CSM Test Mine Camborne

A few weeks ago I went on a trip down to the Test Mine at Cambourne, with the intention to explore my ideas and interest relating to mines. I took a camera with me to record what I saw. And it was great. Seeing first hand what actually goes on in a mine.

The mine is a ‘working’ mine in as much as students treat it as if it were an actual mine were they extract the various types of materials. The students practice their techniques of how to dig and explode rock.

I think there is a bit more that goes into it than that, but this was about as much as I understood. I was given a tour of the mine and showed the different tunnels and the seams of tin, and other examples metals that are natural in the rock. The ground was deep in water in places, you had to negotiate a path over the pools, and there were tunnels which had big barriers over them saying ‘no entry’ but I was assured that this only applied to a few of these tunnels and was directed towards the ones which I could go into ‘with caution’. I was given a light, which by means of a long cable and massive battery pack strapped to my waist I could attach to a metal clip on my helmet, and then I was told to come back when I finished. So I gingerly stepped off into the darkness armed with a rather dim light as a guide.

I took loads of photographs and came back with about 15 good ones. Because I was experimenting with long exposures it meant that I had to carry a heavy tripod with me, which was a bit annoying.

I’m guessing but in the olden days I imagine that the miners would light a stick of dynamite, throw it at the wall and then run as far as their legs could carry them, or they may have used sledgehammers, but that would have tired them out very quickly. Either way I’m sure that the job was a lot more demanding physically than it is now.

What happens today is the ‘miners’ decide which direction they want to take the digging in presumably they follow the money and go after the rock which contains the most stuff – in this case tin. And then start strategically exploding the rock face, they don’t throw the dynamite instead they drill straight into the rock face leaving long holes so they can then push the dynamite into the rock. I think the holes can be up to a few feet long, and the dynamite is pushed right to the back of the hole. Imagine the one hole and then times it by about two hundred. The holes act to weaken the rock face and then when the explosion takes place the holes which contain the dynamite, don’t have so much matter to move.

The miners still have to drill into the rock, which is done using a kind of drilling platform so that they don’t have to take the whole weight of the drill when it is working, It is still a long and time consuming process but much improved through the use of technology. Below is a picture of the lecturer Gus Williams, he is drilling, whilst the others who can’t be seen are shining their lamps towards the borehole.

When you walk around the mine apart from entering into a kind of suspended disbelief where you become shrouded in the atmosphere of the mines, the lowlight levels, the moisture in the air and the smell of wet rock, as well as the constant dripping and splashing of water, it is quite amazing to see the world from this angle.

With each step you take you can see where the rock has been blasted away, there are traces all over the walls, first of all I thought that the walls were covered in some kind of elaborate graffiti, but then it became apparent that the mines were covered, absolutely from top to bottom in these bore holes. Every place you look has these bore holes, including outside the mine, behind the tractor. It looks like a special rendering that never caught on.

Boreholes…

..with a broken drill bit in one

This was the store, with more holes.


When I was being shown around the mine by Geoff Addersly (Camborne School of Mines), he explained to me what various parts of the mine were for. There was a section which was being used by Exeter University for engine building, useful to them because of the noise levels created by the machinery. A company tried to use a a small part of the mine for the storing of nuclear waste, or more like burying. They dug out a hole which was experimentally filled with radioactive material, and then filled over with concrete, but discovered that this was not sufficient enough to eliminate the radio active effects, so abandoned the plan and went elsewhere.

This photograph shows the concrete filling over the rock face, which would have been part of the experiment.

There was also a wind tunnel that was under construction for another project, but was not currently in use. The ceiling is covered in a heavy-duty wire mesh, and then behind is the concrete slab.

On the rock face you can see traces of the oxidised tin – though judging by the collection of minerals at the university the colours could be specific to any number of elements.

Below you can just about see some white specs on the rock, which are a type of crystal formation.

As well as the sight seeing I was also able to see Geoff and Gus doing a laser scan of the mine.


This is a 2D picture like image of the mine on a computer screen, the laser enables for an accurate representation of the mines rock face, which is then used to calculate exactly how and where to drill the rock – to then set the explosion.

Around the mine there are lots of little illuminus blue plaques, which have been attached to the wall. The scanner is programmed to find these plaques and they are registered as location points, the scanner can then link up these locations and stitch the images together, so that instead of lots of images of the mine you can have one continuous image which shows the whole of the mine.

When you watch the laser it is almost like the lights you find in a disco which move across the floor, but each movement is a measurement, and the main point of the measuring in this scan was to find the rods, which have been inserted into the boreholes so that the exploding of the rock can be measured to a the nearest millimetre.

