The Object as Affordance, The Scenography of Drifting & Vitruvian Eyeball Auditoria.
The Object is a small but particular stone found on the shoreline of Mounts Bay between Marazion and Newlyn in West Cornwall, I select the stone for its shape, size and colour, to a great extent the stone represents the polished Greenstone Axe heads that originate from the Mounts Bay when it was a forest in antiquity.
Historically the sea level rose up and the forest sorrounding St.Michaels Mount as well as one of the most revered sources of local Greenstone became submerged.
Project Jade was a very important survey carried out by Pierre and Anne-Marie Pétrequin for twelve years researching (jadeitite, omphacitite, eclogite) axe heads in the Italian Alps between 2006 and 2010, Neil McGregor in his One Hundred Objects from History featured the Greenstone Axe Heads sourced in the Alps, he also spoke about a cult of the Greenstone Axe Heads which proliferated in northern France and Southern Britain, particularly Brittany.
In 2003 they found high-altitude quarries at Monte Viso, near Turin and in the vicinity of Monte Beigua, part of the Voltri massif, immediately to the north-west of Genoa.
From these 2 quarries, Jade axe-heads circulated for considerable distances — that is 3,300 km from the West to the East, Ireland to Bulgaria, and more than 2,000 km from the North to the South, Denmark to Sicily — through Western Europe during the fifth and forth millenniums B.C.
These axeheads were exported for example in the Paris basin to be polished during hundred of hours. To achieve a nice 20 cm. length “carnacéenne" axe, it will need:
• 30 to 70 hours to select and prepare the draft axe
• 100 hours for the first polishing in Alpine valleys (1 to 3 grams per hour)
• 100 hours to transform the axe (going from one type "Durrington" to type "Altenstadt").
• 2 to 10 hours for the “glass polish” or perforations (for example the type “Tumiac”)
Finally, some of these axes, after all these changes can be re-exported, including Spain (Vilaperde / 1900 km in total), in Germany (Schweichen / 2000 km in all) and even in southern Italy (Laterza / 2800 km in total).
In many cases, the axes are found outside tombs and often in the form of deposits (65 deposits listed in Europe for 286 axes). Lot of these axes are “out of context" but that does not mean that all these axes have been lost !
In fact, if we look at the environment of these blades "out of context", we see that :
• 79% of the blades are in close proximity to water (marsh, bog, lake, spring, waterfall ...),
• 13 % are in shelters under rocks or hidden in cracks,
• 8% can be found near standing stones.
Presuming that these are voluntarily placed objects rather than misplaced or lost, places include the marshes of Glastonbury (UK), Grevenbroich (Germany), Casarotto, (Italy) and rivers like Vendeuil (France). They think that a valued object becomes a sacred object encouraging elites to contact the supernatural. This is a common pattern across centuries and continents: From China to Central America via New Guinea.
All the axes, both very rare and highly valued were diverted from their meaning and dedicated to the world of spirits and supernatural powers. This is further reinforced by the numerous representations of monumental standing stones of Morbihan (Gavrinis).
Depending upon how one values axes, or how they were valued (practical purpose or sacred object), it is clear that these axes are very symbolic and reflect great social differences in the Neolithic, They are operated at high mountain expeditions (1700 to 2400 meters), Only clearest jade are selected for large axeheads,They are prepared by master craftsmen, They are hammered and polished for hundreds of hours, They are transferred over long distances, They are exchanged between elites, They can be repolished or reshaped as to load a different story, They have no trace of technical uses, They are rare, They are found in very specific places, They are included in the engravings standing stones, Finally, they will be copied with other rocks (flint Paris Basin for example).
Historically the sea level rose up and the forest sorrounding St.Michaels Mount as well as one of the most revered sources of local Greenstone became submerged.
Project Jade was a very important survey carried out by Pierre and Anne-Marie Pétrequin for twelve years researching (jadeitite, omphacitite, eclogite) axe heads in the Italian Alps between 2006 and 2010, Neil McGregor in his One Hundred Objects from History featured the Greenstone Axe Heads sourced in the Alps, he also spoke about a cult of the Greenstone Axe Heads which proliferated in northern France and Southern Britain, particularly Brittany.
In 2003 they found high-altitude quarries at Monte Viso, near Turin and in the vicinity of Monte Beigua, part of the Voltri massif, immediately to the north-west of Genoa.
