4ip

Just found out channel 4's 4ip fund is to be axed in a series of funding reviews. I've been talking to Forma about approaching this fund for over two years, in fact I approached them and recieved some positive feedback, but we did nothing with it and now it's no longer availble, a lesson to be learned and learned and learned.

Stretching New Boundaries

I was short listed for the Strange Cargo: Stretching New Boundaries commission. I met with Lisa and Brigitte who run strange cargo, they had some really interesting ideas about using social networking to boost participation, and to some degree that is what the commission was organised around. I felt quite confident, this is after all exactly what my PHD is about, and I have a track record in producing this kind of work.

Just found out I wasn't successfull, its really not very encouraging, if I had written the brief for the commission it would not have been much different to how it actually was. On relfection I made a real point at the interview about not super-imposing and external idea, but developing a conversation around a theme, I think maybe i over played this, when does 'I don't want to parachute an idea in become', 'I haven't really got an idea, but I'm sure something will come along'. I am properly disapointed, i've asked the curators for a quick chat, but I wonder the wisdom of advocating this way of working, from the standpoint of being a relatively unknown artist with a small track record of works. Perhaps next time - if there is one - I flag up this approach but temper it with discussion of some thematic focus. Ho hummm .......

Inspiring Digital Engagement Festival

I spent yesterday at the Inspiring Digital Engagement festival in Sheffield, oragnised by Karen Martin and Ann Light. The theme of the conference was digital inclusion and engagement, and how the arts might assist in this. I presented Landscape-Portrait as a case study. I have to say some of the presentations was quite painful, where technology is seen as some magic salve which produces coherence and unity for a group. As I go to conferences more and more the presentation of documentation; "Here's some ladies buying some plastic tubes" really needs attention, were all talking about inclusion and the mute voices are those that participate in the projects, its ironic perhaps when everyone is talking about this social web moment mm.

Some interesting bits came out of it though, the project People Voice Media, working with two groups within the Burmese and Karen Community in Sheffield. There is apparently a feeling of mistrust between these communities that the project wished to address. The project website was hacked by someone in Thailand and made to look like the Burmese community had been involved. The real culprit apparently was the Burmese government.

Thumbprint use that most ubiquitous of new technologies, mobile phones, to engage people in place and ideas. As Andrew Wilson said, mobile phones aren't technology, their ubiquity makes them just stuff and texting is doing stuff. When we talk about technology then we are already operating along a divide.





One other thing, in this moment of funding crisis in the arts. Speaking to one of the other presenter about the curse of the Olympic Inspired logo. As I understand it no funds are made available to organisations for sporting this logo, rather its a convenient badge when the Olympics need to justify their support of grass roots organisations, in fact once you display this logo, rather than open doors for organsiations, its reduces the amount of funds you can apply for.

Ars Electronica 2010

Just sitting in Linz airport returning from Ars Electronica. I am experiencing quite a mixed response to to the festival. My general feeling is that this festival has lost it relevance, it was always quite insular and novelty obsessed. It felt that in order to address this issue an external relevance has been super imposed, this year a familiar exploration of the axis of environmental concern explored through technology . This well worn path, in the hands of the Ars machine, has manifested as 'Repair', which showcased technological and cultural reworkings that actively address environmental issues. Having said that a good majority of the works, and most of those taking part in the Prix Ars Electronica, had very tenuous links to the theme of the festival. In the main the works which engaged me had very little to do with the theme.










For example: the work by Ei Wada - Braun Tube Jazz Band - used old tv as as interface, making use of their electromagnetic properties to perform stonking noisey electronic music. This performance, in the use of the old tv's underlines the point, the use of old tech isn't what this work is about for me, the aural performance is everything, the use of cathode ray tubes to do this, whilst providing some nice cinematic images, a la Cronenberg's VideoDrome, feels inconsequential to the work.

My particular interest in going to Ars was to check out the Digital Communities section. I was disappointed without ever really getting involved, which is a failing on both sides.

ARS Electronica Festival 2010: Richard Sennet - The Craftsman (english) from Ars Electronica on Vimeo.

