Wellcome Elements - Gold Silver Copper and Tin

It’s 2012 and Hugh Aldersey-Williams and I have been co-curating another unique one night only event at the Wellcome Collection, Euston Road London on Friday 22 June 2012 from 7 – 11 pm.

If the last two metals don’t immediately ring a bell for you, then you need to know that copper and tin make bronze, the alloy of gamelans, guitar strings, church bells, gongs and singing bowls. And we make no apologies for ignoring the upcoming O******s completely.

This is to be an exploration of the science and cultural relevance of these four elements drawing on music, alchemy, mining, casting, transmutation and electrification. We have some fantastic people lined up for the night.

• Marina Warner and Vaiyu Naidu will be telling myths and stories
• Jonny Berliner will be singing song of alchemy and deception using phosphor bronze guitar strings.
• Archimedes himself will be coming up from Southampton disguised as Martin Coath to weigh crowns.
• Marcos Martinon-Torres will transmute elements before your very eyes with the help of UCL students and postdocs.
• Stain glass with the Purple of Cassius and other colloids (courtesy of Andres Tretiakov)  and gaze at the nanoparticles particles  with Szigmondy’s Ultramicroscope (courtesy of Davinder Bhachu)
• Join Ayub Hanif and the UCL Debating Society as they thrash out the pros and cons of mining for tin and copper.
• Cast pewter and see tin pest with Martin Conreen and Zoe Laughlin of the UCL Institute of Making (with help from UCL students)
• Watch Daniel Sennert prove to you that atoms exist!
• Work, shape, and mash up silver with silversmith David Clarke
• Explore animal, vegetable, and mineral electricity and smelt copper indoors with UCL students. What could possibly go wrong?
• Make silver photograms with astounding photographer Crispin Hughes.
• Bling or tat? Assay your jewellery using X-ray fluorescence in the Medicine Man gallery with historical metallurgy student Ruth Fillery-Travis and UCL students.
• Learn about metals in the Classical World with broadcaster Professor Edith Hall.
• Make silver wire with medieval jewellery specialist Jamie Hall.
• Let Andrew Szydlo take you on a dangerous tour of the these four elements
• Let the Bronzo-Dog-Doo-Dah band and their amazingly heavy bronze saxophones serenade you (thanks to Howarths of London)

If you can get through half of that and manage a drink in between you’ll be doing well.

Videos should be online at the Wellcome Collection shortly.

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