselves, that they have accomplished, and are living a life that is full of realized dreams and accomplishments, fit of mind, body and spirit, having lived extreme conditions.
A little while ago, before I fell asleep, a big, burly, guy, with long , grey hair whom I had seen earlier at the center, walked by me, ruminating, on his jacket was embroidered.... Swedish Antarctic Polar Research...
I realize that I have very little idea of what awaits me, and yet, it is beginning to dawn on me.... the true adventure and uniqueness of this.... and the privilege! That we are here on a grant from the National Science Foundation, and that everyone is also, no wonder the feeling is that this is not just an ordinary group of people going on vacation, these are all scientific grantees on a mission, doing important research, going to the most pristine environment in the world. To be able to be part of this rarified world is intoxicating. Needless to say everyone feels it, and that is what is in the air on this hulled out military jet with the hundred of beer cans wrapped up in front of us.
I have started reading "The Ice" by Stephen J. Pyne very poetically written "it is a lustrous, magical and elegiac piece of writing. This is a book which has about it the structure of the Ice itself: it is a massive edifice, built up out of repeating units and variations in pressure...one of the greatest written on the cultural history of the earth ever"
I am pinching myself, there are only four tiny "hublot" (French word) tiny circular windows no more than 10" in diameter, I went to one out in the back of the plane, stepping over sleeping bodies, and looked out.... at first I was blinded by the intensity of the light, then it felt that I was looking at the clouds below me, then I started perceiving some shifts and through he clouds started to see an awesome sight, ice, ice expanding from horizon to underneath the plane, only perceivable by the breaks within it, huge sheets of ice, some small, like a cracked dry desert bed, but floating in a deep still sea. Looking out the window, my nose pressed to the glass, standing on the tips of my rubber booted toes, I started dreaming, my body started to float, knowing it was seeing something it had never seen before, a wide expanse of white, just white, only my mind knew it was ice punctuated by a midnight blue between the cracks. My peripheral vision captured a totality of an experience, engulfed me in what I was looking at, bathing my body with sensations that my eye was taking in as physical matter, as light, translating it into sensations, into an enveloping sense of well being. I am being caressed by what I am seeing.
It is getting colder in the airplane, people are starting to mill around, stretching their legs, and we are wondering how much longer we have to fly. Those who have already been there were very happy to see that we were not going in the Hercules which would have taken us over eight hours, they were also surprised that this was to take us four and a half hours, normally it is six, so it is a short flight. The view out of the window has prepared me a little for what Simon keeps saying to me "I can't wait to see your face when you step off that airplane" I think I have just gotten a taste of it. My heart leapt in complete surprise for a moment there when my eyes took me to the edges of the window and to what I could see below It is definitely a sense of something one has never seen before rather not experienced before, and that is what I am trying to get at, that the eye experiences, that we experience through the eye way beyond the sense of vision, in a place like this it is even more apparent.
I am dreaming again, floating again, I decided to look out the window again and this time we are over the continent! Soft, soft powdered snow covering mountain range after mountain range, row upon row of mountain peaks pushing through the snow, looking like waves cresting in an ocean of white. More extraordinary views out of the window, but we are landing! we have to get off.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
CHRISTCHURCH, ON OUR WAY SOUTH
Before the ground turns to ice
Sun gazers
Time to gear up
Departure time
Before take-off: Lionel, Lita, Sophie & Simon
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