From The Ground Up
Eoin Tunstead
from the This project is the creating of a journey, around the measurement, extraction, documentation, and valuation of parts of our Earths boundaries is to really make the mundane magnificent. This project is about reaching that length that the commodity becomes outstanding, showing the various parts of its human personality, its size or volume, its description its value, its location and type. Collected, cataloged through these characteristics to complete a magnificent piece via the combination of the mundane.
I have tried to do all of these things by sourcing the various resources from Earths layers, going to great lengths to attempt to reach the peak of the mineral, element or compounds informative capacity. I feel I have achieved this in the way I set out too, by using measurements, documentation, laws and rules that are set to control and monitor these resources. I have talked about this process in the book. Deciding to sum up the entire project in an outcome that encapsulates all the factors at once, by creating a 30x30x30 glass cube, an exact cubic foot of glass divided into 5 sections to contain my collected materials. With a screen printed front pane, each stating the boxes contents, also the coordinates from where it was sourced. The boxes are sealed on the bottom, but are safely stackable so as to allow the viewer to examine the materials more closely.
air water earth sand oil
ground up
introduction
From The Ground Up is a project in response to the boundaries brief, I wanted to explore our worlds perceived boundaries, from the physical through to meta-physical both boundaries we cannot control and the ones we create. Our lives are assigned and regulated via boundaries, be they physical, cultural, or financial. This is through the assignment of power, restriction, or value in a boundary, its situation, its purpose, and its genetics, all factors created through the interpretive understanding of human life. We have responded to the boundaries that surround us, by trying to live within them, or overcome them, set guidelines for how to interact with them. These come in the forms of measurements; laws and rules, written word, and documentation are the ways we have grown to understand the boundaries of our physical world, a mental understanding of something tangible through an assigned, regulated, and documented doctrine of worldwide understanding.
This is what I have investigated through my project ‘From the Ground Up.’ To discover the way in which we define physical boundaries through human understanding due to the inventions we use to protect, divide, separate, own, sell, control, and value the contents of a boundary as well as the boundary itself.
accordance to location and the genetics of the physical landscape within the assigned boundary. Throughout the ages humans have endeavored to discover and record Earths boundaries, extracting its resources, making it possible for us today to utilize them today and understand them and take profit from that knowledge.
How through this we have unconsciously grown to know and perceive boundaries by there worth, size, characteristics and location due to the documentation we assign to them. We don’t have to see the document, to understand the boundary its en grained into our understanding of the world.
These boundaries have become mundane and ordinary in our conscious; I have been on a journey to extract sections of the earth, by the assigned rules and regulations built up over millennia. Using ownership as my core area of exploration, and measurements of size and volume as my guidelines for investigation, I set out to complete the project by creating a collection of the Earths boundaries in a visual way, using the way they are controlled and distributed as the constraints for display, thus constructing a representation of the Earths magnificent boundaries through their monotonous everyday use.
I wanted to focus on the idea of ownership, or value and the laws and rights over the earth’s minerals, elements, space and soil. Through research and investigation I want to compare ways in which physical boundaries are recorded and measured how this is then converted into monetary value, the difference in value in
land
Whilst researching at the UK Land Registry I discovered there was a short period of time a few years ago, in which Football Clubs, and various other businesses, tried to utilise their fans, or customer’s loyalty to help soften financial woes via auctioning of the ground beneath them. The idea was to auction each square foot of the pitch off to the highest bidder, and give the winner the rights to that area. When this began to get some momentum the Land Registry put a stop to it all, as the implementing of the rights over these patches of land had to many negative implications. With not many options for acquiring land with little money and time, or any farmers taking you seriously. Talking to a neighbor, he was interested and liked the idea, allowing me to purchase a fragment of his garden as
a piece of ‘land real estate’. In the interest of my legitimacy of ownership I constructed a contract, exchanging his land for a sum. Went to his garden picked my spot and extracted a rectangle measuring 700mm(h)X500mm(w) X50mm(d) the separation of a section of land that has value is an act of breaking the boundary of property ownership, we sit surface level as cities and towns shift across the landscape rising and falling following the money. Earth, mud, soil, the surface beneath our roads and homes is the permanent fixture, the priceless commodity. The extracted earth is encased in a box, set next to a caster and resin relief of its below surface attachment, communicates the magnificence of the mundane. This brings you back to the temporality of existence in terms of
ownership, an exchange is made for property but your rights as a home owner in respect to the adaptation of your property are very little, so in truth ownership of land, space, earth is more of a custodial duty, in which we pay to become guardians of a patch of earth for the remainder of our existence, after this the property is passed on to its next custodian through heritage, or return to the system or even its extracted parts are deconstructed and it returns to become part of the Earth once again. This separation of powers intrigued me, the power and restrictive nature of a boundary, so I created the contract in response to the bureaucratic relationship we have with, cultural, mental, and physical boundaries.
