JOHNSTOWN FLOOD MATERIALS (for an upcoming talk; these were the basis of several presentations, re-edited now) Review of my Johnstown Presentation October 4 at 12:38pm Johnstown Flood (1889), the Avondale Mine fire ... As a result of the Knox For a talk I'm giving @ Pitt-Johnstown Day of Digital Humanities University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania Enderthebridge Johnstown Thanks to: The Inclined Plane! Johnstown, Pa. Johnstown and a new otherwise piece called For Johnstown and thanks to Jeremy C. Justus flutework at floodwall http://www.alansondheim.org/flutework.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/flutework.mp4 freight train, stone bridge, flute, floodwall piece shot at the base of the floodwall piece more information and floodwall forthcoming "The Stone Bridge, located on the edge of Johnstowns downtown, is an arched bridge built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1887. On May 31, 1889, its seven arches blocked tons of debris, including miles of barbed wire twisted through it from the destruction of a plant; all were carried by the waters of the Johnstown Flood, but the bridge withstood its force. An enormous fire broke out in the debris at the bridge, killing scores of people trapped within it, and burning for three days." the floodwall project is located at the bridge floodwall http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3165.jpg (floodwall still) http://www.alansondheim.org/floodwall.mp4 (floodwall video) http://www.alansondheim.org/floodwallsp.mp4 (floodwall video x10 speed) Description of the piece; Background; Commentary - The light display; Culled debris text -- Description of the piece: The light display uses 'modern' Morse to code three tiers of distress calls: SOS, QRRR, and MAYDAY. These flash slowly, at a close to unreadable pace, playing off of timing and memory among the tiers. Morse is already close to obsolete, and I don't think anyone is using QRRR (part of the Q-code repertoire) today. After the calls, there is a slow light 'wash' over the bridge, as if flames were rising (this was suggested by Shelley Johansson); this represents the between 30 and 60 acres of debris that slammed and burned against the structure on that fateful day in May. (Estimates vary as to the number burned alive, but a rough figure of 80 is likely. See David McCullough, The Johnstown Flood, Simon and Schuster, 1968.) Then the cycle repeats. There are black intervals between segments and code events. There are trains running across the bridge. The display is on one side only, the side that retained the debris (the other side is in darkness). Background: "The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River 14 miles (23 km) upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam broke after several days of extremely heavy rainfall, unleashing 20 million tons of water (18 million cubic meters) from the reservoir known as Lake Conemaugh. With a volumetric flow rate that temporarily equaled that of the Mississippi River,[2] the flood killed 2,209 people[3] and caused US$17 million of damage (about $450 million in 2015 dollars)." (Wikipedia) I was given the opportunity to create a light-show program for the Stone Bridge: "The Stone Bridge spans the Conemaugh River in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The bridge is a seven-arch stone railroad bridge located on the Norfolk Southern Railway mainline, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1887-88. Its upstream face was reinforced with concrete in 1929.[1] This bridge survived the Johnstown Flood of 1889, but the bridge blocked debris, which subsequently caught fire and created an inferno covering 30 acres (120,000 m2). The bridge is visible from Point Park in downtown Johnstown." (ibid.) And: "A bridge restoration project was developed by community leaders, to include cleaning and physical and aesthetic improvements, resurfacing of the south side, and new lighting with energy-efficient LED lighting adjustable to different colors and intensities. Estimated to cost $1.2 million, the project was initiated in 2008 as part of flood commemorative activities." (ibid.) Michael Brosig, co-chair of the Stone Bridge Committee, said, "The significance of the Stone Bridge is that it stood its ground against the flood waters and altered the future of Johnstown completely and forever. It created the backdrop for the event that put Johnstown on the map. Restoring the South facade of that structure and casting LED lighting on it will certainly showcase the triumph of the human spirit in a spectacular style for all to see, enjoy and be proud of their heritage. Based on its strategic