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Words by    
                Lydia                                              Porter

(<-)

Devices and methods of locating ourselves (our bodies) in places or spaces that extend our range or capacities to traverse or perceive a distance. Mostly, these devices are using the elements to enhance our senses and their abilities to perceive – wind, air, water, sonic, radars, hearing sound and seeing with light. Acoustic mirrors. These things have freer movement, greater range than we do. Scanning. Which we do now in the room in our efforts to communicate amongst a group. These things tell us about ourselves and how we acquire information, how we can send and receive signals. We use these devices in the process of finding and searching; 

Where can we go and return? How to be found, locatable to others? Signal Mirror. 

It is enhancing the powers that are readily available to us and therefore also empowering. Power seems to have a limit, but one that can be extended, and at times this stretches into the mythical, (Dowsing rods, hag stones, Men-an-Tol) magical and fantasy. (Avatar the Last Airbender)

We look up to the stars, the North Star in particular, to measure things we cannot see; magnetic fields that may enable us to traverse our own on the ground. Is the power we have to locate also a power over? A power over distance, space, and time, so we may have knowledge and control over ‘where’.

Power as a physical phenomenon. Power as autonomy. Control over where we are going and where we are staying. A timeless grappling with power, which is often denied to us.

How much of this compulsion to move, to be able to move, is driven by desire? Could this desire be a distant relative of need, and that need be driven by fear – the fear of being lost. There is a murky relationship between desire and need, and the former is often borne from the latter, though they may not retain a direct relation. For instance, biscuits are not often needed to survive but food and sustenance is. We can live without biscuits, but can we live without locating, relocating? Do we want to traverse great spaces and extend ourselves, or do we need to. There seems to be a question of survival rolling around beneath these seemingly innocuous devices. And if we are on the topic of signalling, isn’t fear one of our deepest most inherent abilities at alerting us to danger. The things that threaten our survival trigger this response. Are these devices a means to overcome distance or overcome fear? Sometimes our fear can drive us to abuse our locating, sometimes locating comes with the temptation to consume, to dominate, to have control over more than just ourselves. Knowing and being in places and spaces doesn’t prove sufficient for everyone to quell our fears of things we cannot immediately measure. Many of these devices are means of measuring, and some involve manipulation, though often in a seemingly harmless way. Trig points litter the highest ground in the UK, and from one you can supposedly see another, though not with the naked eye. There is no common use for these, but isn’t it nice to know you’ve reached a designated point. These places have been marked for something. Something special. We can find one point from another, daisy-chaining and improvised map. Sometimes we know our way by where from, rather than where to.

Locating can take place both internally and externally. Knowing a place is often a feeling.

But we bend light and sound to our will, and that is something we have depended on for a long time. There is something natural and instinctive about this. It’s how we inhabit – taking the elements available to us and utilising them. The Earth and the elements are both separate and a part of us. We exist with the world and not just in it. This is how we attune ourselves, how we become attuned.


We find our forces.