Dialogues with Simon Pockley, from September 2006, when he said:
” Your challenge at the moment is to find your focus.
You’ll know when you have because it will be as clear as a line of
moonlight on a still sea.”
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My reflections are written in italics.
On 09/27/2006 08:03 PM Simon says:
The link was to a word doc (now attached) of my paper relating to the GIS stuff. It’s not important in any way but it outlines the preconditions that need to be in place for all to work.
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On 09/26/2006 05:00 PM Simon says:
Re. the geospatial link. It was interesting for me to see people like
Chris Rizos, the UNSW expert in the link you sent. I gave a paper
about the notion of the land as an archive about a year ago and he was
very disparaging.
http://www.duckdigital.net/Research/VitalSigns_ArchivalCommons29_08
In my opinion you are better off focusing on your own project at this stage. The conditions that would support the geospatial component are yet to be properly developed and until they are you would be frustrated by it. Your challenge at the moment is to find your focus.
You’ll know when you have because it will be as clear as a line of moonlight on a still sea.
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On 09/26/2006 05:00 PM Simon says:
I thought this little excerpt (from Cherry Apsley-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the world – Antarctic 1910-1913, 1922) might be of interest from March 1911:
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…Meanwhile Captain Scott walked over the shoulder under Castle Rock to see down the strait and came back with the intelligence that he could hardly believe his eyes, but half the Glacier Tongue had broken off and disappeared. This great Tongue of ice had stood there on arrival of the Discovery, ten years before, and had remained ever since; it had a depot of Shackleton’s on it, an Campbell had depoted his fodder on it for us. On the eventful night of the break-up of the ice at least three miles of the Tongue which had been considered practically terra firma had gone, after having been there probably for centuries.
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Here, changes in Antarctica’s external landscape have been observed.
Since the Industrial Revolution in Europe, Global Warming had begun.
Scott’s party could well have been seeing the first Antarctic changes in response to that.
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There’s another piece (in a Chapter entitled ‘The First Winter’) that
struck me. It’s Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s description of Scott:
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…Temperamentally he was a weak man, and might very easily have been an irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. He cried more easily than any man I have ever known.
What pulled Scott through was character, sheer good grain, which ran over and under and through his weaker self and clamped it together. It would be stupid to say he had all the virtues: he had, for instance, little sense of humour, and he was a bad judge of men. But you have only to read one page of what he wrote towards the end to see something of his sense of justice. For him justice was God. Indeed I think you must read all those pages; and if you have read them once, you will probably read them again. You will not need much imagination to see what manner of man he was.
And notwithstanding the immense fits of depression which attacked him, Scott was the strongest combination of a strong mind in a strong body that I have ever known. And this because he was so weak! Naturally so peevish, highly strung, irritable, depressed and moody. Practically such a conquest of himself, such vitality, such push and determination, and withal in himself such personal and magnetic charm. He was naturally an idle man, he has told us so; he had been a poor man, and he had a horror of leaving those dependent upon him in difficulties. You may read it over and over again in his last letters and messages.
He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole and who died as fine a death as any man had had the honour to die. His triumphs are many – but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of them. Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self, and became the strong leader who we went to follow and came to love.
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Here Apsley-Garrard describes the changing inner landscape of a man, shaped by physical and psychological challenges endured.
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I guess you’ve also seen Wilson’s extraordinary watercolours form this expedition. The book I’m reading is very old and has a number of them. Later editions seem to have dropped them.
http://www.edwardawilson.com/life/11TNova.shtml
There is more to share if you are interested. If you can connect to Skype I can read you some of it…
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On 09/24/2006 09:46 PM Lisa says:
I’m not sure quite what to do with this event, but yesterday I accompanied my son Joe and his friends on a rock climbing expedition to the Blue Mountains and some interesting connections were made.
One of the friends with Dr Craig Roberts – Geodecist (GPS person) and lecturer at UNSW.
