I have begun to learn the software Tim Le Bas, the scientist with who I am working, uses to model bathymetric data. I start with a map of the world, reversing the usual blue /green coloring of land and sea and going on to reverse height and depth. At one point I transform the Himalayas into a void – even then its hard to conceive of the fact that if Challenger Deep was turned inside out it would tower a mile higher than Everest!
Circling above the globe it is possible to change your viewpoint at will, turning the world upside down in a second, its amazing though how, once the familiar, western centric viewpoint of the Americas, Europe and Africa is displaced, hard it is to orientate at all. Left to my own devices I manage to produce a set of strange exaggerated, psychedelic landscapes, which look like covers for a Yes album. These and other experiments can be seen on the Maps/Models page
Submersion Dive Training Centre - Oban 2005
Bathymetric Map 1919 (detail)
Three dimensional model Atlantic coast off North West Africa
Sonar back scatter map - Cape Verde Islands
Truthing Gap is a project, which involves research into
undersea environments and related human activity, that I have been
working on for a number of years and which runs in parallel with
the Submersion Series. It
is driven by an interest in the ways in which the sub maritime
might be thought of as of extra geographic and existing 'outside'
of culture.
I am currently Artist in Residence (funded by the Leverhulme Trust)
at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, one of the
world's top five oceanographic research institutions, working with
sonar geophysicist
Dr Tim Le Bas exploring methods of seabed mapping and undersea
survey. The project will explore the play of myth, imagination and
objectivity, involved in envisaging environments that cannot be
directly experienced, probing issues of knowledge production,
perception and the nature of the scientific gaze.
Truthing Gap originates from an earlier cycle of works investigating different coastal locations and the ways in which they might be said to constitute a border zone, between for example, civic and natural. Following the encircling of a shadow 2001 I began to speculate about the idea of 'passing over the edge' and entering not only another element but also a space which might be thought of as culturally and psychologically 'other'. Around the same time the chance discovery of a historical bathymetric (undersea) map of the world (see image) in which the seabed was revealed as a region with its own distinctive contours and plains, left me fascinated by the looking glass world into which it provided a glimpse.
Currently the deep seabed constitutes the largest yet least
known environment on the planet, a space whose histories are
geological rather than social, one which is never the less subject
to rapidly accelerating economic, political and ecological
pressures. Problems of depth and visibility necessitate that
undersea surveys be made using sonar, rather than optically, a
circumstance which might be said to place the deep ocean at one
remove from the post enlightenment drive to render the world as
observable phenomena. The work of Dr Le Bas and his colleagues
seeks to minimize the challenges posed by such locations to
attempts to map them, painstakingly cleaning and re-modelling raw
data to achieve recognisable forms. For me this process and the
visual practices to which it give rise are fascinating. Incidents
such as the recent use, by Russian broadcasters, of footage from
the film Titanic, within reports of undersea territorial claims
(symbolized by the planting of a flag on the seabed 14,000 feet
beneath the North Pole), suggest a collapsing of real and imaginary
which make this dialogue particularly timely.Technically the term
'truthing gap' refers to the necessity to verify sonar data with
other findings, here it refers to the question of what we 'see'
when looking at undersea environments and how our perceptions are
formed.
The work we propose to do has a number of strands, including the
fabrication of physical, as opposed to virtual, models in different
materials; the production of annotated maps which contextualise the
environments being surveyed economically, politically and
culturally and the staging of a programme of readings, screenings
and lunchtime seminars, at NOCS designed to prompt reflection on
the work being undertaken, from a cultural and imaginative as well
scientific perspective.
The last two images on this page show samples of bathymetric maps created by Dr Le Bas
Marshall St - 2007
Rather than in social histories of swimming, as related to public health or leisure, I am drawn to the spatial and symbolic properties of pools and the psychological and psychological resonances to which these give rise.
Images taken at NOCS and other underwater facillites over the last four years
These images were made in 2007 during a residency on the theme of 'imaginary Places' at Banff Arts Centre, Canada. They are primarily concerned with the ambiguous nature of the water’s surface.
As compared to the first set of images in the submersion series – shot at Tair Lair tidal pool in Scotland - in which a female figure offers a counterpoint to the landscape, suggestive of an interior space, here the body of the viewer provides an echo for the emptiness of the pool.
With hindsight this series marks a transition away from the
engagement with particular places and histories, evident in
the
encircling of a shadow 2001. While using a similar
approach of letting the site 'work on me' by spending extended
periods time there and. as in Newlyn, researching its history, I
found myself consciously avoiding interaction with the groups of
dog walkers, locals and model boat enthusiasts I met - many of whom
wanted to talk about their memories of the pool during its heyday -
seeking instead to understand it as a physical and psychological,
rather than social, space.
The use of the female figure extends preoccupations with presence
and absence, the liminal and interim, evident in earlier works,
conjuring a sensual relationship to landscape which never the less
carries a charge of danger.
Goggle Earth Goes underwater
This week amid a flurry of media coverage Goggle Earth issues an update, which allows viewers to navigate the deep-sea bed.
