GOTHVOS PIEZOELECTRIC PRESENCE

Gothvos Carn Bussa

Three exposures made with a prepared Nikon 35mm Film Camera and Vivitar Lens. In the Isles of Scilly on the Pump Road near Parting Carn Moor.
This Blog is quite messy in its current incarnation the key focus, via Negativa or  locating a Tabula Rasa in which to place the Potent Object the Gothvos Narrative if you will: these themes and images lay scattered around in various guises, the online saga is the usual torture of making hasty choices in hardware and then being hacked about by larger accommodating websites who are suddenly no longer accessible - my own fault in being attracted to the myth of the free lunch. So please scratch the surface, there is more and don't be put off when you read repetitive information, my role is changing as this becomes a Community project I find myself a more curatational role replete with the considerations of enmeshing different perspectives. The Gothvos is about a particular type of stone arising from a particular place from which Cornish Stone Axes were made, over 450 have been retrieved from all over the joint so far. They crop up in books and museums and they represent something extremely fundamental to me about Place geographically, about Language culturally and about the individual in society. I lean heavily on the broadest terms, Landscape and Consciousness.
I have spliced a theatricality into my own way of doing things. Combining this experience  (praxis) with geological and geographical datum, societal, anthropological factors and experimenting with cameras and film emulsions I'm proposing that the potent object is positioned via negativa  through the threshold of a tabula rasa. The potent object releases potential through the hand of the appointed activist, for them ( the catilyst or author) the ultimate action is now to position and document this contempletive act - the piece must fit or be found a more perfect location, only then can the object rest and maximise an emerging compositional matrix. There may be gaged tangible elements present: residual body warmth or smooth density in the stone, external weather conditions - particularly light and available trajectory plinths there will certainly be exposure to piezoelectric influences. It is interesting and rewarding to note that already some reactions have found their way back to me, people are curious about the little stones provenance and cultural inscribed word, the action must be recorded and the object given up or abandoned before the object regains potential in a revitilized composition. 




The old sunken forest of Carreck Loes or Mounts Bay, my school teacher Mr Steve Ottery, encouraged an enquiring mindset he sent us forth on inquiring about Carbon 14 testing of the pollen layers and petrified oak stumps of this sunken landscape over on the mainland (we were on Scilly) . Carbon fourteen was explained and duly acknowledged, the existence of a Green Stone now submerged, called The Gear Rock, where Axe Makers came to get Greenstone. This is one of the closest locations for the Gothvos placings, this stone, I'm fairly sure became submerged but it may have attracted someone to move it to a new Tabula Rasa.

The rock exposures around St Michael's Mount provide an opportunity to see many features of the geology of Cornwall in a single locality. The mount is made of the uppermost part of a granite intrusion into metamorphosed Devonian mudstones or pelites. The granite is itself mineralised with a well-developed sheeted greisen vein system. Due to its geology the southern coast of the island was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1995.
Gothvos of the Elevated Section of the A30 Penzance By-Pass.

(St.Michaels Mount is to the left of the moving tractor)

At the end of 1875 Edison and his assistants were experimenting with the Acoustic Telegraph when they noticed that a rapidly vibrating spark gap produced a spark in an adjacent relay. Subsequent investigation showed that the phenomenon could be made to occur at a distance of several feet without interconnecting cables. Edison, with this small amount of evidence, announced that it was "a true unknown force" since he believed that the spark transmitted electricity without carrying any charge.  Edison concluded that this discovery had the potential to cheapen telegraphic communication and to allow transatlantic cables to be laid without insulation. He was also interested in finding new forces as a means for providing scientific explanations for spiritualist, occult and other allegedly supernatural phenomena following his disenchantment with Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy.

Edison's apparatus consisted of a spark gap vibrating at a high frequency powered by batteries and connected to tin foil sheet about 12 by 8 inches, effectively acting as an antenna. A similar tin foil sheet, connected to ground was located at about eight feet away with two more similar, un-grounded tin foil sheets between. Sparks could be seen at the "receiver" sheets. The last laboratory notebook entry on etheric force in 1875 can be seen at The Edison Papers.

Carreck Loes St.Michaels Mount.

