'The Annihilation of Time and Space': HNY 2024/25

All Images: Lincoln East Bypass, December 2024

In what is becoming something of a seasonal tradition, I found myself up on the Lincoln East Bypass, with bike and camera, on Boxing Day. Certainly, this indicates that, like so many of my creative endeavours, my 'The Annihilation of Time and Space' project has been 'ongoing' for much longer than originally envisaged. However, it also means that the scope of the project has expanded to encompass this slice of edgeland in a range of different conditions and moods.

Last year, the landscape was bathed in crystalline winter sunlight, but this time the conditions couldn't have been more different. The entire region was sunk in dank fog and, even in the early afternoon, light was fading fast. The defining characteristics shifted from deliciously blank to poetically bleak.

Given the state of world events, and the trepidation any of us might feel regarding the coming year, perhaps these conditions were glumly appropriate. As the somewhat reduced procession of vehicles beat on into the gloom, it was impossible to avoid the inevitable impressions of a lost civilisation careering headlong into an obscure and forbidding future.

Whatever the truth of that, we can only hope there are still some brighter days to come, whatever the general trend, and to seek the reasons to be creatively cheerful wherever they may be found. The conditions may have made my cycling a little arduous, but they also prompted me to see a familiar environment in fascinating new ways - and to capture some images with a darker romance not previously attached to this particular project. There's usually some uplift to be found if we remain open to the possibility, and - as Albert Camus pointed out, we should still find the time and energy to dance, even on the edge of the abyss.

Happy New Year.

Pre-Mobile [The Booths]

 

All Images: West Leicester & Clifton, Bristol, August 2024

I have always experienced a certain trepidation about using telephones. Like other kinds of social awkwardness, this was a distinct impediment in my youth, but something I have learned to manage far more effectively in adulthood. Nevertheless, even now, I will still sometimes avoid a phone conversation if there is a viable alternative, or unless a practical imperative pleasurable or pleasurable social interaction are indicated. 

I doubt I am the only one to have experienced such alienation. Our culture is full of references to troubling or confusing telephonic interactions (although they are certainly reported far less often anecdotally). A pretty extreme cinematic example is Joel Schumacher’s 2002 psychological thriller, ‘Phonebooth’ [1.], in which Colin Farrell’s lead character answers a random, unexpected call to a public phone - only to become pinned-down in the kiosk by an unseen sniper. For most of the film, it becomes the highly constricted arena in which he must make potentially life-changing/ending decisions and face-up to his own moral shortcomings. 

Idea for a possible survey:

Which form of phone-call would you least welcome - 

1. One in which a stranger imparts unexpected/disturbing information?
2. One in which no one speaks (possibly enhanced by static, breathing, etc.)?
3. One in in which a public phone begins to ring inexplicably and you are immediately posed the dilemma - to pick-up or ignore?

N.B: Any of these examples might constitute pivotal points in a narrative, or portals to alternative realities (looked-for or otherwise).

Some of my earliest memories involve entering a traditional, red GPO phone box with my mother, at the age of three or four. For somewhat anomalous reasons, the city we lived in also had cream-painted, privately-run boxes, but we were generally GPO customers. It’s possible there were calls to various people, but the ones I remember are those to my Grandmother, who lived on the opposite bank of the adjacent estuary (private line into our own home didn’t come until we ourselves relocated to the southern shore, a couple of years later). There are relatively few intervening miles involved, but in memory, the special journey to the kiosk, and the electronic distancing effect of the apparatus - with its associated infrastructure of cables and exchanges, gave the impression of contacting a foreign country. A trip to visit in person (pre-bridge) involved two train rides and a short paddle-steamer voyage, which only magnified that effect.

The Proustian potential of smell is well documented, and those old multi-windowed cast-iron booths had a particular aroma which remains vivid in the memory. Reason suggests it was essentially a blend of painted cast iron, residual cigarette smoke, and a hint of urine, perhaps - but even now I would simply identify it as that old telephone box smell. Almost as strong are the lasting impressions of filmed and scratched glass - distorting the street outside as I pressed my nose to each individual pane, or the heavily enamelled texture of the iron glazing bars beneath my fingers. Roughly level with the top of my head was a brushed-steel shelf (amazingly, now) - complete with an extensively-thumbed phonebook. My mother would lift me up there, with a coin or two pressed into my hand. Their insertion into the specified slot was a critically-timed procedure - performed exactly as she heard my Grandmother pick-up at the other end, but for me the real satisfaction lay in the sudden release and satisfying metallic clink as each coin dropped into the coin chamber. I might then leaf through the directory pages (futilely searching for some break in the dense and interminable list) as I waited for the handset to be handed over and my Grandmother’s strangely altered voice greeting me from the other side of the world.

Some years later, having left home, I moved between a succession of shared student houses. In very few cases were we prepared to split a phone bill (even if our irregular  comings and goings would have made it feasible). Once more, I found myself in public call boxes whenever it was necessary to make a call. If possible, I would often choose pen and paper instead. For a period, I became a prolific, and typically prolix letter-writer. 

