M.A.R.I.N. on return journey

Archive for September, 2009

Posted:
September 27, 2009
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M.A.R.I.N. on return journey

Isle of Man Big thanks to AND Festival; such a great start for a new event series. M.A.R.I.N. residency vessel departed Liverpool on Sunday morning after 6 am and set path to Isle of Man, Fort William, Inverness, Copenhagen. This jourey is mostly transit, and time to reflect, and work on writing. The two past months of residency was full of extremely interesting encounters with local marine scientists, artists, and folks from different communities. Besides, it was full on work with authoring, yet we also got to enjoy the festivals, ISEA2009 and AND.

M.A.R.I.N. residency can be developed a lot, of course, but what is exciting is that even with a year’s lead to production this Irish Sea residency was a great success. I would like to thank the participating artists, sailors and collaborators on shore, and not least, all the funders who made the work possible.

Image of Isle of Man before sunset.

Posted:
September 22, 2009
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Abandon unsustainable residencies

M.A.R.I.N. vessel at Tate Liverpool M.A.R.I.N. is an investigation in how an art and science residency itself can be sustainable and mobile at the same time. Our main area of research are marine biological and cultural ecosystems. For the AND festival, we abandoned flights for a 11-week residency at the Irish Sea. We sailed an equivalent of 4 hours of flight distance, from North of Germany to Scotland, onto Northern Ireland, and arriving to the coast of Cumbria. Hosted by Folly (Lancaster) we did workshops with SoundWave (Workington), The Dock Museum & Dropzone (Barrow-in-Furness) and Tate & Fact (Liverpool).

Workshop participants have contributed with sound, video and stills, some of which you can listen to at Ecolocated Pool group page. For example, youth from DropZone at Barrow-in-Furness did an hour long rap with their own rhymes, and Tate Youth contributed interviews with friends and family of the changing maritime culture of Liverpool. Some fragments are also uploaded to the Ecolocated map based interface, which includes arrival ship blog to Belfast, and audio and water quality data sonifications around the Albert Dock. An experimental stage version of this interface can also be viewed on 3G mobile phones using your browser, and the URL http://marin.cc/ecolocated/mobile.

IMG_1292 You can read blog entries by the resident artists Tapio Mäkelä (FI), Nigel Helyer (AU) and Andreas Siagian (ID), who have collaborated on the project Ecolocated – Littoral Lives.

In Belfast, the Ecolocated team was joined by Michael Lake and Daniel Woo, with whom we authored a major 12-channel surround sound, locative installation, presented at Catalyst Arts gallery, as part of ISEA2009, The International Symposium on Electronic Art. In this work we worked with local marine scientists, historians, ex dock workers and other collaborators. We also measured water quality in the Belfast Lough, map of which was the interface for our project. The end result was a collage where users could navigate through several layers of audio, sonified and visualized data.

Also part of the exhibit here at FACT, The CDPDU (Common Data Processing and Display Unit, M.A.R.I.N. Alpha) by Marko Peljhan, Nejc Trost, and Matthew Biederman, draws satellite marine ecology data and environmental sensor data from a field unit in Santa Barbara, CA, as well as some data from a sister project’s (Arctic Perspective Initiative) expedition to Baffin Bay last month.
In Liverpool, M.A.R.I.N. had a very interesting visit to the British Oceanographic Data Centre, and The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory. We participated to a Shelf sea workshop, where scientists (and electronic engineers really) discussed latest sea bed velocity sensors, HF radar for wave detection. In the basement of BODC we saw a sonde that makes our water measurement equipment seem like kids play: a gliding torpedo shaped UAV, which uses ballast to zigsaw through the ocean. At the end of an inspiring tour, a discussion with 7 researchers opened up real possibilities for future collaboration ranging from semantic, cartographic, visual and haptic interfaces to environmental data.

Posted:
September 16, 2009
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Fishing for Water

The Albert Dock, Salthouse Dock, Canning Dock, Princes Dock, Wapping Dock, Queens Dock and the Coburg Dock – today it’s time to go fishing for water! Andreas armed with the Sonde portable water quality sampling equipment and I with camera and clipboard – save for the want of white lab-coats we would look quite official. So we think but not so to the ever vigilant Port security officials – we are quizzed by a burly buzz-cut fellow with a tell-tail spiral cable falling from his ear. Asked if we have permission we smile and say no, asked what we would do if Andre fell in with all the gear, we say we would take a great photo! At least the guy had a sense of humour!