One of the former roles of monasteries and priories, like St.Michaels Mount in the Middle Ages was to offer aid, food, lodging and conditional spiritual guidance to pilgrims. Hundreds of thousands of them walked across the causeway from throughout Europe to the fringes of the "known" and frequented or undocumented societies. Apart from adventure, many could have sought redemption of a kind unfamiliar to the more consumer orientated society and an easier route to paradise as witnessed by the relics of saints in sacred places. During the 12th-14th centuries, pilgrimage became increasingly popular, particularly along routes linking sites devoted to St Michael and those that led to St Iago de Compostela in Spain. Many pilgrims travelled to Canterbury Cathedral in England (see Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales) where archbishop Thomas Beckett was the saintly attraction, his murder in 1170 having been incited by his former friend, King Henry ll, Duke of Normandy. But the connection between St.Mont Michelle and St.Micheals Mount became difficult during the 100 Years' War and both islands were fortified. There are other islands similar to St. Michaels Mount more easily identified as Breton, Mont San Michelle has been disputed territory between Brittany and Normandy owing in part to the Norman invasion of Britain and the gifting of Earldoms for favours, the reason seems to be upheld that it is the tidal flow that bestowed the property to Normandy. A small Islet close to Mont San Michelle is the reputed burial site for King Hoël of Wales.

OGHAM

According to Professor Greene, written or inscribed Ogham, was an archaic speech of the Druidic fraternity, which he considers unintelligible to non druidic readers, he suggests that it was written in an archaic language, rather similar to modern english use of latin. 

"When we find Irish written in Roman letters, from the seventh century onwards, a linguistic revolution had taken place, with words greatly reduced from their Ogham forms. This is a paralell to the changes which took place in France and the other Roman languagesas compared to latin, and it is possible that the historic process was the same. Of the six Ogham inscriptions in Cornwall, all carry an inscription in latin repeating the name of the commemorated person. There are also numerous Latin inscriptions, some bear the Chi Rho, one of the earliest Christian symbols derived from the first two letters of thge Greek word for Christ. A Cornwall where undocumented Kings ruled of whom we can only derive the scantiest information. 



Porth Kidney Gothvos (T'wards Trencrom)

Ogham 

The earliest inscriptions in ogham date to about the 4th century AD, James Carney believes its invention is within the 1st century BC. Although the use of "classical" ogham in stone inscriptions seems to have flowered in the 5th–6th centuries around the Irish Sea, from the phonological evidence it is clear that the alphabet predates the 5th century. A period of writing on wood or other perishable material prior to the preserved monumental inscriptions needs to be assumed, sufficient for the loss of the phonemes represented by úath ("H") and straif ("Z"), as well as the velar nasal, gétal, all of which are clearly part of the system, but unattested in inscriptions.

It appears that the ogham alphabet was modelled on another script, and some even consider it a mere cipher of its template script (Düwel 1968: points out similarity with ciphers of Germanic runes). The largest number of scholars favours the Latin alphabet as this template, although the Elder Futhark and even the Greek alphabet have their supporters. Runic origin would elegantly explain the presence of "H" and "Z" letters unused in Irish, as well as the presence of vocalic and consonantal variants "U" vs. "W" unknown to Latin or Greek writing. The Latin alphabet is the primary contender mainly because its influence at the required period (4th century) is most easily established, viz., via Britannia, while the runes in the 4th century were not very widespread even in continental Europe.

In Ireland and in Wales, the language of the monumental stone inscriptions is termed Primitive Irish. The transition to Old Irish, the language of the earliest sources in the Latin alphabet, takes place in about the 6th century. Since ogham inscriptions consist almost exclusively of personal names and marks possibly indicating land ownership, linguistic information that may be glimpsed from the Primitive Irish period is mostly restricted to phonological developments.

Mên Scryfa, inscribed stone, Morvah. Cornwall
Craig Weatherhills excellent book Cornovia describes The Mên Scryfa: The stone stands in a field on the north side of the track, 300m beyond the Mên-an-tol (site 29 in his book) The northern face of this stone, which stands 1.8 tall, is clearly inscribed to the memory of RIALOBRAN - CVNOVAL-FIL-(Rialobran, son of Cunoval). These names in modern Cornish Ryalvran and Kenwal, mean respectively 'Royal Raven' and 'Famous Chieftain', so the stone almost certainly commemorates local royalty of the sixth century AD, the date ascribed to the style of lettering used.

