I am making something with Nikki Pugh called ‘Dust’. It is a response to a manifesto that claims we will make things with you, not for you. This is one of the ways it’s with. You can read about where the project is at right now over here. If you can offer me a story, it will be made into a Dust Mote. Things that people will find and keep. The stories will also feed into and inform the longer-form narrative fragments in the work. Head over here for full context.

And because this is a two way thing, here’s a couple I will submit:

Object 1: A porcelain badge, square with rounded corners, the transfer of a rabbit with a balloon on the front.

This object broke. It was the last thing in my daily life that came from the boy whose hair smelled like raku firings. It fell off my bag in St. Pancras about 3 years ago and shattered. I still have the largest fragment.

Object 2: A small plush rat.

[no picture]

Bought because it looked lonely. Bought just before something went completely, bafflingly wrong. Now hidden.

…

I need some less emo objects, huh?

So, here we are, 1/3 of the way into work for the MADE splacist commission (1 out of 3 days). In case you don’t read my blog RELIGIOUSLY (RSS, yo), Splacism is manifesto’d over here, and it’s that manifesto that MADE have challenged me and Nikki Pugh to respond to in an actual piece of actual art/experience/whatever. The manifesto also includes the notion of being open about process, so here we are.

Post its. Lots of them. That’s the main gist of it. We did some looking and walking and poking outside as well. But the ideas were post-itted. It’s a method I learnt from Alexander Kelly, and is brilliant for streamlining an idea. Like a portable brainstorm where as relevancies and relationships shift, you can re-place ideas. Move them onto a next stage. There are 3 here:

1) what are we doing and why

we summarised the manifesto points (yellow)
we summarised what MADE had asked us to do (green)
we summarised what we wanted to do (pink)

2) write this as a brief

We then took this and turned it into a brief, here you can see things that moved forwards from the manifesto points and self-challenges; Interfaces, resonance and fragments/particles. Heat and lights, the fabric of a city, and racing hearts. Space, and catalysts for narrative. And a story I told about an Edgelands speaker describing the storming of a stage (“an act I had only previously seen on a football field … they needed to feel the resonance there”)

2.1) The Brief

Does what it says on the post it.

3) Respond to the brief.

This is our main thinking space directly to the brief, the thing in the middle is what we settled on making. Another thing, too, but that would spoil a bit of it, so we’ll tell you afterwards. We wanted to push the idea of stories you walk by, of moments and fragments forgotten, floating around a city (Motes…). We’re going to make a device for you to listen to them. But it will also challenge the interface of the headphone piece, it will be tactile and awkward and breakable and intimate. There will be some things never found. You will scan the city from above, and then search its streets below. Also we will provide hot drinks.

And then we named it: Dust.

Book tickets (for free) here, and look out for the next bit of open process on Nikki’s blog, which will be all about building and testing the protoype listening device.

Summary/Tl:dr version:

WHO: Made by me and Nikki Pugh, with some other people, commissioned by Made. For anyone to do. At least one aspect of the experience (out of 2) is highly suited to people with hearing and vision impairment. Those with mobility issues should be fine if in a wheelchair, top walking distance is 10 minutes. Top walking around time half an hour.

WHERE: on top of a car park, in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, and for a couple of blocks around.

WHAT: You are invited to listen in to the whispers of strangers. A large dusty device that catches different voices depending on where you point it. Like a satellite dish, but made of clay and big and round. You will also be sent out in search of Motes. #Dust Motes are a mystery. For now.

WHY: To challenge us as artists, to challenge the perception of how space is inhabited, to pick up the fragments that you often walk by, to consider interfaces, ways at getting at the world; the map view and the street view.

HOW: Using clay, memories, arduino, audio, our brains, and the bodies of people.

I was originally going to release this info a bit later, but turns out people are already booking (the very limited) tickets, and didn’t want anyone in my networks to miss out.

The Zero Hour Bus Tours are 4 pieces of audio loosely themed along the lines of ‘the apocalypse’, designed to be listened to on the N11 night bus (London) between the hours of midnight and 3am. The journey will take roughly 35 minutes.

