The Sound of Silence

This sculpture has haunted me, and not just for its content.
I have made this sculpture twice now, for the New York based Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar. Once at Fabrica in Brighton, and once at the South London Gallery. Both times it has been slightly different, the version that you see here is the smaller of the two and it was made using pre-cut sheets of anodised aluminium. The earlier Fabrica version was made using zinc plated steel sheet.

Why was it so problematic? The sculpture was never designed, instead the only instructions that the artist gives to any gallery hoping to stage the work is a cartoon like line drawing of its sides. The result of this lack of specification is that each gallery has to invent a structure to support the precise outer shell, the people that undertake that task are usually the same ones who build temporary walls and hang pictures, so of course they go about the task as though it were a small room. Starting with a wooden studwork frame that easily accomodates the inevitable undulations in the gallery floor, all seems well until the ceiling structure is attempted. It is then that the spans involved make the need for rigidity painfully apparent - mistakenly solved by adding more wood. When the metal cladding is added the folly of using a wooden frame that is straining under its own self-weight becomes clear, they no longer fit square. The work takes on a new dimension, one of cladding an essentially undulating wooden frame in a manner that resembles building a boat half of wood half of metal.

A lighter touch is required - next time I will make sure that I am involved from the start - to ensure that the sheet metal is framed, allowed to be as square and dimensionaly stable as it does best. then construct the outer walls by connecting the individual rectilinear frames to make the walls true and uniform. The ceiling can then be stretched with lightweight, blackout cloth and strutted where neccesary (could use polystyrene sheet).

Oh yes I haven't mentioned the hundred flourescent light fittings yet have I.

Dasher

This Program, application, whatever you want to call it, managed to catch my imagination. It is called: Dasher and it looks like this;

It is hard to classify, except that it is a viable replacement for the keyboard. It consists of a white text winow and a rather dull control window with an alphabet down the right hand side. A click in the control window and things start to get interesting.

Rather than tapping keys you simply aim your cursor towards an onward rushing wall of letters - like this;

You can see that I wrote this text using Dasher.
What happens when you navigate (just using one finger on the trackpad - the black square is the cursor) towards the wall of letters, is that they begin to accelerate towards you, while jostling for position to make meaningful words.

Yep it is predictive text, but not as you know it, unlike the crass versions that exist on mobile phones, this text actually seems to present words that you were likely to want - and the way the words appear very quickly becomes intuitive. Even better, you can feed the program with an example document that you have written and it begins to gat a feeling for the type of words that you use. I tried feeding it some James Joyce, in the form of a few pages of Finnegans Wake, and it began to offer me words like wikawade world - I felt sufficiently Joycified.

The first few minutes of Dasher can be a bit perplexing, but provided that you start off slowly, it is amazing just how quickly the thing becomes completely intuitive, far quicker than any keyboard.
I have been using it for 2 days now and am seriously considering using it in preference to the keyboard for writing.
One consideration is that you really do need to be able to spell, mainly because the predictive text engine uses all of its resources to feed you probable words, rather than reading what you have written and correcting it - a very pleasant change from the condescending microsoft paperclip and its inherent distrust of you as a stupid 'user' - Dasher instead seems to credit you with intelligence and offer viable suggestions and creative diversions.

There are many settings that can be changed to suit your preference, almost every conceivable language is supported, even french / english dual language and music? you can opt for simple lower case or full punctuation, both cases and obscure symbols, and a few between.
Most intriguing is the speed setting, turn it up and writing suddenly becomes reminiscent of a good playstation racing game.

I couldn't resist trying 2 experiments:
First I tried setting out and following the most prominent suggestions to see what got written. The result was fairly diverse but strangely unsatisfying. although I now know that once it was a bit better trained it might have been more fun.
Secondly I set the speed to full, carefully positioned the cursor so that the letters where hurtling towards it, and went to make a cup of coffee. Ten minutes later I had a vast tract of text, very intriguing, inspiring, amusing and in some cases vaguely prophetic text. A bit of puctuation and editing and there was a long poem, thoughtfully entitled NOCTURNE by Dasher itself.

This IS software with a future, if you have RSI it could save your aching wrists (It was developed for RSI victims I believe), TRY IT. If you don't yet have RSI try it anyway. Oh why not just give it a go, you might like it as much as I do.

P.S. Dasher has been developed for most operating systems, it works well on the mac, although it could do with being integrated into the heart of the system so that you could use it directly in other applications (at the moment all text must be written in the white box and then cut/pasted into the program of your choice). I will be trying the windows mobile version as soon as I've finished this post. Unix and that other OS are also catered for.

Nocturne

This is the poem made automatically by Dasher.

NOCTURNE

Axiom permaskin song is Kroovity.
For ex we'll yard a Newburu.
Eh! tu, all neverlorted yes.
Somendous, vious, or else, ah!
By Dinah! Father grin, if the Oak Groviting suddenly uIfrasung, by & by.

