Concept:

‘These are the towns of light, built from remembered brick, conjectured beam, that stand in Hilbert space, a plane of concept and idea where thought is form. Where the recalled smell of fresh paint upon forgotten stairs is an event in place and time.’

(Alan Moore, The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, 1996)

‘Sur la pavé, la plage’

(anonymous 1968)

I often like to mentally play around within this particular maxim, appropriated by the Situationists after its appearance on the walls of Paris in 1968.

In the spaces between things, inspiration and direction may be found. The mundane and overlooked can be utilised as a vehicle for divination, discovery and perspectival shifts.

By investigating the cracks in the pavement, an unknown and unplanned factor, formed through physical stress, structural or geological inconstenices or weather based erosion, and using this study in a psychocartographic manner, maps of new non-space can be realised, maps of potential and light, inhabited by spectres of our imagination.

Execution:

A series of images were taken of cracked paving slabs and then printed, arranged and rearranged into a collaged layout allowing for the natural continuation of lines and pathways.

Once the selection had been shaped, the images were arranged digitally and a vector map was constructed. Thickness of lines were used to denote main roads and one line logically stood out as a waterway. The map, while devoid of detailed information, suggests the topography of a town or cityscape, the routes can be mentally traversed.

Following the in-depth investigation into non-space that I had undertaken into the Island of Chronacair as part of A Return, I made the conscious decision to leave it as a blank canvas for the viewer to impose their own speculation and detail onto rather than prescribing the information.

This new map, made out of the cracks in the pavement, is then projected onto found material in the form of broken concrete paving slabs creating a discourse of cause and effect, the map of non-space being realised in light, a non-corporeal manifestation of thought back into the medium which brought it into being in the first instance.

More images can be viewed here.