NOTE: This is a collection of information I have gathered and an informal critique of my progress so far regarding the Bath House Data Jam. All the results and information I have will be made available in a more utile form should anybody want or need them.

My objectives:

Think of a project to do with current and past acoustic information relating to both the building and its various occupants over time.

After gathering statistics and doing extensive research of the history of the bath house (largely through the incredibly detailed weekly minutes from the bath house committee from 1890 to the 1960’s) I found myself wanting to construct a sound piece reflecting the uses of the building with audio sources representing the various activities that took place over its history. All the statistics relating to the different activities and their respective people flows would be collated and averaged so as to provide each sound source with a volume level indicative of its usage by ‘customers’ over Laurie Grove’s history. For example, a far greater proportion of people used the building to swim in than to study so the sound source representing the former would be louder than the latter.
This is inspired by the possibilities in thinking about time in a non-linear fashion. Representing as many sounds across the history of the building at once symbolizes in a very crude way ‘the past inside the present’. But, this is not a sentimental pursuit or a critique of the building for its past usage though- rather than conjuring ghosts, I want to symbolise a conception of time that is ever present through a great deal of non-Platonic philosophy- that time is not a linear progression or a fixed eternity but a constant folding and unfolding- a never static becoming where past, present and future co-exist in a constant state of potential. This constant bleeding through of temporality might urge us to think outside of the very idea of past, future and present. Also, I was rather hoping for a fucking cool racket to broadcast out onto the Laurie Grove and get passer’s by to think about just what went on in that building and how privileged and lucky we are to be rid of this civilizing machine.
Through these last few weeks I was aware that I was following a very personal interest and that the statistics and research might well turn out to be more useful than the audio component. My main reason for thinking this is my ideas turned on a highly constructed sound piece and that this would possibly be too closed for group activity, especially when other members of the group were also collating sonic information.

Research history of building usage over the past century.
Obviously, we’re all aware of the use of the building as a bath house, the initial purpose of this being to the “civilise” ‘the great unwashed’ of the Lewisham and Deptford area of South London. Parallel to this is Laurie Grove’s function as a swimming pool providing both first and second class facilities (seemingly separate pools and changing facilities). Simultaneously, the building also offered a laundry service (well, self-service from what I can glean). These latter two functions far outlasted the use of the building as a bath house as a civilising machine although I have yet to pinpoint the date when this came to an end.
Laurie Grove bath house also became a focal point for community life, offering a myriad of entertainments that we’re intermittently staged in the early 1900’s only to become highly dominant from the 40’s onwards. Dances were staged several times a week and the number of applications detailed in the minutes far outweighed the availability of the building. This was far from being the only source of leisure and social activity. Boxing was frequent and wrestling also (though not to the extent of the former). Political rallies were also highly prevalent and covering the spectrum of affiliation- labour, conservative and even (very regularly) communist. There were weddings, gala dinners and indoor bowls took place every week.
Perhaps most fascinating (and initially frustrating as hell when carrying out my research) the building seems to have something of a schizophrenic personality. When the pools were covered over for any non-wet event, Laurie Grove Bath House became Borough Hall- seemingly a blatant attempt to cast a more refined image for the purpose of disassociating any horrendous thoughts of the poor having bathed underneath the lord mayor’s dining table.

Collate statistics of people flow in relation to this usage.
I will present this to you in the form of a small excel spreadsheet.
The minutes provided precise and detailed information regarding people flow for every week from the opening of Laurie Grove through to its merger with a different council in the mid 1960’s. I will present a small database showing averaged statistics of people flow for each decade covered by the minutes. This leaves a gap between the 60’s and now which others may already have recorded. If not, it’s only a short walk back to the archive. Disappointingly, I couldn’t ascertain the people flow stats for the entertainment functions of the building- I was really intrigued to know how many people attended the dances and the boxing, wanting these two pursuits to be represented by their own sonic identity within the piece.
Ultimately, what is staggering is the sheer weight of numbers passing through the building on a day-to-day level when the building was in operating as bath house, pool and laundrette. Compared to the quiet and learned hum of Laurie Grove these days with DamiEminHurst art students downstairs and subversive interactive media students upstairs, the building must have been sonically terrifying.

Learn how to measure sonic amplification.
Not completed yet- David and Joao seem to have this in hand and for me to achieve anything on this front, I need to work more closely with them.

To learn MySQL to build databases.
In progress. I have the data ready to send and the end result will depend on the final goals of the group project.

To source and learn software that can manipulate and transfer data into sound.
Installed and learning Pure Data. Not fully competent yet though. Er, at all. Help??

To combine data and sound into an effective whole.
Not complete yet. This is obviously not a useful target to state in this section with the project far from being finalized at this stage. This belongs in the final section.

To learn how to time manage.
Hmmm, so far just ok. I can see at this point that the most vital aspect of the project for me so far was the information gathering as this had the potential to set me on a wealth of different tangents which would have required a re-writing of this form and a potentially more intriguing project. Also, injury prevented me from being as mobile as I would have liked and I was not prepared for that. I am disappointed that I have no audio data to present although I do have some music to play which might give a very vague idea about how the sound piece might have sounded.

The resources and strategies I will use are:

Talk to Goldsmiths site office about access to building when closed.
Not done- no recordings made of the building due to various problems (injury contributing to mobility problems and poor organisation). However, David and Joao had already collated sonic data of the variety I would have recorded and probably with much better results so this seemed less of a priority at this point. Again, this highlighted the need for collaboration.

Contact curator of Lewisham Voices web project to track down residents who used to attend the bath house when it was open to the public for both information and possible aural sources.
This was a struggle- the website is a few years old and a project between various institutions, none of which having any knowledge of it. Currently following a lead at the London Museum BUT this no longer seems vital as I discovered more than I could have imagined in Lewisham Archive.

Check libraries and local historical groups for possible archive footage (for sonic purposes).
In progress. Any material available will be collated by Friday.

Construct database of statistical information to convert into sonic information.
Spreadsheet complete. Database on hold until project structure is finalised.

Research potential for sound as subversion (e.g., William Burroughs) to glean different strategies of relocating noise.
Done- of especial interest is Burroughs’ “The Invisible Generation” which can be found online here. The ideas present here are something I intend to work on across the rest of the year in parallel with some audio strategies for Gearbox.

Collate recordings of the acoustics of the interior and exterior of the bath house at various points during the day and night representing its current usage.
Explore the sounds of the rooms: the furniture, the pipes, windows, doors etc through amplification in an effort to analyse and playthe sound of the building itself.
Explore the acoustic information from outside of the building and what is prevented from entering the building through sound proofing.
All three of the above not complete yet. As before, this is something to be explored with David and Joao.

To constantly monitor and re-prioritise these strategies to work within the allotted time frame and achieve the best results (i.e., drop a strategy if necessary if its completion time impacts too greatly on a more important aspect).
At this point, I feel only partly successful. With work already being done on the sound capturing side of things, I felt that the information gathering was of greater importance so that I could contribute rather than simply rehash other people’s work. Hopefully the information and any further data that is required can then allow for a more precise collation of audio information should any further sound be needed.

My target date for completion will be: Tuesday 13th November