sources : speech bubble

speechbubble — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 21:15:07 +0000

Paul Merton in China Mr Woo Robots

running people

speechbubble — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:59:29 +0000

a little experiment with scale model railway figures and istopmotion

Van Gogh and Turbulence

speechbubble — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:40:14 +0000

Vincent van Gogh is known for his chaotic paintings and similarly tumultuous state of mind. Now a mathematical analysis of his works reveals that the stormy patterns in many of his paintings are uncannily like real turbulence, as seen in swirling water or the air from a jet engine.

Physicist Jose Luis Aragon of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Queretaro and his co-workers have found that the Dutch artist’s works have a pattern of light and dark that closely follows the deep mathematical structure of turbulent flow.

The swirling skies of The Starry Night, painted in 1889, Road with Cypress and Star (1890) and Wheat Field with Crows (1890) — one of the van Gogh’s last pictures before he shot himself at the age of 37 — all contain the characteristic statistical imprint of turbulence, say the researchers.

These works were created when van Gogh was mentally unstable: the artist is known to have experienced psychotic episodes in which he had hallucinations, minor fits and lapses of consciousness, perhaps indicating epilepsy.

“We think that van Gogh had a unique ability to depict turbulence in periods of prolonged psychotic agitation,” says Aragon.

In contrast, the Self-portrait with Pipe and Bandaged Ear (1888) shows no such signs of turbulence. Van Gogh said that he painted this image in a state of “absolute calm”, having been prescribed the drug potassium bromide following his famous self-mutilation.

Measured chaos

Scientists have struggled for centuries to describe turbulent flow — some are said to have considered the problem harder than quantum mechanics. It is still unsolved, but one of the foundations of the modern theory of turbulence was laid by the Soviet scientist Andrei Kolmogorov in the 1940s.

He predicted a particular mathematical relationship between the fluctuations in a flow’s speed and the rate at which it dissipates energy as friction. Kolmogorov’s work led to equations describing the probability of finding a particular velocity difference between any two points in the fluid. These relationships are called Kolmogorov scaling.

Aragón and colleagues looked at van Gogh’s paintings to see whether they bear the fingerprint of turbulence that Kolmogorov identified. “‘Turbulent’ is the main adjective used to describe van Gogh’s work,” says Aragn. “We tried to quantify this.”

Darkness and light

The researchers took digital images of the paintings and calculated the probability that two pixels a certain distance apart would have the same brightness, or luminance. “The eye is more sensitive to luminance changes than to colour changes,” they say, “and most of the information in a scene is contained in its luminance.”

Several of van Gogh’s works show Kolmogorov scaling in their luminance probability distributions. To the eye, this pattern can be seen as eddies of different sizes, including both large swirls and tiny eddies created by the brushwork.

Van Gogh seems to be the only painter able to render turbulence with such mathematical precision. “We have examined other apparently turbulent paintings of several artists and find no evidence of Kolmogorov scaling,” says Aragon.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream, for example, looks to be superficially full of van Gogh-like swirls, and was painted by a similarly tumultuous artist, but the luminance probability distribution doesn’t fit Kolmogorov’s theory.

The distinctive styles of other artists can be described by mathematical formulae. Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, for example, bear distinct fractal patterns

visualisation of turbulent flow

speechbubble — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:12:35 +0000

Turbulence can be found everywhere: in the sun and in a cup of coffee, in a turbine engine and in biology. How turbulence works is one of the long-standing unsolved problems for scientists and engineers.

Now, however, researchers have been able to test, experimentally, decades-old theories about how particles separate in strong turbulence; the work was done by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany; Cornell University in the United States; the Laboratory of Geophysical and Industrial Fluid Flows at the CNRS in Grenoble, France; and the Risø National Laboratory in Roskilde, Denmark. The scientists developed their own system of high-speed cameras; with them they showed that particles move more slowly than had previously been predicted. These results could lead to better transport and separation models of chemicals and biological substances

turbolenza

speechbubble — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:04:39 +0000

The world first flow visualization representation above is a sketch of a free water jet issuing from a square hole into a pool, drawn by the hands of Leonardo da Vinci; circa 1500. In the view of John L. Lumley, Da Vinci might have prefigured the now famous Reynolds turbulence decomposition nearly 400 years prior to Osborne Reynolds’ own pipe-flow visualization! In one of his notebooks, da Vinci wrote (translated by Ugo Piomelli): “Observe the motion of the surface of the water, which resembles that of hair, which has two motions, of which one is caused by the weight of the hair, the other by the direction of the curls; thus the water has eddying motions, one part of which is due to the principal current, the other to the random and reverse motion.”

