3 days in Pallion
May 19, 2012 by Giles Lane · Leave a Comment
This week just passed Alice, Haz and myself have been running some co-design workshops with local community members in Pallion, a neighbourhood in the city of Sunderland, and with Lizzie Coles-Kemp and Elahe Kani-Zabihi of Royal Holloway’s Information Security Group, hosted at Pallion Action Group. The workshops, our second round following some others in early April, were focused around visualising the shape, needs and resources available to local people in building their own sustainable knowledge and support network – the Pallion Ideas Exchange. We also worked on testing the various tools and aids which we’ve designed in response to what we’ve learned of the issues and concerns facing individuals and the community in general.
The first day was spent making a visualisation of the hopes and aspirations for what PIE could achieve, the various kinds of activities it would do, and all the things they would need to make this happen. Based on previous discussions and workshops we’d drawn up a list of the kinds of activities PIE might do and the kinds of things they’d need and Mandy had done a great job over the past couple of weeks creating lots of simple sketches to help build up the visual map, to which were added lots of other issues, activity ideas, resources and hoped for outcomes.
Visualising PIE this way allowed for wide-ranging discussions about what people want to achieve and what it would need to happen – from building confidence in young people and the community more generally, to being resilient in the face of intimidation by local neer-do-wells. Over the course of the first afternoon the shape changed dramatically as the relationships between outcomes, activities, needs, people and resources began to emerge and the discussion revealed different understandings and interpretations of what people wanted.
On the second day we focused on the tools and aids we’ve been designing – a series of flow diagrams breaking down into simple steps some methods for problem solving, recording and sharing solutions and tips online, how to promote and share opportunities to people they would benefit and things to consider about safety and privacy before posting information online. We’ve also designed some simple notebooks with prompts to help do things like take notes during meetings and at events, a notebook for breaking problems down into small chunks that can be addressed more easily alongside place to note what, who and where help from PIE is available, and a notebook for organising and managing information and experiences of PIE members about sharing solutions to common problems that can be safer shared online. As the props for a co-design workshop these were all up for re-design or being left to one side if not relevant or useful. An important factor that emerged during the discussion was that people might feel uncomfortable with notes being written in a notebook during a social event – the solution arrived at was to design a series of ‘worksheet posters’ which could be put up on the walls and which everyone could see and add notes, ideas or comments to. The issue of respecting anonymity about problems people have also led to the suggestion of a suggestions box where people could post problems anonymously, and an ‘Ideas Wall’ where the problems could be highlighted and possible solutions proposed. We came away with a list of new things to design and some small tweaks to the notebooks to make them more useful – it was also really helpful to see a few examples of how local people had started using the tools we’ve designed to get a feel for them:
On the afternoon of the second day we also spent a long time discussing the technologies for sharing the community’s knowledge and solutions that would be most appropriate and accessible. We looked at a whole range of possibilities, from the most obvious and generic social media platforms and publishing platforms to more targeted tools (such as SMS Gateways for broadcasting to mobiles). As we are working with a highly intergenerational group who are forming the core of PIE (ages range from 16 – 62) there were all kinds of fluencies with different technologies. This project is also part of the wider Vome project addressing issues of privacy awareness so we spent much of the time considering the specific issues of using social media to share knowledge and experiences in a local community where information leakage can have very serious consequences. Ultimately we are aiming towards developing an awareness for sharing that we are calling Informed Disclosure. Only a few days before I had heard about cases of loan sharks now mining Facebook information to identify potential vulnerable targets in local communities, and using the information they can glean from unwitting sharing of personal information to befriend and inveigle themselves into people’s trust. The recent grooming cases have also highlighted the issues for vulnerable teenagers in revealing personal information on public networks. Our workshop participants also shared some of their own experiences of private information being accidentally or unknowing leaked out into public networks. At the end of the day we had devised a basic outline for the tools and technologies that PIE could begin to use to get going.
Our final day at Pallion was spent helping the core PIE group set up various online tools : email, a website/blog, a web-based collaboration platform for the core group to organise and manage the network, and a twitter stream to make announcements about upcoming events. Over the summer, as more people in Pallion get involved we’re anticipating seeing other tools, such as video sharing, audio sharing and possibly SMS broadcast services being adopted and integrated into this suite of (mainly) free and open tools.
The workshops were great fun, hugely productive but also involved a steep learning curve for all of us. We’d like to thank Pat, Andrea, Ashleigh and Demi (who have taken on the roles of ‘community champions’ to get PIE up and running) for all their commitment and patience in working with us over the three days, as well as Karen & Doreen at PAG who have facilitated the process and made everything possible. And also to our partners, RHUL’s Lizzie and Elahe who have placed great faith and trust in our ability to devise and deliver a co-design process with the community that reflects on the issues at the heart of Vome.
View from our hotel in Roker
data logger for Visualise Lifestreams
May 18, 2012 by stefankueppers · Leave a Comment
This week I have been putting together a little Arduino data logger for our current research collaboration with Philips in our Art & Tech commission project.
