I have a thing for work spaces, be it a garage or a studio, Must be something
to do with growing up around garages with Dad as a mechanic . Having a man space now
myself,means I always compare the tool storage/creative activity area I have now. With one that I grew up with. My Dads garage has been used
for many things since we moved house in 1978 ,Dismantled Cars, Racing
Car Storage and my attempt at building a replica Apollo Rocket (that
worked) But now the aesthetic of the space has me just standing in it
every time I visit the UK. Admiring the high alter of storage, where
stuff is stored and latent tools await the future . Until as always my
Mum asks me what I am doing in the garage.
My British Childhood is vaguely religious,
with strange days spent in the Village Hall, Schools days spent in
assemblies wearing Daps. Or haunted rainy days spent indoors watching the dreamy world of TV. Full of, weird French animation with obscure jazz soundtracks,The Clangers,experiments in garden sheds and Spike Milligan’s Q There was even some more bonkers stuff.
At worst it was slightly creepy and malevolent
with certain menace lurking behind next doors curtains. At best it’s
very English,with a cultural strain leading from David Bowie to
Radiohead, Dr Who to Banksy.
Its a Strange late 1960’s hangover, post hippy, with slightly folked up sensibility and a Punk can do attitude.It seeped into my subconscious, Leading to an amateurish adulthood of Bad Science,Dark Humor and World War Two sensibilities.
Although if the main strain of Television I watched
while growing up was correct (as it should be) the vision of that brave
new world by now should be here, I would be living in a sexy spandex suit
provided by the welfare state on Vulcan,eating food pills and having
sex in zero-G with all manner of pleasure droids in a distinctly English way.
When NASA’s Apollo space missions took off for the
Moon in 1969, the world was already gripped by science fiction, Not
Science tomorrow but Science in 40 years,(where I am now) this white
hot vision of the future,fueled Film, TV and books of all types to
promote an imaginative vision of the future, whether utopian or
dystopian.
By my teenage years,I lamented that I missed out
on the swinging sixties,its visions of urban utopias,its teenage
revolutionaries, its sex,drugs, and rock and roll.
But hell I grew up in the seventies and men with
pointy sticks, flair trousers and side burns were telling me about how
good the late nineties were going to be and not only in science
programmes.I was going to be laid in the future and it was only a short teleport away.
My formative decades watching the box promised so much more
than today’s 24/7 TV with their 64 rubbish channels, You actually have
to be a certain age to remember waiting patiently for the next
programme. Waiting for your future entertainment. In
between programmes the TV displayed a disappearing clock to keep you
occupied or a test card, which could hypnotically transfix me,on our then new 24inch colour
television.
By 1978 I was lapping up a diet of The Tomorrow
People, The Prisoner, Blake 7,Thunderbirds,UFO,Dr Who,Space 1999 and
Tomorrows World.
My dedication to that tube had a world that included
Glowing Alien births, Strange Parallel Universes, Funky Guitar Solos,
Groovy Jazz, Perspex Oracles, Exploding Extra Terrestrials, Rigid
Hairstyles, Spray on Catsuits (for Man and Women), Holidays in Space,
Cars lower than my knee, Rigid Plastic Bras,Strange God
like people and Stranger Daemens,Intergalactic power storms and nude
kick ass geeky girls all on one electric box in the corner flashing
a psychedelic red alert.
This personal and sexual liberation of
my technological utopian future, always seemed to be just around the
corner when I was 12 , so I mourn it from my porn fatigued present,my
adolescent imagination of a post millennium. before all of our pornatopia imagery existed.
So, for my
Birthday we went to Metung, Victoria, a small village on Gippsland Lakes just a
four hour jaunt from St Kilda.
In my steel and
plastic eurobox, In Australia, the drive to any destination down the sinews of tarmac. Are always punctuated by enormous safety signs, ‘7 Fatal Accident,17
Serious Accidents this year don’t be Next ‘and ’Speeding is the
Biggest Killer’ These seem to me, to be less about stifling the dickhead
in people and more about wrapping us up in a nice sheepskin jacket.
Putting your
body into a contraption and travelling at more than 40kmh, means you could
suffer a catastrophic accident and die. If you were a pioneer pilot flying a plane during the 1930s,
there would be no way of ‘closing your eyes to revive’.
