18K POCKET WATCHES

This was my final piece for my AS exam on Rhythms& Cycles. I've focused on rhythms and cycles within time and presented this in a surreal way (inspired by artists such as Salvador Dhali and Vladamir Kush).

The figure of the old man can be depicted as God or Chronos (the greek mythological personification of time) he sits and weaves the net of time. I have also based alot of the piece on Louis MacNeice's poem, "The Sunlight on the garden" and have focused on the lines "We cannot cage the minute/ within its nets of gold". Therefore the golden net serves further purposes, and as he stitches the net I think of the phrase "a stitch in time saves nine". The fact that the net reaches out amongst the waves, the phrase also comes to mind, "time and the tide wait for no man". As the tide has a rhythmic relationship with the moon, the phases of the moon can be seen nearby (also a cyclic occurance). Finally there is the connection with the "string theory" which states time to be a dimension like gravity, and to be represented like a net expanding over the universe (therefore chronos's net stretches over the sea: a symbol for the entire cosmos). It is the string theory which explains how black holes are created (this can be mirrored in the cyclic maelstrom).

The ship which can be seen on the waves resembels the voyage taken by Magellan in his circumnavigation of the globe using 18 hourglasses.

Furthermore, The central magpie which has flown out of the cage carrying the pocket watch represents the saying "time flies" but also highlights the inability to stop time as "we cannot cage the minute"

The pyramids in the sky are the pyramids of giza which allign with orions belt, this is a cyclic occurance as due to the processional wobble of the world on its axis, star belts move together . In addition, Halleys Comet can be seen in the top right hand corner, although it also has an arrow head to signify the belief of "the arrow of time" - that everything in the arrows past cannot be changed but its future destination is not fixed.

Finally, the clock heart links common ideas of rhythm; the ticking of a clock and the beating of a heart. The bleeding heart also unites the sayings, "time heals all wounds" and a "broken heart"

Sorry about the essay :)

The full moon is special in so many ways. It seems to be a well known fact that people and animals act up when the moon is full, more babies are born at this phase, and the sight of it rising at sunset can stir some seriously intense emotions if you're watching it with the right person.

It's interesting to me for those reasons, but also just for its sublime beauty through the telescope. What we see when the moon is full is the completely illuminated near side, with virtually no shadows. The sun is directly opposite the moon, shining onto its surface from the same direction that we're looking from. This places all shadows exactly on the far side of the shadow-casters, making them invisible to us. So what we see is purely differences in the reflectivity of the surface features. That's called "albedo" by the astronomical technorazzi.

The western limb is already starting to show some texture in this shot, taken an hour or two after the moment the moon was full. The uneven nature of the surface is clearly evident, especially at the 3 o'clock position. We can also see that Tycho, with its huge ray system, actually has a bit of a dark halo around it. This is fairly common for craters, both large and small.