Arduino, openlog and TGS2620 gas sensor setup with GSR electrodes
We are exploring the translation of health and lifestyle data into new forms of tangible artefacts and for this we revisited mobile data-capture using Arduino boards to inform our early prototypes.
Alongside some Arduino boards we still had in the office I picked up a current crop of useful bits and pieces from Cool Components and RS (OpenLog SD logger + TGS2620 gas sensor) to make a quick, small and simple data-logger for simple capture of volatile gas proximity and basic galvanic skin response indicating anxiety levels.
TGS2620 gas sensor and openlog logger module
We need to capture long time periods of this sort of data on the move and thus were looking for a non-PC based data-logging set-up we could build ourselves. The Openlog board from Sparkfun is pretty convenient as it hooks up directly to the Arduino and can take micro-flash cards of large sizes so I got some 8GB cards for our logging exercises which will last for some good amount of data-capture time.
The Openlog board is tiny (literally a bit smaller than a 50 pence coin) and pretty straight forward to work with: It just hooks to the Arduino board in soft-serial mode. The galvanic skin response is better to be redone with an op-amp but a rudimentary approach will do for now for initial sketch-testing as we can always improve on the circuit later.
I will post some more feedback when I have played around with it some more.
Resources:
OpenLog github site documentation and code
Arduino Gas detection Fritzing sketch
Visualising with Philips R&D
May 11, 2012 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Back in February Proboscis was commissioned by Andy Robinson of Futurecity, with the assistance of Dipak Mistry of Arts & Business Cambridge, to undertake an Art+Tech collaboration with a local industry partner in Cambridge as part of Anglia Ruskin University’s Visualise programme. This strand seeks to engage “leading Cambridge technology companies to collaborate with contemporary artists on the creative use of technology in public life.”
Over the past few months Stefan and I have been meeting with David Walker and Steffen Reymann of Philips R&D (based in the Cambridge Science Park) to establish a creative dialogue. The initial topics for our creative exploration were suggested by Philips based on research subjects being explored in their lab – Near Field Communications and health monitoring technologies. Our discussions quickly began to revolve around personal motivations for monitoring health and lifestyle –
- Why do people routinely lose abandon using health monitoring technologies?
- What might inspire new habits that actively involve monitoring?
- How could we create delightful ways for people to make connections between personal data and Quality of Life?
- How could we rethink the nature of data collection away from the purely rational towards the realm of the numinous and speculative?
Our initial thinking suggested that perhaps the problem with data collection is that it is often too crude and reductive – trying to make impossibly simple connections between phenomena in a complex system. Data visualisations are often barely more than pretty graphs – but our lives, our environments and the ways we live are so much more than that. How might we make tangible souvenirs from the data generated by our bodies and habits that could help us discern the longer term, harder to perceive patterns?
As our discussions have continued we have begun to explore how we might generate talismanic objects – lifecharms – from personal monitoring data using 3D fabbing. Things which could act as everyday reminders about patterns the data suggests, which are at once both formed of the data and yet do not offer literal readings of the data. Objects which are allusive, interpretative and perceptible, but still mysterious. What would it feel like to have an object in one’s pocket that was generated from data gleaned from one’s own body and behaviours? How might this help us maintain a peripheral awareness of the things we eat, how much we exercise, our general state of happiness and perceive the subtle changes and shifts over time?
Stefan is writing elsewhere how we have been inspired by shells – excretions produced by creatures that tell (in a non-literal way) the story of the creature’s life – what minerals it ingested, what environmental factors affected it. For the lifecharms we’re experimenting with using personal data to drive 3D morphogenetic algorithms that can generate unique shell-like forms which we’ll then render into tangible souvenirs.
As a more macro counterpoint to the micro of the personal lifecharms we have also been considering how local public health data could be translated into forms which could be experienced as a group in a public setting – we’re investigating making a ‘fly eye’ geodesic dome with a light source to throw light upon the patterns in the data.
We’ll be continuing our discussions with Philips for another 3 months or so, gathering some test data (from ourselves) then making some prototypes and maquettes of our ideas for an event in Cambridge in the Autumn where we’ll present our work.
Ideas exchange with Pallion
April 23, 2012 by aliceangus · Leave a Comment
Just before Easter we were back in Sunderland working with Pallion Action Group and Royal Holloway, University of London’s Information Security Group on the project to help build a community network for people to share ideas about money, spend and budgets in ways that help them cope with the massive changes in the benefits system and reduction of the public sector’s contribution to the local economy.
I’m finding each time I visit PAG I’m more and more amazed at their ability to bring people together and invent solutions to tackle serious problems through creative thinking and activity. Their projects range from street dance, to pre-employment confidence building, mentoring of young people and projects to engage older people with technology. Although PAG are not an arts organisation their approach does remind me of two media arts orgs – Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) in Western Sydney Australia and Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol. ICE open their doors to all sections of the diverse western Sydney community to join in a program of activities that enable communities and artists to tell the stories of this extraordinary place. Knowle West Media Centre is a media arts charity that aims to develop and support cultural, social and economic regeneration supporting communities to engage with, and benefit from, digital technologies and the arts.
