Returning from my failed ascent of Harter Fell, I stopped at the old packhorse Birks Bridge (not the more modern one by the car park).
As I snapped away, happily taking photos of the bridge and of the gulley it spanned, I became uncomfortably aware that these images all seemed familiar and that I was just taking the same photos of everybody else; that these were the same images I had already encountered online doing my preliminary reading about the Duddon Valley.
I had very mixed feeling about this. Yes, it’s very picturesque, but as an artist I feel I should work a bit harder to look a little beyond the obvious. Then it struck me. All our photos seem to focus in on the river, but what about if we pay attention to what’s happening perpendicular to this? What happens if we instead think of the thoroughfares that the bridges were built to transport over the water? Suddenly the bridge looked very different!
I was still mulling over this shift in viewpoint when I arrived back at the more modern Birks Bridge.
I don’t yet know where this train of thought will take me, but I think I need to resolve to look beyond the postcard views and look at things sideways on.
Having successfully driven over Wrynose Pass, my plan was to then get out of the car and do a bit of walking. Online, I’d found a short circular walk that included climbing to the top of Harter Fell, where I’d also read the views could be great. Whilst I wasn’t sure I’d have a clear view, I thought I’d give it a try and, if I could , then that would be a great way of getting a sense of the valley.
Starting from the carpark near Birks Bridge, I negotiated some boggy ground before entering what the walk’s author had described as ‘desolate forest’. It was an uncannily good description. The photo below doesn’t really convey the feeling of it, but perhaps you get an inkling.
Hardknott forest is currently being restored from a conifer plantation to “native habitats of oak and birch woodland, bogs and open ground”. Well, I’d already found the bog, maybe the desolation was also by design?
Riding up out of the forest at Birks, I relocated the bridleway and, it turns out, lots more bogginess. There was a lot of water running off the fell, and in some places the track I was following was indistinguishable from a stream bed.
As I got higher, the way became harder to spot and, with the arrival of some rain showers, also quite slippery.
I weighed my options and decided that it was probably best for me to cut my losses, turn around and head back down into the valley.
A couple of quick photos whilst perched on a rock, and then the rain started in earnest and I had to find a relatively flat spot on which to wrestle on my waterproof trousers!
This is as far as I made it before turning back (the blue line shows my track and the yellow line was the rough route I was hoping to follow):
I think that means I made it onto Mart Crags, but not really anywhere near the top of Harter Fell. Oh well.
After returning to Birks I veered off to the right rather than retracing my steps back to the car. I wasn’t sure what to expect by this stage, but hopefully it would be a bit drier!
After a going over some fields and a little bit – but not too much – squelch, the bridleway nipped over a stone wall and suddenly I was following a nice wooded track.
I really liked this stile without an obstacle that looked a bit like some odd seating arrangements or some sort of minimalist sculpture.
Descending further down into the valley I increasingly became aware of the sound of pounding water. Ah! I must be getting close to the Duddon again!
The path took me close to the edge of a steep drop which I was reluctant to approach any closer, so I listened to the river for a while longer without being able to see it. Rounding a corner there was this dinky little bridge and Duddon itself. Now I could understand what all the noise was about!
Crossing at the wooden (and very slippery) footbridge, I regained the tarmac’d road and made my way back to the car park, stopping off every so often to take a few photos.
Here’s one looking back up at the summit of Harter Fell. (Or where the summit should have been.) Probably just as well I didn’t push on for the top, as I don’t think I’d have seen much….
Having chickened out of it on my quick recce to the Duddon Valley a fortnight ago, the time had come to bite the bullet and see if my car was up to the challenge of driving over Wrynose Pass. Success here would influence logistical decisions later on in the project, so I had to find out if it was an option or not.
The view from Dove Cottage in the morning was of snow-dusted peaks and lingering cloud, so I wasn’t sure what I would be met with once I started to climb the pass.
Well, a closer view of the snow, for a start!
Also some glorious views and dramatically-lit landscapes.
I justified several photo stops in terms of giving the car a chance to cool down a bit!
I reached the top with no automobile-related dramas and crested the top of the pass to be greeted with…
Ugh! A valley full of raincloud! Typical!
It brightened up for a few more photographs and an opportunity to pause and reflect on how rapidly the Duddon had grown from the tiny little becks I’d seen earlier, to something that could now reasonably be called a river.
