"Airquakes"

I'm currently doing quite a bit of work on Google Earth trying to find ways of visualising cinematic vision and camera 'reach' in urban environments (University of Liverpool and Cambridge). However, I came across this pretty clever piece of earthquake visualisation. For an explanation of what's going on, here's a quote from the US Geological Survey Earth Quake Hazards Programme website:

What is an "airquake?" Earthquakes along the Hayward Fault occur at varying depths. Since we cannot crack open Google Earth to show you earthquakes at the depth which they occur, we have color coded them according to their depth. This Google Earth file contains "airquakes"(earthquakes that we have pulled up out of the ground) along the Hayward Fault to help illustrate the orientation of the fault plane below the surface. The yellow coloured earthquakes are 0-3 km deep, the orange colored earthquakes are 3-6 km deep, and the red colored earthquakes are 6-10 km deep. 

Mineral Defences #1

Over summer, I spent some time photographing a demilitarised area on the island of Tjøme near Tønsberg, Norway. Until it was decommissioned in 1999, Torås Fort was a discrete complex of naval artillery emplacements, lookouts, barrack huts, parade grounds and associated infrastructure built (but not completed) during 1939 in anticipation of an invasion by the Nazis. Between 1940-42 the Nazi's then modified and refortified the site for their own purposes. The complex was maintained during the Cold War principally as a training site but the four 15cm Bofors naval cannons remained in place guarding the mouth of the Oslofjord. 

The rolling granite promontories and deep wooded undulations are perfect for hiding defensive positions, but having been to Tjøme a number of times in previous years, and being unnaturally drawn to evidence of conflict, I quickly clocked the manmade blisters and hideouts hidden in the dramatic topography of the landscape. Despite being decommissioned, Torås remained closed to the public and effectively remained militarised – that is, until a couple of years ago when the complex was deemed superfluous to defence needs and the military abruptly pulled out throwing the gates open to a curious island community.

Torås has a number of distinctive features including the cannon emplacements themselves (only one gun remains), ammunitions storage bunkers dug deep into the granite rock, and numerous rock and poured concrete shelters – but none more distinctive than the hilltop command centre. Arguably the highest point on the island, the command centre is effective a man-made hill built using what must have been hundred of tons of rubble and poured concrete to elevate the position above all others in the region. At the summit is a square flat-roofed observation point with narrow viewing apertures which allows 360 degree visibility.

This construction typifies the almost mystical paradox at the heart of much military engineering of this kind: the desire for omniscience (or in modern military parlance, 'total situational awareness') is totally undermined in the battlefield by being the most visible thing for miles around – effectively, a sitting duck. This brings me to the conclusion that the principle function of the command centre is aesthetic, designed specifically for its visual appearance in order to exercise a form of tacit control over the region – a twentieth century Motte and Bailey castle.

Cinematic Geographies

From early September, I will be working as Research Associate (0.5) on a project called Cinematic Geographies of Battersea: Urban Interface and Site-Specific Knowledge. The project is jointly led by Prof François Penz (Principal Investigator), Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, and Dr Richard Koeck (Co-Investigator), School of Architecture, University of Liverpool. It also includes partners from English Heritage and the University of Edinburgh. I'm very excited about this and aim to post updates of the project on this blog as it progresses.

Defence Image Glitch

As prelude to a larger blog entry coming sometime in the near future which will look at the relationship between geology and defence architecture, I thought I would quickly post some snaps of Torås Fort, Norway taken in August. Actually, these photographs were originally NEF raw files but were partly scrambled by Adobe Bridge as it tries to make sense of images taken in B&W (but which had, for some reason, preserved the colour data). Does not compute…

After a couple very tense minutes, Bridge managed to unscramble the images but it gave me enough time to get these screen shots for their novelty value.

The irony here is that in attempting to remove the colour and concentrate on the formal aspects of the Second World War architecture and the very specific qualities of the local geology, I was blasted by psychedelic colour. 

The Military Pastoral Complex

Here is a link to my latest paper, The Military Pastoral Complex: Contemporary Representation of Militarism in the Landscape, at Tate Papers:

http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/military-pastoral-complex-contemporary-representations-militarism

The mystery of Huangyangtan

In internet terms this is a relatively ancient mystery, being first identified by a German, KenGrok in 2006. Much has already been written about the 1:500 replica landscape constructed in the deserts of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region of China, but the consensus is that this remarkable facility is in fact a scale facsimile (complete with snow-peaked mountains, valleys, tributaries and lakes) of the Aksai Chin contested region on the Indian-Chinese border 2400km away. It has been suggested that this 700 x 900 metre facility is used for tank training but the size and scale of the replica suggests a use in reconnaissance or visualization training of some kind. This image from the Sidney Morning Herald (obtained from a Chinese web forum) seems to show technicians at the Huangyangtan site or a similar terrain fabricated elsewhere. Whatever its purpose, I was reminded of the one paragraph short story by Jorge Luis Borges, ‘On Exactitude in Science’, which I've copied out in full here:

… In that Empire, the art of cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire the entirety of the Province. In time those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographer Guild struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point to point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of the Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Discipline of Geography.

Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones Prudentes

Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

Military Globalisation

Tarak Berkawi’s excellent short piece for Aljazeera reminds us that Military Globalisation is Nothing New. It outlines the historical principle that colonial and imperialist ambition projects military might abroad, circulating soldiers from place to place or training indigenous militias to suppress popular uprisings. The piece also shows the seldom connected back story to those positive narratives of global free trade and economic liberalism, a world in which the military act as the ‘steel frame of globalisation’. Much of this may seem obvious, but it is refreshing to read something that doesn’t root military activity simply to territory or ‘national defence’ but exposes the trans-national complexity of current military activity.