I am the first to hold my hand up to a point made by Richard Sennet in his excellent lecture 'The Craftsman' that technologies have made us very poor at social collaboration, I can easily hide behind some tech rather than actually talk to someone. Sennet cited the example of Googles Wave service, which was set up to host social interactions that engender change online, however as Sennet claims, because of Waves linear structure the quality of the discussion, in particular its discursive nature was lost, with just the main trajectory held in focus, leading to what Sennet has termed a 'Brutal Simplification'.










I think this is what I might have experienced in the Digital Communities area. Set up as an ad hoc internet cafe, speakers corner, international tuck shop come lounge, the lack of an accessible structure, whilst sounding great on the text description, left a lot of people bewildered and intimidated. What digital communities don't seem to lack are more white boy-men, sat behind laptops deep in concentration and listening to hip hop and South Parks alternately. Everyone is obviously welcome, but come on, this surely needs to be looked at. At first I really thought it was a pastiche of some self referential hacker fest, which might have been more promising, but no, this was for real. I sat for an hour thinking that some self organising node would come along and animate the space, I even tried myself, but then south parks finished and I decided to look elsewhere.

Digital Communities, to me this might be thought about as communities who have engaged or have been engaged via digital means, for Ars obviously it means existing communities online communities who need to communicate in a public space, not sure I think that is true.

What i did find in the Future Factory section was some serious thinking about how technology can be rethought to engage specific communities of interest, rather than the other way round. Ken Banks software project Frontline SMS allows a mobile phone to be used as a one to many communication hub, in situations where web acess is limited. He cites it's use in regions of Africa where mobile phone ownership is high. I am thinking of uses in some of the environments I am asked to make work in the UK would benefit from a direct communication channel.

As with the previous Ars I have been to, there is much to criticise about this event, it felt more like a trade show this year, with its centrally located galleries at the Tobacco Factory, there were corporate sponsors stands all over the place, yet it still shows some interesting work. Honestly though I think it could be much tighter, in terms of aesthetic, intellectual and conceptual rigor, that this might result in a smaller show might be for the good of Ars, which does now have the atmosphere of a big chill music festival, as much about aspirational lifestyle as art works.

Shaftesbury Open Space Commission

I spent yesterday in Shaftesbury Dorset after being shortlisted for the 'WIDE OPEN SPACE' commission. Shafestbury is famous as the backfrop for the Hovis advert !



The brief was to produce a proposal for a public art project. I would imagine we were shortlisted for a project I and architects civic completed in Burnley where Proposals were used in an iterative way, to gradually build a mandate for the projects we were developing with residents and the council.

My feeling is my presentation of the ideas behind this approach did not translate well to the Shaftesbury Civic society (who made up the interview panel), I just cant get away from the fact that what they really wanted was a stone carved monument, which is fine, but why select me for the shortlist, cabaret perhaps ?

One thing to learn, always check out who the commissioning panel will be and tailor content accordingly - I think I know that but temporarily forget. Hohum.

Cornmarket Plaza Commission, Dublin 2010 - A feeling of rejection

Just received a very strange thanks but no thanks email from Dublin City council. This has never happened to me before, but after shortlisting a set of candidates and commissioning them to produce comprehensive proposals, the interview panel, which consisted off:

Anne Graham, (Engineer, ex Central Area Office Manager for DCC – who initiated the commissioning process
· Frances Hegarty, Artist
· Ruairí Ó Cuív, Public Art Manager

have decided - and I quote:

"After carefully examining and assessing all the proposals we have decided that no team offered all the requirements of the commission. Therefore, Dublin City Council will not be nominating anybody for this commission at this time. " mmmm - and interesting development in the role of professional art managers, one where they have to go through with a publicly accountable procedure with little appetite for actually commissioning the work ? certainly one that is very frustrating for all the artists involved and a general waste of resources.