I found myself wondering how one would have traveled between Grasmere and the Duddon Valley at the end of the 17th Century. Would it have been something you could have done as a day trip, or would it have been an undertaking of a few days?
I travelled up to the Lake District for a preliminary meeting at the Wordsworth Museum. Having a bit of time to spare I thought I’d take a detour to check out the valley that will be the main focus of this project.
Visibility was somewhat reduced and it was quite squelchy underfoot, but after 10 minutes strolling around on the banks of the Duddon near Ulpha I could understand that this place is a little bit special – I’m very much looking forward to having a proper explore.
In amongst all the excitement about the Orrery project, I’m also one of 4 artists who have been commissioned by Coventry Transport Museum (CTM, working with QUAD Derby) to respond to their collections. Unsurprisingly, I proposed that I worked with their cycle collection, so things will be a bit bike-tastic around here for a while!
Super spokes
The commissions are to spend 10 days on research and development for a larger proposal that the museum may then choose to take forward later in the year. We’re being asked to “create something that will enhance the visitor experience and help to engage with new audiences for CTM”. I did a small amount of unpicking during my interview, but needless to say there’s a lot more work that I need to do before I understand exactly what the words ‘engagement’ and ‘audiences’ mean for the museum.
My residency doesn’t start properly for another couple of weeks, but finding myself in Coventry the other day with a spare hour or two I decided to do a bit of a recce to start my brain off.
It’s clear there are some interesting curatorial challenges to be worked with: I had been told during my interview that there’s an ongoing struggle to try and stop people from touching the exhibits. (I can’t deny this is hugely tempting, given the number of cranks and levers just within reach!) There are signs everywhere asking people not to touch and explaining that to do so would damage the items, however thankfully there are only a few items shielded behind a protective layer of glass and you can still peer at the details that catch your attention.
Difficult to resist turning the pedals and watching these chains in action
For when a head tube badge just doesn’t cut the mustard
You know how it is with supermarkets and museums: you often end up in sync with someone and your paths cross in every other aisle. On my visit one of the people I kept finding myself near was this man, and it was fascinating to watch how he interacted with the collection – mostly by leaning on it, it seems…
Handy man
I’ll try and resist too much speculation (is it a territorial thing? were the descriptions too low down for him?), but it was a good reminder that whatever ‘engagement’ I propose – and let’s face it; it’s unlikey to be passive – will have to work hard to flag up what’s an acceptable mode of interaction and how this might be different from the other things in the same space.
So, back to my experience as a visitor to the museum…
[Insert caveat about not having paid attention to anything but the cycles and also having no better suggestion as to how I’d organise the museum if I were given the task.] The collections are presented chronologically and mostly with an eye on the evolution of design. There’s some historical context, but in that broad brushstroke, dry, text book kind of way: wars, rational dress reform, unemployment as a result of the collapse of the ribbon industry. My engagement with it was mostly on an intellectual level.
This bike shone out in amongst the talk of step-through frames and pneumatic tyres:
1926 Gulson Touring Bicycle
Or rather, this story shone out in amongst the talk of step-through frames and the development of pneumatic tyres:
1926 Touring Love Story
This bicycle was purchased in 1928, by a Mr S.A. Lee. In the same year he cycled to Reigate where he began a romance ith a young woman.
He then regularly travelled the 120 miles form Coventry to Reigate on this bicycle to continue the courtship.
A story about a person! (Two people!)
Apparently I said something eloquent in my interview. I’m not sure I can remember it now, but I think it was along the lines of describing my job to be “to find the hooks that help people to link stories relating to the collection to the stories within their own lives and then to use that as a springboard for engaging with the objects inside the museum”.
Something like that. The importance of stories we can relate to, anyway.
As well as my own experiences of cycling, which I expect I’ll be able to link to things within the collection, after my two-week stint helping with the research on Kat Jungnickel’s Bikes and Bloomers project, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of the back stories behind the inventors and what the details in their day-to-day lives were that led them to try and design something differently. (For Bikes and Bloomers one of the things we were interested in was a patent for a transformable cycling dress designed by Alice Bygrave, I spent some time investigating her family history and we started to discover she was surrounded by a family of watchmakers and racing cyclists. And I would love to know more about the sort of experimental tinkering that it seems she was probably surrounded by as a matter of course!
So, first declaration of intent: I’m interested in the stories a layer or two below the surface.
