After these busy months researching and recording interviews, landscapes and visits to highlghts of Europe, I will stay the month of August at the residency programme of the Impakt Festival in Utrecth (nl), trying to make sense of all the material in the editing desk.
There are very disperse spots around which the footage has to be arranged and then relate this spots all together.
In few days I will know the difficulties.
Since the 06:00 oclock pole everything became so quick and busy that I am uploading the second part of the trp in one go.
Yes, we have been recording landscapes and interviews in Valance, Orleans, Chartres, Paris, Flanders, Brussels, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven and Wuppertal. We arrived yesterday to Recklinghausen again, just to check out if the first pole was still there. It wasn’t.
Like in the fantasy movie it seemed as if, when closing the circle at the end of the film, the twelve poles were standing on a magical sign, alineated to a group of stars, and the old prophecy was going to be realized: the Earth and the sky were going to be one and time and space were going to dissappear into each other. Nothing of this happened and we went for a schnitzel to a local restaurant.
We crossed the north of Italy kind of quick, shooting landscapes in many points, due to the elaborated, domesticated beauty of the fields.
At Castiglione delle Stivere we visited the Museum of the Red Cross. The train would pass right over this building.
At one point we reached the mountains. The land goes very flat until the abrupt rising of the peaks.
From there we have to look the exact location driving by one of the valleys in the way to France.
On our way to the 05:00 pole we passed through Verona, to record images of this sculpture. It is in front of the train station.
I saw it last year when I came to Verona to visit the Arena, in connection with my Coliseum project. I thought it was a nice coincidence with the theme of my next project.
The train will pass at 05:00 by a place between Cremona and Piacenza. The precise spot is near the Po river. The train crosses the river in this area on five different points.
Descending the Alps on following the siting of the train we passed through Trento on the way to flater lands, near Verona.
A second important lake crossed by the train is the Lago di Garda, between Verona and Brescia.
This is the point in which the train would reach the lake.
Then it would leave by this point.
This is an extrem railway bridge that crosses very near the lake on the town of Desenzano del Garda.
After Chiemsee the train would enter the Alps. It is kind of abrupt how the landscape changes from flat onto heavily bumped.
We passed beatiful areas of Austrian Tirol, near Kitchbuel, and went to Innsbruck and Bolzano for interviews. Then we were bound to the Italian side to erect the 04:00 pole near the top of one of the peaks dominating the village Pozza de Fassa.
Already in Italy the weather was good and the sun was shining. That was very lucky considering the previous days of rain and snow. We had to climb for two hours to the place, last part on snow, with the video and poling equipment.
The place was beatiful, near of a small lake. I think riders of the train might enjoy this spot when they pass through at 200 km per hour.
We visit Chiemsee on a weekday in the coldest May in 20 years. That was what the radio said that day.
The train would enter the lake around 3.10 and will cross it on 2 minutes fifty seconds.
We drawn the line on one of the touristic maps of Gstadt am Chiemsee, one of the villages around.
There we got the boat to one of the islands on the lake.
Good name for a boat when coming from Bayreuth.
This is the pier at Frauen Island.
The train passes at three o’clock by a nice area of Bavaria. The exact point is located on a small island created by the river Inn and the Inn canal.
After Bayreuth we went to Nuremberg, the city where the museum of the German Railways (DB) is located. Also we went to the Nazi Party Rally Grounds, that in German sounds something like “Rice Potato Calendar”, pursuing examples of megalomania
As a mix of the two visits I learnt on the Panzer Zug, an armoured train.
The train would pass at 02:00 by this forest of pine trees.
It is near Bayreuth. The walk to set the pole was not very long. Only difficult when we had to enter the forest, as the trees in the limits develop lower branches creating a kind of barrier.
After Kassel we went to Bayreuth to visit the Festspielhaus. It is a theater house Richard Wagner made to measure of his operas.
For long time we have been trying to get somebody to show us the theater, but it was not possible. We just could record images of the exteirior.
Point 01:00 happened to be situated on a nice beech forest. We approached the place with the GPS on hand. There are many little paths in the German country side that although perfectly drive-throughable, are only allowed to agricultural vehicles. We were lucky to find a good close spot to park the car. We just had to walk 10 minutes.
We drove from Recklinghausen to Kassel and slept there. Before putting the pole at the 01:00 site, we took a walk around the city of Dokumenta and Astrid and Thorwald Proll, members of the German terrorist group the Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang).
We took some footage of the city, including the Fridericianum museum.
Then we went there up where Heracles overlooks the city.
The place is very megalomaniac and kind of absurd.
And then there is this topic of the 12 (twelve) works of Heracles.
Seeing Heracles there for so long made me think again about Simon the Stilita I talked about on a previous post.
We arrived to Recklinghausen right on time to put the fist pole on the 00.00 point, the place where the train will pass everyday at noon and at midnight.
This sign has been placed in this spot
.
The house behind the pole is the one you can see at the right.
The design of the poles is based on an idea of Paul Cocksedge.
Today we are starting a trip following the proposed siting of the tracks. It is going to be a long adventure, full of anecdotes, landscapes, interviews… a very intense journey. I am travelling with Gregor Kuschmirz, for the most of the driving and the camera (and various inputs) and we have Barbara’s backup in London (assisted by Valentina and Tiziana). We drove yesterday from Spain in our rental Seat Ibiza.
