Water

Winter Rains

doll_yoko — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:07:17 +0200

Last signs of winter, the heavy rains, the bare branches. Each rain brings memories of the drought which the land has been suffering for years. And the heat waves which are becoming more intense. Summer brings its own dread.

Best foot forward

Lindsay — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:36:48 +0200

Water in Mountains

Armin Medosch — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:26:59 +0200

Man, Machine, Nature

Lindsay — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:58:31 +0200

Some of the research for my post yesterday naturally diversified into the building of the Titanic. As stated in one of my first posts Domestic Sub-Mariner, my first working backgrounds were in engine-based careers; creating with metal also providing a sculptural interest later on when I learned how to weld by arc and mig. The following links then are a spattering of those interests and ones which I wished to share in my research journal.

One fact that interested me was the amount of coal needed to fire the 29 boilers on the Titanic (around 650 tons per day), and the amount of waste that this would incur (100 tone of ash). This was a fact that I'd not really thought about, even though I had lived for years in houses heated only by solid fuel fires that needed cleaned every day; but as I found out, the engine room dealt with this problem in the form of Ash Ejectors.

'The device employed was the Ash Ejector. There were two in each large boiler room, recessed into the coal bunkers at various locations. To dispose of the ash raked from the furnace, a trimmer would fill a barrow and wheel it over to the nearest ash ejector, which consisted of a large grating over a hopper that was slightly above the level of the stokehold floor. The ashes were discharged by shoveling them into the hopper, where they then were drawn down by the rush of air to a water jet which was being discharged through a long inclined pipe, at a pressure of about 150 lb., being maintained by a large duplex feed pump. The water jet carried the ashes up the inclined pipe till, at the upper bend they were deflected and discharged well clear of the ship's side above the water line.' (taken from above link)

Although there is a wealth of photographs and information regarding the Titanic on the internet, I've listed below another few links to diagrams and to the research site that currently investigates the wreck. One of the really interesting links however is the Encyclopedia Titanica. This has comprehensive lists of all passengers and crew on board. This is extremely well researched and has an individual biography for each person, providing a really lovely intimate narrative of the hopes, dreams and lives of the individual, some of whom were locked into the depths of the ship to allow more room for the richer passengers in the lifeboats. Also of interest therefore are the facts and figures of Titanic, which includes a list of all the food taken on the journey and the price of a ticket.

Lost Music

Lindsay — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:58:27 +0200

My research today took a poetic wander. In thinking about the electromagnetic environment and how 'on land' we are submerged in modulated mumblings, my thoughts turned to the electromagnetically silent world of the deep, a world where radio and light don't penetrate, a world that can only be felt through other senses; the skin, the emotions, sound. Today I started looking at the Titanic. Armin's work through his and Hivenetworks Hidden Histories project, has already highlighted the community memory of this tragedy and through their early research, pinpointed one aspect that I found mesmerisingly intruiging; the music that was still being played when the ship went down.

‘What happens to music as it is played in water? On a purely physical level, of course, it simply stops since the strings would fail to produce much of a sound (it was a string sextet that played at the end, since the two pianists with the band had no instruments available on the Boat Deck). On a poetic level, however, the music, once generated in water, would continue to reverberate for long periods of time in the more sound-efficient medium of water and the music would descend with the ship to the ocean bed and remain there, repeating over and over until the ship returns to the surface and the sounds re-emerge’ Gavin Bryars

So today I spent with music, and the musings of the endless 'Last Tune' that the water surrounding the Titanic holds. I re-listened once again to 'The Sinking of the Titanic', a 1973 version of the Eno supported composition of Gavin Bryars, where the last tune of 'Autumn' is played over and over, interspersed with references to human life, quietly passing through the threshold of air to water, to continue for ever at the depth of 3,800 metres.

In looking at Bryars however, I had to listen and take into account more modern takes on this composition. One such interpretation is by London-based musician/artist Robin Rimbaud who works under the name Scanner. Whilst (for me) Bryars composition takes into account the directly quiet relationship between the music and the water, Rimbaud's seems more of an account of the entire disaster. The recent composition is certainly more dramatic, yet in some respects more obvious. Although following Bryar's lead with 'Autumn' as its intro, and some rather nice sound effects such as creaky boards, the compostion departed from the original around the central point, where the Bodhrán sounding a valiance of the third class, made sure that the celtic heart would never be forgotten. There thus followed an audio account of one of the passengers, that nicely brought the listener back round to the more mystical elements of fate. The track then started to disappear with slightly staccato but effective 'cut offs' of sound, interspersing music with the sound of a crowd, until eventually silence. The performance, which was recorded live in 2007, has the sound of the (slightly unsure) audience clapping at the end, which brings the acoustics nicely back round to rain...

Scanners performance can be downloaded for free here.

The final hymn played during those last 5 minutes of the ship's life is identified in an account by Harold Bride, the junior wireless operator, in an interview for the New York Times of April 19th 1912

"...from aft came the tunes of the band..... The ship was gradually turning on her nose - just like a duck that goes down for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind - to get away from the suction. The band was still playing. I guess all of the band went down. They were playing "Autumn" then. I swam with all my might. I suppose I was 150 feet away when the Titanic, on her nose, with her afterquarter sticking straight up in the air, began to settle slowly.... The way the band kept playing was a noble thing. I heard it first while we were still working wireless, when there was a ragtime tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating out in the sea with my lifebelt on, it was still on deck playing "Autumn". How they ever did it I cannot imagine." Gavin Bryars

Fate Ticket

Lindsay — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:15:03 +0200

'One exhibit at Liverpool's Merseyside Maritime Museum is a yellowed envelope whose black-and-red printing announces that it contains "First Class Passenger Ticket per Steamship..." (Then, written in fading brown ink): Titanic.
Because Reverend Holden's wife was taken ill, their tickets, once contained in this unique envelope, were never used. The reverend framed the envelope with the inscription, "Who Redeemeth Thy Life from Destruction" and retained it for years after the sinking.' (Merseyside Maritime Museum.)

Text and image retrieved from Encyclopedia-titanica

lighthouse at sugarloaf point

doll_yoko — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:55:15 +0200

lighthouse at dusk, sugarloaf point, which is around a few hills from seal rocks, central new south wales coast, eastern seaboard of australia . . . it was dark when we returned to the beach house . . . i cooked persian lamb accompanied with rice festooned with slivered almonds, dates and apple, and some salads of carrot and tomato with plum vinegar (my twin said i was brave to mix red with orange), and cauliflower with lemon and parsley from the garden. . . sadly in the haste of eating i forgot to take a photo for TNL

Listening Post

Lindsay — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:11:56 +0200

Listening Post

Lindsay — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:40:34 +0200

Greenfield Scalp

Lindsay — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:14:46 +0200

These are images of the Greenfield Scalp transmitter that serves North Fife and Dundee in Scotland, UK. This is an AM radio transmitter that is owned by the commercial National Grid Wireless network.

The mast is 10 metres high and transmits at 1053 for Talk Sport (1000W for those that know what that means), 1161 Tay AM (1400W), 1242 Virgin AM (500W) and according to one internet table, un night-time pick-up Ciel AM at 981, a French broadcast that I have so far not heard.

This mast attracted me as from the road it looks like a ships mast; the transmitting station sitting in a dip that is not visible from above. The backdrop is the River Tay, which adds to this optical illusion of Tall Ships to shore.

Greenfield Scalp Transmitter from artist1066 on Vimeo.