Inspirations: from the ruins, hope rising

I am standing in the centre of Christchurch, New Zealand. It is my first visit since a series of devastating quakes shook the city to pieces. The most violent, in February 2011, killed 185 people, two-thirds of them in the collapse of a single building. And I am stunned at the destruction, even two years on.

The Christ Church Cathedral – icon of a city for nearly 150 years and the raison d;’etre for its founding in 1850. Now a ruin, due to be demolished.

I took this holding the camera above my head to avoid a fence, pointing and guessing…This is the third attempt.

Demolition under way.

The Christchurch I knew is gone. The centre city is a wasteland of shingled and empty lots, ruined buildings and demolition trucks. Surviving tower blocks lean with tired abandon, like rows of crooked teeth. Most are due to come down.

Tumbling rocks devastated houses beneath – and above.

Beyond, houses lie empty. Just two years ago they were proud symbols of domestic prosperity. Today they are abandoned, their walls cracked, shingled roofs askew, grass growing tall through cracks in the driveway. Grey silt, the dried remnants of liquefaction, lies unexpectedly here and there. Cars bibble over rippled tarmac; bridges that were once smooth are arched.In the seaside suburbs, houses teeter on the edges of new cliffs, rubble still piled below. Walls of shipping containers shield roads and houses from fresh falls.It is a city devastated.

And yet it is also a city with hope. Everywhere, Council trucks and diggers are working to renew sewerage, water, gas and electricity lines. Some buildings are swathed in scaffolding. The Arts Centre – the former Canterbury University buildings, where Ernest Rutherford worked - is being repaired. Near the old Cashel Mall – where masonry tumbled into the streets, crushing people – there is a mall of shipping containers. It is abuzz with sound; singers perform on a stage, people sit drinking coffee and enjoying the sun.

Sunlight and shadow made life very difficult for the camera, the modern CCD is not as good with tonal variations as film, and the exposure was on the concrete. I had to adjust the shadow balances post-production.  This is a detail of the original image.

That’s more like it. This is straight out of the camera, unedited apart from  the copyright notice and re-sizing to fit the blog. Christchurch’s shipping container mall – 2013.

There is a spirit here which speaks of hope, of life, of a brighter future. It is inspiring.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013

Writing inspirations: Wellington’s Tracy Island – er – waterfront museum

New Zealand’s national museum Te Papa – ‘our place’ – is one of the largest single structures in the southern hemisphere, replacing a Stalinesque museum from the 1940s.

The entire Te Papa complex in all its collision of styles.

From an engineering perspective it is a fantastic tour de force. It was designed for a 150-year life, meaning it had to withstand a rupture of the Wairarapa fault, the ‘big one’ that is expected to flatten Wellington. Yet it had to be built on reclaimed land. The answer was a unique base isolation system designed to float the building on lead-rubber bearings - an awesome blend of science and engineering, created right here in New Zealand by Bill Robinson.

My first effort to abstract ugly, at 24 mm focal length.

Architecturally, though, people either love it or hate it. I’m in the latter camp. It’s ugly.

Another abstraction, of sorts. Pseudo-industrial chic, or not.

To me, the building looks like a jumble of styles, thrown together in rough approximation of Tracy Island - the secret headquarters in Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds. There’s a giant round window off the main entrance for Thunderbird 3. And around the corner is the Thunderbird 2 launch ramp, complete with door.

Why have I called this a writing inspiration? Inspiration to write comes from anywhere. Inspiration is about an emotional reaction – about exploring that emotion, about translating it into your own expression.

For me, with Te Papa, it triggered a burst of photography. I thought, ‘I can make this building look attractive.’ Prowling around produced another thought. ‘No I can’t.’

The only real way to do it was abstract the whole thing – take the shapes out of the context and turn them into something else. A trick that writers use too. I thought I’d publish a selection.

Is there anything in your area you find inspiring because of the way you respond to it?

Not trying to be artistic here. This is the ‘Thunderbird 2′ ramp and rising door.

