mary shelley's moonlit window

"In August 2010, Professor Olson, two colleagues and two students went to Lake Geneva to discover when moonlight would have hit the windows, and penetrated the shutters, of Mary Shelley's bedroom." In this way, and by looking up their astro. tables, they aimed to date the birth of her famous tale, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) [The Guardian].

"It was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction" – wrote the poor Doctor in Shelley's tale (chapt 2).

If Shelley had her way, perhaps there would be no field of Artificial Life. If we took her text to heart, should we all stop now? Perhaps, like nuclear physics, the potential to make a mess of things is too great? And yet, here we are, pushing onwards in an effort to create life. Ahhh... what would a girl in her late teenage years know about the future of the world anyway?

moral sustainability and cycling - robert nelson

(Moral sustainability and cycling: an ecology of ambition for a hyperactive planet. Published by St. Andrews Sustainability Institute and Ellikon, Melbourne 2010.)

Although I was aware that the author of this text frequently commuted by bicycle and that he was an active art critic, the discovery of his new mini-book on the links between cycling and our current environmental predicament was an exciting surprise. In this essay Robert investigates the reasons many people make uncomfortable cyclists, in particular why many are unwilling to cycle-commute despite recognising its health and environmental benefits. So, why do people buy themselves a shiny new steed on which to commute to work, and then after a few days hide it in the spare room to gather dust and cobwebs?

As well as dealing with the obvious discomforts associated with vigorous activity in the outdoors, the author addresses a number of seldom considered aspects of the daily pedal to work. He reveals several reasons that have little to do with the availability of bike paths, the extra time that might be involved or the danger of mobile-phone wielding mothers in 4WDs. One reason explored was the disparaging high-speed, lycra-clad bunches of athletes and their portrayal in the media as “real” and glamourous cyclists. Cyclists outside of this context are perceived in the Australian psyche as inferior and sub-human. There are of course exceptions. For instance cycling helmetless down a country lane with a basket of bread, cheese and wine is acceptably Euro-romantic and a “simple” pleasure that even advertisers legitimise. Commuting when a car would do? Holding up peak hour traffic by occupying a lane? Never would cycling in this way be seen as desirable or marketable in our country.

It is here that I find one significant issue that the essay misses, the “fixie phenomenon”. Countless teenagers, university students and some alternative lifestylers here and in many major cities hostile to cyclists, have, in the last ten or so years, cottoned on to the New York bicycle couriers’ preference for track bikes. They carry messenger bags slung over a shoulder and hefty bike chains are worn as bodily adornment. Melbourne now has fleets of NY messenger impersonators heading brakeless into traffic. They run red lights, skid and skip their rear wheels through pedestrian crowds, before heading like bicycle salmon against the flow of one-way streets.

I have even witnessed a student at my university driving his fixie to a nearby hotel carpark, removing it from the boot and cycling the last few hundred meters to university. I can speculate on the reasons for this: (i) It is too far and too hilly for him to ride his fixie’s one gear from home to university; (ii) The fixie is cool, a geared bicycle is not. He would not consider riding geared; (iii) He saves himself the cost of the permit required to park his car at university and has the added bonus of impressing his friends with his lovely bicycle upon his arrival.

I have also seen a different student call out to another as he rolled past on his way to class, “Yeah, sweet bike. Fixie mate!” The bike was not actually fixed, it was a single-speed with a freewheel. It was not "sweet" either. It was a crappy 1980s ten-speed conversion. But these subtleties were lost in the excitement of the pedestrianian's proclaimation of his identification with the rider.

This phenomenon has made commuting by bicycle cool, even here in the motorcar’s second homeland. It contributes to providing a solution for the middle-aged commuter who understands the sense in having brakes, mudguards and panniers. I have seen cyclists aged between 14 and 80 riding fixed gear bikes, with and without mudguards, lights and panniers. The mere fact that a bike is fixed gives its rider the credibility that many crave. Maybe, just maybe, this removes a few cars from our roads. It certainly raises the visibility of cyclists on our roads. For this I am thankful.

As Nelson indicates, as soon as you can afford a car it is barely socially acceptable for you to ride. Our society is set up so that there is no prestige associated with making your appearance at the office bathed in sweat. Physical activity in this context is uncouth. Are you too poor to afford motorised transport? Nelson proposes the electric bicycle to be one machine with the potential to remedy these problems.

Unfortunately, as he notes, electric bicycles have one major drawback — they are seriously uncool. Whilst the fume-spewing 50 cc Vespa has euro-café-style and Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday sophistication, none of this washes off on the humble electric bike, despite its better environmental credentials. I agree with Nelson that these are marvellous pieces of engineering. But as he knows too well, they are not sexy artefacts. I am not sure how this might be rectified, if at all. Maybe a manufacturer could convince a supermodel to pose naked on one?

