About the mysterious sand bags

I'm very interested in these sand bags. One of the guys in the studio is a retired rigger so I asked him did he know what they are used for.  He thought they might be used as ballasts (as weights on a boat, so that weight is distributed more evenly and it floats). Or to block leaks. He wasn't totally sure, he has a friend who works in the Dockyard so I'm going to go down there on Monday morning to see if I can find out more.

The Dockyard

This is my favourite thing from the Dockyard.

The Sensations of Diving (from The Wonders of the Submarine, T.W. Corbin published 1918)

Portsmouth and a Submarine back way when.

The woman I'm staying with, Gill, shared this photograph with me.  It's her grandfather's crew on their submarine docked in Portsmouth. 

Someone told me this.

Due to shipping channels and the varying depths close to shore, you would never see one submerge until they are 30 miles out, and only then if its V Boat.

So I never would have seen the submarine submerge in Southampton.

Coral Propagation

Today I visited the aquarium in Portsmouth.  I found an amazing coral propagation tank.  I filmed it for a very long time - I'm going to make a piece with the footage.  It's as if it was filled with tiny alive sculptures.  The only shots I messed up were the pans, I have to back with a better tripod.  There will be audio to accompany this piece but I won't reveal my plans yet.

HMS Tireless

Went to Southampton on Tuesday to see a nuclear submarine.  I was stopped from getting into the dockyard where it actually was, so I had to watch it from the civilian pier.  I wanted to get footage of it submerging but it went out of sight before it submerged.  First time ever seeing a submarine!

body, sea, world

I let out a breath, to make a bubble.  The bubble travels; it takes its space in the water and pushes its way to the surface.  This is how I see that happening, although it might not be accurate:

Underwatereality

I imagine its cold but I’m sure my body would consist differently and I wouldn’t feel cold.  Being under the water that is.  I suppose, supposing I’m a thing that is alive, I would be a little bit slippy, the surface of my skin I mean.  I would flow with the water easily.  And my weight would feel like less than it does now.  It would be darker.  Maybe, when another object moves that is in a close enough proximity to me I would feel it on my skin. The water would move toward me, in a tiny wave.  So then everything touches everything else, and is affected by everything else.  The objects within it, I suppose, affect even the sea level itself.  Their volume is displaced and the level rises.  I’m sure this amount of water might be tiny when it all averages out but it must hold true. 

Fortified city :)

I met a guy called Brian Bashford.

He is a local historical enthusiast.  He brought me on a walk along the harbour and told me a few facts about the area.

There are three lump forts just off the coast of Portsmouth.  They are military (or were) but were never really used for defense.  They were built in the 1800’s for defense against the French but the French never attacked.  There are a lot of them dotted along the south coast. 

Brian said, of the ones off the coast of Portsmouth, that one is a restaurant/venue, one is privately owned and the other is still military and apparently used by the MI5 (which I was delighted about). 

There is a tower on Gosport (this is a town just west of Portsmouth, it is a peninsula, you take the ferry there in about ten minutes or you drive the long way round, I think that takes about 45 minutes).  It is a diving tower operated by the navy.  Naval divers need to be able to emerge from the level of water in the tower before it is permissible for them to go down in a submarine.  This structure is interesting to me; there is so much water around yet this large tower has been constructed to contain a tall-standing tube of water.  Brian said that during World War II (it may have been I, I need to check) the Germans used this tower as a marker to navigate east to Portsmouth (where the naval dockyard was).  The British military built a cardboard replica of this tower at the furthest point of the peninsula to deter the enemy bombers.  I wonder if the replica was life-size, I assume it was, or almost at least.  And I wonder if it still exists.  I will try to find information on this! 

 Diving tower on Gosport

Tracy Hanna

Tracy Hanna arrived at Art Space Portsmouth on Monday from Dublin, and will be in residence for four weeks until the end of March 2012. She has already met many of the Art Space Portsmouth artists and has made a few studio visits. Tracy will be contributing to this blog as part of her residency. Welcome to Portsmouth Tracy!

You can see more of Tracy's work here:
www.tracy-hanna.com