We move off but resume our sampling work as soon as the official disappears, we must look more convincing to the next chap as he is very pleased to see us and wishes us luck with our research! If it was ten degrees warmer I would fancy a dip in the Albert Dock, the water looks surprisingly clear and the dock walls support a profusion of marine life, principally large Mussels much favoured by immature Herring Gulls who pluck them off and litter the pontoons with the empty shells. Later I discover that the Dock water is tested every two weeks and is of Swimmable quality.

barge_02

We sample along the narrow-boat pontoons in the Salthouse dock and chat with the barge owners, proud of their craft and the heritage of industrial revolution waterways. They are a direct and friendly bunch who unanimously agree that the waterways are radically improved over the past twenty years. It is clearly evident that Britain’s post-industrial condition and the transition from primary industry to a service economy has bought tangible environmental benefits. One could say that Thatcher’s confrontation with the Mining unions that destroyed a major part of working class culture and an entire industry in one fell swoop has ironically set the pre-conditions allowing country to move away from a Carbon based economy!

Posted:
September 15, 2009
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DropZone

DropZone.

8th September – they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that is how we commenced our first workshop with the DropZone lads in Barrow in Furnace – armed with a well prepared power-point brimming with interesting content, our minds primed with burning environmental and economic issues. From a navigational perspective we were way off our mark – the power-point acted like a sleeping draft and our questions probing the local environmental and economic situation ricocheted around the room, in short we had seriously misread the local context.

We struggled, we floundered and at three pm all the lads abruptly stood up and announced they were off – end of story! Maybe, we suggest to the youth workers, the lads could think about our topics and collect some oral histories and photos (please!).

15th September
We stay overnight in Tapio’s Manchester apartment and on the morning of the 15th September Andreas and I drive up to Barrow for our second session, not really knowing what to expect. This time the session is in the DropZone centre and the crew are feeling more at home, playing pool and armed with laptops. Karen, one of the youth workers, had taken them on a Barrow-wide excursion and produced a good range of images but still no audio recordings. Again we tried in a very casual manner to encourage the crew to talk about their experiences and perceptions of growing up in Barrow, with its single industry economy, the Nuclear Submarine business, but again we encountered a mix of reluctance and resistance.

IMG_1622One of the lads had written a rap especially for the workshop and I began to nudge him gently to perform it but again no dice. Looking around the chill-out space we realised that it was equipped with a DJ rig so we try again with the rap business and suddenly the penny dropped – we were saying it was cool to turn the decks on in the middle of the day. The youth workers flinched a bit but the surge of enthusiasm was overwhelming, the guys exchanged their reticence and truculence for high-octane activity – and so the afternoon continued, high volume, high energy and total immersion in the medium. We end the day with a series of high-fives and dude handshakes – think we survived the experience!

The moral of the story – The Medium is the Message.

Posted:
September 12, 2009
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Kingdoms and Ports

Albert_dock6 We were spending several days in Liverpool Marina before we go to Albert Dock for our participation in Abandon Normal Devices (AND) festival. The sunny and warm weather greets us in the early morning. It is our first reunion with hot summer during this project; at last! Tapio and Nigel have to be away on the weekend which makes Captain Lars(I call him Cap) and I  spending the weekend and share the boat together. First thing in our plan was to do an exploration and see some of the local cultures and identities of Liverpool.

After visited Liverpool’s main attraction, Cap took me on a small boat tour cruising from Coburg dock to Albert dock. Cap have an idea to do a business with our small boat by giving a tour, rivalling TheYellowDuckMarine! After one second of hard thinking, I said no! We decided to amuse orself by sightseeing along the canals that connecting the docks.

All this short exploration have showned strong maritime history and culture of the city! The big docks and ports in Liverpool remind me of an old belief in Indonesia saying; “A great kingdom must have a great Naval force”. This belief have been one of the foundation of the three early kingdom in Indonesia named: Tarumanagara, Sriwijaya and Majapahit. We can also see simillar things of the kingdoms in South East Asia through Ayuttaya Kingdom in Thailand who also have strong maritime history in the past. It’s too bad there’s so little evidence of such beautiful docks in Indonesia comparing as we seen in Liverpool and Bangkok. I guess we can’t be too greedy and satisfied with the temples.