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Not the apocalypse…not yet…

Here in New Zealand we woke Tuesday morning to news that Mount Tongariro had erupted – briefly, but with enough vigour to send ash falling over my home town, Napier. I don’t live there these days, but I have family who do.

The Oruanui eruption, Taupo, 26,500 BP. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Taupo_2.png

It was the first eruption of Tongariro since 1897 and came by surprise. New Zealand has an excellent seismograph and volcano warning system – there are live webcams in the craters. Here’s White Island’s, complete with dinosaur. But this Tongariro eruption was left-field. It’s officially over as I write this – Geological and Nuclear Sciences have reduced the danger level - but White Island also erupted last week and Ruapehu is on heightened alert.

All these are tiddlers beside Lake Taupo, an active caldera in the same league as Toba and Yellowstone. The last big eruption, Hatepe, was around 180-230 AD and coated the central plateau with ash. It also gave the Romans and Chinese wonderful sunsets. The Oruanui eruption, around 26,500 years before the present, was the largest the world has seen in the last 70,000 years. It changed the structure of the lake, obliterated everything in the central North Island, and sent dust whipping through the upper air worldwide.

The immediate risk, though, is Auckland.  William Hobson chose the site in 1841 on the back of musket wars politics. Nobody knew, then, that it was atop a lava field. That’s why there are so many small extinct volcanoes – they’re driven from one source, and it erupts in a new place, usually, every time. Maori knew. Rangitoto – that island in the middle of the Waitemata – means ‘bleeding sky’. Hmmn…

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Blasted awake by a quake

On Tuesday I posted some pictures of New Zealand’s Tolkien-ish landscape. There are reasons why it’s so rugged. And at 10:36 last night, 3 July, one of them happened. New Zealand’s North Island was rocked by the biggest quake it’s had in many years.

It shook Wellington like a terrier rattling a bone. Listen for yourself – here’s the noise it made in a Wellington church during a recording session. The quake starts around 00:45: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/7219667/Earthquake-captured-on-organ-recording

I was asleep when it hit, blasted awake by the jolt – and wondered whether it was local. There wasn’t any sound of stuff crashing around the house so – well, I went back to sleep. Hey, we’re used to these things. We’re prepared. It was nowhere near as sharp as one in December that caught She Who Must Be Obeyed and me in a masonry building (we dived under a table).

My personal ‘felt estimate’ for the intensity around our house was around IV/V on the Modified Mercalli scale (building creaks, dishes and plates rattle, people woken). But I wanted to know the absolute magnitude and epicentre. New Zealand has a fantastic seismic network. Our Geological and Nuclear Sciences department posts early estimates in near-real time. By the time we were up at 5.00 am this morning (discovering nothing dislodged around the house) they had a final figure for the quake and its location. It was a big one; magnitude 7.0, luckily off the Taranaki coast and very deep. Probably the Pacific plate moving.

A happier Christchurch – a picture I took of the crowd at the 2009 arts festival.

It wasn’t expected, but there are several known faults around the country which are overdue to move, including one that will trigger the ‘big one’ in Wellington – a quake of 8+ magnitude with a likely ‘felt intensity’ of X on the MM scale. The lesson was brought home when Christchurch was devastated by a succession of quakes beginning in September 2010 – including one in February 2011 that killed 182. The official enquiry into why buildings collapsed is under way now.

There is a theory that the Christchurch sequence was triggered by a 7.8 magnitude quake that hit Fijordland in July 2009. It did no great damage in that remote location but seems, some geophysicists think, to have stressed the system – which then fractured in Christchurch. Whether the latest quake is going to do anything on the Wellington system is a moot point. GNS said today they haven’t the resources to look further into it just now.

But, to me, not it’s something to lose sleep over. We have to live with quakes, here in New Zealand. And volcanoes. And pointy sticks.

Well, actually not the pointy sticks. But definitely quakes and volcanoes. They’re gonna happen – we have to accept them. And be ready.

+++Coming up: a contest. Watch this space.+++

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012