These places have a commitment to valuing everyone’s voice in a democratic space. They’ve created environments that, because they are trusted and run by the community, encourage people to come to them they need an answer or a problem solved or just want to be involved. They all use creative processes, arts, music and film in their projects and through it are able to connect up people, ideas and communities to find solutions, support initiatives and ‘make things happen’ that are both practical and transformative.
PAG “was formed in 1993 by a small group of local residents who intended to take action relating to some of the problems that their community was facing.” Its mission is “To work to improve the living conditions, community facilities, social, educational and economic opportunities available to the residents of Pallion and surrounding areas of the City of Sunderland.”
Spending a few days in the building you get to see the way that PAG subtly makes opportunities for people to work together, to help each other as well as themselves. They are adept in seeing people’s passions, capabilities and capacities and supporting them. It doesn’t take long being there to be struck by the perceptive, resourceful and intelligent people who are involved in Pallion Action Group. People of all ages from many walks of life who have found themselves facing degrees of difficulty over lack of employment and a complex confusing benefits system.
On this last visit we were working with PAG on a shared design approach to mapping the broad themes, areas and issues and began to collect sample stories and experiences. We started with some basic explorations of resources in the home; what comes in and what goes out. It led onto more in-depth explorations of people’s perceptions : where did these things sit in relation to one another; what things people can rely on and what are unreliable; what is fixed, what changes? Finally we moved onto mapping what people’s aspirations are and the barriers that get in the way of achieving those. After these sessions we collaborated with members of PAG on scoping the next stages of the project and how it will intersect with current PAG activities and be supported by people involved in PAG. The discussion concluded that for this network to be of value it will have to enable people to improve their situation and not reinforce fears. Our focus for the project now rests on how what Proboscis does or brings to the process can connect with and supports PAG’s own work; how we can build on and exploit PAG’s skills and enhances (rather than adding more work) their efforts to build on their positive approach.
Bookleteer Animation Prep
April 6, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Props to be used for upcoming Bookleteer animation.
A snapshot of my cluttered desk, here’s a sneak peek of what I’ve been busying away with; these are props I am creating for an upcoming cut paper animation illustrating how to use Bookleteer.
Defining Public Goods: Folklore
April 6, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Visual mind map about folklore.
Traditional beliefs, customs, stories passed down through generations, superstition; you’ve come across some of these at one point in your life or it may still be a part of you to this very day. My next mind map for the Compendium is about Folklore.
Here I explore the different methods to which groups maintain, share and pass on traditions. It also contains quotes from the New York Folklore Society website, where people expressed what folklore meant to them and how it affected their daily lifestyle.
The cultural aspect is a public good, the knowledge or reasoning of why something is the way it is. A method people use to teach others about experiences expressed as stories, songs, performance, legends, myths and rhymes.
It is something communities strive to maintain as folklore symbolise their identity to themselves and others.
Preparations for Pallion
April 4, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
As part of our work on the VOME project with researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London’s Information Security Group we are working with Pallion Action Group in Pallion in Sunderland on a community engagement project to co-design a process with the local community in Pallion, Sunderland to create a knowledge network around money, spend and budgets. We are collaborating with PAG to identify the areas and issues challenging people around household economies. The project feeds into VOME’s aim of “exploring how people engage with concepts of information privacy and consent in online interactions”.
We’ve have been co-designing designing a set of huge posters with people at PAG to help gather knowledge and find the right language to use. We took a first set up recently for the first exploration session, and based on peoples’ comments revised and changed them and will be heading off to do a two day series of activities with local people to dig deeper into peoples concerns about costs, spend, what we can rely on and what is unreliable. I think the project is going to involve some very interesting cycles of creating, discussing, revising, changing and re-producing materials until we can collaboratively come up with the right materials.
Defining Public Goods: Places to Meet and Hang Out
March 29, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Continuing my exploration into public goods for the Compendium I thought about public spaces; parks, the town square, spaces that doesn’t require a fee to access. In these spaces, we often see people walking around, hanging about, waiting for someone, conversing with each other, and so on; and then it hit me – places to meet and hang out can be considered as a public good. These could be conventional spaces such as the park or places that encourage socialising like a cafe, but there are also informal spaces; ones that are not dictated.
An example of an informal space brings me back to my university days; every weekend when I had to go to the main high street to buy food for my deprived fridge, I would have to walk through the town square where flocks of teenagers would hang out, spreading across the flights of stairs and having to dodge the dangerous skater boys practicing stunts from one side to the other. It was the same every weekend without fail.
Visual mind map about places to meet up and hang out.
Programmable Matter By Folding
March 26, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Not quite the paper theme but still folding! This was a video clip I had seen a few years back, and it was my current research for the Compendium that reminded me of the video.