Writing emerged in a variety of different cultures in the Bronze age. Examples include the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica. The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around 1600 BC. The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had independent origins. It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing was developed around 2000 BC for Semitic workers in the Sinai by giving mostly Egyptian hieratic glyphs Semitic values(see History of the alphabet Proto-Sinaitic alphabet). The Ge'ez writing system of Ethiopia is considered Semitic. It is likely to be of semi-independent origin, having roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system. Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design. In the case of Italy, about 500 years passed from the early Old Italic alphabet to Plautus (750 to 250 BC), and in the case of the Germanic peoples, the corresponding time span is again similar, from the first Elder Futhark inscriptions to early texts like the Abrogans (ca. 200 to 750 CE
There are currently estimated to be approximately 6000 languages existing within the various contemporary societies.

Beyond the Sea, Beyond Brocade, Beyond Beyond.

http://www.arthousecoop.com/submissions/20643

HIERARCHAEOLOGY.

The word textile is from Latin texere which means "to weave", "to braid" or "to construct". It is important for me to reconsider the fact that Strands or Yarns were the predecessor of sheet's or bolts of fabricated textile. A good example of sheet textile art is felting, in which animal fibers are matted together using heat and moisture, but wether Felting preceded yarns is unlikely to be either defined or established here, in my order of things the strand came first, and binding must have been the earliest form of conjoining two separate elements with a third. Our forefathers were not averse to the use of leather strands: thongs, which require more basic processing than the vegetable originating fibres.  Textile Art occupies a very undervalued position in the fine art equation, requiring a Name to add value rather than the intrinsic value of its artful spin off, something in the order of a Warhol multiple or a Hirst Spot Rug. Although this value system is chronically flawed, I think it works in my favour regarding the range of idea's I'm most interested in.

Conceptualizing one of the social phenomena that I keep returning to, the process and action of Work/Shared industrial cooperative activity, certainly we see it modulating in the real world and more rapidly fluctuating now than in previous centuries, the idea of "Doing Together", organized or spontaniously making things in a distinct group of contributing individuals, there are many ideas as to why this general action is changing, the usual stereotypical propositions are plainly obvious chief among which the rise of the individual, particularly in Art.

Textile Art is made lesser simply by the substitution of the second word by the first. Primarily there is Art (fine art) and then there is Textile Art (craft work).The consensus being that Art is for mens dreams and Craft is for women's work.Art is refined as closely to an idea as possible, craft is simply getting the right material and forming it.....a bit.

Mengwytha Pendeen

 Stereotypically artists as we know/knew them are commonly male individuals. Art as we knew/know it is a physical manifestation of paint (oil) and canvas, that is the pinnacle in material terms. Artists were established in the Renaissence through sponsorship, often through religion or monarchy, they were paid for their extraordinary powerful figurations: visions which developed sleight of eye through Composition, Scale, Proportion and Perspective, standards of measuring physical logic. The Subversive Stitch They became superlative craftsmen but they called themselves Artists and their techniques or their craft was far outweighed by the phenomena of their artful visionary manifestations. 

 Crafts arise from  desirable proximities, amplified senses, climatic variations, geomorphic consequences, stuff found hanging around by people wanting to transcend their existence: presaging Art. These new superlative craftsmen: Artists considered themselves apart because everyday they were contemplating Life, The Universe and Death and everything, the more financially secure ones had assistants to do the craft leaving them to do the conceptualizing and any signature "dishes" in their repertoire. The Masses were all crafts people, they made stuff together, this is not to evoke some hovis platitudes I'm simply comparing the activity undertaken by an autonomous or autocratic group of persons all present in the same vicinity without the tyranny of a plethora of emails, relentless phone communication ordering stuff online, delivered by angry white van man out of cyber lorry park wilderness and into your collective life-style montage.

Like art, craft can have lowly beginnings in food chains and floral, faunal husbandry it is a direct consequence of the aspirations of the inhabitants of a particular habitat, craft is deployed in order to turn trees into baskets, rocks into car components. It was never intended to develop beyond the sacred psychotic visions of the lofty overlords, the hermits, the anchorites and kings but the part played by ornament and textiles to help establish rank, order and hierarchy was too seductive.
 Sometimes you just know you have to walk on real grass, I recently looked around St.Ives attempting to locate the site of the Fishing Net Looms from the old industry that my great, great grandfather (on my fathers side) would have known, the nets used to be made there but not because the net fibre materials were grown nearby,  Other factors came into play, the primary reason was the close proximity to the sea and the abundance of fish, with the mining industry attracting the railway being extended further southwest. Earlier this preceding century fishing nets were no longer locally manufactured in St.Ives, in fact local industrial textiles practically everywhere were priced out by the beginnings of globalism, they came from Spain and currently they for the most part come from China.