Posted:
September 10, 2009
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Tiny Emission

leaving Whitehaven After spending several days in Whitehaven, we finally have a clear sky to head sail to Liverpool. We say goodbye to the Harbor Master in the afternoon as we headed south with small waves on our path. We’re doing 6 knots in average with the help of mild winds on our sail, slowly “drift” us to our destination. The landscape view was amazing with several old structures stand on it. One of it was an old coal mine on top of the hill located in south of Whitehaven.

We passed across Sellafield, an old nuclear powerplant that is located near the shore on our way south.We took a water quality reading while we were on the nearest shore to Sellafield, looking for some environmental hazard on the site. Our equipment were unable to detect such things, the reading was quite normal. It seems that if the problem was there, it will need more advance equipment and intensive research to be done to detect such. We stored the data to sonify it during AND festival in Liverpool.

As we enjoyed the sail until night came, Nigel and I were talking and having hot tea to warm ourselves from the cold breeze. Nigel spotted tiny blue-green light on the surface of the sea. They appeared as small light many times by the ripple path from the catamaran. Looking at it’s size and light intensity, there’s only one possibility explaining what it was. Bioluminescence, a light emission produced by a certain marine micro-organism from an phylum called dinoflagellates was responding to the vibration from the ripple from the catamaran. This interesting creature have created an interesting discusssion between us. It was unexpected sighting for us to saw them in Liverpool bay since as far as we knew that most of them were seen in warmer sea region.

As we approcahed Liverpool dock, wind turbines welcome us with their blinking red lights. We didn’t knew them at the beginning and thought they were the main entrance to Mersey River. I really enjoyed the sailing experience on this day and was also capturing what Nigel have wrote in this blog; WhiteHaven to Liverpool; An Illustrated History of Power. The main fossil fuel that is used by human for generating power today is coal. The thermodynamic of coal powerplant used today is about 30%, which means about 70% of it will turn in to waste heat. Dinoflagellates however, have gone through millions of years evolution to produce their own light emission. What an advance tiny creatures they are.

As we reached Liverpool Marina in the early morning, we were too tired to do anything more. The sail was great but nearly took our entire energy the whole day. After I desalinate myself, I was imagining a city with light bulbs powered by dinolagellates. An advance light emission by converting chemicals to energy. Or Chemiluminescence: Maybe? Crazy! or: Nice!

Posted:
September 9, 2009
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WhiteHaven to Liverpool; an illustrated history of Power

Finally the winds have moderated and even the sun has consented to make an appearance so we are resolved to keep to our sailing schedule and make for Liverpool and the AND (Abandon Normal Devices) festival at FACT (Foundation for Art and Technology). On board there are multiple interpretations concerning the state of the tide and our relentlessly enthusiastic skipper Lars is eager to slip away at the earliest possible moment. Out of the Sea Lock and into the ocean, then unfortunately straight onto a sand bar! We churn our props, shimmy off the bar, try again whilst listening to hopeful comments from the lock-keeper over the VHF. But discretion being the better part of valour we return to our berth and I fall into a well deserved stupor in the morning sunlight on the foredeck trampoline.

Three hours later we make a successful (and more dignified) exit. The ship cruises south past the hulks of coal mines perched along the cliff tops. Whitehaven once boasted the deepest mine shafts in the world and the first undersea coal mines, it also could report a terrible record in human tragedy, employing children as young as eight years old to extract the energy source that fueled the Industrial Revolution.

Eastward in the haze we spy the towers and reactor buildings of Sellafield, a nuclear re-processing plant, re-named from Windscale in an attempt to sidestep the former nuclear generating station’s notorious safety record and to dis-associate it from its other role as a producer of weapons grade plutonium for Britain’s Nuclear arsenal. Truly a site of cold-war industrial archeology, as these two incarnations are co-located with Calder Hall, the worlds first commercial nuclear power plant. Needless to say the waters in this vicinity are amongst the most radioactive in the world – we decide not to swim!

sellafield1

We sail further south passing a series of oil and gas rigs beginning to light up in the gloaming on the horizon like drifting apartment blocks. As night closes in we approach the mouth of the Mersey estuary to confront a confusion of flashing red lights dotting the horizon. A check of the electronic charts shows no source for them but careful scrutiny with binoculars reveals that we are sailing towards a vast array of wind turbines planted out in the ocean. We debate their disposition and distance and finally choose an approach that avoids being sliced and diced!

