Abstract
If our understanding of life and human potentiality evolved over millennia in relation to a largely hospitable environment, how do we set about planning for life in conditions of unrelenting hostility? What is our relationship to an alien space? Is it a space of human projection or do we make our living systems, values, technologies, and dependencies responsive according to whatever we encounter out in the unknown? If so, how do we create the conditions for a malleable, terrestrial orphan—an indefinitely nomadic ecosystem?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf 1990).
- 2.
Rachel Armstrong, interview with Debbi Evans, “Black Sky Thinking”, Libertine, http://liberti.ne/editions/rachel-armstrong-on-black-sky-thinking/ (accessed September 27, 2015).
- 3.
Jorge Luis Borges, The Art of Fiction No. 39, The Paris Review, No. 40, Winter–Spring 1967.
- 4.
Jack Burnham, “Systems Esthetics,” reprinted from Artforum (September, 1968), www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/jevbratt/readings/burnhamse.html (accessed March 25, 2015).
- 5.
Planeta Final Report, International Space University, March 20, 2015, p. 11.
- 6.
www.icarusinterstellar.org/projects/project-persephone/ (accessed April 29, 2015).
- 7.
Op. cit., p. 2. Elsewhere, the vision of the project is articulated as colonialism: “A self-sustaining worldship would have the capability to leverage a stellar system’s resources to manufacture the necessary components to colonize a planet, construct a space station, or continue the voyage to another stellar system” (p. 10).
- 8.
Op. cit., p. 53.
- 9.
p. 59.
- 10.
p. 60.
- 11.
p. 67.
- 12.
p. 69.
- 13.
From the Initiation of the Fellow Craft, citing Robert Boyle, Works, Robert Lomas, Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science (Fair Wonds Press, 2003), p. 65.
- 14.
Rachel Armstrong, private email to the author, March 22, 2015.
- 15.
What underlies the viability of the project is an ancient, rather than a new, concern. The Vedas Sanskrit Scripture, dating from around 1500 bc, declares, “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.” Cited on United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification website, www.unccd.int/en/programmes/Event-and-campaigns/WDCD/Pages/Proverbs-on-land-and-soil-.aspx (accessed March 25, 2015).
- 16.
Part I, Chptr. 8, p165.
- 17.
Phillips, A. On Balance. Penguin (2011).
- 18.
See e.g. Mike Fuller, “The Logic of Magic,” Philosophy Now, August/September 2015, https://philosophynow.org/issues/5/The_Logic_of_Magic (accessed August 16, 2015).
- 19.
The Online Etymological Dictionary provides the following entry for “circus”: “late 14c., in reference to ancient Rome, from Latin circus ‘ring, circular line,’ which was applied by Romans to circular arenas for performances and contests and oval courses for racing (especially the Circus Maximus), from or cognate with Greek kirkos ‘a circle, a ring,’ from PIE *kirk- from root *(s)ker- (3) “to turn, bend” (see ring (n.)). In reference to modern large arenas for performances from 1791; sense then extended to the performing company, hence ‘traveling show’ (originally traveling circus, 1838). Extended in World War I to squadrons of military aircraft. Meaning ‘lively uproar, chaotic hubbub’ is from 1869. Sense in Piccadilly Circus and other place names is from early 18c. sense ‘buildings arranged in a ring,’ also ‘circular road.’ The adjective form is circensian.” Source: www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowedinframe=0&search=circus&searchmode=none (accessed May 1, 2015).
- 20.
”Knitting Peace” by Cirkus Cirkör, directed by Tilde Björfors, has toured the world since January 2013, deliberately posing a seemingly impossible question to its global audiences – namely, can we, collectively, “knit peace”?
- 21.
Cabinet Magazine, Issue 26, Summer 2007.
- 22.
Cited by Jonathan Allen in “Magic.”
- 23.
