I’ve a pile of ATtiny85 chips to programme up for the landscape-reactive sashes I’m making for the walking festival this weekend. To speed the process I designed and made a programming shield.
The instructions are up on Instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Stripboard-Arduino-shield-for-programming-ATtiny45/.
From the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art website… [source]
GPS traces from a walk in Fermyn Woods
During 2012 we are continuing our exploration of walking and its impact on our understanding of the environment. As part of the Corby Walking Festival 2012, artist Nikki Pugh will be leading walks that allow participants to explore the use of GPS data as a measure of the effect of open terrain, the presence of buildings, and natural phenomena, whilst walking through the landscape to create drawings.
During a residency with Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Pugh will be exploring the landscapes of Fermyn Woods, Corby and surrounding area through the lens of locative (GPS) technology. Pugh currently describes her practice as being located at the intersection of people, place, playfulness and technology.
Join Pugh for an exploratory walk around the centre of Corby, exploring open space and key architectural highlights from both the steel town’s past and recent developments. Collaborate in navigating an object through the environment as it reacts with movement and the locations it passes through, before sharing the resulting drawing, a digital cartography of the morning’s walk. Departing from outside the Corby Cube, George Street, Corby, NN17 1QG.
Parking is available outside Corby Cube.
Pugh will join rambler David Craddock for a leisurely walk via the Brookfield Plantation and Rockingham. Participate in the walk wearing a responsive sash making present an intimate connection between walking and the effect of the landscape on global positioning systems. The approximately 8 mile route is part urban and part rural, departing from Gretton Village Hall, Kirby Road, Gretton, NN17 3DB.
Limited free parking is available outside the Village Hall.
Pugh will lead participants over a 3 mile route from Fermyn Woods Country Park to Lyveden New Bield, previously explored through our Encounters programme. The walk will encompass dense forest, open fields and along the historic Lyveden Way to Lyveden New Bield and it’s Elizabethan garden. Wearing Pugh’s specially designed responsive sashes, experience the walk through the lens of GPS technology, before sharing the resulting drawing.
Departing from Skylark Café, Fermyn Woods Country Park, Lyveden Road, Brigstock, Kettering NN14 3HS. A minibus will be available to take participants who wish back to Fermyn Woods Country Park.
Parking is available at both Fermyn Woods Country Park and Lyveden New Bield.
All walks are free and do not require advance booking. Please arrive at least 15 minutes before the walk departs for registration and to receive a briefing on the walk ahead.
For the complete Corby Walking Festival 2012 programme please visit www.corbywalkingfestival.org.uk
Walking is… the principal means by which someone encountering a different neighbourhood or foreign landscape gets under its skin or gets to know the social, cultural and physical terrain. Moving within different environments allows us to detect properties of sameness and difference and therefore form a comparative perspective and better understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the world.
Detours and Puzzles in the Land of the Living, Andrew Irving, University of Manchester
It is only through our interactions/collaborations/experiments that we show up. Change the assemblage and a different set of possibilities emerges. Can we explore differently in order to reveal new possibilities? Through the use of new tools, do we get a new world to interact with? How do you arrive at the places that are not yet mapped? Observations and questions arising from the Live Feeds research programme led by Spurse, NYC 2011
Possibility Probe (heavy object and built environment) is a starting point for asking questions and conducting experiments. A direct response to the trend of making mobile technology smaller, lighter and more discreet; these objects are unwieldy, heavy and broadcast to all within hearing distance.
Cumbersome – a burden if not shared – these Possibility Probes resonate with the built environment that they are carried through. Like a drum or a heart, they beat faster the more they are surrounded by the fabric of the city, slowing as space opens up around them.
How you carry them, where you carry them and who you journey with will all affect the possibilities that emerge and the unseen qualities that are revealed to you.
I’m posting these images with echoes of a dialogue with artist/researcher John Hammersley still swirling around my head looking for a place to settle: LIVEness and enlivening; gallery as storage; weaving objects into your story; sense and self-ishness…
In the ARTicle gallery space for the exhibition And Miles to Go Before I Sleep…, the Possibility Probes are re-playing one of the journeys they made around Birmingham city centre on Thursday the 26th of April.
