Geodesic Arts - Artists in the Archive

New finds at Star Carr

2010-08-12T03:07:00.000-07:00

New excavations at the Star Carr site have uncovered what could be the oldest house in Britain:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10929343

nearly there ...

2010-04-17T13:00:00.000-07:00

... and here is the AITA tree, safely stowed not far from the Art Gallery ... as you can see it is quite tall ...

today, the last day before we build the installation tomorrow, has seen a considerable rush around ... I have cleaned Boyes Scarborough branch out of foam pads - that makes 20 in all that we can use to line a selection of archive boxes - a container purchased for the tree - i hope its big enough! ...

I have put tools, spray-mount, scalpel, paper, other bits and pieces to one side so I can take them to the Gallery ...

the camera battery is charging ... I thought I might set the camera up and do a time lapse recording in the studio space as we set things up ...

all the videos are sorted and ready so Mark can load them onto the monitor ... the DVD with surround-sound has been authored by Damian (what a nightmare getting that right has been!) ...

Amy will be at the Gallery at 9 to meet Mark, Damian and Kippa ...

now all I have to do is make sure I get on train so I can join them a little bit later!

three days to opening day ...

2010-04-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

Friday morning ... the projector and DVD player have been installed in the Studio ... I arrive late as the 7:38 train was (a) late leaving Scarborough and (b) the train nearly hit a tractor which was trying to cross the track ... I only find out about this when I get to work as I managed to sleep through the entire event ...

when I get to the gallery Amy and the techy guys are waiting for me ... good job as there is a slight issue with the lens ... the long throw lens gives too small an image, the wide lens gives an image that overlaps onto the ceiling and side walls ... Amy and I like the way the projection overlaps on the side walls so I get the technicians to leave the projector with the wide lens installed ... we will be able to crop the image with a piece of card so it doesnt overlap onto the ceiling too much ...

AND most importantly of all ... the tree, the tall beautiful, graceful centrepiece of Mesolithic Interventions has been delivered by Wykeham Mature Plants ...

a team of ninja arboriculturalists (aka Dan, Bob, Rachel, and Harvey) help me carry it round to a safe place where it can be stored until Sunday .... there is an event in the Studio tomorrow so we cant bring the tree in until Sunday ...

the tree is rather taller than I remember! but it will go in the Studio even if there might have to be a bit of judicious pruning ... I even remember to give it a good watering before I leave for home ...

the tree root-ball is in a small bag (an incredibly small bag for a 5m high tree!) that isnt waterproof so we will need to put it in a waterproof container ... more expense!

the Studio is being painted a lovely deep shade of green, the shelving, boxes and drawers have all been delivered (great job Amy!) ...

I have left in the storage space in the Studio: foam, spray paint (only one can, will we need more .... hmmm probably), cable clips and ties, eyelet thingies, gaffer tape and fishing line ... just need to buy more foam and marker pens tomorrow ...

so now its back to sorting out the video files and then all we have to do is turn up on Sunday and put it all together ... it will all be fine guys, honestly, trust me I'm an archaeologist ... and an artist ...

I wonder what crisis is waiting for us? he whispers quietly to himself ... tbc

time to catch up (2) ...

2010-04-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

When we made our first visit to the archive rooms in the basement of the Yorkshire Museum, we were very intrigued by the drawers which contained a rich array of prehistoric artefacts - hand axes, tools, microliths. The process of watching Andrew open the drawers, take out an object and then talk about it was fascinating. We thought that it would be interesting if we could use this experience we had in the archive and use something like it in the exhibition.

Amy has been working hard on our behalf ( i hope we arent being too demanding) ... and she has found a set of specimen drawers which we can use in the exhibition.

The drawers will be placed in the exhibition space alongside the archive shelving. The audience will be able to open the drawers. Inside will be a series of small plastic boxes which will contain a careful selection of artefacts. There will also be a number of digital photo-frames which will display some of Kippa's images. There will also be more of Kippa's photographic prints in some of the other drawers.

The viewer will be able to open the drawers and view the array of objects and images, part of his or her personal journey into this archive.

I have sourced the fabric which will line the rear wall of the Studio for the temporary projection screen. I now have 10m of this nice wide flameproof fabric sat under my desk. I must hand it over to Amy so she can hang it in the Studio.