Cornmarket Plaz Commission, Dublin 2010

On a more upbeat note I have just got back from Dublin, where I along with civic architects and curator Andrew Chetty, were shortlisted for a commission. The location of the commission, on a triangular public space in Dublin is incredibly demanding site, as it is bordered on all sides by traffic.Our proposal incorporated a community engagement strategy, partnered by Create Dublin and the Digital Hub, an architectural intervention designed by civic:


and a curatorial programme put together with partners; Forma, Transmediale (Germany), Forma Arts & Media (UK), Sonar (Spain), Radar (Mexico) and DoDig (Turkey).

We will see what happens, but either way its interesting what they decide to do as Dublin has been hit hard by the financial downturn, and the role of a public art commission such as this, is very contentious. It would be my plan to interview the council arts officer about the project as part of my PHD.

time delay

Its amazing just how quickly all the connection that we strove for weeks to build, whilst doing LP in Bournemouth, can vaporise. Since the end of phase 1, the collecting of the data, i've not had much todo on the project, due to other partners and myself being weighed down with commitments. This is a real failing of the project, its incredibly important that contacts are maintained, via any means necessary. With LP this has not happened, and now we'll have to wait till the end of the month. Not good.

Bus Tops - Viziters

Just updating myself with Bus-Tops, the digital public art project being produced by Artists Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu. I have just selected my local bus stop as the site of one of their Viziters.
Reading through their blog entries the artists seem to imagine the screens as an organic network, with each screen having a set of intelligences:

"Each Vizitər will be a totally distinct being. Each will have an artificial intelligence which will let it filter what comes through it’s sensorium (the art people make and send to it) and make, to some extent, it’s own decisions on what it prefers, over time."

mmm not sure about that, is it no enough just to have a network of publicly accessible signs, the new digital public realm and all that ?

Census - The installation

I've been thinking about how all the content generated via LP could be used in a final, physical piece of work. One where audience members could move through the content, incorporating filters such as postcode area, question type.

As show that really impressed some years back was Kutlug Ataman's Kuba. There would seem some - in my head at least- correlation between the two ideas in terms of presentation.

Martha Rosler - If you lived here......

This quote from Martha Roslers book "if you lived here" seems really pertinent to my thinking about Landscape-Portrait:

"Social activists, certainly, continue to recognise the importance of documentary evidence in arguing for social change. It is the necessity ot acknowledge the place- and time - from which one speaks that is an absolute requirement for meaningful social documentary”

"Naturally, this shifts the terrain of the argument from the art object - the photograph, the film, the videotape, the picture book or magazine - to the context, to the process of signification, and to social process."

The idea of documentary evidence - allowing "acknowledging historical context yet allowing 'unquantifiable sources' - LP can be seen in this light, in try to create a dataset of documentary evidence as part of a integrated practice. How this data might be used, either in gallery, planning office or locally convened online campaign is relevant to its audience.

The other thing to think of here is time:stamp. LP is ambiguous about this, the video is not dated, whilst it acknowledges place - via a Google map. Is it important for each of the video portraits to be dated.

social sites

Now that nearly all the video portraits for Bournemouth are up we need to think about disseminating the content to different social sites. These will consit of sites that are locally focused; such as Bournemouth Echos forum and twitter site, as well those that maintain a wider geographical focus. More links as I find them.

meet SCAN - Planning phase 2

Now the dust has settled on phase 1 of the Bournemouth project I met up with Helen from SCAN to discuss next steps. For me the important outcomes are the use of the media by the collaborators involved in the project.

Of our two main collaborators, I am hopefull that Craig will use some of the video portraits on the Townsend area on his website. Talking with Craig I understand there is a good chance that he may produce additional umbrella community websites for community groups to use. Dianne is planning an exhibition of her photographs, her work will also be incorporated into a exhibition which will travel the local libaries and Bournemouth central library.

Tony White has been working on his text works which so far consist of a blog entry and comments in the 'comments' section of the landscape-portrait website.

Social Tech

The first phase of the Landscape-Portrait project in Bournemouth finished last night with a sprint across Bournemouth to catch the train back to Waterloo. Tony White and myself just made the train with tony suffering mechanical issues by still making the cut.

Thinking about the project now there is a question, part of my PHD research, about the use of technology in non-art or specialist environments.

