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.