'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.

'The Basin': Speed Of Light [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Brunel Way, Southwest Bristol, April - August 2023

Above the Basin, the flow rate intensifies into a rapid pulse. When electric and magnetic fields change in time, they interact to produce a travelling electromagnetic wave, measured in the blip of auto-glass. The speed of light is, of course, just one of several ‘fundamental’ or ‘universal’ physical constants. These are believed to apply to the entire universe and to remain fixed over time. The switch-gear remains visible, despite an overall film of degradation. Multi-axles hammer and the deck shivers through our soles. The spectrum shifts and shuddering loads are subjected to competing forces - augmented by an attendant menu of sound-events. In the description there is a link to create that inevitable trance sound. How busy can it get?

Light, noise and emissions dictate the micro-climate on this level. It is an arena in which quantum fluctuations produce evanescent energies and elementary particles - ‘deteriorating at a significant rate’. Sediment and hydrocarbons are driven into the observer’s face. Rubber granulates. Sheets of hiss shift over the clattered repeat and sirens dopple through the roar. Backlit clouds fray, releasing dazzling shards to slice off inclined glass and sculpted contours. Light from different directions must have different speeds, which should be detected by measuring the return speed. Standing water is atomised and the vehicles diffuse into a sprayed miasma. As redshift moves toward the observer, then a blue shift will be observed. Filthy waves and occasional small components are hurled to the margins. If the wave source moves toward the observer then the person will feel the frequency of the water wave is increasing. In the afternoon, traffic levels two and a half times higher re-emerge from a barrage of heat, onto desiccating tarmac.

The filters employ opportunism and no little jeopardy. You need to imagine a car driving on a huge flat surface. You need to imagine that the car can only move at one speed - say, 60 miles per hour or so. Such moments are seized without forgiveness, and coupled with ongoing road-water and gritting salt ingress. Tolerances are severely tested. The bridge consists of a considerable number of inherent high-risk construction design features, which include post-tensioning or half-joints, and tendons in box-beam bottoms. The car lobby, of course, shudder at the idea. The comments fill up with metrics, snobbery or hate mail (some days it will easily reach six figures). Why do they have those particular values? What do they really tell us about the physical reality around us?

Supply chains are clearly indicated. These short-lived phenomena might seem to be a ghostly form of reality but they do have measurable effects, including electromagnetic ones. The imperative is headlong and adjusting time (beating the barriers and the occasional swing). It had to be included to prompt the behaviour change necessary for the entire project to work. The orange gates stand retracted as logistical solutions serve your sheet material needs. Events are catered and parcels forced. Prime packaging is serviced by an outsourced procession, causing an accelerated depreciation of the network. Elevated commerce cuts across the tidal trades. The wave speed change is actually caused by the absolute movements in the global reference frame. If we put another wave source below the observer - and let them move together at the same speed perspective, the two waves coming from two different directions should have the same frequency. Buses shuttle to marginal estates (in different directions at various different times), and while that happens there will be a ‘reference group’ which will bring in local people. We stand at an organ of admittance. The city consumes and evacuates, upscales and downsizes, deploys and discharges.

Different centuries were stripped into the map here, but the plan already accelerates towards ‘catastrophic failure’. Urban colleagues had to make some unsupported assumptions. Concerns included issues with elastomeric and roller structural bearings and expansion joints between all elevated structural deck areas, ineffective waterproof membranes throughout all bridge deck areas, and a sub-standard parapet system. Alternate futures falter - and are now deteriorating at a significant rate, as exorbitant remedies are threatened. These possibilities are entertaining to think about, and they might well be real in adjacent universes - but still the central issue remains. Time drains into the Basin and the universe is an infinite test. Everything is quite paradoxical and therefore impossible. Attachments to the crescent and the garden-centre remain strong (anthropic reasoning might well suffice to explain why). On both the Eastern Approach option and the Western Approach, the largest number of answers to the questions were that the plans would be ‘worse’.

'The Annihilation of Time And Space: Embankments

 

All Images: Lincoln Eastern Bypass (Upper Reaches), July 2023

Summer steadily trickles away, and (as so many times before) I'm faced with the prospect of far too many creative projects simultaneously in play, and relatively little actual 'product' to show for any single one of them. Nevertheless, I'm also aware that yet more naval-gazing over such perceived problems is merely another distraction. Nobody imposes any of this on me - it's all cheerfully embraced, after all. And ultimately, having too many ideas, or feeling creatively over-stimulated, is hardly the worst problem.

