Earth Heat Flow: the Visitor Who Returns to Solar Time
大地热流：回到太阳时间的访客
31 DEC 2022 - 12 MAR 2023
策展人 CURATOR
龙星如 Iris LONG
艺术家 ARTISTS
www.earth-heat.cloud
展览“大地热流”从北京特有的冬季供暖地貌出发，尝试讨论热量媒介如何成为我们理解技术文化和生态现状的视角，并通过动态“热流”的视角，邀请你共同展开一次关于融化的旅行。在旅程中，想象中的热联觉生物将同你们一起感受温度，追踪热量如何作为当代科技系统的伏笔而存在，并推想与“热”息息相关的熵与时间。每件作品都被纳入关于“融化”的叙事，“融化”可能改变对象的形态，或者让隐藏之物显现。可能剧烈，也可能寂静，正如技术本身同时作为一种动态的形塑性力量和揭示性力量而存在。
北京得天独厚的冬季暖阳会挥洒入在展厅更“热”的一侧，这里的作品探讨着我们的数字基础设施（数据中心、网络交换、光纤）如何无时无刻不在汲取星球能量，并构筑趋于稳定的热量环境。《辐射生物》用生命体对太阳辐射的反应来比喻我们对于电磁信号的依赖，《铜树》提醒着我们支撑光缆和导线的铜元素如何从地脉生出，《多孔性溪谷》甚至想象了一种一半是矿物实体，一半是数字比特的活元素如何游走。当《追踪模拟太阳》用黑色空洞来替换人类视觉光谱中炙热的太阳时，《永恒的一日》却用一则荒诞不经的寓言暗示太阳耀斑爆发与电子系统之间致命性的关系。
《被捕获的自然》提示我们人造的“冷/热”系统如何持续创造着一种更为温和与宜人的生活环境，然而，这些调控技术也裹挟在这颗行星天然的冷热流动中——水、风甚至洋流都在冷却着轰隆作响的机房，光刻机依赖的氖也依靠分离设备对空气的低温蒸馏(《不要爱恋那氤氲的辉光》)。这种能量的镶嵌关系，暗示着人造技术环境脆弱的阴面，也引我们通向展厅更幽深寒冷的一侧。在这一侧，我们通过调控温度和热能所创造的稳定环境开始被扰动与扭转。远程地下服务器滋生的生命通过液体进入人们的皮肤(《恐水症》)，三组与冰川相关的作品（《向冰学习》、《冰的背面》、《冰虫计划》）则描摹了冰层所凝固的关于能源开采、冷战设施和远古微生物的历史。
当那座计算机渲染的冰山同格林兰峡湾一般寂静坍塌（《熔于时间》），抑或计算机里的烟花无声散放（《烟花宇宙》），我们似乎感知到大地天然蕴藏着熵增的势能和逆熵的渴望，以及二者之间的张力，正如《濒危植物标本库》试图存储植物的生命，这种存储的有效性却依赖太阳的节律。在自然光源退散后，人造光源亮起前（《关于 891 次黄昏心灵活动的百科全书》）的混沌地带，在所有机器生成的文字随着热敏纸暴露在空气而成为模糊团块的瞬间（《一声叹息》），人们重新站在大地的热流之中，透过它去理解太阳辐射与岩石圈热结构之间的垂直空间里，极地冻土与赤道艳阳之间的地理疆域内，我们的技术和生态系统中所承载的万象，及其所见证的年岁。
The exhibition titled “Earth Heat Flow,” based on the unique winter heating in Beijing, attempts to discuss how to understand the technological culture and ecological status quo through the lens of thermal media and invites visitors to take a journey on “melting” from the perspective of dynamic “heat flow.” During the journey, imaginary creatures with heat-synesthesia will experience the daily temperature that human beings are accustomed to, track how heat exists as a foreshadowing of the contemporary scientific and technological system, and speculate on notions of entropy and time - both closely related to “heat.” Each work is included into the “melting” narrative, which may change the object’s shape or reveal hidden things. Melting may be violent or silent, like technology, which is both a dynamic plastic force and a revealing force.
