Hail bounteous May that dost inspire

The artwork for the 'Poetry Seen at Cowslip Sunday' banners is finally complete. Above and below you should be able to view the finished pieces. They will now go off to print today (with any luck) and then hopefully be ready for Friday of this week. The idea then is to install the work (with the assistance of some of Cowslip Sundays participants) prior to the rehearsal the takes place next Sunday.


I'm happy with the banners on the whole; I think there is a nice variety of 'poetry' included - from Shakespeare, John Clare and Milton to pupils from the local Primary School and other submissions form Lambley residents.


Now that the artwork is finished I have some trepidation about the installation itself. It is in a reasonably secluded location and will be in place for a full week before Cowslip Sunday itself. As it turned out one of the banners that was installed last year got stolen and there is little to prevent anyone from a similar act of mischief this year - should anyone be so inclined.


But hopefully it passes off without incident - and the idea generates sufficient interest for people to feel inspired to create something similar elsewhere.

“Somewhere in your mind there’s a trace from everything you’ve ever seen.”

The Persistence of Memory 1931 Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

During the course of his research into memory, documented in his book 'Moonwalking with Einstein' (see my last post) the writer Joshua Foer meets Ed Cooke, an English mnemonist. Foer sits in on a fascinating demonstration of memory that Cooke gives to a class of students. In the demonstration the students are shown a projection of 30 different images, in rapid succession. After the projection is finished they are asked whether they think they will be able to recall all 30 images, to which one replies, not unreasonably "no chance".

A little while later the students (and Foer) are shown the 30 images again, but this time each of the images is shown alongside an alternative image. In each instance the students are easily able to recall the image that they were shown earlier - despite the fact that if they had been asked to describe each of the those images they would have almost certainly had no chance of being able to actively do so. The result of this experiment leads Cooke to make the bold claim that “Somewhere in your mind there’s a trace from everything you’ve ever seen.” Moonwalking with Einstein - page 27

In fact Ed Cooke's demonstration is based on original experiments that were far more extensive. For example Timothy F. Brady et al, from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published a paper called 'Visual long-term memory has a massive storage capacity for object details' in which he counters the commonly held view that human memory is fallible and imprecise. Instead their experiments showed that long-term memory is capable of storing a massive number of objects with details from the image. In their experiments:

Participants viewed pictures of 2,500 objects [for 3 seconds] over the course of 5.5 h. Afterward, they were shown pairs of images and indicated which of the two they had seen. The previously viewed item could be paired with either an object from a novel category, an object of the same basic-level category, or the same object in a different state or pose.

This is to say that the 2,500 images were variously shown alongside a completely different image (novel); an image that was of a similar kind but sufficiently different (the exemplar) or an image much like the one they had previously seen but with a slight variation (state). You should be able to view examples of the kind of images the participants were shown below.

The research goes on to show that:

Performance in each of these conditions was remarkably high (92%, 88%, and 87%, respectively), suggesting that participants successfully maintained detailed representations of thousands of images.

I think this is fascinating from a neurological point of view - how the brain is able to store this kind of visual information without it being available to what might be called active memory.

But I also think it would make a really interesting area for an artist to explore - perhaps in the form of an interactive art installation. This might consist of a number of images (whether paintings or photographs) that are projected for a short period of time. The audience for the installation would then have the opportunity to view a brochure in which the images they had seen projected were printed alongside alternative (previously unseen images) and allowed to decide which of the images created by the artist they had seen projected.

http://web.mit.edu/tfbrady/research.html

http://www.pnas.org/content/105/38/14325.full

The Art of Memory

This past week I have started to put together the artwork for the ‘Poetry Seen’ banners that will be installed along the course of a short woodland walk - close to the playing field where the Lambley Cowslip Sunday ‘spring pantomime’ takes place. You should be able to see some ‘work-in-progress’ versions above and below.

Building on last years project (which created three single-sided banners, using lines from ‘The Fairy Song’ from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’) this year will see eight double-sided banners set along the course of the path - with people able to read and (hopefully) enjoy the poetry from whichever direction they are taking on their walk. These banners will feature poetry written by people from the village of Lambley, as well as some more well-known pieces. The idea is to install the work the weekend before Cowslip Sunday - as both an added attraction and as a means of promoting the forthcoming event.