One of the main tasks of the trip is to put all these signs on the actual spots where the train would pass at each hour.
Our assignment today is to put the first one in Recklinghausen (the 00:00). I will write about the experience later.
Thinking about passengers spending one year in the train I thought on how faecal residues can be treated. The common way to dispose it on high speed lines is to treated it chemically. All the possbilities are explained in this wikipedia article.
If the excrements are expulsed to the side of the train, as always have been, years of deposits can make a real sediment along the track, as a small elevated ring around. This reminds me of the image of Simon the stilita, who lived on a column and someone (Bunuel perhaps) said that his defecations around the column make him look like the flame of a candle.
But on ttzz the excrements perhaps only will act as a fertilizer and there is a good green circle around the train.
Actually was is more likely to happen is that, as in the international space station, the urine is reprocessed to consume and ttzz visitors can have their Illy morning cappuccino made out of the same H2O they discharged the night before.
There is a circular closeness perfection in keep the same water, the same amount, circulating in a realization of o sustainability dream.
Couple of weeks ago I was in England for five interviews on a row for the project. Before that I only have talked to Professor Sugiyama of Nagoya University in Japan.
I had Michael Taylor as a camera and driver. We went to Leeds, York, UCL, Newcastle and Oxford.
We interviewed these people.
It was very interesting to see how the themes unfolded on the conversations. And how echoes of one conversation resounded in the others. It seems that it is going to be difficult to cut the footage, as everything is interesting per se and many themes are relevant to the project.
The interviewees belong to universities, and mainly science and technology specialist. The only interview different was with an artist (Wolfgang Weileder), were I was more certain of fully understand what was he saying.
MAIN ITEMS
- Design: Engineering studies, possible impact on the environment, correction of it.
- Expropriations and permissions.
- Earthworks: constructing embankments for the tracks, leveling and re-enforcements. Maximum incline: 12,50/00
- Viaducts and tunnels.
- Railway: Ballast, sleepers and rails.
- Electrical system. Tri-phasic stations, mono-phasic sub-stations of 25 kv 50 Hz. Overhead power cables: posts with connections each 65 m, cables, protections by relay.
- Conservation work on the countryside and anti-noise measures.
- Telecommunications for voice, video and data transference both to maintain the proper functioning of the installations and for the use of passengers.
- A reduced traffic control system. Computerized analogue-digital converter with sensors for maintaining a constant speed. It contemplates
- fixed features, such as slopes,
– variable, such as an increase or decrease in the load,
- and ocassional, such as atmospheric conditions.
- Rolling stock. Locomotive S252 and two cars designed for this specific use. Sanitation, catering services, and information and entertainment services.
- Maintenance of the infrastructure. New leveling work due to possible earth movements. Control of any deterioration of tunnels and viaducts. Wear to overhead power cables.
- Maintenance of the superstructure. Wear to axles and bearings of the rolling stock.
At the www.eurail.com website I found this map of Europe in which distances are measured on rail travelling time.
It would be nice to have a rendering of the map in which each point of Europe in the map is drawn in a place according to the time to get there, shrinking in the centre and where high speed lines are operating and stretching at the edges. Perhaps it is not possible on 2D or euclidean geometry.
Train Time in the middle of the map will work as a stability ring, as every point in the circle has exact similar time/distance relationship.
BBC reported few days ago that a test of confinement for a space mission to Mars is going to take place in an astronautic facility in Russia.
6 people are going to be on a container for 18 months. Everything they will use during that time will be “onboard” at the time of closing the doors.
The conditions will try to match of the ones of a real space travel, but the container will not move from the ground. The participants will be monitored constantly.
The results of the test will be very interesting regarding the conditions of the visitors to TTZZ, that will be one year on the train. It will show possible issues of social interaction, of management of supplies, of emotional stability and so on. But I hope that life for TTZZ visitors will be much comfortable in many aspects. First clear difference is the existence of the windows, giving a constant view of the European landscape, everyday same places at the same time of the day, with the seasons changing outside.
The design of the interior life is yet to be designed but I have already written in the spec sheet the need for an “augmented reality window”, that will show on the glass real time info about things that are happening outside.
TTZZ would be not only the biggest clock in the world, but also the biggest laid Ferris wheel.
The tallest standing now is the one in Beijing.
It takes 30 minutes to get the full circle, so it will turn 24 times while TTZZ makes one circle.
If TTZZ would be standing it would be like 783.500 km tall.
One of the shortest Ferris wheels in the world is at the Centre Pompidou.
But I just learnt that every GPS satellite goes around the world once every 12 hours. The satellites travel 20,000 km above us at roughly 11,000 km per hour.
The satellites would be synchonized with TTZZ, same time, same position.
In 2006 Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf from AMO opened in Austria an exhibition on Europe during the Austrian presidency of the EU.
On the ocassion of the presidency, Austria used as a logo the flag for the European Union AMO had proposed, a kind of cluster of flags.