oil
Oil was top of my list of resources to try and locate and use in my project, so I started by looking again at the prices, values, and amounts. The way its recorded, measured, and sold. Starting with WTI Crude Oil at $92.78 a barrel. A barrel of crude oil is a standard expressed volume of 159 litres. $16.82 or £10.74 for 1 cubic foot of WTI Crude Oil. When searching for my elements to construct my square foot of earth, I was stumped as to were on earth I would purchase or locate, pure crude oil. I explored various options online, with little results. I didn’t realise I would be a possibility to go straight to the source. I then struck oil as they say, I managed to source genuine Crude Oil. From Fred Norton originally from County Cork in Ireland, whom
now lives in Doha, Qatar. Working within the oil industry for the majority of his career, my relationship with Fred came through his time working for Ranger Oil UK, as their offices were based in Guildford where my family lives, my parents met Fred and his wife through various Irish connections in Guildford. I enquired of Fred, the possibility of access to crude oil, and if so would I be able to get some or if he could help me locate somewhere to source it. To my surprise, he told me to leave it with him. So a few weeks later during a trip to London, Fred made a visit to Guildford. He passed me a rolled up red checkered tea towel, attached by two elastic bands. Unwrapping my parcel, out rolled a small Maxwell House coffee jar with a jet black
interior as I tipped it from side to side the contents shifted, as the light broke through the smear I could see a pool of oil. Over lunch, I sat there thinking, about the extraordinary journey, and what an unexpected place for these drops of liquid gold to end up. And I worked out the cost of my 200 ml of crude oil as an average of WTI oil resulting in my coffee jar of crude oil being exactly $1.00 or £0.65. This tiny pool of black liquid, drives our industry and is the constant current for our economy, it has spurred crippling wars, and will continue to cripple us due to our dependence on it. So to have a pure uncut jar at the end of the search is really astounding, and thoroughly rewarding, to me at least it is truly magnificent.