My grandmothers father was a naval officer on board H.M.S. Isis during the Boxer Rebellion, when foreigners to China were openly distrusted for their acquisitive actions and tendencies. The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known by foreigners as the Boxers, or "Yihe Magic Boxing", was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods due to imperialism and natural disasters. The group originate from the Lí sect of the Ba gua religion group. Foreigners came to call the well-trained, athletic young men "Boxers" due to the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was spirit possession, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits. I was really touched that my grandmother left me two lacquer trays that her father had acquired in his time in China, she had noticed my adolescent interest in them. My grandmothers father left the royal navy and became the Revenue Man on the Isles of Scilly, (coastguard) not a desperately popular job among the Scillonian inhabitants although my grandmother was considered quite a catch for her Scillonian husband: my grandfather. Both of my Great grandfathers were separately active participants in attending the rescue of an Italian ship called the Isabo which wrecked one early evening on October 28th 1927. My grandmothers father received a signed (by Benito Mussolini) vellum and bronze medal now hanging in the Isles of Scilly Museum for his part, my grandfathers father was a hard hat diver as well as a fisherman who brought up the perished souls in their seized expressions of agony or begging forgiveness. As far as I know he was not recognised and his diving gear that was kept in a small banked shed that has recently become the Porthcressa Regenerated Tourist Centre wasted away in the dark.  This is a true story, there are few resonant links and there are scant archetypes the story is a text-isle.

With twisting or spinning and plying fibers to make yarn (called thread when it is very fine and rope when it is very heavy). The yarn is then knotted, looped, braided, or woven to make flexible fabric or cloth, and cloth can be used to make clothing and soft furnishings. All of these items – felt, yarn, fabric, and finished objects – are collectively referred to as textiles. Yarns are stories too, embroideries and strands of narrative that link and crossover, weave and bind, suture and marlin caulk are such an obvious connection with our common history of sea travel, domestic life, mythology and language.

The textile arts also include those techniques which are used to embellish or decorate textiles – dyeing and printing to add color and pattern; embroidery and other types of needlework; tablet weaving; and lace-making. Construction methods such as sewing, knitting,crochet, and tailoring, as well as the tools employed (looms and sewing needles), techniques employed (quilting and pleating) and the objects made (carpets, hooked rugs, and coverlets) all fall under the category of textile arts.

http://www.thebeetroottree.com/exhibitions.php

The exemplary fine artist, the maker of masterpieces even in his current guise can be traced back to cosmopolitan Florence, Venice or Rome - such a legacy informs the spawning ground of the salons, colleges or "schools" wether they embrace, subvert or react to the history of art as defined by the collectors, their vision of approved art is compiled by the success or failure of the markets upon which they depend.

Odysseus Adventures: The image of the Mounts Bay Lugger Mystery which sailed all the way from Newlyn Cornwall to Melbourne Australia 1854. stitched through a hard back of Odysseus with whipping twine crafting two stories together using physical actions and affordances to create a perspective by Jonathan Polkest.

As a model of a fiscal pyramid Fine Art is the pinnacle and totally dependent upon the second layer, the commodities, manufacturing, processing, refining and making.  Arrogantly sitting above the very source of its funding, every so often a craft will materialize in the artist category, an artist in clay, an artist in wood, an artist in paper. Sculpture is the eternal truant since it is made by artists using excessive amounts of crafting. Anyway, this is all pretty boring were it not for the fact that I need to address the cultural oddities of a place like St.Ives which has had a long heritage of industrialised crafts which transgressed from stone cutting, medievil theatre, shipbuilding, farming, fishing, manufacturing fishing gear etc etc into Artists Colony.

All those crafts were undertaken by men and women who avoided the mantle of Artist building the most artful ships, the envy of all including their Breton cousins who called the Cornish Lugger "The swallow of the seas".  At an earlier point the community staged Cornish Miracle Plays - written and performed, ship building on the beaches. The simple act of pushing Marlin (tarred cotton twine) between carvel planks with a wood chisel is a contributory act towards waterproofing a wooden structure, a sculptural attribute. Tying ropes, sewing sails, rigging tackle and fishing gear by picking up these techniques and materials of the crafters legacy and allowing the unfinished, "artless' material to express influences, communicate the exposure endured in its creation.

The Invention of Needles.