some rough thoughts

I did some research on Internet about “daylighting” streams and get some stuff which I put together on the web site that I just launched to make it a database for my project. The links and the maps in there are my tools.

In the Q & A with Richard Pinkham from one source (3 Rivers 2nd Nature ), it is said that since 1984 till 2000, there were at least 20 daylighting projects that have been completed in the U.S., and at least another 20 were in various stages of development. When David Haley did his unculverting in Ulverston in 1992, it wasn't the first case in the world. However, most of the cases in the files tends to be scientist or engineer-initiated. He seems to be one of the earliest examples to take such task as an artist in Britain. I wonder, what is the impetus to make him undertook the work?

I also noticed in the WEN interview “David Haley on the Record” he mentioned that ‘I spent six or seven months trying to get permission to unculvert the river. It was at the time when the National Rivers Authority was handing over to the Environment Agency. When I eventually got permission to go ahead with the project the Planning Officer said he had never heard of someone applying to unculvert a river.’

Why it took so many months to get permission to unculvert? Does that have anything to do with the administrative transition of the National Rivers Authority? Or, the transition represented a more beneficial inclination towards ecological concerns, and opened up a bigger opportunity to carry out this kind of projects?

The London based artist group Platform also did quite a few works/projects on the buried rivers in London during the early 90s. It seems the unculverting/deculverting/daylighting streams became a focus around that time. Could that be related to the administrative transition or that simply is a result of the artistic effects since Platform recited the influence they have acquired from the current practioners/cultural activists and David Haley is among the list?