the o machine is from all sides a visual experience, a three dimensional video cube of 6 metre high towers traversed with pillars of light. We are hugely grateful for the work of John Jackets (Sarah’s Dad) and Garry Williams (an artist from Norway) for their help building the towers. The task is somewhat epic and they have worked tirelessly to help make it possible.
This is all happening now, but we want to start at the beginning and explain something of how the o machine has been conceived.
Last October we spent two weeks living in South West Burnley. Here are some notes from that time.. “as we hung our camera close to the road we waited for the silence to film our opening shot…‘Are you looking for wild flowers?’ asked an ex-miner who has lived on Cog lane for the past forty years. Children sped past on scooters. Take a picture of me, take a picture of me, we followed the children to the place they thought would be the best place for an art work. A sparrow hawk dived and took a small bird, and we stood looking at the fabric of the place”.
Our approach was open, we wanted the freedom to explore and find out, to see what caught our interest and what emerged. Our aim was straightforward, we wanted find a way in to make work that is relevant and create something for Burnley that is new and fascinating.
We began to focus on the environment around Stoops and Harger Clough, we were interested in the waves of regeneration that had taken place and what that meant. We began a process exploring ideas of regenerative design, where diverse systems are key to developing long term self-sustaining communities. Regenerative design sets out to create the conditions for life rather than life itself.
This process led to us focusing on ideas of emergence within complex systems. You can see examples of emergence within the patterns created by flocks of birds. This area of work is being seen by many scientists as being at the forefront of contemporary thinking. Put simply emergence is 1+1=3, or rather in complex situations when there are a critical mass of elements interacting something emerges that is greater than the sum of the parts. It is at this level of complexity that scientists now speculate that life emerges. There was a fascinating discussion about it on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago, you can download it here
Returning to ideas of regenerative design we began to look for ways to create a new artwork that would explore these ideas and bring something of them to Stoops. So we went back to the key point in this field of understanding and took inspiration from Alan Turing to explore his o-machine as a starting point for the creation of this artwork.
As you can see from these photos we are busy creating the structure we will bring to the Recreation ground on 1st Feb. We have been combining interesting technology for this piece, particularly some special black paint, hopefully it will all come to together to create something more than the sum of its parts.
