Old and new technology

Something I made in enamel. Perhaps it shows some biological / technological crossover?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was an Art Student. Now you may know some and think theirs is an easy life, all that getting out of bed late and splashing paint about. But actually it's fraught with existential angst. Not only do you have to produce some work which is held up to some seemingly unknowable criteria of worthiness but you also have to examine the reasons why you're doing it. Such constant self-examination is not required from Science Students. I frequently found myself tied up in a paralysed knot, which now seems ridiculous. By the end, my recurring trains of thought had sort of coalesced into something about how we all use a lot of technology today but understand virtually nothing about how it really works. That we use it but we couldn't repair it and we've willingly let ourselves become sort of powerless and helpless (although someone tapping away on their new i-phone may not agree).

They do pay me for some sort of technical proficiency, and I like to know how things work and get very frustrated when modern technology works against me. You may call it control freakery. But everyone needs a bit of control in their life. It's stressful not to have any. Some people achieve this by keeping everything neat and tidy (visitors to my desk will see that's not my approach). But for me, part of the control is Knowing Things.

And so, finally, I reach my taxonomic-collection-related point. I like knowing what trees and plants and animals I'm looking at when I'm out and about in the world. I like to know the features that define them as different species and I like to know the cultural connections they sometimes have. For example, above are some little rolls of birch bark.

Would you believe it, but they're ten thousand years old - somebody in the British Mesolithic rolled them up and forgot about them. Birch is full of resins that make it a great firelighter so it's very likely these objects were precisely that. It's also possible that the resin was destined to be melted and used as a glue to stick tiny flint blades into arrowheads or something similar. But I just find it reassuring that come the technological apocalypse (subject of a hundred films) knowing birch has these properties could help me brew up a soothing cup of tea.

In the same case at the British Museum I saw this, a bracket fungus:

Likewise, it comes from the Mesolithic site at Star Carr in North Yorkshire, and likewise it's a species which is excellent for starting a fire. You use the layer above the pores, which can be fluffed up into a material that will take a tiny spark - the material seems to be known as amadou and Paul Kirtley explains here how to prepare it. You may have heard of Ötzi; he lived in the Alps about 5,300 years ago and his body became preserved in a glacier. He had some prepared amadou amongst his belongings.

So, this sort of thing - whilst rather peripheral to what you've been asked to do for the assignment - might lend an added layer of interest to your researches, and who knows, might enable you to survive in the event of global meltdown. I'm kidding, everything's going to be fine. But just in case. And perhaps if you do have any existential angst it can help to anchor you to reality.

CC Jason Hollinger; CC Martin Cooper; CC Doug Bowman; CC Jason Hollinger. 

While on the subject of bracket fungi, another repeating pattern in my career as Art Student was repeating patterns. This morning, looking at Student K's bracket fungi under the microscope, I was drawn to the different shapes of the pores in the different species. They're so tiny that they're really not obvious until they're magnified. And they can be diagnostic of the species you're trying to identify. So do feel free to bring your fungi in to examine microscopically (you can then put them in the freezer for the freeze-drier) - or you could also consider getting your own hand lens.