A demonstration created by the Pentagon research scientists; of a tiny robot as thin as a piece of paper covered with predefined folds. It wasn’t quite origami but using algorithms the tiny robot folds itself into the shape of a boat and then a paper plane. Quite amazing huh? I am not confident enough to go into robotics just yet, but for now I think I’ll stick to paper craft.
Animation Experiment #3 – The Tortoise and the Cube
March 23, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Continuing with my experiments for the Compendium using paper crafts, I wanted to try animating with 3D models. To animate something that was flat pack and have it lifting up as if inflating and popping up into shape from the ground. So I went on a hunt for a 3D paper model – thus coming across the tortoise designed by Konica Minolta. It took some time to assemble but the finished tortoise looked great.
I named the studio's new pet, Yumi.
But Yumi was not a flat pack, she was made up of separate pieces, so the aim of the experiment changed slightly to experimenting puppetry with Yumi a 3D model and have a story cube inflate into shape instead. This time round the experiment had two subjects or actors if you will, in the scene. So the difficulty here was getting the timing right between the two.
Screen captures of Yumi walking around the cube as it folds itself.
Turntable Hack
March 19, 2012 by stefankueppers · Leave a Comment
The other week Alice and Mandy started evolving ideas around the use of Zoetropes. Mandy produced some wonderful origami birds and Alice sketched out a series of cardboard mock-ups on a wooden ‘cheese board’ turning platter. These worked nicely for some very initial sketches but would not allow filming well and the rotation speed would vary.
Alice found some great turntable hacks for Zoetrope out on the web that got us thinking: Our Zoetrope experiments needed more control and flexibility in the electronic and mechanical design aspects so rotation speed could be controlled more precisely in future design iterations.
The hacked turntable ensemble
Ok: The Public Goods Lab (i.e. myself and the kit…) got involved in its technical capacity to support this. Alice brought in her old Technics turntable and I had a go at making our own motor driven Zoetrope as a hack from it: As it turned out with her turntable the real issue was that it it did not allow placing arbitrary size objects on the platter as the Technics model was designed as a slide-out chassis so we needed to do something with it before we could use it for Zoetrope testing.
I got onto disassembling the chassis getting the rotating platter out of it with its motor. The electronics were so tied to the chassis that I decided to just fix a stepper motor on the side of the platter base and made a little Arduino controller and breadboard motor driver circuit to go with it. The driver circuit is just suing a ULN2003A chip for a quick and simple test ( That chip is a multi-transistor package so I did not have to roll my own H-bridge).
I first used a unipolar stepper [4 connections] but the circuit [I used this post from eLABZ blog ] was getting a bit hot with a floating voltage across the driver chip so I ended up reverting to a bi-polar stepper motor (still using the same circuit as above but dropping the floating voltage and this works just fine without the driver chip overheating. There are two poer supplies, one driving 5V for the Arduino board and another 12V supply for the stepper motor driver. Both were taken from an old hard disk power supply and wired into a breadboard. The circuit used has a tow small switches that let you change the stepper direction which is a nice convenience.
Arduino + Stepper driver electronics
More code hints for Arduino stepper control see the
introductory Arduino stepper control tutorials
The code can be tuned to change the speed of the stepper a little bit but this could alaso be extended with more control buttons in the circuit which we may do if we really need it.
Defining Public Goods: Craftsmanship
March 16, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
I’ve always admired the works of a craftsman, and I definitely feel that their skill as an artisan can somehow be reflected in the Compendium. But can craftsmanship really be considered as a public good? I turn to the Heritage Crafts Association, advocacy body for traditional heritage crafts for some answers. There I find an article by Professor Ewan Clayton, who explains all that I am unable to convey in words.
He talks about the importance of heritage crafts and that “craftsmanship have an interesting relationship to time” the embodied wisdom from the craftsman of a time is reflected in the artefact created, the interaction or activity that may involve the artefact, becomes a cultural resource.
He also mentions the focus in safeguarding traditional craftsmanship should not be made to preserve craft objects but to create conditions to encourage artisans to continue their practice and to transmit their skills and knowledge to others.
I also stumbled upon Richard Sennett’s book titled Craftsman, which mentions how medieval workshops provided a communal atmosphere and a social space, that bound people together forming a community of masters and apprentices.
Both Professor Ewan Clayton and Richard Sennett made insightful points about craftsmanship in the past and in our current lifestyles, it was also a sad reminder of craftsmanship that have become so rare and at risk of being lost forever that it made me want to learn more about them.
I wrap up this post with a quote from Professor Ewan Clayton’s article “So this intangible cultural inheritance that crafts carry is not only about our past – it’s about the vision of what it means to be human. It’s about now, and its about our future as well.”
Visual mind map about craftsmanship.