Turbulence article from the guardian

speechbubble — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:51:05 +0000

Extracts from Turbulence, Giles Foden’s novel about the D-Day weather forecast

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story A Descent into the Maelstrom, the unnamed narrator, watching from a cliff on the Norwegian coast, describes the appearance of a giant whirlpool: “The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar . . .”
On Wednesday Australian oceanographers announced the discovery of a giant cold-water eddy of the proportions of Poe’s whirlpool, if not as precipitously inclined or fast moving. Sixty miles off Sydney, the vortex has a diameter of 200km and a depth of 1km. It is whirling round with such force that it has lowered the sea level by almost a metre and changed the predominant current structure in the region. It carries more water than 250 Amazon rivers.

Australia’s leading scientific body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, has said the eddy is so powerful that it has pushed further out to sea the major ocean current popularised in the film Finding Nemo. This East Australian Current is used by merchantmen and by sailors in the Sydney-Hobart race down the east coast of Australia, but so far the giant eddy has not affected shipping.

It is unlikely to do so, but scientists will be hard pushed to say exactly what will happen, because behind eddies and vortices lies the phenomenon of turbulence – one of the last great scientific problems of the modern age. The great quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg said: “I will have two questions for God on my death bed: why relativity, and why turbulence? I really think he may have an answer to the first question.”

Ocean eddies are found all over the world. They are a normal occurrence in nature. They happen when different flows meet. Along with their close cousins atmospheric eddies (eddies in air), and the combined effects of sun and wind, they are among the most important processes affecting weather. Eddies perform some of the work of transferring energy from one part of a weather system to another.

Regulated mainly by the flux and reflux of the sea, eddies obey some mathematical rules, but not all. Only partly predictable, they are a consequence of turbulent disorder but also display structure, rhythm and other characteristics associated with order.

Eddies never repeat themselves exactly, so statistics or analogues of their behaviour cannot solve the “problem” entirely. The Americans made that mistake when trying to forecast weather for the invasion of D-Day by averaging 40 years of Channel weather data. They had to be rescued by British and Norwegian forecasters using pattern-based approaches.

While they cannot be described as a freak of nature, eddies as large as that discovered off Sydney can play a significant part in unexpected climate events, particularly “El Niño”-style anomalies, from torrential rains in Peru to droughts in Kansas.

Ocean eddies are caused by the mixing of water from contrasting sources, with different temperatures and/or flow rates. The resulting clash, or “turbulence”, can have unexpected results. This unexpectedness is linked to the wider climate-change jigsaw insofar as higher emissions of carbon dioxide and methane cause instability, which in turn causes even more unpredictable mixing.

Ratchet up all these variables and the maths involved becomes mind-boggling. One of the things scientists have struggled to understand (and have been arguing about since the 1920s) is the relationship between uniform and non-uniform motion in eddies, which is a key factor in their predictability.

The biggest trick pulled by turbulent flows like the great Australian eddy is to alter according to the scale on which they are observed: look at them from one point of view or across a particular time slot and you will see as calm what appears rough when looked at from elsewhere or another time. That is why, if you sail across one, the water will seem placid; the movement is on too big a scale to affect even the largest boats.

Probably the Sydney eddy will soon dissipate its energy. Giant eddies usually last about a week, but some can keep swirling for up to a month. They do not “cease”, but transfer energy by pulling smaller eddies into their vortex.

Energy cascades up and down something like a vortical stairway, from molecular movement through eddies in water and air to the edge of the atmosphere, where the mystery of turbulence opens again into the flows of interplanetary space. Scientists have found whirlpools in the wakes of stars.

Looking at an eddy in motion – something only really possible since the advent of satellite technology – one is really studying the exchange of information across different scales. That is why the science associated with eddies is closely followed by those concerned with the vast financial flows of global stock markets. The new book by the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is not called The Age of Turbulence for nothing.

Other mathematicians model the “eddy motion” of information passing across the internet or through a hive of ants or the human nervous system. These areas and other complex systems are all subject to something like what is happening off the Australian coast, and turbulence is the key.