location, it is the lynchpin of the historic district of our city." (ibid.) Commentary - The light display: The light display parallels miscommunication, warnings too late, muck, murk, the bridge as signifier and vector, the intensity of the mess at the base of the structure (which increasingly rose into the air), the indescribable chaos, the negligence, the violence of the water, the fury of the storm and conflagration, animals and people caught unawares, the subsequent pawning off of responsibility by the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the mudflats, the dynamiting of the debris pile, the spread of typhoid, the screams of those burning alive in the pile, Clara Barton and the Red Cross, the accounting of The Reverend David J. Beale, the tree through the house, the leveling of Woodvale, the yellow press, the eyewitness accounts, the emendations, the mythos, the symbols, the descent into print, the ascent into action, the muscle, the care; the light display parallels all and none of this, the entanglements of an event occurring over a century and a quarter ago - Coded by Shelley Johansson, with documentation by Jeremy Justus, Marissa Landrigan Justus, Azure Carter, and myself Thanks to Shelley Johannson, Jeremy Justus, Marissa Landrigan Justus, and Azure Carter Culled debris text: detritus_excretions_sloughings_tears_floods_spews_mercuries_ _flooding_what_does_it_mean,_this_grey_ body...:wonder flood-flog flooded. again. personal_ws english gertrud in the sandgranularity of phallocentrism you say, "& soon those memories flooding, that inert event, signs, costs, water overruns, cracks cracks. floods, tree, 'out side,' broken, who wouldn't. fires with which other remains or a lapse into (floods, hurricanes, tornados, droughts, etc.) night all lips engorged leg-hinges flooded dark waves people died susquehanna's held back by dikes floods anyway coffins they floated down river/ our house as fog, ... fog calls forth avatar, hungered, making things. /*...acters*/ /*may*/ /*be displayed*/ /*incorrec*/ /*you*/ /*flood*/ /*apocalypse.*/ /*me...'t*/ /*bother*/ /*a.*/ my window /s can't stop flood, flow sorry for looking blood toor ted a instead metaphor, literal prior, came, still has it's gone through two one together; from hurricane agnes devasted parents' home 1972, collections, now swallowed basement large susquehanna rose 42.66 feet, stage, upper supplemental held. $thing cal @sways @de "waste" @s transforms have fly _nikuko internally coherent. an emission is sourceless, net flood; spew towns where inhalation-exhalation perfection begins and ends, out. thinking skin. holding absorbed debris, war-battered enclave. gaza floods: un declares state chicken hawk put up tail" tail four strips, then there write about him such good style! style ground am am! does! wet straight very happy angry jove hurls h groan'd benea fire, when s he ah, zarathustra, words, what "they"? "are"? tears) (and world tears). goal: to disappear inside truth said it before, flooded, drowning, i was attacked photographing evidence, devastated exiting, i've written about; external literally flood. kristeva, draw peta, save manatee, environmental organizations. valley; despair irony, nikuko-oozing, noh medieval theater; pretend alan_s this secret. not even valleys great storms would make once; storm becomes slow emission, widening interior, teeth. are injured reality things!!!" prospect park paths driveways overflowing split flood-flooding wiped v roots school, debris, disease. bcc called _book_ it. seagulls come clutter a-historicity etc.), neutrality. spillways occupy fields, discursive marrow tomorrow! standby:the grit gorges, control, formal fire, debris, oozed around marks, _things_ at, food its awake we'll mirror, thin, nails back. long, parallel, slew names everywhere mudra-shifting, shaped, visible. space pulses, plain. we inhabit it, haunt dwell there. words eaten giving gagged iridescent wings. wet-world runtime beetles flesh. rides, rides wet, high. nimbus shallow voices, probes. t participation, bodies _flood_ calling glacial sea-change terminal, loading transparency, providence flooded; lost terminal. horizon; sheet closes world; abject symbols. piepel? thrusting offer-proffer you, circum-stantiation, circumlocution abyss: defuge/flooding, gathering accumulations, momentarily within them stuttering <everything acid>flooding impossibility where</everything acid>in across semantic plateaus participants' time well, "all adjacent mines uncanny afterimage affect flows floods. strip after days heavy rains air, radio pulsing bodies, her voice termites, air-conditioner, ripped-up flooring, ceiling... first. said. alive. look