They are a Forest Fringe commission for the In Transit Festival 2011.  Along with Steve Kilpatrick on sound I have been writing one of these experiences.

You can buy tickets for any of the 4 different ‘tours’ (and the rest of the festival) on this site, and below are the direct links to the times and dates of my and Steve’s piece. The piece is gently interactive. It might ask you to do small things; look out the window, hold onto a handle. Nothing that might make you look silly.

The tickets are free, but limited; for mine there are only 6 per journey. As we are being only ‘tolerated’ by TFL, you will have to pay for your bus journey (£2.20 cash, £1.30 Oyster). My journey is from World’s End, to Liverpool St. Further instructions will be provided after you have bought your ticket.

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 12:35am

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 1:05am

MON 25TH JUL, 2011 1:35am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 12:35am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 1:05am

WED 27TH JUL, 2011 1:35am

I am still looking for a few more volunteers to help me on the night, there are more details about that here. Please get in contact ASAP if you are available on the above dates/times, plus the weekend before, and interested in running around London in exchange for a drink, £10 expenses, and all the costume items that I might furnish you with.

I read Freakangels the other day. It put me in mind of this:

“Each epoch dreams the one to follow.” – Michelet, “Avenir! Avenir!”

Freakangels also puts me in mind of my small obsession with flooding (and rain). Growing up in Lincolnshire will do that to you. So much of the land there was ‘reclaimed’ from the sea. Wrong way round, that. As if the land belonged to us before the water. Anyway, projected sea level rises linked to global warming put vast swathes of my home county back underwater. And flooding threads itself through an awful lot of my plays and soundwalks.

I’m a good swimmer. I’ve never been afraid of water. I am afraid of losing the things that tie me down though. The skies of Lincolnshire are as big as they are because of the lay of the land. Because how far away the horizons, because of how far you can run and feel like you’re not moving. I return home when I need to unwind my mind.

I have really vivid dreams. If you follow me on Twitter you might sometimes see me talk about them. The ones I remember most I’m always running. Packing for a great ordeal, leaving with a warm jumper, clean socks, running shoes, basic supplies. And running. Sometimes I fight. Sometimes I save the day. But I’m always running.

“the arcades and intérieurs, the exhibition halls and panoramas*. They are residues of a dream world. [...] Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening. It bears its end within itself” (p13 of the Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin)

Just a thought.

*think shopping centres and billboards, museums and parks

Me mid-June, with my freshly broken arm and super-attractive cast protector.

Mandatory end-of-year reflective blog post ENGAGE.

So, yep, here we are. And what the heck could you want more than my reflections on My Life in Art 2010 Edition? Exactly. This is going to be meandering and will probably miss things out, but is a rough account of art wot I have done, and art wot I enjoyed this 2010…

So, apparently I’ve actually done quite a bit of art stuff this year, despite the full-time PhD (and I managed to deliver two papers this year without having anything thrown at me, or getting thrown out) plus a broken arm in June… which still hurts actually. Half a year more and it should stop. Anyway, art!

In March I had my first full proper-play production at Theatre503 with Box of Tricks Theatre’s Word:Play – Awake was a short 15 minute conversation between a dying gamer and her avatar. It was an interesting experience, but I don’t really rate it as a piece of writing, I think I’d found a story but not really the right form; so I next moved from the stage to the street… In May I released my first experiment in sound-based pervasive work – Walk With Me, a 10 minute soundwalk for one to be done anywhere in the rain. I got some lovely feedback, handwritten notes, posted found items, and twitpics and photo albums from people who went on the walk. I then got to develop to 30 minutes worth of sound-walking for The Smell of Rain Reminds Me of You in July, which although admittedly breathed it’s first breath out of Walk With Me, was this time built out of memories collected from people online. It was commissioned by the Green Room as part of the Hazard Festival, and I fell slightly in love with Manchester as well as learning a lot about working with a group audience, not just a single person. APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T HERD THEM. Who knew. Then Fierce‘s Interrobang allowed me to push my practice beyond the soundwalk (which I didn’t want to get stuck in as a form) into a 4 minute piece of live art called ‘Home’… OK it still used recorded sound. And was pretty damn authored. But it was a step, and I learnt a lot more about live art as a form. A brief art/academia mashup occurred for the TaPRA conference with A Soundwalk without Organs - a soundwalk done as part of a paper delivered which described the contemporary academic conference as completely useless in representing either academic thought or arts practice. FUN. Then it got to Autumn, and I got to make a soundwalk with a piece of entirely new music from the brilliant Lantern Music, Nightwalk York happened as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York Festivals in October/November. Finally towards the end of November Hibernate! a game for Larkin’ About took to the streets of Manchester, and I was at least able to push my practice a little bit further in terms of pervasive stuff…

