Smith Journal – Volume Three

There are the coffee houses of 18th century Europe where people from different classes and occupations would literally bump into one another to share ideas, and a 100-year-old workshop in Germany’s Black Forest where a young man makes cuckoo clocks with his father. There’s a small studio on the top of a record factory where the owner sneaks up to listen to old albums after hours, and the inside of a prison cell where zero resources and a compulsion to ink give rise to clandestine invention. There’s the virtual world where people are making a comfortable living buying and selling real estate in parallel universes, and the back of a restored International Box Van where one guy has reconstructed a 160-year-old wet-plate camera. Then there’s the boat adrift on the South Atlantic Ocean where one man has found himself caught in a series of maddening lies – and there’s a lesson learnt: while space can inspire, it can also conspire.