Animation Experiment #2 – Origami Crane
March 14, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
The folding paper piece was quite quick and simple to animate, so the next one to experiment with for the Compendium needed to be a bit more challenging. A self folding origami crane. For those who are familiar with folding the crane, you’ll know that the crane have symmetrical folds ; so the real challenge here was working out how to make the paper flip over to carry out the repeated folds once one side completed the necessary step. My first attempt in solving this issue became too complicated and confusing, that I had to stop animating and go back to the drawing board to revise the storyboard.
Storyboard for self folding origami crane.
Following the new storyboard the animation progressed at a good pace at the start but towards the end I wasn’t consistent with the number of key frames so it may look like the crane got impatient and hastily folded itself during the last few seconds. Despite the frames per second, I achieved the main goal of animating a self folding origami crane! But to maintain the consistency of frames, I am going to need to devise a time sheet to go along with the storyboard.
Animating in progress.
Screen captures of the self folding origami crane animation experiment.
Defining Public Goods: Communication
March 7, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Branching out from the idea of social transactions; mentioned in a previous post about Stefan’s reunion over the holidays, led me to the topic of communication as a public good. How do we carry out these social transactions? Why is it so important to convey our thoughts and opinions to others and how will this result as a public good?
Communication fits the description of being both non-rival and non-excludable; words used from an economic point of view to define what a public good is. Thanks to conventional methods and modern technology, sharing ideas and thoughts have become widely available. But the point I am trying to make here is how we use these ‘props’ to communicate and share information.
The internet itself is not a public good, rather the communication and information functions it provides is. As a result the internet has given opportunities to create online communities that allow social connectivity of diverse groups, sharing information and knowledge that led to the creation of open source applications.
Taking these thoughts and ideas for the Compendium, I illustrated and brainstormed examples of our methods of communication through traditions; stories of experiences, songs, and visuals. Also thinking about the different outcomes created from the act of communicating such as social groups and communities linked through common interests, open source materials, data and information.
Visual mind map about communication as a public good.
Simply by a Push of a Button
March 5, 2012 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Whilst researching animation techniques for the Compendium of Public Goods, I came across many innovative and inspirational animations and thought it would be a good idea to share my findings through a series of posts.
Without further ado, I present SNASK; a stop motion animation created by Mike Crozier, an inspiration for my first animation experiment Folding Paper. The SNASK animation consists of clever transitions between different colourful patterned papers and eventually forming a box within a box, which changes into a TV and then ending the animation with the TV sinking into the desk. The whole animation was compiled from a total of 1846 photos!
SNASK from Mike Crozier on Vimeo.
Coffee Time by Wan-Tzu is an adaptation of Mike’s work, using SNASK as a template to learn and practice stop motion techniques. The video was a recreation of effects used in SNASK but given a storyline that reflected the creators love for coffee. I really liked the smoothness of the coffee machine interface, and the use of wool to represent the coffee, very clever!
Coffee Time from wan-tzu on Vimeo.
Animation Experiment #1 – Folding Paper
March 2, 2012 by mandytang · 1 Comment
Having spent some time researching about animation techniques for the Compendium, I was nudged to move away from my desk and start experimenting with animation on the other side of the studio. There, I was greeted with a green screen; a roll of thick green paper which Alice had heaved up the many flights of stairs and hung up ready to go. The camera positioned and set in place hooked up to the laptop; this marks the beginning of the animation experiments that I’ve been looking forward to.
Storyboard for the simple folding paper animation.
My first experiment! ‘Folding paper’. I began by making quick sketches of the key frames with the help of a prototype of the subject to work out its movements. Using stop motion and following my storyboard, this paper will fold itself.This is so much fun!
Screen captures of my folding paper animation experiment.
Defining Public Goods: Food
February 29, 2012 by mandytang · 1 Comment
As part of my explorations into the notion of Public Goods for the Compendium, I’ve been creating some sketch maps that explore how to define public goods. What are they? Public goods come in many forms and their meaning and values vary among different groups of people.
Whilst preparing to have lunch with the team, Stefan began telling us a story about his family feast during the holiday season. The social transactions he had during the reunion, the reminiscing of traditional dishes. It sparked the thought that it wasn’t just the act of sharing food that was a public good, but everything that evolved around it. Where and how we get our food; the agricultural skills and knowledge needed to grow our food; the market place in which people come together not just to buy goods but for social interactions and where communities share stories; the history and culture, our traditions and sociology behind food, and ‘Foodways‘ – a term used to describe any piece of food culture which once existed in a time and place that tells a story about who we are.
Visual mind map about sharing food.
City As Material 2 with Professor Starling of DodoLab
February 28, 2012 by Giles Lane · 3 Comments
Once again we have been collaborating with our esteemed colleagues Andrew Hunter and Lisa Hirmer at DodoLab on a discursive exploration of place and knowledge as part of our ongoing investigations and collaborative publishing project, City As Material. This time we have been undertaking a research expedition with Professor William Starling into the decline of the European Starling in Britain, seeking stories and evidence to explain their rapid disappearance in three towns : Thetford (in Norfolk), London and Oxford. Alongside Proboscis and DodoLab, we were accompanied by expedition members Dr Josie Mills, Curator of the Art Gallery at the University of Lethbridge, Canada and artist Leila Armstrong.