I’m really pleased with the idea - the banners don’t intrude on the walk in any way and hopefully will enhance it slightly. I particularly like the way in which the poetry might conceivably act to heighten people’s senses - to put them in a ‘poetic frame of mind’ and as such be more aware of the ‘natural poetry’ around them.

Another aspect of this particular ‘Poetry Seen’ project that I think is interesting is the way in which it might take advantage of one of the fundamental aspects of the way human memory works. In the book ‘Moonwalking with Einstein - The Art and Science of Remembering Everything’ the author Joshua Foer looks at the way our memory skills, just like our cravings for fat and sugar, were better suited to our days as hunter gatherers. Back then, what our ancestors needed to remember was: where to find food; which plants were edible and which were poisonous; and how to find their way home. 

“Those are the sorts of vital memory skills that they depended on every single day, and it was – at least in part – in order to meet those demands that human memory evolved as it did.” Moonwalking with Einstein - page 91

The legacy of these original memory skills means that we are far better at remembering visual imagery, rather than remembering the multiple passwords, numerous phone numbers or detailed verbal instructions that we tend to increasingly need to recall in the world in which most of us now exist.

This aspect gave rise to what became known as the ancient ‘art of memory’:

The Art of Memory or Ars Memorativa (“art of memory” in Latin) is a general term used to designate a loosely associated group of mnemonic principles and techniques used to organize memory impressions, improve recall, and assist in the combination and ‘invention’ of ideas.

It is an ‘art’ in the Aristotelian sense, which is to say a method or set of prescriptions that adds order and discipline to the pragmatic, natural activities of human beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

For my purposes the most interesting aspect of the art of memory is the following (which comes from the same wikipedia site as the above quotes):

Perhaps the most important principle of the art is the dominance of the visual sense in combination with the orientation of ‘seen’ objects within space. 

Put simply this method consisted of assigning clear visual images (of the information needing to be remembered) along the route of a geographic location that was familiar to the individual wishing to retain and recall the information at a later date. Subsequent recall would consist of 'mentally' recreating and retracing the steps of the journey along the chosen geographic route – retrieving the memories as the individual went along.

Most typically this method would be achieved by using what became known as 'Memory Palaces' – i.e. buildings with a clear and memorable layout that an individual could use for the purpose of depositing their visual images. The same basic principle is employed by the 'mental athletes' and 'mnemonists' who take part in the kind of memory championships that are at the heart of Foer's book.

But the same 'mnemonic principle' of a memory palace could equally apply to a walk through a landscape – and I think the way in which this 'Poetry Seen' project utilises "the visual sense in combination with the orientation of ‘seen’ objects within space…" becomes another interesting aspect of the work.

Ironically, according to Foer, for many of the ‘mental athletes’ who take part in ‘memory championships’ the remembering of a poem is perhaps the hardest and least enjoyable part of the competition – and if the poem is remembered at all there is little chance that any of its possible meaning is retained (for further rumination) which kind of defeats the object of remembering poetry. 

I intend to look a little more at another aspect of 'The Art of Memory' and Foer's book in my next post.

Lambley old road

© Photograph copyright Martin Jones and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lambley_old_road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1614876.jpg

Over the Easter weekend I have been trying out the Canon 7D (with a zoom lens) to try to get some close-up footage of wildlife in the fields around Lambley - for inclusion in the film I am making about the village. In truth I'm not sure it has been entirely successful - I think the footage has a slightly different tone from my Canon 550D. There is a fragment of film using the 7D at the bottom of this post.

However the footage is interesting for me because it is taken looking along part of the route of Lambley old road. I hadn't realised it when I came up with the idea but it turns out that my 'Poetry Seen at Cowslip Sunday' installation is to be located along part of this same historic route into Lambley. I'm really pleased that anyone visiting the 'Poetry Seen' installation will be walking along ground that, though now part of a secluded woodland path, once formed the main road into and out of the village - and as such provides a physical connection with the past under people's feet.

Lambley old road

Running parallel to Lambley Dumble this old road would have been hedged on either side.

The Hawthorn trees shown (see photograph at top) are most probably remnants of the original hedges that flanked the road. 

