Twice a day they all sit down for coffee and biscuits, and if you don’t you are frowned upon. This is a social time for discussions and debates whether it be design, event or simply social based. Other artists join in whether they be designers, ceramicists, joiners, textile artists or friends. Three times a week there is a communal lunch when everybody attends and you are required to cook at least once a month and the person cooking decides on what the meal is and it varies tremendously. The bread is supplied by the bakery as are the cakes. As an outsider I was extremely welcome and there was a real sense of community.
Day two approaches and it’s another early rise. We work long hours together. Chris then says “so man, what are we meant to be doing together? Am I supposed to pay you?” No I reply, I’m simply here to talk, learn and be inspired and anything you need help with then I’m here for that. Cool he says “lets make sound”. We talk together about our independent reasons for creating sound and the purposes of our work. However I say to Chis that I’m not really sure why I am doing it and he replies to my amazement “Good, me neither” we then agree that we are trying to communicate and that our work is really just for us and everybody else is a bystander, I guess there for the ride. This second day becomes quite interesting as we are still in show mode. The idea today is to design and create some vases/ planters. We visit a small reclamation yard setup by a previous resident. This person was the local doctor and he had recently passed away leaving his small business to his daughter. His daughter is an artist and her speciality is paint. She makes her own colours and the bench in her studio is covered with lots of tiny pots of a variety of different shades of colour. She is greatly concerned with making her finishes with the least amount of harmful additives and chemicals. The store for the reclaimed goods is always open and there are lots of windows, sinks, fixtures and fittings and lots and lots of ceramic tiles and pipes. We are visiting to source some more ceramic pipes/ tubes. Chris says the more organic the better. The vases are to be made from collected materials and the internal part of the vase will be a wine bottle that has had its neck removed. This becomes a long and interesting process of trial and error and it later becomes more error fraught and only one out of a dozen bottles breaks how we intend.
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The following day we rise early and it is bright, really fucking bright and freezing. We sit together contemplating the day ahead and I am brimming inside as I haven’t done any smithing since that terrible August, yes that one, don’t forget, never forget. We stroll down to the forge with the cold nipping at our ears and hands and Chris says “I’ll have to light the fire when we get down there” and sadly it doesn’t warm the workshop. If they were all up and running there would have been seven power hammers. There are five forges and as many anvils, vises, and a wide selection of hammers and tongs as well as numerous other hand tools. There is a box folder, a few guillotines both handheld and electric, saws and plenty of welders ranging from mig to tig and more experienced users than you can shake a stick at. All of the occupants know what they are doing, no room for error here, and that’s when it hits me, I actually know what I am doing and how to do it, and quite possibly better than some of the other people here.
Visual aesthetic design starts from the word go. We start by finishing off some candlestick holders that Chris is making for a show to be held at not quite alongside the other makers and artists. We sit there and consider bases for the holders. They are forge fabricated with a forged element in the centre. The base is the most important part now and we decide that a simple square base is required, we go back to the sketchbook and look around the workshop for further inspiration. All of the machines and tools have similar bases, they all have flanges on them to give a larger surface area for greater stability so we decide to add this feature on to the candle holder bases alongside some very thick steel. Aesthetically this works and the decision is finalised and the pieces are almost complete. I ask him what sort of finish he is considering. Simple he says, we are going to leave the rust on the metal and paint them with an industrial blue paint and hopefully the rust will work its way out onto the surface to give it that worn industrial feel. Continuous considerations are made all the way through the construction, Chris says that he has stopped counting the number of changes that take place throughout these projects. However he then points out that when working to commission he sticks to the designs that have been agreed by the customer/ clients. The candlesticks are part of what he calls ‘speculative work’, they are not commissioned merely stabs in the dark for their show, he continues to say that this is not his type of work that he would normally choose to do and I get the feeling that it is almost a means to an end. The following day we rise early and it is bright, really fucking bright and freezing. We sit together contemplating the day ahead and I am brimming inside as I haven’t done any smithing since that terrible August, yes that one, don’t forget, never forget. We stroll down to the forge with the cold nipping at our ears and hands and Chris says “I’ll have to light the fire when we get down there” and sadly it doesn’t warm the workshop. If they were all up and running there would have been seven power hammers. There are five forges and as many anvils, vises, and a wide selection of hammers and tongs as well as numerous other hand tools. There is a box folder, a few guillotines both handheld and electric, saws and plenty of welders ranging from mig to tig and more experienced users than you can shake a stick at. All of the occupants know what they are doing, no room for error here, and that’s when it hits me, I actually know what I am doing and how to do it, and quite possibly better than some of the other people here.