I thought it would be a good design for the exterior decoration of Train Time. Something like this:
(Here is on a German ICE model by Siemens)
It would be scanned by thousands of eyes during the day, and controlled by all kind of electronic safety systems, so a barcode seems to be appropriated.
At the same time this decoration would make it kind of disappear on the landscape, like in the camouflage tactics used during WW I with ships.
The idea was not so much to make it invisible but to confuse enemies about the exact situation of the ships.
With this pattern decoration the train would be like a watermark in the map of Europe, like the circle on the bills.
This makes me think on the idea of a ghost train. People affirm they have seen it, but when they come back to the place with witnesses, it is not there anymore. It runs endlessly, empty, perpetuum mobile.
This video will be the starting set piece of the documentary.
Directed by Gregor Kuschmirz
Camera by Alex Healey
Produced by Barbara Gutierrez
Motion Graphics by Marco Rotoli
Music by Mischa Ruhr
from an idea by Manuel Saiz
Cast: James Clossick
Voiceover: Bill Nash, Hannah Jackson
I found some more interesting maps also in the book ”The Image of Europe”.
Here are two images of ancient maps that portrait the world as a circle.
This is the 520 ac map of Heateus of Miletus. The world is divided in three: Europe all the North part and then Asia and Africa.
This is the Psalter map.
The image of the circle as totality starts with civilization. Circle is essential and its simplicity fits well in the spirit of zen practice.
I like to think of the artist behind TTZZ as a zen master that decides the path of his life (and many others) in one single stroke, after meditating for many years.
This is the original spirit of TTZZ, and after a long way of development can become something like this:
Nagoya subway line map.
And then I want to include this image in this post, rescued from the far less spiritual post Budgeting
.
And once back to the TTZZ continent, in following an information about an exhibition of Rem Koolhaas on the image of Europe, I reached this book by Michael Wintle that presents an exhaustive study of how Europe has been seen by his inhabitants and by others in the course of History.
The book has references to many maps and paintings. The most common representation of Europe through history has been in relation with the bull, and there are various ways of picturing this couple.
The image I liked the most is this “Map of Europe as a Queen” by Sebastian Munster.
With Train Time will look like this:
I guess this might be the beginning of a wonderful t-shirt design adventure.
Last days in Tokyo I went to visit the construction site of the Tokyo Sky Tree, a new communications tower that is being built in the East of the city.
Now is 330, but it is going to be a 660 metres tall structure, the tallest artificial construction of the country.
It will take the functions now covered by Tokyo Tower, of clear Eiffel inspiration.
The comparison with the new tower and the remains of the Eiffel design on it make me think of how the times have changed, in terms of precision, efficiency and disregard of other interests than the pure technical in the design of infrastructures.
The surroundings of the place were full of visitors. I think it is awakening a lot of geeky interest. There are many photographers and observers coming often to see the progress of the construction. I was shown around by Yohsuke and Mr Onodera, from Studio deluxe, who is documenting beautifully the development of the building.
As this impressive engineering building has little to do with my Train Time project I wondered on the spot if I was just becoming a plain civil engineering junky, a megaproject otaku. Yohsuke came to my rescue: I can put a tower this type in the centre of the circle. It would act as a sun dial, pointing its shadow all the time to the place where the train is at the moment.
It is a beautiful image. Of course sun time is not the same than standard time, but nevertheless is a good idea.
I wondered how tall the tower should be, how low the sun should be, for the shadow to reach the train. I asked Fernando, who is mathematician. He show me the formula to calculate it. He said that probably the main problems would be tat the tower would be too thin and will not project shadow at that distance and that in 400 km, the curvature of the earth could be an annoyance.
One of the visits last days was to Akashi-Kaikyou bridge. “Kaikyou” means “strait”. Akashi is a small town near Kobe famous in Japan for the quality of octopus captured there.
It is the longest span in the world. Suspension bridges have the record of longest spans and this is the best in the suspension type: 1,991 mt.
In the Akashi side there is a bridge technology museum. One of the most curious facts about the bridge is that it was intended to measure 3910 ms but during the construction the Kobe earthquake of 1995 happened and the two sides separated one meter more, so the bridge is now 3911 ms.
The bridge is for traffic, not for railway, but I wanted to see it expecting to build several of this in different places in the Alps and perhaps in some of the multiple crossings of the river Po.
In May I hope to visit the Millau Viaduct, that will be also a good example.
It is interesting to point out that the first suspension bridge was also European, made by Brunel in Bristol in 1864.
This one I hope to see it and record it on April.
I have been visiting several civil engineering projects in Japan, and I have interviewed Dr Sugiyama of the Physics department of Nagoya University. I will explain about it and about the connection with TTZZ in future posts.
For the two weeks I have been in the country I bought a Japan Railway Pass, that allows travelling in all the lines of JR (Japan Railway).
It is possible to travel in Shinkansen and special trains, but not in the very fastest one, the NOZOMI
.
I have taken account of the number of hours spent in trains during my stay: 34 hours 41 minutes. It is not bad, for a two weeks visit.
I wanted this visit to Japan to be specially train themed, so I forced myself to travel even for short visits to faraway bridges.
Trains in Japan are an important part of daily life and culture. This factor, in combination with the obsessive quality of Japanese individuals and the interest in recording and precision, has created a wide range of train related tribes. Trainspotters are nothing in comparison.