It is a little baffling how quickly/easily a little clutch of photos - taken spontaneously in a particular location, one day, can blow-up into an ever-expanding, multi-layered potential project, requiring multiple return visits (and extended photo-editing sessions). However, this has to be preferable to feeling disengaged or uninspired in the final analysis. Without getting too existential about things, it must be better to check-out with a list of things still to do, than to merely wait for the end in a state of inertia. The days may continue to dwindle down, but a healthy to-do list might just be the healthiest form of distraction of all. In the Deleuzian sense, perhaps all that really matters is that we continue the process of 'becoming' until (perhaps even after?) the passage of time intervenes definitively.

Crikey! - that got philosophical pretty quickly. The intended function of this post is really just to highlight how the work goes on, and to look eastwards again, to the Lincoln Eastern Bypass, after having mostly been staring down the M5 to Bristol's Floating Harbour in recent weeks. The images here document one aspect of my most recent research trip to the bypass. Actually, I'm wondering if this might be the last such for a while, given that they serve to fill-in the missing upper reaches.

Over a period of around a year, I have now managed to collect images from the entirety of the Eastern section of the overall bypass, completed in December 2020 (this is the section still new enough to retain some kind of slightly 'alien' resonance within the landscape, and the one with the most personal/subjective significance for me). Certainly, there is now more than enough raw material to keep me tied-up for quite a while. In the interests of progressing things, it would seem only sensible to ease-off on the collecting phase, and move into the actually-doing-something-about-it phase. By coincidence, my Bristol-focused project(s) are approaching a similar point, I think. It feels like the Autumn/Winter months may see things start to coalesce a little more noticeably.

One obvious way in to that process is to start sorting the visual raw material into various categories (subject, motif, formal elements, thematic potential, etc.). That's clearly one way to avoid becoming overwhelmed, and to break things into chewable pieces. However, the cross-referencing of, and interplay between, such groupings is also often how the unexpected connections and significant correspondences may begin to emerge. The real key is to  avoid rigid pigeonholing, or trite logics, and to maintain fluid or porous boundaries. One clumsy analogy might be a process of ring-fencing in which all gates are deliberately left open (and vigilance is maintained regarding any productively wandering black sheep).

Consequently, in the interests of preliminary organisation, this little batch of images all fit into the category of  Embankments. Such artificially elevated earthworks are a major feature throughout this heavily engineered landscape, and they serve to delineate the new road's imposition upon the map. In some cases they represent a grand topographical statement, in others - a more modest barrier. Whatever the scale of any particular section, the embankments are muscular in their geometry overall - and also inject a range of dynamic perspectives into what is, at first glance, a supremely bland region. The more I become embedded within it, the more i realise I am often looking either up or down, and that this is as much a function of the embankments as the more general contours of the general  landscape. Passing vehicles are often raised above my eye line, or else I am looking down upon their roofs. It only serves to underline the separation between the time-perception of the motorist or delivery driver, and that of the runner, cyclist, dog walker, itinerant artist/photographer, or any individual  whose workplace might reside in the surrounding landscape itself.

The other features which particularly capture my attention amongst the embankments, are those endless serried ranks of desultory saplings, dutifully plugged into the earth within their plastic sheathes. I have no idea whether, in decades to come, these will be transformed into majestic stands of trees (the long-term goal is, I suppose - to provide some further degree of screening, or else some simulacra of organic woodland). However, in their current state , they simply seem to punctuate the sense of a profound disconnect between the agendas and demands of modern life, and any symbiotically meaningful relationship with the 'natural' world. One is even tempted to speculate whether they were simply programmed into the road scheme in fulfilment of some quota or other (is each one accounted for - I wonder?). Mostly, they just serve to remind me that, whilst green may be the dominant colour in these images, we are still inescapably in the Edgelands here. Indeed, the city is just out of shot in each case. The very disconnect mentioned above is, of course, the defining feature of such liminal zones.