The trackway is clearly visible on Richard Bankes' crown survey "Sherwood Forest In 1609"


http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1614861

Wildwood

I've recently started reading 'Wildwood - A Journey Through Trees' by Roger Deakin. It has been high on the list of the books I've wanted to read for a while - and my 'Branches of the Poet Tree' project made it the perfect time to read the book for inspiration. You can find a little more about my idea here: 

http://poetryseen-in-lambley.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/branches-of-poet-tree.html

Briefly, as part of my 'Poetry Seen at Cowslip Sunday' installation (which will create a series of banners using poetic texts, predominantly featuring poems written by people from Lambley - including contributions from local schoolchildren, but also using some more well known pieces, such as Ariel's song from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest') I also want to create an original piece of art (using two lines from a poem by Shel Silverstein) produced in the form of tree branches - then have these hang from an appropriate woodland tree.

As a source of inspiration 'Wildwood' doesn't disappoint. Deakin writes that:

'To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is no accident that in the comedies of Shakespeare, people go into the greenwood to grow, learn and change. It is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically, by getting lost.'

'Once inside a wood, you walk on something very like the seabed, looking up at the canopy of leaves as though it were the surface of the water, filtering the descending shafts of sunlight and dappling everything.'

Deakin seemed able to articulate some of the almost magical quality of a wood - and made the idea of creating a (non-invasive) art installation in a wood seem like a wonderful idea. The hope is that it would encourage people (who might not necessarily do so) to take a walk through the wood - to enjoy the artworks but also to enjoy some of the 'art' of nature. But I particularly like the idea of people discovering the work unawares.

I had identified what I considered to be the optimum location for the piece (see picture above - taken late last year). This site consisted of two reasonably mature trees - stood perhaps 15 feet apart - on the south side of a woodland path, behind a short hawthorne hedge, thus protecting the work from anyone getting too close.

There was very little foliage between the trees - so the work would be nice and visible - and with the sun moving across the sky behind the piece (from perhaps 9am until early afternoon) the work would then change with the light during the course of the day.

I had in fact used the location last year (see picture below) - with unfortunate consequences that I blogged about earlier:

"Before installing this work I had attempted to seek the permission of the farmer who the land belonged to – and was assured by an individual that it wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately it transpired that the farmer was in a dispute with his neighbour and he (bizarrely) assumed that the artwork was an attempt at a wind-up on behalf of his neighbour and subsequently took the work down. After I had the opportunity to explain the situation he was quite contrite – to the extent that he offered to be involved in the installation of the work this year."

After having spoken to the farmer (Eamon Pell) on Cowslip Sunday last year, I was reasonably confident that he would (perhaps with some financial inducement) be content to let me use the site briefly this year. So I had visiting Mr. Pell and negotiating an arrangement on my 'to do' list. Unfortunately, whilst out walking last week, I discovered that one of the trees in question had been felled.

The above photographs shows the location I had in mind for my 'branches of poet-tree' installation. The picture on the right shows the site on Cowslip Sunday last year, the picture on the left shows the site just a few weeks ago. The large tree on the left of each photograph (not the one on the far left) is the one that has recently been chopped down.

Obviously the loss of this tree is really disappointing, not only because it seems - on the face of it - to be the wanton destruction of a healthy, mature specimen but also because I really thought there were (or certainly ought to be) restrictions on the cutting down of trees in Spring - when birds have already begun to nest.

Anyway I am intent upon pursuing this 'branches of the poet-tree' idea - but I now need to find a new location within the wood. For me it highlights again the problems to be overcome when trying to create and install artwork in the living landscape. I'll leave the last word to Roger Deakin:

'Human beings depend on trees quite as much as on rivers and seas. Our intimate relationship with trees is physical as well as cultural and spiritual: literally an exchange of carbon dioxide for oxygen.'

First cowslips of 2012

Thought I'd quickly post this fragment of film. It was shot an hour or so ago (12noon-ish on Sunday April 1st 2012) and shows the first cowslips I've seen this year - growing in a field near Lambley.


The few blooms that have appeared look a little sorry for themselves in truth, because although we've had some lovely warm weather over the past week or so, the nights are again quite cold - and there was a widespread frost when I went out with the dogs this morning (at 6am).