Monday, July 22, 2019

Lions in London - The V & A Museum...

A bashful-looking lion with its cub.
With a large back-log of blogs that have not materialized, I need to make a move! Here are some of the amazing noble beasts that I saw in May, in the Medieval section at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The lions in question were presented in many mediums - sculpted, carved, molded, painted and woven creatures.

Although the mighty lion might well be the king of the jungle, and therefore synonymous with royalty, the range of expressions on show here was quite extensive, and not merely regal or haughty!
Some of the representations were bas-reliefs, as in the above, in stone and then ivory...


The lions looked a little cowed or just plain quirky, but certainly not fierce!
The ones below were carved into stone to form the decoration of well heads, from mid-15th century Venice.


In fact, they often seem to adorn many of the forms of access to water. Below is the detail on a fountain basin from mid-16th century Verona; Italy...


Other lions support vessels and water once spouted from their open jaws...


 The following water spout emerges from a dragon's mouth that initially springs from the lion's mouth (late 15th century Lucca, Italy).


My favourite lions were perhaps those used as aquamaniles (water ewers) for the ceremonial washing of hands. The funny wisened expressions and pigeon-toed stances were unique!


Pillars of stone and wood were held up by valiant lions...


Or ones that looked more sheepish...


The following, rather worried-looking beast has guarded the monument of a Veronese military commander since the early 15th century.


The poor creature really does look as if he has the world on his shoulders - literally, whilst his tail curls beneath his legs...


Other lions seemed more carefree - clambering up pillars with their dense tails furling around them like marmoset monkeys.


Finally, the chivalric representations on stained glass bore the typical lionesque pose...


As did some of the woven and painted works, with lions demonstrating their strength, baring their teeth and powerful claws, ready to strike...


Proving their rightful place in the animal kingdom...


Although sometimes they did not seem too convinced of this themselves, and look on with quizzical expressions!


Monday, July 15, 2019

A Prime Day for Reckoning...

One of my favourite sections from the façade of Reims Cathedral...
Despite appearances, I am not on an Amazon-bashing mission! However, as their Amazon Prime Day is about to take place, for 48-hours of frantic shopping, I wanted to consider a few things that have led to a number of discussions here. The flood gates are set to open, and the virtual cash tills ready to rake in record amounts of money, even surpassing sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. For Amazon, there are not only huge gains to be made in revenue, but in loyalty too, with membership numbers increasing as basic customers pay a subscription fee in order to gain elite access to the prime deals. It appears to be a golden win-win situation...

Prime Days occur but once a year, but nowadays, almost on a daily basis we seem to be learning of the dire work conditions at Amazon. The end of year festive period already appears to be anything but jolly for the armies of frenzied workers who pack and parcel in order to honour everyone’s Christmas list requirements. You therefore can’t help but wonder what the peak summer-time Prime Days entail for employees, when the heat is on, in every sense.

The massive Amazon warehouses are ominously-called ‘fulfillment centres’, a term that rather recalls the Ministries of 'Love, Peace, Plenty, and Truth' in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Without a doubt, these centres enable Amazon to meet and go beyond the expectations of its millions of customers, just as it has done since 1994. Its product range, competitive pricing, delivery speed and efficiency mean that Amazon wins hands-down in online retail, across the board. But a dark-side is beginning to emerge that taints the present, and hints towards an troubling future.

Ugly stories of pressurized workers, struggling to maintain seemingly unrealistic, almost inhuman targets, timings and deadlines abound, all along the Amazon chain. Orders must be processed within a set time-limit and the momentum of this giant machine must be kept by each and every cog, in an uninterrupted manner. The storage of products and their efficient distribution requires a formidable organisation at each stage to keep this juggernaut rolling. Standardization goes hand-in-hand with optimization and productivity… Unfortunately, the work force here is largely based on fallible human capital, with its flesh, blood, foibles and feelings – for time being at least. Crushed by restrictive time-windows that open and shut with stop-watch precision, obliged to cut corners at every turn, monitored by Big Brother tracking systems, the employees inside and outside the centres feel the burn. In the drive for efficiency, warnings and terminations are swiftly issued to any worker whose performance fails to hit target after training. Curious names are given to the various task workers that start to resemble humble insects, scurrying and toiling away in a parallel universe, that feeds ours. Unloaders remove goods from the trucks arriving at the centres so that ‘water spiders’ can distribute these to the work stations. ‘Stowers’ then stock this inventory into shelving units referred to as ‘pods’ and ‘pickers’ pluck desired items from these, ready for ‘packers’ to box and load them up, for shipment. The group of workers who intervene in areas where robots are at work are sinisterly known as the ‘amnesty team’. Boxes are finally distributed by delivery men using a hand-held device known as a ‘rabbit’. Naturally, significant parts of this vast process of customer fulfillment relies on intelligent automation – robotics – and elaborate computing. In the search for increased and improved performance, and faced with the growth of scale and pace of its activities, Amazon is surely set to hand-over ever greater responsibility to state-of-the-art technology. Not only will this revolutionize the shop floor for online retaillers, but will also lead the way for their giant bricks-and-mortar competitors such as the mighty Walmart. More important still, this practice will set a pattern for industry and commerce and in general, just as ground-breaking as Ford’s assembly line in production.