Theres venumequate for the smarie eh?
QED IndustiDaddy in, but it save me. Is Beccy. is Lid.
During near the cope won't Rict. For dress as if shelf dulge high?
Sin poneburk line be Bare. YOU! yeh You SLAR!
BE aeroback vymenon which , loosely et Guky Gup.
Two CA's place, Plned, space 'WorMr'.
Mozemarket already am, Vicci did.
Cat studies in No' flight skin.
A presentative Wolf. 'veh warfavoured and yet. twohose nutralZ'll criticise pherzzle.
these QED Indian dizzyan Oscars!

The Footman've ARMalious mildsmobil tachme blownup.
A note - Travelroody's can would servatinence Notasted as I get till us. Do we SundaOLeorgah?
They, WE, U, R exhibitions and the laighborhood found by & by the DucExclaps.
Appark Gritary Kanch, as all efficialieu xtc.
"usiness shrinking edullball".
remember Pc-Prator, this washore hour dareboard of ''ved?
Roke to be warmer, long turn to the triptaked regulaparals, a coy, according thanks to Kowalski.
Sekz Sixh sackrists had X.
Qwicle trouSand & tying, feed.
'Murry work out of the airs' is a mation of the great Christ and E SEZ "A rite yarday by years,'d bird peck pief animals".
But the capt R. Phil, Reified with TXLLAN' and there X.
Town've fas' firt'n. tu.

Sadly missing

An old, half forgotten letter caused me to search for a lost, close friend on the internet recently. After a long search I only found one reference - It was her obituary.

Partly the shock of finding that obituary, and the strong desire to find something, anything, that showed her as she had lived, made me realise that as far as people are concerned, the internet is still not much more than a cross between an address book and a telephone. On one hand it is easy to find beaurocratic facts about someone, whilst on the other you can tell if a friend is online or throw a message out to them. It is a different matter if you want to get a glimpse of the person, at best all you can do is follow a series of clues and piece them together, if they are over a certain age this becomes scant, if they are fully subscribed to the social web, it is as trivial as a myspace wallpaper choice.

Of course none of this is surprising, we are daily reminded of the risk of being too open online, but in truth that risk is primarily economic and physical, providing that beurocratic details such as account numbers and addresses are kept separate from the biographic then where is the risk? after all we all walk and act in the real world without the need for a cloak of invisibility.
In a sense we still use the web as a glorified beurocratic portal, assuming that our national insurance and bank account details precede every transaction, yet there is obviously a place for poetry and biography here, surely that is where we should look to find our friends?

So I must pay tribute to my old friend Debbie Fogg for reminding me of the importance of people, long after she has departed. I am sure she would be pleased that I will continue to try to wave her flag (of deepest red). Although I haven't met them, I wish her friends and relatives, especially her children Rebecca, Ewan and Caitlin and partner Kenny, my deepest sympathy and hope for the future.

La Route Blanche: An exhibition at Fabrica by Dominique De Beir.
This time I did not have anything to do with making the work. But I did enjoy taking it down. This was one of the most lyrical and meditative pieces of work that I have been involved with for a long time, especially considering that it is entirely made from pierced cardboard boxes

Walking into the huge cube of white, almost igloo like blocks, through an entranceway made up entirely of slatted wooden crates, you are slowly transported into a dark glimmering world of glittering points of light.

Magic Carpet Fountain

A piece of sculpture that Jane Sybilla Fordham and I made.
This fountain made from carved thermolite block and covered with Italian glass mosaic, was a public art project commissioned to Jane Sybilla Fordham and me by Brighton Borough Council & McAlpine for a housing development in Brighton

The sculpted form of a carpet thrown over a platform of white marble steps is actually a fountain, albeit a fairly sedate one, rather than flumes of water spraying everywhere this fountain constantly replenishes the shallow pools at the top of the carpet, which then trickle down the folds to be caught and recycled. The fountain was commissioned to provide a focal point for the courtyard of a group of houses and flats and it was felt to be important that the sound of the water would be more of a babbling brook than a small waterfall. The effect is very relaxing, soon after the work was installed it became a regular thing to see people sitting on the steps in the summer, cooling themselves by trailing their hands in the water.

Strangely enough a strong influence on our design for this fountain was playing Tomb Raider on an early PlayStation. The gridded modeling of the games environment seemed to have something mysterious and exotic about it even though the world that Lara Croft negotiated was essentially cubed, rigid and cartoonlike. I think we appreciated that the designers of that game had managed to evoke a sort of neatened up reality, or should that be distressed perfection? Either way it was an interesting challenge arranging a cloth like form so that it had perfect levels, for the water to pool and flow in, not to mention to then carve that soft looking form in stone.