VICroads fear
is. We cannot be trusted on these trips. But sooner or later the meditative
effect of foot on throttle and hands on wheel will be replaced by our own
autonomous vehicles. These self-driving carriages will be able to drive you to
your destination of choice, using technology orbiting the globe,Powered by
electricity supplied by their own solar cells backed up with wireless energy
transfer (park your car in a designated spot and recharge) while you play 3D
backgammon on the back seat, with no fear of an accident.
All those nasty random elements of your journey will have been taken into
consideration by a scientist at MIT. It will also come with the mind numbing
effect, of no delight at a new discovery, for there will be none.
The journey to
Metung seemed to be a trip though ideas now lost and looking for meaning
especially as they don't make any economic sense Telephone kiosks, Churches,
and Power Stations. My Birthday to me is always about journeys, Especially as
its a NASA anniversary of the first man mission to Skylab. Space flight was
something that punctuated my formative years. It fired my imagination when I
was five, as it does now. I always seem to be thinking of being fired off, away
from our sphere and moving about in weightless three dimensions on some fantastic voyage.
On the first
morning at Metung, during breakfast it was reinforced again while I read ‘The
Age’. It dawned on me that this tiny outpost had been set up by people who
were so far away from where they started out, it was the equivalent of going to
the moon. The paper had an article on Neil Armstrong, the first person to step
on the moon, making him probably the world’s most famous explorer.
I marvelled at
our now lost ability to travel anywhere and risk all. Here was a man who flew
78 combat missions in the Korean War, who between 1960 and 1962 managed to
travel at 6420kmh (Mach 5.74) and get to an altitude of 63,000 metres while
testing the envelope of the X-15 rocket plane.
Here was also a man who allowed
himself to be strapped iton a rocket with two others in 1969, so he could stand
on an object that orbits our home.Traveling over 500,000 km to get there and
get back. Basically,in a tin foil box no bigger than my car.
From the place
of my birth I have travelled the 18000km to and from Australia many times.
Always in the comfort of big, electronically controlled airplane. Those that
initially travelled to Metung not only travelled the 311km from Melbourne,
overland or by sea, but probably came from all corners of the globe. These
people took part in some heroic voyage, so they could build a better safer
life. These voyages could and did result in people dying in the pursuit of this
idea.
Regretting that
I didn’t use the toilet while in the cafe, I glanced at a tourist information
board about a boat slipway being used during the 1930s for flying boat
refueling. The board showed a weather washed picture of a flying boat.
Not really
paying attention, due to the bladder pressure,I was off on an imagined history
of RAAF Catalina’s and Qantas Empress flying boats using the lakes at Metung as
base during World War Two. While the Catalina’s looked for Japanese Subs,like
the one that sunk the ‘SS Iron Crown’ off Gabo Island in 1942 the
Empress’s transported General MacArthur up the coast, what transpires was
totally different so I should have read the board and had a pee at the cafe.
Australia
suffers from a treacherous coastline, With Victoria being singled out, due to
the higher traffic history between Sydney and Melbourne. The ‘SS Christina
Fraser’,was a collier built in 1925 of 717 tons; Owned by R. W. Miller
& Co.She left Newcastle NSW Thursday 22nd June 1933, on her
maiden interstate voyage bound for Geelong Victoria , she was last
sighted battling a strong gale about six miles south of Gabo Island, by
the steamer ‘SS Koranui’ at 1.50 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 24th
June 1933.
Her late arrival
started an airborne search, that wouldn’t surprise anybody today but which at
the time had every aviator showing bravery as they flew up against a Victorian
Winter. Showing fortitude, proficiency, and self-reliance these men were
pioneers of search and rescue. Their planes made of wood and canvas, their
windows of cellophane (if they had any) and sometimes their transport had their
ability to stay aloft compromised.
On Wednesday
June 28th the ships agent chartered a Saro Cutty Sark for an air
search. A small twin engine flying boat it was piloted by a Mr G. Jenkins, and
left Essendon airport for Gippsland, using Sale for an overnight stop after its
initial search. While searching again on the Thursday 29th the
little Saro with two observers aboard, was forced to make an emergency landing
in the wintery sea, due to engine trouble, caused by a cracked fuel pipe. Luck
was with them, as they alighted on the sea near a Norwegian tanker the‘SS
Varanger’ who plucked the crew and plane from the water.
Friday 30th
June the search was intensified by the owners of the collier.Engaging the
services of the Hart Aircraft Company's triple engine Fokker F.VIIa-3m Trimotor,piloted
by Mr J. Turner, it too left Essendon looking for the missing collier.
