Big Things on the Beach - Blue Moon Event

[Guest]

I'm setting out just now, camera in hand. The mist should make for good photographs.

[Poppy]

Marya - if it starts raining I'd not only wear a rainmate over your rollers, but a pair of wellies over your slippers. At 6 tonight the Prom was practically a river with lots of water features as water gushed up in little fountains from under the metal covers. Charlie Dimmock would have loved it!!

[Guest]

I'm setting out just now, camera in hand. The mist should make for good photographs.

Don't you just love guys like Alex and Wangi? They go out and take wonderful photos of arty things in the rain and the mist for us and we get to stay home and drink beer.

All we need is a few more people to record what is happening outside and we need never go out again.

[wangi]

At 6 tonight the Prom was practically a river with lots of water features as water gushed up in little fountains from under the metal covers. Charlie Dimmock would have loved it!!

http://www.pbase.com/image/32375397
http://www.pbase.com/image/32377043
I got bloody soaked.

[wangi]

So did anyone see the creation light up? Me and my two reluctant companions (husband and son) ventured down and hung around for about 40 mins, but all that happened is that I 've succeeded in putting my son off modern art for life. I spoke to another couple who said it was the third time they had come to view it and they hadn't seen it lit up yet either. She (is it one of you out there???) also said that someone had said it only happened if it was a moonlit night? Anyway her partner sounded just as impressed as mine, as he was muttering "who paid for this anyway?" as we left, walking backwards, slowly, just in case something did happen as soon as our backs were turned....

I probably just missed you, but caught/spot Alex while I was trying to dry out a pair of shoes...

I believe it's only been lit up once - the first night - and it was by the hitech method of strapping on some glow sticks! Should be more impressive after they add more pink thingies on (about 20 more), and get that mini-sub hooked up to it... I've got visions of the whole thing exploding...

[Epykat]

[quote="wangi
I got bloody soaked.[/quote]

Not as soaked as my weetabix box when the Tesco man dropped it in the street!

[Guest]

Here's a Big Things update I just received:

The tides will be favourable once more this weekend for a final 'big push' to install the next phase of the tidal artwork. Work is also now underway on the lunar mechanism and the lunar tide-clock is still within our scope - this is the first work of it's kind - anywhere.
To acheive this goal, volunteers are needed at critical stages over the weekend (when the tide is out) to help trench in the pneumatic hose for inflating the buoys at high tide; times as follows:

> Saturday: 6.15pm - 9.30pm (or whatever you can manage)
> Sunday: 8.00am - 10am

Everything is ready to go and a good turn-out is needed at these times to acheive a successful completion; please invite anyone you think might be keen to help - and bring a spade.

hope to see you all there

Renny

[wangi]

Everything is ready to go and a good turn-out is needed at these times to acheive a successful completion; please invite anyone you think might be keen to help - and bring a spade.

I'd have helped with the initial installation - but the guys were never there when they said they'd be...

[Guest]

I don't think that these arty types have much truck with the restrictive bourgeois concept of time you refer to. Then again, time and tide wait for no man.

[Guest]

Yep, but not a patch on your teacher rant masterpiece. Haven't the school holidays flown in?

You see, you're a bad influence - off-topic again!

[wangi]

I don't think that these arty types have much truck with the restrictive bourgeois concept of time you refer to.

Or the timing of the tides - as was wintessed by thier "high tide" that wasn't when launched

[Guest]

In conjunction with BTOTB, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop held an event in Portobello Library this afternoon, where kids were helping to create an inflatable sculpture, with 2 further sessions to come before it is launched on the beach.

Today seemed to be about painting the panels. Below is some of the work, which I think is fantastic.

[wangi]

One thing's for sure - those guys certainly have put in the hours this weekend. Yesterday morning, seven hours in the evening and still at it since half seven this morning... However the general response/questions from passers by is still:

• WTF is that?
  WhoTF paid for it?
  WAFing waste of money!

[Epykat]

• WTF is that?
  WhoTF paid for it?
  WAFing waste of money!

Funny, those were my exact thoughts!