 Although Amazon has not yet implemented a management by algorithm system, it is leading towards a structure that relies heavily on I.A and A.I. Indeed, Amazon has already acknowledged that the idea of a ‘lights out’ warehouse is already on the map; for the moment they must wait for high-tech to deliver the means to roll this out. At the dawn of this brave new world, job losses are to be expected, as human workers are let go - their manual tools laid down at the feet of machinery that affords incomparable speed and efficiency. Amazon need not even lay workers off, since the work conditions are already such that all but the most desperate employee would gladly leave of their own accord in many cases. Certainly, given the menial, mind-blowingly repetitive, poorly-paid, often hazardous nature of the work, it would be preferable for all concerned to hand it over to sophisticated automation. Since this work is so dehumanizing, why should a human work force be shackled in this way?

But that leads to the next question; what of the redundant workers? Technological unemployment is nothing new; already in 1930, John Maynard Keynes drew attention to "unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour". Naturally, new jobs will be created in fields that we cannot yet envisage in this unchartered territory, but will these be notably more fulfilling for the individual concerned or yield better results for society overall? For many ways yes, as technology opens up a world of exciting, challenging opportunities to facilitate work and improve conditions. Computors – however smart – cannot, as yet, do everything and will still require human intervention. But that is not the whole story….

Everything is geared towards consumer satisfaction, profit margins and boosting economies, but there is more to life than purchasing goods and services and corporate bottom lines. Society is held together by far more than the latest intelligent device – sociable or not. A small but significant example; the cash tills that are being dropped in favour of scanning decks. Give me a human cashier any day for basic shopping transactions! How is simple human contact going to be maintained through creepy digital personal assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa? What satisfaction can former cashiers possibly glean from standing up all day, supervising the very scanning device that replaced them? Training and education will undoubtedly open many possibilities, but could these cater to everyone’s needs? What of those people who no amount of coaching and teaching could ever adapt to modern work expectations because they simply do not have the intellectual faculties suddenly required? What about workers who were perfectly content and suited to doing the dull, routine work that has been suppressed or is now carried out by some I.A?

No doubt Amazon will break records over the next two days, but I wonder where this will all lead us… and them. It feels as if a day of reckoning or reflection is long-since due. We relentlessly consume to excess and fail to notice that in this process we are perhaps letting humanity get sold short. Ironically, Bezos - occasionally referred to as the 'anti-Christ' of the workplace - initially wanted to name his company 'Relentless', but opted for Amazon instead. Either way, the flow is ceaseless, carrying us along, sweeping away any obstacle that slows it down, but drowning much of what is in its path too.


Sunday, July 14, 2019

They Shall Not Grow Old....


Ever since hearing of Peter Jackson’s 2018 documentary film of the life of the British soldiers on the Front in WW1, I had been very keen to see it. They Shall Not Grow Old was aired on BBC television on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. It came out in France this July…
Stunned viewers are immersed in a first-hand experience of the trenches, based on the impressions left on those who had experienced the «war to end all wars» between 1914-1918. The faded distant past is brought vividly into focus, and injected with colour, sound and lifeblood through the digital restoration and remastering of original 100-year-old footage. Film director and producer Jackson was asked to take on this project which was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW (the UK arts programme for the Great War centenary) and the Imperial War Museum in association with the BBC. From hundreds of hours of British war footage, taken from the archives of the BBC and the Imperial War Museum, this unique film emerges, captivating us as the voices sound out from the past, and the colour seeps out from the frames to swamp all our emotions.



Not intending to be a historical documentary, with set factual detail of names, dates and place, the film first plunges us into the anticipation and flurried preparation of war. This is presented in stark black-and-white, as hordes of civilians finally set off as ordered troops of soldiers.Veterans’ voices rise up throughout the film, recounting their experience in a harrowingly frank, matter-of-fact way which has not been dulled down and flattened by political correctness. The accents and attitudes vary, yet the sense of camaraderie is overwhelming, uniting a motley crew in the most unlikely manner. As the mud and horror grows in the confusion and inhuman conditions of the trenches, colour suddenly flows into the scenes so that we feel the pulse of life in all this devastation. The red of the symbolic poppies burns out of the dull backcloth of tortured landscapes, just as the blood lies vivid on mud-splattered bodies. All sense of bearings, purpose and logic is lost in the morass of warfare, with its seas of mud, stagnant water and spilt blood. In this blur of lost boundaries and identities, the soldiers start to perceive little difference between themselves and their foe. All are ultimately soldiers in the same war, «getting a job done» on different sides, yet experiencing the same hardships and thus drawing a strange humanity in the most inhumane circumstances.
                               
Horse bust - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Peter Jackson dedicated the film to the memory of his grandfather, but as he said, it could have been created in the name of anyone’s loved one from the Great War, irrespective of class, race or nationality. There have been a number of criticisms directed at the film – from the French public at least – claiming that the work fails to mention les Poilus (French infantrymen) and as such is too chauvinistic. However, this was indeed an English film; the numerous mentions of the nice cup of tea and sentiments towards the battlefield beasts of burden – horses, mules and dog leave the viewer in little doubt of that! It offers an account of the Tommy impressions and images of the Front within regiment, based on many voices, not just one narrator who tells his own story of the war. Yet those impressions and images were shared by all the soldiers of the 14-18 War. Furthermore, this generation which sacrificed so much largely drew the same conclusion ; the Great War had led to unprecedented slaughter and had achieved very little. The cruelty and carnage of war have been captured here in this great film, but so too has humanity and beauty, arising like the light, sound and colour under the master direction of Jackson.

                                   They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 
                                        Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 
                                        At the going down of the sun and in the morning 
                                        We will remember them....
                                                             
                                                  For the Fallen - by Laurence BINYON  (1914)

                                                  
                                                 'Mademoiselle from Armentières'