4º ANGLE - 1 FINAL AMAZING!!!

Book of the Dark
January 2019 by Degard

International Atom 2018

MRes
School of Architecture and
School of Art & Humanities
Royal College of Art
Slant is a collection of 19 books produced through
a collaboration between MRes SoAH and MRes SoA.
Dr Nicky Coutts MRes Pathway Leader SoAH
(School of Arts and Humanities)
Dr Adam Kaasa MRes Pathway Leader SoA
(Architecture)
SoA
Nuria Benítez Gómez
Mariano Cuofano
Moritz Dittrich
Wanying Li
Ching-Hung Lin
SoAH
Dee Clayton
Javier Torras Casas
Jiyoung Kim
Katherine Paul
Nazneen Ayyub-Wood
Pandora Layton
Sheera Jacobs
Caroline Halford
Sing Hang Tam
Sofie Layton
Yuting Cai
Yuzo Ono
Zhiruo Yu
Zizhen Cheng
Diego Valente
One of three prints 2018

An Introduction to Slant
by Nicky Coutts & Adam Kaasa
Lines of flight are bolts of pent-up energy that
break through the cracks in a system of control
and shoot off on the diagonal. By the light of
their passage, they reveal the open spaces beyond
the limits of what exists.
Tim Rayner (2013) - Philosophy for Change

At the start of any research project lines get drawn. Provisional marks
circle the researcher’s feet, positioning them ‘here’ not ‘there’, with
‘this’ territory in mind over ‘that’. And extending from these lassoed
feet spiral dashed, dotted, curved, looping, perspectival lines indicating
predicted direction(s) of travel, journey times, expected encounters.
Research in the arts often begins, not with a question (which should
follow later) but with a configuration of lines, a drawing that is at the
same time establishing/descriptive data, a sheaf of maps, hunches,
annotated diagrams and plans. At this stage, the lines involved are
workings-out as a proposition is made.
MRes students from the School of Art and Humanities and from
the School of Architecture pathways, combined to produce a series
of books based on this provisory moment, the ground zero of
an individual research project. Preparatory discussions across the
two pathways, centred on how to locate and position yourself as a
researcher – to look not only at what claims are being made, but from
where they can be articulated.
Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote of the diagonal
trajectory, referred to by Rayner, as a means to contest normalcy, to
vie against established conventions exemplified by the horizontal and
vertical axes. To operate on a tilt, incline, pitch, tilt, skew is to place
yourself in a particular position beyond convention that is intrinsically
also a perspective. Through doing so questions form.
This joint cohort chose to refer to this generative set of princi- pals
as Slant, each one choosing an individual angle. Slant has become a
physical cut applied to the base of each publication, a description of
walking as a choreographic act of falling and catching yourself, an
intrinsic concern in Architecture for keeping any building watertight.
It is an emotional state, a climate, a ramp, a rant, a prediction, a joke.

Precarity is the condition of being vulnerable to others. Unpredictable
encounters transform us; we are not in control, even of
ourselves. Unable to rely on a stable structure of community, we
are thrown into shifting assemblages, which remake us as well
as our others. (...) Indeterminacy, the unplanned nature of time,
is frightening, but thinking through precarity makes it evident
that indeterminacy also makes life possible.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2015) – The Mushroom at the
End of the World

In Tsing’s view, we must get used to living in
an age of uncertainty where slants inevitably
abound. Occupying a slanty world takes considerable
negotiation, time to adapt and be adapted.
Finding out ways of working together, while
respecting individual slants, became a major
consideration and activity throughout the slant
project. Occupation within the project was extended
to all, even as their physical slants might
place them at odds. The cohorts got together
regularly to investigate notions
of consensus, ambition, compromise and community:
to lean into each other.
The precarity of negotiating within a group also
gave rise to basic considerations of what makes
sense and how much sense is needed. The group
would migrate into fictional mode. Voices would
multiply in the room as ideas were put forward
and contested, with so- metimes a single voice
occupying and testing out many contradictory
angles.