The worn picture
on the tourist board depicted what was one of two RAAF Supermarine
Southampton’s (I think it did,I needed a pee).The Southampton was an open
cockpit wooden hulled twin engine, biplane flying boat, weighing 4300Kg with a
crew of five. It made its first flight in 1925 and was used for coastal
reconnaissance.The pilots of this machine would have stepped into an open
cockpit coping with winter weather while two snarling 450hp Napier Lion V
motors assaulted their ears five feet behind them. The RAAF Southampton’s
operated out of Point Cook VIC. Searching the sea for the missing ship since
Thursday 29th but had spent the evenings at Metung.
The RAAF plane
was now flying with six men included a wireless operator and three observers
with powerful binoculars,the flying boat would cover a 1000-miiles over a
section of the Tasman Sea each day.
Adding to the
search on Saturday July 1 1933 was the famous ‘Southern Cross’, Fokker
F.VIIa-3m Trimotor. This left from Mascot Airport Sydney piloted by Sir Charles
Kingsford-Smith, with a wireless operator and an observer; it along with the
other two aircraft flew down past Eden NSW over the area looking for the ‘Christina
Fraser’.
By Monday 3 July
1933 all hope was beginning to be lost, as no sign of crew or identifiable
wreckage had been found. Still the big flying boats spent three & half
hours looking.On July 3rd a radio message from the master of the
liner ‘SS Westralia’ stated that at 7.30 am. an object 10 feet long was
seen protruding 3 feet out of the water 15 miles west of Gabo Island. The RAAF
flying boat flew over the position given but a long search failed to reveal
from tho air any sign of wreckage.
The search was
called off on Tuesday 4th July when it was finally concluding the ship had
founded in heavy winter weather with the loss of all on board. Neither she nor
‘SSKoranui’ the vessel that last sighted her was fitted with
radio apparatus. So no Mayday was ever sent or heard.
Aug 4th
1933 In Sydney an open verdict was recorded by the Commonwealth Marine Court,
which investigated the loss of the missing collier The Court, in announcing its
decision, ex- pressed the opinion that all seagoing vessels on the Australian
coast should be fitted with wireless apparatus (Radio), The Australian
Navigation Law was changed in late 1935 to accommodate this.
The names of
persons on board the vessel at the time of her disappearance were:.John Walsh
Queen, Master; Chas.Wm. Frost, First mate; Arthur W. Lucey, Second mate;Daniel
Palmer, Bosun: Charles. A. Gale, A.B.William England, A. B;Albert Seager A. B.
Paul Kuraimes, A. B;John Stafford Huntley, O.S.; Frank Walker, first engineer:
Robert D. McPherson, second engineer; James Birrell, third engineer; William H.
Olsen, fireman; William Bassett, fireman; Joseph Rogers,fireman;Charles
James,cook and steward; Ernest Collerson,and a boy.
The search for
the missing ship highlighted the remoteness of Gippsland in the 1933. Let alone
when it was first settled in the 1840s, the roads or tracks to this part of the
state , suffered from heavy rain especially in winter and the topography was
hilly.
Born in 1821
Captain Alfred Darby kept a journal of his time afloat. Starting as an ordinary
seaman, he rose to the rank of Captain,. His first attempt at a master was on a
schooner ‘Mumford’ assuming command in the capital of The Philippines,
Manilla.During Oct 1844, he sailed with a cargo of sugar and cigars bound for
Hobart, Tasmania.Unfortunately the ship lost a mast in a typhoon on the way.
The newspapers announcing his arrival two months later Dec 29th.
After other duties and other ships,Darby captained the 'City of Hobart'a
three masted steam ship for five years between 1860-1865,a hundred years before
Armstrong flew the X-15,this ship was battling its own climatic envelope as it
battled across the Tasman Sea between Melbourne and Dunedin with mail and
general cargo.The Newspapers of the time would list his coming and goings
in the miscellaneous shipping adverts.
My winter
Birthday weather was reported as
May 25th
2012
‘A
deep low pressure system over Bass Strait south of Wilsons Promontory will move
steadily south-eastward’s past the east coast of Tasmania tonight then away
across the south Tasman Sea during the weekend. Damaging winds averaging 50 to
70 km/h with peak gusts around 100 km/h are forecast for mainly coastal areas
of the West and South Gippsland and East Gippsland forecast districts. The
severe weather warning for parts of the Central forecast district has been
cancelled, but the situation will continue to be monitored and further warnings
will be issued if necessary.’
