Where did you go? Well, I don’t know if anyone still reads this blog. I’d love it if they did, checking out the previous posts, leaving comments and all that. I’m trying to spend less time looking at a computer which is difficult when virtually all the things I like to do – making music, videos, crappy photoshop jokes – are all screen based. The stuff that is not (or less) screen based, I have been trying to collate over at the horribly named www.gregmclaren.com … Also been trying to do an STK blog which is on the website over there. This is probably a massive long title because in my absence wordpress has turned into a kind of tumblr interface and I cant figure out where to put the body. But, so yeah, if you want to know what I’m up to, then hit the greg dot com address. Oh, I love you internet.
Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse!
What to do with a room full of model boats in display cases? Play a 3D, to-scale version of Battleships of course.
One autumn in the late 1960’s the finest model ship builders were summoned to the Science Museum in London and put to work with tiny chisels and miniature rivets in pursuit of an exhibition of exquisite models to echo Britain’s naval prowess and glory, and long did they toil. But not quite as long as the exhibition has been on display.
Before the current multi-mediated, intimately interactive and well thought-out exhibitions, there was the display case. The window to the past, the incubator of time, the proud bearer of artifact. We’d push our faces against the glass turning the object round in the mind, imagining all it’s potential uses, all the possible and impossible situations it had survived, unable to tell whether it were real or no.
I was floundering in this nostalgia last week at the Science Museum’s Shipping Gallery, where we were designing Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse, a live, fully dimensional version of the classic vector thriller. Next year the thousand or so models, mini-engines and navigation equipment will be disappeared and replaced by something more current and exciting, so we’re taking this opportunity to inject a last bit of life into the hulks and the paddles and the turbines. This is the non-deleterious war the brittle liners have been dreaming of! Where ancient Northumbrian fishers can fight alongside Britain’s first nuclear submarine! Two teams will assemble a fleet from their favourite models and battle it out across the vast floor of the gallery. Miss! Miss! Hit!
Museums should activate the imagination and stimulate the mind and while most of the new generation of exhibitions are excellent, I reserve a place in my heart for the simple, static object who’s history can be whatever I imagine.
Battleships : Ocean Apocalypse takes this Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd October from 11am to 3:30pm in the Shipping Gallery at the Science Museum, London. Games run every 30 mins (and take 15 – 20 mins).
ATOMKRAFT Scratching at BAC
What are you doing on Thursday night 9pm? Why not come down to BAC and see what I’ve been cooking up (apart from my hand) in Edinburgh. This scratch featured as part of the BAC Summerhall activities. Poor old Summerhall, jumped a bit too quickly into very serious art dealing and ended up with it’s head up its arse. Nice sofas though. And lovely box office staff.
Nevertheless / alwaysthemore, I had a good time and was able to include my favourite imagination – that of Mamoru Iriguchi – into the scratch. BAC have been jolly nice in asking us to re-do it at their place, so on Thursday (that’s right, the day after tomorrow) come down and check us out.
Here’s the rather good E-flyer cooked up by the BAC team. I did the copy though. Do you like it?
And don’t worry if you miss this one, because I’m developing it more and doing it again on 21st October down at the Riverside Wankhouse, where with the marvellous SHOWTiME team (Present Attempt to those in the know), we’re trying to de-wankify the place.
ATOMKRAFT Research 3
06:55 Rubidium 06:50 47 billion years 06:45 Is this a dream? 06:40 Uranium 228 06:35 4.5 billion years 06:30 Take off your mask 06:25 Uranium 235 06:20 710 million years 06:20 Who are you? 06:10 Thorium 06:05 80,000 years 06:00 Are you going to die? 05:55 Plutonium 05:50 24,400 years 05:50 How long have you got left? 05:40 Americium 16/01/1900 05:40 Is it true you’re retiring? 05:35 7,950 years 05:30 Who’s going to inherit your enormous wealth? 05:25 Carbon 05:20 5,730 years 05:15 Is this a myth? 05:10 Radium 05:10 What’s wrong with you? 05:05 1590 years 04:55 Human 04:50 38 years 04:45 Do you believe in God? 04:40 Caesium 04:35 30 years 04:35 Do you think your plan is irresponsible? 04:25 Strontium 04:20 28.1 years 04:15 Stand up 04:10 Cobalt 04:10 Tell us about your theory of heat 04:05 5.3 years 04:00 Does that mean that a Lizard is effectively solar powered? 03:55 Calcium 03:50 164 days 03:45 Tell us about the water 03:40 Phosphorus 03:35 14.5 days 03:30 What’s going to happen to your body? 03:25 Iodine 03:20 8 days 03:10 Radon 03:10 How did you get your cancer? 03:05 3.82 days 02:55 Tritium 02:55 Tell us about the air 02:50 64 hours 02:45 Is that a wig? 02:40 Sodium 02:35 15 hours 02:30 Tell us about the ground 02:25 Potassium 02:20 12.5 hours 02:15 Show us where your cancer is 02:10 Technetium 02:05 18 minutes 02:00 What’s that noise? 01:55 Flourine 01:50 66 seconds 01:45 Where will you be buried? 01:40 Love 01:35 5 seconds 01:30 The ground you love so much 01:25 Polonium 01:20 0.00000004 second 01:15 01:10 turn it on 01:05 Beryllium 01:00 1×10-16 second 00:55 It’s time 00:50 Go down 00:45 Sing
ATOMKRAFT Research 2
In Tuesday’s news the Indian nuclear authority plays down the risk of contamination of it’s workers, or future workers. India is (or perhaps was) keen to fire up the mighty turbines of Nuclear Power, and had been approached by the Chinese who offered their reactors. The Indian government politely rejected the offer on the grounds they wanted their own technology and presumably their own profits. Nigeria had a similar offer from the Russians this week and have all but accepted.