Tetsu ota is a word for generic train fans, from “tetsudo otaku”. “Tetsudo” is “railway”(iron way) and “otaku”. A familiar nickname is “tet-chan”.
Then, Toritetsu is for people who like to take pictures of trains.
Ototetsu is for those who record the sound of trains.
Soushiki-tetsu is for those into railway services being discontinued (soushiki, funeral)
Finally, those who are into ride in trains (landscape or speed is secondary) are called “noritetsus”.
I have been a “noritetsu” for two weeks. People visiting Train Time must have some noritetsu quality.
I think is interesting to require visitors of the installation to spend one year travelling on Train Time (post #29). Those who do not have time or willing to dedicate one year to the installation, better they do not experience it at all.
To keep spectators for certain time on a show requires a very sophisticated technology, and a sense of balance that few artists master. Since the wide spread of the use of video in galleries, the possibilities of testing and put in practice different techniques to deal with the attention span of visitors have increased enormously.
The variables to consider getting visitors to see one art work until the end are:
- the immediate interest of the work. Does the work catches the attention of the spectator and allow him to follow a story, to identify with the character, etc? It is not compulsory that it does, but if doesn’t will have to put more effort in other of the variables.
- the trust on the name of the artist and his previous works. When you have seen interesting things from one artist before, you are more willing to invest time on a new work because the expectations of the work paying off are bigger.
- the trust on the work as it will have a pay off. If the spectator has been advised of the work being interesting by friends or reviews.
- The duration of the work. Short works are more likely to be seen until the end for obvious reasons.
- To force people to stay. Coerce them by the principle “or you see everything or you do not see anything”. This can be done by make them pay, travel far away or making them wait until the beginning of the work and then closing the doors and turning the lights off.
- The benefits added to it. You will be able to talk about the work if you have seen it until the end, you will meet influent people when the work finishes.
To get people signing to be on the train for one year all the variables have to be put it in the best condition (except, evidently, the one of the duration).
The maximum time and dedication I have spent to visit an art work was used in visiting Lightning Fields by Walter de Maria. I got back to civilization satisfied with the visit, as the work gave me things back. I wrote the narration of the experience for the Colossal Blog last year http://manuelsaiz.com/Rome/?p=1468
Yohsuke send me a message with this link of the Ohashi junction I talked about in post # 25. http://shibuya246.com/2009/08/22/ohashi-junction-chuo-kanjo-sen/
There is this image of the interior and some others of the building on the distance and the construction of the tunnels.
I heard a rumor that Japanese Railways are planning an underground line between Tokyo and Osaka. The benefit of underground could be that the line will be completely straight and it will avoid costly land purchases, but in other matters will be very expensive to build. It might be also about this idea of transportation on vacuum tunnels, which allows incredible speeds of perhaps 5000 km per hour.
I am not interested on speed, because TTZZ has to run exactly a 200 km/hr. But to make the project underground will solve many social and ecological problems.
I wonder what happens then with the conceptual part of the project if TTZZ siting was completely underground. Is the relation with the landscape, with the people outside, important? It will be purer the relationship time space if there is not other adjacent themes?
This makes me think about Bruce Nauman’s Underground Chamber I saw years ago on the Reina Sofia Art Center in Madrid. The interior of a locked underground room excavated on the patio of the museum could be seen by a cctv camera on a monitor inside the museum galleries. Nobody can enter, no operation to attend to, but you know it is there. Here is when they excavated the room on the Walker Art Center.
Also reminds me to these
Smoke Rings (Model for Underground Tunnels), 1979. Plaster, 3,4 m. Courtesy Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York. Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. Photo: Philippe Migeat. © 2009 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
One of the things I am more worried about is that in order to keep the rapport to time, TTZZ ideally should never stop. This, of course, creates a lot of technical and practical problems. For instance, how to do the maintenance, how to have public in and off the train, how to get in all the supplies, cleaning, etc.
I thought about many solutions and the one I like the best is to stop only in October, during the Daylight Saving Time change. All the trains stop that day, anyway. At 2 am the train will stop near Bayreuth and will start again one hour later. Then, the visitors would have to spend one year on the installation.
If everything is prepared, one hour is enough for all the necessary yearly arrangements.
There is another time change in Spring and I have to find a solution to recuperate one hour. A temporary working solution is to build a 1000 kilometres track that goes from North to South and use it once at year to gain one hour without changing the speed.
Just an idea.
I found a clock that it is synchronized with the stations of Yamanote line in Tokyo. Instead of looking the name of the station you are in by the window of the train, you can look at your watch. I do not understand how it works, but I guess it can wake you up if you sleep on the train and you are about to miss your station.
I do not know in which way something like this can be useful for Train Time, apart of creating a series of art multiples/merchandising, but seems to be in the spirit of the project.
I learnt also that Tokyo people call the sense of the Yamanote line “inner Yamanote” or “outer Yamanote” because the one that goes clockwise is in the inside of the circle (I think). The one outside needs a longer track, although both are one hour ride. Therefore, anticlockwise riders have less time to jump in and out the train the clockwise riders.
