BROCHS - GLOOMY, DIM, & SMOKY

After considering the broch as a black hole, see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/01/brochs-iron-age-black-holes.html, one ponders more about light, and its source. While contemplating the reality of the broch experience, one comes to understand how we are encouraged to not only think of broch interiors as brightly lit spaces, but also that this outcome was achieved by the obvious solution of a raging central fire, the primeval source of mystery and ceremony. While we know or can envisage sitting around a campfire in the bush with all of its allure, and can understand how a larger fire can indeed successfully light up an area to create a bright ambience, there are reasons to question this solution for a light source in a broch.

First of all, the material being consumed is most likely to be peat, which burns with a gentle, smoky flame that is no great source of illumination or heat; but it suffices mainly for the latter in the absence of more efficient fuels.

The second issue is that, with large fires giving off bright light, assuming this can be achieved - timber could be a valuable resource, not something to burn willy-nilly - one has to recall how the heat radiating from this source forces one to maintain a safe and comfortable distance. Anyone who has experienced an Up Helly Aa will know about this. Broch interiors are really not that expansive, making the clearance required from a raging, bright fire difficult to achieve, literally pushing one up against a wall. The interior timber structures inside the broch would also have to be kept well clear of any fire, causing one to question the idea that a substantial burning mass might have been a good light source for the black interiors. Fire could have been seen as a major concern in a broch envisaged as a place that was meant to keep stores safe for the community and to hold its most sacred of places and objects; fire must have been something to control and supervise very carefully.

The science of burning is yet another issue to consider. Everyone should know that open fires in poorly ventilated spaces are a problem, as the carbon monoxide combustion gases are deadly at higher concentrations. A large fire could be a serious problem, requiring oxygen to maintain its brilliance.

So one is left wondering about the situation that must have remained gloomy, dim, and smoky at best, with a small peat fire smouldering away 24/7 as it did in the black house. The fire would have given off some heat and a little light, but this would have been modest. The desire to consider a beautiful, bright burning mass prevailing over the broch’s darkness comes up against so many issues that one has to drop the idea and revert to thinking about a black hole with the soft glow of the flames of a peat fire and oil lamps lighting up and defining places as needed.

We have become used to a bright world. It is not that long ago that everyone relied on oil lamps and candles for light. The Tilley lamps offered a brighter solution that even the invention of electricity struggled to match; gas lighting was initially more effective. On visiting the sadly relocated Macintosh house interior at Glasgow University - one of the first of many terrible relocations that seem to rely on harsh, rational logic for their raison detre to ‘protect’ a subtlety that is more than tested# - one is astonished by its darkness. It has electric lighting, but the spaces are lit by only a very few carbon filament bulbs that, with their gentle, mellow glow, look more like Christmas display lights than a source of illumination to aid life and the conveniences it seeks: yet the place was apparently happily occupied and considered ‘avant-garde.’*

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Other relocated interiors are:

Francis Bacon’s studio interior, now in the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2013/01/bacons-sacrambled-studio-francis.html

Margaret Olley’s home interior, now in the Tweed Regional Gallery in Murwillumbah, Australia: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/01/quilty-harding-and-accents.html

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann office interior, now again on display refurbished, in the V&A in London: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-mere-shadow-of-quilt.html

All of these beautiful, interesting interiors suffer from the destruction of their context, with spectators being asked to view things as if nothing had happened - but do not enter! The acceptability of this awkward tension created by this transition to a display, a tableau, seems to be made reasonable with the logic that it is better to have relocated the things than to have lost them. One could argue that, if these places have to be kept, they should be in their original location; that it might have been better to have a photographic/video archive than to put things through this trauma and leave them as dead, dusty bits and pieces, lost, left to gawk at from an air conditioned comfort infused with the amazement of the mechanics of the outcome that has achieved this ‘real life’ museum/art gallery exhibit:

“Can you imagine shifting all of that?”

“How did they get it out?”

“How did they get it back together?”

“It’s amazing what can be achieved.”

Astonishment supersedes and shapes the experience that is meant to be otherwise, something of a homage. We are left with the pretence of a pastiche for popular remembrance.

*

The Macintosh interior can be entered and enjoyed, for a fee. It has been reassembled into a Brutalist 1970s concrete building, the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow University, a massive structure that mocks the considered, subtle delicacy of Mackintosh’s design. The exterior tries hard to suggest a Macintosh presence, but is crude and insensitive, with the front door left stranded some metres off the ground level. The jibe ‘Mockintosh’ comes to mind.

NOTE

15 Jan 25

A THOUGHT

While one attends to one aspect of the broch, it soon becomes clear that this is a complex subject, raising other questions that need attention. Why were brochs frequently built close to the sea and/or on prominent locations, or both? This has been interpreted as lookout opportunities, or locations for communication, but might it have been primarily to facilitate defence? High ground is easier to protect than open, flat country; and having one side of the broch protected naturally by the sea allows a better control over the remainder of the perimeter. So it is that one sees the Broch of Gurness in Orkney hugging a cliff; and Muness sitting close to the rocky island edge. Brochs, if one accepts that brochs were for stores and for spiritual uses, were places that needed to be carefully protected; they held the future viability of the whole community, its sustenance, both physical and spiritual. Choosing a site by the sea or on raised ground would make any attack more difficult; more specialised; itemised, as it were: easier to manage. That these locations might also be good lookout places seems to be an added bonus, an integral part of the sense in this choice of siting. Such locations near water would also allow construction items to be readily shipped in, and for ocean catches to be more easily carried in for processing (e.g. distribution/smoking/storage).

