Constructing Conversations
October 20, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Constructing Conversations
Constructing Conversations from Proboscis on Vimeo.
A film for the Perception Peterborough project, documenting the creation of a 3 dimensional ‘map’ of creative visions overlaid over the city. The film was shot during workshops facilitated by Proboscis in Peterborough Museum in September 2008.
Perception Peterborough – Workshops
September 25, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Perception Peterborough – Workshops
As part of Perception Peterborough three creative transdisciplinary workshops were led by Proboscis (alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates) at Peterborough Museum over three days in September 2008. The workshops were the culmination of Perception Peterborough and were designed to reflect on Peterboroughs’s vision for the future around the three themes;
- Green Infrastructure and Environmental Technologies
- Social Cohesion within a Climate of Migration
- Growth: Development of the Built Environment.
Over three days each workshop explored the notion of ‘Environmental Capital’ and both discussed and built ideas for the features of an environmental capital. Creativity underpinned our process for the workshops where a playful but intensive period of activity involved social mapping, StoryCubes and 3D mapbuilding.
The workshops involved:
Social Mapping to explore participants’ connections to each other and Peterborough using brown paper and crayons. StoryCubes to explore relationships of ideas to each other and focus the conversation, with
a physical landscape of cubes building up over the days. StoryCubes are a tactile thinking tool for exploring relationships and narratives, each face of the cube is illustrated or annotated to graphically convey an idea, a thing or an action. A 3D Map of a Future Peterborough to make manifest participants ideas for the features of an environmental capital and go beyond the big ideas such as ‘a carbon zero economy’ to look at how that might be achieved on the ground. Participants added both new ideas, suggestions and existing or planned buildings, structures or initiatives.
View a film of the collaborative map created over the first three days.
Dislocate08 workshop & symposium
September 23, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Dislocate08 workshop & symposium
Proboscis devised a creative workshop on September 18th at ZAIM, Yokohama as part of the Dislocate08 festival. The workshop is the initial stage of our research for Sensory Threads, engaging artists, urbanists, designers, technologists, musicians and dancers in an active investigation into the sensorial patterns and rhythms to be found in our environment. The area around ZAIM in Yokohama became our research field as we sought out and evidenced the recurring, overlapping and intersecting sounds and movements that take place as we act in, and react to, our environment.
Sensory Threads is a work-in-progress to develop an instrument enabling a group of people to create a soundscape reflecting their collaborative experiences in the environment. For this interactive sensory experience, we are designing sensors for detecting environmental phenomena at the periphery of human perception as well as the movement and proximity of the wearers themselves. Possible targets for the sensors may be electro-magnetic radiation, hi/lo sound frequencies, heart rate etc). The sensors’ datastreams will feed into generative audio software, creating a multi-layered and multi-dimensional soundscape feeding back the players’ journey through their environment. Variations in the soundscape reflect changes in the wearers interactions with each other and the environment around them. We aim to premiere the work in 2009.
We also took part in the Dislocate symposium on September 20-21st, presenting our film Play to Invent and giving an overview of our work in public authoring, sensing, mapping and mobile technologies.
Perception Peterborough – Impressions
September 15, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Perception Peterborough – Impressions
As part of our research for the project, we conducted an anarchaeology of the city and its people and created a series of Impressions to inspire different perspectives on the key themes for workshop participants and project stakeholders.
The Impressions, initially created as a means of conveying a local sense of place to national and international participants, were inspired by the series of ‘Wanderings’ that Proboscis undertook with local people in Peterborough as a means of conveying a local sense of place.
We were inspired by the people of Peterborough and the seeds of the future they showed us that Peterborough already has; the diversity, talent, river, and green spaces, fens and waterways, the history and folklore and the great generous friendliness of people who never turned us away. Our Impressions therefore were about the seeds of Peterborough; visible and invisible, from past and future, for hopes
and concerns. They are about what could be seeded, nurtured and grown and what seeds exist here already to help everyone do that.