What is the point? There is no point, we are dust and will return to dust in the winds of time, we are at the “still point”. My Ba Hons degree discovered, talked and touched upon this, something I did not understand at the time and which others quite happily overlooked, perhaps because they needed to because of their misunderstanding, or perhaps their own eloquent intrusive misdirections, a play by ear, or a catastrophic inquiry into craft, such are susceptible to misdirection. But now I am beginning to understand through contemplation, through defiance. at the still point: you are governed by rules and tick-able boxes aren’t you, you feel empowered to have a beautiful three dimensional substance but surely beauty is in the whole idea.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, bullshit, this is a democratic belief which excuses you of mis- understanding the purpose and pure and simple fact that you do not understand the forces in play surrounding you; this was not made for you, this is a vessel for me to understand me, my surroundings and beliefs, you are merely passing through my time, you are merely a bystander, you are not even the catalyst for this procedure and predicament. We carry on our walk through the deep and dark orrifices of the plant, the fear grips me again, walking into the uncharted, Chris says i haven’t been here before, or at least accompanied. I can feel something is not quite right in this room. and I later learn that a certain number of arms have been removed from bodies by belts which drive the unstoppable machines and I can smell and taste it. Yeah it ain’t cool, the spirits are angry here, Ollie you have to make a bell to drive them away, and i think,”we need a drum to aid the spirits across into their world”, and right around the corner is a drum kit, coincidence? You have to draw the line somewhere however this isn’t the time or place, many years will succeed us all, drone on as you wish, the world is no longer that safe and subtle place, you are no longer alone, yet you are far from being surrounded, which would you choose? The answer is clear here, is it clear there? What does the world you weave have to offer, are you strong enough for the ultimate answer, sadly not, as the answer isn’t here as you haven’t asked the question, and how far does the hole go? Yes a hole that travels deep into uncertainty, a hole that never relinquishes, never, never, never fold. But what is in a question, what is the point, is there really a still point? Fundamentally you will cower, you hope for the best, you hope for a rounded outcome, an outcome which object and words form a distinct picture, the room is dark and I have a choice left or right, how would you choose? I flipped a coin, very simple one or the other, left or right, loose and fail or what win? Win is in which context, accomplishment, an answer? Sounds like you took the easy option, you knew the outcome before you started, front of the queue for you, boxes ticked, nice life, bollocks. Boring, why are you here, who are you here for? Quite obviously not yourself, back of the queue of humanity for me then. Or maybe you've been working towards this outcome for years upon years, and then why are you here? We walk left through the very dark door, you cannot see any light in there, its far from the comfort zone for the familiar faint hearted, only the strong, only the brave rings out in my overwhelmed brain, do it a voice tells me, the sweat is pouring again and it is pure fear, the purest of them all, the floor creeks, its rusted, they tell me bats live here, do it, don’t be afraid our bell will protect us, believe, believe. We descend back down the mass of rusted and definitely unsafe stairs until we reach the bottom. For me, I now felt at ease but I’m sure for most people the feeling of fear would still be present. He points out that a friend replaced the lagging around the pipes only to find out at a later date that the original lagging was asbestos. Great bloody asbestos, crafted sounds kryptonite. this is the only thing that truly stands in my way, now i truly understand the saying “suffering for your art” .