I also attended and liveblogged Mayfest for Forest Fringe and Inbetween Time for New Work Network, did my first 2 guest lectures in January, and followed with a few speaking events, culminating in Shift Happens in July. I’ve got a lot better at speaking/teaching since the shaky beginning of this year, and hope I get the opportunity to do more of it in 2011.

This year coming I’d also like the opportunity to collaborate more with OTHER PEOPLE. I really don’t see enough of them other people types. Although I suppose it’s harder to fit in if there’s more than just me to cater for, I do often wish I had a collaborator to bounce ideas off, too often end up bouncing my head off a wall instead. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a part of some kind of company. But it’s all a long while off. 2012 (all going to plan) is when I’ll be PhD-ed up and looking for some kind of game-plan.

And what about other people’s work? Well here are some of my favourite things, where possible in twos (for no real reason at all).

Music – This year was tinged with a Scottish rockish feel, Frightened Rabbit captured me for the Summer, and We Were Promised Jetpacks came in time for Winter to ease me into the darker days. I got to see Frightened Rabbit live, but WWPJ haven’t ventured south yet from what I can see. Hope they will soon, because Scotland is expensive to get to.

Film – I saw Moon in January – seriously amazed this didn’t get ALL OF THE OSCARS. And the exquisite Bright Star is well worth a watch – I don’t care if you ‘don’t like films with bonnets and dresses in’, watch it. It’s a wonderful piece of writing/acting/direction.

Theatre – Although not a personal favourite, it was an absolute joy to introduce someone to theatre with Kneehigh’s Red Shoes – a friend who I discovered had never even seen a panto had their MIND BLOWN by what theatre could be. Highlights (more than two) otherwise divided between Yorkshire’s Unlimited, Third Angel and Red Ladder stage shows, and Bristol’s Duncan Speakman, Mayfest, and Inbetween Time festivals which woke me up to what more theatre and performance could be. London gets a look in for the one piece I could afford to get to (it was free and on a Sunday) – Hide and Seek’s adventures in and around the National. And then to Birmingham for The Author, which resulted in my FIRST PROPER QUOTE IN THE GUARDIAN. It made my parents forgive me for getting quoted in the Telegraph.

Apps/Games I finally forked out for World of Goo – and there’s an Android app called Spaghetti and Marshmallows which channels it a little bit which is worth a go if you can’t access iOS4 – I like them physical puzzlers. Papa Sangre OMG buy it now, and the Board Game Remix Kit, which is going to form the basis of basically the COOLEST DINNER PARTY YOU EVER HEARD OF early next year, are all worth the small amount of money you’ll pay for them.

Comics I woke up to comics care of the iPad my mum kindly bought me with some inheritance money – I could cart whole series across the many train journeys I take monthly; bliss. I kill Giants and Preacher are the two I’d pick out if I had to.

Book Serious? I haven’t read anything without pictures for pleasure for… since the PhD started. I try, and then I fall asleep. Incidentally I’m currently encountering the same problem with PhD books so it’s nothing personal (or genre-ific?)

And a resolution? Well last year’s to eat less meat got turned into 360 day a year vegetarianism, so I have high hopes for 2011′s SORT OUT YOUR MONEY.

Have a lovely 2011 all, thanks for reading the blog. Here’s to exciting new projects *raises glass*

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/12/2011-a-year-in-art-mine-and-other-peoples/feed/ 0 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/09/home/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/09/home/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:42:59 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1859 My mum walking alongside the River Witham in Lincolnshire.

