ABOUT ARTIST:

For a living I worked 44 years for the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI). My profession was doing hourly surface weather observations, high altitude weather balloons including those for measuring the ozone layer, and I was responsible for the instrument calibrations.

As an artist, I work with text and image. I’m fascinated by language and science, particularly the moon, astronomy, and quantum physics, which I bring together in my writings and my scratched black-and-white images. Like these scratches, my writings are essentially scratches as well. To me, my scratches, in whatever form, are reflections of my existence and, thereby, the universe.

I have been fascinated by the moon ever since my childhood. For me, the moon is a metaphor for the unknown and the mysterious. As an artist, I feel like an explorer. I’m following what Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Scott said when he stepped on the moon as the 7th person: “Man must explore.” Hopefully, my art will encourage this, too.

Photo: Angeliek de Jonge ©

SUBMISSION: In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word.

By hand I’ve notched a ‘maan reading board’ in a 8x5x2mm piece of slate.  Once slate was used in schools to write on. Reading boards are still used.

The word “maan” (“Moon”) became part of our earthly culture through the Proto-Indo-European “mḗh₁n̥s” → Germanic “mēnô” → Old Dutch “māno” → Middle Dutch ”mane”/”maen”. 

“mḗh₁” in “mḗh₁n̥s” means to ‘measure’. “Maan” has helped the way we view the world and the universe and still stimulates us to technological progress (such as being able to go to the Moon). 

Just as our prehistoric ancestors did at the sight of a fascinating night sky with a mysterious “mḗh₁n̥s”, astronauts in space also searched for words (or remained speechless) to express their impressions. Especially those who had been to the Moon. Some tried to describe their experience outside of Earth’s atmosphere with phrases in ‘1G words’ such as, “Oh, this is really profound” (Dave Scott, Apollo 15). Or Artemis II Reid Wiseman observing the moon creating a total solar eclipse: “No matter how long we look at this, our brains are not processing this image in front of us. It is absolutely spectacular. Surreal. There’s — I know there’s no adjectives. I’m gonna need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window.”

Back on Earth, the Moon had changed these space heroes forever. Therefore I think in the future community of lunar settlers, terrestrial words will evolve into extraterrestrial words. ‘Measured words’  that are still unknown, but with which humans in a dangerous and breathtaking 1/6G environment someday will express themselves. “1/6G words” will help give meaning to a lunar civilization and make it successful. One day there will be reading boards in 1/6G classrooms.

‘Maan’ (‘moon’) was the first word I learned to read and write. My notched reading board is copied to the reading board that taught me that and has been transformed into Stanley Kubrick’s monolith:

1963. I was six years old. My first day at school, my first class, a reading class. Reading boards hanging on the wall in the classroom. The first board showing the moon with a word below. The teacher asking me what word it is. I don’t know and I don’t answer. I cannot read. Behind me, a classmate whispers ‘moon’. “Moon,” I say.

It was as if the word itself spoke to me. 

I got to know the word “maan” early in my life. According to Daniel C. Dennet in his book “From bacteria to Bach and back: The evolution of the mind” (2018), every time seeing the Moon together with my parents saying “maan” I copied “maan” in my mind over and over again and learned to pronounce it. This cultural evolutionary process is similar to when our distant ancestors began to formulate words. Like them, as a twentieth century toddler, I was unaware using words. I associate my conscious use of the word “maan” with the moment in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith appears. The scene a humanoid throws up a piece of bone which transforms into a space ship, is to me my very first reading lesson.

Like Scott and Wiseman in space our distant ancestors saw a fascinating spectacle in the sky. The word ‘moon’ is a surviving expression of this. An ‘evolutionary artifact’. It tempts us to go (back) to the moon and beyond, on a way to unknown words.