Here’s a description of a scene:
The following takes place over the period of one hundred years. Twelve people are resent on stage. Half are professional nuclear workers and half are professional theatre workers. Due to the deep level of research and extremely long rehearsal period, both parties can be said to be proficient in both professions.
(Do not forget at any point forget they are in a theatre. You will not be transported. You will not be moved. There are no love stories nor battles of will nor the revelation of certain salacious secrets. There will be zero surprise, zero thrill, and no music. There will be no interval. There may be no end, but there will be a beginning and that happens now.)
Lights up on the twelve people standing in a line. They are in pairs. One pair has a phone each, another a big red button, another mops, the next a large metal wheel to turn, and the final pair have a 10-year-old.
A voice, off and loud: Good evening. Boom.
The phone pair pick up the receivers and dial frantically
The buttons are pressed
The mops are abandoned and the moppers rush off
The wheels are turned frantically
The eyes of the children are covered
Blackout.
ATOMKRAFT Research 1
>>These are some notes from the process, I’m writing them here in the hope that some of you that read this may comment, this is a huge subject with many polarised opinions so I’d love to know what you think. You can comment below<<
Boom! I’m starting work on ATOMKRAFT, at BAC. I’m resident for the week, staying in one of the newly constructed bedrooms. To my delight, also here are Little Bulb, Hide and Seek, Gemma Brockis and Silvia Mercuriali, all of whom I’ve worked with in some way. Apart from Little Bulb, but I did jam with them in a cave. Very exciting to be here in such famed company.
I’m working mostly alone and have invited a few people along for a chat and some improvisation or scratching around. There is such a lot of information and constant news related to the subject, I feel I will be doing quite a lot of ‘crunching’. As a kind of sketch book, each day I will make a short performance, intervention or installation in response to what is returned by the Google alerts service term “Nuclear Power”.
On Friday and Saturday I will make a showing here at BAC, then hop up to STK on Saturday night to show a bit for Word/Play.
The main casting task this week is to find a nuclear worker and an actor who resemble one another. London contains no Nuclear power stations, but it does have a lot of scientists. No shortage of actors.
Fascinated this morning by unfinished nuclear projects from Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, to the abandoned Yucca Mountain waste storage facility. Each has already cost about $10b
Onkalon – Finnish solution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN25RTYjjIg + http://spectrum.ieee.org/video/energy/nuclear/a-nuclear-waste-repository-grows-in-finland
Yucca Hill – abandoned waste depository in Arizona http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0Mivu-ceE
I love the timeframe in the Onkalon video, “The seal should be good for 100,000 years” I can imagine some intrepid future archeologist excavating the tunnels and getting a nasty surprise.
For a story, the length of these timeframes is appealing, Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Agency admits it has “no medium to long term plans” for the safe disposal of it’s toxic waste, and most scientists admit it will be 100 years or so before anyone will know how to process the stuff. It’s the kind of thing JG Ballard would have loved, a 100 year narrative that climaxes in the discovery of ‘the end’.
Even a brief internet search for nuclear and power reveals the corporate driver behind operation of all utilities. It could be an argument for the state taking control of these things, if the state could be trusted that is. Today the Italians can vote in a referendum on continuation of development of nuclear power, the privatisation of waterworks and distribution, and total immunity from prosecution for Berlusconi. Presently the Italians suffer huge electricity bills because they buy it in from France and Germany. Even so, allowing Berlusconi to control production of power by nuclear means would probably cost more in the end.
I find the nuclear issue a suitable metaphor for the human condition, and the problems with how earth and people are governed. It’s in the perception. The risks have always been the same, but confidence has shifted away from it. the same with global finance “The markets received a boost of confidence” What we are living through is a period of complete fiction. Climate change is a sprawling story of proof and refutation, financial deals and the securities they are made up of far exceed the actual amount of money and monetisable stuff on the earth, while the dramatised-through-advertising ambition to keep societies growing and growing to provide larger and larger markets is undimmed. I think we ought to decide we want less stuff. Try to ignore advertising.
The Human Condition:
“”There’s a huge problem”
“oh, shit. What can we do about it?”
“Nothing, it’s a disaster”
“Ah well, no point in worrying then, let’s just cary on”
“Oh but wait! It seems like there might be a possible solution in 20 years based on this research.”
“Great, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel! Carry on then”