A brilliant and hectic week has just passed, highlights of which include the Playful Festival on Friday – where I learnt about the wonders of Minecraft, that games ≠ points, and about games people’s frustrations at badges and the ‘gamification’ of brands/sites, as well as getting a teensy bit grumpy at game designers’ propensity to play with and challenge all rules apart from those pertaining to gender-; a performance of Brian Duffy’s Modified Toy Orchestra after a spectacular Artists’ Brunch Sunday at the Edge in Birmingham; and a top meeting with the Nightwalk York music people - Lantern Music - ahead of our trip to reccy the area around the Minster at the beginning of October.

Saturday evening, as you may have seen, I had the immense pleasure to take part in Stoke Newington Airport‘s Live Art Speed Dating. An absolutely brilliant event, incredibly welcoming and supportive, and having spent 3 or so years in the West Midlands I can say an incredibly valuable effort by Fierce to get Live Art out into the heart of the Black Country. Having primarily hid behind pen and paper for the past 5 years, performing again was a bit strange, but mostly good. The piece I decided to do in the end was a very simple one, and probably still a bit writerly, but the base ideas of which are something which I think I’d like to work up further. All of the other artists’ work looked and sounded brilliant brilliant, and my main regret of the night was not getting a chance to see any of them!

‘Home’.

My ‘date’ happened down the back of the stage, in a dingy and dark little corner. It was lit by a lamp and a green emergency light, was called ‘Home’, and consisted of an audio track of me speaking for 3:30 about the fact that the growing consensus on sea level rise puts my county mostly underwater in 50-100 years, and what it feels like to understand that you might never be able to return to the landscape that to you, is home. This was listened to over headphones, whilst I spoke about 2 seconds behind the recording with the idea of disorienting the listner. The iPad I was playing it on (longest battery life available to me, 3 hours action, left it at 96%[!]) had a picture of the tree I centered the speech around on it. The final thing I did was to give them 30 seconds to write down the ten things they’d take with them if being evacuated, they could then leave that with me, or take it with them. The text was pretty short so I’ve included it at the end of the post if you’re interested. 

Things people would pack if evacuated with only one bag:

5 people would take a phone

3 people would pack their passports

3 people would take their grandmother’s cutlery

1 person said they’d take their grandad’s potato peeler

7 people would take photographs

8 people would pack socks

3 people took abstract things like ‘love’, ‘life’, or ‘heat’.

3 people packed other people

One of those people was James Brown

2 people packed some form of diary, one person a notebook

1 person would take all of their Vinyl

1 person would pack onions

1 person would take two gold jackets

Also, women tended to be more practical, taking things they could use, men more nostalgic, taking things they owned and prized (though obviously there were exceptions to this on both sides).

Afterthoughts.

The piece went down somewhere between middling to very well. One person left tearfully, several people visibly affected, a couple interested, and few unmoved. I think developing the piece would involve looking at becoming more disorientating, or perhaps playing with erasure of the audio as well as the place I was talking about, maybe I lose myself, and begin to forget what I was saying. Maybe different sensory disruptions. Maybe asking them to read out the words for me. I’m not sure how much the iPad was a bit of a distraction on the table as it’s not exactly a ubiquitous piece of kit yet, so a longer headphone cable would mean I could have the player on my lap and eliminate out of context distractions. I think a longer piece would look more at the idea of ‘home’, how our landscape makes us, and what we associate with it. I’m also coming to these more interactive forms from quite a writerly background so I need to learn to free up a little bit too. Though I think I’m glad I started with something simple.

(If you want to see where you live under different sea level rise conditions, check out this map. Remember to take into consideration storm surges if you’re coastal/London, and infrastructure; your house may not be underwater, but if much of your surrounds are, it’s unlikely sewage systems/water/ electricity/gas supplies will be maintained.)

The text.

There’s a tree near where I grew up. In the highest place for miles. This tree is tall, taller, I think, because in my mind it merges with the memory of standing at the foot of it as a child. This tree is tall though, and it sprawls towards the sky like a reaching arm. And on it are these little slats of wood, nailed, to form steps and handholds, so you can climb up, sit in the crook of its branches and look out across to where the ground meets the sky.