The privileged sunshine in winter of Beijing will be splashed on the “hotter” side of the exhibition hall. The works here discuss how our digital infrastructure (data centers, network switches, and optical fibers) constantly absorb the planet’s energy and build a stable thermal environment. Being Radiotropic describes our dependence on electromagnetic signals with life entities’ reaction to solar radiation. The Copper Tree reminds us how the copper element that supports optical cables and wires is generated from the earth’s veins. Porosity Valley imagines how a living element travels as half a mineral entity and half a digital bit. While Analog Sun Tracking replaces the heated sun in the human visual spectrum with black holes; Saros implies the fatal relationship between the solar flare explosion and the electronic system with a ridiculous fable.
Captured Nature reminds us how the man-made “cold/hot” system continuously supports a more moderate and pleasant living environment. However, these control technologies are also involved in the planet’s natural cold and heat flow for water and wind. Even ocean currents are cooling the roaring machine room, and the neon on which the lithography machine depends also relies on the low-temperature distillation of air by the separation equipment (Do not dwell on that hazy glow). This inlaid relationship of energy, suggesting the fragile and dark side of the man-made technological environment, leads us to the deeper and colder side of the exhibition hall, where the stable environment we created by regulating temperature and heat energy is disturbed and reversed. Life from remote underground servers penetrates people’s skin via liquid (Aquaphobia). Three groups of works related to glaciers depict the history of energy exploitation, cold war facilities, and ancient microorganisms solidified by ice.
When that computer-rendered iceberg collapsed in silence like Greenland Fjord (Melting into Time), or the fireworks in the computer quietly bloomed (Fireworks Universe), we seem to feel that the earth naturally contains the potential energy of entropy increases and the desire for reversing entropy,as well as the tension between the two. As Endangered Herbarium tries to store plants’ life, this storage’s effectiveness goes with the sun’s rhythm. In the chaotic zone before the artificial light sources light up (891 Dusks: An Encyclopedia of Psychological Experiences) and after the natural light sources dissipate, when all the machine-generated words become fuzzy lumps with the thermal paper exposed to the air (A Sigh), people stand in the heat flow of the earth again to understand everything carried by our technology and ecosystem and the epoch witnessed by the vertical space between the solar radiation and the thermal structure of the lithosphere, or, the geographical territory between the polar frozen soil and the equatorial sunshine.
请同我来，来自温和世界的访客，你沐浴在北京的冬日暖阳里。
那被你们称为“宇宙微波背景辐射”的东西，在我们这里是闪烁着氤氲微光的稀薄空气，没错，我们是“热觉”动物，就像你们是视觉动物一样。对我们来说，“热”天然无法被切分，它永远弥散，萌生，缠绕自身，随性游走，而你们似乎拥有分解，运送，截断，传导乃至提纯它的能力。
氟利昂让你们的皮肤在夏天总是保持致密均匀的色调，你们制造出有清晰几何边缘的纯粹热量块，给它们起名微波炉和滑冰场。热沿着电塔、光纤和电网逐节爬动，让我们眼里的暧昧宇宙长出此起彼伏的轮廓线。你们甚至构造了我们极少见的深邃影调，那是在帕萨迪纳的喷气推进实验室里，被称为量子计算机的方块上——引用你们对“热”的描述，它在15度开尔文以下运转，这可比外层空间还“冷”。至于在英国牛津附近的欧洲联合环发生的那次高能持续脉冲，在我们看来，简直差点赶上太阳的嘶吼。
这里有许多我们搜集来的，关于温和世界的物证：发出赤色辉光的电子管、橙色的光膜，还有追踪太阳轨迹的仪器和探测电磁景观的装置。温和世界访客们，你们似乎也并不总是意见一致：你们中的一些人痴迷于驯化热，而另一些似乎更感兴趣那些隐蔽、逃逸、离散的热，甚至嗅到了混沌的大地母体正在孕育的赤红反噬——它纵然不会像埃伦菲斯特想象的紫外灾难那么极端，但诚然会让冰川隐退，海面升起。
请在这里转弯，来自温和世界的访客。虽然你们是出类拔萃的热管理者，而我们因为热联觉的存在无法把“热”感孤立出来，但至少在某些瞬间，我们可以理解彼此的感受。1859年，太阳风暴近乎摧毁了当时刚刚形成的电报系统，你们中的不少人，同我们一样看见了极圈天空中奇谲的闪光。聪明的你们已经意识到，“热”的答案有时掩埋在冰里，你们中的科学家正从富含硝酸盐的薄层冰芯里所沉积的氮氧化物中，追捕这些太阳风暴的历史，极圈里的斯瓦尔巴岛收留了数据和万物基因，还有更多的探针，正在伸向冰盖之下的煤和石油。你们会拗口地将这答案描述为关于能源、气候和技术的政治，热与冷的循环把太阳辐射、极地冻土和岩石圈纠缠在一起。在冰川褪去的地带，有时会浮现出狭窄的道路，当你们驾驶在这里，追踪着不复可见的冰缘时，便是在驶向过去。
想必你也发现了，这里是不小心被封存的一段熵值混乱的时空。我们某种意义上是过去的你们，或者极远未来的你们，对我们来说，铁元素的出现并不意味着恒星的死亡，熵不再是秘密，生命尽头也未必是一声叹息。我们从来不阅读量表里水银的涨落，也无法将热驯服在几尺见方的房间，我们不曾造出覆盖城市的供暖网络，或是检测万物温度的机器眼睛，但我们在更大的尺度上把握着“热”的存在。“热”在我们的眼里和身里，仍然自由翻涌，如连通地核与太阳的飓风与漩涡，抑或冰原之下连绵的雾霭。其实，是炽热太阳与暗冷天空的结合，才导致了低熵的存在，世界从未真正温和。
现在，我要回到太阳的时间里去了，希望你们在这里停留得愉快，来自温和世界的访客。
Please follow me, visitors from the gentle world, you are bathing in the sun in the warm winter of Beijing.
