Groyne 76 – The Broken Ferrule
Fascinated by change this video explores using two temporal distortions. Compressing time I present one post over six years with seven images. Then slowing time I concurrently present the same post dealing with the waves of a bi-diurnal and lateral tidal flow.
I first photographed the post tops of Groyne 76 in 2002, this means that I have eighteen years worth of images tracking their change from which to sample. I spent some time on the beach until I selected a single post top to video in slow motion, using a sports camera. In this way, I can produce a close-up, intense series showing the waves splashing through the post top, past the damaged ferrule. Both the camera and I got wet.
In my
Much of our coastline exists in its current form as a result of our intervention. Groynes are an example of this as they stand in the rigours of the splash and inter-tidal zones. The more I look, the more I see, and the more I want to know. Exploring and recording both for its own sake, and seeking metaphors to consider our relationship with the planet; with our beautiful, fragile, life-support system.
Groyne 14 from 2017 to 2018
It was a joy to find that I had a complete groyne set for 2017 and 2018 for Groyne 14. This does not happen very often due to varying tide and weather conditions that move the shingle and so can obscure some post tops. I created this animation to show visually how quickly change can happen.
The video presents a linear sequence of change. The condition of the post tops changes as you move from the splash zone deep into the inter-tidal zone. From lichens to barnacles, from salt-water splash through the grinding power of shingle-laden tidal flow, to the lengthy inundation by the sea of the end-posts.
Change from one year to another is often subtle but not always, step changes happen and sometimes they come in clusters. While the intervention project effectively started in 2002, the first full set of this groyne was taken in 2017, this year (2018) taking a second set, I found seven of the metal ferrules missing. That’s a lot to lose in one year.
Pebble Trap
This was a diversion, a distraction, from just photographing the post tops to looking at the details in the images that I often cut away. I am constantly removing – cutting out – pebbles from my finished photographs to show the edge of the post top. However, pebbles become trapped between paired post tops and sometimes become bonded with the metal ferrules. This ceases being a step change from metal to pebble but is a gradual transition as corroding metal spreads and invades the trapped pebbles.
The `Pebble Trap’ is made by aligning the metal ferrules of the paired groynes and overlapping them. I then softened and adjusted the mask between the edges to produce a flow to the video animation and create a continuous track. Again I used Adobe After Effects and Adobe Preview Pro.
Finished work from my Intervention project was exhibited at Waveworn – Fifteen Years in the Inter-tidal Zone