sand
Acquiring my second layer of earth, Interestingly the price of real estate in Baghdad averages $675 per square metre, 1 square metre equates to 10.76 sq ft. Making Baghdad land value at a rough average of $74.00 so £48.00 per square foot. Agricultural land in Iraq is still in some cases measured in an ancient format, still even in Baghdad. Land is measured by the Dunam or Dønøm originating from the Ottoman Empire is the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day, roughly 0.25 acres = 1 Donom. Whilst the sandy desert at ground level is almost worthless, sand in its different forms has value. The average price for 1 Domon of agricultural land near Baghdad is $55,000. This research led me to Southport to collect sand from the banks of the Mersey. However I asked a favour from my brother, Corporal Tunstead of the RAF Regiment, on return from Iraq he collected sand from the Kuwait Desert in a 2 Litre Evian bottle
and brought it home for me. The 2 litres of sand sum up beautifully what I have been exploring through this project, the boundaries we live in, and live out, the Earth is going to be here long after were all gone, we claim ownership, we stake claim, we import export, excavate, land fill, we drill, dig, burn and cut. Wars are fought for theses things, and reasons globally, there also fought locally. The Earth is magnificent, understanding, using and utilizing it is what we try to do, measure, record, use, reuse, recycle, destroy. The magnificence is everywhere, these sections significance to the world and modern human life is paramount, but what’s fascinating is the mundanity of it all. Sand, the next level of Earth surface, passing through soil and rock, a gradient throughout earths crust. It’s vastness in deserts and coastlines, like water and soil, its gratuitous presence on earth makes it seemingly a worthless commodity, what could be the value of a grain
of sand? Yet sand is bought, sold, shipped, built upon, and fought over. In Saudi Arabia, in the United Arab Emirates, a nation built upon the sand even imports sand from right here in the UK from Southport, in Merseyside. American Bases built in the neighboring Kuwait, and Iraq are constructed in the Desert itself on the sands, but the cement walls surrounding them, is built from sand shipped in from elsewhere, the Iraq sand was deemed inadequate for the bases blast walls. So sand was then imported via countries like United Arab Emirates and Qatar, with more sand in the Kingdom than oil its exportation has become a huge industry, but now Saudi’s are fearing sand shortages. These countries that have been fought over for centuries, have become reliant on selling the ground up from underneath themselves, running out of sand in the desert? Next they will run out of tea in china! It’s these tales of industry, wealth, war, and power that is so attached to seas of sand in the Middle East none more so than that of Iraq.
earth
The baseline for our existence, we build our lives upon it. Earth (Soil). As an island, land is rare so it’s an aspiration possession. Attention towards it revolves around the money. I went to find out more about land ownership, relative to the way we approach property ownership, it’s consideration and effects of ignorance towards it. I got in contact with the land registry and spoke with Brendan McEvoy, finding out about home/land ownership, how the dimensions of the house and garden are assigned to the property, this gives owners of the space the rights straight down and straight up, to the core, and to the atmosphere, yet have no rights at all. To approach my journey to extract Earth from its natural boundary had to be in relation to the fluctuation in property due to its attributes. By finding the national valued averages for the various lands and spaces across the UK. Starting with agricultural land at an average of £6,783 per acre, a steep increase in the value of land
due to shortage, and expanding production to capitalize on high agricultural commodity prices. An acre is 43, 560 square feet, which divided by the average per acre price gives an average price of £0.16 per square foot of agricultural land in the UK. In comparison commercial office space in Surrey is derived from the average sized office property which in my example is 872 square feet, costing a £130, 800 average sale price. The average price of office space in Surrey is £150 per square foot. The average for commercial property in Guildford, derived from average sized properties for sale that include over 1 acre of land. A large property for sale in Surrey is on the market for £2.5 million. An Old Nursery with a 4-bedroom bungalow with 2 acres of land equals 87,120 square feet, giving an average of £28.70 per square foot.
How mundane it seems, so much so it’s relatively ignored until it has its measurements and attributes are attached to a price tag. An auto trading company that dealt mostly with tyres occupied some land previously. After an organisation purchasing the land, surveyors checked the soil, the land was completely toxic, over the years the oil, car fumes, tire rubber, had seeped down into the earth poisoning it to great depth. Work was stopped until the land was resuscitated. A moral of the mundane I suppose in that, the most important area is beneath your feet, it what keeps you. This Is why I decided to source the four main soil types in the U.K. in the purest form, to locate them then bring them together as the purest representation of UK soil, and of the purity of soil itself, its gradient and sediments, its purification device, a habitat for humans animals, and insects alike. It is one of the most important parts of our society it is at the very foundation of our kind.