It is no wonder scientists have been puzzled by it – because turbulence itself is a wonder. Artists from Dante and Da Vinci to Damien Hirst have been entranced by the possibilities of the spiral. Turner wrote of and painted “vapoury turbulence”, while Joseph Conrad described novel-writing as the “snatching of vanishing phrases of turbulence”. In Mallarmé’s modernist poem A Throw of the Dice, a Conradian sea captain has to decide, with his ship pitched on the edge of a whirlpool, whether it is still worth throwing a dice.

The characteristic shape that turbulence produces is the “whorl” – like the spiral on your fingertip. Look closely and you will see that shape everywhere, from conch shells to pine cones to that vast eddy edging towards the Sydney opera house – and who knows where else. It is in the nature of turbulence to surprise.

Creative Laboratory

speechbubble — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:09:52 +0000

Sources set up a week of experimentation in IOU’s studio space, working with Anne Caldwell, Poet, Jack Lockhart, Visual artist, Andy Plant Visual Artist and mechanical maker and Matt Wand, sound

The week had no performance or exhibition outcome, but was an opportunity to explore collaboration between words, image, visual arts and sound. We looked at how we could combine strands of all of our work to create an installation.
The aim of the week would be to examine our working practices together and do a showcase of this work later in June 2007. This project extends the range of what Sources can offer, and has given us a chance for the company to work with a larger creative team

Anne Caldwell writes:

Sunday 29th April 2007

I am cooking a meal tonight for the artists taking place in the Creative Laboratory myself and Jack have set up for this following week. They are Matt Wand, a sound artist and Andy Plant, a visual artist and maker. The four of us are meeting up to begin the week with a chance to get to know each other and share some food.

It’s been quite a busy day so far. I have written this piece of writing from my son’s point of view (who is seven years old)

Today I found ten millipedes, two wood lice and a garden spider with a purse of babies. There is a big orange sun in the sky and a cold wind up here on the edge of the hill. Me and Joey play on scooters. My mum is grating carrot forever. We have six Easter eggs in the house and four artists including mum. They sit down to eat and take up so much space we have to get an extra bit of the table out. Mum says that’s called a leaf, but it doesn’t seem much like a leaf to me. My guitar is zipped up in its bag having a sleep. The adults are going yakkity yak yak yak. My job is to keep the cats away from my newts and fish.

Monday 30th April 2007

Here is an outline of what has taken place on the first day of the Lab:

The morning was taken up with each person introducing themselves and their work to the rest of the group. Fascinating stuff. A chance to see where we are all coming from, artistically. Although I am aware of the fact that people are not their past, and the journey we can go on in the future can be a very different direction. In the afternoon we tried out an idea that Louise from IOU suggested – as a way that the theatre company uses to devise shows. It involved a series of concentric circles on which to brainstorm ideas around themes. We brought in post it notes for people to write on – including ideas for objects/props, environments or settings, atmospheres and feelings. Amongst many other themes, we ended up talking about car boot sales, feral things, turbulence, lost dogs, swapping things, a poetry car wash idea, the ends of canals, flotsam and jetsam, wardrobes, containers of domestic objects, or perhaps parts of the body. A whole range of stuff really.
How useful was this exercise? I am not sure it got us anywhere in particular. It did throw up a range of ideas. We might need a clearer structure. Jack wants to re-instate the idea of using the week to look at projected animations onto moving screens. For me, the idea that writing can be seen as raw material for the week, rather than something more finished is quite challenging. Andy talking about the newness for him of doing a project that involves text and words. Matt discussed Alan Ginsberg, French avant-garde poets and sound poetry.
We also decided that each person would lead a short session at the beginning of the rest of the days. It’s Jack’s turn tomorrow.

Tuesday 1st May 2007

The second day of the Creative Lab was led by Jack in the morning, which got everyone involved in making a short animation using a great bagful of scraps of coloured felt. It gave us a chance to have a play instead of just talk, and to do something together.
We then sat down as a group and looked at choosing the theme of turbulence for the week, and focusing on some practical techniques. A starting point emerged of going to turbulent places. I suggested The Strid, at Bolton Abbey that has some fantastic eddies and corkscrew currents. We ended up going up to the Wind Farm above Blackshawhead and to Lumb Falls, rather than spend all day in the car. Matt decided to test out the idea of recording underwater using hydrophones as well as recording up at the Wind Farm.