chatrooms, shooting. threw question encoding, decoding; contradicted presence language another almost got caught flash death valley. myself already verge. pool; tragedy flaw usually fuge upgrade among numbers numbers, fissures, abjection identities liquid midnight, sound wood stork scabs bites; cuts; nail parings subjectivity, consciousness communication. travis loop chunnel dangers flooding. observed act more liquids; skeins flood-plains > < woe desiccation starvation; rivers stories over century. world's record-setting droughts enormous tornado information floodwall forthcoming mississippi generally leads me @abort before get room, ordinarily separates interior flotsam jetsam, debris sea selves: who's speaking, manic tongue many times water shooting-space :: violent milking millions killed. living bad areas against meadow moraine! civilization thine arms legs, else {sleep(1); print "\nfirst flooding\n";:if ($sign=fork) {print ourselves another** negation shadowing eyes, ** news, antenna just "in case" names, stuff; sound; apparent flood-reader simultneous texts, results the lid of the grey sky, appearing sky, viscous fluid, coating, flow, flux, flight, empty gone, gone wandering among the dead [ placeholder, Jeremy Justus photograph ] [ unknown stones of the grand view ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/among.jpg ] from there i was born [ placeholder, bridge and city view from incline ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3109.jpg ] i won't die this way [ placeholder, gravestone ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3079.jpg ] no teeth for me [ placeholder gravestone ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3041.jpg ] i'm already there [ placeholder, bridge and city view from incline ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3096.jpg ] "out of so much promise, and so quickly, this man has not laid by even a grave stone wherewith to quieten his soul. "just look out, you, who take your life and limb for granted." [ placeholder ] [ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip2930.jpg ] +++ Talk at Brown, state of the world (reworked for UPJ) The steering: 1. Broken, petrified, grand narratives: modernism is always with us as the phenomenology of coherence. 2. Broken texts, the world of the future anterior: Broken World: Steerage and Steering Mechanisms We are steerage. We do not arrive. */Properly, the space in the after part of a vessel, under the cabin, but used generally to indicate any part of a vessel having the poorest accommodations and occupied by passengers paying the lowest rate of fare. [1913 Webster]/* The ship is steered. The ship wanders. The world's broken. Don't misunderstand: nothing will save us; there is no land or: the land is damaged, or: the land is exhausted: blank, the land is blank: anguish. Anguish on our part. We're the ship. Our world. Or: We're all marooned. It is no longer a question of hope, of the human project, of plans or structures, of capital or capitalism, of late capitalism, of neo-liberalism, of inerrancy or the absolute. It is no longer a question of ideologies, of common language, of the commons: it's over. It's steered, and it's steered over, the steering's over. The mechanisms at work are simple and fundamental. They are abject; they grind the rest, whatever was tottering through modernism - they grind the rest down. The world's a world of dust and radiations. The world does not crack. Our project's broken. Some of them: The first intractable mechanism: Overpopulation. The planet is close to its carrying capacity, and there's no end to population increase. The demographics are skewed towards young reproducers; exponential growth lumbers on. The result is more mouths to feed, more strains on the environment, more slash and burn, more hillside slums, more bush-meat, more overcrowding, less jobs, more local war. The second intractable mechanism: Environmental degradation which has reached the point of no return. Consider the plasticization of the oceans, the post-tipping point of animal and plant extinctions, the increasing desertification world-wide, the loss of biological diversity. The anthropocene is not the usual planetary rise and fall; it's the greatest, the fastest, the most violent, extinction. The world is already destroyed; Gaia or its equivalent, is over. Something will remain, future adaptive radiations, but it won't be us: every species will be invasive, and the world, for the foreseeable future, will swarm. The third intractable mechanism: Global warming which is also global redistribution of currents and weather flow. This is also irreversible, past the tipping-point. The