From these 2 quarries, Jade axe-heads circulated for considerable distances — that is 3,300 km from the West to the East, Ireland to Bulgaria, and more than 2,000 km from the North to the South, Denmark to Sicily — through Western Europe during the fifth and forth millenniums B.C.
These axeheads were exported for example in the Paris basin to be polished during hundred of hours. To achieve a nice 20 cm. length “carnacéenne" axe, it will need:
• 30 to 70 hours to select and prepare the draft axe
• 100 hours for the first polishing in Alpine valleys (1 to 3 grams per hour)
• 100 hours to transform the axe (going from one type "Durrington" to type "Altenstadt").
• 2 to 10 hours for the “glass polish” or perforations (for example the type “Tumiac”)
Finally, some of these axes, after all these changes can be re-exported, including Spain (Vilaperde / 1900 km in total), in Germany (Schweichen / 2000 km in all) and even in southern Italy (Laterza / 2800 km in total).
In many cases, the axes are found outside tombs and often in the form of deposits (65 deposits listed in Europe for 286 axes). Lot of these axes are “out of context" but that does not mean that all these axes have been lost !
In fact, if we look at the environment of these blades "out of context", we see that :
• 79% of the blades are in close proximity to water (marsh, bog, lake, spring, waterfall ...),
• 13 % are in shelters under rocks or hidden in cracks,
• 8% can be found near standing stones.
Presuming that these are voluntarily placed objects rather than misplaced or lost, places include the marshes of Glastonbury (UK), Grevenbroich (Germany), Casarotto, (Italy) and rivers like Vendeuil (France). They think that a valued object becomes a sacred object encouraging elites to contact the supernatural. This is a common pattern across centuries and continents: From China to Central America via New Guinea.
All the axes, both very rare and highly valued were diverted from their meaning and dedicated to the world of spirits and supernatural powers. This is further reinforced by the numerous representations of monumental standing stones of Morbihan (Gavrinis).
Depending upon how one values axes, or how they were valued (practical purpose or sacred object), it is clear that these axes are very symbolic and reflect great social differences in the Neolithic, They are operated at high mountain expeditions (1700 to 2400 meters), Only clearest jade are selected for large axeheads,They are prepared by master craftsmen, They are hammered and polished for hundreds of hours, They are transferred over long distances, They are exchanged between elites, They can be repolished or reshaped as to load a different story, They have no trace of technical uses, They are rare, They are found in very specific places, They are included in the engravings standing stones, Finally, they will be copied with other rocks (flint Paris Basin for example).
 |
| Looking Southerly, almost Sou westerly from Britons Hill to Penlee Point across the townscape of Penzance, without a magnetic compass I want to know which of the externalized navigational coordinates (N,S,E,West) that we use to move around with actually correspond to equal directions embedded in the human body (or mind, or both) When speaking Mongolian, speakers will typically use the words for "front", "back", "left", and "right" to mean "south", "north", "east", and "west", respectively |
More on Orienteering & location.
The most frequently used relative directions are left, right, forward(s), backward(s), up, and down. No absolute direction corresponds to any of the relative directions. This is a consequence of the translational invariance of the laws of physics: nature, loosely speaking, behaves the same no matter in which direction one moves. As demonstrated by the Michelson-Morley null result, there is no absolute inertial frame of reference. There are definite relationships between the relative directions, however. Left and right, forward and backward, and up and down are three pairs of complementary directions, each pair orthogonal to both of the others. Relative directions are also known as egocentric coordinates.
Definitions of left and right based on the geometry of the natural environment are inconsistent, in practice, the meaning of relative direction words is conveyed through education, acculturation, tradition and direct references. A common definition of up and down uses gravity and the planet Earth as a frame of reference. Since there is a very noticeable force of gravity acting between the Earth and any other nearby object, down is defined as that direction which an object moves in reference to the Earth when the object is allowed to drop freely. Up is then defined as the opposite direction of down. Another common definition uses a human body, standing upright, as a frame of reference. In that case, up is defined as the direction from feet to head, perpendicular to the surface of the Earth. In most cases, up is a directionally oriented position generally opposite to that of the pull of gravity.