Of the two locations, Lumb Falls in Crimsworth Dene seemed the most fruitful.
Jack shot some video footage of the area, Andy spent some time helping Matt record underwater, and sat with his notebook generating ideas, I did some writing.
It was a gloriously hot, sunny afternoon. The river was low, not so turbulent than at other times of year.

Here is a sample of some of the poetry I wrote in response to this place:

The Falls

A young man, stripped to the waist,
chest white as candle wax,

plucks up his courage
to make that leap.

He dive-bombs, legs
tucked up to his breast bone,

slams into that dark bowl of water
beneath The Falls.

His head submerges.

Three, five, seven seconds.
Mates stop laughing.

He surfaces, spluttering
like a wet dog.

River

You’re fishing for sound,

a water diviner

with hydrophones

capturing the language of Lumb Falls.

Bilberries

line the pathway,

nipple-pink fruit,

yet to swell and darken

with the heat of summer.

Light

snake skins

on the pool’s surface.

Concentric circles

intertwine

like lovers.

Rocks

Furred tongues

sticky with

spittle-water,

the colour of Theakston’s OP.

The day was positive. It felt good to be clear about the structure and theme for the week, and the day went better due to it being task orientated. It was also useful using the tried and tested technique of going for a walk to kick start the week. This is something Jack and I have done before in our collaborative work together.

Wednesday 3rd May, 2007

Matt led the morning session by playing a huge range of vinyl material – for example, sound poetry by Henri Chopin, other recordings that used chants and voices from fairgrounds, auction houses, and tobacco sellers, a sound recording of Weddle seals from the Antarctic, Word Jazz from Ken Nordine. One album included instruments that spin or whirl by Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell and David Toep. One of his favorite recordings is of the Pumping Station at Shrewsbury.
Matt also go us involved in an exercise that played words like a punch card on a musical box, and projected the same words using a small light source, An ingenious way to combine a mechanical object, projection, sound and poetry together.
In the afternoon, we shared some of the material from Lumb Falls – images, sound and poetry and Andy and Jack projected images and words onto the ceiling of the IOU gallery, onto a giant mirror and the pillars, playing with the idea of using the building and unusual screens.

Thursday 4th May 2007

It was Andy’s turn to lead the group this morning, and he had brought in a collection of books from home including books on architecture, design, vehicles, and art. He led a discussion about what we may want to construct as part of the week, and here is a range of some of the ideas that emerged from looking at the books and talking with each other:

Chandeliers
Bird wings
Washing machines
Vibrations
Chaos
Gravel
Thought bubbles emerging from stuff
Spirals
Shadow plays as another way of animating
Cartoons mixed with reality
Containers
Crossing the celluloid divide
Mixing scales
Naff meets technology meets kitsch

A strong idea emerged to create the following:
A model of the building in which we find ourselves in the centre of a room that people come across. The ceiling as a moving projection – maybe a 3d screen that turns.
Maybe this thing is a vortex. People can see themselves in the projections when they look at the model.
We go over to IOU’s workshop in the afternoon, and Matt and I also do some resourcing in town, collecting small scale models and some whisks to use perhaps as a sound piece.

Friday 4th May 2007

I lead the last morning by sharing a poem that I had written the night before:

Turbulence

The aircraft stutters over water.
You are listening
for the comforting drone
of twin engines at full throttle,
checking for sick bags,
life jackets, oxygen masks,
that strip of lights on the floor.
I’m aware of the heavy weight of metal
buckling our groins, the way your knee
presses itself against mine, braced
for impact.

I also involve the group in performance piece of text – quite light hearted, but looking at how voices can be used layered on top of each other.

Matt and I work during the morning using sampled words from a range of CD’s – stories, spoken word stuff etc. Matt introduces me to the idea of using this collection as a starting point for writing. I then write a few pieces based on the words (it was a bit like the fridge magnet poetry kit idea, only using sound). Matt then recorded me reading these pieces, and adding in another layer of sound by recording me in a lift, in a theatre space and including recordings from outside.

Here are two of the pieces written very quickly using the bank of words:

The garden

clambered in through the front door,
lost her skin.
We tried to reason with her;

Don’t listen to the potatoes,
the young cabbages,
the mongrel dog, for Christ’s sake!

