One Year – Week 49

One Year is a project through which I intend to construct a daily photographic record of a single view: the view from my study window at around 8.00a.m. each day when I sit down to work.  One Year will annotate each picture with a note of the weather for that morning and the morning’s main news headline from the BBC News site.  In addition, there will be a note taking a key sentence or two from my daily journal.

22 August 201422nd August 2014

Heavy rain

IS militants ‘biggest threat’ to US

The things I write about are those that I remember

 

23 August 201423rd August 2014

Sunny intervals

May pledges anti-extremist measures

The terror of kept objects

 

 

24 August 201424th August 2014

Sunny intervals

Hammond: Foley killing betrays Britain

I set a trap for my conscious mind, and wait around to see what happens

 

25 August 201425th August 2014

Light rain

Film’s Richard Attenborough dies

Integrating the irreconcilable elements

 

26 August 201426th August 2014

Thick cloud

Salmond and Darling in heated debate

Transferring all my lists into one master list: strangely satisfying, though not very productive

27 August 201427th August 2014

Light cloud

Fresh quit call over sex abuse report

The illicit thrill of climbing onto the scaffolding once the builders have gone home

 

28 August 201428th August 2014

Sunny intervals

Wright quits Labour but not PCC role

A word collage of overheard conversations

 

 

Artist Statement

… “natural history” has no actual existence other than through the process of human history, the only part which recaptures this historical totality, like the modern telescope whose sight captures, in time, the retreat of nebulae at the periphery of the universe.

Guy Debord – Society of the Spectacle

The purpose of this project is to explore continuity and change.  Over the course of a year, I will build up a daily visual record of the same view.  Despite my best efforts, though, I will not be able to replicate the ‘same’ view each day: it is subject to changes in the environment, such as the weather or the time the sun rises.  But it is also affected by changes caused by me, the observer.  For instance, my feelings that morning may change the way I hold the camera or, inadvertently, the image may show my breath on the glass from getting too close to the window.

Looking out at the view on this, the first morning of One Year, I see a scene comprising sky, trees and rooftops.  I don’t see much evidence of human activity just yet, but that may come later in the year when the leaf cover begins to thin out.  Being on a flight path, we also see the odd vapour trail or aeroplane light in the sky too.

Some of the changes that will become evident will be pretty obvious, such as the seasons.  Other changes will be more subtle.  My daily notes will give some insight into what is going on inside my head that morning, from my journal entry, and there will also be a record of what is happening in the world in general, from the news headline.

But the ‘view’ I am recording in One Year is not neutral, it is selected and framed by me.  Similarly, my journal extracts are selected from a much larger body of work; it is the ‘insight’ into my thinking that I choose to present.  Even the ‘news headline’ cannot be regarded as neutral, for it is subject to BBC editorial bias.

But there is a third party in the One Year process, one that is outside of my control. That person is you, the reader of this blog, the interested observer of the project.  I want people to bring their own interpretations, views and insights to this project.  All comments received will be reproduced in my weekly project reports.

About Bobby Seal

Freelance writer, poet and psychogeographer
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