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February 2010
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I heard stories recently about the strange lights known variously as earth lights, will o’ the wisp, jack o’ lanterns or corpse candles, which traditionally vary from flickering glows seen hovering over bogs or other damp ground to enormous bright glows that can light up an area as if it was day, being seen regularly in the Longdendale area of the South Pennines. Apparently the area around Longdendale between Glossop and Crowden has been an area of many sightings of unexplained lights, including small glowing spheres dancing above car dashboards to ‘brilliant incandescent blue light’ that ‘lit up all the bottom half of the mountain, all the railway, the reservoirs and about a two mile stretch of road.’ (from Longdendale Lights). The lights have been commonly seen around the aptly named Shining Clough and the Devil’s Elbow on the Woodhead Road to Glossop.

Theories about what the lights actually are range from the inevitable UFO and supernatural connotations to marsh gases and tectonic electromagnetic activity. An automated monitoring system in Hessdalen, Norway where there has been a huge amount of earth light activity is still to deliver any concrete analysis and scientists such as Paul Deveraux and Michael Persinger have been working on the phenomenon for years.

This is the crux of the theory from wikipedia;

The theory goes that the strain causes heat in the rocks, vaporising the water in them. Piezoelectric rocks such as quartz then produce electricity, which is channeled up through this column of vaporised water, until it reaches the surface—somehow displaying itself in the form of earth lights. This theory would assert that the majority of earth lights are seen over places of tectonic strain. If it is correct, it would explain why such lights often behave in an erratic and even seemingly intelligent manner, often defying the laws of gravity. Paul Devereux’s explanation, however, is much broader. He thinks that the link between the lights and the landscape is more tenuous. He says that they are probably related to many things: tectonic strain, weather conditions, local geography, ‘ley lines‘, terrain, water table depth and so forth. This explanation, however, is rejected by most experts as highly unscientific.

A recently explained phenomenon of weird lights much higher up in the sky, and another previous UFO theory has been put down to iridium flares. The iridium satellites are part of a communications network and have the unique feature of 3 highly reflective aluminium antenna panels mounted 120º apart which reflect the sun when the satellite performs one of its preprogrammed turns.

Often these flares can be seen in daylight at a fairly high magnitude and there are several websites, widgets and applications that predict when and where these flares will be visible. Maybe the best of these, Heavenly Bodies, predicts that the next one visible from Huddersfield will be on 21st July at 19.07.23 hrs at 239º WSW and 71º elevation. This will be Iridium 35.

Some of my readings and research during this residency that has touched on GPS, messaging and radio communications has led me to want to place a network of small radio beacons on the trig points all over this region of the Pennines. These beacons will broadcast the encoded landscape information from samples taken from the site of the trig point. Maybe these transmissions could be triggered by photocells or other sensors picking up earth lights or iridium flares.

The time is upon me when I need to start thinking about what sort of concrete results I can take from the time that’s left on this residency. I tend to think that the development of some sort of system, or a prototype of that system, that I can carry on working with would be a good idea. Maybe the apparatus I was imagining I could use to etch the landscape images whilst monitoring bacterial behaviours and states will be reworked as a general investigative fermenter.

A fermenter is a piece of laboratory equipment used for the intensive culture of microbes in quantities from a litre at smallest to many hundreds at biggest. The device is normally hooked up to a biocontroller to monitor and control the inputs and outputs and a PC to log the data over time. We have one hooked up at the moment in the lab where we’re trying to build up the quantities of our thiobacilli.

The logging computer is out of shot to the right but we can see the business end of the thing here. The machinery on the right is the biocontroller which is the primary interface receiving data from the sensors and controlling the stirrer and any necessary environmental conditioning devices. On the left is the actual fermenter vessel which has a number of ports in the lid for the placement of air lines and sensor probes - in this one we have Ph, dissolved oxygen and temperature - as well as housing the stirrer motor. Inside the vessel are the air manifiold and the stirrer arm and blades. Its all very scientific and rigorous.

So I’m considering building one of these for artistic use. Apparently I can commandeer a flask from the science department, I’m ordering a couple of probes and a stirrer can be built using a cheap dc motor. The air supply and manifold is easy for someone with my experience of cobbling together apparatus from cheap aquarium gear and I can hook the whole thing up to the Muio board to read the sensors and control the motor. That would be enough to get a similar level of data out of the system and a basic level of environmental control in.

The addition of a couple of speakers, a small LCD screen and some LED arrays should give me enough to begin testing the developing microbial colony’s reactions to information overload. A satellite hook up feature can be added at some point in the future alongside radio receivers and transmitters.