The garden was calling out,
she swallowed the kitchen,
we were dreadfully frightened.

This certainly isn’t a nice fairy tale

Don’t listen to the potatoes,
the young cabbages,
don’t listen to the mongrel dog, for Christ’s sake

Yesterday
the loaf of bread jumped up from the breakfast table
Ha Ha you can’t catch me, it shouted,
sliced itself underneath the fence
ran off to the wood to be free.

The next morning
the garden swallowed herself
lost her skin
clambered in to the kitchen
on her hands and knees

We were
dreadfully frightened
dreadfully frightened.
We followed a trail of bits of bread
went to sit down together
under the big fir tree,
light the fire,
chew the cud together.
And that was a splendid life

Whilst Matt mixed the recording, I had a bit more time to write and came up with something I am happier with: It shows the sampled words from other recordings:

Prose poem

The mongrel dog clambered into bed with me and my life lost her skin, her safety, her well shaped hands and knees. To speak of what happened is to talk of a swallowed sandbank, a long forgotten scarlet-fever fairy tale.
To speak of what happened is to enter the Dark Wood. That flea bitten, jumped up, rebel of a mongrel dog shouted, full of wind, oh blow, blow, for fuck’s sake, fucking light the fire, you timid girl, let’s burn the suburban garden together, scorch all the young cabbages you’ve planted in regimented rows, the dreadfully frightened cucumber frame, those potatoes, swelling fat and rich like boring bad news accountants, that big fir tree of mediocrity.

Whilst we were working on this collaboration, Jack and Andy had created an extraordinary installation next door, involving projectors, cameras, a fish tank, floating objects (including a ghekko!) They tested out the properties of a sample of projection material from a theatrical suppliers in Halifax but at the same time came up with the most amazingly clear images of floating objects using this installation:

We ended the afternoon by sharing each other’s work and then doing some reflection on the week as a whole:

Andy Plant:
I thought Sources should have been more prescriptive at the start of this project. However, it turned out that this vagueness was a strength. We needed freedom for new ideas to emerge. I often feel my other work is prescriptive and often to order, and instead this week was an interesting seam of ideas, and so many more possibilities for artistic work emerged because of this lack of structure. I found it personally very useful, I found working with words stimulating, and it was great to be outside my usual tram lines. Like a virus (but in a positive way) the week was greater than the sum of its parts!

Matt Wand;
I felt the opposite to Andy. At times things were closed down too quickly for me, I wish we had more time to explore ideas at the beginning. A bit dictatorial at times.
I did enjoy going out in the field to record stuff with the hydrophones and was pleased with the results. I feel like we did a month’s worth of work in a week! It was a new experience for me to capture the different sounds of the water itself. This could have been refined and developed, and during the week things moved on very quickly. I was not so sure about splitting the group and working in pairs.

Jack Lockhart:
I got a hell of an amount of stuff from this week, and the luxury of time to refine and process some ideas. We covered a large amount of areas of work. I loved hearing the underwater recordings and can see a lot of possibilities. Working with Andy did not generate the mechanical stuff I had expected, but we worked together on a lot of technical approaches and solutions. I enjoyed the afternoon we all spent together playing with the possibilities of what we had created. It would have been good to stay together as a group today rather than split.

Anne Caldwell:
I felt a bit like I had been on an emotional rollercoaster this week. Quite far out of my comfort zone. I realised that writing perhaps was the least technical art form for the week, or the one that didn’t have a technique to solve. I struggled to keep up with some of the discussions and ideas. At times I felt that poetry or the use of text felt a bit like an imposition, or slightly irrelevant to the process, but this may be due to my own lack of confidence. It was exhilarating, tiring and I am trying to absorb all the elements of the project so far. A good starting point, if somewhat turbulent for me personally!

