Hannah Nicklin speaking eloquently and passionately about remaking the city; ubiquity; not wanting to live in a world where there is such a thing as a girls’ drink; magical realism; putting bodies at the centre; the need for art to use technology as material, rather than as tool; and cabbages.
http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/07/imagining-better-cities/
http://www.hannahnicklin.com/2011/07/tedxyork/
http://npugh.co.uk/blog/19264_seconds/
http://npugh.co.uk/tag/colony/
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 Routes, Roles & Rules programme also has its own blog where you can read more about the artists and the workshops as they take place. We’re very much interested in the idea of building on themes that come out of the workshops, so keep an eye on the activities section where we’ll be posting stories, tasks, and trails that you can download and do yourself. Here’s the first one – Story detectives – to get you started.
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!
Last night I gave my first Pecha Kucha presentation at the lovely PK Coventry.
I’ve been meaning to do something like this for some time, as one of the aims I’ve set myself for this year is to do more public speaking. This is in order to give myself more practice at articulating the ideas around my work.
Here are the resulting slides and words for “Own This City”, in which I give an overview of some of the observations, ponderings and questions feeding into my newly-commenced project, Colony.
Own This City
Own This City is a section title I’ve shamelessly stolen from a section of New York Time Out, because I think it’s important.
Ownership towards – rather than over – spaces is part of a wider spectrum of interactions between people and place that I’m thinking about a lot at the moment, as I develop a new project called Colony.
Shinagawa Station by mdid on Flickr
Tokyo: population 36 million, and, it seems each of those people desperate to be somewhere different.
Here more than anywhere I’m aware of the city being just a backdrop to that perpetual process of being neither here nor there.
It’s like the background in a platform game – it moves as you move, but it’s not somewhere you will ever touch or be touched by.
Man on bench by Jay Morrison on Flickr
So, to what extent are we blinkered as we move around in our everyday life?
Maybe the first step towards owning our city is to stop and to be aware of it?
To slow down.
To simply spend time with a place.
To linger,
To be present.
17th Street Plaza opening by Jamison Wieser on Flickr
These people sit in a plaza made from space reclaimed back from the traffic.
I look at this photo and I wonder what sort of sense of ownership they are feeling after having fought for and won back this territory?
I wonder if observation of the city is enough, or does ownership also require being proactive?
As for my actions, I suspect they are more loan this city than own this city: temporary occupations. Passing moments that leave little or no trace on the city itself.
Within my practice I try to affect people’s perceptions of space, which is a slightly different thing to altering the space itself, but it can be just as vivid.
Recently I’ve been learning from the world of pervasive games.
I’ve learned a lot about the power of a silly hat, the power of brief moments of spectacle, the power of conspiracy and the power of doing daft things in public places.
I learned the thrill of knowing the secret life of a place…
…of knowing that these market stalls are really a wiff waff stadium
I learned that familiar things in unexpected places can make people pause and that these pauses can be turned into many different things.
I learned that after the running around and the laughter, serious conversations happen in the pub. Where can you pong? Where would you hide a stash of bats for those in the know?
The thing is, once you start playing in public places, you become aware of how much of the city is only pretending to be yours.
In such a case, I tend towards subversion and a little bit of risk.
Some of the people in this photo have dared to come to this shopping mall with no intention whatsoever of buying anything.
When Nicky Getgood reported there were half a dozen different ballhead stickers, and that there might only be one place in which you could find all of them together, suddenly we were seeing the little blighters everywhere!
Having a task or a framework radically pulls different elements of your surroundings in and out of focus.
Chaser Country by Kevan on Flickr
Kevan has had a slight, irrational fear of the steps at the back of the Royal Albert Hall, ever since he first encountered them during a chase game.
This is where it starts to get very interesting for me. The play may only be fleeting in terms of its presence on the streets, but its effects and resonances can stay with you for a long, long time
I first became aware of this whilst on a train about here. The wasteland in front is where we had once spent the afternoon playing and sharing a picnic. One afternoon.
This time though it was hosting men in hi-vis and some sort of massive drilling rig! It was a real gut-churning moment of “But it’s ours! They can’t do that! ”
This got me thinking and I started compiling a map of all the places around Birmingham that I now feel I have some sort of ownership towards.
Actually, I got a bit carried away with some of these areas – this large one bounded in red, and the one inside it bounded in yellow. They should really just be a series of perimeters.
Here are the bits I actually claim as mine, and I claim them not through spectacle or subversion, but through quietly and mindfully walking the same journeys over and over again.
Through this process I am starting to gain an affinity for what are, frankly, pretty grotty bits of the city.
These grotty bits are also regeneration areas and I place myself within them as a sort of witness to change.
As I walk on a daily basis, changes on a micro scale reveal themselves:
Shifts in litter, new additions of graffiti, fresh coats of paint.
The same space can get occupied by construction workers, emo kids and office staff at different times of the day.
As I repeat the walks on an annual basis, changes on a macro scale are revealed as buildings are demolished, carparks assembled and the other type of ownership changes hands.