In using video and the net to disseminate the content created by LP we have lost a few participants who simply do not trust the technology, that is video or the web. With video the reaction has to with being recognisable, along the lines of 'please don't take my picture'. With the web its slightly different, but the reaction is related to an idea of what people (other net users) might use this for. This incorporates a range from pedophiles through to identity theft. Its obviously not our place to persuade people that the dangers are not real, they do happen, but that they are extremely unlikely to happen as a result of taking part in LP.

This level of mistrust - either of medium or technology - does not happen s explicitly within classic 'art' spaces, there is sometimes an unthinking acceptance - no more worrying than the suspicion - that they, as participants' know the risks and still wish take part in a cultural project.

phase 2

The landscape-Portrait project for Bournemouth has now moved into phase 2 of its production. Currently I am uploading all the interviews conducted so far.

Tonight were having a get together with all the collaborators as a sort of thank you.

The second part of the project where we seed the content into online spaces that directly relate to Bournemouth. Tony White is going to write content to sit in the comments box of various videos, the hope will be that interested parties coming to the website will view content, and be inspired to either record a portrait of leave a comment about a portrait.

work experience

Having just finished writing in my registration document about private public spaces , such as shopping centres - today I found myself in a shopping centre, Castlepoint in Bournemouth, trying to do a community art project.


In a parallel of Anne Minton's comments in the book Ground Control we had a brief moment of panic when the manager of the shopping centre, as a "representative of his employers", asked to see our indemnity insurance. The centre manager was keen for landscape-portrait to take place in the centre, but like so many private public spaces, this engagement had to follow certain procedure.

After a quick phone call the project went ahead, we had insurance, just no proof. Positioning ourselves on one of the least promising location I have experienced we did remarkably well. The spot was completely wind blown, outside Marks & Spencers and with no natural constituency. All we had were two borrowed chairs and video camera, but it worked, more to do with the quality of the collaborators than anything else.

In the afternoon we were based at the Library opposite the shopping centre. A venue i was looking forward to using with its established community reference point etc. Not surprisingly we had less success in terms of numbers, but a greater level of engagement. People were interested to talk about the ideas - less keen to commit to doing a video portrait.

In terms of the ongoing debate about technology, its divisive capabilities and this project, it was interesting to see how technological constraints, consistent to most public facing, non art environments, changed the way we explained the work. Again all interviews were recorded onto tape - when they could have been recorded on line - perhaps. The playback of the video from the website was occasionally jerky and the audio popped due to congested bandwidth. The machines themselves were fine in terms of specification but had been well used, with the result that the audio sockets were not working satisfactorily - leading a poor audience/user experience. Again I think we need to do specific test in each of these locations, on specific machines well before the work begins.

Generally lots of users were interested in the idea of demographics, especially when considering how different postcodes effected the cost of their car insurance.

Firewalls

Just talking with Helen about the issue of Firewalls in civic spaces - its proved a real issue for the project and has lead to us doing all the interviews onto tape and uploading them by hand. These institutional sites restrict access via the firewall which means that users can't upload video and in some circumstances download video, rendering the project invisible yet frustrating.

This could also been seen in terms of controlling public space, firewalls restrict access to publci spaces and data, in the name of security or perhaps under the slightly hysteric notion of safety.

More work needs to be done in preparing locations for recording, easy to say in retrospect but there has been a real compression of time, the deadline being March 31st.

A knock on of this and processing is a certain dislocation between interviewee/audience and the work. We upload the files, then we have to track down the interviewee and let them know the URL for their portrait. Not ideal.

Public Sphere

Reading about Alexander Kluge and his thoughts on the production of 'oppositional public sphere'. Kluge was a documentary film maker critical of the struggles of squatters who required him to come and live with them in order to 'join (and film) their fight' against the authorities who wished to evict them. Kluge argued that by keeping their struggle private they were replicating the structures and methods of the authorities, who were using private means to regain what they saw as private property. By refusing Kluge access unless he embedded himself within their community Kluge argued they were refusing to allow the events, over the next few days of eviction, to enter an oppositional public sphere.

