DayFour issue 2 Strange Attractors

Published 2003

Cover: Matt Carr

The Butterfly Effect
The great thing about personal projects is the way you can take inspiration from anywhere, make links with anything that strikes your imagination, use your own logic and make up the rules as you go along. ‘Strange Attractors’ is a term in Chaos Theory. Even in James Gleick’s seminal text, Chaos, it’s very hard to pin down simply what a strange attractor is – something to do with ‘Turbulence’ and ‘Phase Space.' But David Ruelle, the physicist who in 1971 came up with the phrase (along with mathematician Floris Takens) felt it was ‘suggestive’. We couldn’t agree more. Strange Attractors also describes the themes in this, the second issue of d4. All the features deal with places, or people, or events that are out of the ordinary: a juggling convention in Germany, a road trip in Mozambique, an obsession with identical twins. And they were photographed or written about because they intrigued our contributors.

Contributors

© All photography and text in Dayfour is copyright the contributors. All rights reserved

Darkness Visible

I came to Prague in the spring of '94 intending to stay three days. Just a stopover from where I was in Germany to where I was working on a story in Poland. I had packed everything away back home to travel Europe for three months or till the money ran out. At the time the Czech Republic was still coming to terms with it’s new found independence. Things were changing at a jump and sputter and I wanted to watch it, document it, and somehow be a part of it. I was offered work at an English language newspaper with the words, 'you can’t make a living at it but if you want to try…' I may have stayed longer than I planned but I never lost the fascination with the country. I had become the crotchety old man who didn’t want things to change, I didn’t want to see that cafe or pub remodeled or the multiplex cinema move in. I don’t want your bottled Heineken or vegetarian option. I want the hidden piece of ham, the homemade slivovice that no government would deem safe for public consumption. I take comfort in the fact that the computer is broken and no one speaks English.

Contributor Matt Carr is an Indiana boy who 'can't hold down aa job for any length of time, travels the world irritating people, blames everything on Dick Cheney.'

More Matt in d4.3, d4.4, d4.6 and on www.mattcarr.com

back to top

Dune A Sahara Desert Diary

April 11th: I went out of the main living room into the small courtyard. It was quite dark. The wind had dropped. The night sky, unpolluted by city lights for a hundred miles or more, was studded with stars. Abisha was crouched by her wood fire as she prepared the evening meal: couscous and root vegetables which she cut in the palm of her hand, a single kerosene lamp beside her on the ground. Little Hassan lay asleep, finally, under the rag rug loom. The old wooden door was ajar and I could make out the dark shapes of our two camels, their jaws grinding on the palm fronds...

Contributors Simon Hicks and Karen Hayes are environmental consultants who have so many 'unusual' stamps in their passports that at airports they can no longer use normal check-in desks.

More Hicks and Hayes in d4.4 and on www.conservationworks.org

back to top

Postcards

14th June, Osaka. Tunisia 0, Japan 2. We were lucky enough to be staying in Osaka when Japan were playing their second game in the city. We couldn't afford tickets to the match but the organisers put up giant screens in the Osaka Dome baseball arena. Around 40,000 of us cheered and sang the limited repertoire of Japanese football songs, and the party continued outside. We convinced a group of Japanese supporters that my friend Jon was in fact Michael Owen's brother – a crowd gave chase and we had to leg it to the subway station.

Contributor Emma Kirkham is an art director and a football fanatic, a loyal supporter of Queens Park Rangers.

back to top

The Outsider

The beach smells of rotting seaweed and dead fish. Flies buzz. A crow picks over the pebbles, looking for rubbish to eat. The amusement arcade is noisy and it smells of adolescent boys and dirty coins and candy floss. Just like funfairs. They make me feel sick. And I don't like being drunk in the afternoon. Go back to the B&B for a nap. Later, look for a pub with a beer garden. The pier's all lit up, and there are pretty coloured bulbs strung between the streetlights all along the prom. Jack Jones is on at the Pier Pavilion. Crossing the road is easy.

Contributor Jude Evans is a photographer, painter and writer, who loves 'cats, stationery shops, and mashed potato.'