The vision of the vehicle distributor in Shibuya has triggered the idea of sharing the Train Time track for “profane” uses. It will make the project much more feasible.
If the existing high speed train lines are connected to the Train Time track, and if the trains are scheduled to do not interfere with the Time convoy, the line might be used for other services (let’s say “for parallel time realities”).
It will do a good alternative connection between Berlin and Paris. The city of Kassel would have clear gain, maintaining direct links now with Dortmund, Brussels, Lille or Paris. Many other useful combinations will be possible but I will let these calculations to dedicated software processing various types of relevant data.
The second public work is a combination of tunnel and bridge that crosses Tokyo Bay.
It is called Tokyo Wan Aqua Line. It was built some like 10 years ago and it connects the city of Kawasaki and the Chiba prefecture.
The route to the Wan Aqua Line passes through the Rainbow bridge, icon of Tokyo, and Haneda airport.
First we entered the tunnel, two separate tunnels one for each sense of circulation and two lines each. It is 9.5 kilometres long.
At the end of the tunnel there is an artificial island called Umihotaru.
Then there is a bridge 4.4 kilometres.
The most interesting feature is the island in the middle.
Yesterday weather was awful, so I couldn’t see anything of the bay from the island, just a white curtain all around. It looked like the deck of a ship. It was shocking, anyway, how this complex of restaurants and parking lots can be built in the middle of the bay. I do not wonder it took 31 years to be completed.
I was thinking on the possibility of using this bridge/tunnel solution on the crossing of Chiemsee.
The Northern section would be a bridge, and Southern, a tunnel. In the case of the Tokyo Bay this solution was selected due to the heavy ship traffic of the bay, some like 1.400 ships at day. The bridge is cheaper to build and maintain. In the case of Chiemsee would be just to preserve big part of the lake for leisure boating.
The island in the middle can merge beautifully with the already existent. The distance to cover is a bit shorter than in Tokyo Bay: 10, 171 ms
Yesterday I visited two big Japanese public works that apply to the TTZZ project. I had the chance to know them thanks to Komuro Yohsuke, who guided me to both.
First one is called Ohashi Junction, a large building that is about to being finished near Shibuya in Tokyo in which cars will spin.
The first idea that comes to my mind is, of course, the coliseum (again!!). The coliseum is 188 x 156 and this one slightly smaller
The Junction building is the one on the left. On the right, as to compare, is the Japan National Stadium. It is 175 by 110.
Coliseum + Cars + Oval might suggest racing track, but the purpose of the building is practical: a very innovative solution to connect six different highway tracks that cross on this point. Some are elevated and some underground.
Soon will be fed with cars coming in Tokyo from all Japan and launched from here to their destinations. Tokyo Metropolitan Government expects to smooth greatly the traffic jamming of the city. Cars will enter, turn couple of times to change level and will live the building tangentially. It has something of space travelling sci-fi.
Another association for this building is the particles accelerator at CERN, in Switzerland, that I hope to visit in May as part of the trip of this project. The purpose of this building though, is not other but the cars NOT to collide.
Once finished it will contain a interior square for public use and a top roof with green areas. Then it might get given a new name like Cherryblossom Spiral Plaza or Shibuya Wonder Traffic.
Yesterday I did the full Yamanote line circle in Tokyo. It was exactly, EXACTLY, one hour. I got in at Ikebukuro at 10:25 and I was off there at 11.24. I did it clockwise, so when I finished I was one hour older.
I hope to do the Ringbahn in Berlin sometime soon.
I found in Rome airport Fiumicino this sign for the trains going to central Rome that has an strange symbiosis of the TTZZ project with the previous one, the Colossal Blog. I might do something about the Vatican soon.
The circular train from Berlin is called Ringbahn. I received this picture from Gregor there.
Apparently the full ride of the circle takes exactly one hour.
At Train Time’s speed one hour means a circle of 200 kilometres
One minute means 3 kilometres 333 metres circle
One second 55 metres and 55 centimetres circle.
There is a nice idea to create a TTZZ interpretation complex at the very centre of the TTZZ sitting, in France near Strasbourg.
View TTZZ Proposed Siting in a larger map
It will be an operation control facility, a permanent show and explanation about the project, and it will feature two circular train tracks, one surrounding the buildings that will take one minute to do the full circle and one in the middle of the complex, that will take one second to circle.
If you take the Ringbahn clockwise you will be one hour older at the end of the run.
It would be nice that if you take it anticlockwise you become one hour younger.
In the Keith Hopkins Mary Beard’s book about the Coliseum I learnt so much last year from for Colossal Blog, there is an interesting proposition:
To show an image that readers can understand of how difficult and expensive was to build the Coliseum, the authors asked a firm of Chartered Quantity Surveyors to estimate the costs of creating the foundations for the Coliseum in England at the time of the publishing of the book (2006), using modern methods and materials. They gave a list of specifications of how the job should be done to match the Coliseum foundations. The result for the basic foundations, nothing above ground, not drainages, no professional fees, no VAT was £28.5 million. Slaves do things easier (as they pointed out) but it is an enormous enterprise, I like to think, similar in a way of that of Train Time.
I very much would like to have the chance to ask a firm of Surveyors how much approximately the building and operation of the first year of Train Time will cost. I hope to have the chance before the documentary is completed.