Liverpool was my introduction to city life; I studied Sculpture here and used to sail the Mersey on a regular basis. In those days we had a strong aversion to contact with the river water which exuded an acrid chemical odour (courtesy of Lever Bros et al) a full immersion in which was said to require a tetanus injection! We enter the river my nose expectantly aquiver – but to my surprise the river has seemingly returned to a healthier state, silt filled as usual but without the chemical tang!

We glide past Seaforth, passing a procession of outbound merchant ships, passing New Brighton to starboard and then the entire river is ours alone, the city’s shining reflection across its glassy surface.

At one in the morning we tie up to the harbour wall and I’m climbing a sea-wall ladder to beat down the door of the Coburg lock-keepers station. Two sleepy, good-natured lads stumble out of their bunks and within an hour we are berthed, showered and in our bunks.

Posted:
September 6, 2009
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Sound Waves

DSC02060.JPG As part of the collaboration with the AND Festival, M.A.R.I.N. artists in residence did a 2-day workshop with sound artists from SoundWave, a music and sound art organization from Workington. We met first on the catamaran docked in Whitehaven for informal discussion and dinner, introductions, and telling about our work and journey so far. In between several days of gushy winds, we enjoyed a cool and crisp, calmer evening.

We joined SoundWave at their offices in Workington for a show and tell, first myself, Nigel Helyer and Andreas Siagian discussed sound art in contexts of public space, locative work, and ecology. SoundWave coordinates programming for a nice 8-speaker rig in the town centre called The Hub, originally designed by BASE Structutes for the Allerdale Borough Council, and including work by Illustrious Company (Martyn Ware and Vince Clarke).

DSC02081.JPG The Hub’s soundscape was quite beautiful, giving a sensation of for example sea birds hovering above you. Emma Foxall presented a community project called Sonic Picnic that they had realized at The Hub, from which one got a real sense of building community ownership through participation.

Also Steven Pearson, Dave Camlin, Mark Newport, and Dave Roberts discussed their work, in particular in the context of The Hub, 3D recording and authoring. Soundwave had also realized an interesting project called Slate Song at the Honister Slate Mine last Spring. Performed in the mine, a 1.5 tonne “Musical Stones of Skiddaw” instrument had been performed together by a mezzo-soprano and fiddler (Mike Newport).

Posted:
September 5, 2009
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WhiteHaven

“Once the second biggest port in the country…..” reads the legend on the harbourside public art project, well this is hard to imagine as Whitehaven is a barnacle of a harbour, brooding stone walls clinging to a wave wracked, cliff-bound coastline and boasting an entrance that can be terrifying in rough weather (see previous post “White Knuckle to Whitehaven”). Some large amount of EU money must have been poured into the town since the collapse of the Coal industry as it carries its history in a proud and well ‘interpreted’ manner.

Not everybody liked the place however, one of its own, Jean Paul Jones, who sailed from here at the age of thirteen came back as a commander of a US naval vessel during the war of independence, spiking the guns of the shore batteries and sinking shipping around the coast ~ he must have had a bone or two to pick!

We are harboured here whilst making forays up and down the coast, workshopping with regional arts groups, discussing their connections with the local communities and the environment. Our plans to visit Barrow in Furness in the boat are abandoned as the English summer continues to emulate the Icelandic winter, howling winds driving breakers over the harbour mole – we happily revert to land lubbers!

Posted:
September 4, 2009
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2-day break and a great sail

We said farewell to Belfast and ISEA2009 on the night of September 1st, as weather forecasts suggested foul weather for the seas the following afternoon. M.A.R.I.N: catamaran set sail for Isle of Man during moonlight, arriving morning of the 2nd to Port Mary. We spent the day walking over hills with beautiful heather, sheeps and occasional posh housing estates here and there. Lars bought some scallops from a local fishery, which were perhaps the best on the planet. It was great to rest after 5 weeks of non stop work.
We sailed across to Whitehaven with winds up to 17 m/s from the North West, our travel speed around 10 knots yet reaching 18 knots on downsurfing the big waves. We got wet allright, but it was a great sail. Upon arrival to the Whitehaven marina, we just made it through the pier heads… there was only one try, or a splintered boat.
Today we have been gathering our thoughts and working away, getting ready for the AND Festival worksohp series hosted by Folly and FACT.

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