It’s easier for
me to check this (took two minutes on the web) but Captain Darby and a host of
other ships would pitch themselves against weather that was not predicted, only
expected time and again. The trip took about 11 days. In 1864 alone, Darby
travelled this route ten times.
In 1865 he took
charge of a coastal Paddle Steamer the ‘Charles Edwards’.
The
Launceston Examiner of June
4 1867 reported that:
‘The Charles
Edward has been In the Gippsland lake trade for some time. She is 129 feet
long, 20 feet beam, and 8 feet deep; 141 tone, 60 horse power, and steams 10
knots.She has accommodation for eight ladies and twelve gentlemen in the
cabin,and about forty in the steerage’
This Paddle
steamer plied its trade along the Victorian coast to the lakes with Captain
Darby until the late 1860s, when Darby would have been in his early 50s. On our
wanders at the back on Metung we saw a sculpture of the ‘Charles Edwards’.
The four hour
trip through Melbourne suburb’s to a cute holiday destination and back, is now
punctuated with signs telling me to go careful. I can read of travels in the
recent past where nobody could stop the ride because they wanted to get off.
But my immediate future now, always seems planned out by committee.
It started to
rain on the way home which the wiper blades of my car dealt with efficiently.
Maybe we are all getting a bit soft.
Artists reference their lives all the time, Maybe
it’s a desire to return to the past or getting trapped by an organising
principle.
Being the manager of my own life and not wanting to let the
inner Artist out without a purpose. I had an Art Pyre at the weekend.
After
being ill for 8 months, turning 44 and now having to wear glasses for
the first time in my life, a burning seemed appropriate.
Metaphorically my
scribbles seem to take up more space than they should. But the catalyst
was talking to a UK street artist who had just sold $50,000 of work.
I had also noticed in Melbourne a candlelight vidual for a
‘Banksy’ It turned out that some people believed that a Chapel Street
wall painted by somebody from Bristol in the UK to be of some supposed
Australian cultural merit.
Every work created with a street artist seems to reference a screen printed 'Warhol’, he did it first.It’s really like trying to be the ‘Sex Pistols’ why bother.(yes I know its stencil Art, but the same principle applies)
While in London earlier this year I saw a ‘Grayson
Perry’ installation. His new works alongside objects made by unknown
men and women from the British Museum’s collection.
It wasn’t perfect
screen prints or past ups but people having a decent stab at craft. Coming up with incredible beautiful but wonky objects.
Street and Non Street artists go through the same process it’s just that Graffiti art is just a bit me too at the moment, Makes me want to burn all my stuff. Oh I just did.....
In my fluoro
shirted locality. There are at this moment, seven apartment buildings scratching
into the sky. The array of equipment brought in, by the builders to pull these erections skywards. Looks like a
small war effort surrounded by traffic cones.
With the
influx of workers comes the ever-present HSE requirements, Flags , Go and Slow
signs, Whistles and the portaloo. The ability to port a toilet into any area is
a relative new thing. But they arrive stacked on trucks, craned into position
for use. Virtually self-cleaning they are able to store the expressed liquids
in their self-contained polycarbonate shell.
Toilets,
potable and public, have
a history back to the mid 18thCentury the first modern, with a flush (in a
Victorian sense) public lavatory, was opened in London during 1852, Constructed
for the ‘The City of London Corporation’ by contractors George Jennings
of Brighton. They were usually underground. Jennings calling them ‘Halting
Stations.' charging 1d, a go.
Initial
Public use of these ‘Halting Stations' was difficult. As it was a topic which nobody
mentioned. But by 1895 Jennings had his underground public conveniences in many
British and Empire towns. With the modernisation of the late Victorian and
Edwardian periods saw the construction of free public conveniences above ground
plus a reform campaign also campaigned for facilities for women, as the early Toilets were
primarily for men.
Now in
the 21st Century a Public convenience is available in shopping
centres, public buildings, pubs and clubs, and motorway services areas. In Australia we have
National Public Toilet Map this shows the location of more than 14,000 public
and private toilet facilities across Australia for Public use
.
These small public spaces are in fact used for all manner of shenagins .We all
know this as condoms, are usually sold in toilets.
Couples, and in fact as many as will fit in, have been engaged in the primary sexual activity of mankind
in a small spaces, since we walked upright.
