#dan koop

Our captain and ferryman, Dan Koop, was interviewed for Your Afternoon with Penny Terry on 936 ABC Hobart (and Launceston of course!)

Have a listen and get an insight into what we've done to integrate the work in our lovely surroundings on the South Esk & Tamar River...

http://dankoop.net/

Looking for the seat of government and the centre of power I started with a a tour of the Victorian Parliament. The first thing you do to enter the building is go through an x-ray security check, just like at the airport. The second thing they do is put a day glo yellow sticker on your chest with a huge T in the middle - no mistaking it, you are now a Tourist. The Victorian Statutes that sit on the floor of both houses of parliament have a globe with something orbiting around it. I don't know why... The opening of parliament each day must be a sight from the public galleries.

A Walk In The Park is as mundane as it sounds. A figure 8 traced from Federation Square, up through the Fitzroy gardens and then back. But, it immediately takes you to St Pauls (which I have never actually been into before today) and points out the Flinders statue. Flinders was the first person credited to circumnavigate the continent that became Australia (but he must've had some along for the ride, right?). The Conservatory in the Fitzroy Gardens was closed, but provided a great photo opportunity all the same. What are they conserving in there? Or are they promoting a set of values? The whole garden seemed to be in honour of the European settlers. Captain Cook, a model Tudor village and Sinclair's Cottage preserved for the guy who preserved the European landscape by remodelling and replanting all the European horticulture. By this stage the Republican in me is getting ticked off - this doesn't feel like the progressive Melbourne that I prefer to think of. Finishing the tour at Birrarung Marr does me no good either. It's windy and vacant. The Barak bridge audio highlights that he was at the signing of the "treaty" with Batman. The "treaty" was immediately refuted by the crown, you can't make a deal with people who don't exist and the land was officially terra nullis.

By now I'm finding the official version of history, with it's sunny side of life focus, incredibly patronising and irritating. I know better, but what about those who are here for a day and take this as the truth? The tour confronts me, a native Melbournian, with uncomfortable colonial truths exactly by it's desire to airbrush them clean.

I am officially over these self guided tours. I feel lonely and isolated from the city. Weirdly, taking all these tours alienates me from the city that I actually know really well. The official history is all about a past that is well beyond living memory. What about the Melbourne Festival Hub that was next to the boat houses in October? What about the 3x hourly boat journey's I was taking across the river in May? What about the Birdman Rally during Moomba even? Nope, the official version of history is all about times that are long gone...

In just 38 seconds I'm at the top of Eureka Tower - the view is familiar but completely surreal - I am seeing the map view of the world that I have been studying for the past few days. I can even guess where the 903 bus has carved out its orbit about 10km away. The busy cross roads of Flinders St Station, Federation Square, Young & Jacksons and St Pauls suddenly look so small and so devoid of human activity.

But, what would I do on holiday? I'd have a glass of the local thanks.

Melbourne Visitor Shuttle: 90 minute round trip

City Circle Tram: 54 minute round trip

After two days of orbiting Melbourne, first from afar and now much closer, I'm starting to feel estranged from the city I live in. I see the city from behind glass, but the conversations I overhear are about Manchester or the voices speak a language that I don't understand at all.

I feel the distance covered, a distance between origin and destination and an alienating distance of time. I'm passive - I sit, look and listen but my only choice seems to be when I get off. I'm on the periphery of the city, physically and socially. Time to get off and be amongst the crowd...

I want to find some "centres of Melbourne" - I want to visit:

Immigration Museum

Parliament House

Captain Cook's Cottage

Hoddle's starting point

Government House / La Trobe's Cottage / Old Observatory

Koorie Heritage Trust

St Pauls / Flinders St Station / Young & Jackson

Melbourne's Parks: Treasury, Carlton, Flagstaff, Batman, Docklands, Birrarung Marr

Eureka Tower

Melbourne's Oldest Building

Melbourne Town Hall

Melbourne General Post Office

Ventura Orbiter around Melbourne: via the Frankston Line Train, 903 Bus, 1 Tram, 96 Tram, Werribee Line Train, 903 Bus, 1 Tram

