From Hags book ‘How Things Are’
‘Current scientific thinking to determine the mass and structure of the universe has had to invent dark matter to make the sums work. The discrepancy was first noticed in 1933, but nobody took much notice until the 1970s when it was realised that we needed this hidden mass to explain many of our observations. It is supposedly 90% to 99% of the mass of the universe! We do not have the necessary perception to detect it, (or we just have not found it), but we do have the imagination to invent it, so our scientific reality remains intact. This is matter that does not obey any of the known scientific forces. It does not reflect light or any other form of electromagnetic radiation, we don’t know where it is but we need it to be there.
Many major scientific ideas, no matter how bizarre they appeared at the time, have been proved correct. When Einstein realised that there was a huge amount of energy contained within mass, this answered an ancient puzzle as to how the Sun could shine for so many years without burning out and led to a truer understanding of the age of the solar system. The expression of that energy – the Sun – was always there, sitting in the sky, illuminating us, and creating us – we are just stardust. Dark matter, if it is found to exist, will be obvious. It’s staring us in the face right now.’
Hag originally made a rough of this picture early in the process of creating ‘Tree in Islington‘, a mural commission for Pink Floyd recording studio in 1978. It is the same tree image . He developed it further in 1987 for a poster for Athena International who titled it ‘Ocean of Life’.
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Created by Hag without the use of a computer by Combination printing.
Collage Montage Surreal Photography.
