Call and Return and the Ludogeographers

On the 19th of September, players of Call and Return will start to tackle a series of creative missions that will send them out across the city exploring places, materials and the way contemporary culture permeates through them.

The city in question could be Birmingham or Tokyo, Bristol or Kyoto, and as well as negotiating their immediate surrounding, players must also negotiate interactions with other people across different geographies, languages and time zones.

Call and Return is the second in the Emergent Game series: projects that investigate group dynamics, collaborative creativity and the use of digital technologies to adjust how we relate to public spaces.

Missions are not location-specific, so players can be based anywhere: all you need is access to an internet connection, a sense of humour and a soft toy to represent you in the game (we play anonymously).

Instructions on how to sign up can be found here:
http://ludogeography.org/projects/callandreturn/
(don’t worry, this is the most complicated bit of the process – it gets easier from here on in!)

To complement activities taking place on-line (once again most of the conversation will take place via twitter.com) there are opportunities to get involved in various events:

Monday 8th of September
Workshop at hanare, Kyoto
http://hanareproject.net/workshop_lecture/index.html

Saturday 13th of September
Workshop as part of the Dislocate08 festival, ZAIM, Yokohama
http://www.dis-locate.net/workshop2.htm

Then we pull together the contributions from the workshops and on-line conversations in a weekend of creative missions as part of a festival of pervasive games in Bristol:

Friday 19th – Sunday 21st September
igfest, Bristol
http://igfest.org/

It doesn’t matter if you can’t make it in person to any of these events – remote players have an equally important role to contribute. Sign up now to join the conversation and influence the directions the game goes in. For a flavour of what it might evolve into, see the Emergent Game website for what happened last time.

Ludogeography

Call and Return is a project initiated by The Ludogeographic Society. The Ludogeographic Society grew from collaborations central to the development of the first Emergent Game earlier this year: Ana Benlloch, Stuart Tait and myself.

To coincide with Call and Return, we are also launching www.ludogeography.org where we will document the activities of the Society. Likewise for http://twitter.com/ludogeography: if you use Twitter follow @ludogeography for updates on what we are doing, or perhaps just subscribe to the RSS feed.

Call and Return is supported by:
Arts Council England
Dislocate 08
hanare project
igfest

Thanks also to Antonio Roberts and the igfest volunteers for helping to staff the Bristol activities.

Emergent Game: Call and Return

A few months ago, myself, Ana Benlloch, a swathe of other collaborators and a posse of participants designed, shaped and played Emergent Game.

This was an amazing experience in itself, but to turn it into Learning we are doing it again.

Next month Ana and I will fly out to Japan where we will be contributing to the Dislocate08 festival.

Dislocate is an ongoing project examining the relationship between art, technology and locality. Exploring the impact of new media upon our experience and expression of place, Dislocate08 examines the creative potential of the technologies which surround us to heighten our awareness of our locality, transforming our encounter with our direct environment and the manner in which we attempt to communicate this to elsewhere.

There’s a pdf overview of intent and participating artists here.

Being in Japan also gives us the opportunity to work with hanare: a sort of artist-led space/meeting space/café space in Kyoto. (You may remember the 4649 project.)

On the 8th of September we’ll be doing a workshop at hanare, and on the 13th of September we’ll be doing a workshop as part of Dislocate. We’ll be using these workshops to shape the Japanese component of a long weekend of Emergent Gaming happening on the 19th, 20th and 21st of September. Why? Because Emergent Game has also been accepted as part of igfest (Interesting Game Festival) in Bristol.

So, coming up is the second iteration of Emergent Game in which we’ll be investigating what happens when you have two groups of players exploring places separated by differences in language, culture, geography and timezone.

As some of the players will be in the UK and some in Japan; some having online access and some not; there will be variations in what is possible: part of the game experience will be how your avatar negotiates this. Perhaps you will make friends with a player in another country and barter things with them by post; perhaps you will be a ‘lone avatari’ with a mission of your own; perhaps you will find new spaces online where participants can interact.

We’re still negotiating the starting points for these activities and, of course, the eventual shape of them will largely be determined by those who get involved. But for now the initial instructions from the first game apply to the one coming up in September.

We’d quite like players based in the UK (or elsewhere) to get involved (online) in the two workshops on the 8th and 13th and we definitely want you guys involved in the weekend of the game itself (19th-21st) which is when we’ll be running the mission challenges. The way we see it working is that you now have a few weeks to find a toy to represent you, set up a Twitter account for it and to start some conversations with other players. Be sure to set the location in the Twitter settings to “emergent game” and to follow the likes of @yohmoh and the other soft toys located in emergent game. The rest will take care of itself.

This headstart will substitute for the workshops we’ll be doing with the players in Japan, so use this time productively…

The Ludogeographic Society

During the course of the first Emergent Game, a new collaborative group was formed between myself and two other artists I worked very closely with to realise the project: the aforementioned Ana Benlloch and also Stuart Tait. The Ludogeographic Society will be an identity we will use for future collaborations that explore similar territory to Emergent Game so this upcoming game will be realised as a project under the name of the Society, rather than under my name alone.