I used to imagine sitting there and watch the season change, as though recorded in time-lapse. Watch the fields ploughed, and planted, watch the shoots spring, grow green, and as the sun, rain and clouds flash across the ground, grow golden, weighed down, as the hedgerows thicken.

Two summers ago I stood on that hill, and I saw something different. You couldn’t see the roads, the divisions between crops, or hedgerows. It was like when it snows, but darker, muddy grey. One colour.

About a third of my home county is below sea level.

I was two years old when we moved there, and one of my earliest memories is watching my mum spread across a huge map in the dining room, shading in all of the ‘safe’ places. We made sure we lived up high.

I have these dreams, about disaster. There’s lots of different kinds, zombie uprising, food riots, flooding, wizards. The dream always begins with me packing, though. Good trainers for running. A coat. A screw driver, hat, gloves, a jumper, and socks. I always pack socks.

When – as is looking increasingly likely – an ice shelf collapses sea levels will rise 3m in about 50 years. And as extreme weather events become more frequent we’ll have more regular and bigger storm surges. The storm surge in Lincolnshire in 1953 was about 6m. So that would make 9. A total additional sea level of 9 metres.

But those numbers don’t really mean anything to me, I can’t picture them. What I do see is the view from that tree; static, grey, unchanging. Flood defences broken too often to repair economically. And the place, abandoned.

It’s so strange to think that within my lifetime there’s a good chance I might never be able to return to the landscape that to me, is home.

And it is. And there’s nowhere else like it. It’s made of big skies and hot summer’s days and blackberry stained fingers and racing after the horizon.

In 1953 30,000 people were evacuated in one night.

They could take a bag. About 10 things.

What would you pack? What would you take with you? You’ve got 30 seconds.

]]> http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/09/home/feed/ 3 http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/09/nightwalks-talks-and-live-art/ http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2010/09/nightwalks-talks-and-live-art/#comments Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:56:52 +0000 Hannah Nicklin http://www.hannahnicklin.com/?p=1833

Greetings all, hope you’re enjoying the cooling down of the weather and the reddening of the trees. Autumn always gets me excited, not just because I can make crumbles and gravy dinners with more than usual impunity, or because it means the approach of my birthday, but also because it feels like the beginning of new endeavours. School years, university; Autumn makes me want to purchase stationary. And in the spirit of new endeavours, I have three very exciting things to tell you about…

One: I will this Saturday (25^th September) be performing a piece of Live Art in Stoke Newington Airport’s Live Art Speedating as part of Fierce, Birmingham’s Interrobang. Lots of words there that might not make sense to everyone. Go look at the poster, and check out this video, for more on what it’s all about…

Two: I shall also be talking at the Coventry Pecha Kucha on the 12^th of October on Theatre in the Age of the First Person. 20 slides of 20 seconds each. See here for more info. Other talks, too, I’m particularly intrigued by the ‘safe sex with robots’ one.

And three: I’m very excited to announce a new soundwalk! Nightwalk; a guided walk through the light and dark of York will be happening on Wednesday 27th & Friday 30th October at 7pm. The event will be free, and is happening as part of the Take Over and Illuminating York festivals. I’m especially thrilled because this will be my first collaboration with real music-making people, the brilliant Lantern Music. Hopefully it will mark the beginning of a beautiful collaborative relationship. The site for the piece is http://nightwalkyork.tumblr.com – do share it, and join/invite people to the Facebook Event. And follow me and @umbrellaproject on Twitter for whisperings from the writing process.

So there you go, lots of exciting things to lead me up to the beginning of November, and the prospect of launching a very exciting country-wide project come next Spring… but you’ll have to wait to hear about that.

That’s what Pakistan is dealing with, 1/5th of it, “ravaged by floods“

“The water was up to my neck, then my nose, I only survived because our men took me by the arm and lifted me up,” she told me. “We walked for two hours like this. Ever since the running away my belly has hurt all over. I don’t know if the baby inside me is alive or dead.” Saeed Bibi from the Punjab

DONATE HERE

Meanwhile the hottest weather on record in Russia has wiped out ONE THIRD of their grain crops.

They’ve had to impose a ban on grain exports, which will raise prices across the world, hitting the poorest, hardest.