water
The value, and documented recording of water and it value is the most bemusing to me, as in our relationship with it fitting into our lives. With privatization of water, and bottled water prices at all time highs, and estimated water bills still as confusing as ever, I was very interested in discovering the values and averages information for the UK’s water. Water is measured by the cubic metre usually, equalling a cost of £2.05 per cubic metre, as I am working in feet assigned to my glass cubic foot, I have been converting everything into feet. It came as a shock when I worked out the average price per cubic foot of water in the U.K. £0.06, which confused me even more when thinking about water crisis, high street bottled water costs, the amount of oil being used to created the bottles that contain water etc. Then I had to go one step further, as my water section of the cubic foot glass box will only contain half a litre of water. A cubic foot of water equals 28.32 litres, at a cost of 6 pence. Works out that 1 litre of water is £0.002
so my box will only contain 500ml which will be exactly £0.001 worth of UK water. This is astonishing, but understanding, water is the most valuable element of the Earth as without it human life cannot exist, but due to the volume of its presence on Earth its value through monetary assignation and modern understanding is relatively worthless, the industries of water charge for the service they provide in the control of water, and its distribution rather than the product itself. This human response that’s caused by the rarity of an element making it a more sought after product is subtly highlighted through this comparison. So In my search for water, I explored various options for getting the best representation of water at cost for my audience, a bottle of water from a shop would not match up with my calculations, as they are made up on the water pumped through to homes, so its in much larger volumes and not all is drinking water. So I
needed to somehow, locate mains water and take a 500 ml sample from as close to the source as I can. I contacted Thames Water to see if I would be allowed access to one of there water depots or water pumping and refining areas situated around London unfortunately I never got a reply. So instead I got in contact with a member of Guildford Borough Council in Guildford in Surrey, and asked for Locations of water depots, or filtration sites in the area as I couldn’t find any online or via Thames Water or the Borough website, I got a list of locations, and picked the closest one to the Thames Water depot in Jacobs Well in Surrey. This is where the River Wey splits and eventually meets with the Thames, so I found myself at the closet point to the source of the water that makes its way through the various water control centres and eventually into our homes, and was in its purest stage, right before it was recycled and reassigned as part of a measurement and given a volume, documented, then finally valued and sold.
air
The key element to my investigation, is Air. I wanted to include air as a part of the project as I found it to be the most fascinating of all, that air could be measured, be assigned constraints even contained, and given a value. Something like the ownership and restriction of air is extraordinary, and is why I really wanted to research into it. My first understanding of the actual sale of air, as in air space being sold, completely empty space in a vertical 3 dimensional area, was documented for sale in America, in New York, Manhattan. A Real Estate company in Manhattan were selling air space for $10 million, which worked out that if every area in manhattan cost the same amount that it would $500 per square foot of air space in Manhattan. Unfortunately I couldn’t find out if any Real Estate companies are selling air space in
London, and as far as my research found nothing of that sort is happening or any sort of air sale transaction. So instead I chose to investigate the value of air space above London via a different method. London’s airspace has been and is increasingly becoming more popular for Helicopters as modes of transport for the super rich, and experience seekers.
£600 which equates to £4.00 per litre. 1 cubic foot is the equivalent of 28.5 litres. So the cost of the first fill/compression of the tank costs £114 per cubic foot. Or £600 for the fill of the tank. This cost will halve each time the tank is recompressed to the point where the compressed air will be completely free except for the minor electrical cost to drive the motor.
The cost of a Helicopter flight of London for 30 minutes is £129.00, with an average speed of 150 miles per hour for 30 minutes is 75 miles, which easily can cross the length of London, works out at £1.72 a mile.
This is again in relation to the comparison of elements to provoke the question of how can we assign a cost, or price of something we cannot see and place restrictions on something we can’t realistically control. All these areas are linking back to my original research on the ownership of land/minerals/elements to provoke argument on what do we really own, the arguments and falsities within the idea of ownership of parts of the Earth. And how we truly own nothing at all, due too the transient nature of human life, against the permanent presence of Earth.
Or in a larger distance across the UK an Air Ambulance travelling from Ireland to the UK costs £3,500 for 400 miles one way, equals £8.75 per mile. Just to make sure I had tried every avenue I looked into UK based companies selling compressed air in large quantities. Clarke Air, sell 150 litre air compressors for