We’ll let you know when The Ludogeographic Society’s website is up and running, but in the meantime announcements will be made here and via the usual channels.

Coming up…

Due to what I can only put down to being a momentary lapse in concentration, I seem to have inadvertently got myself into the position of having tangible objects on show in exhibitions over the coming weeks …not only once, but on three separate occasions!

GOODS In

Saturday 28th June, 4-8pm
332 – 346 Moseley Road [map and directions]

First is GOODS In: a one-day exhibition curated by Charlie Levine and Harminder Singh Judge

This is a group show with the works chosen for the theme of “mechanics, engineering, the factory and multiples” in response to the location: a disused bed warehouse.

This is a must see – of course for the work, but also for the building itself (of which, unfortunately, you will see only a tiny fraction). There’s a lot of potential here and the owner, Sham, is working hard to turn what is a HUGE amount of space into a viable venue. Help get the momentum going.

I’ll be exhibiting a series of simple cardboard mechanisms that interact with the space.

Contents May Vary

Thursday 3rd July, 6-8pm
Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester. M15 4GB.

Ages and ages ago I submitted some work for the second Contents May Vary publication.

The gap between what we can assume lies beneath the visual world and the potential possibilities of what it conceals has given our imagination the opportunity to wander. Our minds reason that the inside of a rock is simply more of the outside. But we can never quite come to terms with the possibilities of what is hidden. To split the rock in a quest for this knowledge is futile when you discover that instead of revealing the internal, all you have achieved is even more known external. As artists we are faced with a decision on the format with which to start a discussion. With accepting what we see is real, a book as object involves seen and unseen material. This inanimate object can engage us on many levels when we begin a relationship with it as both creator and viewer.

My work is a map relating to the Sites of Potentiality Guidebooks series.

The publication is a 16 page, black and white limited edition with contributions from myself and artists: Andrew Bracey, Alice Bradshaw, Chris Clarke, John Dellar, Stuart Edmondson, Michael Farquhar, David Martin, Liz Murphy, John Sauve and Richard Shields.

You can pick up your copy at the free launch event at Castlefield Galley or, after the launch, by sending an A5 SAE to: CMV issue 2, Castlefield Gallery, 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester M15 4GB, UK.

theweatherproject

July 11, 2008 – April 19, 2009
Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Lingnerplatz 1, 01069 Dresden, Germany

Part of the 2°. Weather, Climate, Man exhibition at what looks to be a really interesting institution. I’ll be flying out for the opening, not for the networking – which I’m terminally hopeless at, even in my native language – but to see if the exhibitions live up to my high expectations based almost entirely on this image from their website.

For those who don’t know, the weatherproject began in late 2000 when I started asking volunteers to collect samples of weather for me. Each person gets an identical weather-collecting kit and can then choose when and where to collect their weather. Some of the results are documented online, but, despite difficulties in asking people to take mysterious containers abroad with them nowadays, actual numbers are now something like 300-400 jars (I can never keep track) and still increasing…

Here are the names of the people whose jars will go into the show:

Sophie Maughan, Lucie Slámová, Nigel Prince. Graham Dix, Suping Tian, Gill Lawson, Sandy Hewat, Afaq Qureshi, Petra Nieth, Kate Lang, Elizabeth Batters, David Taylor, Astrid Bergmann, Emma Hunter & Charles West, Cathleen Jackson, Martin Weaver, Rachel Jack, Judith Evans, Scott Smith, Clark Crawford, Xenia Snetkov, Jane Tapley, Simon Tapley, Tomoko Okada and Sylvia Gardiner.

Only 30 collections have been selected for exhibition, but I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to the project over the last 7 years or so.

Um, also, if anyone has any suggestions for a cunning storage solution for several hundred small glass jars…

await further instructions

The Emergent Game website is.

digbeth tweets

After a year of abstinence, I have finally succumbed to twitter.

Why?

SMS updating, time-stamping (sort of) and tomorrow’s invigilation. Here.

After the invigilation, once we’ve gathered back at VIVID, we’ll also be collating visual and aural traces here: www.flickr.com/groups/invigilator_digbeth/.

Let the quest for how best to document Invigilator continue!

Invigilator: Digbeth

paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm
meet at VIVID at 2pm

As Digbeth continues its metamorphosis and assimilation into Eastside (Birmingham’s transforming, revitalising and regenerating regeneration project[1]) art institutions and project spaces present there are slowly increasing in number and yet, for the most part, they are safely kept behind locked gates, barred windows and access-controlled doors.

For Invigilator: Digbeth, a team of volunteers will take the role of gallery invigilator/visitor assistant outside where, rather than sitting in gallery spaces, they will be watchful over the streets and the day-to-day life unfolding there.

This is the fifth in the Invigilator series[2] where a single set of directions has been transposed onto different locations to determine the exact place for watching over; we can choose our significant starting points, but then a pre-determined sequence of lefts, rights and straight-ons takes us on a not-quite-random walk to an unplanned invigilation site.