I’m now sure I will probably suffer an excruciating death like my grandfather did at the feet of asbestosis so I need to make the most of this precious time i have left. “Don’t make art which shocks people” rings in my head, I then realise what this means. It resonates that they wish to stand alone in their shock treatment, sorry but you are full of shit. We carry on our trip around the massive expanse of a building and I imagine hundreds of people rushing around like ants scurrying through corridors and towing and growing between jobs. Chris tells me that they always knew the colour of the paper being produced as the river was that colour, bright greens, blues, yellows and purples. The pollution this place made was enormous, and I would later be told that the soil in this area is badly affected and there are lots of deposits found in it. I met an artist which has a plan for an art piece and that is to collect various soil samples throughout Sweden, followed by tests to show what is contained within the soil and to then display them as a sculptural piece to bring both awareness and vision to the public and government which are in denial of this existence. I expect generations have been silently affected and this is visible with abnormalities in human forms. The building is full of heavily rusted objects and also sound producing sculptures which other artists apart from Chris have left there, almost discarded but free to experiment with. Chris starts to climb through a tight gap reminiscent of potholing and so I pluck up the courage and decide to follow like a lamb to slaughter. And wow I’m so glad i took the plunge. We are in another silo that has perfect white tiles on it, fresh as the day they were removed from the kiln and I freeze to the spot. I freeze as there is a white substance on the walls and the fear of asbestos flies back to my overwhelmed brain. chris softly says, hey ollie don't worry its only paper! We are standing in a paper mush silo, it’s a storage tank. I glance upwards when I use my wearing out torch and see a large white disc. This is when the fun really starts and I can see the smile revisiting Chris’s face. The white disc is similar in form to a drum skin where later on I see a remarkable video he made. The skin was inhabited by two dancers for a live show they did that was open to the public and was over subscribed. The sound-art-video depicts two ladies dancing in a hypnotic fashion and you can only see their shadows illuminated and projected through the skin and it is difficult to see their bodies but only their outlines or gender. Re-fucking-markable. this is what many describe as “out there”, craft; what a joke, nice shiny well made things standing truly alone by themselves, no theoretical backing, what the hell is the point? I guess that I am going to die one day and that it is unacceptable that leaving a beautiful object isn’t enough, I have the unprecedented ability to leave a theoretical legacy, one which inspires and neglects the impoverished thinking of our fore fathers, the true belief that everything is finite, that ephemera cannot truly be diminished and that we are truly alone. The certainty that life is not eternal and that it circumflexes the true injustices of social impoverity. Thus we must trust our inner judgement regardless of what others believe and we must impart this on the world which we live in regardless of whether we truly understand what we are doing. What is then point in doing something which we understand, life is a journey, art is our life, plans never work out, so plans are irrelevant if we wish to push boundaries. Boundaries are created by persons which have a common intellect, they are created for the minority of thinkers, we are not a majority or even part of it, we are merely outcasts in an abrupt and social volume of discriminations. So i have been given a tour of old Paper mill. I cannot get over the amount of the debris that is lying around.isbn 978-089281455-8
R murray Andy Goldsworthy Processes Rivers and Tides. He works intuitively with nature.(documentary) baschet brothers France (athens) designer and sound artist betroia visual sculptures so where does your work fit in, what category or where would it be seen, is it fine art, conceptual craft, art etc… screens on one side, sound emitters on the other, as the viewer and listener moves down the strip, each screen independently shows a silent video and the sound is emitted behind them for that particular video. we need to use some type of sensors for this interaction. So I have arrived in Sweden and have been picked up by Chris at the train station in Åmaal. We drive to not quite about 22km from the station into the wilderness and society starts to evaporate. Upon arrival we drop my things off at his place and he says “Lets get started”. We take a walk down to the paper mill. Unlike all of the places I have visited before we have free access and I become excited at the prospect of not having to illegally enter the site. The tour starts and it becomes apparent to me that there is a wealth of really interesting spaces with their own types of debris specific to their location. I get a tingle down the back of my neck and spine, I start to sweat; not from being too hot or being gripped by fear but from the sheer abundance of stuff in this wonderful place, and it is more than wonderful. It is like no other site i have visited as you can feel something extraordinary oozing out from beneath our feet and we are only in the first room that is filled with pumps and turbines. Chris says “ this is the place for sound” the floors and stairs creek beneath our feet as we slowly meander around this massive and impressive place. Chris