Transport Update

 

Both Images: Bracebridge Heath, Lincolnshire, July 2023

Summer continues to dribble by in a somewhat underwhelming manner, and the supposedly productive school holiday interlude is already halfway done. Creatively speaking, work continues - but we're definitely in another of those 'not-too-much-to-show-right-now' phases. As was ever the case, too many projects vie for my attention simultaneously - but that is, of course, so much better than having no ideas or inspiration at all. 

That might also explain why my social media communications have definitely thinned-out a bit of late. Perhaps I'm just experimenting with the idea of not chattering away so much, unless there's actually something interesting to report (you know - like how we used to behave in previous, more analogue times). It may put me slightly at odds with twenty-first century habits, but it does at least free-up a little more time to prioritise more important stuff.

I'm not sure if this update on my personal transport options counts as exactly 'interesting', but it does at least have a bearing on my artistic endeavours in a fairly obvious logistical sense. Pretty much everything I make has its origins in the urban (or sub-urban) landscapes. That necessitates either putting myself into specific locations, and/or deliberately losing myself within a variety of cities, on a regular basis. Realistically, public transport and my slightly dodgy knees can only facilitate so much. Cars and bicycles therefore remain the most efficient means of accessing those moments of urban revelation on which I depend. This is the year I decided to update my existing options in both respects.

Like any un-garaged fourteen year-old vehicle, my previous car was starting to show its age a bit. Overall it had given excellent, economical (and mostly reliable) service, for what was once at the very bottom of Skoda's product range. Nevertheless, it was inevitably starting to cost more to keep on the road than the meagre resale value could really justify. Hence, bye-bye, old red Skoda Fabia - hello, much newer red (and black) Skoda Fabia. Ultimately, I'm not interested enough in the complexities of modern motoring to shop around different makes and models -  'stick with what you know', is my motto. The fact this is my third red Skoda hatchback in a row is purely coincidental, but it might suggest something was meant to be (if I was superstitious). Mostly, I'm just hoping this new one proves as dependable as the previous two.

Much as a car is valuable for covering the big miles, I maintain that a bike is really the most involving way to experience the urban landscape, once one is actually immersed within it. My existing mountain bike has proved a much-valued tool in that respect, and will even (at a squeeze) fit into the back of a Fabia. Nevertheless, a certain amount of scuffing (of both vehicles) as well as repetitive seat-folding, is inevitable in the process. What better excuse for a new  folding bike, to preserve the new car's interior? It's a bit of an indulgence, I'll admit - but I've coveted one of these funky little Bromptons for quite a while, and this one will just fold-up and fit on the back seat (or in the boot) far more easily. Theoretically, that should encourage me to drive to one city or another, then explore it more immersively on two wheels, on an even more regular and spontaneous basis than I can now. The resulting health/fitness benefits can only be a bonus too.

In reality, the mountain bike will always remain the preferable (and more comfortable) option over longer distances or uneven terrain, but these 'Brommies' are had to beat when it comes to compact portability. Either way, I'm choosing to regard it as an essential artistic tool, and thus -  far more than just an urban hipster's plaything. The fact that I am seemingly now also the bloke who only rides white bikes is also purely coincidental. It's the cheapest one they do - and they only come in white this year.

Finally, if you're wondering about the incongruously leafy venue for this photo-shoot (after all this talk of accessing urban terrain) - one terminal of Lincoln's Eastern Bypass is literally just round the corner. The Brompton had just carried me on another little expedition to document its upper reaches, before being folded back up and whisked-off home to Leicester.

'The Basin': Stopgates [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Bristol Floating Harbour, Entrance Locks, April 2019-June 2023

Stoppages interrupt the flow at various points in the system. This arrangement provided flexibility of operation, with the Basin being used as a lock when there were large numbers of arrivals and sailings. A level will occur anytime between 1 hour and 10 minutes to 20 minutes before high water and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes after high water.  At other times, recalcitrant barriers dam the infamous fluctuations between brooding ramparts (a modest increase having regard to the ever-increasing size of ships). It is impossible to ignore the cartographic sectioning brought about through the insertion of the valves, or the bladdering of the basin itself. Despite the geometries of containment, multiple small incontinences raise doubts throughout the extended system. They may indicate both mortal foreboding and infantile anxieties.Tides of 9.6m and over are stopgate tides, but tides of 9.1m to 9.6m may become stopgate tides if the level of tide is higher than predicted.

