Hacking The Public

Last weekend I took part in The Public’s experimental Gallery Hack Camp event. Experimental in that they’ve never hosted anything like this before and also, well, it’s a bunch of creative people in a space – we’re going to end up trying stuff out!

First up: rearrange the letters. GRAHAM CAKELY PLC. That’ll do nicely.

Second up: respect The Public’s attitude towards caffeine.

Third up: a tour of the 230 metre long gallery ramp that we had been invited to tweak and re-imagine.

++th up: IDEAS!

Eventually the ebb and flow of conversations settled down into coagulations around ideas. Kim, Alyson and I set off in search of cracks and crevices to leverage towards exciting, secretive, human-scaled experiences. This involved some impromptu den-making and a certain amount of static electricity…

Eventually the gravitational pull of the ramp drew us back in to what had been most people’s first response to the ramp: by some administrative oversight, the ramp is currently without a marble run. Shocking!

We fixed that.

like marbles; but BIGGER

We only had a few hours making time, but we managed to scrump some interesting materials from various boxes, shelves and cupboards. We by this time being Kim, Dave and I.

I think we had a nice demo mix of mechanical and electrical going on with chutes, a bicycle wheel paddle wheel, drumroll, unfeasibly large alarm clock, fire bell and Christmas lights all either affecting or responding to the golf balls along their journey.

Things got a little eratic after we relocated from the camp HQ to the ramp, but I think the power of these things is all in the build. Remember the Improbable Machine?

marbles from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

It’s got me thinking a lot about the use (or not) of prototypes in settings like this. I think I’d like to be able to engage with imperfection more.

Mis-fitting at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design

This term I’m doing some Visiting Tutor work teaching into a project for the second year BA Art & Design students.

The original idea was ‘Body Architecture’. Here’s what the brief evolved into after my recruitment:

Creative Mis-fitting

Watch the following music video:

We see someone wearing a succession of body sculptures (is it fashion? art? architecture?) as they walk through the city and prompt a variety of responses from the Normal People.

When we work in the bubble of an art school, it’s easy for us to forget the world outside and how our work might be perceived by those who have not encountered similar things before. We’re going to take our work outside.

Starting at the Margaret Street school of art, walk, run, slide, skate or use an alternative mode of locomotion for 3 minutes 50 seconds (the length of the music video). The place where you find yourself at the end of that time period is the place you will locate your work. Make sure you have arrived at your own space and are not within 20 metres of another Mis-fitter’s location.

Your brief is to design, construct and ultimately wear a body sculpture that responds to and in some way fits your location, whilst at the same time misfitting people’s expectations of what they might encounter in that place. Find a niche or other point of leverage at your location for your construction to echo – a bit like how the guy in the video’s costumes echo the things that are thrown at him. You will be wearing your work, so you also need to consider how it relates to your body and how you will move whilst wearing it.

You will document the process of arriving at your location, finding the bit to riff off, constructing your attire and any interactions that arise out of you and your costume inhabiting your location.

The project launched yesterday and I joined them in the afternoon to give a lecture on the-sort-of-stuff-I-do-and-the-things-I-think-are-interesting-about-working-in-public-space. This included: an overview of Dust, leading on to the importance of interfaces; objects as permission-givers; magic vests; triangulation; vibrant social spaces; interactions with/between strangers; Urban Sensation Transformers; silly hats and the implications of different design aesthetics; city as playground; rule-bending and transgression; comfort zones and accumulation of actions.

Following this we went outside into Birmingham city centre (Victoria Square and Chamberlain square for some blindfold work and giving the students a way in to working (and being vulnerable) in front of an incidental audience.

Working with one blindfolded person and one chaperone, they were given the following exercises:

1. Blindfolded person to describe everything they sense/notice/feel/are aware of as they walk around.
2. Chaperone curates a series of sense experiences foe the blindfolded person.
3. Try to facilitate some interactions with stranger by making the first approach – ask people for the time or for directions etc and see if they then come back with questions or conversation.

We’ll be unleashing works in progress and the final pieces onto the streets around the school of art over the next few week, so keep an eye out for any unusual goings on …and don’t be afraid to say “what are you doing?”

Academia

I’ve spent the last few days surrounded by academics and researchers.
It got me thinking what department I might like to be affiliated to.
After a frustrating search, I started to dream one up…

Welcome to the department of HCI HPCI (Human-Place-Computer Interaction).

Human: the two main ingredients are the body and story-telling.

Place: urban, rural, large, small, public, intimate and everything in between.

Computer: unlikely to involve screens.

Interaction: like you’ve never experienced before.

We’d be a very empirical bunch of people – getting out there and learning by doing. Segregation into “teachers” and “students” probably wouldn’t be very useful. Members of the Department of HPCI would be interstitials: mobile, able to occupy the gaps between things and effect change. The department too would be something of an inbetweener: fluctuating co-incidences of interest resulting in temporary bonds to those within more traditional departments of Art, Computing, Urban Studies, Sociology… I’m thinking we’d also need adjunct professors in Sound Engineering, Electronics, Neuroscience, Astrophysics, History and, well, pretty much any other discipline you’d care to mention…

Bookmore would provide the support structures and pertinent questions; Lynne would design the graduation gowns and distribute motivation; Holly would be in charge of bunting (and running for your life); Hannah would instigate magic moments; Paul would invite people in; and Markuz would enable them to participate in something bigger than themselves.

