Walking City

I have put together two versions of the same video. The first uses a classic Johnny Cash song I walk the line, the second uses a soundtrack of World War II bombing and gun fire. The videos bring together a number of elements, video of water; stills photography of the London Wall; and an item at the heart of this project; a compilation of Strava app maps which were generated each time I went running or walking along the route of the wall.
In addition to this, I have included some videos which were made using the same stop motion technique but making use of traditionally-made silk screen prints, in each case using a single photograph rendered in a variety of ways.

The challenge is to choose an approach to the physical printmaking that is appropriate to this project. Here are three examples using material generated last year.

This image of Centrepoint remains unchanged apart from the colours.

In this one, the image of Great Arthur House is not only printed in a number of colours but there are a range of overlays and different ways in which the image is positioned on the page.

This mixes versions of the same image with overlays of different sizes and densities, words and some video.

I have been using display.land. This has been interesting to learn and my experiments to date have led to some weird objects. There is a particular issue with working out the right light levels and types of surface required to make this work. It is also interesting to see how to create a simple, complete image.

Here are four examples:
1. Room: interior
2. Living room: interior
3. Great Arthur House: external of building
4. Wall: external view of stone

This development of the previous video makes use of 3D graphic app display.land which offers the potential of a 360 degree view of a site. In this case, the focus is on a single block of stone moving across the landscape. The soundtrack has been created using audacity.

The project this week has turned to stop motion, a form of animation that relies on still images to create a story. I have experimented with four short pieces, each designed to experiment with a different approach.

Centrepoint is a based on a single photographic image of the Centrepoint building in Central London. The images were printed using four colour separation with a variation in the mixture of ink colours to create a range of finished prints. These were incorporated into a stop motion animation with an added caption looking at the history of the building.

Great Arthur House is a the centre of Golden Lane Estate where I live. I have a view of this fifteen-floor tower block from my window. I made two dozen prints again using a single photographic image with a range of colour variations. In this case, I made some images that broke through the frame of the image and others in which there was a stencil overlay. This stop motion animation makes no political points but is designed to experiment with slightly out of register images overlaid over each other.

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Looking for the wall reminds me of a similar attempt to find the Berlin Wall twenty years after much of it had been removed. I have spent the past two days walking from the Museum of London down by St Paul’s Temple Bar and Ludgate Circus as the landscape slopes towards the river at Blackriars. I now have an excellent book Walking London Wall by Ed Harris, to guide me. This map brings together most of the buildings that feature on the route and offer my first attempt to work out the exact route.

The map can be viewed with place names here.

This is the parish church of Saint Andrew by the Wardrobe. It is opposite the point where the Roman Wall met the River Thames and effectively the place where the wall starts. My job is to find out where the wall went. This is not that simple as much was buried or built over in the C17th and C18th. The exact point is at a place called Puddle Dock which is home to a very dull office block and the once delightful Mermaid Theatre which is no longer in business.

The route north from the church goes up in the direction of Ludgate Hill. Near the top of the hill is the first sign of the wall. This was discovered in a private cul-de-sac called Amen Court, home to St Paul’s Cathedral staff. This is hidden behind Amen Corner which is a rather fine 1960s apartment block.

Walking in the direction of St Paul’s Cathedral leads to the discovery of the only entrance to the London Wall still in existence. This is Temple Bar, formerly located at the entrance to Fleet Street and now a gateway to Paternoster Square (and the London Stock Exchange).