BUILDING WALLS

No one might know their age, or who built these dykes, but they are there, crisscrossing the island for kilometres. These dry stone walls on Unst, Shetland, are simply accepted as being there, as forming a part of the natural patterning of the landscape. It is not until one pauses and considers the process and effort involved in constructing these walls that one becomes astonished. This is not just a matter of stacking stones to a preferred height along an alignment.

The rocks must have been gathered up in the clearing of the fields, and thrown into piles ready to be placed. The technique might sound simple and straightforward, merely a matter of persistent work and time, but constructing these walls involved a true skill and thoughtful care.

Out of a pile of randomly gathered stones, the dry stone waller has made perfectly straight walls with a perfectly true face on each side, even taking the time to ‘finish off’ the work with a stone capping, all neatly arranged to become a true coping, as precise as any on a cathedral, but all made just from the collected rocks, and with the ‘extra’ effort to cap the wall off; to make a ‘proper job’ of it.

The more one considers the wall, the more one admires the skill, care, and effort that went into its making. It is good work, as E.F. Schumacher spoke of it in the book with this title - HarperCollins, 1979. The wall still stands as assuredly unyielding as the day it was built, after years of buffeting by snow, storms, and rain.

This is the work of a true craftsman. One thinks of the lines in Robert Frost's poem,

Mending Wall:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

One can see the dyker thinking and feeling as the work is done, such is its wondrous beauty that even includes the idea of the dentil corbelling of the stones with a remarkably accurate, subtle delicacy, all created from rubble, with stones that have been thoughtfully selected and carefully placed, the rule being that a rock picked up is never put down except into its place in the wall: some wall - consider the stones.

AI GUESSING

We had driven to within 5 km of our destination only to find the road flooded and closed. There had been heavy rain overnight. We turned around and drove home. Later in the day we were wondering if the water levels had dropped, so decided to see what AI could tell us by asking Google - or is it Gemini now? - if the Boonah road was still closed.# The response was surprising and worrying: It began by picking up on the information that had been given to it* by suggesting that perhaps there had been an accident, and that the road might soon be cleared, etc , etc. with additional, bland, 'helpful' sentences that contained every cliché one could put together about car crashes and delays and possible clearance times.

In short, the response was rubbish - a mere guess prompted by the question, followed by useless, misleading, pompous blurb that expanded on the original assumption as though one had asked for a reply in a minimum of one hundred words. The best answer should have been a simple: ‘I do not know.’ AI is structured to respond as though it might be a knowledgeable, living person - a helpful friend: creating yet another aspect to the illusion this algorithm seeks to present - and we are encouraged to believe in this!

Why is there such hype about AI when it is merely a set of routes for assembling a set of items/units/letters as directed by the rules? One thing that AI is incapable of seems to be apology, true humility to acknowledge the shame of being completely wrong. One might get the letters, but this will only emphasise the nature of the system one is dealing with; it relies for its credibility on us; on our blind, praiseworthy acceptance of it as a 'genius,' knowing everything. We must remember that, as with the television set, there is an ‘OFF’ button for us to use.

The gesture is used to make us remember that robots 'think.'

The Thinker, Auguste Rodin

Even when it does acknowledge that it does not know something - does it really 'know' anything? - e.g. the new First Nation names for the Art Gallery of NSW - it comes up with suggestive propositions stating what is usually the obvious, that this might be that; or could be something else, as though it was trying to be helpful, believing the interrogator knew nothing at all. In this sense, AI is bombastic.

The point to always remember is that AI needs to be queried; challenged; questioned; doubted; and turned off as required. We have to overcome the mindset that we are being pushed into: that we are inferior, lesser mortals than the superior being, the mystery genius known as AI that is really just a tool for gathering bits and pieces in response to certain inputs. AI is like a complex set of rail tracks; an array of switches that directs current to an assortment of destinations.+

One might argue that the human mind - or is it brain? - works with a similar mechanism; that the only difference is finesse, being able to engage the full complexity of integration that is the human body - and that it will only be a matter of time before AI is capable of such feats. Again, it is up to us to believe in order to support this position, that even predicts that our creations will eventually take everything over.

Perhaps they will, but only if we let them: we have to remember this. We seem obsessed with the idea of creating man: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/10/in-our-own-image.html. Is it a desire to ‘Know oneself’? The associated Delphic phrase, ‘Nothing in excess,’ needs to be heeded too: never overrate AI. It is a simple tool, and, as with all tools, has its wonderful uses and many limitations. It is really only as good as us, as good, or as bad, as what we might choose to make it.

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It was after this search that the Queensland Government Transport site was discovered. This site, although awkward to manipulate as it covers a large state, identifies sites across Queensland that have issues using graphic markers. This site indicated that the Boonah road was still closed. It took 24 hours before it was reopened. There was also another site, that of the RACQ, which was also rather cumbersome, but useful once one had found what one was looking for.

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It is a little like the expensive consultant called in to give advice: ‘He comes in, takes your watch, and tells you the time’ - only, in this case, the watch that was not working was picked up.

+

The digital world is singular, managing everything one by one. We are becoming similar to this way of understanding: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/05/architecture-is-not-singular.html. Modernity is singular, lacking the immediacy of the integration of understanding and experience that earlier ages knew. It is this situation that we approve of as being ‘rigorous,’ that causes the great schism between what we might call ‘the First Nations’ world’ and ours: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html.