Tim Nunn

Since moving to the Southside of Glasgow I’ve always cast a sad and longing eye at the disused bandstand in Queens’ Park. I live a stones throw from the Victoria Road gate of Queen’s Park and therefore two stones throws from the bandstand. It’s not a grand Victorian structure or much more than a dent in the landscape but it has the potential for some fun and it would be great to see it spring to life. So, I was delighted to hear that the Community Councils and Glasgow City Council are doing something about it and a competition of designers and architects has chosen a structure to re-launch the bandstand. Here’s the winner.

As a bit of an homage to the bandstand I popped down there this morning and did an ambient sound recording. At 5.30-6am I was in the company of various birds, lots of squirrels and even more rabbits. I was probably a bit late for the main dawn chorus but even so there was a fair few birds doing their thing.

Bandstand, Queens Park, Glasgow, 6am, 3 June ’10 by timjnunn

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Here’s hoping the bandstand gets going properly and a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who is putting effort into making that happen.

A magpie just landed on the window ledge next to my desk. I froze and for a minute or two he or she hopped around about four feet from my left shoulder.
Magpies are creatures I find difficult not to anthropomorphise, and not in a good way. When we first moved into this flat I hung a bird feeder out of the window and was delighted when garden birds found even though we are two floors up. Come Spring a family of blue tits emerged from a nest nearby and I think the bird feeder was the maiden flight of one of the young. I watched as the young bird reached the window ledge under the feeder, probably having followed an adult, but then got stuck. It screeched and screamed but didn’t fly. And then there was an enormous black and white streak across the window, fast and precise. The young bird was gone for magpie breakfast.
Of course I shouldn’t resent the magpie its kill. If the young bird had left the nest too early its chances of survival were minimal. Even if it were a survivor it was still destined to be part of the food chain one way or another. Hey, better the magpie than a greedy pet cat that could just as easily feed on tinned waste from the butcher.
So, maybe magpies aren’t really bastards and vicious and bullies, or ever so slightly sexy in smooth-latin-haughty sort of way. They’re just good at what they do and there’s more of them about then there was a few years ago. And the one that was on my windowsill a few moments ago was very beautiful.

Amnesty International press release explains what happened:

Amnesty ‘disappointed’ by FT’s decision to pull ad targeting Shell

Posted: 18 May 2010

Financial Times’ late call thwarts Amnesty’s campaign

Amnesty International UK expressed its immense disappointment today at the Financial Times’ decision to pull a new hard-hitting advertisement at the last possible moment. The ad was due to appear today as Shell held its London AGM.

The advertisement focused on the appalling human rights record of Shell in Nigeria. It compared the company’s $9.8bn profits with the consequences of pollution caused by the oil giant for the people of the Niger Delta.

Numerous oil spills, which have not been adequately cleaned up, have left local communities with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathe in air that stinks of oil and gas.

Tim Hancock, Amnesty International UK’s campaigns director, said:

“The decision by the Financial Times is extremely disappointing. We gave them written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement.

“Both The Metro and The Evening Standard had no problems with running the ad.”

Tim Hancock added:

“The money to pay for the advertisements came entirely from more than 2,000 individuals online, who we’d asked to fund an ad campaign targeting Shell’s AGM – and it really caught their imagination. And I am sure these supporters will share with us our sense of deep disappointment.”

ENDS.

Courtesy of Roger Boughton, this is the recording of the tadpoles mentioned in the earlier post (Tadpoles sound like sausages).

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Thanks Roger!

Last weekend I had a fantastic time at the Kindrogan Field Studies Centre on their first ‘Wildlife Sound Recording’ course. We were under the learned and expert instruction of Roger Boughton and Phil Riddett who are both part of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society. Doing the course was justified as work for a new play, that I shall describe in a later post, but also justified as being a brilliant laugh. Roger and Phil are not only great tutors but hilarious and full of a million stories about travels to mudflats and forests around the world.

