Trapeze Monkey

My aim with this installation/intervention was to try and turn the large, empty space of the Community Room into a reverse ballroom – not somewhere where the occupants all move in coordination, but one where they synchronise standing still.

We learned that people find it very hard to stand still…

Fair play though: most people got there in the end!

With nothing more than a prompt on the doorway to the room to not startle the monkey, it was largely left to people to a) find the monkey, b) decide how not to startle it and c) hang around long enough to find out if they’d got it right and what would happen as a result.

Perhaps we should add d) on to the end of that list: whether (and how) to teach newcomers.

I popped in and out of the room quite a lot (monkey maintenance), but I don’t remember doing a massive amount of explanation, even though I joined in the standing still quite a lot. On quite a few occasions I saw people jumping around and waving their hands a lot in order to try and entice the monkey down. My favourite experiment however, was the family that spotted the stereo in the corner and started playing music at various volumes to see what startling effect that might have. Since the stereo was in the corner out of range of the monkey’s motion sensor, it turns out to have had the effect of making him come down!

Below are a selection of my photos from across the weekend. The complete set can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikki_pugh/sets/72157631495270018/ and I’ll also be keeping an eye out for images coming from some of the other people who were around and documenting stuff.

It's always nice when you can prompt people to look up - something we don't do enough of. The height of the ceiling in the Community Room meant that there was a lot of 'up' to look at and the presence of the monkey at the top of it was particularly striking - especially when stood directly below.

This boy was captivated by the monkey (returning to the room several times) even when he had traced the various ropes and strings back to the mechanisms that were making it move.

I really liked watching the monkey-watchers from this angle - the zoomed-out view of the whole room as well as being able to pick out the incremental movements people made in an attempt to not startle the monkey.

One of these girls had encountered the monkey and trapeze as work in progress. She returned with her sister, two of their own toy animals and the unshakable belief that the monkey should be able to do back flips.

Yes the monkey was a hit with the visiting children, but it also seemed to captivate the older audience members. Or is that just an illusion caused by the motionlessness? In either case, I did notice that staff and studio holders frequently returned to the room to watch - or just check on - the monkey throughout the weekend!

It was whilst standing with this group of people that I noticed how standing still also seemed to go hand-in-hand with being silent

There are some technical improvements I would make to this installation if I had the chance to do it again. I also have a hankering to fill the room’s canopy with a whole cartload of monkeys!

I’m very happy with the responses the installation catalysed – and am satisfied with the simple ‘do not startle’ prompt, but one thing I think I would like to explore is better communicating the reason there was a Trapeze Monkey. (There’s a group that uses the room regularly as a space in which to practise circus skills. I had a chat with some of them whilst I was working, and they’ve been coming to Artspace for at least 15 years. I also learned that I’ve forgotten how to juggle clubs…)

Unfortunately the monkey mechanism wasn’t reliable enough to leave running over the next few weeks, but we did talk a few times about what it might be like to have it running whilst the community room was in use by the various pottery, art, acting and circus skills groups that rent it out. Would he just stay in his box the whole time, or would he creep into people’s peripheral vision during a quiet moment?

Artspace Research Commission: Hijack

HIJACK is a commission offering artists and curators the opportunity to make radical architectural/artistic interventions in the Artspace building; responding to its history and location and hijacking its usual purposes to create an unusual find for a public event.extract from ARC: HIJACK project brief

[…] I will research, develop and install a series of small interactive interventions within the Artspace building and immediate surroundings. These contraptions will be responsive to the presence of people in these spaces. Where possible, I’d also like them to resonate with the stories of those that have passed through the various histories of the building.

Using a variety of sensors such as proximity, motion, heat and humidity sensors, mechanisms will move, shake, rattle, roll, reveal, hide, strike, ping, scrape, dangle and waft as people move into their awareness. […]

Itchy questions I want to scratch at:

• What does it feel like to have a building watching you?
• How does this flip our assumptions for Open Heritage Day if a) the fabric of the building is woven through with technology and, rather than people going to look at the building, the building is looking at the people?
• What playfulness can be instigated and how will this result in people moving their bodies through the spaces of the building?

Extract from my proposal

Constructing indoor, fixed constructions was something of a new context for me since starting to work with sensors and physical computing, although I did find that my starting point was very similar: what spaces do I want to amplify and what movement/behaviour would I like to instigate in the audience? I identified a wishlist of places (non-places) and the sorts of flows and pauses I wanted to try and instigate within them. From these I was able to get 5 devices designed, made and installed ready for the Heritage Open Day weekend:

Tweeting Members’ Room – Automatically logging a selection of activities in the (off-limits) Members’ Room and publishing their occurrence on the internet.
Ghost (Town) Tapper – Making the fabric of the basement resonate with the echoes of the past. Hoping to instigate a bit of a boogie.
Dodge Errol – Animated decoupage cobboulage. Encouraging people to hang out in the pseudo gallery space in the corridor by the loos.
Trapeze Monkey – Turning the empty space of the Community Room into something of a ballroom. Can groups of visitors coordinate inaction to entice a monkey down from the rafters?
Secret Police Disco – Something that must be hunted out or discovered completely by chance. Marking the threshold to the basement with a reference to a Police social club.

The Artspace building and humans were both a delight to work with and for. So many stories; so many questions; so much enthusiasm. It was also great to be making things for the Heritage Open Day audience and to able to make things that, on the surface at least, were very playful.