These are the big changes that have a habit of being made by stealth:
the ones where you can never quite remember what was there before…
While I walk, I gather data that describes the landscape. In these drawings short lines indicate open space and longer lines indicate lumps of stuff.
Over the years I hope to capture something of the changes in the fabric of the city.
But when I’m walking I cannot pause to investigate or chat. It’s a solitary, introspective process.
This is where I find myself now: at an intersection wanting to weave several threads together.
For Colony, I want to transform the process that I use to make those drawings into a real-time shared experience. I want the data to manifest itself as you walk through the city.
To do this, I’m having to make the move from closed-box electronics, to building the darn things myself – because I want to own my data in much the same way that I want to own my city.
I want to seed feelings of empathy amongst the participants, so the technology will eventually be housed within what will be some sort of landscape-aware organism that is carried around.
Maybe this organism does not like open spaces. Or maybe it starts to writhe around if it feels too enclosed.
A colony of these creatures will be transported by foot across the city. How will their guardians negotiate the different pushes and pulls acting on them?
More questions!
How do these factors combine to affect how people will perceive the city in order to be able to navigate it?
What will be shifted into focus?
Will any of these effects be long-lasting?
What sort of desires will be projected onto the creatures,
and what sort of passport will these provide for passing into and maybe owning new parts of the city?
~~~
Many thanks to Janet, the gang and the other speakers for a really excellent evening and a great atmosphere.
I’ll be presenting at the Coventry Pecha Kucha night coming up on the 10th of May (tickets available here).
I want to explore themes of affiliation with place; of different ways (relating to my practice) that feelings of responsibility, empathy, custodianship and connectedness can be fostered.
With the early form of a presentation entitled “Own This City” in mind, I took these two photos yesterday:
Let’s see if they make the final cut of 20 slides…
Taste the Game went really well yesterday and I’ve had loads of positive feedback, which is always nice.
Jumping straight in to planning the next one for the 29th though, so here’s a simple slideshow of my photos and video on the basis that it’ll tell you as much as any words I can put together right now will…
A big thank you to everyone to contributed and took part.
Over the last month I’ve been project managing a commission from the Midlands Arts Centre to deliver 2 pervasive games based events as part of their free summer programme.
Working together with the BARG network and a handful of more seasoned games designers based in London, we’ve put together an afternoon of games and activities for this Sunday that is intended to serve as an introduction to pervasive games.
There are more details about the event and what will be on offer on the BARG website, but basically what you need to know is that it’s free, will run from 2-4 (info desk open from 1:30) and it’s going to be great fun!
As well as the project management side of coordinating a team of eleven across different cities and also liaising with the venue, it’s been interesting spotting where little arty bits have come into it.
The main game of the afternoon, Bull Hunt, needed the construction of a bull’s head mask. A fairly obviously arty activity and one I quite enjoyed doing – I was working quite closely from photos of the bull sculpture outside the BullRing in Birmingham city centre and it was good to have to think in a sculptural way again.
Anyway, you know me, so the really interesting part came last Tuesday when it got it’s first public outing…
Sat with it next to me on one of the sofas in the mac, I found myself constantly talking to strangers. People asking what it was for, spotting what it was modelled on, asking how it was made. There was a fab ‘WOW!’ from a little girl too!
There were also some good conversations with members of staff – we’ve been holding various meetings in the building and I’ve been making sure I speak to the floor managers etc wherever possible. I love the way that novelty objects can so easily mediate interactions.
So, reaction to the bull as a mask was good, but reaction to it as a costume with someone inside it was even better! Thanks to Pete, Ant and Libby for all being game to give it a go.
We got some good photographs and also made a quick video to promote the game:
Bull on a bike.
Have you seen this bull? from BARG on Vimeo.
I generally struggle to find licence free music to use as backing for the videos I make, sites like opsound tending to be a bit too electronic for my purposes. This time however I came across this collection from Kevin MacLeod. Short pieces in different styles just right for testing your resolve in editing down your footage to a minute or two!
Throughout the process of putting this event together it’s also been interesting (sorry I keep using that word, but I wouldn’t want to get stuff written down if it wasn’t!) looking at how I’ve been looking at the space. The mac recently underwent a huge renovation project to the extent that it’s basically a new environment, significantly different to what it was like before. However, I’ve only ever seen the new mac through the eyes of someone planning an event there. What space would be good for what sort of activity? How are people moving through this area? What are the acoustics like here? Where can I put 60 helium balloons and a trestle table?
I’ve been at the mac loads now, but never once stopped to look at the art in the galleries or to check what’s on at the cinema! Different. Eyes.
Another month to go (we’re doing a second event on the 29th of August) and then we’ll see what it looks like after that. I suspect it’ll be another area filled in on the “Own this City” map I’m slowly constructing of places in Birmingham I feel I have some sort of ownership over after having played games there.
Copyright and permissions:
General blog contents released under a Creative Commons
by-nc-sa license.
Artworks and other projects copyright Nicola Pugh 2003-2024, all rights reserved.
If in doubt, ask.
The theme used on this WordPress-powered site started off life as Modern Clix, by Rodrigo Galindez.