Location Aware at Territorial Play event in Nottingham

I’ll be in Nottingham this coming Friday and Saturday for the Territorial Play platform event and symposium as part of Tracing Mobility.

Detail from Uncertain Eastside - I will be using the same technique to explore Nottingham

For Territorial play, Pugh will conduct a series of walks whilst carrying a satellite navigation device in each hand. Glitches in the technology and interference from the physical landscape result in anomalies in the data recorded by each device. As the journey is repeated and the resulting data overlaid, unique generative drawings are produced that reveal relationships between the fabric of the city and the behaviour of the technology.

My first walk will start at 11am and you are welcome to join me (free, there is a sign-up list at http://locationaware.eventbrite.com/), you can also join me on subsequent walks, through until the early evening, however these will be unscheduled.

The generated drawings will be on display at the Broadway Media Centre [Google map] and added to throughout the day as new layers of data are collected.

17 ways…

A (silent) video accompaniment to the previous post:

17 Ways… from nikkipugh on Vimeo.

Manifesto for mediascapes

During the Almost Perfect residency, I had the chance to try out a few different types of thingies running off the mscape platform, but towards my 4th week in Banff I was starting to question the typical delivery format of iPaq and headphones. I couldn’t see how wandering around on your own, gingerly holding a foreign touch-screen device whilst plugged into headphones and being isolated from your surroundings related to my practice.

Nothing against those other mscapes I experienced, it just wasn’t a canon I wanted to contribute to.

Here’s what we were using to run the mscape player off:

A sight that might make some techies salivate, but kind of intimidating at the same time. These would generally be used in conjunction with some fairly substantial headphones. As a result you could very easily be worrying about if you’d pressed some of the wrong buttons, accidentally nudged the touch screen or whether you were easy prey for some street crime …rather than concentrating on whatever sounds were being delivered to via the headphones.

Things started to get interesting when people paraded down the street en masse but, for the most part, the experience stayed with the person wearing the headphones.

Cue my manifesto for mediascapes:

Be visible (i.e. make it obvious that something is happening, rather than skulking around wearing headphones and looking at a small screen); and be audible (inflict your happening onto innocent passers-by).

These starting points later opened out into further thinkings about how to make mediascape experiences shared experiences and how to make mediascape experiences playful experiences.

How these thoughts manifested themselves was through a quick prototype alternative housing for the iPaq.

First I hacked (in the non-tech sense) apart and rewired some mp3 player speakers and then I mounted them inside a cardboard tube.

I then had something big with a strong physical that you were very aware of carrying; something a bit shonky and made from very familiar, very non-intimidating materials; something that was loud; and something just a little bit ridiculous. A tool, a plaything, a conversation starter.

Actually, I had two.

With a diameter of influence of about 20 metres each.

With two of these ‘talking sticks’ I had a way of encouraging interaction between people using the mediascape. We also started up a few conversations with people who had no idea what was going on …but wanted to find out!

Like when Emergent Game‘s egorbeaver made friends with the ticket inspector or when Paul and some other Digbeth Invigilators found themselves in the position of having to make sure an inebriated stranger got back to her hotel safely I find these instances of when a thing bleeds out of its original context and reaches another layer of participant very interesting.

It was also fascinating to see how changing the interface for the mediascape changed the way people conducted themselves. Admittedly I don’t have a huge amount of experience with mediascapes, and wandering around the corners of campus listening to piano strings being broken is probably going to foster a fairly light-hearted reaction, but there’s something different going on here, right?

[Update: And there's some video footage here too.]

In C for Open Road

I always knew I wouldn’t be able to realise my full-blown ideas for a locative media version of In C whilst I was in Banff this November: there just wasn’t time to organise the tech, the musicians, the recording and the power issues.

Still, not one to be put off by technicalities, I set off for a walk and a low-tech version. In C for musicians, speakers, GPS and open road.

Armed with a map and some chalk I walked along a road that had been closed to vehicles for the Winter. Taking each of the motifs in turn, I walked until what felt like the appropriate moment to pause and draw the music onto the road’s surface.

I’m not sure how long I walked for or how far I travelled, only that I got up to the 17th motif before my chalk ran out. This, I decided, was the end point for the piece.

Only not quite.

My minor obsession with In C is tied up in with chance meetings, interactions and collaborations with various people outside the group directly involved with the residency I was on and, as such, somehow really underlines the true value of residencies such as these. I still had 4 more sticks of chalk (kindly donated by Laura, thankyou!) and decided that rather than continuing in a different colour, I should open things up to further collaboration from other people.

A kit containing instructions, the remaining chalk, the score for In C and a map was passed on to Dohi Moon – one of the In C musicians from the concert – for interpretation and, perhaps, adding another layer of chalk to the road.

I’m not sure what happens next, I just wanted to give it back.

update: Dohi Moon has posted a photo of her interpretation.

Walk to Work – a proposal

I set Kevin the task of mapping out his normal route to work in terms of lefts and rights etc and asked him to set off one day from where he was staying in China and Walk to Work following his normal route and ‘do some work’ when he got there where ever that was. The definition of work is blurred here so do something – take photos write sweep the street – whatever.
Paul Conneally

An interesting proposition has come through to work with Paul Conneally and Kevin Ryan on the challenge of transposing people’s usual journeys to work onto different locations, and then performing some sort of work function at the new location.

Kevin’s walk in Chongqing resulted in some really nice images which you can now see on his photo gallery.

Meanwhile, I recorded my journey to work for Paul to do what he will with:

1. Right
2. Right
3. Left
4. Left
5. Right
6. Straight over
7. Straight over
8. Straight over
9. Right
10. Delay of 32 minutes
11. Right
12. Left
13. Left
14. Right
15. Left
16. Right
17. Straight over
18. Straight over
19. Straight over
20. Straight over
21. Left
22. Left

After some discussion, we seem to have a distilled version of my typical day’s work invigilating at a local gallery that Paul will reproduce somewhere else:

• Arrive at your location and set up.
• Perform a general tidy up of the area.
• Settle into your seat and become absorbed in your book/music whilst at the same time being attentive to the needs of others around you.
• Answer any queries in a polite and professional manner, asking any visitors if they wouldn’t mind adding their name to the visitors book.
• At about 4 o’clock ask if anyone wants some chocolate and then go to the nearest newsagents.
• Return to your seat as before.
• Start packing up 5 minutes early if you think you can get away with it.

That’s the starting point anyway – I’m really interested to see what conversations Paul’s presence might catalyse. We’ve been strict withourselves and dismissed the temptation of too many bells and whistles: Paul’s mission is essentially to sit, to be, and to watch.

Hillwalking

I’d heard great things about his tour, so when I got the chance I joined Johnny Hillwalker for a stroll around Kyoto.

After starting with the main Bhuddist (this-one-only-cares-if-you’re-dead) headquarters, where even the concrete looks good, we went on to visit a range of smaller shops and workshops that I’d otherwise have been completly oblivious to.

Folding-fans being assembled and pressed; sweet-makers making assorted things out of beans and sugar; and tatami mats being re-covered.

All this on top of the usual collection of lanterns, torii and prayer-boards that you’d expect from this corner of Japan.

Here’s his web page again in case you missed it first time around: http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/h-s-love/