In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers.
We believe in the existence of people who aren’t
there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of
Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon.
Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.
... In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know
perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and
then, while reading, believe every word of it.
Ursuka K. Le Guin (1969) – Introduction to The
Left Hand of Darkness

10
SCIENCE IS POLITICAL
So ….…..when I am asked the following
set of questions these are my answers
What do you do? (experienced as ouch)
I am a painter, artist
Ooh interesting
What do you paint?

PT.I
I paint kind of portraits
What do you mean kind of?
Well………breathe……
I see auras around people,
it’s not as you might expect them to
look and I paint them and I can see
them far better in the dark………
Which got me thinking about
THE DARK
- what’s in the dark?
And somehow the very
interpretation of this:
what is the dark,
how do we perceive it?
……. So, I asked some people about
their perceptions of the dark.

12
Sky at night 30/11/18 11.58.23
Redhill , Herts, UK

PT.I
DARK space is the no space,
no place, natural space that I look into,
believe in,
intangible, the lines and baubles are the whole
world, the natural space
where everything else lives, consciousness,
non-time non-space, mind dimensionless, infinity
The Me inside forever and ever hidden intangibly
untouchable even by Me! My mind.

14
„Gödels aura pure“ from The Dark Series,
26 x 26”,
by Degard,
oil on canvas and wood, 2018

PT.I

16
These are the questions and answers
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?
Ethics this research is conducted for a book written by me. Your name if you wish
can be anonymized. This title in the first instance won’t be formally published and
will be part of an art collective for a Master of Research degree at
the Royal College of Art.

PT.I
Phil Innes, baby boomer, US/UK
1.No
2.When I close my eyes, but I am also a ‚day lighter,’ and
often turn off electrical lighting to better appreciate
ambient natural light, which is ‚dark‘ by degree rather
than absolute.
3.I find that I tend to maintain a spatial awareness by
aural means — I become more aware of sounds.
4.Often a respite from [especially invasive] visual
over-stimulus and an enhanced ability to concentrate
or relax.

18
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Grace, Gen K, UK
1. Not really if I am on my own in the woods then yeh
2. When I look out the window it is dark, when I walk
outside it is dark, normally when I am by myself
3. It is like splotches, darkness where the light is still in
your eyes cos it is really bright in here. In bed thoughts
probably
4. Nothing – it’s irrelevant and it is a void

20
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Joshua , Baby Boomer, UK
1. No, but as a child, an older child thought it would be
funny to turn off the lights when I was in the bath and
pretend to be a ghost emitting a blood-curdling scream
and wanting to kill me.
2. I can also feel scared of what I might encounter by
way of menacing presences in certain dark places (dark
alleys, subways etc.).
3. Unlit places within me.
4. The darkness within me, illuminated with pulses and
scintilla of variously coloured light, quite commonly
a halo with a dark centre and, imaginary scenes (as in
dreams).

22
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Laila, Millennial, Middle East
1.Yes
2.So, when I am sad in my mind
3.Darkness plus sparkles different colours of sparkles
and different sizes and pulses
4.It means sadness, ambiguity – there is no clear answer
or idea cos when I Am sitting I feel sadness, it gets
too dark or even if I close my eyes I feel sadness and
I am not sure what I want or what I am going to face -
nothing clear

24
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
KP, Millennial, UK
1. It’s not a no.
2. Complete darkness – not very often – have to sleep in
complete darkness – at night when I am already in bed
– there are lights in my house which don’t work so I go
up the stairs in darkness
3. I can concentrate on my other senses more I find it
hard to listen to a concert because I am distracted by
the movement – if I open my eyes there is too much
movement and information.
Depends what I am in the room with already.
4. I don’t know how to answer that question – broad
and abstract and have lots of different things. The dark
means different things in different places, so the dark
is highly contextual – dark street means something
different than my dark bedroom and a dark cupboard
is different to dark internet – can be metaphorical and
some kinds of trades are referred to as dark/black often
you can’t help but have metaphorical associations but
an overarching similarity – enlightenment ideas – dark
is used as symbolic short hand for unknown or not
meant to be known, sinister association embedded in
the language – it is cultural ascribed to darkness which
filters into different bodily experiences when you are in
the dark