A final poem from me:

atmospheric eddies
tmospheric eddies
mospheric eddies
ospheric eddies
spheric eddies
pheric eddies
heric eddies
eric eddies
ric eddies
ic eddies
ceddies
eddies
ddies
dies
ies
es

edgar allan poe The Maelstrom

speechbubble — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:10:27 +0000

The Maelstrom
Edgar Allan Poe

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.
Joseph Glanville.
WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man –or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of –and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man –but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?”
The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge –this “little cliff” arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky –while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.
“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event I mentioned –and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye.”
“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him –”we are now close upon the Norwegian coast –in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude –in the great province of Nordland –and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher –hold on to the grass if you feel giddy –so –and look out beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer’s account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction –as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.
“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Iflesen, Hoeyholm, Kieldholm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off –between Moskoe and Vurrgh –are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Skarholm. These are the true names of the places –but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear any thing? Do you see any change in the water?”
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed –to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion –heaving, boiling, hissing –gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly –very suddenly –this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than half a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation.
“This,” said I at length, to the old man –”this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom.”
“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the Moskoe-strom, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene –or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle.
“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water is between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea –it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground.”
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The “forty fathoms” must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strom must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ships of the line in existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon –some of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal –now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Feroe islands, “have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser experiments.” –These are the words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part –the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him –for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
“You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old man, “and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-strom.”
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
“Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculation –the risk of life standing instead of labor, and courage answering for capital.
“We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes’ slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slackwater again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming –one that we felt sure would not fall us before our return –and we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently that, at length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents-here to-day and gone to-morrow –which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
“I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered ‘on the ground’ –it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather –but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-strom itself without accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing –but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger –for, after all said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth.
“It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth of July, 18–, a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget –for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west, while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow.
“The three of us –my two brothers and myself –had crossed over to the islands about two o’clock P. M., and soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Strom at slack water, which we knew would be at eight.
“We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual –something that had never happened to us before –and I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
“In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us –in less than two the sky was entirely overcast –and what with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.
“Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced any thing like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board if they had been sawed off –the mainmast taking with it my as I youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety.
“Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strom, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once –for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the foremast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this –which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done –for I was too much flurried to think.
“For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard –but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror –for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word ‘Moskoe-strom!’
“No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough –I knew what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us!
“You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack –but now we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! ‘To be sure,’ I thought, ‘we shall get there just about the slack –there is some little hope in that’ –but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.
“By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky –as clear as I ever saw –and of a deep bright blue –and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up every thing about us with the greatest distinctness –but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!
“I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother –but in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers, as to say ‘listen!’
“At first I could not make out what he meant –but soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced as its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o’clock! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strom was in full fury!
“When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her –which appears very strange to a landsman –and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase.
“Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose –up –up –as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around –and that one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-strom whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead –but no more like the every-day Moskoe-strom, than the whirl as you now see it, is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.
“It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek –such a sound as you might imagine given out by the water-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss –down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and the horizon.
“It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves.
“It may look like boasting –but what I tell you is truth –I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man’s mind in such extremity –and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.
“There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situation –for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and the spray together. They blind, deafen and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances –just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.
“How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a large empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act –although I knew he was a madman when he did it –a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I thought it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel –only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.
“As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them –while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage and looked once again upon the scene.
“Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.
“At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel –that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water –but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved.
“The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom –but the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.
“Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept –not with any uniform movement –but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred feet –sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.
“Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious –for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. ‘This fir tree,’ I found myself at one time saying, ‘will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,’ –and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all –this fact –the fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.
“It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-strom. By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way –so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters –but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed –that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, from some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early or absorbed more rapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was, that as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent; –the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere; –the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.
Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject with an old school-master of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words ‘cylinder’ and ‘sphere.’ He explained to me –although I have forgotten the explanation –how what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments –and showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form whatever.*
*See Archimedes, “De Incidentibus in Fluido.” –lib.2.
“There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel, or else the broken yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station.
“I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother’s attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design –but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to force him; the emergency admitted no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment’s hesitation.
“The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale –as you see that I did escape –and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say –I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-strom had been. It was the hour of the slack –but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom and in a few minutes, was hurried down the coast into the ‘grounds’ of the fishermen. A boat picked me up –exhausted from fatigue –and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and dally companions –but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story –they did not believe it. I now tell it to you –and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.