My own attempts - clumsy no doubt - to use this facility afford the exhilarating experience - and it is strangely physical - of crashing down towards and through the sea’s surface into an environment which is strangely reminiscent of some of the undersea scapes I have been producing using the Erdas modelling software
What is strikes me most forcibly is level of visibility it assumes. In parallel I am editing some video footage shot at a depth of between 2,500 to 3,000 metres which makes evident the difficulty of seeing anything beyond that which might be illuminated by the beam of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) (an area of approx 9-16 sq metres). No horizon is visible confounding immediately one of the primary pictorial conventions of landscape. The other surprise perhaps is the constant stream of snow like debris that falls through the water to rest on the bottom and which as soon as it is touched swirls up dramatically, obscuring the view. For me this powerfully evokes the depth involved while for the scientists I am working with it is a source of extreme frustration .
I remember when I was producing work in response to the site of a wrecked boat at Prawle Point in Devon, putting the camera (see Above and Below this page) in waterproof a housing and allowing the tide to animate the camera as a means to embed within the work a trace of the circumstances in which it was made. By the same token this dark, awkward, footage excites me because of the echo it offers of the physical the space of the deep sea bed and the resitance it offers to the attemtp of the camera to reveal it.
Sitting in the video archive at National Oceanography Centre watching this footage I am awed by the hours and hours of tape held there, all of which must be painstakingly logged. I read the entries which record sightings of a purple anemone, small sponge, vase bug etc In this world, which is so vast and lacking in familiar landmarks a mussel shell serves as an provides an important point of orientation
Returning to Goggle Underwater I find myself thinking about the virtual world it conjures and the ways in which this in turn shapes our perception of the actual world. I can’t help feeling that despite the wealth of data on which it draws, Goggle Underwater represents a making of the world in our image, which is as much scenic as it is scientific.
Speaking with Dr Lindsay Parsons I stumble across one of those terms that keeps on resonating with you - or at least in an imagination as given to associations as my own - 'The Area'.
I was speaking with Dr Parsons about the processes whereby countries may submit claims to areas of seabed under the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea.
‘Article 76 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea provides a mechanism for nations to claim rights to their continental shelf and slope beyond their current EEZ limits. To support claims, nations must present, among other things, bathymetric data establishing the location of the 2,500-meter (about 8,200 feet) depth contour and the foot of the continental slope’.
In gathering information about this process I had already realised that there would inevitably be areas of seabed, which would fall outside of anybody’s direct jurisdiction, but I wasn’t prepared for the fact that the collective term for this is ‘the area’.
Something about this term - reminiscent of an episode of the Prisoner, suggestive of a ‘free’ zone outside of normal limits; as evocative as the Sargasso Sea or Bermuda Triangle - continues to captivate me.
Interestingly, parts of ‘The Area’ can be enclosed by other territorial bodies of water and regions of seabed, as in the Arctic, on maps they appear as a kind of hole in the fabric of things. Immediately my mind is set running as to how such things can be differentiated at sea, the answer is of course through co-ordinates, but never the less the lack of visible, on or under the surface, differentiation, suggests that were one to find oneself wandering across such spaces, no indicators would be evident.
I wonder if at some point in the future rather than using bodies of waters as a means to travel from one territory to another they will in effect become synonymous with them. Giving rise to attempted border crossings of the kind that currently take place between Mexico and the US, necessitating the creation of some kind of seaborne physical border.
In 2,000 leagues under the sea Captain Nemo is a figure who has claimed the sea as his home, protector and domain, taking refuge in its vast, unbounded drifts from the conflicts and tyranny of mankind. Satellite systems such as the Seahorse
network, used to police the seas off of the Canary Islands, give the lie however to any contemporay romantic notions of the freedom of the seas
Talking to Tim he tells me that when he is on a research cruise (yes cruise is the appropriate term) there maybe long periods of time where no passing ships or land are visible, a circumstance which conjures a sense of emptiness and seclusion. Lindsay assures me however that the possibility of one country invading unobserved the undersea territory of another is unfeasible although the possibility of un-attributable pollution spreading from one zone to another is much more of a concern.
Rather than as a free zone ‘The Area’ is conceived of as being maintained and managed for the common good:
1. No State shall claim or exercise sovereignty or sovereign rights over any part have the Area or its resources, nor shall any State or natural or juridical person appropriate any part thereof. No such claim or exercise of sovereignty or sovereign rights nor such appropriation shall be recognized
2. All rights in the resources of the Area are vested in mankind as a whole, on whose behalf the Authority shall act.
The resources of which are never the less available for exploration and exploration under licence, the levy going to support developing nations.
‘The effective participation of developing States in activities in the Area shall be promoted as specifically provided for in this Part, having due regard to their special interests and needs, and in particular to the special need of the land-locked and geographically disadvantaged among them to overcome obstacles arising from their disadvantaged location, including remoteness from the Area and difficulty of access to and from it