The wanderings involved conversations and encounters with over 20 local people of different ages and backgrounds. Proboscis journeyed through townships, villages and city by taxi, train, bus, bike, kayak and on foot to investigate and explore the city and its surrounding landscapes. We gained a richer understanding, through local and grassroots perspectives, of people’s perspectives of what it is like to live in Peterborough and their aspirations for the future. The resulting series of Impressions include short films, audio collage, eBooks, StoryCubes and drawings that can be shared physically and digitally and combined with existing policy material to add new perspective to the visioning process.
- Lines of Mobility Diffusion eBook
- Blocks of Change Diffusion eBook
- Bus Adventures Diffusion eBook
- Underused Assets StoryCubes
- Monsters and Mermaids (8 panel french fold booklet PDF)
- Flows Film
- Perspectives Film
- Voices audio piece
- Briefing Pack Book (PDF)
- Briefing Pack StoryCubes (illustrated by Matt Huynh).
Perception Peterborough Briefing Book
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Perception Peterborough Briefing Book
Produced by Haring Woods Associates
Editor: Celia Makin-Bell
Concept and design: Proboscis
Illustration: Matt Huynh
Graphic Design: Carmen Vela Maldonado
Monsters and Mermaids
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Monsters and Mermaids
Perspectives
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Perspectives
Perspectives from Proboscis on Vimeo.
Perspectives of Peterborough (UK) from bike, kayak and bus. One of a series of 8 “Impressions” of the city of Peterborough in England. Part of the Perception Peterborough project which involves artists and consultants in working with local, national and international people to develop a compelling and exciting vision for the future of the city.
Perception Peterborough – Voices
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Perception Peterborough – Voices
Voices records hopes, aspirations and feelings about the city of local people we encountered during our anarchaeological research for Perception Peterborough. One of a series of 8 “Impressions” of the city of Peterborough in England. Part of the Perception Peterborough project which involves artists and consultants in working with local, national and international people to develop a compelling and exciting vision for the future of the city.
Flows
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Flows
Flows from Proboscis on Vimeo.
Flows in the heart of the city of Peterborough (UK) with music on the hang drum by Jimmy D. One of a series of 8 “Impressions” of the city of Peterborough in England. Part of the Perception Peterborough project which involves artists and consultants in working with local, national and international people to develop a compelling and exciting vision for the future of the city.
Diffusion Residency – Matt Huynh
August 25, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Diffusion Residency – Matt Huynh
Comic artist and illustrator Matt Huynh from Sydney Australia was resident at Proboscis studio in August 2008, playing with the Diffusion formats and creating several eBooks. Matt won the inaugural Design NSW Travelling Scholarship in 2008.
Read more about Matt’s Residency here.
CREATOR Troubadour Study
August 6, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on CREATOR Troubadour Study
Proboscis is collaborating with Sarah Thelwall to conduct a ‘troubadour’ study to investigate artistic & creative research models and the ways in which these interface between creative SMEs and organisations such as HE institutions and the Research Councils.
In the work which culminated in Capitalising Creativity, Sarah developed a model for defining those activities which are at the core of an artist or creative organisations activities versus those which exploit the intellectual capital created and leverage it into income streams and commercial collaborations. Whilst this model of ‘first ‘and ‘second order’ activities was a good fit for some SMEs, Proboscis concluded that the research focused approach which it pursues is not well suited to the development of second order activities in this manner. Instead Proboscis, and organisations with a similar outlook such as Blast Theory, have pursued an approach that increases connections and activities with research focused institutions.
It is these connections and methods that we would research in the Troubadour Study:
- what are the interactions between SMEs and research institutions?
- how does each side of a collaboration evaluate the partmnership and define ‘value’?
- how is this value communicated to funders and stakeholders?
- what are the limiting factors of such collaborations and why are there so few examples?
- what lessons can be learnt from the experiences of Cluster members Proboscis and Blast Theory and how might this contribute to influencing funding policies and frameworks?
