Introduction
In September 2022, I received a letter from Ian Wilkie, the Managing Director of Leviton Manufacturing, asking if I’d be interested in making a sculpture for the traffic roundabout at their plant in Glenrothes, Fife. (Ian had recently watched the BBC documentary, ‘Meet You at the Hippos’ in which the work of the Scottish New Town artists (including myself) was featured.)
Ian and I worked on some ideas together, none of which saw the light of day. Then Ian hit on the idea of making a larger scale artwork for the town centre – one that would involve many people in the making. (Under his guidance, Leviton already has a social outreach presence in the town.)
I had worked in Glenrothes 50 years earlier, for one post-graduate year, as the assistant town artist for this Scottish New Town. During that time I had made a group of concrete hippos, concrete sculptures that have become loved over the years…
…and so I felt it was appropriate that as an environmental artist, I should revisit that theme in proposing a new work for the town, because the situation in 2023 for African hippos has changed drastically since 1973.
The global climate crisis has been devastating for wildlife in some parts of Africa. When rivers dry up due to lack of rainfall, all the animals who rely on them suffer, but especially hippos, whose natural habitat is the river. If the skins of hippos dry up, they die. Hippopotamuses are disappearing from the face of the planet. It was this gradual disappearance which was to be the theme of the new work…
Our vision was that any number of people, groups and businesses in Glenrothes would be involved in the construction of the ‘Disappearing Hippo’. Businesses with a track record of social outreach might offer their services in the training of youngsters (in particular) for the skills required to make such an artwork – from metalwork design and fabrication to glass art and concrete casting. The idea was that people would have made this thing, and that because of that, not only might they have acquired new skills, but also they would have been offered the opportunity to express their concern for the environment (and love for hippos) by using those skills.
Sadly though, that’s not the way things worked out, because when Ian and I took our model of the proposed 7.5m long Disappearing Hippo to a local metalwork company seeking their advice, the advice was that it could not be achieved because of the sheer complexity of the geometry. (Each angle, each line in the geodesic triangular structure would have to be unique, meaning that for each piece of metal processed, cutting machines would need to be reset and reprogrammed – not to mention the improbability of finding welders who would be willing to lead that part of the programme.)
Here is the 1:10 scale model we took to the engineer…
After our disappointing meeting with the engineer, Ian and I had a meeting with Andrew Walker from the Fife Council, and it was at this meeting that Ian (who will always find a way forward) said out of the blue that, “Leviton would commission me to make a smaller version of the Disappearing Hippo – one that could be included in a new festival exhibition at the Kingdom Centre in Glenrothes – to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Scotland’s second New Town, after the Second World War.” (This festival is also his idea.)
And so that’s exactly what happened. I made the Disappearing Hippo at a scale that was about the same size as the original concrete hippos in Glenrothes. And here’s a photograph of how it turned out, in place, in the Kingdom Centre…
The photograph above was taken by Vincent Bonnar, shortly after we’d installed the Disappearing Hippo in the Perspex cabinet (so beautifully crafted by Heron Cabinets of Sheffield). The sun was shining on the day of it’s installation, making the photograph very special indeed, for the Hippo does seem almost to be disappearing.
Vincent and I had driven up from my home in Chirnside in the Scottish Borders, where I had spent the previous six months making the Disappearing Hippo. During that time, my neighbours had very kindly saved up their old tin cans for me to use in its construction (of which more later), and were now all helping us to transfer the beast from my studio into a hired van for transport to Glenrothes…
The comic-book stylisation of the video has twofold purpose. On the one hand it saves the blushes of my kindly neighbours, while on the other hand it outlines the philosophical intent that I have – which is to explore in this text the implications of quantum entanglement.
What I mean by this is that scientific evidence was discovered in the first half of the last century, that all the apparently different objects or ‘quanta’ that we sense in the spacetime around us, are actually in some means related [as the singularity of under-standing which I think is our state prior to spacetime.] Scientists call this mysterious relationship ‘quantum entanglement’. Later in this text, it will be my aim to describe in detail how I think this comes about. In the video however, I have simply reduced and rendered all the familiar properties of objects – colour, texture, shading, sound and timing – to the commonality of a comic book cartoon – as a gesture towards their/our singularity.