Catastrophe is defined etymologically as “1530, ‘reversal of what is expected’ (especially a fatal turning point in a drama), from Latin catastropha, from Greek katastrophe ‘an overturning; a sudden end,’ from katastrephein ‘to overturn, turn down, trample on; to come to an end,’ from kata ‘down’ (see cata- ) + strephein ‘turn’ (see strophe ). Extension to ‘sudden disaster’ is first recorded 1748.”
- 24.
“Tilde Björfors, Kajsa Lind (trans. Claire Chardet): Inuti ett Cirkus Hjärta/Inside A Circus Heart (Norsberg: Cirkus Cirkör, 2009), p. 39.
- 25.
Rachel Armstrong, www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=28905 (accessed May 1, 2015).
- 26.
Jonathan Priest, “The Following Circus Is False, the Preceding Circus Is True”. Jonathan Priest’s 30 % seminar, Stockholm University of the Arts, May 6, 2015. http://www.uniarts.se/forskning/seminarier-och-konferenser2/jonathan-priest-30-seminar
- 27.
Serres, M. The Parasite, translated by Lawrence R. Schehr, pp. 225–226. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London (1982).
- 28.
The point was made by Jonathan Priest at the above seminar and is explored at greater length in his virtuoso performance lecture “Knot Circus,” https://vimeo.com/64292705.
- 29.
Jack Burnham, op. cit.
- 30.
Later in the same chapter, Armstrong notes that “The current model used in testing the transition from nonliving to living matter, is Tibor Gánti’s notion of a 3-compartment system, which contains metabolism, container and information (Gánti 2003) [Gánti, T. (2003). The Principles of Life. New York: Oxford University Press]. Scientists are therefore focused on creating primordial systems that try to produce structures that represent these functions in the pursuit of abiogenesis.” Interestingly, metabolism, container, and information also describe the core elements of the proposed space ark.
- 31.
“It is commonly said that there exist three distinct subtypes of compartmentalization which aptly divide our awareness of the external world. First, there are the ‘known knowns’, things we know that we know. ‘Known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ follow suit in a similar fashion. Then, what of the forgotten fourth category, that of unknown knowns? (a type of knowledge forbidden, exclusively, from knowing itself). It is this category that to me represents the Freudian unconscious, the embodiment of the disavowed beliefs and suppositions that we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves, but which nonetheless determine our acts and feelings.” Slavoj Žižek, Facebook post, February 23, 2015.
- 32.
The italicized sections cite Rachel Armstrong’s reflections to the author on her protocell videos.
- 33.
This story was published in Issue 43 of Odyssey, the British Interplanetary Society’s science-fiction journal.
Combined Reference list for Chapter 16
Tilde Björfors, Kajsa Lind (trans. Claire Chardet): Inuti ett Cirkus Hjärta/Inside A Circus Heart (Norsberg: Cirkus Cirkör, 2009), p. 39
J. Brodsky, Watermark: An Essay on Venice (Penguin Classics, London, 2013)
G. Flaubert, The temptation of St. Antony. Source Bebook (not dated) www.covesys.com/docs/appnotes/pickup/BooksFromFVSR/The%20Temptation%20Of%20St.%20Antony%20-%20Flaubert%20Gustave.pdf
R.M. Hooper, The fish that helps us understand gender. The Japan Times (2015), June 20, www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/06/20/national/science-health/medaka-fish-helps-us-understand-gender/#.Vv5Bvavp6Hc
Protocell Circus. Protocell circus: spontaneous generation: a.k.a. A “Natural History” of Protocells. You Tube (2011), www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFagK5Lshlg
Sacred Texts. The prophecies of Nostradamus, preface, Salon (1555), March 1, www.sacred-texts.com/nos/; http://www.sacred-texts.com/nos/preface.htm
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hughes, R., Armstrong, R. (2017). Interstellar research methodologies. In: Armstrong, R. (eds) Star Ark. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31042-8_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31042-8_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31040-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31042-8
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)