The Beam Engine started yesterday at 11am to an audience of six. It got going seamlessly with grace, elegance and an almost silent whirr. The building filled with new smells, sounds and sights of coal and steam. Left alone with it I lost myself in the hypnotic motion and gentle power and filmed it and thrilled in the boiler’s flames and steamy spaces. Working for the first time in over 4 years.
Sipping tomato soup, from Peter, to warm up- and celebrate, I studied a ‘man going to replenish the fire’ in a 1712 engraving. It made me consider the engine as a whole, not just the individual moving parts. More filming until the power went on the camera (now on shopping list: extra battery pack!)
A problem with working site specifically in a building that has ever changing plans, with work that is shifting equally as fast, is that identifying the right spot to show it. I liked the space we explored in January, but light was an issue. Now the sound has developed a new direction I’m not sure if that would work. The room I thought would be roped off now won’t have to be. It is a distinct possibility, but is it right. And the plans I’ll see in a few weeks may offer further possibilities in rooms yet to be built!. With such flux I have to just focus on the work and stop feeling so desperate about the location, for now. After seeing Mining Review, Number 11 (1949), I threw another idea that wasn’t right into a basket this week. Satisfying!
Next week I meet with my Peer Review Group. We are going to work on a group project and with my days and increasingly my evenings being swallowed with engineering influenced thoughts it will be refreshing to be distracted down a new creative route.