Team : Sarah Thelwall and Giles Lane
Funded through the CREATOR Research Cluster, part of the EPSRC’s Digital Economy programme.
Diffusion Residency – Lisa Hunter
August 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Diffusion Residency – Lisa Hunter
Curator Lisa Hunter of Dundas Museum and Archive spent a week at Proboscis studio in July 2008 exploring uses of the Diffusion eBooks and StoryCubes in a museum context.
Read Lisa’s comments on her residency here.
CREATOR Pilot – Sensory Threads
August 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on CREATOR Pilot – Sensory Threads
Proboscis is leading a pilot project, Sensory Threads, funded by the CREATOR Research Cluster. The project builds upon our previous collaborations with Birkbeck College’s Pervasive Computing Lab on the Feral Robots and Snout environmental sensing projects and takes wearable sensing into new areas with new collaborations with the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London, the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham and Southampton University’s School of Management.
Sensory Threads is a work-in-progress to develop an instrument enabling a group of people to create a soundscape reflecting their collaborative experiences in the environment. For this interactive sensory experience, we are designing sensors for detecting environmental phenomena at the periphery of human perception as well as the movement and proximity of the wearers themselves. Possible targets for the sensors may be electro-magnetic radiation, hi/lo sound frequencies, heart rate etc). The sensors’ datastreams will feed into generative audio software, creating a multi-layered and multi-dimensional soundscape feeding back the players’ journey through their environment. Variations in the soundscape reflect changes in the wearers interactions with each other and the environment around them. We aim to premiere the work in 2009.
Team: Alice Angus, Giles Lane, Karen Martin and Orlagh Woods (Proboscis); Demetrios Airantzis, Dr George Roussos and Jenson Taylor (Birkbeck); Joe Marshall (MRL); Dr Nick Bryan-Kinns and Robin Fencott (Queen Mary) and Dr Lorraine Warren (Southampton).
Funded through the CREATOR Research Cluster, part of the EPSRC’s Digital Economy programme.
bTWEEN08 StoryCubes
August 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on bTWEEN08 StoryCubes
A short video of StoryCubes in use at bTWEEN08, Musem of Science and Industry, Manchester. 1 min, July 2008
Our StoryCubes installation was voted Best Interactive Exhibit by the delegates and public at bTWEEN08.
StoryCubes Installation – bTWEEN08
June 20, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on StoryCubes Installation – bTWEEN08
Following the Manchester Beacon workshop, Proboscis facilitated a StoryCubes ‘landscape of ideas’ to help Just b. Productions and the Manchester Beacon Project define the brief for a new commission to create an online public engagement service that maps connections between people, places, knowledge and creative activity in Manchester. Starting with a series of questions derived from the initial day-long workshop, delegates of b.TWEEN were asked to add their comments, ideas and suggestions to scope out wider issues, aspirations and challenges for the design brief of a new online ‘public engagement tool’.
The StoryCubes Installation was subsequently voted Best Interactive Gallery Installation by the delegates of b.TWEEN.
Team: Giles Lane and Karen Martin.
StoryCubes Workshop – Manchester Beacon
June 20, 2008 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Proboscis were commissioned by the Manchester Beacon Project and Just-b Productions to design and facilitate a StoryCubes Workshop as part of developing a brief for commissioning an online ‘public engagement tool’.
Read more about the workshop and view it outcomes here.
Participants:
Katz Kiely, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Erinma Ochu, Rob Annable, Geoff Laycock, Constance Fleuriot, Lewis Sykes, Maria Stukoff, John Wetheral, Dom Raban, David Fernandez-Dias, Tim Riches, Martyn Amos, Marjahan Begum, Toby Howard, Andrew Wilson, Onno Baudouin and Dwayne Brandy.
Team: Giles Lane and Karen Martin
Lattice::Sydney – Drawing Conclusions
May 15, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Lattice::Sydney – Drawing Conclusions
Lattice: Drawing Conclusions from Proboscis on Vimeo.
A short film of Matt Huynh and Tina Tran of Popperbox drawing conclusions from the Lattice forum. Music by Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens. (May 2008).