describes what the place means to him in a spiritual manner which excites both the teller and listener alike, and I start to realise that i am in a truly remarkable void that stands still in time, unchanged, undisturbed and unchallenged. The ephemera of this place is subtle yet strikingly obvious to the naked eye. He exclaims that this is the place where you will learn to listen, this is the place where you will understand what quietness really is. At first I do not understand, until we visit the “clapping room”. We had climbed a multiple if staircases and the sweat is starting to drip from my armpits, down my back and from my forehead, this time the sweat is pure fear, as i am not the best with heights, but i soldier on to a point until I have to admit my fear of heights. We open a thick rusted bomb proof like door and it squeals. The door which he had opened with a crow bar years previously groans in anticipation. Inside the door is a small platform on top of which i can only describe as a huge silo and the feeling that it will crumble at any moment is almost inevitable. We stand on the edge and he claps, the claps echo in different ways depending on the energy created by his hands, a smile grows across his face as if to say “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. Are we famous for our arrogance?
I'm looking to craft a drum with a bell inside it. The idea is that it can be rolled down the hill the wind can sound it common in the rain will act on it and Play the drum. I will be using the debris from the Sheffield ski Village and respond to the landscape the site. I am going to respond to the materials from the site and explore their characteristics properties and potential both visually and auditory. I will play and explore by cutting Burning dissecting dismantling manipulating reforming layering and trimming. These processes are to be recorded both visually and auditory. I am to consider the concept and process of Rolling Down the hill or slopes and jumps. I will use this to inform the object and it's visual aesthetic linked to the function and sound qualities. So how would you like to display the object. I would like to view the object on film in a dedicated area or orb that reflects the shape of the created objects? So I've come back from the United States of America and it was fantastic. However I quite by accident stumbled across an interesting site up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. I strongly believe that I have found a site which encapsulates a lot of what I have been looking for. The site has risen, Deceased and is in a state of ruin and disrepair. I visited the site neglected up lots of very interesting pieces of debris. I took my camera and tripod and try to talk in front of the camera and beside it. I guess that point I should've had some sort of script to follow. So I've got a digital SLR that takes great photos and also supports video. I have a lack of underpinning in film making but have been Learning about it via YouTube and I've been looking at basic tutorials. A tutorial by Moritz Janisch (Fenchel & Janisch) Blog & Website: http://www.fenchel-janisch.com I think at this stage i should strongly consider finding some people who are professionals. I have been using a digital slur for my videos and also my iPhone. I started using final cut pro x but at $300 a pop I transferred to iMovie, but sadly it doesn’t cut it. Mind you the iPhone records sound very well but a professional depth of field. Chart time. Now having removed this section in regards to video and production there is a lot more “effort" to be divided up between for remaining categories. I will continue to use charts in this manner to illustrate the use of effort throughout Recording my artistic practice. I revisited the site to collect some more material. So we’ve decided to do a research trip to visit a Blacksmith and sound artist by the name of Chris Porcarelli. Chris originally hails from the USA and is a blacksmith. He is a post graduate masters degree student. This is how Chris describes his Practise and has been directly taken from his website. Sculptural forms, interaction, movement and sound are sources of investigation and inspiration. My practice weaves interests in social dynamics and material based objects in hopes to develop opportunities for creativity and face to face relations. The focus of my work is to encourage a relationship between the participants unique ideas with the power of movement, in order to create either a personal or shared experience through the use of a sculptural object. I am currently focusing on developing objects that are interactive acoustical sound devices that stand quiet until touched. Forms and sounds are designed to evoke curiosity and encourage exploration with one or multiple users. When engaged, objects reflect the unique physical input of a users’ movement by producing auditory signals. Such interactive motions actuate layers of sound and rhythm that compose a unique event experienced by those present. So welcome to the next site and what a fruity one it is. So we’ve taken the plunge to check out Sweden. And I’m off to meet and American at a place called Not Quite where coincidentally there is a disused paper mill where they all make art in. So up in the heights of the building there is a room that they flooded for a light installation and as you walk around the place there are sound making machines and all sorts of objects to interact with. The sites are getting sadder and sadder. Back in its glory years there were hundreds of people rushing about where I was slowly plodding. The place had an eerie feel to it where I’m sure something pretty nasty has happened yet with a calmness.