Second declaration of intent is all about the making.
By the 1890s the cycle trade was booming and Coventry had developed the largest bicycle industry in the world. 248 cycle manufacturers were based in Coventry, and the industry employed nearly 40,000 workers.[source]
I’m reading statements like these a lot as I do my background reading to try and get my head around how important the cycle manufacturing industry was to Coventry and how important Coventry was to the cycle manufacturing industry. There’s something niggling away at the back of my brain though (or perhaps it’s in my sculptor’s fingers) and it’s the feeling that there’s something that gets hidden behind the words and the numbers. What does it actually mean to make a single bicycle, let alone 1,369 of them?
I want to better understand the time and skill that went into making the objects on display at the museum.
Probably all this will change once I have a chance to meet with the museum staff and find out more about what it is that they want to get out of the residency, but that’s where I’m at going in and I can’t wait to get started properly!
~~~
Walking home from the museum, I spotted this in one of the subways under the ring road:
?
Having spent the previous few hours looking at things like this:
Sociable
…my first thought was that it was obviously a cycle lane intended for use by riders of sociables, but on getting closer I think one of the bikes is probably facing in the opposite direction to the other one.
Q1: Which direction do the painted bikes near you face?
Q2: What happens when the effects of the museum leak outside and into the wider world?
On Monday I attended Museum Camp. As with MuseumNext in 2009 it was a) rather marvellous and b) a stimulating place to discuss ideas that relate directly and indirectly to my practice. Thanks to all involved!
Hello. We are interested in Museums and we want to think about...
I hadn’t intended to lead a session, but as a spur-of-the-moment decision I offered to instigate a session on ‘interesting digital stuff that doesn’t involve screens’. This was largely from a desire to carry on the conversation that had begun with my recent residency at Coventry Artspace linking in with Heritage Open Days, but also fly the flag for this other face of digital that perhaps institutions aren’t aware of.
I was really happy to see so many people come along to take part in the session. Sitting-on-tables-or-the-floor room only! This post is intended as a reference for those that were in the session and those that weren’t able to join us: pulling out the main areas of discussion and linking to some of the examples mentioned.
I started off by talking a bit about my background and why I was interested in interesting digital stuff that doesn’t involve screens: my journey through gradually more expanded forms of people+place and then influences from pervasive games (I like this definition) and the hackspace/makerspace movement.
I sat on a table and waved my hands a lot as I talked about two recent digital installations that encapsulated a lot of stuff I’m passionate about: making people look up; affecting how people interact with a space; instigating collaboration; making people think and speculate and do experiments to try and find out.
Rebecca Shelley took some comprehensive notes on the conversation that followed as has been kind enough to share them, so here’s where we went from there…
But how much does it cost and is it something we can realistically implement?
Not got a local hackspace? Why not host one? Museum 2.0 post
At the time of MuseumNext 2009 The Life Science Centre in Newcastle had got a long way towards planning to host one, not sure how far they got with implementing it.
Arduino is the platform I use: a small computer but also a community that shares a massive amount of information. A standard board costs about £25 and a lot of the sensors are available now as things aimed at a hobbyist market. It’s probably people’s time that’ll be the main expense.
Sensors include distance-measurers, motion sensors, noise detectors, humidity sensors… You can link up sensor inputs to a variety of different outputs, with some decision-making in between if the result is this, then do this.
Remember…
Later on we reminded ourselves that the behaviour or effect we wanted to induce should lead the design, rather than the technology.
Use what you have in terms of resources and the space.
Secrets, missions, games, small groups of people who are in-the-know and pantomine (as seen with the Secret Police Disco as people who had found it tried to enable others to make the discovery too).
How do you set/stage the space?
How you describe what’s going on and the process by which people enter that activity (or not).
Do I see it as performance? No – mostly because the idea would terrify me! – but I do see it as performative sometimes, and I’m interested in spectacle and different types of audiences that observe it.
I tend not to emphasise art (it’s scary to a lot of people!)
I tend not to emphasise technology (it’s scary to a lot of people!)
Can you pique people’s curiosity? Reward those that seek out the hidden things?
The Heritage Open Day event that Trapeze Monkey and the Secret Police Disco were a part of had a short paragraph and the end of the heritage-orientated handout that said I’d been in residence and things were ‘available for discovery’.