Sunrise over Melbourne: 5:56am

Flinders St: dep 5:58am - AstronomyCast 183, 184

Mordialloc: arr 6:38am / dep 7:15am - AstronomyCast 185

Coburg: arr 9:48am - AstronomyCast 186, 187, 188, 189, 277

Lunch - Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Everything You Need to Know About Earth's Orbit and Climate Change, Astrophile: Lonely Planet Roams With Stellar Outcasts, 

3RRRFM: arr 12:00pm / dep 12:41pm - Listen to Dan Koop interview via Triple R On Demand

Flinders St: arr 1:14 / dep 1:32 - Science Friday NPR 20 May 2011, Voyager Golden Record Side A

Altona: arr 2:02pm / dep 2:45pm - Voyager Golden Record Side B, John Glenn Speech, John Glenn 50 Years Later

Coburg: 4:28pm / dep 4:36pm - The Copernican Revolution, The Continuing Copernican Revolution

Flinders St: arr 5:11pm

11 hours and 47 minutes to orbit Melbourne on a highly elliptical orbit around Flinders St Station.

Long enough to:

Drive from Melbourne VIC to Newcastle NSW

Fly from Melbourne AUS to Seoul KOR

For an analogue clock's hands to make a full rotation

For the Earth to make a 1/2 rotation

OBSERVATION

INSTRUMENTS / MEASUREMENTS

MATHEMATICS / CALCULATIONS

THEORIES

Things to follow up:

Sexagesimal numbers

Mapping of star maps, solar system and galaxy maps, ground maps, psycogeographic maps

Astronomy's relationship to time

Centres: Earth at the centre (Ptolemy), Sun at the centre (Copernicus), no centre (Hubble), planets that don't orbit anything at the centre (rogue planet)

The first orbits around Earth: Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2 with Laika, Vostok 1 with Yuri Gagarin

Large Hadron Collider

100km up is the boundary of space - what is the boundaries of Australia and the UK?

First day of development on City Cycle as part of Going Nowhere at Arts House: Dan Koop is in Melbourne AU, Andy Field is in Bristol UK, 11 hours and 17,073km apart. During the creative development neither of us will travel to meet each other, we'll purchase no new materials (second hand or recycled is okay) and we'll work up an idea for a new work that can travel without us getting on a plane or sending equipment either. Perhaps we'll present the work in a 3rd city altogether...

I started by visiting the Melbourne Visitor Centre in Federation Square and picking up maps and guides for tourists visiting Melbourne. These readily available printed collateral will be our materials. The sites surrounding also provide key Melbourne sites for exploration: the City Circle tram, the Melbourne Bike Share system and the Melbourne Visitor Shuttle. Even Eureka Tower rises above the iconic Flinders St dome from this angle.

Federation Square claims to be "Melbourne's meeting place" but perhaps this boast is for tourists? "Meet you under the clocks" at Flinders St is still a default meeting place for many Melbourne locals. But is this the centre of town? Both Fed Square and Flinders St Station sit on the "southern" border of Melbourne's city grid. Travel up Swanston St to City Square and were getting closer, even if this isn't a square at all - at least Melbourne Town Hall is directly across the road giving a sense of being near the seat of local power.

Bourke St is the (almost) west-east spine of Melbourne, with the pedestrian mall situated between busy Swanston & Elizabeth Sts. Here, we find the Melbourne Visitor Booth and helpful staff. Anyone can drop by and grab a tearaway black and white map of Melbourne. The Melbourne General Post Office (now a boutique shopping centre) stands in the background on the corner of Bourke & Elizabeth. All the highway signs leading into Melbourne measure the distance to the GPO, marking this as the "centre of town".

But Melbourne is expanding. Many times I've heard it said that "geographically, Melbourne is one of the largest cities in the world". I have no idea if that's true or not, but seeing as there are no mountains to stop the city growth I know there's something to the statement... It's like pancake batter that continues to ooze outwards from this centre. So if this really is the centre, what revolves around it?

The free City Circle tram carves out a boundary around the edge of the Melbourne CBD, now adding the Docklands to the west to it's route. What's inside this boundary and what's outside? Who's inside this boundary and who's outside? Who's in this city as a local and who's the visitor?

Photos from the 2012 Next Wave season along and across the Yarra River at Southbank, Melbourne.