For the moment I have these numbers: the high speed train line between Wuhan and Canton, recently opened is 1.100 Km and the official cost of it has been €11.900 million. Train Time is double length, so double costs.
Considerations:
- There are rumors that the real costs have been much higher.
- The line Wutan Canton could look for the easier terrains, reducing costs, something that TTZZ cannot.
- The costs of social displacement and the value of the land and substantially lower in China
- Train Time only runs in one direction and only one track is needed.
I am planning a trip during May 2010 following the proposed siting of the tracks. I will try to reach by car all the points of interest along the path: landscape, historical, monumental, environmental… It will be useful to identify the main problem (technical, social, ecological, etc) that are going to arise during the detailed planning of the train infrastructure. I would like to interview relevant people along the way, engineers, politicians, art curators, individuals possibly affected by the construction works, etc. All the necessary arrangements are in course.
For the trip I will have the company and help of Gregor Kuschmirz, a German artist who uses design, video and advertising for his work, among other skills. He has been living in Egypt and Italy and is based currently in Berlin.
We have team up for camera work, translations and creative input of all kinds. Gregor’s work and ideas are a great addition to the forces of the project and an intense synergy is forecast.
There are many cities that have circular trains (actually “trains that have a closed circuit”). Normally transport networks develop in order to connect the centre of the city with neighborhoods around, creating a kind of a radial structure. Eventually becomes necessary a line that tight them up in a concentric shape. I know Glasgow, Madrid, Berlin and Tokyo.
Yamanote is the JR line that connects most of the main stations in the surroundings of Tokyo, including Tokyo station itself in a circular trip. It takes around one hour to be covered (the time it takes is as precise as Japanese technology, but I do not know exactly yet)
I found this clock that represents the circle with the stations around the sphere. It seems that it simulates the distance between the stations. I will check it out soon.
The clock plays some of the tunes that help to recognise the stations when riding the trains of the line and has the characteristic front of the train in the middle.
The universal icon for commitment on unrestrained poetical enterprises involving hardware has a name: Fitzcarraldo.
I read “Conquest of the Useless”, the diary Werner Herzog wrote during the pre production and shooting of the film, looking for light on the kind of person necessary to carry on with an out of measure project like TTZZ . There are some elements in the film and the book very inspiring for the development of Train Time.
First is the double layer of the book, in one hand the ambition of Fitzcarraldo’s project, the determination of the character, his enthusiasm, his sublime moments and his loneliness and humiliations; and in the other hand the ambition of the film, the determination of the author, enthusiasm, sublime moments, loneliness and humiliations… In TTZZ there is also double layer, although fortunately I do not need to actually build the train (benefits of documentary versus fiction). I think the person to propose Train Time will share many aspects of the psychologic profile of Mr Fitzgerald. I am planing to consult a psychiatrist to define his profile (so I can ask him about my own condition too).
The second thing that interest me is the triple layer of engineering. I did not catch this point on the film nor in the book, but it seems to me that Fitzcarraldo is an engineer. His idea, besides of commercial and tycoonish, requieres a technical mindframe and has engineering beauty and elegance. Then in the book Herzog talks about the engineer that worked in the first part of the production, a real engineer for a real physical problem. The engineer resigned and it feels like if the author also took this task as his own. At the same time, there is a lot of engineering on filmmaking and film production. Hitchcock and Enseinstein, for instance, were engineers before filmmakers (or on top of).
The aspect of the book that interests me more is the image of somebody bound to a vision, risking money, mental health and money for a wonder that only he perceives in advance. As Herzog says in the diary, at one point he feels very lonely among all the extras, cast and crew, but seeing “something the others did not see.” The artist sees things that other do not see, things that perhaps only exist because the artist sees them. I would like to know how much delusion needs an artist to start a process that is going to be painful and that, if the ships weren’t burnt at the beginning, would be cancel at the first inconvenience. Bent Flyvbjerg in his book Megaprojects (post #3) says that public works should not tolerate any delusion, that things can be studied clearly in advance and carried on only if feasible. I would like to know if this is possible in art too. Artists are “conquistadores of the useless” and the menace of feeling the futility is always near.
After reading the book I watched the film again. Not very important but perhaps a bad omen for TTZZ: before passing the boat over the mountain Fitzcarraldo failed in a previous project: a train to cross the Andes.
The new Train Time logo has been unveiled.
The author is Marco Rotoli, a London-based Italian designer www.marcorotoli.com
We thought that the logo should contain “train”, “time” and “Europe”. I think it shows perfectly those ideas.
It is simple and good to animate. It is serious but dinamic. Thanks Marco.
Railways are very European. Of course there is Shinkansen and US transcontinental railway episodes, but it seems like if Europe has been living on a train since the beginning of 19th century.
The first modern railway was built in England in 1820. Years before were tested and shown the first steam locomotives, as the Richard Trevithick’s Catch Me Who Can I talked about in post #13.
But also the first high speed train was European. High speed technically is when running more than 200 km/h. That was the speed that reached the Schienenzeppelin in May 1931.
Schienenzeppelin was running between Hamburg and Berlin in demonstration and testing rides. It is the same line that supposed to cover the abandoned DBahn Maglev train.