Question from Nikki: How does this sit with pedagogical aims of institutions? Does it matter if only a small number of people make the discovery?
[Silence…]
How do you connect these experiences with the outside?
One participant talked about experience using gamification, linking in to people’s online social networks and harnessing the technology people carried in their pockets.
Another reminded us that not everyone has smart phones and I reminded us this was a session about non-screen-based approaches!
We then talked about the urge to share stories/experiences and possibly also how to close the feedback loop and do something useful with the contributions coming in from social media (or I might be conflating that with later discussions).
Education and fun
I noticed a few undertones that seemed to suggest these two are mutually exclusive…
(I disagree.)
Flows of visitors
Institutions are aware that visitors tend to stay in the areas that are more populated. Can we use interactive installations to draw people into the less well-trodden areas?
We talked about conferring agency, and how this brings people back if they can see their actions are having a direct effect on the space.
Someone talked about the audio piece Shhh… at the Victoria and Albert Museum and how it had enabled things like men transgressing into the ladies loos.
Can I give some examples of exemplary projects?
Um, this threw me a little as I think this is what I’m trying to move towards understanding through getting more of the museums’ points of views. I fell back on describing things I had encountered that had resulted in me having a powerful experience.
Ran on blindfolds, binaural recordings and the gentlest of touches leading you down the rabbit hole.
We talked again about spectacle, and returning to see what things look like from the outside. Also buying in to an activity and submitting to the experience.
Blast Theory were mentioned as the technology big guns. I’d seen some of their control room for I’d Hide You. It’s a lot of tech!
Reminded me to say that things will go wrong. Embrace it! (And design for it!)
This linked us back to an open approach and fostering a sense of agency and ownership – you can playtest your prototypes and people will appreciate it, it doesn’t matter if it’s not polished and flawless.
Hide&Seek’s Sandpit approach (and use of low tech).
I also mentioned the previous week’s Heritage Sandbox showcase and the Ghosts in the Garden project at the Holburne Museum. Smartphone technology wrapped up in an intriguing interface and an engaging narrative.
Worried about a lack of budget? Cardboard props are great because they flag up that this is something running on imagination-power and you can do anything with that!
Following the success of my Ministry of Rules project with The City Gallery back in February [Museum 2.0 interview], they’ve asked me back as project manager for their Summer programme of activities.
This time we’re linking in with the 2Player exhibition at New Walk Museum & Art Gallery (“exploring the abstractions of game play and computers as a form of communication”) and I will talk with anyone who will talk with me at the LCB Depot (“looks at the nature of conversations, the creativity that can come from the gaps, stutters or breakdowns in speaking and the spontaneous production of new ideas that can occur when people meet for conversation and collaboration”).
The Graham Hudson installation housing the exhibition at LCB Depot
From my starting brief I’ve put together a framework to allow us to really explore the potential of the gap and journeys between the two exhibition sites. Loosely based on the idea of a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook, rather than getting a bit grumpy about having to shepherd people to an unfamiliar venue, or even just working on a fixed route between New Walk and the Depot, we’ve defined a group of possibilities. The workshops will work with these to explore the layering of stories and characters over the top of the routes and the decisions made along them.
The workshops will run for the two weeks between the 15th and 26th of August, with different workshops aimed at different age groups ranging from 0-2 years through to 12-17 years. We’ve got an absolutely top-notch team of artists lined up to lead these sessions: Graham Langley (storyteller and one of the Traditional Arts Team), Lindsay Jane Brown (who has worked on early years programme with the REP), Sian Watson Taylor (a narrative-weaving artist who’s worked with more galleries and schools than you can shake a story dice at) and Ashley Brown (digital artist to be found in ludic rooms of all sorts). That’s a pretty amazing collection of skills and expertise we’re unleashing onto the streets of Leicester!
If you’re under the age of 17, you and your responsible adults can sign up for workshops here. (They’re all free, most will include BISCUITS! and most will involve exploring outdoor space – be prepared!)
The Story detectives worksheet - can you find all the story clues and mark them on the map? Bonus marks if you can then make a story using them. Suitable for all ages!
Don’t forget to share your results with us!
~~~
Oh, and whilst we’re on the subject, I also had a bit of a hand in planning the activities for The Herbert‘s Wild Worlds early years summer exhibition. You know it’s a good sign when you’re sat in a planning meeting trying to figure out what small children you can borrow to be able to take part yourself!