A valid engineering solution to a recognised problem may stare people in the face, yet it may be overlooked for purely social reasons. The consequences of this type of human stubbornness have often resulted in a needless struggle for survival. This has sometimes been followed by extinction of entire cultures. Colonial societies for instance have carried the ways of their homelands to new horizons. Rather than adapting their behaviour by mimicking the successful lifestyles of the locals, they have stubbornly clung to inappropriate agricultural practices, poor hunting and gathering choices, incongruous architectural styles and scarce but familiar building materials. The results include malnourishment, starvation, decimation of local ecosystems and, as Jared Diamond discusses in his book of the same name, Collapse. As a planet we are headed this way via our momentum-propelled reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable population growth.

Nelson’s book is entertaining, slightly rambling but always insightful. This style suits me perfectly. A diversion exploring the eroticism of the bicycle saddle was amusing but, I felt, unnecessary. This tangent in particular seemed to confuse the book’s main drive to detail our relationship with the bicycle in all its engineering simplicity and marketed complexity, and to explore its socio-environmental credentials. In these latter respects the text is informative and original. It has stimulated me to think more deeply about why I ride so often and why I seldom commute.

the death of j.g. ballard

Crash. Until I'd read Ballard's book, I had no idea twisted metal, burning plastic and shattered bones could be considered by anybody to be erotic. I remember diving into the text on a flight home from Canada 15 years ago. The air hostess thought I was reading about aeroplane crashes... "Ahhh. Ummm. No. Actually the book is about sex in car accidents." I think that stunned her. She didn't pose any more questions apart from those she was paid to ask. "Tea or coffee?"

"J.G. Ballard died of cancer on the 19th August, aged 78", I read over my morning toast. The first thing that sprang to mind was Crash. Then by chance my eyes fell upon the water level indicator on the front page of the paper and a vague memory of The Drought returned... people travelling miles across barren salt plains created by desalination plants to capture sea-water with paddles and sweep it homewards... it has been a long time since I read this book. Concrete Island is fresher in my mind... an architect becomes trapped in a concrete space between freeway lanes. Unable to escape, he spends days, then weeks in the company of a couple of other outcasts who call the tiny island in urban hell their home. Shades here of one of my favourite books, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes. Ballard was that kind of writer.

I only know a half dozen of Ballard's books, but of those, I'd call Crash and Concrete Island "great" works of disturbing fiction. His comments on human psychology, the bizarre but believable views he takes towards humankind's future and that of our planet, all ensure I am saddened by his passing.

what is sport? - roland barthes

(Translated by Richard Howard, published by Yale University Press, 2007)

This little book is a gem. It is originally a script Barthes prepared for a Canadian documentary. The French philosopher (I can say that here without groaning) explores the role of five national sports including the Tour De France and Spanish bull-fighting. What pearls of wisdom does he have to offer? Several, and also a writing style in translation that is lovely to recite.

A man alone, with no other weapon than a slender beribboned hook, will tease the bull: call out to him... stab him lightly... insouciantly slip away.

But Barthes is not blind to Spain's obsession. He comprehends the significance of the bull's death and places this archaic ritual as a tragedy in four acts. I shan't spoil the fun by telling more since Barthes' short piece of narration will occupy your eyes for only a few minutes. Still, it has the potential to occupy your thoughts for some time to come.

...the Tour is incorporated into the depths of France; in it each Frenchman discovers his own houses and monuments, his provincial present and his ancient past. It has been said that the Frenchman is not much of a geographer: his geography is not that of books, it is that of the Tour; each year, by means of the Tour, he knows the length of his coasts and the height of his mountains...

There is no doubt that sport dictates the ebb and flow of Melbourne. Does a Melbournian measure train trips according to the number of stops before or after Richmond and the MCG? Time according to the number of days before or after the Grand Final? (Or on a shorter scale, before or after half-time?) Can weather be associated with cricket, tennis or football seasons?

Anecdotally (and I suspect supported by statistics that I admit I have not recently consulted), the waves and surges of fans and participants that enter our cricket grounds, football ovals, tennis courts, velodromes, athletic tracks, swimming pools, gymnasia, hockey pitches and even our lawn bowls greens, far outweigh the streams that attend or present at art galleries and live performances.

Melbourne prides itself on being a "cultural capital". Do the bean-counters still employ the trick of including sporting events as a cultural activity? Is riding down Beach Rd. in a 100 strong bunch of lycra-glad, carbon and Campagnolo wielding men cultural? Or sub-cultural? ;-) Given the chance, on a balmy summer's evening, I'm a sucker for the buzz of freewheels or the grumble of boards under a sprinting bunch. All the better if my freewheel buzz or my wheels' thunder adds to the melee. Hopefully I can participate with style.

Style? Here Barthes again has a lovely way with words.

Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introduces rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity the appearance of freedom.