Invigilator: Digbeth will consist of several invigilations taking place simultaneously throughout the Digbeth area. The significant starting points will be the galleries, studios and project spaces that would normally host the invigilators. The same galleries, studios and project spaces responsible for Digbeth’s renaissance…

Digbeth is also significant as the starting point for the Invigilator series as a whole since the directions used to arrive at the invigilation sites were derived from those used to get from home to a part-time job invigilating at VIVID.

All are welcome to join us for Invigilator: Digbeth. We will meet at VIVID at 2pm, borrow some of their red t-shirts and then walk to our respective invigilation sites (about 4 people per team) where we will be watchful for about 30 minutes before returning to VIVID for refreshments and feedback. No special equipment required: just bring yourselves, suitably warm clothing and a willingness to interact with the city.

Queries on the day phone: 0121 766 7876 (VIVID office)
Further information on the Invigilator series: www.npugh.co.uk/projects/invigilator

references:
[1] http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/eastside.bcc
[2]New Forest,Derby,Tokyo and Nuneaton

Invigilator:Digbeth has been supported by Access West Midlands

invigilator invites

We’re currently getting excited about the re-appropriated business cards we’re using for the Invigilator: Digbeth invitations. Hope you do too!

[link to vimeo page]

INVIGILATOR: DIGBETH
paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm

meet at VIVID at 2pm

bring a red top if you haven’t already arranged to use either one of ours or one from a different venue

npugh.co.uk/blog/invigilating_digbeth
enquiries@npugh.co.uk

invigilating Digbeth

Since May last year, Paul Conneally and I have been invigilating.

First I invigilated some of the New Forest. Then Paul replied by hopping on the train with the morning commuters and invigilating a building site in Derby.

Shortly after that I wanted to explore what would happen if you had more than one invigilator. I wanted to see how the presence of multiple invigilators affected the dynamics of an area that has to be walked through (rather than just a point location that people can walk past).

I was in Japan at the time so this gave rise to Invigilator: Tokyo and – inevitably – a whole barrage of further questions!

More recently, Paul and I met up in Nuneaton for the first of the invigilations that we have done together. More questions!

We now feel it is time for us to turn the process around on itself and use the next invigilation to examine its origin: my old part-time job invigilating the gallery space at VIVID.

We want to dissect what we have learned so far.

We want you.

We’re currently gathering people who would like to don red t-shirts and join us on Saturday the 29th of March for Invigilator: Digbeth. We want to scale up the Tokyo action and send small teams of invigilators percolating out through Digbeth: turning the whole cultural quarter thing inside-out to extract people from their barricaded, security-protected warehouses and onto the street for an hour or so.

As a nod to how this series of works came about, we’ll be using VIVID as a base, liberating their red t-shirts, and also returning there for the debrief session and refreshments afterwards.

The invigilations themselves involve following a set of left/right/straight-on directions and then probably about 30 minutes standing around that location being watchful. What we’re after, in order to give Invigilator: Digbeth some clout is a) as many invigilators as possible so we can properly cover a large area and b) some suggestions for relevant starting points for the random walks.

So, for now, we’d like you to do three things for us:

• Put that date in your diary: 29th of March, 2-5pm.
• Suggest some cultural venue/art institution-esque starting points that the random walks to the invigilation locations can start from. We know about the obvious ones near to VIVID such as Ikon Eastside, the Custard Factory and the soon to be opened Eastside Projects, but we’d like more. Are there any? Bung something in the comments and let us know about it!
• Let us know if you’d like to take part. All welcome, but we’d be particularly keen to hear from anyone who would normally work as one of the aforementioned venues.

More details to follow a bit closer to the day, and further invites are being circulated in the real world too.

Artgos

Starting today and running until the 15th of December, Artgos will be at the Merrion Market in Leeds.

This Christmas artsparkle presents Artgos, a new catalogue store in the heart of Leeds’ shopping district! A collaboration between Artsparkle and theartmarket, Artgos will be selling work by big name artists alongside fresh talent working with multiples, those fabulous, affordable artworks that make such great stocking fillers. Come along to the catalogue shop for a unique shopping experience, see performance artists in full flow, and kick-start your contemporary art collection for as little as £1!
Artgos website

Counsel for the Artist will be there in the form of some packs of postcards made especially for the event.

Each pack contains one postcard for each of the following statements:

• Make exchanges with spaces
• Strive to achieve modest connections
• Set your own agenda
• Add to a culture of learning and experimentation
• Get the message across
• Meet a new network
• Resist the ascribed role of witness
• Circumnavigate predictability

When I’ve shown them before I’ve been struck by how much these have resonated with other people – not just artists – so with any luck this will be a good opportunity to get the statements circulating into some interesting places.

There’s a veritable flotilla of links relating to the Artgos event, including the main Artgos website here.

If the Flickr stream is anything to go by, a lot of work has gone into preparing the space:

I’m digging the order forms! Hopefully some images of the opening party will also be added later.

If you can’t get along to The Art Market in person, I have limited numbers of map-wrapped Counsel for the Artist postcards available through the invisible hand shop.

link and ShiftSpace

A ShiftSpace remix of a blog YouTube remix of the junicho renga ‘A Circle of Fire’ by Paul Conneally.