Let me further indicate the way towards our own-most singularity, by stating my intention to travel back gradually into ‘the past’. But of the ‘here and now’ at which I am now writing these words (that travel forward in time as I write them) I can say only this: that this very moment is the elementary moment of our universe, and that by ‘travelling back through writing forward’ I hope always to have an understanding with that elementary moment and honestly reveal its contents.
Of Glenrothes and Hippos
“Glenrothes is Hippo mad….. all thanks to you!”
These words were written to me the other day by my friend in Glenrothes; and I have no reason to disbelieve them, especially when I see the publicity for its 75th birthday celebrations…
…But since I made these concrete hippos, many, many things – many moments of under-standing, have coalesced and coincided to create the present circumstances. Of course I’m gobsmacked to think that a work of environmental cognitive re-creativity [aka ‘art’] which I made half a century ago should have become so loved by other people. But what does it all actually mean? Is there some inner sense to be gleaned from the many coincidences that brought us here?
Some decades ago, a young person painted these prophetic words on the side of one of my concrete hippos in Glenrothes. I say they are prophetic because what they say is true for me now, as much as it was for that young person then. And by the end of this text, if both of us arrive there, then I hope you will agree that the hippos do indeed mean something. For now, all I can tell you is that my life has been spent trying to understand the very nature of things – their meaning against a backdrop of quantum entanglement – so it’s as if the writing on the hippo is advising me personally to keep going, just to see if I will be able to pull together a lifetime’s work by going through a ‘hippo shaped gate’.
Later in this text I will try to explain exactly why I think our emotions are the most vivid, concise and accurate indication of our under-standing with the things around us. [In particular] what we love is indeed how and what we are in this entangled universe. Keeping this, and the situation of hippopotamuses in Africa uppermost in our minds, we can easily comprehend why I made this video for school teachers to show to their classes in Glenrothes primary schools…
My idea was, if many children could create small works of love for hippopotamuses that – because of our singularity of under-standing – we could together reverse the bad way that their lives have become entangled with the lack of water in some parts of Africa. Yes, we could actually affect changes for the betterment of hippos, and perhaps repair some dried out hippopotamus skins by sending loving thoughts in their direction. These would come together in the geodesic skin of the Disappearing Hippo.
But as it happened, the teachers must possibly have realised that my request for the artworks to be no bigger than 20mm in any dimension, was far too ambitious for small hands; and that’s how the loving hippo thoughts of kids became their own and very successful part of the Festival Exhibition. Here are photos of their lovely artworks, which I am sure are sending love to Africa as we speak.
At about the same time as the children’s images/texts were being installed at the various entrances to the Kingdom Centre, we were installing the Disappearing Hippo into its position. Vincent made a video as Ian Wilkie and I discussed the merits of having two sets of barriers to protect the work. It is important to both Ian and myself that people are able to interact with the emotional dimensions of the Disappearing Hippo, but at the same time we realise that, being in untested territory, perhaps some gesture towards its security is advisable. In the event, we settled on a discreet rope stretched across the foot of the stairs. But at this point in the proceedings you might pick up from the soundtrack, myself mentioning that I thought the railings were inappropriate…
Vincent’s video gives us a good understanding of the situation at this part of the exhibition in the Kingdom Centre. However, as an artist and philosopher, I also have to think about the language of the video, and use this opportunity to speak about the question – what is actually going on beneath the surface of the video’s reality? How does the singularity of things under-stand itself? symbolically? [of which more later] And most importantly, can we comprehend the singularity of under-standing in ways (for instance by modifying the ways we think and speak about things) that will enable life on Earth to survive climate change?
And so I looked again at Vin’s video and worked on it a little. Using Apple’s Motion 5 graphics manipulation programme, I overlayed the video a number of times and applied various filters to each layer…
During this process I was guided by what I am trying to achieve, which is to give an impression of the way that all quanta – all objects in time and space – are entangled. That I am having to describe this here and now in the words of this text, is a sign of the difficulty of a task that requires the visualisation of the invisible – which is visibility itself.
I hope that the video (rather than simply accepting the object’s being in spacetime and documenting its placement in the context of the Kingdom Centre) gives a sense of its coalescing as an object of comprehension from the things – the regions of under-standing – which are as its actual context. This supports the possible reading that the hippo is not just disappearing, but appearing also.
Intermission
Here is a link to a lovely, funny song by Tommy MacKay. It was written after we had installed the Disappearing Hippo (reappearing)…
https://www.dailyreckless.com/2023/07/06/environmental-cognitive-recreativity/