I have made great progress on editing my video pieces. I am happy with the large scale landscape piece. I have given Damian a low-resolution copy so that he can start to put the soundscape together. I have also edited the interviews with Andrew, Nicky, Ben and James; again I have sent a low-res copy to Damian so he can tidy the audio tracks. I have a lovely time-lapse recorded over a weekend in the archive/ laboratory space in the Department of Archaeology, Kings Manor. I also have a video sequence of the roller-rack shelving opening and closing.

It is my intention to place all these videos apart from the large-scale projection piece onto the MMMRI monitor. However there may be too much material and I may have to jettison the time-lapse and the roller-rack sequence. If so I will put a link on this blog so people can see them here instead.

time to catch-up (1) ....

2010-04-13T01:52:00.000-07:00

the pace has picked up considerably over the last week or so. On Easter Saturday, I met Damian at a wet Malton station and we then drove into Dalby Forest. Damian wanted to record the acoustic characteristics of the forest so he can use this "acoustic signature" in his soundscape for Mesolithic Interventions.

We push our way deep into the pine forest an soon we reach a suitable spot well away from the road ... though I am not sure quite what made this spot more suitable than the infinite number of similar spots around us.

There is much hand-clapping and listening to the sound fall off. The trees are planted close together, along narrow ridges with shallow furrows in between - a sort of throwback to 18th and 19th century narrow ridge and furrow agricultural practice. I guess Damian has chosen this spot because the trees are slightly further apart. Every now and then we hear a car passing in the distance, an aeroplane far overhead, a bird calling.

Damian rigs up the audio recorders: two Edirol devices. These recorders are quite astonishing. They are very small, they record professional quality sound, and the battery seems to last forever.

The edirols are taped to to a mic stand. Each device has twin built in microphones. The recorders are rigged so the microphones point in opposite directions. After more level adjustments the fun begins.

We have a pack of balloons. I retreat about 10-15m from the recorders into the forest. I then blow up a balloon. Ita ages since I have inflated a balloon and clearly my lung capacity isnt quite what it used to be - memo to self, more exercise! - anyway after much hufffing and puffing I inflate the first balloon. I crouch under the branches, balloon in one hand, pin in the other. No cars, no aeroplanes, no birdsong, Damian is happy so .... BANG! i pop the first balloon. The explosion is amazingly loud, it echoes around the forest for ages - an incredibly lively acoustic.

We then repeat this until all the balloons are gone and Damian is content that he has sufficient data to work with. We pack up and we emerge from the forest liberally dusted with pine needles, twigs clinging to jackets, trousers and hats.

my god it's almost April ... !

2010-03-28T06:47:00.000-07:00

good grief ...

yesterday I went out to meet Martin at Wykeham Mature Plants; we had a very good and useful conversation ... now why would I be blogging about that, you ask yourselves? ... more of that later ...

the concept that we intend to explore in the exhibition Mesolithic Interventions is that of the journey ... for us this has emerged as a key theme in our work over the last four months:

we have journeyed into the archives;

we have made our own journey through the modern Star Carr landscape;

we have learnt about the journeys that hunter-gatherers would have made through the mesolithic landscape;

we have made a collective journey of understanding into the Mesolithic and contemporary thinking about the Mesolithic;

and we have continued on the journey which is developing Geodesic Arts collaborative practice.

... more later

Mesolithic Updates ...

2010-03-22T15:15:00.000-07:00

... good grief how time flies ...

in the past month we have

walked around the landscape at Star Carr
gathered bits and pieces from the woodland and fields around Star Carr
visited the nearest point on the modern coastline to Star Carr (Cayton Bay)
interviewed Andrew, Nicky, Ben and James in the Yorkshire Museum library
spent a day with Nicky, various students and James studying the fine art of flint knapping and arrow making
checked out what bits and pieces might be available to borrow from the "archive"
obtained clearance from the conservators to bring an unusual object into the exhibition
assessed the Studio space in the Art Gallery in the light of all the above
we have a title for the exhibition Mesolithic Interventions

and ... we have now a pretty good idea about how we will bring all this together into an exhibition that we will have to install on the 18th April!!! HOORAY!!!

In the research we have done so far, one of the key concepts that has emerged for me is that of the journey ... as the project has developed we four artists have made several journeys:

into the landscape;

into the archive;

into the territory of the "experts" ...