26
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Marie, Millennial, Europe
1. A bit – very specific dark – dark windows because
always afraid I am gonna see a banshee
2. From a book. She read supernatural creature and the
banshee had a lasting impression – she appears screaming
at a window
3. Not very often maybe during holidays with parent’s
cos house is very big and old but get more scared in tiny
flat in London cos of more light – going to loo at night is
a journey of fear – lots of big windows creaky floors
4. If I pay attention fireworks of colours when I was
child I would concentrate on them to help me sleep.
Dark means quiet and secretive

28
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Qri, Millennial, Asia Pacific Rim
1. Yes, quite a lot because when I stay in the dark continuously,
I come up with crude scenes from movies so
when I stay alone I keep on the lights
2. I used to study violin. I spent a lot of time on the stage
– concentration of others attention because too difficult
time for me I didn’t like attention or the dark that idea
is so freezing
3. Nervous because continuously come up with previous
bad memories
4. All of my challenge which I need to break

30
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Respondent 1, Millennial, Europe
1. No
2. Do you mean psychically or psychologically? Experience
it more psychologically. – dark experiences dark times
mentally – perceived as being negative
3. A lot of internal narrative – my internal voice that I
hear most loudly when I close my eyes –
4. Like a knowing an absence of light, i think, inaccessibility

32
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Miles, Gen X, UK
1. Very rarely not normally
2. In bed or sometimes on a dog walk
3. Stillness
4. I hope it means solace

34

PT.I
Rhianna and Prince Harry extended aura pure
10 x 14”, oil on canvas board, acetate and paper,
2018

36

1. Are you afraid of the dark?
PT.I
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?
My interview - Degard
1. I love the dark. I see so much in the
dark it’s amazing
2. A short period of time outside and in
bed
3. I experience a huge interiority of a
vibrant unknown
4. MIND BLOW-ING beautiful x
Vera Gard aura pure with Morris Gard –
The Dark Series, 8x 10 “, oil on paper and wood, 2016

38
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Alan Gard, baby boomer, UK
1. No
2. When I have got my eyes closed, when I
go to sleep
3. Think about a few things you have done
that day and try to go to sleep,
4. I don’t know I have never thought
about it – nothing mystical or funny or
imagination often think about something
that went on but other than that that’s it

40
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Alan Skry, Baby Boomer,
UK
1. No
2. At night but not in my dreams I am in a
dark room right now
3. Peace and in my head – solitude
4. Emptiness

42
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

PT.I
Louis Clayton, Gen K, UK
1. Not scared to walk out in garden but scared
to go on a dog walk (in the countryside)
don’t know what is lurking in bushes – the
unknown – fear of the unknown not afraid
in bed
2. Fuzzy dark just – just dark
3. Just perceiving darkness
4. It means nothing, fucking nothing

44
I love these survey results. They are stunning and
beautiful, so intimate and unique.
Thank you to the respondents.
I wondered that people might experience Rothko
like voids, an infinity of Fontana, the exquisite darkness
as in Klee, the sublime of Klein,
awe-inspiring experiences of outer space and/or
the minuteness of our humanity in relation to our
place in cosmogony, cosmology and the quantum.

Mark Rothko, No.61 (Rust and Blue), 1953
115x92cm, Museum of Contemprary Art.
Los Angeles
PT.I

46

Concetto spaziale, Attese, signed, titled and inscribed on the reverse‚
l. Fontana Concetto Spaziale ATTESE 1 + 1 - 00 00 00 Buona sera‘,
water paint on canvas 25 5/8 x 32 ¼in. 1964
PT.I

48
Fish Magic – Oil and watercolor on canvas on panel Paul Klee, 1925

50

Yves Klein, IKB 191, 1962
Pt.II

52
Part of Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image showing a ty
interspersed by deep vacuum. Given the finite spee
the history of outer space

pical section of space containing galaxies
d of light, this view covers the past 13 billion years of
PT.I

