Super Injunctions (Update)

In response to the statement made by below.

“It’s not fair on the newspapers if all the social media can report this and the newspapers can’t and so the law and the practice has got to catch up with how people consume media today. I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this.”

David Cameron

“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.”

John Perry Barlow, 1996

In Parliament today. MP john Hemming named Ryan Giggs as the individual at the centre of the super Injuction row.

“Within minutes of Hemming naming Giggs, mainstream newspapers and broadcasters used the protection of privilege to identify the footballer.”

Hemming later said he was trying to stop lawyers for Giggs using the courts to oppress and imprison individuals in secret just for retelling gossip on Twitter. He said: “The first steps had been taken to identity people who had started the gossip. There are people who are jailed in secret in this country.”

“The Birmingham Yardley MP told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: “When he sued Twitter and showed he was going to to go after relatively ordinary people and try to prosecute them for gossiping about him on a matter of trivia, I think he has to be held to account for that.

“I worry greatly about this country’s willingness to lock people up in secret. I really don’t think we should allow a situation where people are prosecuted and potentially jailed for two years and it all happens in secret and you can’t know what’s going on.

“If there is oppression going on, we should be willing to speak out about it, if you are jailing people for gossip.”

Mr Hemming added: “Is it really good to have a society in which rich people use their money to persecute people of relatively ordinary means, and nobody is willing to say anything about it? I think that would be very wrong, it would be very sad.”

Super Injunctions

Super injunctions are just another example of the control state has over corporate media. When those outlets not directly under the state influence seek to publish information not desirable, it can rely on the judiciary to protect its interests. 

The fact 70,000 people have named Ryan Giggs as the love affair of Imogen Thomas on twitter goes to show the power of new media, and the public’s reluctance to have limits placed upon them by decisions taken in secret between wealthy people and judges.

I just watched Dominic Grieve (Attorney General) answer questions on this subject in the house of commons. How ludicrous is the idea that 70,000 people can be prosecuted. 

As one MP said “The idea of imprisoning someone, in a secret prison, on an offence that can’t be reported, and is thus a secret, smacks of the actions of a state such as Zimbabwe or North Korea.”

Europe’s Fears Realised - Why no hype?

Revolutions are contagious. They come in clusters.

The October Revolution of 1919 preceded movements in Hungary, 1919 and Mongolia, 1921.  The August Revolution, of Vietnam, 1945 came before that of Korea, 1948. The anti-communist revolutions of Eastern Europe, 1989.

A very similar pattern has occurred in the Arab world. People on mass, united in their rejection of the state have occupied and protested in the streets, often or setting up camps in city squares.

The Western media has been quick to point out the faults of these “tyrants”. The widespread lack of prosperity in these countries, the disparity in wealth and the little opportunity afforded the youth.

They have spread across state boundaries. People of a next country empowered and by the news which filters through the channels of communication. But as has been well documented, we are all connected by the Internet. There are no boundaries in cyber-space - or at least, short of cutting the net off, these can be circumvented.

So it would be ludicrous to suggest these revolutionary movements could manifest themselves within our European cities; after all, what we have seen are “Arab Revolutions”!

So, it’s no surprise that when the same seeds of revolution occur across Spain the story is relegated to the internet equivalent of the middle pages. Banished from the home page to a section of the website which requires a considerable degree of detective work to locate.

“Thousands of Spaniards filled city squares and camped out across the country.”

“Tens of thousands of protesters have daily joined those camped out for the past week.”

“We need a change and I’m not surprised people have risen up.”

So, why the lack of media coverage? Simply, because its not in the traditional media’s interest. And, the European states have watched closely the impact news coverage of institutions like Al Jazeera had on disseminating information and fuelling revolutions across the Arab Gulf.

They do not want scenes like those witnessed from afar here. Where youth unemployment is sky high. Where the poor bare the brunt of economic policy. Where the people are discouraged from protesting and the security forces, trained in the use of force employ it of those unarmed. Where inner city riots rock communities and protesters die.

These things simply don’t happen in Europe… wait!

BLDG: Underground

Faraday Cage

The government now spends as much on electronic security and surveillance as it does on traditional formats of security. A sign of our times. As such, and in response to the brief, I feel at least part of St. Saviours should be electronically secure. The way to do this is to create an enclosure in which repels electronic fields, and so the concept of a faraday cage comes to mind.

