England Plus Paris: Part 13

Nobody's driving!

Back when I was in college, back when usenet was arguably useful, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the Docklands Light Railway was working its bugs out. The DLR was an automatic train. Normally, it didn't have a driver. I'd read through a lot of debate on comp.risks about which was safer: a computer-controlled train or a human-controlled one. Now I finally had a chance to see it.

This guy manually controlled the train for a little bit. But mostly he just checked tickets.

Fast Ship Going Nowhere

There wasn't much to see aboard the Cutty Sark. It was a sailing ship like many others. From its displays I learned that people had wanted their tea carried in wooden ships, thinking that an iron ship would affect the taste. I read about the history of the ship.

I'm no figurehead expert, but I wouldn't trust this one on my ship. Her eyes are closed. How can she sees where she goes?

There was a collection of figureheads down in the hold. I don't especially like figureheads. I didn't spend much time in the hold.

This weathervane is silly. Notice that the "clock face" below the weathervane, in fact, shows the weathervane's direction. I'm not sure why it does this. If you can see the "clock face", you can see the weathervane.

I visited the University of Greenwich because I mistakenly thought it was on the way to other things. (Perhaps it could have been, but many of its gates were locked.) There I saw their trompe l'oeil hall and their chapel and eventually found my way back out into the real world.

Now that you've seen this, you can skip the trompe l'oeil "Painted Hall". Trust me, it looks better here than it did in person.

The chapel was shiny, even the organ.

Oh Well

Pretty barge

Britain's is a long and proud maritime history, so it was surprising that their National Maritime Museum was so dull and uninformative. For example, There was a picture labelled, "Corn porters tying rags to their boots." Why did they do that? There's no explanation.

According to a sign, the museum's collection is huge, with over two million items. But there weren't very many items on display, and those were dull.

(Back home, I found the part of their web site that has photos and descriptions of items in their collection. Their collection really is quite extensive and wonderful. Don't bother with the physical museum, but do visit the website.)

Oh Well

There was a camera obscura, but it didn't work very well with the tourists. Tourists would walk into the room, leaving the curtain open, letting light in. The light wiped out the projected image, so they wouldn't see anything. So they'd continue to hold open the curtain as they made their way out. Then the next batch of clueless tourists would show up to let in more sunlight.

There were many clocks on display, including Harrison's clocks as made famous in Dava Sobel's Longitude. Those were interesting, just barely interesting enough to make me endure the crowds of tourists milling around in the room.

Summary: Skip Greenwich

Considering that Greenwich specializes in my interests, it was quite dull. I'm sorry I went. Skip Greenwich.

Exotic Foreign Foods

I wondered What keeps the cans of beans in their cardboard 4-pack holder? And on this day, I learned the answer: not much. As I picked up the holder, a can fell out and smashed a drinking glass in the kitchen. Cooking beans was more complicated than I realized.

These Are a Few

As I walked, I hummed, making up new lyrics to Tom Waits' song "Cold Water". As I traversed a pedestrian overpass through the morning air, I became amazed, and adjusted my words accordingly:

You Go Tate

The first thing to catch my eye at the Tate Modern was "The Soul of a Soulless City," a citiscape in beige brown by CRW Nevison. Which city? New York City. I thought, For this I came to London?

One of the few things in the Tate Modern that you're allowed to take a photo of.

There were some photos by Bernd and Hilla Becher. I'd seen their photos of water towers at LACMA, and had liked their style. Now I saw what they could do with covered conveyor belts, and it was wonderful. There were photos of nine coal bunkers, so I was able to compare and contrast them. This one had rail tracks underneath; this one had two slips for trucks. Most of the bunkers bulged out towards the top in a sort of rectilinear reinforced goblet look; one of them didn't bulge, was a sleek rectangle with an airy space for trains underneath, it looked like magic.

There was another set of Becher photos, showing "pitheads", the tops of mines. It wasn't as interesting as the coal bunkers, but by then I knew I had to find out more about the Bechers.

Rebecca Horn's "Concert for Anarchy" was a semi-exploded piano hanging from the ceiling. That seemed pretty cool. I walked under it to get a better look. Then I heard a creak. I backed out from underneath that piano pretty fast. But the piano wasn't breaking loose nor falling down. It was unexploding. Mechanical contrivances within were closing it up, retrieving its splayed keys. For a while it hung from the ceiling, an unexploded piano. And then it exploded again, opening up its top and letting its keys splay like lolling tongues.

The museum had a wonderful bookstore. There were many books by the Bechers, most from MIT Press. (I was surprised to learn that MIT Press made art books, but I shouldn't have been, of course.) I looked over their books to find out which ones covered subjects I was interested in, planning on ordering from MIT Press. But a good museum bookstore is a rare thing, and worth encouraging, so I bought one there.

A Wrong Museum

I'd been walking along the Thames, finding out that various ships weren't open to the public. The Somerset House had banners out in front, as if they were trying to attract tourists. I approached it and found out that that they indeed had some museums.

So I went to the Gilbert Collection. There were micro-mosaics. These were high-resolution mosaics. They were very impressive. There were bright lights shining on them. Perhaps micromosaics can handle bright lights better than paintings would? The presentation was great. But I just couldn't get excited about micromosaics.

A Wrong Museum

The National Gallery contains many exquisite paintings of Venice and worse. I stood there and jotted down notes about what I remembered from the Gilbert collection.

Most visitors to the National Gallery shambled around, not paying attention. In a room with perhaps 100 tourists, at most four of them seemed to be alert. Of these, one of them was looking at the painting I was in front of, trying to figure out what I was taking notes about.

Salvaging the Afternoon

My plan was to look for the Institute of Contemporary Art, get lost, get found, find the Institute, and not enjoy it.

But along the way, I went through Leicester Square, where there were movie theaters. One of them was showing the Royal Tenenbaums. Looking at the show times, I saw that I'd missed the start by 20 minutes. But then I remembered the last London movie I'd seen: there's been about 15 minutes of advertisements before they got around to showing movie previews, and even more time before they showed the movie itself. So I bought a ticket, and I was right on time for the show.

Departures: England Plus Paris: Part 13

We Are All Passengers

Fast Ship Going Nowhere

UG

Oh Well

Oh Well

Summary: Skip Greenwich

Exotic Foreign Foods

These Are a Few

You Go Tate

A Wrong Museum

A Wrong Museum

Salvaging the Afternoon