I painted and they climbed, then I traveled back on the train with Craig. He told me about this arts-based research project that he was involved with through UNSW:
http://www.audionomad.com/team/
The project involved walking through the cemetery near here – that old one off King Street Newtown (St Stephens) – holding a GPS device that told you things about the physical place where your stood.
It made me think of the Gwion Gwion book, that takes the reader to specific locations, to BE there – connect to the country from which the stories arose.
I thought of how tiny animations could be viewed of a screen, with words, and voices and sounds.
Craig suggested I build an architecture for such a thing, which, if an Aboriginal organization were to use it, might call it a message stick.
I could have the building of the architecture as my major research project focus, and have that area in Antarctica where I spent most time (The Amery ice shelf where Australia’s major sea ice studies are stationed), and Newtown, sydney (where I live), as site testing places – connecting my own back yard with world’s end (in so many ways!).
Today I am painting.
Maybe you are too. This weather is delicious!
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On 09/21/2006 05:15 PM Lisa says:
It’s incredible how things seem to all come apart in one’s mind, and then come back together again.
Today as I was walking to meet Elaine Russell, the Aboriginal artist friend who I was meeting to interview about her work, and contemplating the inspirational Stephen Eastaugh DVD and exhibition, this idea came: I must go to Antarctica for a year (or 15 months) and animate the changes in that landscape. I will animate from direct observation, through drawing, as well as from what I learn about from scientists (through instrumentation images). As well, I can animate from what’s
imagined (the myths and imaginings of myself and other base dwellers) over that long time. I will be charting an external as well as an internal landscape. There’s an exceptional library of books and films there, so Antarctic History will inevitably become woven into it all. And hopefully it might engage the interest of some Antarcticans to share their ‘frozen moments’.
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Early in May 2007 I find I am unsuccessful in my AAD Arts Fellowship application.
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Here’s a detail of the female dress dummy, deeply etched just yesterday with Pedestrian figures, and lit from within (just with a lamp at this stage). Funny how the tracks at their feet, and the stitching in Stephen Eastaugh’s recent canvas pieces share this language feature to symbolize journeys.
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Layering seems to be another language feature in contemporary Antarctic art. Sue Lovegrove’s work is finely layered, and map-like. I have much to learn from her approach. Perhaps it’s because what’s beneath the Antarctic ice is on uppermost our minds, knowing all the drilling for minerals and oil? Also, the long silent history in its rocks beneath, revealed by science.
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On 09/20/2006 05:00 PM Simon says:
It’s interesting to see Stephen’s site. Interesting that we should have been discussing it in August. I was quite struck by his picture of the Barrier ice cliffs.
The other research projects are interesting. You might consider establishing your own community of interest around this material. You never know her it might lead. Maybe the blogging software will help maybe you could develop a wiki or a moodle around it.
There’s more that I want to send you form The Worst Journey in the World…soon.
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On 09/20/2006 05:00 PM Lisa says:
I was sorry I didn’t know about Stephen Eastaugh’s exhibition opening in Sydney last night or I may have met him. But I’m sure we will. And I’ll go and see his show tomorrow. I’ve found a couple of students at the RCA researching in fields related to mine:
Serena Rodgers: Is Landscape A Hidden Language?
In animation, the artist has absolute control over the placing of narrative in landscape. To what extent are animators conscious of the landscape language they employ? This project will use quantitative and qualitative methods to look at existing patterns’ cross-over points, and where animation lies relative to other moving image media. By analysis of animation in terms of frequency of scene, depth of field, and placing of character in the landscape, trends will be investigated. Interviewing animators from different generations and different media, 3D games etc. will cast light on how conscious they are of the possible narrative landscape patterns and relationships in use today.
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…to investigate the nature or communal languages, constructed histories, cult activity, cross cultural/social collaboration, vernacular and folk trajectories within contemporary art practice and multi location accumulative art events….
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