54

Keywords
Pt.II
ATOM

56
Brian Cox on stage at The Royal Society, London with a 294 carat
diamond at the time of filming in 2012 worth £1 million.
“this makes what I am about to say quite remarkable.
The atoms that make up this diamond are virtually empty, what
do I mean by that well what is an atom?
About 100 years ago now in Manchester, Rutherford discovered
that the atom consists of an atomic nucleus which is made of
particles called protons and neutrons tightly packed together and
a third kind of particle called an electron all orbiting
somewhere or exist somewhere around the outside.
The nucleus has protons that are positively charged,
neutrons are neutral and electrons somewhere out here have
a negative charge and as Faraday would have talked about there
is a force that holds the electron to the nucleus because they are
both electrically charged.
Protons, neutrons and electrons not only make up the diamond
but everything we can touch every structure we can see everything
is made up of these same three identical particles.
So, the richness of the natural world - everything on planet earth,
everything we can see beyond, is described by a simple recipe
that determines how these simple particles combine together.
Physicists don’t call it a recipe they call it Quantum Theory.

Pt.II
Historically, the great challenge for the theory was….
to understand how these particles come together and create
this diamond and You and Me and everything else.
This provides our best understanding of the structure of matter
and yes understandably it is still a bit strange
- particularly the behaviour of the electron inside atoms.
These tiny electrons spend the overwhelming majority of their
time in far distant clouds, so between the nucleus and the
electron there is a vast emptiness. If I were a nucleus and I were
perched on the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover, then the fuzzy
edge of the electron cloud would be deep in Northern France.
Looking out towards the electron I would see nothing but empty,
interatomic space. So atoms are vast and they are empty actually
about 99.999999
9999999 (13 nines) empty. So, if you buy this diamond it is about
a million quids worth of mainly empty space and since
everything is made of atoms that means you are vast and empty
too. Especially you!!! hahahahahah!!
If I squeezed all the space out of all the atoms out of all the people
on the planet then you would be able to fit the whole of humanity
into that diamond……”
Jan 20 2013 posted to Politics on Disclose TV - A Night With The
Stars – PROFESSOR BRIAN COX

58
” If an apple were magnified to the size of the Earth ...

... then the atoms in the apple would be approximately the size of the original apple”
(Wikipedia ‘atom’ - Feynman, Richard (1995).
Six Easy Pieces. The Penguin Group. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-14-027666-4. OCLC 40499574.)
Pt.II

60
Stephen Hawking aura pure – The Dark Series, by Degard,
26x26”, oil on canvas, 2018

Keyword
//
MAGICAL
So you can have the matter and mass and I will play with the
immaterial, the intangible –
you have the apple and I will have the magnified apple – this
natural space I have been calling The Dark – because science has
told me that
“...since everything is made of atoms that means you are vast and
empty too.”
What my questions originally intended to discover is this deep
emptiness within us fostered onto us by our cosmological world
view.
So I have the
Empty,
The dark
The void
The black hole
But
What does the dark mean to you?
It’s incredible to me that all that is, call it 100%, and this divides
between the material world at 0.00000000000001% and all that
is intangible is 99.9999999999999% and yet all we perceive is
almost exclusively the material world – incredible MAGIC!
AND – this is where the cosmic joke is. We take little heed of our
own perceiving in the 99.9999999999999% - we perceive our
own intangibility as irrelevant and yet that is truly nearly
EVERYTHING – HILARIOUS – MAGICAL HILARITY

62
Keyword
SPATIAL QUALITIES OF ATOMS
There’s positive and negative ENERGY
And none
At all and dancing, moving, swapping, motioning, spinning, magnetic,
vanishing to infinity
TO re-
Turn….
Responsively
Inclusively, naturally,
Changing route.
I observe and they go THaTT waaay and VAnish
I observe and they MOVE ZIiiiii IIP……….
OH meant to say these 0.0000000000001 percenters travel
streaming, flowing through you and I and DEEP SPACE unnoticed,
every second, every second, every second – we connect to DEEP
SPACE and to You, inout You inout You ZIiiiii IIP………. . It’s proven
‘ghost’!
By Degard

Sir Isaac Newton aura pure – The Dark Series, by Degard,
26 x 26 “, oil on canvas and wood, 2018
PT.III

