All That Mighty Heart

Snows and obligatory shifts in the daily routine meant a disjointed start to the year and planned experiments at the Engineerium postponed. The shift in the main focus of the work was unsettling me too. Like being a vegetarian and then suddenly eating meat, and having to tell everyone (or vice versa!) I am giving my practice a new ‘label’ and its taking some getting used to. But that’s why I’m doing this.

Time now is divided between warm home and chilly studio, studying ‘The Mechanical Engineer, a Magazine for the Mechanically Minded’ and The Engineer at home, interrupted by bursts of Googling. The photocopying at the studio is interrupted by doodling. I have finally found my strand in the old paperwork and I have a clear concealed subheading now. Obvious now, I wonder why it wasn’t before.

Suspecting that the building work may take longer than anticipated I’m gathering ideas into baskets. An initial idea is heading towards a basket, a by-product now. It’s stronger out on its own and it gives me other exhibiting opportunities away from the Engineerium. I’m getting better at paring ideas down.

Last week (after they had tested the pressure in Boiler No 2) I saw the dark smoke escaping out of the huge chimney and floating towards Hove Park. A reminder, we don’t see this much anymore. Giddy with nostalgia (all that mighty heart had a beat) I filled my camera phone with (inadequate) photos.

‘A Kids guide to Managing Time’

What did I spend the most time doing?

What did I spend the least time doing?

Is there something I would have liked to have spent more time doing?

Is there something I would have liked to have spent less time doing?

Is there something I would have liked to have done but didn’t do?

Did I have enough free time when I could do what I wanted to do?

Did I spend enough time doing things I decided to do?

Do I feel good about the way I spent my time?

It appears that I have spent most of my time thinking and printing.

Four meetings in the last week have addressed different aspects of this ‘Mighty Heart’. One: with my funding ‘expert’; one was an APD 1-2-1 session about the ambitions for the work, the third with the project manager thinking about timescale and budgets and the final one with a colleague looking at the practical problems of projecting and sound in the space. Then more thinking!

I have spent little time making, apart from lists of things to try out in the new year.

More time looking at a book on Railways, Identity and Culture (inspiration comes in unlikely places) would have been good, and for finisihing the list of words that describe the emotional journey I want people to take through the work. Really pinpoint how I want them to feel?

Back at the Engineerium I handed back a technical drawing we uncovered (from 1917) of the grounds this week.

Needed to confirm the depths of some pipe work, as the building work progresses, it reminds us of the importance of archiving all these papers for the computerised era.

Goldstone, Examinations and Repairs Book (found today)

At the newly installed

Boiler Number 4

June 4^TH 1934

Slow fires put in

June 7^th 1934

Raising steam

June 8^th 1934

Inspected by Mr. Thomas at 80Ibs

April 6^th 1937

Flues swept

November 16^th 2009

Day of the flue cleaning of Boiler Number 4, readying it for inspection and firing up after 4 years at a standstill.

The health and safety standard outfits didn’t deter the soot getting in as they scrambled deep inside the boiler, armed with brushes. The soot is so fine and 5 barrows full came out from those dormant tunnels, nothing like the 88 barrows that came out when the boiler was fully working.

Back in the studio there’s a pile of photos to edit ,which is thrilling me to the core, and Rotring pens to clean…not quite so thrilling (the nostalgia wearing thin as the two I want to use are blocked.)

The latest old paperwork we found may help with my narrative strand…But it’s looking doubtful. Nevertheless the writing itself is inspiring.

My school run ‘bus job’ has been jotting notes for the funding application and on the opposite page thinking about other venues for the work, after the Engineerium…and Christmas lists.(it’s a long trip)

Engineers Report Book August 1918

Gentlemen, I beg to report that In July last I received a letter from the Vulcan Boiler General Insurance Company Ltd dated 10^th of that month pointing out that the boilers at the Goldstone pumping station were now 56 years old and that even when new had only a moderate factor of safety, and asking that the pressure in future should be reduced from 60 to 40 lbs to the square inch.

Your Obedient Servant

My Notebook November 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen

With numerous diggers paving way for the new kitchens, I wandered to the boiler room to attend to the task of envisaging myself meandering round the exhibition. Suddenly I seized on the idea of how the sound will work, a giddy rush emerging on the Number 5B as I penned it in my notebook.

Enlarging and cropping has been the week’s task in hand, and contemplating funding. With a couple of possibilities on the horizon realising this project with less compromise is an option. I know now what I need to achieve with the sound. I’m ring fencing ideas and about to launch my plans on the Engineerium for consent, before I start writing yet another plea for additional funds. Adventurous it may be, but I am endeavouring to drive my work forward.

To quote James Nasmyth (inventor of the steam hammer, 1808-1890)

‘It is one of the most delightful results of the possession of the constructive faculty, that one can build up in the mind mechanical structures and set them to work in imagination…It is the early cultivation of the imagination which gives the right flexibility to the thinking faculty….’ from the British Engineerium executive summary circa 1993.

After presenting my Peer Review at Fabrica and showing mock ups and photocopies for the first time beyond the home front, my thinking is clearer. I answered some of my own questions. What am I trying to say? What is important to me? What fits the space? (- and if money was no object?) The group help me answer more….Why am I doing two bodies of work (when only one is clear in my head?) I have been working with layers in recent work, is it enough to have one? – and is a photocopy enough!? The day after the review I went back, to 1992, and my own limited edition. It’s all about narrative (my life before layers)

I have been sneaking in test drives in camera shops over half term and am on the verge of a Canon. With my head in dusty B&W photography I’m waiting to hear about when they are going to clear the flues at the Engineerium-not quite the same but…

‘Step into that cage which hangs over a yawning well away up at the Goldstone Waterworks;-permit yourself to be lowered into Plutonian darkness; and at the bottom of the well you shall have a new experience. You shall not plunge into the cold bath you expect:- for your sake, the mighty engines up overhead have pumped the wells dry, so that you may undergo the strange experience of taking some lengthy walks eighty feet or more under the surface of the Earth, and may witness some novel effects of illumination.’ The Brighton Herald May 28^th 1904