PASSAGES

Department of [Meta]Physics,

Mt John, Lake Tekapo, Aotearoa New Zealand

Five observatories sit enigmatically atop Mt John, a roche moutonnée, or ‘fleecy rock', a remnant of glacial times.  Home to the Department of Physics of the University of Canterbury, in addition to other international astronomical institutions, the observatories have long sat at the edge of consciousness, not inviting the attention of anyone other than astronomers.  Recent moves to open the site up to the public prompt speculation how to resist touristic commodification, proposing instead a vision which amplifies the sublime and melancholy aspects of the site.  Astronomy is the most melancholy of occupations, the most intimate of immensities.  Astronomers sit within their tiny enclaves, addressing the infinite.  And the very limitlessness of that infinity is the place of melancholia, since there is both the possibility and the impossibility of knowing, collecting, possessing that vastness of stars.  Jean Clair wrote "Collecting is a limitless pursuit - the finding of the missing object is the collector's overwhelming passion - and a profoundly melancholy undertaking." (Jean Clair, (2005) Saturn’s Museum, FMR, April/May 2005, 27-54,  p.40.)

Imagining a ‘Department of [Meta]Physics' expands on number of conceptual foundations:

Observation No. 1: The Earth is not Heaven

The image of the Earth at night (1) resembles the starry Heavens (2), yet the paradox is that it is the very stuff of these terrestrial constellations that obscures the Real night sky.  Light pollution is the enemy of astronomy.  Tekapo residents imagine a World Heritage Park - a Celestial Park - to cover the entire MacKenzie basin, preserving the blackness and light-free quality of the night sky.   

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Observation No.2: The Sun is also a Star

Out of the one hundred billion stars in our galaxy, the sun is the closest, yet its familiarity means it is often disregarded as an astronomical phenomenon. There is potential for revelations of the astronomical sphere to occur during the daytime, as a complement to the largely nocturnal activities of the observatories themselves. 

Observation No. 3: There are Five Senses

Mt John sits at a nexus of two profoundly visual domains, astronomy and tourism.  Like eyeballs trained on the sky (3) the observatories stand testament to this, while the snapping cameras of tourists underscore the visual spectacle of the high country scenery.  The remaining experiential territory is ‘overlooked'; yet the possibilities of engaging all of the senses are phenomenal. 

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Observation No. 4: Observatories are Temples

The resonances between garden temples such as Stourhead's Temple of Apollo (4), and the observatories (5) are potent.  Further reinforcing this analogy is the scattered distribution of the observatories, and the serpentine road leading to the site, both of which are suggestive of the broader setting of a ‘landscape garden'. Thus, the vision of Mt John as a garden invites speculation on further ‘temples' or follies which in turn confer the status of ‘temple' upon the existing observatories.   The elevation of the observatories to temples is a recognition of the spiritual within the astronomical.  As Einstein observed, "All physics is metaphysics."

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The design response evolves out of this drawing of arcs through time and space, to connect this site with other traditions, and to recognise its very vulnerability to the pernicious spectres of modernity in the guise of tourism and conspicuous consumption through light pollution.  The proposal for a number of subtle interventions into the site develops the idea of an astronomical garden.  The experiential devices, reminiscent of the ancient observatories of the Jantar Mantar of 18^th century India and of the pre-radar acoustic mirrors installed on the south coast of England in the early 20^th century, provide heightened, amplified experience of place during both night and day.  Visitors extend their phenomenological consciousness through navigating the site at night without the aid of lighting, sensing the surface of paths, focussing upon ‘authentic', unplugged, engagement, from embracing the vertigo of the Folly of the Winds in the velvet blackness, to straining to hear what sounds might be captured by the Sound Mirror, watching the stars upon the Sky Mirror, or by day, tracking shadows across the Astral Plane.