THE END

IOU Waylaid

speechbubble — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:49:00 +0000

Jack and I saw the IOU show ‘Waylaid’ tonight. It took place in a dome-like space; (yet another igloo-shaped structure – this must be a visual metaphor for us at the moment!). There was a sense of being in the far north, somewhere up near the arctic circle in my mind. The show involved each member of the audience wearing head phones to listen to a live music and spoken word sound track. I loved the emotional layering of words and sounds that this produced. It did create an audience who all seemed to be in their individual bubbles. I felt a little out of my depth responding to visual theatre as it is a new language for me. The piece explored a limbo land, a space between life and death, between being conscious and unconscious. There were strands of fairy tale elements, such as being kissed awake or trying on a glass slipper that doesn’t fit, but also surreal, almost science fiction stuff as well.
There was a hole in the set that seemed to suck in people and their lives and a giant beetle that looked like something from Kafka. The show ended with the phrase ‘there is only now’ but up to this point seemed to explore lots of other versions of reality and the links between memory and the present. The strong sense of watching a sequence of events that cuts through ordinary life reminded me of how I felt when I was burgled at home, and came downstairs to find the house trashed. The rest of that day passed in slow motion.
After watching the show, Jack and I discussed how the words worked as part of the theatre piece and whether we would explore using similar techniques with Matt, the sound artist that we are going to work with in the creative lab week. I liked the idea of a tangential sound track, an inner monologue with a collage of broken, dream-like sections of prose or poetry. There was a moveable washing line in ‘Waylaid’ as well. Owl-like characters emptied the contents of a woman’s suitcase and briefcase and pinned some of this up. A strong image of how work-related stuff can seem very important at the time, but is actually ephemeral. This image sparked off a discussion about the use of projection screens in our piece and how we could make these a striking visual element in our work. However we don’t want to mirror IOU’s style but do want to explore and learn from other artists’ creative approaches. In our own work, we like the idea of creating a tone that is serious, but playful at the same time, perhaps by using elements of the absurd. (Forkbeard theatre do this very well) I worry about whether I can write anything remotely funny!

The ORBIS PICTUS

speechbubble — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 13:01:54 +0000

-or The Gate to the Wold of Man’s Creative Imagination
interactive exhibition in the Czech Republic
designed by visual artist Petr Nikl

The Czech Music Museum’s monumental vestibule and transepts have been filled with numerous musical instruments that stimulate creative abilities and imagination in visitors. “The interactive exhibition prompts the visitors to play and create with the help of artistic objects and instruments that produce various sounds and light effects,” says Jiří Wald, the initiator of the project.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart – an organic playing assembly mounted in an inflated heart-shaped structure, which makes possible, like all the other exhibits, the visitors’ active and creative participation. In the huge inflatable heart, in front of Petr Nikl’s imaginary landscape, visitors can play a three-octave bubbling water organ with its flue pipes immersed in water, designed by Václav Smolka, or a hurdy-gurdy created by Martin Janíček, or they can use sticks to sound Jaroslav Kořán’s Dreamers’ Astronomical Clock and peek into periscope tunnels devised by Petr Lorenc. In the monumental space offered by the Czech Music Museum, whose nave forms a natural body of the exhibition, the visitors will also find The Ear – Ondřej Smeykal’s sound tent, and The Eye – Petr Nikl’s massive object designed on the principle of the camera obscura. They will also have an opportunity to chime Milan Cais’s anthropomorphic kalimbas, Luboš Fidler’s Singing Butterfly – a huge keyboard instrument with aluminium rods instead of strings, Ondřej Smeykal’s rattling tube, Petr Nikl’s piano zither, Martin Janíček’s playing cylinder, Čestmír Suška’s metallic sphere and Jiří Melzer’s sound instrument. Visitors can also visually play Petr Lorence’s giant kaleidoscope and the Fountain of Pleasure, Ondřej Smeykal’s rotating object and Ivan Havlíček’s telescopic tubes, or set Zdenek Šmíd’s kinetic plants and Miloš Vojtěchovský’s object in motion. In front of the Czech Music Museum’s building an iron structure designed by Čestmír Suška will be mounted. During the exhibition a number of musical, dance and theatrical performances will be held; most of them will come from the alternative cultural scene.

“The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart by Jan Amos Comenius has been the main inspiration,” says visual artist Petr Nikl, the author of the artistic concept of the exhibition.

The scenario of the exhibition is based on his experience acquired from interactive exhibitions Nests of Games, Rudolfinum Gallery, 2000, and Garden of Imagination and Music, Czech exhibition at EXPO 2005 in AICHI, Japan, and the world premiere of the PAMPAEDIA project, of which ORBIS PICTUS is a part, in Paris in 2006.