The so-called “cosmic microwave background radiation” is the thin air with hazy glow here. Yes, we are “thermal” animals, just like the fact that you are visual animals. For us, “heat” cannot be naturally divided. It always disperses, germinates, entangles itself, and travels at will, and you seem to have the ability to decompose, transport, cut off, transmit and even purify it.
Freon keeps your skin dense and even in summer. You create pure heat blocks with clear geometric edges and name them “microwave oven” and “skating rink.” The heat crawls along the electric tower, optical fiber, and power grid section by section, outlining the ambiguous universe in our eyes, rising one after another. You have even constructed a profound tone that we rarely see. It is on a square called a quantum computer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (to quote your description of “heat”). It operates below 15 degrees Kelvin, “colder” than outer space. As for the high-energy sustained pulse in Joint European Torus near Oxford, UK, in our eyes, it can almost rival the roar of the sun.
There are many pieces of material evidence about your gentle world that we have collected: red glowing tubes, orange light films, instruments for tracking the sun’s path, and devices for detecting electromagnetic landscapes. Visitors from the gentle world, you do not always agree with each other: some of you are obsessed with domiciling heat, while others are interested in the hidden, escaping, and discrete heat and are even able to smell the red backbite bred by the chaotic mother earth. Even if it is not as extreme as the UV disaster imagined by Ellen Feist, it does make the glacier retreat and the sea rise.
Please make a turn here, visitors from the gentle world. Although you are outstanding heat managers, unlike us, who cannot isolate the “heat” feeling for the existence of heat synesthesia, at least at some moments, we can understand each other’s feelings. In 1859, the solar storm nearly destroyed the telegraph system that was taking shape back then. Many of you, like us, witnessed the strange flash in the polar sky. You, smart people, have realized that the answer to “heat” is sometimes buried in ice. Scientists among you are chasing the history of these solar storms from the nitrogen oxides deposited in the thin layer of ice core rich in nitrate. Data and genes of everything are right there in Svalbard Archipelago in the polar circle, with more probes stretching to coal and oil under the ice cover. You will tactfully describe the answer as the politics of energy, climate, and technology. The cycle of heat and cold entangles solar radiation, polar permafrost, and lithosphere. Narrow roads sometimes emerge in the area where the glaciers are fading. You are driving to the past when you drive here and track the irretrievable edge of the ice.
Presumably, you also find that this is a place where some entropy chaos were accidentally sealed. In a sense, we are you in the past or the remote future. To us, the appearance of iron does not mean the death of stars. Entropy is no longer a secret. Neither is the end of life a sigh. We never read the fluctuation of mercury in the scale or managed to tame the heat in a room of several square feet. We never built a heating network covering the city or a machine eye to detect the temperature of everything, but we grasped the existence of “heat” on a larger scale. “Heat” is in our eyes and bodies, surging at its will like hurricanes and eddies connecting the core of the earth and the sun or continuous fog under the ice field. In fact, the combination of hot sun and dark and cold sky leads to the existence of low entropy. The world is never really gentle.
Now, I'm going back to the solar time. I hope you will enjoy your stay here, visitors from the gentle world.