results are harrowing: record-setting droughts and floods, enormous hurricanes, tornado swarms, irreversible sea-level rises, and so forth. This is the classical catastrophe (Rene Thom): the fragility of the good descends to chaotic phenomena, and practical measures, theory, containment, is always after the fact. The fourth intractable mechanism: Increased violence and local/ global warfare: again, with limited resources, this will only grow worse. Territories split and compete; the lines are religious, ethnic, geographic, historic etc.; brutality increases as humans turn more and more to the rigidity of absolute/inerrant ideologies, and fortified binary oppositions - classical logics - gain strength as ideological instrumentality. This turn to the right, where the free press, women's rights, science and self-critique etc., are all viewed with suspicion; the left (if these binaries still exist at all) is an endangered species. The fifth intractable mechanism: The vast sea of weaponry and the nuclear arsenal available to all; it is only a matter of time before a dirty bomb or nuclear device is detonated, the equivalent of over-fishing, trawling, the sea bottom. Scorched earth returns to scorched earth; there are no longer resources for rebuilding as poverty and social chaos increase in the world. History, archaeological sites, villages, nations, records, are erased; history is no longer visible, readable; reading itself becomes suspect. The sixth intractable mechanism: Enclaving of the rich and income disparity exponentially increasing; the result is hoarding of resources and increased poverty as noted. This enclaving extends, crudely, to nations; the U.S. for example uses far more resources per capital than almost any other country; the U.S. prison system is itself a flux of pure capital, privatization, the largest in the world. Prisons are less efficient than pure disappearance; even so, population growth more than makes up for the violent loss of life around the planet. Think as well of local militias, including police forces that, first and foremost, look after their own, by any means possible. The seventh intractable mechanism: Antibiotics and spread of disease across varying species; as sludge and clutter increase world-wide, the opportunity for endemic disease increases. Disease vectors are driven by population vectors, by poor health practices, by hunger and poverty. Understand that overpopulation is behind all of this, a developing horizon, just like hacking and criminal gangs are a developing horizon of violence and seizure. There's no more living off the grid; off the grid is on the grid, within mechanisms and horizons. We're all in the ship, we're all marooned. The eighth intractable mechanism: Global communication networks granting power and encrypted communication among activist groups, including local militias and extremists. populations. These networks are temporary, because the Net and its cousins are subject to hacking on a inconceivable scale; security simply can't keep up without infringing on the rights of others - without replacing one ideology by another, far harsher. The Net and privacy are porous, and subject to the seven mechanisms above. With so much data and control in the cloud/s, with so much control and personal information in the hands of monopolistic corporations, gangs and governments, there's no doubt that we're seeing the tip of a cyberwar iceberg that will do violent damage far beyond the Sony fiasco - damage that will extend to (for example) power, health, military, and financial grids as well. We must begin to think of these mechanisms as both interlocked and environmental - i.e. constituents of a global and catastrophic horizon: much as the Club of Rome developed a model of interrelated flows in their relatively doomsday scenarios, we have to see this horizon as a holarchy of entangled mechanisms. The difference is that the mechanisms today are chaotic and unpredictable: there are events (primate extinctions, violent storms, the rise of violent fundamentalism, hacking of financial institutions, etc.) that are both destructive and fissured into any (ideological or instrumental) coherency that might have appeared as "explanatory" in the heady days of modernism which still inform us. What fascinates me is the global appearance of these mechanisms in the large: there's a kind of simplicity in their phenomenology that dissolves quickly upon closer inspection. But the simplicity isn't contradicted by the details; global warming, for example, doesn't reverse because the north-east United States is having record cold spells. The overall configuration of the world is based on strange