Philip Blackburn, artist
Brian Davis, environmental engineer, hydro geologist
Walking through Swede Hollow and the Bruce Vento Nature Trail
We need more wetlands to clean our environment but towns need space for development, and to generate tax income, so getting enough is unlikely ever to happen. The bacteria work for free but you can’t tax them.
The 1884 spiral railway tunnel: confluence of art, natural forms and Victorian engineering? Locally sourced limestone and sandstone used; how to build such a structure by hand, with limited energy supply?
Varieties of acoustic environments and structures: tunnels, bridges, hollow/gorge… If bats could be artists what would they create? What if we could de-privilege the eyes in favor of ears? Birdwatching is more often Birdlistening.
Sustainability and time scales: geological time vs human memory. The only constant is change. People will move to accommodate and adapt to climate change, with all the social upheavals.
Northern Pacific Railroad skally line: “Skally go hout.” 1915 poured concrete walls, only 32 years after the stone original and more energy intensive. Industrial archaeology.
Steam trains going uphill would have produced all kinds of pollution (and noise).
Acoustics of dogleg tunnel near Hamm Brewery, accidental sonic focal points with multiple flutter echoes, dampened oscillations, whispering walls, acoustic lens, Brewster Point... Reverb as metaphor; the voice/spirit of a cathedral or cave is an acoustic one.
Graph: Technological Progress over Time vs Percentage of inebriation of society (the Age of Enlightenment coincides with the appearance of tea houses after the beer era for purifying water).
Hamm Brewery bridge features large concrete poured moldings indicating the development of greater energy intensive systems since the earlier bridges. Natural shapes last longer.
Water flowing to the river from the creek, from springs and lake overflow, clarity and silt sediment-settling dynamics create stone over time. Stokes Law describes the settling process, creating limestone and sandstone. Nature is as destructive as it is constructive; the cycles just take time. Oxidation is seen in the human metabolism (through the glycation aging process) and in acid-stained floors that accelerate aging rapidly.
What does a Post Carbon art form look like? After the peak oil period what art will society need to understand the changes? It won’t be as materialistic. What will the new equilibrium look like? Fewer planes overhead, less travel…
Is this a polluted pond or just a pond in equilibrium, given the quality of its water? Chem Lawn, tires, sediment, duckweed (N, P, K). But this is a sacrificial basin; it captures wastes and excess nutrients from upstream and prevents them traveling to the river. Nearby is cold water from a natural spring.
Songbirds living near traffic noise have learned to sing more loudly. Impositions on the environment cause eco-systemic changes. Lifetime behavioral adaptations or DNA evolution?
Spiral tunnel construction took place during James Hill’s ownership of the Great Northern Railroad; was it an artistic or engineering extravagance? Would it happen today?
It doesn’t cost boats any more energy to carry heavy scrap iron downstream than a light load. Maybe rivers will return as a low carbon way of transporting goods.
Industrial vs. natural soundscapes, hierarchical vs dynamic systems. A living system is dynamic, where the whole is determined by the nature of the parts. A hierarchical system, top down: the parts are determined by the nature of the whole. How can you control or manage a living system to get the outcome you want?
A decibel meter along a walking path could be an interesting display.
Five bridges in the space of 100 yards; lots of mechanical history.
Analyzing train sounds: heat generated by braking downhill powers a fan to cool it, the motor becomes a generator.
Using bacteria in wetlands to remediate industrial solvents, enhancing the oxygen content: aircraft de-icing fluid, Trichloroethylene, household contaminants, etc. How can we increase the rate of natural reactions, using little energy, in a relatively small area to enhance this natural synergistic process? These processes degrade the waste into carbon dioxide or ethylene gas, both non-toxic.
Perception is a matter of scale; Newtonian mechanics works at the human level, not the quantum. We rarely think of our bodies at the cellular level. What is microscopic hearing? We are portable bacteria bags, we are moving gas exchangers, birds are seed transporters. There are many perspectives, depending on use. We live on a thin crust of the planet that is able to support life; we can see that skin right here. We need to understand these living systems better so we can speed them up; 70% of the planet is water; we are not using the remaining 30% efficiently. This square of soil at my feet is the only life between the molten inner core and inorganic gases above; this is very fragile.
Where is Art in this Greening world? As political propaganda for Green products? Can Environmental art be a simulacrum for these processes? Musical instruments powered by the wind or water; “instruments” that acoustically bring attention to the environment to the ears, such as the sounds made by storm sewers. Using art to make people aware of where they are is supremely important now, especially since we spend so much time in man-made urban contexts, removed from natural processes.
How can art make us more aware of the consequences of our actions and creative responses to changing our lifestyles?
First the river, then the trains, carry goods from all over the world to our doorstep. The distribution network changed all subsequent development (North-South of the river changed to East-West of the train). Before Lowertown warehouses there were caves such as Carver’s Cave used for brewing, storage, and housing.
Scientists and engineers can present data that deduce and rationalize, but we need artists to communicate. Playing an instrument embodies the feedback loop of sensitivity we need to use in all our life practices. This is not the commodity approach to art, but the participatory process itself. We learn to live in harmony with complex systems, not reduced to over-simplifications for political expediency. Maybe Harmony is a better word than Sustainability to describe the relationships of our life. Dynamic equilibrium models change in non-linear ways, change (such as the costs of oil) is not smooth.
Brian Davis here--
ReplyDeleteLooking back from the first snows of winter at the late summer walk Philip and I made through Swede Hollow, it is clear to me that our conversation was fun, wide-ranging, and in-depth. I think that part of the reason that I felt so free to converse is because from the depths of the Hollow, automobiles were not competing for my visual and aural attention. Could it be that riding the LRT between downtown Saint Paul and downtown Minneapolis could instigate such conversations due to the divorcing of the foot from the accelerator?
Brian Davis