Residency at Phoenix Square, Leicester – participants wanted

23/02/2012: Updated with this eventbrite link.

Next week I’ll be the third and final resident at Phoenix Square in the series that started with Engagement Party and The Institute for Boundary Interactions.

My blurb has yet to make its way onto the website, so here’s the skinny:

Over the next few months, a range of artists will be living, working and creating brand new artworks at Phoenix Square, taking inspiration from this unique cultural building and its surroundings…

Nikki Pugh is evolving technological creatures that affect the way you navigate the cityscape.

Nikki’s project ‘Colony‘ is an ongoing series of experiments in which she is developing a group of creatures that respond in real time to the landscape through which they are being carried.

Having already built prototypes that vibrate differently depending on whether they are in open or confined spaces, Nikki will be using radio communication and biofeedback to investigate aspects of flocking and interconnectedness.

Stay tuned for opportunities to become part of the colony and contribute to the play-testing in and around Phoenix Square.

Nikki Pugh is an artist who investigates issues around interaction: how we interact with spaces and landscapes; how we interact with each other; and how we interact with objects. Her practice is located somewhere in the intersection of people, place, playfulness and technology.

Basically the plan is to do a series of experiments involving radio communication and, I think, galvanic skin response readings. You probably know enough about me by now to know that this will mean going out into the streets and trying stuff out to see what happens.

Since I’m particularly interested in flocking and interconnectedness for this residency, that also means I’ll be needing to muster small groups of volunteers in order to try stuff out and see what happens.

If you’re up for spending some time next week exploring the streets of Leicester whilst carrying a small radio unit and with a few sensors attached to your fingers, you can sign up at this eventbrite page.

Thanks!

Good Post Day

The XBee radios for the Phoenix Square residency have arrived, as has the T-shirt I won for my Geiger counter triggered LED decorations project instructable. Also a possible refund from SLC!

The Sanitised City: How Public is Public Space

The podcasts of Alistair Donald‘s and my scene-setters for the recent Birmingham Salon are now available online.

I wasn’t able to show my accompanying slides on the night, so I’ve superimposed them over my audio in this video:

Many thanks to the Salon for inviting me to take part: it was a good opportunity to push some of the things I’ve touched on before a little bit further, particularly what I might mean by “ownership”.

Do make sure you listen to Alistair’s recording too.

Still Walking festival, coming to Birmingham soon!

Last year artist/historian/typographer/tourguide Ben Waddington came to me with an invitation to be his partner in crime for making something rather exciting happening…

Ben Waddington makes you look up.

Frustrated at the lack of interesting walking tours (in a city that should really be able to do better), and at the lack of visibility for the stuff that is going on, Ben had resolved to do something about it and organise a festival of walking.

After sounding out various artists, historians, architects and enthusiasts, getting a hugely positive response from loads of people keen to share their perspectives of Birmingham, the result was inevitable and Still Walking was born.

Still Walking (a pilot festival for what we hope will be a regular annual celebration of all that walking is and might be) will take place from the 15th March – 1st April later this year. For those of you who like your Interesting Things, that’s sandwiched cosily between the Flatpack film festival and the Fierce festival of live-art-and-things-that-are-a-bit-difficult-to-categorise, both of which we’re partnering with to bring you a great big chunk of amazinteresting this Spring!

We’re awaiting funding decisions before we can finalise the programme and unleash a full website on you but, whatever the outcome, there will be a selection of guided tours, expeditions, instigations and processions offering you the opportunity to see Birmingham in a fresh light.

Our provisional programme spans film, TV, health, history, art, science, fact and fiction. What more do you want?!

Oh, ok then, expect an afternoon of lurve, too…

It’s going to be ace.

We have a holding page up at http://www.stillwalking.org/ where you can sign up to one or both of the mailing lists; Ben’s on the other end of the @StillWalkers Twitter, ready to talk the walk; and there’s a StillWalkers Flickr Group that we’d like to fill with walking goodness…

You’re cordially invited to plug yourself into any or all of those channels and to join us in becoming Still Walkers.

Whilst we’re waiting to be able to announce the programme, we’d love to hear from you if you’d like to volunteer for the upcoming festival or to offer an event for next year’s shindig. We’re also asking which Brum celebrities you’d like to see leading a guided tour of Birmingham.

In the meantime, spread the word: Still Walking is coming soon!

Initial results from the Chin Up Chapeau

Having made a hat to measure my posture as I walk around different parts of the city, I’ve spent the last few days testing it and getting a feel for what sort of results it produces.

Diagram showing position, direction I'm facing and the angle of my head. Click for a much larger version...

