everything around – including what isn't seen

THE QUEEN'S NOISE AND TOWN CRIER

1.
Northampton Northampton,
The Queen's noise and town crier.
The council has modern Boroughs — steeds

Disturbance in red plush,
and that meeting

Waistcoat planning, houses,
received and caused,
from breaches and permissions

Also holding complaints,
built from the large numbers of drab gaiters,
most the one in about a castle,
of people and gilt-probabilities

An illegal mosque, still alive,
gathering at branded and granted barracks

The property reminds one,
even if a preach, a road,
at certain, somehow

Application has the building done for them,
times of the rings,
his was made


2.
Investigating row,
to new — where it was

Cowper illegally used,
to make the building,
in established verses

A mosque,
a way from the use of his bills
since the 5th — a Castle

The property of morality,
modern red

It has been — a person,
old-fashioned, brick shoe,
speaking on a town fool

Months for factories,
attracting behalf of also,
who is the story,
to stud the town

Pleasant red worshippers,
founded in by way are the white,
brick little enforcements

EXCHANGE exhibition, the university of plymouth, nov '09 — jan '10

(11/09 - 01/10) Prints from the on-going You Are Your Own Timekeeper enquiry are being exhibited at the University of Plymouth as part of 'EXCHANGE:', a research exchange on approaches and responses to 'landscape' between the University of Plymouth (LAND/SEA research group) and the University of Northampton.

The images document the former chelsea workshops in two states: emptiness (left, middle) and at a hiatus in its renovation by the al-iman society (right). A1 Single colour digital prints in archive inks were chosen over some new plan-copy prints that didn't reproduce consistently enough for the three to work as a sequence... I'm now building quite a collection of rolled A1 plan-copies from this work, that I hope will one day see the light of day.

Commentary: "YOU ARE YOUR OWN TIMEKEEPER considers the landscape of Northampton as a construct, exploring ‘place identity’ of the town through the interactions between a nineteenth-century boot and shoe factory and its inhabitants (or lack of). The activities and processes that have taken place, or are planned to take place within the space, are seen as intrinsic in etching and moulding the landscape of Northampton, with the inquiry placing the building at the meta-geographical centre of the town – a location of activity or non-activity metaphorically representing Northampton through three key phases in its use. First, as a place of industry (1896, as boot and shoe factory manufacturing within a worldwide market). Second, as a place of emptiness and degradation (approx 2000, as vacant production space following the movement of industry away from the factory and part-conversion into ‘luxury’ apartments). Third, and currently, as a place for immigrant populations; a community centre for the Al-Iman Society of Northamptonshire, a space for meeting and education currently in appeal against recent council rejection following opposition from local residents and far-right political groups.

The work is open-ended with no fixed outcome or date for completion: as well as an inquiry in itself, the building is treated as a test-bed – a space for developing methodologies and processes using text, images and sounds for describing and mapping places and spaces. The images displayed are works in progress exploring various methods of dissemination (photographic compositions; book; text), recording the building in it’s empty state alongside current renovation by members of the Al-Iman Society (October 2009), who wait in anticipation of council approval and public acceptance of their contribution to the town and its inhabitants."

The problem is, people are scared of change

The changes that the al-iman group have made to the building were good to see at last. I was shown around by Jafar who told me that there was still a lot to do but felt it was important to retain the past within the future when it comes to developing the building for it's new uses. What struck me was that the group were adding to the building rather than changing it. If anything they're restoring it back to it's 'former glory' with previously unseen 19thC features carefully cleaned and maintained. I will plan another visit on my own to document the changes in more detail, but Jafar was very welcoming of what I was doing, inviting me to meet others when more work was taking place. Whether their plans are accepted by the council, I don't know, but they've made their mark on the place, which for now is enough.


- Clicker closer maker finisher


- Activity room


- Storage


- Footwear


- Out


- This way


- Window


- Mats

Here - this weekend

Drop needle. Here somewhere, back to square one:

COMMUNITY CENTRE PLANS REJECTED

"Plans to turn an old factory in Northampton into a Muslim community centre have been rejected by the body charged with overseeing the development of the town. The Al-Iman Society, which represents the town's East African community, had made the application to turn a former shoe factory on the corner of Cowper Street and Shakespeare Street, in The Mounts, into the centre. The application had previously been recommended for refusal and residents nearby had circulated a petition objecting to the plans. At a meeting of the West Northamptonshire Development Committee (WNDC) this week the application was turned down. John Weir, WNDC's Deputy Chairman and member of Northampton Area Planning Committee, said: "WNDC fully understands the need for new community centres but on this occasion the location is not suitable for the proposed use. The general noise and disruption from the proposed use would have an unacceptable impact on the surrounding area. "Secondly, Cowper Street and the surrounding roads do not have sufficient parking for current residents and therefore have no capacity for extra cars."Ahmed Ali, secretary of the Al-Iman Society, said the group respected the committee's decision but was disappointed, and will be having a meeting to decide its next step."