Forward and backward can be defined by referring to an object or person's directed motion. Forward is defined as the direction in which the object is moving. Backward is then defined as the opposite direction to forward. Alternatively, 'forward' may be the direction pointed by the observer's nose, defining 'backward' as the direction from the nose to the sagittal border in the observer's skull. With respect to a ship 'forward' would indicate the relative position of any object lying in the direction the ship is pointing. For symmetrical objects, it is also necessary to define forward/backward in terms of expected direction. Many mass transit trains are built symmetrically with paired control booths, and definitions of forward, backward, left, and right are temporary.In situations where a common frame of reference is needed, it is most common to use an egocentric view. A simple example is road signage. Another example is stage blocking, where "stage left" "stage right" "stage up" and "stage down" are, by convention, defined from the actor's point of view, but up/downstage does not follow gravitational conventions of up and down. An example of a non-egocentric view is page layout, where the relative terms "upper half" "left margin," etc. are defined in terms of the observer but employed in reverse for a type compositor, returning to an egocentric view. In medicine and science, where precise definitions are crucial, relative directions (left, right) are the sides of the organism, not the those of the observer. To avoid confusion, Latin terminology is employed: dexter and sinister for right and left.
Given significant distance from the magnetic poles, one can figure which hand is which using a magnetic compass and the sun. Facing the sun, before noon, the north pointer of the compass points to the left hand. After noon, it points to the right.
Geometry of natural environment
The right-hand rule is one common way to relate the three principal directions. For many years a fundamental question in physics was whether a left-hand rule would be equivalent. Many natural structures, including human bodies, follow a certain handedness, but it was widely assumed that nature did not distinguish the two possibilities. This changed with the discovery of parity violations in particle physics. If a sample of cobalt-60 atoms is magnetized so that they spin counterclockwise around some axis, the beta radiation resulting from their nuclear decay will be preferentially directed opposite that axis. Since counter-clockwise may be defined in terms of up, forward, and right, this experiment unambiguously differentiates left from right using only natural elements: If they were reversed, or the atoms spun clockwise, the radiation would follow the spin axis instead of being opposite to it.
Nautical terminology
Bow, aft, port, and starboard are nautical terms that convey an impersonal relative direction in the context of the moving frame of persons aboard a ship. The need for impersonal terms is most clearly seen in a rowing vessel where the majority of the crew face aft ("backwards") and the oars to their right are actually on the port side.
Cultures not using relative directionsMost human cultures use relative directions for reference, but there are exceptions. The Australian Aboriginal people the Guugu Yimithirr have no words denoting the egocentric directions in their language; instead, they exclusively refer to cardinal directions, even when describing small-scale spaces. For instance, if they wanted someone to move over on the car seat to make room, they might say "move a bit to the east". To tell someone where exactly they left something in their house, they might say, "I left it on the southern edge of the western table." Or they might warn a person to "look out for that big ant just north of your foot". Other peoples "from Polynesia to Mexico and from Namibia to Bali" similarly have predominantly "geographic languages".[ American Sign Language makes heavy use of geographical direction through absolute orientation. When speakingMongolian, speakers will typically use the words for "front", "back", "left", and "right" to mean "south", "north", "east", and "west", respectively.
Left-right confusion
Left-right confusion is the difficulty some people have in distinguishing the difference between the directions left and right. According to research by John R. Clarke (Drexel University) it affects about 15% of the population. These people can usually normally perform daily activities such as driving according to signs and navigating according to a map, but will often take a wrong turn when told to turn left or right and may have difficulties performing actions that require precise understanding of directional commands, such as ballroom dancing.
Substantiated Absence
 |
Carreckloes or in English Language St.Michaels Mount, Mounts Bay.
The bay in which a former forest grew around the mount before being submerged. I'm holding a piece of Greenstone smoothed by the sea and forming an axe head shape.
Why place a Gothvos Stone ?
|
Elvan is a name used in Cornwall and former Brythonic locations in Devon for the native varieties of quartz-porphyry. They are dispersed irregularly in the Upper Devonian series of rocks and some of them make very fine building stones (e.g. Pentewan stone, Polyphant stone and Catacleuse stone). Greenstone is another name for this stone and it is often used for parts of buildings such as doorways so they can be finely carved. Most of the elvan quarries are now disused. Others are quarried in bulk for aggregates commonly used for road-building.
Archaeology
Approximately 400 prehistoric stone axes, known as Group 1 axes and made from greenstone, have been found all over Britain, which from petrological analysis appear to come from west Cornwall. Although the quarry has not been identified, it has been suggested that the Gear, a rock now submerged half a mile from the shore at Penzance, may be the site. A significant amount of trade is indicated as many have been found elsewhere in Britain.