Yesterday we started the And Miles to Go Before I Sleep… gallery installation in earnest ready for tomorrow’s opening event.
After sorting out lighting, arrangements, power and cabling, all 3 Possibility Probes have now been assembled. Mona and I took one of them out around the city centre to see what it was like.
Mona gets her first Possibility Probe experience. She seemed to like it...
All looked very promising in terms of the object functioning as it should and there was much observing, thinking and discussion around some of the questions and associations it raised.
First up, we do like the materials. Seems there’s a hint of a coincidental Beuysian theme going on with a few of the works in the show. Now seeking a coyote for the opening…
We also liked the physicality of carrying it around and how it affected our awareness of what was around us.
As well as trying a few different ways of carrying it, we also put it down and stood away from it a couple of times. We like how it is still audible from quite a way off and are curious about how it conveys a different feeling depending on how it is placed.
For the opening tomorrow night the tubes will be ‘re-experiencing’ a journey through the city and then on Thursday we’ll be conducting more experiments with them to see what possibilities they open up. (Sign up here: http://heavyobjectbham.eventbrite.co.uk/).
As part of And Miles to go Before I Sleep…, 5th Beatle Mona Casey has produced a rather nice piece of print work bringing together snapshots of the thoughts and influences that are feeding into the practices of the 4 artists showing work in the exhibition.
Come along to the opening event at the Margaret Street school of art 6-8pm on Wednesday (25th April) to check out the work, the print and the journeys they mark.
And Miles to go Before I Sleep...
Between the 26th of April and the 11th of May I will be showing work alongside that of Gene George Earle, Trevor Pitt and Adam Smythe as part of an exhibition at the ARTicle gallery space, Birmingham.
And Miles to Go Before I Sleep… is a presentation of four distinct artistic practices. The title is taken from the poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by the American writer Robert Frost. The poetic line acts as a metaphor for the durational endeavour and journey inherent in artistic production. This exhibition presents a pause or moment in that journey and shows us not necessarily completed or finished work, but a transitory phase in the generation and exploration of ideas at a given time.
The opening is 6-8pm on Wednesday 25th April 2012, do come and join us.
On Thursday the 26th I’ll be running 3 playtesting sessions where you can take the objects I’ve made out around the city centre and see what happens.
The sessions are free and take place 13:00 – 14:30, 15:30 – 17:00 and 18:00 – 19:30. Please sign up at http://heavyobjectbham.eventbrite.co.uk/.
ARTicle gallery is at the School of Art, Birmingham City University, Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BX [map] and open Monday–Friday, 10–6pm.
This possibly won’t mean anything to you unless you took part in the Uncertain Eastside Walk and Talk event, but I have recently had occasion to cross the threshold of Lynn’s(sp?) Diner. [edit: ah, it’s “Lyn’s”]
hot. spot.
4 of the 5 main food groups
Visual treat: holographic image of some coke cans
I’ll say no more except to encourage you to try the same one day.
I like this moment in a project – where the idea made real is first taken out into the wide world and your visions are (hopefully) shown to be roughly on target and, if you’re really lucky, whole new avenues of exploration are opened to you.
Test-drive a-go-go
This morning Pete and I took the Possibility Probes (I’ve sent off the marketing copy, so these things now have a name – Possibility Probes is part of it) out for a test-drive.
Most targets have been hit:
The one main area for improvement before the public get their hands on them is to improve the response to landscape.
Not bad for a first iteration, though…
Thanks to Pete for being a willing pioneer and test subject.
The last 5 months have largely been dominated by my involvement in helping organise the Still Walking festival. All this work recently came to fruition with the various tours and events wending their way across the city.
There are many more words and pictures on the Still Walking blog and Flickr pages, but a few of my photos are gathered here by way of marking these happenings.
A gathering on New Street looks up, causing The DHL Man to stop, linger and say "thank you"
Opportunities to osmose between the inside and outside of tours; to be swept up in the passions contained within, but also to observe them from a distance
Trust and exploration
Taking the road less travelled
Saying goodbye
Causing people to stop and stare whilst we stopped and listened
Gathering around shared interests
Standing out from the crowd; talking to the individuals within the crowd
Cinematic moments
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