– from the northampton chronicle and echo, may 30

I missed this outcome and am disappointed (though not surprised) the chance to involve this group in the work may be lost. I'm hoping to arrange another visit to the factory asap to see what changes have been made. I now need to consider how this decision alters the direction of the work.

INTO THE NOTHINGNESS OF SCORN AND NOISE (1 of 3)

INTO THE NOTHINGNESS OF SCORN AND NOISE (1 of 3) from james smith on Vimeo.

NOTHINGNESS OF (SCORN AND) NOISE

studies for a soundwalk, northampton: text and verse as composition. more sound to follow.

stage / verse 1.1:

YOU ARE YOUR OWN TIMEKEEPER

Produced as photographic documentation of the Chelsea Workshops. Available with CD of sound recordings taken at the factory. See this post for more information.

CHELSEA WORKSHOPS

view photos here

(written as part-submission to a call-for-entries, discussing the audio track Clicker Closer Maker Finisher)

This study is part of an open-ended enquiry into the representation of place as sound, in particular within Northampton. The work attempts to communicate a past and present view of a once dominant boot and shoe industry by evoking sonic images of a workforce that shaped the town in terms of its contributions to the UK (the armed forces, fashion, industry) and further afield. These sonic interpretations of people, objects, and spaces were projected into the main production area of a disused Northampton victorian boot and shoe factory, allowing the architecture of the building to shape and add to the sounds through reflection, reverberations etc, leading to a hybrid portrait of a past industry and a physical environment in which it occurred.

The boot and shoe industry (becoming the specialist industry of Northampton in the mid 17th Century) led to the construction of hundreds of homes in the town centre and employed two fifths of the towns men at the end of the 19th Century. The rise of the mechanical age within the industry at this time led to a steady decline in the workforce, with makers gradually moving to machine processes and outsourcing work to cut costs. The chosen site for this work was perhaps the most recent example of a move away from tradition and past practices, with the previous tenants now making footwear in a purpose-built, fully mechanised site outside of the town. This work attempts to capture the final moments of these factories at a point in time where all except a few are being converted into luxury, open-plan apartment blocks.

Digital translation of image and text to sound took place through various algorithmic processes, using open source and cutsom-build software to reduce visual and written information to a raw data that can be reformed as sound waves.

4 areas of the shoe-making production process (clicking, closing, making and finishing) were projected by separate loudspeakers, positioned accurately in areas of the factory where these processes took place. Despite the seemingly atonal quality of the sound, the track is a kind of spatial narrative, with hundreds of sonically different and abstracted artefacts of past workers and their actions being manipulated and moved around in space by the architecture of the building over the course of several hours, forming a temporal account of industry and place at the point of recording.

Study for Clicker Closer Maker Finisher:

TONY CONRAD AT THE FISHMARKET

DIG

FISH MARKET FLICKR SET

AUDIO CLIPS

walking.mp3 : Walking through a disused victorian boot and shoe factory, projecting an audible history of manufacturing into the production space (edit)

CLICKER & CLOSER (today)

A CONVERSATION WITH PLACES (Northampton)

projecting sonic images of places/non-places within places/non-places evoking discussion between spaces.

each place informs and communicates developing a sonic overview of areas and networks of places and people.

introducing contrasting places and non-places to one another leading to a folding of communities cultures network in real time.

many visits between places/speakers

4 largely unrelated locations, chosen for their position relative to change and (re)developement in northampton

1a) greyfriars bus station, mounts
2a) edward green shoe factoy, cowper street
1b) x
2b) x

NON-PLACES (edit)

non-place / non-space is one that has no acknowledged identity. exist as temporary habitats. passages. necessities. transitional places

audio project documentation:
objects are taken from the non-places and made audible through a range of analogue and digital techniques, capturing the micro sonic details of content alongside the macro documentations of place.
- place becomes the instrument — taking sounds from found objects
- and the recording device — when re-recording from within the space
patterns of sound generated partly by place, partly by human intervention.
sounds re-assembelled using (x machine)


bus station
train station
underpasses
cafés
car parks

buses leave this stop for
we leave this stop for
we leave this space for
we leave these spaces for
we move through these spaces for
leave these spaces for
these spaces for
these spaces
spaces for
used spaces

we leave this non-place for
we leave these non-place for
we move through these non-place for
leave these non-place for
these non-place for
these non-place
non-place for
used non-place

POINT OF CENTRE GRID

SCREENS (20:30)