But this atom stuff – there is some genuine deep nonsense in it –
don’t you think!?
The 99.9999999999999% represents the INTANGIBLE
This includes mind,
thought,
thoughts
thinking,
consciousness,
attention,
cognizance,
perception
unconscious,
subconscious,
unthought,
this is where the STORY OF SEEING INTO THAT VAST EMPTI-
NESS…… and now re-termed the aetheric,
arrives because in the 99.99 and a lot percent is the rest and all
the exciting stuff!
And our interpretation of the 99.99 and a lot percent is a key
aspect of our relationship with ourselves and society.
My experiences have given me a window, I believe, into this
darkness and a desire to reinterpret our connections
to ourselves, our local neighbourhood and society and the psychic
world. Where the spiritual, the psychic, the ghosts
are re-understood without fear and instead with a broad curiosity
to experience.

Madame Blavatsky aura pure – The Dark Series WIP, 26 x
26”, oil on canvas and wood, 2018

And this is what happened and happens to me………….

I have been trying to make sense of the aura pure
through paint for some years now.
The expression of this extraordinary type of energy that isn’t an
energy at all; more an INTENT (C. Castaneda) Intent is a strength,
an influence a power that one creates inside oneself with experience,
memory held, living life.
Intent is not a thought – those that use gut intuition employ intent.
Intent builds into a formation around the body of
emotional energies stored and reignited, values held and
relived through the vortex of life. The aura pure moves and
vanishes holding truth. The colours you see around the body is
the aetheric energy – the intent.

Sketchbook design for The Dark Series 2018

Sketchbook design for The Dark Series 2018- photo taken in the dark
And I think investigation into the
99.9999999999999% should be active and full
of excitement, enchanting…

Benedetta D’Ettore aura pure, 2017, aura pure drawn
by Degard, photo taken by Guido Lanteri-Laura at RCA White City

The First Book of Aethericism by Degard.
Printed 2016. ISB No: 978-1-5262-0049-5

Einstein aura pure – The Dark Series WIP, by Degard, 26 x 26”, oil on canvas, 2018

‚The Dark Series‘ , ‚Aleister Crowley aura pure‘, oil on canvas and wood, by Degard, 2018

Sky at night 12.39am 02/12/2018
Redill, Herts, UK

‚The Dark Series‘ , by Degard exhibited at The Royal College of Art, Battersea 2018

I would love to hear your views
Please answer the survey on the dark here :
1. Are you afraid of the dark?
2. When do you actually experience the dark?
3. What do you experience when you close your eyes?
4. What does the dark mean to you?

MY SLANT
My slant is a doorway into new thinking and a revival of thinking that has
been disparaged.
Knowledge, curiosity, inspiration needs to be deep and broad to cope with
the rapidity of 21st century life.
How do we dig deeply into the knowledge of 99.9999999999999%?
• Through belief in our own personal data experiences
• through a methodology of repeatability across the many people
experiencing the same accepted as valuable data
• add your view – how do we discover the unknown?

From ‚The Dark Series‘ ,‘Allan Devie Aura Pure‘ ,
by Degard exhibited at The Royal College of Art,
Battersea 2018

Bibliography
Bibliography, references and thanks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom
https://www.disclose.tv/a-night-with-the-stars-brian-cox-301395
Feynman, Richard (1995). Six Easy Pieces. The Penguin Group. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-14-
027666-4. OCLC 40499574
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucas_Cranach_d.%C3%84._-_Adam_und_
Eva_im_Paradies_(1531,_Gem%C3%A4ldegalerie,_Berlin).jpg
https://www.space.com/41146-neutrino-source-blazar-cosmic-rays.html
more information on ghost particles https://www.space.com/41146-neutrino-source-blazar-cosmic-rays.html
Carlos Castaneda – The Power of Silence
Wonky door on pinterest
The First Book of Aethericism Degard
The Second Book of The Aetheric Movement – Celebrities and Icons? Degard

From ‚The Dark Series‘ ,‘Camilla Aura Pure‘ ,
by Degard exhibited at The Royal College of Art,
Battersea 2018