alxblk

Curated thinking on art and science

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Suntan Lotion & Semiotics
Resilience ·

Suntan Lotion & Semiotics

Every heatwave, the cameras find the same shot: ice cream, paddling pools, sunbathers in the park. In May and June that imagery sat alongside 2,700 estimated heat deaths in England and Wales. Representation doesn't just describe risk - it decides how seriously we take it.

A week, in pictures
Photography ·

A week, in pictures

Freezing in an emergency isn't fear — it's a failure to retrieve a behavioural template. A go-bag simulation with Year 10–12 students proved the point: only one packed a toothbrush, and almost nobody thought to bring a bag. Try my virtual version built on the train home.

Benton End, Suffolk
Art History ·

Benton End, Suffolk

Benton End, once home to Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines and the Colchester–Ipswich art school they ran from it, has reopened its Walled Garden — renewed in collaboration with Sarah Price.

Qstat be thy name
Wildfire ·

Qstat be thy name

This week, between Cambridge Tech Week, the Centre for Risk Studies Symposium, and agreeing to help run a UCL STEM day for teenagers — made newly urgent by a Scientific American piece on US science — I also wrestled my dissertation's quantitative core through UCL's HPC cluster.

UCL200 - Mathematics Symposium
UCL ·

UCL200 - Mathematics Symposium

Marking 200 years of mathematics at UCL - a symposium that reminds us research only becomes useful when it leaves the journals and is made accessible and inclusive. Expect the maths that unmasked Banksy and caught a serial killer, plus UCL's "Godless institution" origins.

Wildfire
Risk ·

Wildfire

A number of people have been kind enough to ask me about my research, so I thought I'd

Fourteen
Photography ·

Fourteen

Our dog turns fourteen. A day trip to the North Norfolk coast was the only appropriate way to celebrate on an unexpectedly warm and sunny day.