“Faraday cages are nothing but metallic conductors that, when used to cover an area or an electric device, make that area free of any electric fields. This happens due to the characteristic property of conductors which lets them retain the charge on the surface and keep the field inside at a total zero.”

A point of note: 

“Another aspect to keep in mind while making a Faraday cage is the grounding of the outer surface. While the property of metals and conductors lets them form good Faraday cages, they redistribute charges among themselves and thereby produce potential differences and currents across the surface of the conductor. This is precisely why the surface needs to be grounded.”

Examples of faraday cages in use in buildings are surprisingly sparse but one example, and possibly the most appropriate, is the Mi6 Building, Vauxhall, designed by Terry Farrell & Partners. It is reported that the whole building is a giant faraday cage blocking all invasive electromagnetic current.

There is no need for the cage material to be totally solid -take for example a microwave - practice is, that the holes should be smaller then the height of waves being excluded.

Copper may be a good choice of material due to its well documented conductive properties, and it’s traditional relationship to architecture. 

Urban space: the means of confrontation

The following extracts stem from The Coming Insurrection.

A book which has “become the principle piece of evidence in an anti-terrorism case on France, directed at nine individuals…accused of “criminal association for the purpose of terrorist activity” on the grounds that were to have participated in the sabotage of overhead electrical lines on France’s national railways. The French Interior Minister has publicly associated them with the emergent threat of an “ultra-left” movement, taking care to single out this book, described as a “manual for terrorism,” which they are accused of authoring.”

The chapter in viewable in full.

Although there is an interesting critique of the City, it is the paragraphs on pages 59 and 59, which I draw your attention to.

” “The enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretationand fall into his traps. […] I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win […}This is why we opted for the methodology of moving through walls […] like a worm that eats its way forward.” Urban space is more then just the the theatre of confrontation, it is also the means.

This echoes the advice of Blanqui who reccomended (in this case for the party of insurrection) that the future insurgents of Paris take over the houses on the barricaded streets to protect their positions, that they should bore holes in the walls to allow passage between houses, break down the ground floor stair cases and poke holes in the ceiling to defend themselves against potential attackers, rip out the doors and use them to barricade the windows, and turn each floor into a gun turret.”

My point is that, in the final instance NLM should be accessible to the people but provide adequate protection from “potential attackers” and so maybe space should deviate from the “traditional, classical manner”.

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1:200 DEVELOPMENT

Below are photos of the revised 1:200 model. Additions include the submersion of studio space below Bermondsey Walk, creation of production space to the East as well as inclusion of storage and engineer space.

The image above proposes creating a void at ground level enabling public to peer into a world below. It shows the intention to create a visual relationship to London as a city of layers, and thus make reference to the Neckinger.

BRINGING IT DOWN TO EARTH

Attempting to base the proposal within reality, it now rests firmly on the ground. The initial idea of a tower being the symbol has been resurrected.

I’ve commandeered the private garden on the other side of Bermondsey walk. seeking to replace it with something that contributes to the wider public and fosters interaction.

Bermondsey Walk, itself, will be a little more loosely defined. The removal of curbs will merge Northern and southern sides creating a shared space between motorists and pedestrians.

The plans below, propose inhabited space above the road creating a visual bridge between the sides, but as can be seen in the model photographs, this produces a great deal of shade in areas intended to be public, and so may need revision.

note: shadows cast at approximately 12noon on day of the equinox.

April Update

A couple of bits.

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ALL OF THE LIGHTS (part 2.)

As stated below, I think light is significant and has scope to be built into the project. In this case I’ll probably incorporate Litracon, a light transmitting concrete. Its translucent quality casts amazing silhouettes, and could be an intervention establishing a connection a visual connection between the public and NLM staff.

“The glass fibres lead light by points between the two sides of the blocks.  Because of their parallel position, the light-information on the brighter side of such a wall appears unchanged on the darker side. The most interesting form of this phenomenon is probably the sharp display of shadows on the opposing side of the wall. Moreover, the colour of the light also remains the same.”

It’s composition seems over-appropriate, because just like the fiber-optic cable infrastructure in which NLM utilises to disseminate information, Litracon is made of “thousands of optical glass fibres”.

Not just pretty, the blocks have the ability to create load bearing structures “since glass fibres do not have a negative effect on the well-known high compressive strength value of concrete”. Litracon in addition to lighting can provide transformative temporal qualities like the sign below.