A Multidimensional Factbook from Shetland and North Uist John Hartley November 2010 Background This work is commissioned by Shetland Arts, in partnership with Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist and The Swan Trust, as research and development exploring the feasibility of an artist in residence on board The Swan, a herring drifter built in 1900. The residency is being considered for the duration of the Tall Ships Race 2011. The resultant publication, by artist researcher John Hartley, considers the creative potential of such a residency by addressing the interdependent social, environmental and personal realms that animate the seas through which the Swan will travel and the shores from which she will take her crew and history. It is hoped that this publication holds some interest in its own right, as it has been approached as a creative work, and that it will support those developing the residency further. Finally, it is hoped that this publication might also engage those with other interests in Shetland and North Uist by offering some taste of the currents and echoes that reverberate through this nautical territory. Contents Background Discussion Inversion Waves of Change Carrier Waves Cycles The Need to Connect Additional Data and Hypothetical Projects Acknowledgements 3 Take a Good Look: Coastal Residence in North Uist 4 Inversion Edge to Centre Shetland and North Uist are very different islands, but both are often perceived as occupying marginal space. Shetland is home to the most northerly settlement in the UK (Skaw) and the most northerly land (Out Stack). Are these places at the very tip? Likewise North Uist is seen by many as a retreat from the heart of the modern world. What are the significance and validity of such perceptions, and are there better ways of seeing such locations? Both have strong maritime links to locations around the Atlantic basin; from Scandinavia and Mainland UK to Iceland, Canada and the USA. Rather than being at the edge of a land-centric mindset, they might better be seen as central to a North Atlantic mindset. This is not to say they are mainstream though. Conditions can be very different from life in the middle of a landmass. Although fifty feet above the sea, the Muckle Flugga lighthouse men often found fish on the roof after strong storms. 5 Inversion Negative to Positive How can we hear the life of the sea? How might we learn to read the waves as clearly as bus drivers do road markings? Not by counting the coast as the end of land, but rather as the start of sea; inverting subject and background of land maps. Who or what else shares such a Different locations support perspective? different stocks and require different fishing 'gear'. Coastal The Arctic Tern above the species prefer different types waves, commuting annually of sea bed. Open ocean or between North and South Poles? 'pelagic' species live, in turn, in different zones with Fishing fleets on the surface different ecologies. The that hunt wild stocks of fish 'epipelagic' (or sunlit) zone below? descending to 650ft supports most life in the oceans, with plankton the base of the food Land=1, Water=0 becomes Land = 0, Water = 1 6 chain. As you descend up to a deep, then the Nolso-Flugga kilometre to the mesopelagic communications line traversing (twilight) zone, life becomes the kilometre deep waters more marginal. More distant and between Shetland and Faroe deeper waters also have shelves would tell a rare story. bathypelagic (midnight) and This trench plays a key role in abyssopelagic (lower midnight) North Atlantic water flow, with zones and occasionally, the 5 currents of differing salinity almost unknown hadopelagic from Arctic, Norwegian and zone, named after the Atlantic sources sliding past underworld. each other in the high pressure If we could 'listen to the lives' sub-zero dakness. of the cables we send to the Waves of change From Subsistence to Industry to Information We are moving away from a time of centralist command and control to a distributed way of life. This can be see in many spheres, from the production and consumption of culture to manufacturing, employment practices and the wider economy. Alvin and Heidi Toffler have, among others, described these changes (for example in their books Future Shock, The Third Wave, Powershift). They talk of three successive waves in history. War and Anti-War Toffler, Alvin and Heidi (1993) Warner Books Future Shock Toffler, Alvin (1970) Bantam Books 7 Subsistence monoculture can prove First Wave economies are detrimental to globally dependent upon agriculture and recognised areas of high other small scale subsistence biodiversity such as the rare production. This can be recognised costal regions where shell in historic fishing practices and fragment and peat mix to crofting. The Swan had its heyday provide fertile terrain known as in what the Tofflers would call First machair. 