There is maybe a correlation between this methodology and the production and interpretation of public data as a public art project on the ground. Talking specifically about the creation of data Kris Cohen, writing about the group show ‘Day-to-day-data’, hi-lites the role artists might play in subverting the creation of publics. He writes “because whoever makes data makes the publics that data purports merely to describe”.

Tech Issues

Landscape-Portrait has been running in Bournemouth now for a couple of weeks, with Steve, Diane and Helen having managed to capture a dozen good interviews. There have been some issues around IT. These usually consist of people not being able to record their video portrait, or view other video portraits. The IT issue is quite divisive, for while the system is working fine, if users encounter a problem they abandon. This is further complicated when we are relying on IT kit in local Libraries. Helen after much deliberation has given up on using the Libraries PC's as the IT dept cannot set up the computers to work with the website. This is a major blow, as it means we have to record all of the portraits onto tape and then edit, encode and upload them.


Today we are going to Townsend Children's center fun day, are we are taking the Media Bus . This new bus is equipped with lots of kit and hopefully a viable internet connection, i really want to record some of the portraits online, in order to build a greater cross section of responses. Just looked out the window and thankfully it's stopped raining.

First Bournemouth video post

At last the first Bournemouth post is up. Donna, who I first met in West Howe is up. This has a huge symbolic value, in terms of getting the portraits on the map.

So Donna "What's the most important thing about your home and why ?":

Tech Teething

Speaking with the curator (SCAN) of the Bournemouth instance of LP and she is having problems with the tech. People can login or easily upload there portraits, the libraries are having problems uploading. We should have checked this before hand - however its a mistake to get caught up in the tech. If the online way of recording portraits dose not work for a particular context, then we should skip it and just use video camera. The technology is not - in and of itself - important. (note to self).

Geographical site specific-ness

As the LP project roles out to more locations it will be interesting perhaps to locate geographically specific venues which would be able to show content from the site. This is my intention in Bournemouth, there are plans to show the work at the Sunday best music festival in West Howe and via a large video screen in central bournemouth.

test embed working

We've just been working on the embed code so its possible to share the video content across social networking and other sites - seems to work - here's my favourite from the project in the North East: take it away Sonia.



See the rest here: http://www.landscape-portrait.com/?Sonia

Writers Brief

We've just agreed to commission a writer to work on the LP project. His name is Tony White and some of his work can be seen here http://pieceofpaperpress.wordpress.com/.

As well as wanting other practitioners to work with the LP project I am really keen that the comments box - which is currently underused - should be engaged by the writer.

I am thinking that the comments space within the website can be used to house written texts. These texts might be a response ot the video portraits, but hopefully they will also take the project
off in another direction; perhaps linking up with other online discussions, resources and artifacts.

UK DATA

Essex Uni has a data store -https://www.esds.ac.uk/- which has relevant datasets from social and economic sphere's. We've just downloaded the Acorn types (with CACI's permission) but there is much more to be explored.

This ties in neatly with my PHD area of study, in that I have been making the point that public data can form the material for public artworks, and using these datasets, as part of my studio practice, allows me to be reconstitute the datasets in various ways, underpinning various interactions that might occur.

CACI The Home of Demographics

I had an interesting conversation with CACI today about using Landscape-Portrait content within their own marketing strategy. Obviously this would require consent from participants and it does feel inappropriate and slightly unnerving. Landscape-Portrait was conceived as a critique of market driven demographics, however I always imagined the the outcome of the project, perhaps the legacy of the work, would be an online resource/artwork that would sit next to commercial services offered by companies using acorn data; such as UpMyStreet.

What is more interesting is the idea of a seperate project, which uses the sampling tools developed by Landscape-Portrait and creates a project directly for CACI. I'm thinking here of an artist in residence type of opportunity; It would be interesting to have an artist working alongside statisticians in the creation of public data, "who ever designs the data defines the public" .

Newsletters

As a means of letting people know about the project we are placing adverts in local newsletters. These will include (hopefully) Heathlands primary school newsletter (West Howe) , the Rev Dick Saunders newsletter to parishioners (West Howe), not sure about Kinson, haven't as yet managed to find an equivalent there, and the funday poster in Townsend.

