The Interaction of Galaxies

The sub-atomic world also throws up impossible visual models of our universe. The best way to understand atoms is the famous figure of the orange representing the nucleus placed in the centre of a rugby field and marbles representing electrons orbiting it from the distance of the try line. So against our better judgment, we have to come to terms with the fact that matter is mostly empty space. To make it more problematic, the whole orange and marble analogy is nonsense. Electrons are actually waveforms of some sort and it is a physical impossibility to simultaneously predict the position and speed of an electron. It was Niels Bohr who said something along the lines of ‘Anyone who says they understand quantum dynamics has not understood quantum dynamics’. Below is one of 20 or so digital prints with a drawn element. Each drawn element as well as the printed element is unique. The large black stain is a single scanned and digitally printed dot made with a 0.13 Rotring pen and the drawn element is made up of similar tiny dots. The complete series will comprise of around 15 – 20 such images.

The image is obviously highly magnified and one can detect the colour information that the scanning and printing process imposes on the image as it searches for colour information on such a small scale. The bands on the edges of the dot could also be an interpretation of very obscure information by the scanner or the printer (or both) or it could be the weave of the paper. I am intrigued by the very large and the very small and our inability as humans to fully grasp either of them.