It was really good to go down the mine, and see how they work today. I did know what to expect because I had been told before hand, but when I imagine mine, what comes to mind is something underground, where the walls are held in place by bits of timber. Somehow I don’t think that that kind of set up would be allowed these days, health and safety would probably go wild.Hopefully I can encourperate some aspects of this experience into my work.

Just found a couple of blogs that I like - http://mis-guide.blogspot.com/ this one is an anti-travel guide, showing you weird and wonderful ways to appreciate our landscape that you would not find in a travel guide.

And a second one which is a guy in Paris http://cedric-paris2e.blogspot.com/ talking about art, relevant because there are some pictures of Zaha Hadid architectural drawings, a proposed Opera house in Dubia. Posted on the 17/11/2008 - they look very similar to ariel views of the Eden Project.

I really enjoyed the trip to St Ives because it made me feel as though there were lots of other people out the like me who were just waiting to belong to something bigger than themselves, not like a church, more artistic like'.. So we sat and spoke inanely about art for a few hours, mostly public art.

My own belief is that placing art in the public arena is a very valuable thing. We often find that art is restricted to the gallery space where it becomes the refine of the elite, and therefore it seldom makes it's way into real world, which is surely what it is made for.

Because of this it may be true to say to make an artistic statement, that is recognised by enough people, including non-artists we should explore the idea of working outside of the gallery and stepping into the public arena.

After the St Ives trip I was thinking about competitions and how I have always wanted to win one (..ha ha). Well I have looked a lot into the idea of doing a residency abroad, going somewhere hot and making sculpture – but it always came back to the fact that I was too scared to apply, and a bit on the lazy side. I remember searching for the type of residencies available:

Scottish Sculpture Works - http://www.ssw.org.uk/
John Micheal Kohler Arts Centre – http://www.jmkac.org/
Artquest – http://www.artquest.org.uk

There are lots of residencies, on Artquest alone you can access a whole database of ongoing opportunities, it's great. I have to say that mostly this was wishful thinking on my part, but it did make me think that in the future I should give competitions a go even I have to concede and never apply for a competition again like Bruce Mau suggests, not to say I have applied for loads.. but who knows.

So when I saw the Wildworks www.wildworks.biz/ brief, I thought that I should give it a go, and sent off a creative CV. I chose to design the CV around my current ideas, I made it so that it would open out in layers and hopefully be exciting to look at.

The map folded into a small square which I put in a self seal plastic bag witch was meant to protect it, a bit like when you are walking you can put a map in a bag so it does not get wet. I then printed my CV onto the map itself and included photos and a cd of my work.

St Ives/Heartlands

On the 17th of November I went to the Tate at St Ives, for an event called ‘What’s coming over the Hill’, which was run by Creative Skills, of Cornwall and it was about placing art in the public realm.

There were four speakers,

Locus+ is a visual arts commissioning agency that works with artists on the production and presentation of socially engaged, collaborative and temporary projects, primarily for non-gallery locations. In each project place or context is integral to the meaning of the artwork. Project manager Matt Hearn represents Locus+. http://www.locusplus.org.uk/



Dave Beech is an artist in the collective Freee. He lives in London and teaches at Chelsea College of Art. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly and is represented by the International 3 gallery, Manchester. http://www.dave.beech.clara.net/



Graham Gussin uses a variety of media including drawing, photography, sculpture, film, video and sound installation. He produces works that engage with the human experience of the infinite, creating situations that interrogate our perception of the real and its relationship to imagined experience. He was commissioned by Locus + in 2006 to produce Illumination Rig in Newcastle upon Tyne, a work which was also show in the 8th Sharjah biennale in 2007. http://www.grahamgussin.co.uk/


The Chair Alistair Snow who is a member of the Arts Council and also a director for artist newsletter [a-n] magazine.

The above information was taken from Creative Skills http://www.creativeskills.org.uk/

All of the speakers were actively involved with placing their art in the public realm. A lot of the work was time based, performance art and site specific. And all of the work was somehow about challenging convention. Locus+ was an example of a funding body, which were not restricted by councils, who have their own agenda and instead pushed artistic boundaries providing the public a more realistic version of art today.

A topic, which was raised for discussion, was about the ‘quality’ of public art, how much of it seemed to be ill considered. Using the example that the artists applying for commissions often have their ideas diluted so that they are palatable or more generic, this may be partly to do with art needing to fulfil certian preconceived expectations.

The talks were very interesting, and relevant to Cornwall because Cornwall has recently been given a cash injection by private and public investors. The money will be spent on a massive project of regeneration within Cornwall namely ‘Heartlands’. Lots of initiatives have been put in place with the aim of introducing new business and culture into the area raising the economy and perception of Cornwall so it is on par with the rest of the country.