June 2, 2016

Maxim: Some friendships can be experienced in principle only, rather than in practice also.

9.00 am. To do: medical appointment; cable order; postgraduate monitoring update; tutorial time revisions; and appointments for next week. Then, down to the meat of the day: the sound projects (present and forthcoming). In respect to the latter, I must move forward, even though the realisation of the Port Talbot Steelworks piece may be stymied by the TATA Steel’s (understandable) delay in granting copyright approval to use the glass-plates and their surrogates:

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Postcard: The Morgan Works, Port Talbot (c.1930s)

The original Port Talbot steelworks was named after Christopher Rice Mansell Talbot (1803-90). He was a relative of William Fox Talbot, the photographer and pioneer of the salted paper and calotype processes. Thus, the steelworks has had a link to photography beyond that of being being a subject before the lens. The industrial site was constructed between 1901 and 1905. The final two years of its inception coincided with the period of the Welsh Religious Revival. (I cannot let that connection go unreferenced in the sound composition.) The works were closed in 1961, and demolished two years later.

Towards the end of my first year BA Fine Art studies, I made several small landscape pieces informed by the Ebbw Vale steelworks (which lay in the valley parallel to my home town). It’s curious how, often, the germ of the present has been planted decades before it comes to fruition. The past abides:

1979-(21)-Industrial-Landscape-No.-2
John Harvey, Industrial Landscape No. 1 (1979), mixed media, 26.5 × 11.5 cm.

Afternoon. Before lunch, I headed for the School to conduct a second supervisor’s annual review interview with one of our current PhD Fine Art students:

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After a late lunch, I turned again to the text of the CD booklet and prepared to write the final paragraph. Eventually, there’ll an exhibition booklet (related to the 23 works that made up The Pictorial Bible III: Bible in Translation, exhibited in 2015) and two websites associated with the album. The first website was completed last year, and embodies a 57-part composition, seven hours long, entitled The Floating Bible: Miracle of the Risen Word. (I played the suite during most of the afternoon.) The second website will provide an extended description of those concepts, processes, and techniques that have determined the character of the sound works on the new release.

Evening. I wrote up my report of the afternoon’s interview and proceeded further with my general website updates.

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