Our progress is punctuated by such interventions, and we are required to teeter on deviant planks. Alternate perspectives are applied. A single step-up occasions vertigo here, and a vee-formation must be adopted. Silhouetting effects can only emphasise a certain fragility in the surmounting assembly. However, turbulence should not be experienced when the lock is being emptied, and steel pistons (puzzling in their articulation) thrust from die-cut shadows in a bolstering of archaeology. New angles have been described. Whilst a leap of faith might be implied, the data-driven athletes still spring across - hesitating only for cursory bicep readings. Conversely, visitation-lingering effects may also impede progress or image composition. A recreational spectrum is clearly evident, although hazardous operations take place in this area with potentially dangerous installations. Risk assessment ultimately rests upon variable adhesion levels. There is no public right of way, but to make the crossing is also to span the pooling years. Please ensure your ropes are clear on their cleats, will not jam, and are tended continuously.

The maximum size of vessel which can be accepted is determined by conditions in the river and the dredged depth in the harbour. The comedy of the historical record can be relished at this juncture (note that confirmation from the Marine Services Supervisor is required). Can the subversion of a cylindrical reputation, with floating hinged gates known as ship-caissoons (local spelling), be resisted? Certainly, exponential advance must collide with physics or oversight eventually. Ballast chambers were prone to silting up because of the silt-laden tidal water and the lock was only 54 feet wide. Entropy will prevail and obsolescence was built-in here. A sense of imprisonment is inescapable, so call the Marine Services Supervisor on VHF Channel 14 as you pass. The route to this gullet already cleared a preferable mouth, which experiences the second largest tidal range in the world.

Coping stones and platforms were removed over-night and the ship sailed the following morning.

The Basin: The Plates [Draft 1.0]

 

All Images: Entrance Locks, Bristol Floating Harbour, April 2019- June 2023

Here, amongst the plates, territory has been systematically annexed. The methodology is both cast iron and set in stone. Four-square beats prevailed on the journey down, and we are captivated by the poetics of insertion. All the plates are similar in that the upper surface is patterned with rows of small square blocks within a plain border. They encompass a tesseract of elements. Oxidisation is inevitable and geological time accelerates accordingly. Weather systems are entered into a spreadsheet of quivering light. Our records show that, previously, there was a dark ledger - with each triangular cargo packed tight. The third beat is a legacy, twice displaced. An elevated viewpoint indicates how the necessary colonisation might operate through cartographic shading. Original sets of plates were recorded by the Ordnance Survey at 1:500 scale where, confusingly, they were hatched in the manner of built structures.

 

In this region our progress is constrained by a ductile geometry associated with the hydraulic operating system for the lock gates and sluices. The flows are directed and there is both a channelling and harnessing beneath the plane (porous space). Water acts upon small gun metal pistons in cylinders, which set in motion the gear of the particular machine acted upon. The machines of projection and reflection are of prime importance but many other such devices can operate in chains of affect. They may be recognised on the ground because the stone blocks surrounding them are fixed together with butterfly-shaped iron cramps or ties. Flush with the quay surface are perforated circular plates covering air shafts. The diameter of the pipes conveying the water round the system varies but is mostly 7 inches. Some of the plates have slots for operating levers. Since liquids generally are virtually incompressible, it is possible to develop very high pressures with almost no reduction in their volume (pressure drop). Repression is thus rendered futile. Despite the best efforts of the engineers, our charts and geo-positioning have led us to an empire of obsolescence.

There will be a presumption in favour of preserving any archaeological features or sites of notional importance, whether scheduled or not. The surface is fragile, and narratives may bend or crack. A suitable strategy has been put forward to mitigate the impact (no vehicles on steel plates). Provision for adequately recording the site prior to destruction is made, to allow essential recording and publication to take place. Notes, drawings and measurements were made, and 35mm black and white and digital colour photographs taken. Many rolls of film were archived in negative form. Polyrhythmic accounts are overlaid in historical counterpoint, and time flows in accordance with the tides. Previously, there had been an archaeological watching brief during preparatory geotechnical investigations, and observations made in a range of weather conditions have been documented. A geotechnical borehole was drilled to a depth of 16.90m, but no solid geology was encountered. Memorialists submit they are entitled to such relief as the city authorities can afford.