70% of the world's Wave conditions. machair is in the Uists and Harris. Industry Culturally, the Tofflers observe Second Wave economies are that second wave economies expressed a large amount of industrial in nature, out- interest in the manufacture of competing first wave cultures national, rather than regional or through 'economies of scale', local, identity. machine-derived savings on The industrial age was the time employment costs and optimised duing which the Victorians processes that allow little developed ideas of Scottish deviation from short-term, high- nationhood, the British Empire profit strategies. These changes and other nationally-framed have affected fishing and ideas that still underpin many crofting, pushing people habits of perception. towards conglomeration and large scale holdings in both. Information This industrial approach allows According to the Tofflers, Third less flexibility. Investment in Wave economies are driven by quotas and licences pressurises the production of information. fishermen to specialise and Elsewhere, Manuel Castells has invest heavily in a single niche. expanded further on the idea of the 'Network Society' Previously they might move which invests in and derives between stocks as they sensed value from from intellectual they were becoming depleted. capital. Connectivity and Equally, agriculture is 'locked in' distributed production and to narrower modes of production. consumption are part and Margins are minimal and parcel of information The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells (1996) Wiley 8 economies. Artists have become interested in collective production, exploring issues of Intellectual Property and authorship in digital and 'socially engaged' practice. They have explored multiple identities and shifting boundaries that skirt over nations through shifting, temporary or subversive ways of w o r k i n g Abroad in successive waves of boom and The significance of what bust, how do the skills, sensibilities and have been renamed the memories embodied in local crafts and 'Cultural Industries' traditions support resilience for future changes in an uncertain times? information economy too. Due to their role as primary producers and interpreters of 'information' of many sorts, cultural production can be argued to occupy a more significant role than in industrial economies (which sometimes grouped 'culture' alongside 'leisure' as time away from making things that count). 9 Although perhaps not at the Taigh Chearsabhagh is a hub of leading edge of information production for the Western technology in the same way as Isles, driving cultural silicon valley, the locations investigation, connecting and considered here are nonetheless exchanging skills and providing sites of significant regional a range of information services. connectivity and sites of Shetland's cultural activity is significance for cultural central to the perception of a well- information of many sorts. resourced and forward thinking While key locations in community with a global diaspora industrial, Second Wave, economies are overwhelmingly stretching to New Zealand. urban, that is not necessarily What is the potential for locations the case in Third Wave such as North Uist and Shetland economies. within such changing times? Can the arts help us reconsider the connections between man and land ? 10 Connectivity in time How easily can information societies coexist with information that pertains to first and second wave economies? Information economies are dependent upon ideas, narratives and data and an information dependent future must still contain the echoes Some indigenous cultures believe and ripples of previous ways of we travel through time backwards. seeing and doing; both This explains why we don't know physically and culturally. what's coming yet can see our own Perhaps particular aproaches to wake clearly. How can we better understand the connectivity between the contemporary and the historic? 11 cultural information increase our connections and possibilities and, as such can be seen as a form of resilience. Greylag goose scaring on crofts is now informed by scientific data on population numbers, and insight into how crofting practices impact upon rare corn bunting populations. But it benefits equally from non-scientific information such as a traditional 'feel' for how the goose behaves; connectivity through information that is technical as well as cultural. The Swan The Swan, a Victorian herring drifter, is a pre- industrial economic artefact displaced by steam and steel. Fore Halliard Tackle, Peak Halliard, Throat Halliard, Fore Sheet, Aft Spring, Boom Guy, Jib Sheet, Mizzen Halliard, Stern Rope She carries information. 12 During the Tall Ships Race 2011, she will sail between leading countries in the information age carrying a crew brought up on, and carrying global, mobile telecommunications. She will be moving through waters changing in temperature, salinity, fish stock and pollutants due to globalised trade and pressures. She is a living embodiment of the connectivity between these three 'waves'. The Swan is rubbed raw gagged strangled pinched and corroded grazed and split by the forces that drive her Can we think more creatively about connectivity between species, connectivity between eras.