The family that own it grant free access and use of it, sadly people do go in there to wreck things but also at the same time a group of enthusiasts come and work on some enormous hydraulic pistons in the engine room and endeavour to get them working. The site was really worth visiting, I wouldn’t recommend walking around without a guide as some parts were more than sketchy and to be honest I’m not great with heights and that had to be overcome. But the sheer abundance of things you could use to make sound with was incredible, and every space entered was acoustically different. I came across the site quite by chance after a conversation with a friend who lives in Sheffield. The Sheffield ski Village was an artificial ski slope complex in the park with Springs area of Sheffield. It was destroyed by fire in 2012. It was believed to be the largest artificial ski resort in Europe with the sport shop, bar, restaurant and a range of slopes which include a snow flex nursery slope, dendix recreational slope and a freestyle park consisting of a half pipe, hit jump, kicker, a quarter pipe and various grind rails.
Is in addition to the Ski Village slopes there was a tenpin bowling alley, quad biking, laser tag and a downhill biking track designed by Steve Peat. The ski village bowling how is a state-of-the-art tenpin bowling alley which opened in 2009. The full-size tenpin bowling lanes were built with Brunswick technology. On 29 April 2012, the main building of the ski village was destroyed by fire. The blaze occurred in the early hours of the morning and no one was injured. This fire was subsequently ruled to have started accidentally, with subsequent fires on the site being treated as Arsenal. On 1 May 2012, a small hot at the top of the main slope containing controls for the ski lifts was destroyed in a second fire in the early hours of the morning. On 21 May 2012, the former snowflakes nursery slope was partially destroyed on the third fire, again started deliberately. On 24 April 2013, the remaining wouldn't outbuildings of the former adventure Mountain outdoor playground was set on fire, destroying the only remaining infrastructure on the site. Since the initial fire, the site is remain closed to the public aside from a brief attempt by the shop ski club to hold sessions on May 2012, it were stopped when the ski lift motors and power ancillaries was stolen. The site is stood derelict and has been blighted by significant fly tipping, theft and vandalism ever since. A local campaign group formed by the members but the former slope management staff has been started with the objective of eventually reopening the former ski Village site and operating it as a hub for snow sports excellence in the UK. The snow sport four Sheffield Group is headed by former ski school manager how Best are and has already generated significant support from local residents and those full press coverage. The site covers a spectacular 15 acres. It is absolutely littered with debris. It is evident however that some time some point people have visited the site with the sole intention of removing scrap metal as this material is least in the abundance at the site. The potential material at the site consisted of dendix brushes which we use to form a honey comb structure which allowed skis to slide on it imitating snow. Buried beneath this honeycomb structure was a mass of chains which held it altogether. There was a very limited amount of metal however there was a huge amount of debris which did not belong to the site and it was the remains of fly tipping. |
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