Gothvos Stone placed in Perranuthnoe
 |
| PENLEE ELVAN QUARRY The Greenstone source |
Gothvos stone Positioners can either be involuntary or voluntary, involuntary paricipants are largely anonymous and generally involve themselves as reactors by intercepting an existing placed Gothvos stone and re placing it elsewhere. Voluntary participants always place their Gothvos stone in a particular location which is documented photographically as it is left in position.
Gothvos Stones all come from one source and were initially placed and photographed using small apertured lenses to witness their existence both in the detail of the foreground and infinite background, although It is an important factor that the stone and the action is deliberately evidenced the peripatetic drifter may discover stones in a new un-archived location. They may wish to 'unscramble' the existing composition and establish a new composition. Subsequently from this parish-localised perspective a widening number of connections and context are participating in assembling a global cairn with the story of the Greenstone of Penlee Cornwall being re-imagined, re-interpreted.
Greenstone is found in many places but the Greenstone of West Cornwalls Penlee is very particular and was formerly used by Bronze Age Craftsmen to carve ceremonial axe-heads which to this day are found scattered throughout the rest of Britain and European mainland in river beds and excavations long after being cherished and traded many centuries ago.
The Greenstone Axe Cult is mentioned in the BBC - British Museum; History of the World in Hundred Important Objects, the existence of the cult of greenstone axe heads was most definitely a reality, Neil McGregor states that the jade axehead he uses as an example comes from the Alps, although he makes no connection to the Greenstone Axeheads of Mounts Bay or Penlee in West Cornwall.
a history of the world
Elvan continued to be used as Roadstone for its hardness, a network of granulated Elvan spread throughout Britain. Until recently the Penlee Quarry provided quantities of the mineral.
 |
| Gothvos Stone from Newlyn placed by Martin Langthorn, |
North Curl Curl Headland
Sydney
New South Wales
Australia
Gothvos Stone from Newlyn placed in Lima, Peru by Valeria Tello Giusti:
That {the gothvos stone} stone was placed on the coast of Lima, by the Pacific Ocean. In Lima, a year ago, the town hall decided it would be a good idea to build a road that went through a cliff and in order to do that, they blew up part of the cliff, which changed the tide and started eating away the coastline. So, in order to protect the coast, the beaches got covered with stones, similar to the gothvos one. That stone was placed on one of these beaches and it blended in perfectly. When placing the stone, I performed a short ritual whereby, the Cornish stone was rubbed against a Peruvian stone, while I sang and whispered to them. Then I replaced the Peruvian stone with the Cornish stone and brought the former back to the U.K. with me, in the hope the one day it may make its way to Cornwall replacing stone was taken from and create a sort of exchange.
.
Fishtail Mountain Gothvos Nepal
placed and documented by Charmaine Warrior
Machapuchare or Machhapuchhre (माछापुछ्रे) Lit. "Fish Tail" in English, is a mountain in the Annapurna Himal of north central Nepal. It is revered by the local population as particularly sacred to the god Shiva, and hence is off limits to climbing. The Sanctuary is a very desirable trekking destination, Machapuchare commands tremendous vertical relief with a pointed profile, making it a particularly striking peak, despite a lower elevation than some of its neighbors. Its double summit resembles the tail of a fish,hence the name meaning "Fish's Tail" in Nepali language. Machapuchare has never been climbed to its summit. The only known or documented attempt was in 1957 by a climbing team who did not complete the ascent; they had promised not to set foot on the actual summit. Since then, the mountain has been declared sacred, and it is now forbidden to climbers.
The idea of composing a juxtaposition within the landscape resonates with several important ideas; consciousness of our landscape both internally within the thinking mind. External references to the influences on our place of birth or where we live or work, our language,...indeed our bodies and other cultural signifiers.