attractors, which proceed, literally, in any case; we're steerage, not steering. (The technophilic ideology of progress, paradigm shifting, and cleverness does a disservice here, promising techno-utopias just around the corner - or already here - while in reality the beheadings and bush-meat continue to ravage.) (I think, at the least, of a curriculum focused on these mechanisms - but to what end? Past the tipping-point, things will continue to deteriorate until the anthropocene extinction does final damage. I can imagine the very rich escaping at some point, but to where, with what rockets, with what supplies? We are living in the ruin of a total institution called the global; we go down with the ship, in steerage. And steerage is now the corrosion of the dream of the West at the very least, as Plato's cave becomes the hold of a ship floundering on polluted waters.) +++ http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip3165.jpg (Floodwall still) */I'm putting up Floodwall again; someone was discussing bridges on Facebook and I ended up revisiting the piece. It seems prescient at this point; the SOS, MAYDAY, and QRRR now call out uselessly in Pennsylvania, a state that voted for the coming regime. Two days ago I wrote a piece about avoiding suicide, about death underlying whatever we consider our work to be at this point. I feel bankrupt. Today news came from Arizona about a home-made menorah transformed by vandals in the middle of the night into a swastika, as well as a release of letters between Heidegger and his brother revealing deep anti-semitism and vituperation against the Jews. The news is nowhere good. Floodwall isn't a wall, but an opening; its coded light reached maybe a kilometer up, no more. Everything crushes everything. The axis is turning towards Putin/regime, the EU bypassed, already weakened by Brexit. The bridgelight dissipates, spends itself into the void like the rest of us. I fear 2017 presages a networked 1939; is there anything we can do in the face of this, short of suicide or murder?/* (first version) onslaught?/* (second version) http://www.alansondheim.org/floodwall.mp4 (floodwall video) http://www.alansondheim.org/floodwallsp.mp4 (floodwall video x10 speed) */Additional commentary: The flood was the result of a dam failure; the dam and reservoir behind it were owned by a club of very very rich men who paid no attention to the environment, and recklessly lowered the dam (without repairing it) in order to build a carriage road across. It was a catastrophe waiting to happen. The men got off of course; the devastation was horrible. The enclaving that was in place, the collusion with power, is repeated today. There was no recompense, no recourse, no due process. The very very rich men moved on. Carnegie was one of them. He built libraries./* Michael Brosig, co-chair of the Stone Bridge Committee, said, "The significance of the Stone Bridge is that it stood its ground against the flood waters and altered the future of Johnstown completely and forever. It created the backdrop for the event that put Johnstown on the map. Restoring the South facade of that structure and casting LED lighting on it will certainly showcase the triumph of the human spirit in a spectacular style for all to see, enjoy and be proud of their heritage. Based on its strategic location, it is the lynchpin of the historic district of our city." (ibid.) Coded by Shelley Johansson, with documentation by Jeremy Justus, Marissa Landrigan Justus, Azure Carter, and myself. Again Thanks to Shelley Johannson, Jeremy Justus, Marissa Landrigan Justus, and Azure Carter. ========================================================== Hey Alan, I wanted to update you that today I finally got your work on the My Idea of Fun website! http://www.myideaoffun.org/alansondheim/ ... Thanks again! Brandon Wordflood Johnstown and The Flood 2825 Pennsylvania, on the way on local roads to Johnstown 2844 entering Johnstown 2855 first sight of Stone Bridge, Penna. RR, Johnstown 2856 Johnstown 2865 Moxham, Johnstown, their home 2872 MAYDAY is spelled 'LAYDAY' by mistake! evening, Johnstown, 2911 dam from overlook on Johnstown Incline Plane 3025 hill above Johnstown 3086 On the Green above Johnstown near sunset 3087 looking down from the hill at Johnstown 3256 model of Johnstown from the Flood Museum 3268 Hospital Cafeteria, downtown Johnstown, where we ate twice 3280 going back, hilly road in Johnstown 3285 downtown Johnstown 3357 downtown Johnstown, from Sheetz? 3358 leaving Johnstown, local roads 3464 You Are Here image from Johnstown Memorial http://www.alansondheim.org/flutework.jpg +++ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