The Kindrogan Centre is also a great place to stay and work. It’s surrounded by beautiful country that is teeming with wildlife. I’d thoroughly recommend it for any of their courses as well as a damn fine breakfast.

So, we spent the weekend waving around microphones, scaring the fauna and the occasional flora. Roger and Phil generously gave us the chance to play with some great, and incredibly expensive, kit. There were many occasions throughout the weekend that I felt like a little boy, in total wonder at the sounds coming through the headphones, scooped out of the air by a parabolic reflector and a sensitive microphone.This is one of my first recordings, made around 5am or so. I was recording some birdsong when I had three unexpected visitors:

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It must be twenty years or more since I’ve seen red squirrels in the wild and the woods around Kindrogan are full of them. These three were belting around the trees and undergrowth oblivious to everything around them. They were fast and furious little red streaks of energy. And the microphone was picking up tiny squeaks and the scratching of their tiny feet on the bark. I can’t describe how exciting it was to watch and hear. This is more of them:

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And this, so I was informed later, is the distress call of a Mistle Thrush. A Sparrow Hawk had just flown over so maybe that was the cause of the distress:

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Later in the weekend I recorded the river that flows beside the centre. I like the bassey bloppy noises under the splashing. You might have to listen with some headphones to hear them. The river was flowing pretty fast:

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On the Sunday we had a demonstration of the a hydrophone (underwater microphone) which was hilarious. A pond nearby was teeming with tadpoles and we all took turns to listen to them make a sound that was very similar to frying sausages. I suspect it was actually the sound of lots of little tadpoles headbutting the microphone. Maybe someone from the course will read this and send me a copy of the recording so I can post it (pretty pleeeeease).

And I’ll finish with a quick plug for Phil. One of his recordings is on a British Library CD – order it now! To say it is a recording of a nightingale barely describes this beautiful, multi-layered and musical recording of woodland. I ordered it the day I got back, it arrived the next morning and I’ve been playing it very loud ever since, confusing cats for miles around. I’m sure Roger has some recordings out there of equal quality but I haven’t got any locations for them yet.

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P.S. Roger has now kindly sent a copy of the tadpole recording – Tadpoles!!

Another One and Other Blog 22 August 2009

I’ve copied the text below.
‘The plinth has changed my life’
00:10 GMT, Sunday, 23 August 2009

The Edinburgh Festival has taken over my life. Completely. I have had a show running since the start of the festival (‘Funny’) and on Monday there will be the first performance of ‘Tank Man’ that was written on the plinth during ‘One and Other’.

‘Tank Man’ is a short piece, it’s ended up at around 12 minutes, performed by a single female actor. From the script written on the plinth I’ve developed it in rehearsal with Gillian Lees, a talented and intelligent performer who I’ve worked with before on a number of projects. Gillian is great! Tank Man is derived from our knowledge of the man who stopped the tanks near Tiananmen Square during the Beijing protests of 1989.

I am very pleased with Tank Man. It has an intensity that reflects the intense experience of writing on the plinth. When I look at my notebook I am still surprised by how much I managed to write in that hour. I wasn’t even writing for the full hour as I signed off at the point when I knew I had a beginning, a middle and an end – and spent the remainder of my time happily toasting the health of members of the crowd with a fine single malt whisky.

Tank Man isn’t particularly political or intended as a campaigning statement. It is me playing around with ideas of what makes a hero and how that is remembered. The real Tank Man was someone who apparently acted without forethought or plans. He appeared to be on his way home from the shops. He wasn’t armed and there was no indication that he had even been in the protests that had occurred in Tiananmen Square during the weeks before. From his demeanour and dress it is very unlikely he had been in the protests the day before that had ended in bloodshed. Most commentators think it is unlikely he was a student; more likely is that he was a menial office worker or something similar. All he carried was a light jacket and a plastic carrier bag, that appeared to contain some groceries. From his actions that lasted no more than a few minutes he became one of the heroes of the twentieth century.