In Canada recently a couple was arrested for public
lewdness in a pay toilet, but successfully argued that as it was a pay toilet ,
the couple were basically in a form of
hotel accommodation. Gay code for a public toilets in the UK during 1960s was a
cottage, to go cottaging was to have anonymous sex in a cubical, It could involve
all manor of signals and/or glory or Judas holes drilled in walls to view or
perform acts .
In the present we have people using a phone to film themselves
or others polishing the purple bishop in a cubical, Posting this on Websites to
advertising services for those who want to get jiggy in small space. As we now don’t
live in the era ‘self-polluted sin and
all its frightful consequences’ (Dr. Balthazar Bekker) what I propose is
the pay mobile ejaculation space.
A 2003 study in Australia found
that men who ejaculated most (more than five times a week) in their 20s, 30s
and 40s had about a third less instances prostate cancer. Research
undertaken in Japan shows that men take 35 seconds to use a urinal, while women
take a minimum of 60 seconds to use a loo. But the average time for intercourse
is between 7 and 10 minutes. So there is a health benefit and a revenue earning
potential in all this latent sexual energy.
In that suburb of mine, before work and at lunchtime. It’s
a busy time for the ladies who operate outside as chippies, sparkies and
plumbers seek some crotch attention before another shift starts.
Over 40
years after France's May 1968 revolution spawned the slogan "pleasure without obstruction,",
Local authorities should now be looking into ways of making small public spaces
more available.
In
these times of austerity and cut backs, They could install automatic self-cleaning web friendly pay
spaces, We could then all hire The Portable
Fist Pump. In a small movable room that can store bodily fluids, We could communicate,
defecate and fornicate all at the same
time. when nature called.
The WTO declared, 19
November, as World Toilet Day.
I listened on Friday to somebody called “Drake’ stating that a comprehensive plan to arrest all corrupt global bankers and political elite existed, and was being put into action (2012-03-29). Although he wasn't quite sure if it's implementer was the American military, NATO or Disney. Frankly what I got from the interview, really, was his belief that the use of toilet paper made us civilized.
Now centrally located between a million rubbish TV channels and the insidious trap of being permanently on-line. I have put myself through the boredom of listening to this for three hours.
You have to be a certain age to remember actually waiting patiently for the next TV programme to start. Between the school's programmes and just before the News but after a test card, being bored because the telly was rubbish was part of my day, if you don't remember the pre-channel hopping world; you can't help but feeling a little nostalgic for. Although I am getting concerned that boredom now ,is a sleeping bag with no zip.
We all seem to be staring at a cultural dog’s breakfast. Everybody’s ideas are already concerned with nostalgia to the exclusion of everything else. The wistfull toothpaste tube is squeezed out every day to find a solution for the future, extending that nostalgia even to last week.
As human beings we have a maximum aural range that begins at 12Hz to 20,000Hz, the human eye has limits to its vision, the human tongue has approx, 10.000 taste buds and our olfactory range is limited.
Even our brain is limited in size, allowing us to experience only these parameters:
·11 Foods Groups, 5 Basic Tastes.
·7 Colours in the Spectrum,14 basic Pantone Colours.
·7 Basic musical notes.
·750,000 Probable English words.
·7 Basic Human story plots.
Or if you like
·80000 Chinese characters.
All of this is limiting, so we are close to looking into an abyss , but in this case the abyss is the sum of every human experience sent to you via Google. We are drowning in this data feed during our strange love affair with the difference engine.
With a cure close to Altzheimers maybe a drug can be created to treat these cognitive symptoms, memory problems could disappear with the application of this drug so that last week’s cultural life can be taken again. As at this moment, all I see is stuff I have seen before. All what I hear I have heard before.
I usually try to walk a line between a toddler and a conceptual artist but we have got to a point where the regurgitation of cultural output is all that is available.
I except that I am the sum of somebody else’s ideas, but sometimes I see my artistic job, is to mix and mash, where mixing hasn’t occurred before. But even that becoming a strain.
With 21st Century Technology. Sensors are now able to record all of my bodies movements, cameras can record all what I see and recording equipment can listen to my day , People of the future will have J.G Ballards prediction waiting for them .
Fear of the Future J.G Ballard
I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: Boring. And that's my one fear:. That everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.
You have to question the Gorgons stare, when staring at a portal has the option of experiencing somebody else life, Its anaesthetising the us all.We could all become Buddhist.
But let’s arrest 10,000 people across the globe in one go, that’s never been done before.Culturally it'll be great