[cornerboy]

Come on now, folks. The piece isn't finished yet. This is an ambitious piece of art which works with two fundamental parts of the Portobello experience: beach and tides. the artist, Renny Nesbit is responding creatively to those elements using his resources: a talent for sculpture, some engineering know-how and an imagination which enables him to combine these things in a way which will bring something entirely new to our community. It'll be new, but express something fundamental and ancient about the piece of coastline we inhabit. (Don't ask me to define what that 'something' will be: let's leave that to the finished work.)

[bellybabe]

I think that's a fair point, Cornerboy. But if people don't want us to judge the unfinished work, they shouldn't invite people to view (and surely therefore judge) the work before it's finished.
Having said that, my understanding was that rather than view it as finished or unfinished, it is supposed to be something that is evolving - I could be wrong.
Bellybabe

[wangi]

Cornerboy, I know what you're saying but the "installation" was finished at the start of the month (hence a bash to open it) - although it was an "evolving" piece. That evolution has only started this past weekend.

I think the original setup was much better - the simplicity of the single ring of pink thingies is far better than the mass/mess of them now (picture to follow)... However, that's just my personal opinion.

People are entitled to criticise the piece - after all it is their money that has funded it. Passing people have said to me why hasn't the money been spent planting trees for the area outside the pumping station, for weeding the cobbles, for recovering the garden furniture that has been lobbed into the sea by vandals, for... These are all valid points. However it has to be noted that the guys behind "Big Things on the Beach" actually had the get-up-and-go to actually get the funding to allow their work to progress - anyone who moans about wasted money should do the same for whatever they want it spent on!

(BTW some guys were back working at it 0800 this morning! Grafters!)

I support the idea behind "Big Things on the Beach", but I think a permanent piece on the Prom would have been a much better start. Think of the art along other waterfront areas... Personally my favourite is John Kindness's (no relation) ceramic Big Fish on Belfast's quayside.

EDIT: Have fired off an email to BTOTB inviting them to join this discussion.

[bellybabe]

I agree with Wangi, and would prefer something permanent. I love "The bones of the wind" in San Sebastian.

[Guest]

I think the original setup was much better - the simplicity of the single ring of pink thingies is far better than the mass/mess of them now (picture to follow)... However, that's just my personal opinion.

Have to agree. At least it was a discernible shape. However, I think we can have some fun with it. Think of it as a dot-to-dot. What can you make from it?

[Dadaist]

What can you make from it?

[Guest]

That's more like it! All you need now is to dress it up in some pseudo-intellectual nonsense and an Arts Council Grant is all yours.

"Dadaist appropriates the art of others and reconsructs it to his own agenda. In his new work, Big Mistakes On The Beach, his smiley face mocks both the original work of art and our own conception of What Art Is. The perverse banality of his work is intended to disguise deeper and more difficult currents of troubled water that flow from the angry sea of his mind. The image appears at once familiar and yet disconnected. The observer is challenged to compare Art with artifice, orginal with pre-owned, subcontext with subversion."

continued p.27

[flearoy]

Actually a inside member on the project confirmed that once the sculpture is complete the best way to view it's magic is by getting extremely close. The council has therefore furthered funding by another £13,000 to purchase a fleet of ped-lo boats.

what a great idea!

[ecm]

A few new piccies of the sculpture and some info about lighting-up times on the website now.
The inflatables the kids helped to design at the library workshops recently are to be launched on the beach tomorrow.

Check out the link to the Aussie site!

www.bigthingsonthebeach.org.uk/

[Big Thing]

People are entitled to criticise the piece - after all it is their money that has funded it. Passing people have said to me why hasn't the money been spent planting trees for the area outside the pumping station, for weeding the cobbles, for recovering the garden furniture that has been lobbed into the sea by vandals, for... These are all valid points. However it has to be noted that the guys behind "Big Things on the Beach" actually had the get-up-and-go to actually get the funding to allow their work to progress - anyone who moans about wasted money should do the same for whatever they want it spent on! ...........

I support the idea behind "Big Things on the Beach", but I think a permanent piece on the Prom would have been a much better start. Think of the art along other waterfront areas... Personally my favourite is John Kindness's (no relation) ceramic Big Fish on Belfast's quayside.

