Slow time with one’s head in the clouds

With the arrival of the snow yesterday also came the arrival of the cloud(s): creeping along the Bow Valley towards us at breakfast; dark and broody overhead; and ephemeral lines hugging the lower slopes of the mountains.

I spent the morning researching bluejacking and proximity marketing whilst doing my best to try not to be distracted by the stunning views outside the window that spans one end of the studio.

In the end a compromise was reached by way of setting up (i.e. resting it on a convenient frog) my camera on the window frame and leaving it to take photos at intervals. Wow. I’m glad I did – the resulting video highlights so much that you’re completely oblivious to when it unfolds in real time. (incidentally, as good an opportunity as any to link to the great animation Das Rad.)

Cascade Clouds from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Cascade Clouds 2 from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

The second of those videos is a sequence of stills taken at 30 second intervals over a time period of about 2 hours.

Looking back at them now, these remind me of recent conversations about how one might use technology to achieve slowness (as opposed to being a way to get stuff sooner, quicker and more efficiently).

The afternoon session was led by Angus Leech on the topic of Invisible Architecture. After an introductory talk we were once more donning coats and tuques and heading outside to put stuff into practice.

Taking William Gibson’s Spook Country as a starting point, we explored the Banff Centre campus looking for locations and inspiration for impossible augmented reality sculptures. More on that tomorrow I expect: after we have toured around everyone’s ideas.

Next we took over the Tunnel Mountain Lounge for a shared meal in an attempt to save our wallets and waistlines from the indulgences of the campus dining room. This had to be carefully timed to fit in a small window of opportunity between at least three different other events that people variously wanted to attend. I was originally going to a gig in a hut, but at the last minute (or 10) decided to go and see Sid Marty, John Vaillant and Wayne Sawchuk speaking/singing as part of the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Sid Marty was superbly entertaining and Michael Christopher Brown‘s photos accompanying the later presentations were jaw-droppingly beautiful. Again, themes of going slow; particularly the notion of going at ‘migration pace’.