Pretty much exactly as I was expecting really, which is probably a good reason to avoid drawing any sweeping conclusions from it – at least until I’ve got to the stage where I collect data without being aware that I’m doing so…

On the plus side, it does reveal lots of unexpected things – posing yet more questions in the process – and that, I believe, is the sign of a good tool!

For these renderings, green represents a neutral head position, with the pointer getting redder as my gaze is lowered. Here are some noticings:

The lower, horizontal section shows me walking along a fairly busy road: eyes front, head direction and angle reasonably constant. The upper section is along a footpath next to a river: my interest is drawn in all sorts of directions and this is shown by the inconsistency in pointer direction and colour

Close-up of a high interest area - head angle changes a lot, as does the direction I'm facing

Head angle decreases slowly as I approach the High Street, but returns to a neutral position a lot quicker as I leave it behind me

High Street Mode gets switched off as soon as I go into the Post Office, on another day it fades slowly as I walk away.

It’s becoming apparent that I need to include some sort of calibration so that I can more reasonably compare tracks from different walks. Currently, differences in how I’m wearing the hat are too easily read as differences in head angle when I put all the traces on the same diagram.

I’ve also expanded the arduino code so that I log date, time, latitude, longitude, altitude, course, speed, bearing, pitch and roll. I think there are some very interesting potential correlations to investigate (for example: when my head angle decreases, do I also walk faster?) and, whilst I may not be investigating them right now, I want to make sure I’ve got the data when I do!

Introducing the Chin Up Chapeau

[or the Shin Up Shapeau. Or the Chin Up Chap! Oh!]

The Chin Up Chapeau

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my posture changes in relation to whereabouts I am as I walk around Birmingham.

As I approach what I perceive to be high risk areas I believe I adopt a significantly more defensive stance: lowering my gaze and stooping slightly. Of course, there are hunches and there are hunches…

I made the Chin Up Chapeau to measure the angle of my head and log it along with locational data so I can see exactly how my posture relates to space. Do I really stoop, or is it, y’know, all in my head? Where are the danger zones? Are the boundaries clearly defined?

The Chin Up Chapeau sports a gps receiver [EM 406a], a tilt-compensated compass[CMPS10], a logging device [OpenLog] and an arduino clone microcontroller [RBBB] along with a few other accoutrements like a soft switch and an indicator LED.

There are still a few niceties to be sorted out, but here’s a visualisation of a quick walk last night:

Head angle, bearing, location ...and a loaf of bread from the Co-op

I’m going to log data as I walk around the city, but I’m very aware of how easy it would be to ‘fake’ the outcomes to match what I think they should be.

Or perhaps I’ll be concious that I’m watching myself and instead make an effort to keep my chin up at all times…

At the very least I now have an electrically heated hat to keep me cosy!

Location Aware artwork used on Speak Destination CD

Nearly 2 years ago I spent a day gathering GPS randomness around Nottingham as part of the Territorial Play event organised by Trampoline/Radiator. The photos went onto Flickr and I bought some new trainers and that was that.

Until The Luna Moth got in touch last month.

The Speak Destination album is available as a download, or you can get a CD (with lovely textured touchy-feely cardboard case!) for a few quid more.

Sound and vision

There’s a moment in every build where it starts to come together: you get a glimpse into the future and you can see what it’s going to look like.

At about lunchtime yesterday the make gained volume in that it started to occupy space.

A few hours later we’d added the skin and, rather pleasingly, the sonic properties are working out as planned too!

Making, tangents and edges // Making tangents and edges

After a bit of a delay, and then after a bit of an induction, I’ve at last been able to start on the making! Hurrah!

Still life with visor, nail gun and wood adhesive

I’ll be using my time at the Margaret Street campus through the AA2A programme to explore a tangent of the Colony project.

The two prototyping sessions I ran last year posed some very interesting questions about the experience of travelling through public space carrying landscape-reactive objects. Lots of interesting questions. Lots of interesting big questions.

In the absence of a big interesting residency in which to tackle these big interesting questions, I’ve decided to modularise my research and use some little interesting residencies to explore different avenues of research.

I want to feel that I am really exploring possibilities rather than just making the version of Colony that’s already in my head, so some of the things I’ll be investigating are tangents that may lead me away from the things we’ve previously said are the nice things.

This is how we find the edges (hopefully), and the edges are where the interesting things happen (inevitably).

In the previous two incarnations of Colony, the objects carried have been small, light and kind of cuddly. The vibrations in response to the GPS data were only perceptible to the person carrying the object.

What happens if the objects become large and weighty?
What happens if their reactions are audible to those nearby?
What happens if you are moving in a group with others also making noise?

Artists’ Access to Art Colleges

For the next few months I have access to tools.
Big ones. Noisy ones. Dangerous ones.

I am maker; hear me roar.