Open call for participants for The Crystal World

[Joanne Lee]

http://crystal.xxn.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=the_crystal_world:space:...

Open call for participants for The Crystal World Open Laboratory at The White Building, Hackney Wick, London, with Martin Howse, Ryan Jordan, and Jonathan Kemp.

The absolute silence of the vegetation along the banks and the deep prismatic glow almost convinced him that the entire earth had been transformed and that any progress through this crystal world had become pointless.
- J.G. Ballard, The Crystal World

The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle.
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

The Crystal World Open Laboratory is a 5 days lab of experimentation, crystallization, and de-crystallization starting from the premise that computers are highly ordered set of minerals.

Crystalline structures are extracted from the earth, and re-crystallized through industrial process as equally ordered computers. In their technological redundancy, precious metals are in turn extracted or de-crystallized within cycles which further destroy life and leach a dangerous chemistry into the planet.

Mimicking the often dangerous processes undertaken in these extractions by the world's dispossessed, The Crystal World Open Laboratory proposes to expand these industrialised interventions through experimentation in the formation of novel crystal geologies aimed to etch unexpected psycho(geo)physical distortions and contingencies into our contemporary crystalline cycles.

Activities across the five days will include mineral extraction and precipitation, biological doping (addition of impurities to engender computational properties) of substrates, construction of high heat and
high voltage synthetic geologies, crystalline signal processing, speculative geophysics, anthropocenic (re-)fossilizations, and diffracted odic imaging. A final evening of presentation and live experimentation will attempt to fuse these diverse actions, culminating in the ingestion of colloidal suspensions of precious metals to stem the contemporary plague.

Experiments will include high heat, high voltage, and toxic
processes. Safety gear and induction will be provided but please bring any masks/goggles/labcoats or similar if available. While we provide full safety guidelines participants take part at their own risk.

No previous experience is necessary although as places are limited preference will be given to those showing a firm commitment to the full five days. A fee of £5 is payable for basic provisions (tea, coffee etc).

Please send expressions of interest to [e-mail]
before midnight Friday 6th July.

http://crystalworld.org.uk
http://thewhitebuilding.org
http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/whats-on/the-white-building

Martin Howse:http://1010.co.uk/org
Ryan Jordan:http://ryanjordan.org
Jonathan Kemp:http://xxn.org.uk
Mailing List:http://www.freshsent.info/crystal

The Crystal World is part of a Permacultures residency supported by SPACE, Bloomberg and Arts Council England, London.