Haz has posted reports for each of the journeys and visitations which we undertook in Thetford, London and Oxford over on our bookleteer blog and we are now collaborating to produce a series of eBooks charting the expedition’s activities and findings – blending together questions, observations, musings, photos, drawings, rubbings and other things collected. As before, we’ll print up a limited edition of the books as well as placing downloadable PDFs in the online Diffusion Library for handmade versions and enabling bookreader versions for reading online.
A few months in..
February 7, 2012 by stefankueppers · Leave a Comment
Wow, how time flies:
Starting my Proboscis experience began only in October and already it seems like a distant past as so many things are happening at the same time here:
The Proboscis team, Giles, Alice, Hazem and Mandy have been really warmly welcoming me into their fold and I have been getting to know all the many friends and collaborators in the various projects we are working on. It is a great experience getting into a totally different scale (much smaller!) and horizontal way of working; a big change from my previous Higher Education job! I have come needing to juggle wearing many hats: design, research, technology development, etc. and I am really relishing it. It is really great when you can mix up the strategic and the practical and a few things in-between.
All this took some time getting used to but what is great is that a lot of excitement in this involvement is already showing: There is the new thinking about the technology stack that we are evolving for our Public Goods Lab work, the authoring and (successfully!) bidding for new commissioned work (e.g. Exlab) with other exciting work in the pipeline. Then we have been rearranging our studio space to accommodate more fabrication space for our various projects. Now there is a corner for electronics prototyping with a kit bench that is slowly expanding for our circuit design and production.
We are slowly growing more capacity not just to fabricate electronics but in fact a wider range of components in house. At the moment we are adding ideas around 3d printing (rapid fabrication) and textiles to embedded electronics. We are also exploring motion capture technologies and the production of data landscapes using sound environments! This is very exciting also as we are re-interpreting ideas and processes previous Proboscis work to expand our exploration and play with notions around physical knowledge artefacts. We are looking to experiment in our various projects where we can take the ideas around them and what they could spark for different uses..
All the above is tied in with ongoing conversations with friends and colleagues I had made in my various previous places of work in an HE context (UCL & The Bartlett Faculty of the Environment & Central Saint Martins, The University of The Arts) where I was for example involved in projects around
- Co-Presence & collaboration technologies with digital artefacts in virtual environment visualisations
- Mapping, understanding factors and strategies producing higher quality urban/city spaces
- Digital archives for architecture student works & new means of portfolio building, sharing and learning
- Collaborative research knowledge spaces and archives
- 3D printing in architecture design
- Parametric modelling and Arduino / Embedded electronics driven installations
- Platforming of shared work spaces and collaboration environments
Being here as part of Proboscis is an exciting way for me to bring a lot of this experience of setting up and operating Learning & Knowledge Spaces in the public realm. Watch out for our new works!
Visual Interpretations 2
June 27, 2011 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
Hello! It’s been a while since my last post and what have I been up to you ask? Well, I’ve been honing my skills in advanced Pictionary! Or at least that’s one way of looking at it as it takes on the same principle of visual interpretations from words. For the past few weeks Giles and Alice have been throwing words, concepts and phrases at me to create sketches visualising the meanings behind them.
Below are a few examples I have created which illustrate some of the many different projects Proboscis have accomplished over the years and key outcomes from them:
Perception Peterborough – valuing citizens’ voices in city planning & regeneration.
Navigating History – creating new awareness of rich local archives and resources.
Sensory Threads – revealing value creation in cross sector collaborations.
Snout – using play to inspire people and make complex issues more accessible.
With Our Ears to the Ground – connecting council depts to work together for the first time for cohesive community development.
Lattice – providing the catalyst for new creative collaborations.
Having been a part of Proboscis for a fair amount of time now, trying to describe the type of work Proboscis does can be a little tricky. So the best way around it was to look at what Proboscis had accomplished in the past, giving me a new perspective on the kinds of projects and themes Proboscis had undertaken and the different types of people they have worked with.
This part of the project had given me an great opportunity to exercise my conceptual skills, visualising complex activities and abstract ideas and presenting them in the form of a single sketch.
It was challenging creating a sketch that would capture and reflect the sense of a complex project and required a lot of conversation – to which I would carefully listen to pull out keywords that may best describe the process, outcomes and achievements of a project, then further researching to finalise sketches.
Throughout the process I’ve developed the ability to visualise concepts using a single word or string of words and sketching to reflect the meaning behind the words or the ideas conveyed, giving me new confidence as a concept artist to visualise something quickly and to use my imagination to give some of the sketches a touch of humour and a new perspective.
It has been an enjoyable experience, and given me a new insight to the type of work a visual interpreter/ graphic artist does and I look forward to more work like this in the near future.
Advanced Pictionary go! go!