When I arrived to London, at the end of the 90’s, I was living in Brockley, South East. I remember everyday to be waiting in the afternoon for the Concorde to pass over the area in its landing way to Heathrow. It used to be around 17.20, some days a bit earlier, some days a bit later. The days I wasn’t aware of the time, the particular noise of this aircraft reminded me the daily appointment.
I guess that all systems in the world are in close relationship with Time, and everything that has a technological edge has a lot to do with clocks. But I think that trains are more tied to the measurement of time that other devices, than other transportation devices, like planes and cars. The planes never take off exactly at the scheduled time; cars depend of traffic jams, the mood of the driver, the weather conditions: it look like the time slots are more flexible. Maybe the tracks. Trains, like the hands of the clock, are trapped in its fixed path.
Few days ago Kirai reported that Japanese train drivers are trained to stop the train on the station with a precision of 10 cm and 5 seconds.
It is unavoidable the siting of the train to pass the Alps twice, in the Austrian/Italian area and at the Italian/French border. It is of a great difficulty in terms of technical, economical and environmental development of the project. However the artist should not see this as a burden but as something that will embed the train fully in the history of Europe. The Alps have always been there, when Julius Caesar wanted to bring the legions to get Rome, when Hannibal’s elephants had colder feet than ever.
Another important advantage is the beautiful landscapes that the people visiting the instalation (riding the train) will see from the their seats. It might be costly, but a good production value for the artist.
It is going to be plenty of them, but one of the difficult spots is this border between Austria and Italy, where a 2.600 mt peak has to be crossed. The train will pass at 03:36 every day by this point.
View TTZZ Proposed Siting in a larger map
These problems make me think about the “Via Mala (Evil Road)” in Switzerland, a very steep gorge were the Romans made one of their highways pass.
Via Mala history
History
395 crossed by the Roman army under its leader Stilicho with bullock carriages.
401 crossed by the Roman army under its leader Stilicho with bullock carriages.
1219 written mention.
1473 first road through the gorge built.
1723 road through the Via Mala mentioned to be completed.
1738 new bridge built by Christian Wildener.
1739 second new bridge built by Christian Wildener.
1820 road developed according to the rules of modern roads.
1935 first bridge replaced with bigger one.
1938 second bridge replaced with bigger one.
1960s motorway A13 built parallel to old road through tunnels.
In the long years that TTZZ has been in my stand-by folder, many stories connected with it have been noted and archived. I hope to have the chance to research about every one in the course of the following months.
I received notice of the existence of Catch me Who Can from Charo couple of years ago.
A circular train! It was built in 1808 and shown to public as a demonstration of technical achievement and entertainment.
The event in which the train was shown was called “steam circus”. This connected when I received with my previous work about the Coliseum. Catch me Who Can was set where now London’s Euston station stands. I have been living for several years near of the spot.
At the speeds of that time (19 k/h) the track circle for Train Time would have been 228 km of length. The train would cover a distance of 317 metres at that speed, which would have been a nice length of the circle for the 1808 demonstrations: one lap, one minute ride. It looks shorter in the drawing though.
I wonder if always runs anti-clockwise.
Today on the BBC newsletter: More people moved in China for Three Gorges dam.
300,000 more people’s homes are relocated for the construction of the dam. Chinese government is very efficient in managing the social costs of public projects.
Already 1.3 million people have been moved. The project has costed officially 19.15 million euros, but apparently Chinese government calculate budgets also in a way that puts good light onto them.
I would like to know more about the way these operations have been made. If we consider that China has the first Maglev train in operation (Shanghai airport link) and the longest high speed train network in the world, I think a closer look to the country might be relevant in the future of Train Time.
I thought about Train Time for the first time at the end of the 90s. When I arrived to London in 1998 I put it online. For the website I did a presentation, I drew the map and I calculated the basic needs and costs. At the time was still recent the much celebrated Spanish AVE connection between Madrid and Sevilla, and I used data and publications from that project for the designing of Train Time.
At the begining my approach as an artist to the conception of TTZZ was innocent. I wanted to manage the project as if a crazy artist was insane enough to believe it as necessary and feel himself entitled to ask for understanding to all instances about its values and benefits. A bit as the VideoHacker. I wanted to play it as if inside the fiction. I am not very much into acting, or pretending, but at least on the documents I wanted to call the suspension of disbelief of the readers.
I learnt that it is not good in any respect to present ideas to people in a way that their first reaction in 70% of the cases is something like “you cannot be serious”. It just creates anticlimactic situations very unproductive. In order to grow and improve, ideas should be presented in such a way that allow counterparts to interact happily, that make them feel that have immediately grasped the basics of the idea and can start to be creative right away.
Few years later I saw how much intense and productive was to develop it as an hypothesis. I think the formula “imaging that…” is very appropriate to start a process that will create artistic experiences.
How absurd Train Time is and, at the same time, how feasible might look (deceptively feasible) if you divide it in tiny parts that can be managed separately in controlled isolated spreadsheets. One of the main things to work out is the budget, how to get the required economic support to build the infrastructure and to keep it running.
