The Last Post

Post No.10

I have often worked outside on the street, painting a mural or installing a mosaic. Often spoken with the general public while I’m doing it, and not been shy to talk about art, or even why I have made it, until I videoed my wind harp on the sea front car park the other day?

I could see a number of people sitting in their cars watching me take the wind harp out of the boot and tart about trying to take videos of it balancing on the railings....in the rain as well.

I really hoped they were people I did not know.

Yet I am comfortable enough to post this nonsense out on the internet? I was actually dreading someone coming up and saying,

 ‘What you doing’

‘Making a video of a wind harp I made playing in the wind’

‘Why are you doing that then?’

‘Because I wanted to post it on a video hosting site’

‘Why did you make it’

‘Because I invented a little storey about the wind as the creator of everything, and I thought I might be able to make the wind make music as well’.

‘Keep taking the tablets fella’.

I am happy with people I don’t know, knowing I made this wind harp. I don’t mind people who know what I do for a living knowing that I made this wind harp. But if people across the road or people who work in the co-op knew I am embarrassed as I don’t know what their reaction to it is?

The resulting video is actually rubbish as well.

I spent a day or more editing a nice 40 second video with nice transitions and everything, but I could not save it in a file type that video hosting sites are able to upload? So you can only see the raw unedited clip which I can’t even rotate the right way up. Very frustrating.

I attached the harp to the side of the little blue hut and I waited a while............... and it played.

Views of the Little Blue Hut

Building a wind harp.

Post No.9

I looked on tinternet about these harps, they are called Aeolian Harps and they play by themselves in the wind. There is information on how to make them, so I tried it out.

............................................................................The examples shown in pictures on the internet  use these little threaded pegs to tension the wires? These are like the things on a sitar or something! I don’t have access to those, so I figured guitar machine heads are available, and they would do.

It was easy enough to build a box, but I made a lot of modifications with the lid and the wires and placement of the machine heads. It became quite complex.

The main problem I had was that when I tightened the strings, the high tension bent the ends towards each other. Lifting and splitting the layers of plywood apart. I had to attach extra wood so as to be able to screw the top of the box down more firmly.

Then it was ready to try out! It does work, but is inclined to work better upside down. This is something I am unable to explain? It is also rather camera shy, or should I say video shy.

Video is not my strong suit and I am unable to even get the pictures out of my video camera into the computer. I have another camera which also takes videos as well, and I have had a lot more success with that. The next and probably last post from the ‘Little Blue Hut’ I hope to post a video of it working.

A Walk with Cosmo.

Post No.8

This time I walked to the Little Blue Hut with ‘Cosmo’ who couldn’t believe his luck. A dog walk outside of the usual time, excellent.  It was windy, cold and spitting with rain most of the way there and it’s a long way to walk, took something like an hour. Cosmo don’t care about the weather he fully enjoys being out at any time.

I was really looking forward to just getting there, not doing anything when I did get there, just getting there was all I wanted. Cosmo: very happy not getting there and when we did get there he didn’t really like it or want to go in, all nervy and jittery. Eventually he realised I was going in and he had to make the most of it, and he lay down and dosed off.

I took a couple of photos, and in about 2 minutes wished I’d driven as I wanted to go home already and it was still raining. I forced my self to do a couple or three uninspired drawings and decided to go home as it was boring already.

Cosmo’s pleased when we are off, he’s looking and searching for something all the time. I don’t know what he’s looking for, he never finds anything, and he never gets disappointed at not finding anything. But he’s always looking.

Now he’s off round behind this row of boats. These are small yachts all parked up in a row by the sailing club. I’m calling Cosmo ..come on, I want to get home. He doesn’t he’s looking under this boat. I’m standing waiting for his interest to wane and I can hear all the boats are playing a tune in the wind. It’s a bit of an abstract tune, but that’s OK. The wind is blowing the lines or ropes against the hollow metal masts. There are 20 plus boats all going ting, ting, ting, tong, tong, tong playing altogether like an orchestra. A wind symphony. The funny thing is Cosmo’s ready to move on now and trots off along the beach and I’m the one staying behind in the rain. I wanted to take photos but he’s almost out of sight now and I have to catch him up.

As I walk home I have made plans to make a wind harp. They are also known as Aeolian harps. As the weather is rubbish I have decided to construct one at home.

Local Creation storey (part 2).

Post no.7

The North Wind which is one of the four creators’ lives in the North Star, above what we call ursa minor or the plough, this also looks like a sauce pan. These stars are positioned just above the wind farm.