We've just produced some promotional material for Townsend childrens centre where we plan to have the Media Bus parked for their fun day on the 20th of March. The initial design here:

The text was based on this design:

After a chat with the center manager it was agreed that this design was not appropriate for the Townsend community poster, so it's been revised here:

Community Facillitator

As well as Diane Humphries we have also talked with Craig Gilbert who runs the
townsend community website.

With Craig and Diane and Richard Jeffery (who is a local education worker) we are starting to put together a decent team.

Bournemouth visit 14-18 2-10

Just returned from Bournemouth after a week of meeting members of the three communities
we are working in - Kinson, Townsend and West Howe. We've got good support in all areas and met some good people who are committed to their community, and have shown good interest in the project.

On thing that comes up quite often is the thought that we are from the council, and the distrust of the council after years of being let down, and therefore there is a distrust of us as council representatives. This takes some discussion and hopefully is resolved. This has happened before, and much more deeply in Burnley.

Another thought, which is outside of the budget of this project, is the idea of visiting others towns that have the same Demographic types as the areas we are working in, in Bournemouth. So that might be parts of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.


Spent some time walking around each neighborhood taking photos, to be reminded what a potentially loaded activity this is, obviously taking photos around children's playgrounds, but the just the idea of what you might and might not do with the image, and who and for who the images are being taken. Anyways images from Kinson, West Howe and Townsend can be viewed. These images will be used for publicity for the work. We've also engaged Diane Humphries, an local photographer to work on the project.

FIlm As Data

Whilst sitting through a film by Joram ten Brink, Professor of Film and Director of the AHRC Arts on Film Archive, MAD . I kept thinking of this project in terms of film as data. He was talking about his film 'The Man Who Couldn’t Feel’, which he described as as a film as essay. This leads me towards the file formats that contain data about an object, OGG, ITL etc - as well as Apples new format 'Cocktail'. The idea of hacking media files is somewhat different to seeing film as a container of data, but its related (in my head).



This also lead to a memory of microfiche, from my uncles garage, where the size of the card was related to the amount of data that could be stored.

Mmmm - is there a public art file type, that requires certain paramaeters to be filled in order to become viable (funding, engagement, legacy )

I must have a look at hacking some files, soon.

Geo Spatial video

Coming back on the bus it strikes me that, as we pass through one area of the city into another we are passing through a range a demographic types for each of these postcode areas we pass through. An idea is to maybe record a piece of linear video footage (maybe on a mobile device with appropriate software), that is geo-tagged and in some way is engraved with the the demographic type for that postcode area. This would be super imposed on top of video which noses into possible demographic signifiers along the root. Shops, light fittings, pubs, betting shops, certain people on the streets who might look (from a far) a certain way, prisons etc.

This use of bus routes feels like a kind of reaction to this work http://bus-tops.com/, which I am intrigued to find out more about.

bournemouth ways of working

Maybe we might use the local paper, the Bournemouth Echo's forum pages to locate the work. This might take the form of a 'Missing' campaign, where demographic types are advertised as lost and living in a particular postcode, the make up this person would be managed online, references to actual locations (pubs, bookies, etc) food stuffs, papers read, hobbies etc. The idea would be to create several forum feeds from here ( http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/sport/4993255.Confident_Jalal_backs_Cherries__quality/?ref=mc ) - and relate it back to the LP website.

Kevin Carter - Karin Coetzee, 'Landscape-Portrait', Photography, 2007. Photo: Karin Coetzee.

Landscape-Portrait 2008. Postcard Campaign
Originally uploaded by Kevin Carter

Karin Coetzee was given a brief by Kevin Carter to locate certain demogrpahic types relating to postcode. These ficticous types are developed by demographic comany CACI to flesh out statistical data about person and place.

Bournemouth 2010

Landscape-portrait is due to staged in Bournemouth by SCAN (http://www.scansite.org/?w=1129&h=729). The work will be staged in three locations, Kinson, West Howe and Townsend. At the same time Simon Yuill (http://www.lipparosa.org/) will be producing a project engaged with the idea of commons and common land.

Previous productions of Landscape-Portrait can be see here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11928089@N04/sets/721...