That previously linked article comes with a handy explanation on how both are caused by a shift in the jet stream, the instability of which has been linked to climate change:

“The World Meteorological Organization says this “unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events … matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.”  NASA says July 2010 is “What Global Warming Looks Like.” ” (source)

Even the DAILY FREAKING MAIL has changed it’s stance to ‘global warming is happening, and it is our fault‘

Donate to Pakistan relief efforts, because you should. Donate, because you can. Donate, because this will soon be us. Donate because Western lifestyles have contributed directly to this. For whatever reason, whatever you believe, please, reach out, £5, whatever you can. Donate.

And all this comes as the so-called ‘green’ Coalition government are side-stepping their promises on climate change action, including an incredibly damaging broken promise RE power provision, and the mooted selling off of our conservation land and country side. Not only will reneging on green policies like this mean being hit severely by EU penalties, if the coalition government carries on like this a greater cost will soon be at their feet. The sooner and better we act, the lower the human and monetary cost the world is hit with. The later and more half heartedly they act, the greater the risk that  it’s not long before we won’t have to do any imagining.

*that’s one fifth of England, mind, I don’t know how many counties there are in the UK. Also, it’s 1/5 of counties, not of land, I did try to pick coastal ones, as we’re more likely to be affected by storm surges and sea level rises. They’re also mostly low-lying. But I will freely admit this may not be exactly 1/5 of land or population. I hope you accept it as a quick way of making a point, if not, feel free to do the maths and I’ll happily amend it.

[images off the BBC, via the linked articles, I always try to use CC images, hopefully these will be seen as 'fair use' as quoting the referenced articles, however I will take them down if wished]

http://walkwith.tumblr.com

Just squeaking in a blog post at the last moment to keep to my ‘at least 4 a month’ quota. Lots has happened this month, Mayfest took up a great deal of it, then I completed 10,000 words of PhD chapter 1 and other material for my first year progress board, including all of the fore-planning (I actually have the next two and a bit years planned out, which is an unusual combination of reassuring and scary). I’ve also released a first foray into soundwalk style storytelling to the general public, and agreed to and submitted an abstract for a joint paper on the inefficiencies of the academic conference in representing performative thoughts for a TaPRA conference in September… That’s written better in the actual abstract. So a busy month, though I really do intend to do a run down of my experiences at Mayfest sometime soon, promise.

The image above is from the soundwalk I’ve released, check it out at http://walkwith.tumblr.com – all it requires is an mp3 player, 10 minutes, and some rain. I would really appreciate any feedback you have – either in text/audio/image/video form via the site, Twitter, or even posting me handwritten/collected things (as some people have). It’s my first experiment in the form, and at the moment is a bit like a monologue-with-interactive-bits than something that might be called truly interactive or player-as-protagonist driven. I shall have to get working with the second-person referential, I think. I’ve also got plans to play with binaural audio – to develop a real 3D feeling with the headphones. You can hear some really good examples of where that can lead at Papa Sangre’s house, the audio storytelling is there described as a ‘video game without video’. Make sure you wear headphones when listening. I’m getting some mic’d up ear buds and a cheap minidisc player (from Twitter, the lovely @daveisanidiot) to experiment with that. My brother (trained sound engineer if you’re hiring/have intern work/want someone to hold a boom mic whilst BREAKING WOOD) is also going to help out, so more technical stuff and higher quality hopefully forthcoming.

These experiments are all eventually leading towards the ideas I have for the currently quite cryptic Umbrella Project (no zombies involved), which I’m trying to secure some funding before lift-off. If you know of any funds, grants, or tech/web/music support-in-kind that might be out there and interested in being involved in a country-wide pervasive storytelling experiment, let me know. You can follow the Umbrella Project on Twitter here, and if you have £8,000 (I have a fully costed and sensible budget and everything) you wanted to throw at me, please do!