The Play Ground residency draws nearer: on Monday next week this corner of the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, will have been cleared of the trestle tables and retro computer games (don’t worry, they’ll not have been moved far!), and the Ministry of Rules will have set up their new headquarters there instead.
The soon-to-be Ministry of Rules HQ
I’ll be inviting visitors to the exhibition to join me in becoming Inspectors for the Ministry of Rules and together we will shape the investigations that will take place over the 5 days of the residency (21st – 25th of February). Our main task for the first day is therefore to construct the hugemongous mind map that will help us decide what we collectively want to focus our energies on for the remainder of the time.
On Monday afternoon we also have a sign-writing activity that will see the more adventurous amongst us surreptitiously placing new rules around the museum building. We wouldn’t want it to be too much about the paperwork now, would we?
From that point on I have no idea how things are going to evolve. Personally, I’ll be looking to explore physical spaces, unspoken rules, looking at things from a different angle, emergent playfulness, and poking the edges of conventions. If you’ve enjoyed the work I’ve done previously around pervasive games and interventions in public spaces then I strongly recommend you try and get over to New Walk Gallery over half term. Also, there’s a bouncy castle!
The only non-blurry photo I have from the inside of Mungo Thomson's Skyspace Bouncehouse.
I know the hours of 11-4 may be unfriendly to those with day jobs, but fear not: we’ll be making the most of the MoR blog at http://ministryofrules.npugh.co.uk/ and there could well be more chances to get involved remotely such as the Find-an-Interesting-Sign challenge that readers of this blog so wonderfully road-tested last week.
I’ve ordered the Inspector ID badges, requested the colourful wool and located the large box full of assorted sticky tape. We found a fox in a box, too, but apparently that’s just normal museum stuff…
Please ensure the gate is bolted after entry and exit.
I’m test-driving a few ideas and approaches in preparation for a week in residence at New Walk Gallery as part of their Play Ground exhibition programme:
What rules do we follow in galleries? What rules would you most like to break? What new rules would you write?
The Ministry of Rules (MoR) is a fictional organisation that will be based in the Play Ground exhibition. The MoR needs your help to research, observe, explore, enforce and re-write the rules people may or may not be following in the art gallery and museum.
As part of this I want to check having a Flickr account that people can post to. Would you help me out, please?
I’m looking for examples of signs and notices with some sort of imperative about them. The theme is rules, so the sorts of things that tell you to do this, or not do that or that such-and-such is forbidden.
I suspect road signs and other massively mass-produced signage might get a little dull, but there are loads of examples out there that are custom-made or more interesting because of their context. Can you help me hunt them down and then email them to church20arts@photos.flickr.com ?
I’ll leave it running for about a week to see how it shapes up. Get noticing!
Things we have learned #1:
You can add descriptions for the photos in the main text of the email. If your email automatically adds a signature with your contact details etc, you may wish to remove it…
Things we have learned #2:
If you don’t add a title via the subject line, Flickr will use the file name of the image.
An open sketchbook post in preparation for 5 days residency-style alongside Play Ground. See this initial post for more background. Open to influence, rather than just on display: all constructive conversations and contributions welcomed. All posts in this series can be found under the Play Ground tag.
In this post I ask for suggestions for the name we will work under. Probably some sort of government ministry, but we don’t know yet. What do you think?
***
We work closely with professionals from affiliated departments.
We are the experts in how the public behave in cultural institutions. We work with theory, observation and practical experimentation. We work in large groups and small teams. We work alone. We sometimes go undercover. We make the decisions about what is proper behaviour within museums and art galleries. We enforce those decisions.
Who are we?
Please add your suggestions for the name of this group to the comments, or tweet @genzaichi
My main area of enquiry is centred around interactions between people and place: often using tools and strategies from areas such as pervasive games and physical computing to set up frameworks for exploration.
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I had very mixed feeling about this. Yes, it’s very picturesque, but as an artist I feel I should work a bit harder to look a little beyond the obvious. Then it struck me. All our photos seem to focus in on the river, but what about if we pay attention to what’s happening perpendicular to this? What happens if we instead think of the thoroughfares that the bridges were built to transport over the water? Suddenly the bridge looked very different! 
I was still mulling over this shift in viewpoint when I arrived back at the more modern Birks Bridge. 