As ever, though – and as all research projects should – we unearthed more questions with our experiments and noticings. Save the date of Wednesday the 19th of September for an evening Answer and Question session (different to a Question and Answer session!), where together we shall be looking at what happened, what might have happened, and what we might want to try and make happen next…

In the meantime, I’ll be adding further blog posts here with initial documentation and observations.

Please do not startle the monkey

Or feed it.

One of my installations available for discovery and interaction at Artspace in Coventry.

Free, today and tomorrow, 11-4.

Coventry Artspace, 16 Lower Holyhead Road, Coventry, CV1 3AU [map]

I’m around for chatting, asking “what if” and coming up with crazy ideas – would be lovely to see you.

Monkey + mechanical advantage

Problem: the monkey is too heavy for the stepper motor to lift.

Solution: science.

Members (and Twitter users) only

As part of my application for the current Artspace Research Commission, I was asked to consider how I “would share the project/involve others via social media etc”.

Beyond Flickr and Vimeo etc I don’t really use any social media platforms, but the prompt (and the expectations wrapped up within it) got me thinking: what if the building did the tweeting? What interesting questions might that highlight.

The table monitor. And a monkey.

So, for the last couple of days I’ve been wiring different sensors into a room at Artspace that is, I understand, usually kept as a space reserved for the studio members (think staff room crossed with meeting room crossed with common room).

That private space is now publishing messages to Twitter whenever the photocopier lid is lifted, the kettle boiled or the table clunked. As I type, my glamorous assistant Reece is working away on one of our other interactive devices, so the table monitor is being triggered quite a lot!

See @ArtspaceMonitor for the feed.

Objects updating status messages onto the Twitter platform is by no means a new idea and the occurrences I’m logging are not particularly dramatic, but I think it raises some interesting points for discussion. (Like when Reece goes to lunch!)

The kettle corner, with additional electronic items

The brew monitor

The pool of message texts it selects from are not very extensive, so it’ll be interesting to see how followers of the account respond to the inevitable repetition.

It was also very interesting to sit down and try to imagine what voice the room would use and how it might perceive the activities taking place. What I really needed there was a team of 4-year-olds on the case, as I’m sure they would have found the task a lot easier!

Anyway, we have a demonstration up and working and you’re invited to have a glimpse at the things going on within the Members’ Room. Here on the inside we’ll be watching carefully to see if people end up changing their behaviour once they know echoes of it are being heard outside the walls…

Again, the Twitter stream is at @ArtspaceMonitor.

Ethernet shield sitting in the corner taking care of things

Seeking out Artspace’s non spaces

So, first job with the Artspace residency was to have a good ol’ look at the building and seek out the spaces that have potential.

For me this turned out to mean seeking out the non spaces. Also the liminal spaces between more obvious locations.

Here are some of the places that caught my eye:

From these (or maybe some others) I’ve shortlisted the sites I’d like to work with and identified the sorts of questions I’d like to ask through the devices I’ll be making. (Sorry, can’t tell you too much or it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?!)

I’ve ordered motion sensors, sonar range finders, an ethernet shield and various other goodies. Hoping tomorrow will be a Good Post Day.

On Monday we start making.

Upcoming residency at Coventry Artspace

Next week I’ll be based at Coventry Artspace as the recipient of one of their 5 Artspace Research Commissions (ARC).

I’m HIJACK; tasked with making architectural interventions in the Artspace building, hijacking its usual purposes to create an unusual find for a public event.

My unusual finds will be in the form of small interactive interventions. Using a variety of sensors such as proximity, motion, heat and humidity sensors, mechanisms will move, shake, rattle, roll, reveal, hide, strike, ping, scrape, dangle and waft as people move into their awareness.

In the best of research traditions, we don’t know what will come out of this work, but we’re curious to find out.

My proposal is based around the Heritage Open Day weekend coming up on the 8th and 9th of September and the question “how does it flip our assumptions for Heritage Open Days if, rather than people going to look at the building, the building is looking at the people?”

Now I’ve had a chance to delve a little deeper, it might perhaps be more accurate to say the residency will aim to instigate conversations responding to the next wave of questions that arise after you ask the one above.

• Should the devices be integral – of the existing structure – or superficial – new additions placed onto surfaces?
• Does the building communicate with us?
• If so, about what? In what sort of voice?
• Can we affect the flows of people around the building?
• Would we want to make people uncomfortable?
• If so, how uncomfortable would we be comfortable making them?
• What might the devices reveal about the building …or about the people?

The Artspace building has a rich history to draw from, but time is limited, so it’ll be interesting to find out which of its many stories bubble up to the surface in that time.

I’m also curious to find out what the research reveals of me and my practice.

Back in July I attended the Interactive Architecture day at MADE. I went into it thinking “yeah, spaces and sensors and that: this is totally what I do”, but soon found out I was really struggling with the shift from putting the tech on the people to putting the tech on the architecture.

Here’s where I start to question what I want from interactive architecture.

If you’d like to see how far I’ve managed to explore in a week, please do come along on either Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th September between 11am and 4pm to find out.

It’s free, there are other tours and stuff happening as well, and we’ve already decided we don’t want to make people too uncomfortable. Probably…

Coventry Artspace, 16 Lower Holyhead Road, Coventry, CV1 3AU [map]

Pecha Kucha presentation coming up…

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…