Outside The Box – First Play Test
April 18, 2011 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
- Outside The Box play set laid out on the grass at Lambourne End Outdoor Centre
Hi all! We had our first play test for Outside The Box yesterday with the children who were taking part in the play scheme with the YMCA of Central London. We went with them to Lambourne End Centre for Outdoor Learning, where the children will get to take part in various activities including a chance to have a go with the play sets.
Upon arrival I was engulfed by the surrounding greenery, the centre was huge! 54 acres of land; open fields with animals grazing on the grass and various adventure activities built and scattered across the vast fields.
As we walked through the reception area to catch up with the children who were currently having lunch. My attention was immediately swept away from a beautiful blond haired horse which trotted passed; a small carriage trailing behind it with children gleefully cheering as they enjoyed the ride, “I want to go on that” was all I could think of after that.
After lunch the children were split into two groups and thus it was time to set the cubes free onto the grass and just see what happens.
The curious children watched and questioned as Giles placed the play set on the grass, they began picking them up and marvelled at the different drawings and asked who drew them – I felt proud and happy that they really liked them. They’ve ask me how did I draw the images to which I explained very briefly the process.
Then the blank cubes had become like gold, they all became immersed in the idea of making their own cubes and swarmed around trying to overcome the challenge of assembling a cube and immediately attacking the art box soon after. Frantically scooping PVA glue over the grass and dribbling it across each other, they busied away crafting their masterpiece.
Children crafting their masterpiece cube.
There was one girl however, who was more determined to solve the animal set. At first when she couldn’t work it out she claimed the cubes were wrong, so I nudged and gave a clue to which she immediately thought “Ah! so it can also go this way!” she shuffled the cubes and tried again. Eventually she solved the puzzle and huffed “that was hard”.
Then the groups switched over, a trio sprinted across the field and sat down to make a cube. They then began playing with the storytelling set. At first they only picked one word from each face of the cube – which made their stories one sentence long, but after suggesting that they can use all the words from each face, their stories became longer.
One of the girls used the words in order shown, another used the genre cube – but instead of rolling it she preferred to choose the face that she liked and did the same with the word cubes. They competed with each other to tell the best story and started shouting to drown out each other’s story!
(If you would like to listen to some of their funny stories, click on the links below)
http://audioboo.fm/boos/329978-stories-from-storycubes
http://audioboo.fm/boos/329979-more-stories
Finally the groups reunited to go see the farm animals, indicating the end of the first play testing session. Overall it was a great opportunity to be able to play test with children in a outdoor setting, it gave me an idea of what needs changing and how to set up the next play test. It would have been better to be able to get more children to play with them and to also get some of the boys to give it a go for a fair play test, instead of taking one look at it and tossing it aside for football. I thank the Central YMCA for this opportunity and look forward to more visits in hope that children will like Outside The Box. As for the golden horse that kept trotting passed me numerous times and swaying it’s golden mane as if taunting me…one day..one day..*shakes fists*.
Outside The Box eBooks
March 15, 2011 by mandytang · 1 Comment
Take notes, draw maps, make sketches, stick things in, scribble away!
(Drum rolls) Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present the finished eBooks!
The eBooks are part of Outside The Box and were created to accompany the play sets, they act as props to help stimulate game play.
I’ve created a total of six eBooks that fit with the role playing set, each eBook corresponds to the six roles available. Once roles have been assigned, players can take their eBooks with them to carry out missions. They can use it to take notes, draw maps, sketch images or even stick things into, they can do whatever they like with these eBooks that will assist their game experience.
But what’s inside you ask? (sniggers). Each book is themed to each role, not just on the cover, but the inside pages too. All pages inside are hand drawn with blank spaces for the player to use, it’s printer friendly and encourages players to freely scribble in them.
The eBooks can also be used for the other play sets too! For example, players can choose an eBook of their choice and use it to play along the story telling game. Or they could use the eBooks to create strange combination animals. (More suggestions available in the Outside The Box Suggestion eBook).
I enjoyed designing and creating the eBooks, it all began with making miniature versions as the initial design. Then making the basic prototype and moving onto finalising details and adding messages to the players. I had a lot of fun making the eBooks, I now hope that players will enjoy the finished product.
The eBooks aren't limited to the Role playing set, they can be used for the other games too!
Final Reflections – Hazem Tagiuri
March 4, 2011 by hazemtagiuri · Leave a Comment
Creative Assistant
(6 Month Placement, Future Jobs Fund July 2010-January 2011)
Before starting my placement here, I had only vague notions of a career in writing, knowing I would inevitably employ my ability in some way, but entirely unsure what form this would take. I enjoyed scribbling poetry and other writing, usually as a result of my leisurely days, having decided not to attend university or embark on a meditated career path. These jots were the results of experiences I had in place of established life routes, and I never conceived they would shape my creative ambitions for the future.