Finally, as June arrives and July seems much closer than it did in May, I’m beginning to think about what I might talk about at Shift Happens on the 5th and 6th. Shift Happens is an industry (as opposed to academic) conference about arts, learning and digital technology, and there are some really big speakers from places like 4ip, The Guardian, and the National Theatre also up there, so I’m trying to work out how I can best fit in. I suspect I’m there as a passionate loud-mouth and blogger before I am an academic, but I do feel like the dialogue needs to move on from ‘you should be using/interested in tech’, ‘but it’s scary/time consuming/too hard/not monetarily justifiable’. Perhaps a focus on the harder times that are upcoming with regards to the Tory-Lib Dem arts cuts. I’ll have a think about that. And if you think I have a particular clear message that I’ve hitherto missed, do let me know, very welcome!

Merry Bank Holiday Weekend. And if any of you are off to the Rough Beats Festival next weekend, find me and say ‘hi’. I may even say ‘hi’ back.

Last Friday I went to the Digital Design Sensations exhibition at the V&A Museum. The video picks out the pieces that interested me most, and the ones that I thought were the most successful – I’ll let the video do the describing for me, other than that, I just wanted to note main observations I came away with:

1) At what point does tech become art? The answer to that is probably something facetious, like ‘when it’s put in a gallery’, or ‘when an artist is involved in making it’, but I did feel a lot of the beginning pieces (not filmed) felt more like screensavers/music visualisations, than pieces of art. Why can’t a screen saver be a piece of art? No reason, I suppose that’s my own prejudices talking – I’m used to seeing that style of thing as ubiquitous ‘filler’ material, not the focal point. It was, I think, the reasons behind or the data informing the code which did make it art. In the same way paint is just paint until you let information express through it. Something to think on, certainly.

2) Unintuitive interaction is worse than no interaction. A lot of the stuff in that room just didn’t work well enough. Take the rotating singing head (after the rotating words in the video) it was interesting to choose what angle, inside or out, that you viewed a sculpture (very phenomenological) but as a regular touch screen user I was incredibly disappointed when I couldn’t pinch zoom, change the movement with the speed of my gesture, rotate, etc. Likewise there were delays or misses in a lot of the projected interactivity. I’m sure there was an awful lot of clever tech behind it all, but it wasn’t clever enough. Interactivity might just be an all or nothing thing – if something invites me to interact with it live, in a natural space, I will always be disappointed if it doesn’t react in a natural way to my gestures.

3) The best, most intuitive, pleasing and playful pieces were all intimately connected to the natural world; the projected leaves of the tree that fell, and that you could kick around the floor, the dandelion, the little prehistoric sea creatures that grew when you uncovered the a space from the sand, that multiplied, and evolved the longer they were exposed to the air. This goes forwards from the previous point – intuitive is important. We see ourselves, our worlds in art. Art is a way of reflecting on seeing and being, the enthusiasm for the combination of nature and tech, is encouraging for my continuing investigation of the collision of the bodied and the virtual space. It also hooked up with a sentence I read on the coach home:

“Judging by the importance of nature themes in digital installation art, many artists also seek compensation in computer simulations for the disappearance of natural environments. We hope to recapture through technology the pristine world that technological culture took away for us” – Narrative as Virtual Reality by Marie-Laure Ryan.

My favourite piece isn’t in the video, it wasn’t something you could capture well. Maybe that’s why I liked it the best. It was a huge mirror, it took a while to work out, turned out it only showed an impression of you if you sat in one place for long enough, about 30 seconds. It was rewarding, and I loved the way it made you slow down, sit, and watch. So much of the exhibition was fast, grabby, noisy, and immediate, this piece felt like an oasis.

The other main highlights were the mirror built out of the click clacking pieces of rotating cylinders (I liked the sound it made, like bamboo, and that you could see all the way around the back), and the sand piece, which was the only tactile piece, the one where you were directly touching the material you were interacting with. I could have played with the sand for a long time. Another pleasing, slow one.

Finally I will say it was quite a small exhibition, I think that was the first time I’ve paid to see an exhibition (aside from Paris, and a Freud retrospective), it cost £5, so one room felt a tad disappointing, a bit crammed in, the tree alone would have been lovely as a single room piece, but then I’m sure the V&A had their reasons, as well as limited space. They have a lot to fit in, seriously, how much colonial gold did we rob?

You can also see my flickr set from the exhibition (and the Tuttle-based launch of the Creative Collaboration space near King’s Cross) here.