The mind a powerful force, a force that can change much, a force of immeasurable potential. In the right circumstance, cerebral gelignite, an explosion of intellect that can conceive a formula for the change of matter. The force of the mind to change can also be the mind to force a change. Intellectual facility, an authority over matter the catalyst for change. A mental impulse, the initialization of physical execution.

 

But thought alone has no power, no real power to modify the material world without a  subsequent physical action. Thought might be able to conceive a means to effect change, might be able to invent devices, implements of technology or devise methods, but the change eventually comes from a physical act not from the cerebral pre-act. For it is physical movement, flux, exchange, reaction, modification that alters matter not the mind alone. Substance altered through action, not the contemplation.

 

Simple tools fashioned in: hard stone, bone, wood, bronze, steel, sharp blades, teeth that cut, horned edges that slice, points that prick, ropes that bind, tips that pinch, hard flat heavy weights that pound ----------------. Or moving mechanical parts:  wheels that turn, arms that swivel, blocks and tackle, tight belts, drive chains, gears that endlessly mesh, springs that tension then release, the pressure of steam, hydraulic pressure, electrical energy, intricate electronic components, these have a more corporeal and often devastating effect on matter.  - They modify the material world. 

These are implements and devices of work, objects of function, conceived in the cerebral domain, and while they have a specific aesthetic, they are designed in a certain manner to realize the actions that alter substance, they are devices of technology that perform the task of matter exchange. These devices are at the `nuts and bolts' end of the process of physical change. Often disregarded, subordinated to their utilitarian tasks, they are designed in such a manner because the mind understands the physics that makes them function, the employment dictates the object's form, the existence of any aesthetic is incidental or of secondary concern.

 

Work tools, simple forms: spears, adze heads, patu (clubs), fish hooks, clamps, saws, planes, hammers, trowels, pliers, snipers, spanners, shapes that are ordained, predestined by function, profiles with their own poetry, silhouettes that imply a use and purpose, imply an age of usage, imply a context. Lines that curve, bend and draw in a manner that denote a specific object. Sketches cut into a black ground, vignetted, practical shapes that speak of invented devices to affect change in a shorter space of time, more efficiently, on a gigantic scale or to effect change that could happen only with the use of the device.

These are familiar objects with their own lyrical shapes, inextricably linked to the function, to a specific task, and this utilitarian shape speaks a language associated with the reconstruction of matter.

 

 

The harnessing of power, water solar, hydro, petrochemical, nuclear with the intention to affect matter. From rudimentary chipped flint stone to coda, implements affect the physical environment and eventually become artifacts of past actions. Even if the artifact has never formed the task it was designed for, even if by fate it is made for a purpose but never used, the shape deceives the purpose, and it represents the actions of other such objects. 

Representations of wilderness, images of a pristine landscape. The photographic component is instigated from unrelated photographs of the landscape, areas that I identified with, but unlike other projects I have worked on, these often had little geographical reference to each other. Isolated images from different sources of geographic location that have a seductive quality for one reason or another. There is a geographic indeterminacy, but a visual linkage

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The estate of wilderness, primeval secular linkages to antediluvian times, remnants of pre-technology, hidden valleys, secrets still obscured, passages to an ancient origin. Wilderness unsophisticated, uncomplicated, naive, a rawness as yet unrefined. An ambience in repose, vestiges, vibrations of flora/fauna, resonances of organic evolution, echoes. Leaves that rustle in each breeze, twigs now broken on the ground, branches reaching and supporting a wide canopy, strong round trunks anchored firm in the earth. Tangled roots that search and penetrate the humus, interlace fine threads, engulf stones, twist around rocks, bulge and gnarl in places. Small seedlings pushing through the fallen leaves of the generation before, searching for an opening to the light. Rains that drip from leaf tips, run down the bark, dampness on the moss mounds of miniature forest, on the dead leaves on the forest floor, dampness that seeks a pathway down to a stream. Long fern fronds that arch down into water that babbles over rocks and stone. Water that cuts a course for the ocean. Raw boulders uncovered, exposed within a forest floor.

Organic virginal convergence, where things begin, where things have always been, where we came from, a starting point from which to modify, resources to exploit. Wilderness ripe for intervention of unaltered states, ready for the implement. The nature of the tool reflects the degree of modification. A primitive stone adze, or huge earth moving machinery there is significant difference in scale, technology, effect. A turning back to a sensitive means if one desires, or a turning away if no consideration is given.

Artifacts, objects discarded with past uses now relinquished. Not new, odd or extraordinary, rudimentary silhouettes that stand for simple tools, tools that signify a time and a means of modification. Not the typical valuable aura-laden artifacts but modest icons with insignificant anthropological references, artifacts that also stand for a people, a time and a place, that stand for actions, events and a consequence. Modest tools lifted to a special status, now endowed with an indwelling spirit, referenced in a different way. History semi-obscure, read not by act but by encrypted artifact, items left behind. Tools collected for their intrinsic elegance and the romance of their past use.