If we look for previous big infraestructures made in Europe in the past, we will find that the construction of Stonehenge in England has been estimated in more than thirty million hours of labor. A curious expensive construction made not for practical purposes.
At ground level, the ruins of Stonehenge appear somewhat random and chaotic, but a view from the air reveals the monument’s circular order. The site started out modestly around 3100 B.C. as a wide ring of wood posts surrounded by a ditch and bank. The familiar enormous rock slabs, some brought from hundreds of miles away, were added to the interior over a period of about 1,500 years (from National Geographic site).
Also my beloved Roman Coliseum (a colossal blog) was built at enormous cost for that time. An almost circular megaproject built for entertainment.
If promoters of Stonehenge and Coliseum got the resources, Train Time must get them too.
As any other existing clock Train Time is a time machine. It is a machine to measure time. Not need to say that many time measuring devices will be needed to build it and maintain it in function.
But as far as I can see now, it will be also a time machine in the science-fiction novel meaning of the term. By the state of things that Einstein’s theory of relavity sets, the passengers riding the train for one day, will have travel to the future of the ones that had stayed at Recklinghausen. Even if in these dimensions the amount is minimal, absolutely imperceptible for the human experience, actually the passenger getting off the train will be younger that if he would have stayed at the station waiting.
This phenomenon called “time dilation” is beautifully explained in the Paul Davies book How to Build a Time Machine. Travelling to the future can be achieved by speed, and the difference of timing between moving and still clocks increases with the increasing of speed. See “the twin paradox”.
There are many speculations on physics (and metaphysics) I am brought to by this book. I would like to know the exact dilation in one day, or in one year. The dilation if the train does the circle in one minute, instead of 12 hours (2,400 km/m means 144,000 km/h), or if the circle ride is completed in one second. I just calculated that a the speed of light, the train will pass something like 125 times at second by Recklinghausen.
One important thing Professor Bent Flyvbjerg advise in his book Megaprojects and Risk. An Anatomy of Ambition featured in post #3 is the setting as early as possible a feedback mechanism to get citizens and groups affected by the project, involved in the development:
“In our judgement, therefore, when developing and appraising megaprojects, concerned groups should be allowed to play an active role in the planning process, including a constructive role in defining the major objectives and requirements to be taken into account in the technical, environmental and economic design of possible projects.”
So please, if you are in areas that are going to be affected by the construction of the tracks, get in contact with the promoters (us) to get your points considered in the planning: artisforpeople@ttzz.eu
We are looking forward to work together with you.
Old friend Rene Magritte, whose painting “La carte blanche” was featured in my Video Hacking, is coming again to encourage me in the making of an art work. He is extremly European and interested in time and trains. This image came via Ana.
| Time Transfixed, 1938 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 147 x 98.7 cm |
| Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1970.426 |
“I decided to paint the image of a locomotive . . . In order for its mystery to be evoked, another immediately familiar image without mystery — the image of a dining room fireplace — was joined.” RM
“Train , “treno”, “tren”, “trein”, “train” and “time”,”tempo”, “tiempo”, “tijd” and “temp” are coming together from the same ´Proto-Indo-European, ones via Latin, the others via Proto-Germanic languages.
“Train” is from Latin trahere, to pull
I do not have idea where “Zeit” and “Zug” are coming from.
I guess that considering the order of the countries the train is passing throug, the project should be called ZZTT
The translation to Japanese I thik would be 列車時 (ressha jikan), although I guess Japanese people would call it “turenu taimu”.
Bárbara Gutiérrez is going to take care of the main production of TTZZ.
We have worked together in previous projects, with good results and understanding. The last work we did, The Two Teams Team, has been shown in many ocassions and got a Special Jury Mention at Moscow Media Forum Festival.
Bárbara is a London based producer, artist and designer. She is currently studying Philosophy at the London College University.
Last week we got the first production meeting and the wheel is starting to turn.
One of the most brilliant moments of the train, for the passangers and for the people around, will be the crossing of the Chiemsee lake, in South East Germany, around 03:09 everyday. Nine kilometres that the train will cover in a bit more of 2 minutes 30 seconds.
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View TTZZ Proposed Siting in a larger map
TTZZ is a big project. It is a megaproject.
“Megaproject” is a term I did not recognise as fixed. I founded in Wikipedia as refering something particular:
“Megaprojects are typically defined as costing more than US$1 billion and attracting a lot of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets.”
Also in Wikipedia I learned about Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, who wrote about the mechanics of megaprojects in his book Megaprojects and Risk. An Anatomy of Ambition.
“An Anatomy of Ambition” sounds promising regarding TTZZ. I am reading this book at the moment. I will report my findings promptly.
The map of the siting of the tracks is finished and it can be seen on google maps.
The circle was dropped on the map in an action-painting type zen gesture.
It is the first step to identify the main difficulties and tasks of the project.
View TTZZ Proposed Siting in a larger map
This is the beginning of the Train Time project development. During the next months the show and the documentary film are going to be taking shape slowly. This blog will be the tell of its modeling.
On the right side you can see the links to the different categories, which represent the numerous themes that the project tackles.
The blog is to be developed until September 2010, when the project will be shown at the Diputacion de Huesca (Spain) and the documentary released.