I suspect that the concept of the journey would not be alien to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer, although he or she would have expressed the concept in very different terms ... however, the process of going to and from the sea, of moving around the landscape to exploit different resources at different times of the year, of meeting other kin-groups and negotiating taking a "husband" or a "wife" ... these would all have represented journeys of different magnitudes and importance ...

we do not know how they were disposing of the dead at Star Carr. How did they weave memory and ancestry into their lives and into the landscape? What markers, physical and psychological, did they place in the landscape? what mental journeys were they making?

can we, 10000 years later, imagine a Mesolithic psycho-geography?

and ... action!

2010-02-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

We have all been involved with a range of other projects, so at last its good to get a few dates in the diary for some more research for this project.

On Monday 8th February we will have the opportunity to have a look around the laboratory in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. We will be able to have a close look at the material that Nicky Milner has excavated at the Star Carr Mesolithic site.

We are also going to get an opportunity to work with and interview Andrew Morrison (Keeper of Archaeology, Yorkshire Museum) Nicky Milner (lecturer at the Department of Archaeology ... damn I want to meet Ray Mears too) and James the flint-knapper. This will happen on the 5th and 6th March.

A third element of the research for this project will be a walk through the landscape from Star Carr to the coast. Why? Well, the archaeological evidence from Star Carr appears to establish a link between the Star Carr site and the coast. The landscape today between Star Carr and the coast is very different from the Mesolithic landscape; the sea is also a lot closer to Star Carr than it was 10000 years ago. However, we feel that a walk will provoke debate and reflection on what it means to pass through the same localities as the Mesolithic inhabitants but with very different backgrounds, experiences and cultural understanding.

These three pieces of work have arisen from a lot of thinking, reflection and discussion that we four artists have had over the last two months. I have reflected on what is an archive in my last post to this blog. We have been thinking through what the Mesolithic means ... it is after all one of the least well known of all archaeological periods. As Sellars and Yeatman wrote in 1931:

The first date in English History is 55 B.C. in which year Julius Caesar (the memorable Roman Emperor) landed, like all other successful invaders of these islands, at Thanet.

And the Mesolithic ends some 5000 years before Julius Caesar became the memorable Roman Emperor.

But i thnk I will leave that discussion until the next post.

about "the archive"

2009-12-29T12:33:00.000-08:00

This project is called "Artists in the Archive". So, what is an archive? (We will leave the question of what is an artist for another time.)

Standard dictionary definitions and thesauri entries tell us that an archive can be A place or collection containing records, documents, or other materials of historical interest or a record office, museum, registry, repository. An archaeological archive is, we are told, All parts of the archaeological record, including the finds and digital records as well as the written, drawn and photographic documentation.

This is interesting territory. An archive can be a place or a collection containing materials of historical interest. An archaeological archive includes the finds. Let's consider a field.

A field is after all a place. There may be deposits below the surface of the field that contain objects placed or discarded many centuries ago. Strictly speaking, these buried objects are not finds, because they havent been found. So they cant be part of an archaeological archive. But the field is a place. And it contains a collection of materials which are of historical interest. These objects, in those deposits, in that place ... does this constitute an archive?

Clearly the concept of archive involves much more than the simple idea of something being somewhere. It is more than having a cabinet stuffed full of blue jugs or a field or garden full of dead Romans.

For an object to become part of an archaeological archive, as defined above, it has to become a find - it has to be found. The object is taken from its context and placed in a series of other contexts. The object moves from soil to the finds tray; from the finds tray to the storage box; from the storage box to a place where it is conserved; from conservation it will be taken somewhere and analysed; it may go into long-term storage; possibly it is put on display and viewed; it might be lent for display elsewhere; researchers may come and study it; an artist might ... be creative with it.

The object is taken further and further away from its original context in an attempt to create an understanding or series of understandings of the object, its use, its contexts. On this journey the object gains value. It is cared for and carefully looked after. It is numbered, described, it acquires documentation. Now the documentation needs to be looked after as well.

An array of individuals is drawn in: the excavator, the finds person, the site director, the conservator, the specialist, the museum curator, the collections manager, the cleaner who polishes the glass display cabinet, the van driver, the security guard, the museum visitor, the researcher ... .

On reflection, the archive isnt a place, or a collection, it isnt a museum or a depository. To me the archive represents a process of engagement.