On one occasion I visited the call box at the other end of our street, to make a fairly lengthy call. It was the end of the day, I was weary, and only when I got home did I realise I had foolishly left the kit bag I’d been carrying on the shelf where I once sat as a child (the accompanying directories being long-lost by then). Having only recently relocated to that address, I had stored all my personal documents in the same bag for safekeeping (passport, birth certificate, medical documents, etc., etc.) - but neglected to remove them before going out for the day. Its perceived value instantly multiplied way beyond the meagre cost of simply replacing a cheap canvas bag. It took no more than 5 minutes to run back to the phone booth, but in the interim the bag had been filched. Back then, restoring key official documents could involve an extended bureaucratic ordeal (involving a series of further phone-calls and letters, ironically). For several weeks, it felt like the monster had effectively swallowed my life.

Of course, technological ‘progress’ has long-since rendered the boxes all-but obsolete. Whilst I may be an habitual late-adopter, I’m not a total Luddite, and so I too carry a mobile device - just like (nearly) everyone else. If I’m honest, the range of typed/deferred  alternatives to spoken calls, and obvious flexibility it offers, actually suit me fine. However, any vestigial anxiety about phone calls is now replaced with the periodic stress of negotiating a new deal, and  the life-sapping chores of managing emails, social-media posts, updates etc. Communication over distance never really gets simpler, it seems. It may have become less of a deliberate or pre-planned operation, but the potential filters between us still morph and multiply, nonetheless.

The old cast-iron kiosks slowly retreated into that quaint dimension of British ‘heritage’ that  also encompasses Morris Minors (my family also drove those), welcoming pubs, and properly-funded public services. Most were gradually replaced by a more minimalist, glass-sided variant, adorned by an ever-changing succession of privatised company logos. Somehow, those always felt pretty shonky, despite their somewhat belated nod to functional Modernism. Sleek aesthetics and an ever-contracting societal regard for shared facilities are rarely a great fit, and so it became increasingly rare to find one in a pristine, un-vandalised or otherwise unadorned state. Their bland, flat sides proved impossible for corporate interests to overlook as potential advertising space, and fly-posters-by-night and graffiti enthusiasts clearly felt the same way.

Luckily, all that patina, entropy, entangled messaging, and creeping neglect remain visual meat and drink for my own lens (for the time being, at least). Indeed, even complete absence itself can often supply viable subject-matter, I find. Certainly, the pit-falls of nostalgia are far more usefully swapped-out for an appreciation of the inevitable processes of urban/social change. Either way, the ever-accelerating decline of/demand for the booths, and apparent reluctance of BT to maintain those that do linger, suggest they will probably become just another ghost of the Everyday before long - perhaps revealed in the form of a occasional wrecked carcass, or vacant concrete pad.

[1.]:  Joel Shumacher (Dir.), 'Phone Booth', Fox 2000 Pictures & Zucker/Netter Productions, 2002

'The Basin': Art Trail 2 - 'Action Painting' [Draft 1.0]

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol,  February 2023

‘Action Painting’:

For a time, formal muscularity gives way to “an arena in which to act”. The iron-clad underflank has become a designated target for spontaneous ejections, as the bridging function embraces a new entanglement. Decor and physics combine in a fluid exchange, although, in the present case, the surface tension effects are small. The moment has been elongated at a flick, with each line of flight logged prior to accretion. [Note that the formation, motion, and stability of fluid filaments have been vastly studied because of their prominence in a wide range of flow phenomena]. Several regimes are observed: viscous, gravitational, inertio-gravitational, and inertial, and liquid transfer across the board remains the key to this environment.

The historical significance cannot be overestimated, with traditional parameters dissolving into a field of uncertainty. The roots for this style of painting lie at the dawn of Modernism - since when, many artists have used formlessness as a tool for creativity, not to elevate art, but to get it down and dirty. To one notorious thinker, “l’inform” was about destroying categories and knocking art off its metaphorical pedestal. An understanding of the physical conditions at which these patterns were created is important to further art research, and it can be used as a tool in the authentication of paintings. 

A ritual intoxication has leaned back onto a vertical plane now [swivelling on demand towards the most advantageous aspect]. Therefore, it is relevant to compare the surface tension effects with gravitational stretching. At greater elevations, seabirds conduct experiments of their own.

'The Basin': Art Trail 1' - 'Visible Form' [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol, February - April 2023

‘Visible Form’:

Art has the capacity to draw us into mental and emotional places where we can go, let go, and come back. Inserted as a way-marker at the intersection of two such zones, this exhibit is typical of those earliest sculptural forays in what would become a significant international career [one in which such concerns remain constant]. If we can enter the area the forms occupy, we do so only to gain further experience of them and to confirm a sensation of space and volume which the sculpture offered from a distance.