CREATOR Research Cluster
April 27, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on CREATOR Research Cluster
Proboscis is a founder member of the CREATOR Research Cluster, funded by EPSRC as part of the “Connecting Communities for the Digital Economy” initiative. The cluster brings together practitioners from the creative industries with researchers from varied traditions that span ICT, the arts and humanities, the social sciences, and business studies.
The cluster seeks to establish a close connection between ICT researchers, those with an interest in business and innovation, and practising members of the creative industries and seeks to answer 4 main questions:
- What key challenges face the creative industries due to the emergence of a new generation of social, pervasive and affective ICT?
- And conversely, what long term challenges must be tackled by ICT research in order to support future creative industries?
- How can we better engage small creative companies in research and knowledge transfer?
- And especially, how can we establish new interdisciplinary approaches across ICT, the arts and humanities and the social sciences that support “practice-led” approaches to research?
Members include:
Blast Theory, University of Reading, Storey Gallery, AmaK, University of Nottingham, University of Cambridge, Queen Mary, University of London, University of Technology, Sydney, University of Sheffield, University of Lincoln, Goldsmiths College, University of London, Exeter University, Decoda, The Creative Media Centre, Lancaster University, Brunel University, University Of Chichester, Birkbeck College, University of London, Proboscis, Newcastle University, University of Glasgow, iShed, Watershed, SCAN/Bournemouth University, University of Bath, University of Worcester, University of Southampton, University of Sussex.
A series of Pilot projects and ‘Troubadour’ studies will be conducted over the year 2008-09.
StoryCubes Workshop – iHuman Youth Society
April 6, 2008 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Lattice::Sydney
April 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Lattice::Sydney
Lattice::Sydney from Proboscis on Vimeo.
Diffusion Shareables
April 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Diffusion Shareables
Diffusion Shareables from Proboscis on Vimeo.
Play to Invent
April 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Play to Invent
Play to Invent from Proboscis on Vimeo.
A playful exploration of Proboscis and some of its projects, tools and techniques.
Created by Alice Angus, Giles Lane, Orlagh Woods and Karen Martin (April 2008).
Music by Peoplelikeus.
Experiencing Democracy Report
April 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Experiencing Democracy Report
Experiencing Democracy Report (April 2008)
Anarchaeology at Render
April 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Collecting, Curating and Communicating Culture
Proboscis co-designed (with Andrew Hunter of Render) a studio/seminar course introducing 3rd & 4th year undergraduate and post-graduate students to contemporary approaches to collecting and curating through learning by doing. Students were introduced to techniques (anarchaeology, public authoring) and tools (Diffusion eBooks, StoryCubes, podcasting) used and developed by Proboscis. The goal of the course was to work both individually and collectively in excavating narratives of people, places, events and artefacts and creating new artefacts (using new and old media tools).
Render continued its collaboration with Proboscis on the Anarchaeology programme in May-July 2008, running a lab out of the Artery Gallery in downtown Kitchener. As part of this Render hosted a workshop with Collision, a group of students from Preston Highschool who have formed an independent collective to initiate and create performative art projects. Collision is mentored by artist and teacher Kyle Brown. For the May 17 workshop, Collision became selected buildings in downtown Kitchener and then ventured out into the street to engage the public.
Collision Workshop Photos on Flickr
Team: Alice Angus, Giles Lane & Orlagh Woods
Partner: Render at University of Waterloo (Andrew Hunter, Barbara Hobot & Amos Latteier)
Funded by the J.W. Graham Trust
Art & Cartography
February 5, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Art & Cartography
Proboscis was invited to take part in the Art & Cartography symposium exhibition, zoom and scale, at the Academy of Fine Arts and Kunsthalle Wien project space, Vienna in January 2008. We exhibited a set of 27 StoryCubes exploring the Social Tapestries research programme, a set of 8 StoryCubes reflecting our creative practices and process and two films, Social Tapestries and Play to Invent.
