What is the measure of a man?

Measurement: that is the form of translation I wish to make manifest for my part of this installation. It suddenly struck me the other day that I want finally to make my own version of Robert Hoddles's chain which he allegedly used to measure Melbourne. I first saw it when I returned to Australia in 2008 during a residency at La Trobe University in Bendigo.

I had wanted to revisit the State Library of Victoria, a space I really loved going to when I lived there in 1992. The wooden reading tables, with their green-glass and brass lamps, create a very Victorian atmosphere. It's a marvelous public space, always full of the kind of hushed energy that only seems to occur when strangers all embrace the hushed energy of concentration.

The chain is a part of the library's collection, which includes Ned Kelly's armor, which I'd gone to see. Whilst climbing the stairs and peering into the glass cases that house much of the collection on display, I saw the chain. There was something humble and yet beautiful in the wire loops in contrast to the straight sections and the seemingly inexplicable triangular loop some 25 lengths in.

According to Wikipedia: "Robert Hoddle (20 April 1794 – 24 October 1881) was a surveyor of Port Phillip in the 1830s, and the creator of the Hoddle Grid, the street grid system upon which inner city Melbourne is based."

It made me think of Tom Friedman's hand-made ruler and the nature of measurement, but also about Plato's famous quote "The measure of a man is what he does with power," which, in turn, made me think of the 1968 Civil Rights marchs on Beale Street and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death at the Lorraine Motel.
So... I'm not sure where these thoughts will lead, but I plan to begin fabrication of a chain based upon my bodily measurements: a translation of myself, if you will, into facts and figures: my head, my foot, my hand and my thumb, all common measurements. Then I shall use my body's increments to measure more of my environment from there.