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ISSUE 7- The Mass-Observation Edition: 12th Day Survey

Oliver Sumner: Portsmouth
Sandro Setola: Somewhere in Europe

Dear Rosie

I'm forwarding Sandro's 12th day diary, which I've just recieved. I like that he is being poetic and slightly introspective. Mass Observation wasn't cold scientific objectivity. Charles Madge was a poet after all. I failed to write a 12th diary on the day, although I could still do it now:

On the news that morning I heard an estimated 200 people had died in the previous day's multiple rail bombs in Mumbai. The British reaction seemed very slight. Particularly considering we had just passed the first anniversary of similar attacks in London, and Britain's historical relationship with India. Getting ready for work I was reminded that I first met Sandro in London at the time of the July 2005 bombs. I got to Aspex [gallery] at about 9.15 and spent the day indoors mostly having meetings and writing emails. In the evening I went to the Millais Gallery 10th anniversary to hear the speech from John Everett Millais' grandson, and eat too many Danish pastries. It was a warm day and quite uncomfortable inside the gallery. So the 12th July 2006 was spent in close quarters. I had thought of recording my anonymous observation of people in the street, or at the supermarket. Or to use a questionnaire to gather views dispassionately. But Sandro's right. this would always seem inadequate and probably tedious.

Let me know, Best Ollie

>From: "sandro setola" <sandrosetola@hotmail.com>
>To: oliversumner@hotmail.com
>Subject: RE: Mass Observation
>Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 09:21:47 +0000

Some thoughts on the twelfth of july 2006

One doesn't really wake up observing everything as precisely as possible,
moreover this morning I woke up at about half past seven and felt the heat
of the sun on the tent and a full bladder urging me to get out and make my
way to the toilet. It was only halfway there that I remembered our
appointment because I stumbled upon a bizarre phenomena. A huge mass of
trilobites had gathered in a certain spot of the camping area doing
nothing in particular but swarm, forming a big black spot. Observing itself
always calls to mind some kind of
super-conscious act of studying and
looking at ones surroundings or tracing habitual acts and changes in the
weather or something. But observing everything seems to be a completely
unattainable task for anyone human. What causes this inability is just as
much an unanswered question as the question why we would even want to do
such a thing.
Observing as in looking and
experiencing through all the senses and recording as in memorizing and to some extent reproducing these impressions usually cancels out a lot of things like emotions and mood swings affecting the most objective kind of observation, but most of all observation itself seems to stand in
the way of recording because halfway writing something down, a new visual or
sensual reality has already presented itself and is eager to be recorded. I
guess that's why we want to have machines doing that for us. Just
observing without the recording bit is what we do best I guess.