More Jude in d4.3

back to top

On the Road

We spent the weekend in Norfolk, VA (or Naw-fuk Vuh-gin-yuh, as the locals have it.) The idea was to get away from New York City and experience a bit of the Real America. We did that alright. As other reluctant New Yorkers have been telling me for the past two years, there's nothing like a weekend away from this stinking hellhole to make you run screaming back to the sticky embrace of this stinking hellhole. Norfolk, VA, on this weekend, boasted some of the ugliest fat men with buzz cuts I have ever encountered. Now, I don't wish to cast aspersions on the population of that good burg, so I am willing to suggest that most if not all of these red-faced doughboys were just visiting. I will go further and charge responsibility for this vast herd of ugly on the evil empire of Hasbro. Because as we swiftly realised, as we emerged from the hotel elevator and ploughed through swarms of (literally) red-necked families ripe to be introduced to the wonders of SPF15, these were not just ugly fat men – these were ugly fat men with dolls! Like hapless heroes in a summer blockbuster, we had managed to land ourselves plumb in the middle of a disaster story waiting to happen: a GI Joe Collectors' Convention. And we had no wheels.

Contributor Michelle Hayes currently lives in Ireland. She misses San Francisco and New York, but what she really wants is to get two dogs and move to Italy.

More Michelle in d4.1, d4.3 and d4.4

back to top

The Bear Comes Home

One hour trip from Moscow (by train, bus or car via Gorkovskoye Chaussee.) 38 kilometres from Moscow, which makes 24 miles. Around 160 aircraft concentrated here: planes, helicopters, gliders. The collection also includes over 120 engines and air guns, missiles, bombs, navigation instruments, radio and other communication equipment, rescue equipment, uniforms, combat banners and more...

Contributor Vadim Yasnogorodsky has been fashion director of Russian GQ and Maxim and Editor-in-Chief of Russian Wallpaper. He lives in Moscow.

More Vadim in d4.4

back to top

Nights at the Circus

......Luke, who's a technically very good juggler, came out for the final night and did this great routine. He had a TV and a prerecorded video. You can describe juggling patterns in numbers. He juggled while the TV screen read out the sequence of what he was juggling. For instance, a 'zero': the ball stays in place. A 'one' is if I take the ball and pass it from this hand to this hand. A 'three' is if I throw the ball from hand to hand. So, like, '5-3-3-3-1' is a pattern. There are a lot of jugglers who talk numbers – 'Can you do "7-3-5-1-2-4?"'...

Contributor Dr Michael Way is head of a research group at cancer Research UK. He is also an avid and expert juggler

More Michael in d4.1

back to top

Close Range

'We just happen to have the same hairstyle.'
'We have been together for 64 years.'
– Audrey and Mavis Hirschberg

Contributor Christina Hebe describes herself as a ' documentary portrait photographer.' Her work has appeared in magazines, books and exhibitions in the UK and her native Denmark.

More Christina in d4.3

back to top

Rites of Passage

In Mozambique... It was a wonderful road trip. Stevie drove, I panicked about how Stevie drove, and Marty told us stories to stop the two of us from arguing about how Stevie drove. We got stuck in too many sand dunes down south in Ponta d'Oro; had a puncture twenty minutes out of Maputo on our way up north to Inhambane; and locked the keys in the car for a day at Tofo Beach. But each English woman's or Scottish man's cockup was a cue for some Mozambican to rise out of what had looked like deserted bush and calmly rescue us from our Western incapacity...

Contributor Paula Glassman combines her work as a photographer with studying for a Masters Degree in International Development at LSE.

More Paula in d4.3, d4.4 and on www.paulaglassman.com

back to top

Revelations in Black

The weight of the North Sea heaves against the mouldering Victorian stonework, flinging icy spindrift in your face. The small town huddles into the cleft of the valley, its cobbled streets slick with rain. Overlooking it from the headland the ruined beauty of the ancient abbey looms out of the mists, a sight that has inspired a religious conversion and become a backdrop for Bram Stoker's Dracula, among other things. We are, of course, in Whitby.

Contributor Sarah Ward is a designer and a (sometime) alternative fashion model with a liking for for tequila and shiny things. She says, 'All the best ideas are written on bus tickets and loo paper.'

More Sarah in d4.3 and d4.4

back to top

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Fashion to make your eyes pop.

Contributor Andrew Clatworthy has spent time on the road working with both rock bands and fashion photographers.

More Andrew in d4.3 and d4.4

back to top | dayfour home | contact