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Copper Bodies & The Logic of Crystals

Added on by Kira O'Reilly.

Copper bodies is a short series of studio experiments, make quickly in Extractor Space, the project room in Tidemill School Studios in Deptford where I currently am lucky enough to have a studio. The studio works takes up from the experimentation during Prologue with Flora Wellesley Wesley, following some of those threads and continuing to work with salt, water, pigment, vinegar, copper, particularly experimenting with cultivating verdigris on copper with vinegar and salt. I don't know where it's going but it feels good simply to do and allow the materials to nudge the next steps.

Dataisnature published a fascinating entry on The Logic of Crystals, featuring the 1924 Space-group Diagrams by William T. Astbury & Kathleen Yardley which describe 'every possible atomic lattice configurations in crystals. The figures formed the basis for what eventually became the International Tables for X-ray Crystallography.' The diagrams are very beautiful, I took to drawing some of them in chalk on the kitchen tiles of Extractor Space, enjoying their tangental connections to the crystals building via the salt, vinegar and copper. Chalking some of them onto the floor they and their proximaty to my crude and elementary chemical reactions reminded me of magical diagrams, alchemy and the fertile origins of contemporary chemistry.