So what is Sport? Sublime. Sublime in the way a practiced artist wields a brush, a baton, breathes life into a flute or a character. Sublime also in the way a sculptor forms a marvel from a mass. Life's confusion can be executed with style only by a few. An athlete approaches this ideal as closely as an artist since each pushes the bounds of the possible. The latter pushes the possible for the future. The former, perhaps only for the present.

de renner / the rider - Tim Krabbé

In about the same time as it takes to complete a short road race I have ridden the English translation (from the Dutch) of De Renner, The Rider (1978). Tim Krabbé has done a marvellous job of recreating the experience of a road race. I don't believe anybody but a cyclist and an author could have written this novella so convincingly and with such authority. Its a deceptively simple book — the thoughts of the author as he struggles to win a fictitious race against fictitious opponents in the mountains of France. The book ticks through the kilometres at race pace, sometimes sluggishly, sometimes in bursts of pain, through wind and rain, up steadily and down awkwardly as Krabbé struggles on the high-speed bends. This is no time trial, Krebbé's opponents are an intimate part of his mental and physical tournament. They're written into the text at the level of detail that any rider knows his (or her) adversaries. This is true also of the rider's thoughts as he competes... the half-ideas, repetition of poorly-formed sentences, the struggles to remain focussed and the fluidity and stillness when the crowd and background is submerged are all captured with the efficiency of a practiced pedal stroke or the flick of a friction down-tube shifter. This is a great piece of literature: highly recommended for cyclists, cycling widows and anybody who doubts the poetry of the obsession for suffering on a bike. I'm still puffed!

[The author is also known for the disturbing story known in English as The Vanishing, which has twice been made into a film.]

library of dust

In keeping with the themes of biology and decay, I stumbled on a post (on BLDG BLOG) about a book, Library of Dust. The book is a collection of photographs of unclaimed, cremated human remains from a psychiatric hospital — compacted and tinned humans, stored like corn and beans on a supermarket shelf!

Unlike the bones of the catacombs beneath Paris or the ossuary of Sedlec, the human form of the remains has been completely obliterated. Whilst the bones of Paris and Sedlec have been jumbled, these human remains have been kept separate from one another. Each can of ashes leaves its unique, visible mark on the world through the patterns of corrosion on its surface. The ex-patients may have been tinned and stacked, but they regain a unique identity in a most unlikely way. Library of Dust is a strange, visually arresting and thought provoking record of people past.

Image: From Library of Dust by David Maisel, published by Chronicle Books

ecological design

Notes on the 10th Anniversary Edition of Ecological Design, by Sim van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan. This is a terrific book that collects ideas from numerous sources into a coherent statement of how we might best rectify the mess we have gotten ourselves into. In some places it waffles a little but it is always thought-provoking and helpful.

"In many ways, the environmental crisis is a design crisis. It is a consequence of how things are made, buildings are constructed, and landscapes are used. Design manifests culture, and culture rests firmly on the foundation of what we believe to be true about the world. Our present forms of agriculture, architecture, engineering, and industry are derived from design epistemologies incompatible with nature's own. It is clear we have not given design a rich enough context. We have used design cleverly in the service of narrowly defined human interests but have neglected its relationship with our fellow creatures. Such myopic design cannot fail to degrade the living world, and, by extension, our own health." (p. 24-25)

This quote sums up the authors' approach neatly. The text proposes that human designers should not "take from nature" but that our designs should actually become a part of it by playing the same roles as organisms and ecosystems. We must ensure that the processes we employ for construction, and the structures they generate, mesh directly with nature's own processes. Everything we do must sit comfortably inside biology. So far our actions primarily degrade it.

My response to this book is therefore, "Design all things within the parameters laid down by organisms and ecosystems." That's a tough call, especially for someone whose career is based on the use of equipment that is so ecologically destructive. Green Computing? Yikes, that is a far cry from the kind of environmentalism the authors of this book champion.

eco-pathology

eco-pathology has a certain ring to it. A Google search turns up: the study of biological, physical, human and economic causal elements of disease in livestock. However, in Ecology and the End of Postmodernity, George Myerson (in a very postmodern way), decides on his own interpretation of the term. He bases it on Freud's idea of psycho-pathology. Just as Freud read unsettling meaning into the minute details of everyday human behaviour, assuming them to be symptomatic of underlying trauma, Myerson feels that we (predominantly the media) now read danger signs for imminent ecological disaster in all natural events.

For instance, even the fact that more cafes are opening street seating indicates
an increase in global temperatures. On a larger scale, outbreaks of SARS, Mad-Cow disease, AIDS etc. are indicative of a rampaging nature run amok. Floods in the UK are a sign of climate change and rising sea levels.

This is all part of a new Grand Narrative (hence the title of the book... Myserson claims we are returning to Modernity) of Ecology. Science, Technology and Governments will see us through. To act against the mainstream is irresponsible. We must all bow to the experts with the ability to forecast the gloomy future.

Sadly the world and its ecosystems are in a declining mess. It is our fault. It doesn't take an expert to notice. It takes a moron to think otherwise. I don't know how to describe those who still insist that profit and shareholder dividends cannot be sacrificed in the name of environmentalism. "Shallow Ecology" anyone? :-(