 

Colour is totally demanding once it becomes a priority, and the cadmium imperative is fully condensed here [occurring as a bright yellow coating on sphalerite or siderite, deposited by meteoric waters]. It is an important truth that emphasis upon colour has helped to liberate the modern artist from particular circumstances in his search for general [natural] truths in personal experience.The piece constitutes a delectable arbitrary imposition upon the landscape, but degrees of purpose still accrue [errant incursion is denied; a bootlace may be tied]. The sculpture invites this kind of close involvement. The scale is always a human scale, and the occasional apparently irrational detail serves to hold our attention at close quarters. In this context, botany can never be ruled out, although plants have no excretory mechanism for cadmium.

'The Basin': The Rotor-Palms [Draft 1.0]

All Images: Floating Harbour, Bristol, April 2023 - April 2024

The rotor palms sway on high-level galvanised-steel lighting poles, employing flexibility and high standards across the entire region. This was the first high mast lighting in the UK, using 25 metre masts and 1000W MBF/U lamps. Prevailing westerlies and wide angles make perpendicularity a problem. Lens correction and transformation rituals become routine in post [the sequence of connections of all unit circles is solved according to the shortest path principle.] We note that technology innovators [powered by advances in robotics, battery power, imaging, communications, sensing and artificial intelligence], are on the cusp of delivering new breakthrough capabilities. Effective energy management strategies are an important part of the equation, and the lights themselves [which could be lowered by winding gear] appear to have been replaced. Information which reaches us from remote light sources reveals events occurring in the remote past, whilst distance may be implied through selective juxtapositions and experiments in relative scale.

Across the ocean, similar trees presided over transplanted and commodified souls. Phylogenetic studies reflect the complex evolutionary history of the West Indies and no single biogeographical pattern emerges. Instead, we seek those angles best suited to  pleasing silhouettes, whilst selectively omitting the profit-mansions on the cliff behind [a newer architecture overlaid]. The lights cast a retarded illumination where the revenues flowed - sticky with molasses and anaesthetised on baccy and rum. It was lucrative but risky business. The city is revealed to itself, recoiling in elegant disgust as the misery archive is slowly compiled [everyone was expected to work]. Light from the palms angles through the bond windows where pertinent records may be uncovered [unclear whether import data include customs duties]. Ventilation management should be a priority.

The oscillation may demonstrate accelerating fragmentation in pendant form. Under heavy rain and wind-rush, complete atomisation may occur. Shutter speeds must be considered carefully, with video capture eventually the more appropriate method. During periods of calm, the inverted rotors appear poised for memory-churn within The Basin. Strategic planting aims at comprehensive territorial illumination, but affords the upper carriageways clearer visibility. Down below, more perplexing, high-contrast geometries operate amongst  historical assemblages of angular shadow [light mostly travels in straight lines but time adopts an increasingly cubist aspect]. Nevertheless, some undulation may also occur at the surface. At such times, waves ripple back across concrete undersides - resulting in a blending of narratives [i.e. not a story anymore but part of history].

Lost wanderers are easily misdirected down there - descending to forget their sufferings where edges and distances grow ambiguous [don’t be a statistic]. Others, after the hardships and severities they have experienced, indulge themselves ashore. We wanted to see how well-lit it might be and to search for an answer really. Whether despair or intoxication are the cause is yet to be ascertained [what lies beneath?]. The smallest bit of information could make a huge difference in our investigation so, even if you don’t think it is important, we encourage people to still get in touch with us. The project has now become one of identification.

The incident response was observed at a remove from multiple viewpoints. However effective the safety management regime is, marine incidents do occur. The first officer jogged along The Basin’s rim, peering into the water from a fragile walkway. Emergency vehicles of all colours followed in sequence [eyewitnesses reported a ‘huge crowd’ gathered near the water, with multiple ambulances and fire engines at the scene]. An exclusion was effected under flickering concrete. Delegations are no substitute for the duty holder being directly involved. The brute rattle of rotating blades announced a searching hover, but other factors played a part [economic and social as well as philosophical]. From the footbridge we were able to watch those lingering to reflect. They will be involved in the associated planning work, and in events that once failed to unfold. With the level raised, a small vessel may be retrieved from the lock.

To facilitate the necessary temporal transference, is it possible to lift this entire droning landscape on flimsy propellors? The path can be optimised by solving either the path-planning problem [PPP] or the coverage-planning problem [CPP]. In implementing this scheme, a key output will be to develop and publish a ‘future of flight’ plan, setting out the coordinated vision. Consideration should be given to the following points:

• Even on a warm day, the strategic framework is imbued with paternalist overtones - but is interesting as it presents the reader with the notion that savages can learn under proper supervision.

• Those entrusted with code-related responsibilities must be appropriately trained, experienced and qualified to undertake their duties This enables them to monitor situations in real time.

• The temperature in open water can remain very cold, causing a physical reaction which can make it difficult to control breathing.

The more drone functions become autonomous and intelligent, the greater the benefits and efficiencies will be. A transposition of readings might thus be enacted on the spatial plane, with new colonisations following as a result. Clearly, we need a smart, efficient ‘virtual infrastructure’ [air traffic management and ulcerated state systems], in order that the trajectory might be extended. 

N.B: How remote is the control? We have identified a number of potential command posts, but in reality, the constant contact that was part of plantation life was seen as being demeaning.