I don’t want to describe too much of what happens in the performance as I think people should draw their own conclusions from seeing it themselves. It will be filmed next week and I hope I can get a video that represents it well enough for it to be put on YouTube.

I know very well that Tank Man would have been a very different piece if it had been written elsewhere, certainly different from something I would have written at my desk. I’m not even sure that Tank Man would have been written at all if it had not been for the opportunity I had on the plinth. That experience was not just the act of being on that stage for a short while, it was an engagement with ideas of celebrity, performance, public endorsement, public art and the purpose of monuments. All of those things contributed to how I wrote about the Tank Man.

There is no statue to the real Tank Man like the ones for military and political leaders in Trafalgar Square. There are, however, many monuments to him using the famous pictures and videos of him standing in front of the long column of tanks

So the plinth has had an impact on my life, and my work. The project is clearly having an impact on many other lives as well, and not just the plinthers themselves. I’ve said it before, and I shall say it again – I hope a way is found to document the impact ‘One and Other’ is having on those experiencing it.

If you are at the Edinburgh Festival details of the free performances of Tank Man on 24, 25 and 26 August can be found here:  Tank Man Dates

P.S. I’ve been away for a while and come back to discover there are polls running on the One and Other site and by SkyArts on Twitter for ‘favourite’ plinthers. I think that is totally rubbish and contrary to the expectation of participants not to be judged. Please stop it.

On 11 July 2009 I spent an hour on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square as part of Anthony Gormley’s ‘One and Other’. During my hour I wrote a ten minute play inspired by the ‘Tank Man’ of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989. ‘Tank Man’ will be performed  by Gillian Lees at the Edinburgh Fringe 09 alongside our new full length play ‘Funny’.

You can find more information about ‘Funny’ here.

You can find more information about ‘Tank Man’ here.

My blog on the One&Other website. This one is about my plans for the day itself – writing ‘Tank Man’.

http://www.oneandother.co.uk/blog/2009/07/tank-man-on-the-plinth.html

I’m intrigued by eBooks and I’m sure I’ll have a reader soon. The debate has clearly started about what the new format for words will do to the culture of the book and I find it all fascinating. Although I don’t, yet, have one of the new generation of readers I have often read from my Palm Pilot and find it very satisfying. I got out of the habit when I got a different Palm and found that having the screen on for prolonged periods drained the battery far quicker than the old one (!).
The great thing for me was that I found I was reading more, grabbing moments of reading when I wouldn’t have read before. Some of this was due to capitalising on unplanned for moments of waiting, a short journey on the tube becoming a delayed long one or a cancelled meeting. Suddenly I had a source for reading that I wouldn’t have before.
I also found some differences in the way I read that I enjoyed. On the Palm it is a scrolling navigation, either line-by-line or by screen-fulls. The text is no longer punctuated by page turns. I found I was continuing to read longer than I might have normally without this measure of how much progress I was making through a physical book.
A similar discovery, and one that I imagine may not apply to new ebook readers, was that there was no indication of how far I was through the book. Unlike a conventional book where the thickness of pages on the right are an obvious and unavoidable indication that the end of the book is approaching fast, the digital version did not. There were a number of occasions when I was shocked to turn the last page and find it was the end. That was great. A whole new reading experience and made me realise that writing a book that went to ebook had a new potential that was more subtle than just the obvious non-linear, hyperlinks and annotated ones. The first book I read on the Palm was Moby Dick (on the theory that if I can read that on the Palm I can read anything) and the experience was made more enjoyable by this factor, no question. When I did an update on the ebook reader and a discovered a little graphic that measured progresss through the book I turned it off immediately.
I don’t need bookshelves full of books. There are paper-and-spine books that I would never be separated from and will want with me as long as I live. But there are many other books that I am happy to read and have hanging around virtually rather physically.
When I do get an ebook reader it will be for work as much as recreation. I download lots of research material and a reader would be a much better reading medium than the computer screen. So I need one that can easily accept notes and those ones are just a bit too expensive at the moment.
I look forward to carrying a few thousands books, PDFs and essays around in my pocket.