Who else?

Gretton Explorers – a day at Gretton Primary School

The final part of my commission for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art was to spend a day working with Year 1 and Year 2 pupils at Gretton Primary School.

Working blind with people and place that I hadn’t met before and also up against a forecast for torrential downpour, I armed myself with a large rucksack filled with explorer-y things, a story about having been sent to explore Gretton and some mild consternation that my explorer equipment hadn’t been delivered yet.

With the pupils’ expert assistance we did some excellent exploring that was sure to make Yasmin Boss extremely proud.

Pictures, pictures, pictures…
Those marked (JS) courtesy of James Steventon, Fermynwoods Contemporary Art.

The group decides that we need a map before we can start exploring and everyone settles down to draw a mapbit of something interesting/important in the village

The group decides that we're going to need a *really* big piece of paper to put all these mapbits on. Next job is to work out where all the mapbits go...

But how do we get from one mapbit to another? (JS)

Paths, roads and other details added to the gaps in the map. (JS)

A few of the girls hang behind at breaktime because they think they've figured out what the recently-delivered devices are. (JS)

Explorers set out to walk to some of the places on the map. (JS)

Using all our senses...

A confused Nikki The Explorer needing some things about the village hall explained to her. (JS)

The Pocket Park: many things to discover and examine. (JS)

Walking through the tunnel with the GPS devices to see what effect it has. (JS)

Explorers in the tunnel. (JS)

Small child. Large rucksack.

Discovering that drawing a line of where we've just been is actually quite difficult. (JS)

Recognising where home is on the device-drawn traces is even harder...

Recognising places. (JS)

My home-made GPS gadgets get the thumbs up. (JS)

Because - regardless of age - that moment when the LEDs come on is always a good one... (JS)

Investigating dark places and their effect on the gadgets we made. (JS)

Success!. (JS)

Someone puts forward the hypothesis that the trace from the GPS module placed on the windowsill is the way it is because of all of the excitement in the room when we were making our gadgets. (JS)

A great day and a really nice group of people to work with.
Thanks to Garmin for supporting the day through the loan of several GPS devices.

My Flickr set of photos from the day is here.

Possibility Mapping (heavy object and built environment)

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.

More images on Flickr: photo set | slideshow

Possibility Probes hit the city centre

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/).

Test-driving the possibility probe

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:

• To be contrary to the light, cuddly, empathy-evoking bundles from the initial Colony playtesting (this project is an oxbow in a much larger, meandering research series)
• To be a little bit uncomfortable and unwieldy, but not too much so.
• To be audible.
• To be felt.

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.

Tinier GPS

After an enforced absence from the Margaret Street workshops, I’m bracing myself for a final push to get some serious making done in preparation for an exhibition coming up at the end of April.

Although I’ve not been able to get at the woodwork equipment, I’ve not been idle and have been working away at improving the code and GPS set-up that I’ll be using to animate the objects I’m producing.

I’d like to say I’ve built on the improvements I made whilst in New York, however it’s probably more accurate to say I’ve torn it all down and started again from scratch…

Here’s the kit I’ve been using up until now:

1 x Arduino clone (RBBB); 2 x bare bones Arduino clones; 2 x GPS receivers; OpenLog

Having initially tried and failed to satisfactorily read from the two GPS receivers via serial, I’d switched to using multiple Arduino units communicating over I2C. All built off the tutorials and examples made available at the wonderful Lady Ada site (and a lot of help from other generous people!).

A year and a lot of learning later, I thought it would be worth a second attempt at a one-microcontroller set-up. Having used Mikal Hart’s TinyGPS library for the Chin Up Chapeau, that seemed a promising way to go. And here’s the result:

One RBBB Arduino clone alternating between reading two GPS receivers via TinyGPS and SoftwareSerial (also based on work by Mikal Hart, available with V1.0 of the Arduino IDE).

I’ve been testing it over recent weeks and the results are a very close match to the lines I was getting with the original original set-up using two PDAs and mscape.

A walk through the city centre earlier today (click for larger version)

It’s not all about cutting things out, though: I’ve also added in a transistor to control a solenoid. Tomorrow I plan to insert it all inside a large wooden drum and see what happens…

Phoenix playtesting sessions #2 & #3

Due to low turn-outs, these sessions were more testing than play, however we still had some very big smiles!

By Thursday I’d made some units that communicated with each other via XBee radios. They remain happy whilst still in range, but once separated you have a short grace period in which to link up again. After that an alarm goes off.

For the first of the two playtesting sessions it was the first time the units had been taken outside, so we wanted to get a feel for what sort of maximum range they have. Not until after having experimented with corridors and lifts, first.

Faraday Cage: third floor.

Maplin’s carpark wasn’t big enough, so we moved on to the ring road and then the St George’s retail park. You can just make out the person carrying the other unit in the distance…

Range-testing in the biggest carpark we could find...

For the last session we headed into the city centre and experimented with corners, pillars and mezzanines in various streets, theatres, shopping centres and multistorey carparks. I’m afraid I was so engrossed in what we were doing that I totally forgot to take any photos!

Next step is to expand this out to a group and start working with range information to see how that affects the coalescence of a group moving through the city.

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!