EDIT: Have fired off an email to BTOTB inviting them to join this discussion.

:

Big Thing wrote - Folk are certainly entitled to criticise the piece, that's an essetial part of moving forward. Hopefully, if folk engage with the Big Things consultation & more people get involved, we'll ensure that if we do this again it will reflect what local people want. I won't get cornered into apologising for Big Things & I can't respond for any other members of the group, but my starting point was a desire to explore how we could use the space along the Prom / Beachfront (even the extra mile behind the car showrooms) not to just display existing artworks, but to do something new which responds specifically to Portobello.

The whole bureaucratic business of getting permissions & insurance etc. (especially for something permanent), meant that in the first year (esp as we lacked experience at organising these sorts of things) we decided to go for something temporary, so we were really encouraged that we were funded. The residency went out to tender & a number of artists responded. Renny's idea to do something that used the beach & the tides, sounded the most innovative (even though few of us really understood how it would work out or how do-able it would be) & therefore the most risky. It's taken longer to come together than we (or Renny) anticipated, but if it's in place & lit up by next weekend (28th) I think it will have been worthwhile, even if just to test out the idea of doing something (perhaps even something very different) on a regular and/or even permanent basis. It might even encourage the Council to think more creatively about solutions to 'normal' installations like the benches or the use of spaces such as the old playground beside our tenement.(?)

BTW Website soon to be upodated with ref to forum & photo's etc.
http://www.bigthingsonthebeach.org.uk/

[wangi]

Thanks for the input - interesting to here about all the reasoning behind the project. I'm looking forward to seeing it lit up next weekend.

What's the story with the compressor?

And regarding the old paddling pool site, see this thread here: http://porty.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=43 plus the planning application can be viewed online - I think i'm right in saying it was granted?

[Guest]

Thanks for the input - interesting to here about all the reasoning behind the project.

and this is why it's not a good idea to criticise others for their spelling!

[wangi]

Thanks for the input - interesting to here about all the reasoning behind the project.

and this is why it's not a good idea to criticise others for their spelling!

Nah, that one was on purpose - to see if you're on your (!) toes... When I really do mess up it'll be much bigger and embarrassing!

[honest! ]

[Big Thing]

[quote="wangi"]What's the story with the compressor?

As I understand the idea, when the installation is finished, the buoys, (which are currently inflated & free floating), will be weighted down & will not float automatically until the tide fills the mini-sub and the displaced air fills all or some of the buoys (selection governed by a valve mechanism). The idea was that at the full moon the complete circle would be inflated, at a new moon only a partial sliver of buoys will rise! The valve turns with each rising/falling tide (the engineering has been one reason for the delay).

PS: Thanks for link to paddling pool info - I think PP was granted. I just hope that we don't need a high fence to protect our windaes from enthuiastic basketballers.

[Big Thing]

It would be useful,however, if the Big Things etc. website gave the times of high tides for the remaining days.

Done!

[Maria]

Wow! That's service for you. Thanks

[wangi]

This saturday at 2200 is roughly the lowest point in the tide... High tide is not till about 0230 in the morning.

[wangi]

http://www.pbase.com/image/32970013

[Guest]

By far the most interesting pic of the pink things yet IMO.

Renny has just emailed me the following message:

Big Things on the Beach - Luminous Event at Joppa

Full Moon Illuminations on the midnight tide .

The tidal artwork at Joppa by Renny Nisbet will be 'lit up' and afloat with the tide at midnight.

BYO - - - refreshments, woollies, bonfire, music - - -

Open House on the Beach

Saturday evening, 10pm - 3am, Sept 28 - on the Beach at Joppa.

I really don't think I could stay awake until 3am, but a few drinks until closing time and then a stagger along the Prom around midnight might be just about possible. Anyone interested in joining me in this artoholic venture?

[Guest]

Actually, I've got a better idea. How about a party at Wangi's place?

[Jay]

I really don't think I could stay awake until 3am, but a few drinks until closing time and then a stagger along the Prom around midnight might be just about possible.

That is always possible, as far as I'm concerned. I will be very happy to be a fellow-staggerer ........... although if I haven't bagged any of you by then, I won't know who any of you are to stagger with .............