The North Wind keeps all the stars in this sauce pan and each star has a dream inside. The pan is full with these stars and the 30 turbines blow the stars out of the pan every night. As the stars blow into the sky, one of the dreams may visit you in the night while you are asleep, but the dream always returns to the pan before morning for someone else on another night.

Creation of the Animals: they are formed in the same way as the fish. This happens along the cliffs at Reculver. As bits of the cliff break off and fall into the sea on touching the water the dogs, cats, cows, horses, foxes, squirrels and chickens are all formed. All the different kinds of animals created are created in this way, and Reculver has ‘country park’ status because of this, and is protected by the laws of the council.

I have found a stone horse on this beach which never turned into an animal. The process went wrong leaving a stone horse buried in the sands.

Only the head remains visible now. There are other animals in the rocks if you look carefully.

Cameras never lie

Post No.6

I thought the government were really focusing their energy policies on the building of new nuclear power stations. I had heard that there was going to be a new wind farm constructed off Ramsgate or Broadstairs way, a larger one with 60 turbines. But I don’t know if it has been started yet?

Anyway I am sure that’s not what I can see today. I am also sure I would have heard if more turbines were constructed off Whitstable and Herne Bay. Because as it is a clearer day for a change I can see another set of turbines behind these ones?

They are really there: It is true, I have not seen the special construction ships out there, and I thought I had explained the white lights on the horizon. Well they are still there so it’s not the construction of this second set of turbines that’s for sure.

They are definitely there. I can’t match the grouping with the nearer ones. The first set follows a pattern that goes:1.2.3.4.5.5.4.3.2.1 

For a start I can see two groups of three together which is out of sync. with the pattern?

There was rumour that a wind farm was going to be built near Margate, but it was cancelled. Norway is the next country if you travelled far enough in that direction and that might be..well less than a thousand miles, but they don’t belong to Norway I’m sure!

But they are disappearing now and slowly dissolving. Mirages are caused by light passing through hot air and something technical about vertical temperature gradients. 

‘Cant’ see’

Post no.5

It is very often ‘I can’t see’.

I can’t see the wind turbines today. I can’t really see what the point of being an artist is sometimes? I can’t see what this residency is doing, what is it about?

The only thing I can see is that the mirror or internal parts of my camera needs cleaning. I have tried to clean it before, those dark spots remain still! ‘Lens signature’, that’s a good one I think I’ll leave them there.

I am sitting here thinking about why I like these wind mills that are not there? But instead I’m remembering the fall of communism in the USSR. The fall of the Berlin Wall and how all those East European countries were exposed as having terribly corrupt communist leaders, who hoarded the countries wealth for themselves, almost like the Tsar’s that I suppose communism was reacting against. Then I was thinking about the capitalist system and how the banks collapsed through the greed of a money and profit, MP’s expenses, boosting there income, tax avoidance and the abuse of our welfare state. Housing benefit, tax credits unemployment benefit, national health and sick pay a list of great well intentioned things that are totally misused. The crime, the antisocial behaviour, the lost generations that some commentators are predicting all add together to make a gloomy picture of our modern technological society.

Then I forget what I’m thinking because I have been watching a small flock of sea gulls fly from Herne Bay all the way to here and past me and on still further.

It’s all about the individual isn’t it? Me Me Me, what I want. I want more, I want to upgrade larger, replace for better quality. Just a rampant consumer culture, which had a blip, but ‘growth’ is just around the next corner and we can start consuming again like we are used to and it will be back to normal soon.

Well I have noticed that I was reading about Totemic systems of social structure. These have been wiped out by integration programmes now. I am talking about Aboriginals in Australia and Red Indian cultures in America, all broken by expanding European ideas. These totemic societies seem romantic with no crime, but they focus on community and nature which are the issues we need to focus on as a modern society. They don’t focus on the individual; they focus on the welfare of the group or clan, we may equate this to local communities. It is done through identification with a nature, usually an animal. I can’t help wondering if these ‘primitive’ people were actually way more sophisticated than we thought and we should have learned from them and been influenced by them, and solved our own social problems if we had tried to see things their way.

I like the wind turbines because they are a totemic symbol for the wind people, who ever they are, but they must live round here somewhere?

White Lights?

No.4

I walk along the sea front in the evenings with Cosmo regularly. When it’s dark I can always see that there is always a line of white lights on the horizon?

The red lights are obviously on the turbines. Are they boats or ships on the horizon? Well er no because they are too regularly placed, and they are always there?

Then one late afternoon I realized the answer to the puzzle which was getting a little tedious because I kept on wondering about it. I took this picture from the Little Blue Hut and it all fell into place! 

Not all the turbines have red lights on the top. But they do all have white lights at the bottom. I had expected them all to have red lights on top?