The transformative act of making objects - particularly from raw material is one that I find persistently of great interest and reward. Greenstone is a hardened form of slate, its former sacred potential is a matter for conjecture. Implements made of Greenstone seem, by modern standards to have a limited practical use but I am making this observation in the light of thousands of years technological and social development. Perhaps a sense of place carried more meaning for the properties of implements, perhaps they were similar to souvenirs from religious reliquatories. Were Greenstone Axes early antiquitaries harking back to a time without metal? |
 |
My initial fascination in Greenstone mineral origins came to me via my geography teacher on the Isles of Scilly. Although presented as a formal school lesson I misinterpreted his delivery as a type of mythology in which a large greenstone (deposits) lay beneath the sea in Mounts Bay ( St. Michaels Mount ), this was connected to a sunken forest - a geographic project that featured carbon fourteen samples of pollen layers beneath the submerged sands of Mounts Bay and petrified stumps of oak still extant at low water. The idea of a submerged forest and the hermitage on the isle of St. Michaels Mount overlooking these obscure features ignited a very personal revery which I didn't understand. Later I revisited these internalized ideas with a renewed interest in the submerged Cornish Language. Where this language, so different from English had come from...? Out of the ground? and where had it gone?
 |
| Penlee is the "place of the flat stones" and nearby in Newlyn there is a place called Green Rocks, a very prominent vein of quartz runs more or less due south near the sad Life Boat House that is now a memorial to the brave people of Mousehole in the tragedy of RNLI Solomon Brown. |
This photograph was taken with one of several prepared small apertured cameras that I developed towards the Gothvos project. The long exposure time and my insistent belief that the stone must be photographed exactly how it is intended to interact when placed called for some uncomfortably low level crouching, wet knees and the cause of some attention from curious onlookers. To use a Beuysian concept I would say listen to your inner-voice-radio whilst placing a stone. It is very satisfying to see someone walk towards the photographed stones just as you walk away. Will they discover a story and a new location or Will they keep it? What will happen to this particular stone?
 | ||
| Gothvos Stone photographed on a prepared Olympus Film Camera into the setting sun from Pendeen Carn towards Scilly on the eve of my Fathers funeral 2008. A WISTFUL EXCURSION • HANNAH MOORE
Vigo was born to Emily Clero and the prominent Spanish/Catalan militant anarchist Eugeni Bonaventura de Vigo i Sallés (who adopted the name Miguel Almereyda - an anagram of "y'a la merde", which translates as "there's the shit"). Much of his early life was spent on the run with his parents. His father was strangled in his cell in Fresnes Prison on the night of 13 August 1917; allegedly the authorities were responsible. The young Vigo was subsequently sent to boarding school under an assumed name, Jean Sales, to conceal his identity.
Vigo was married and had a daughter, Luce Vigo (a film critic) in 1931. He died in 1934 of complications from tuberculosis, which he had contracted eight years earlier.
Vigo is noted for two films which affected the future development of both French and world cinema: Zéro de conduite (1933) and L'Atalante (1934). Zéro de conduite was approvingly described by critic David Thomson as "forty-four minutes of sustained, if roughly shot anarchic crescendo." L'Atalante was Vigo's only full-length feature; the simple story of a newly-married couple splitting and reuniting is notable for the way it effortlessly merges rough, naturalistic filmmaking with shimmering, dreamlike sequences and effects. Thomson described the result as "not so much a masterpiece as a definition of cinema, and thus a film that stands resolutely apart from the great body of films."
His career began with two other films: À propos de Nice (1930), a subversive silent film inspired by Bolshevik newsreels which considered social inequity in 1920s Nice; andTaris, roi de l'eau (1931), a motion study of swimmer Jean Taris. None of his four films were financial successes; at one point, with his and his wife's health suffering, Vigo was forced to sell his camera.
Zéro de conduite was banned by the French government until after the war, and L'Atalante was mutilated by its distributor. By this point, Vigo was too ill to strenuously fight the matter. Both films have outlived their detractors; L'Atalante was chosen as the 10th-greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound's 1962 poll, and as the 6th-best in its 1992 poll. In the 1990s a complete copy of L'Atalante was found in Italy, and the print was restored to its original version.
Writing on Vigo's career in The New York Times, Andrew Johnston (critic) stated: "The ranks of the great film directors are short on Keatses and Shelleys, young artists cut off in their prime, leaving behind a handful of great works that suggest what might have been. But one who qualifies is Jean Vigo, the French director who died of tuberculosis at age 29 in 1934.
Hannah Moore is a Performance Artist
http://
|
Turkey.
ReplyDeleteAtabey Göktug Tasiyaran, have you found a Gothvos stone because one has most certainly been left there in Turkey. jp
Delete