Machinery, left abandoned because the site is no longer viable, rust, decay, disintegration. Forgotten sites where sharp edges are worn and blunt, screw threads corroded and locked, points dulled with neglect, blades bent chipped or broken with use, where gears no longer turn and are now idle, decaying. Sites where the last Moa fell, beaten to death, where stone scraped flesh from bone, where fires lie as black ash pits, where cold steel cut the warm flesh of seal and whale, where giants of the forest crashed to the ground at the last thrust of an axe blade, where saws sliced each log into even planks, where whole hills of alluvial soils lie leveled in the search of gold, where the blades of technology cut deep into the earth, where concrete encases all that falls into its thick liquid state. Rust and corrosion, patinas of time still in the process of transfiguration. Fragile marks of evidence, a language towards an object's decay, an object's past use. Implements lost with the age of usage.

 

The element of time changes the importance of the object and the act. Initially it is significant, essential, imperative that it function in a certain manner, that it perform certain tasks, that it remain in possession for future use. The tool is a means to this essentiality, but over time the importance diminishes, it is forgotten, the object becomes impotent, severed from intention. The essence of this change lies not with the object but in the human mind, without the cerebral connection the item is returned to the earth, its function irrelevant.

 

The beauty of the `thing itself', abstract marks left on the page by the opaque object. The silhouette as an indexical foot print, a reference that interfaces with the black void around it. On top of this the detail interlaced throughout provides a complex over-layered tapestry of artifacts, a cloak of references to more intricate devices `where the  represented object may even disappear when the medium turns itself back on its own codes".  Here the importance of stratigraphy eclipses object. Layers reveal ages, tell-tale stories of past lives.

But only one single object is fully referenced, the silhouette like a cave opening, a portal from the vacuous spaces of darkness to an outside world of technology, it outlines an exclusive artifact. The single shape that predominates, has the power to compete with the juxtaposition of wilderness. The darkness of the undiscovered, the potentials of the unknown, waiting.

 

The object of civilization represented by resemblance, indiscriminate of cultural colonization, sophistication, material of manufacture. Residues of the past, memories of old activities, left lying, discarded.

 

Laborious manufacture of stone implements, unique, individually made. Stone specifically selected, painstakingly worked down slowly to a useful form, polished with devotion the final item treasured. In a much different time frame, the mass-produced item, a contrast, tools moulded from hot metal, rapid production, multiple-production. But individual stone or mass-produced steel, each tool has an individual history.

 

In the object there is also something else, `a trace in matter of the activity of the immaterial' . The shape of the object represents the idea of an object's function, once known the two are inseparable. Access to the act through shape requires knowledge, requires associations to function, without it the most poetic lines become no more than basic design, arbitrary shapes with no meaning.

 

 

 

Ironically, some of these implements are themselves used to excavate, dig and sift through temporal soils of an earlier occupation, the diluvian dusts of lost occupation and actions. A fatal consequence where the implement loses its purpose, becomes something else, an antiquity, reverenced for different rational. The passing of time alters the initial context of the tool, at some point it no longer functions as an implement, as time passes, or the technology evolves, its use becomes obsolete, it is lost, but the poetry of shape predominates. The shape speaks of its past, speaks of a past purpose, a past action, a past expended energy.

 

 

Some of these are used to probe layer by layer through the concealed remains of earlier constructions, explorations, they are the tools, the icons that represent the installation, application of technology. An archaeology of implements that reference their own history, points to possible past actions, locations, cultures, industries. A site of technological construction for an end other than itself. A colonial end now forgotten, obscured in the transforming mists of time. Reverberations of generations before. An origin unrecorded, an origin deciphered by the discarded artifacts and surmised actions. A site that relies upon a discovered evidence.

 

Intricacy of detail, references of other artifacts, pervade the space of the larger implement. An over-laying of time and object, implement and action, a texture of diminutive artifacts. They provide a more complex manuscript to decipher, they add a fabric within the outline, they weave another set of codes. Codes that provide more complex meanings, potentials with a multiplicity of interpretation. The texture provides a transcendence of the obvious, there is a range of new composite objects, old and inventive, from the ancient, elementary implements to the complexity of electronics. From tangible artifacts to cyberspace.

There are other implements, soft tools, more obscure devices that represent actions, but in themselves do not act. They sit between the cerebral and the physical. Inscriptions that direct actions. Text, lines, letters arranged as words, drawings, a series of interrelated characters arranged as codification for change, directions, plans, instructions. Commands that have been used for centuries to advise others how and where to alter the physical nature of the world. Strange runes, marks of engineering, chemistry, physics, measures of volumes, strengths, depths, pressures, voltages, speeds etc. Although these letters, marks remain detached from the tools of the act, they function as artifacts in another manner, there is still some implication of tactility, something to touch, handle.

But with binary codes the physical artifact is lost, the tactility of the object is denied. Investigation of work in a post-object domain requires a new means of excavation. With cyber space the tools are not simple shapes, the poetry is different, there is a pivotal change, artifact will have changed forever. Museums can not house characters, collectors can not touch this coded information, they exist in a separate reality. Here there are no stratigraphy, no archaeology, no artifact.

Left is another archaeological site, a site where artifacts are less material, where there is nothing to lie buried in the strata amid the soils of the past. A site where digets sit on pages, fading memories as the ink loses it's grip on the fibres. Or the digital site in the memory of a computer drive, binary codes that survive the vagaries of passing magnetic fields. 

Lloyd Godman 1993