Working at Proboscis has channeled my writing into a medium that lets it develop and influence others, rather than lurking in scrapbooks that never see the light of day. By regularly blogging – describing what’s going on the studio and my own creative processes, as well as researching inspiring works and spreading the word – I’m honing my craft and developing a work ethic. More exciting however, by creating and taking part in projects that use my scrawls, such as the City As Material series, I’m producing original writing pieces that are slowly forming into a respectable body of work. Although mostly short poems, (albeit with common themes that allow them to be compiled and displayed in their own right) I’m looking towards short stories and longer pieces to spur my development further.
The City As Material series of eBooks I co-designed and contributed to.
Having the opportunity to showcase my writing, and letting the environment and events experienced here inspire it in turn, has influenced what route it might take. I wouldn’t rule out trying to publish an anthology, or at least submitting my work to publications – something I had only done once before, without reply. Even having a hand in a publication which displayed other people’s work, would be of great reward – then again, I’ve been doing that here with City As Material, and barely noticing the ramifications. I don’t think you comprehend the opportunities and possibilities available during a placement like this, until it is nearly finished, or asked to write an account of it. Perhaps that’s just my skewed look at it – motivation has always been an issue and this is my first job in the creative sector. I know there are people who are industrious (and rightly so) when it comes to their creative work – endlessly writing, committing to multiple internships and gaining ladder-holds and experience – yet I’m only just easing into that groove.
I think therefore, placements such as these could definitely benefit from being longer. Approaching the end of the 6 months, after adapting to creative working and learning techniques, I was just settling in and at the peak of productivity. Thankfully, I am being kept on as a full team member, but if the placement had ended there, I fear I might have been at a loss – not able to showcase a portfolio of work which was created in these additional months, and perhaps having to resort to a non-creative job, where it would be extremely difficult on focus on and develop my writing.
On a more optimistic note, as a result of the placement here and the work I’ve been involved with, we’re currently planning and scheduling new City As Material events for this year, as well as more Pitch Up & Publish workshops. I’m looking forward to sharing the techniques and experiences I’ve gained, with people who might now be in the position I was last year, and who are interested in using bookleteer and getting their work seen. Thus, it seems I might be able to take on a similar role that Proboscis and New Deal of The Mind have performed for me – undoubtedly rewarding, and a symbol of how placements such as these can positively influence people, who then hopefully inspire others.
Hazem Tagiuri, March 2011
Observational Sketches
February 18, 2011 by mandytang · Leave a Comment
The wall of visual interpretations have expanded! Soon I will invade another side of the wall with my sketches.
In my previous post, I mentioned a major part of my work is creating visual interpretations as research for Public Goods, Proboscis’ new programme of projects exploring the intangible things we value most about the people, places and communities we live in. So far I’ve been creating sketches using images found online combined with my own knowledge. We decided that it would help to gather inspiration from the ‘real’ world in both drawings and photographs, to be surrounded by people and absorb the atmosphere of everyday life.
Usually shying away behind the PC, I agreed to take on the challenge and chose the Science Museum as my first destination. Upon entry there were many objects on display, from steam engines to planes to the evolution of technology. All these objects were traces of what used to be; evidence that reflected on the lifestyle of those that once lived. The objects were categorised in a time-line, indicating the different notable era’s in society such as mass production and the industrial revolution, it demonstrated the changes and evolution stages of specific objects and introduced new theories and materials that were readily available of that time and also the trends that influenced them. As I made my way through the different displays, I was overwhelmed by the thought that all these inventions were the stepping stone to today’s technology. If it wasn’t for these people, our world of convenience wouldn’t have advanced so much.
The next exhibition was the exploration of outer space, whilst looking at the different satellite and shuttle parts on display it hit me that curiosity is a big part of our human nature. Creating theories and exploring methods to prove them and making new discoveries. But it is science that makes it all happen, by making the intangible into tangible with the use of devices and tools; such as light or the ability to fly.
Going upstairs, leaving the historical part of science behind me, I came to the “Who am I?” exhibition. It delved into our biological make up with displays about how our brain is wired and exploration of dreams. The next few displays were about aspects that make us unique individuals such as our exposure to cultures and the environment we grew up in and how such aspects affect us psychologically. I really enjoyed my visit here, and appreciated objects which were the greatest inventions of their time. Although behind glass and never to be used again, just imagining the stories that accompanied it makes each object that more valuable.
During my time at the Science Museum I focused on photographing of objects so for the next outing, I headed to Westfield Shopping Center to create first hand observations of people in a public space.
From being used to sketching still life or just from imagination it was challenging to draw people that wouldn’t stay still! The aim for such an exercise is to capture the moment, through speed sketching; with enough detail to illustrate the subject’s form. As an artist who loves details, I struggled at first to sketch simplified drawings of people but because there was a chance that the person would suddenly move, I was forced to note down their action quickly.
I managed to spend some time just watching how people behaved, the gestures they made when with others and the body language they displayed. But one thing I noticed whilst in the center was; there was no concept of time – with no visible clock anywhere it made the experience feel so timeless and surreal with very little natural lighting. People would often check their mobiles or they too would stop and observe others from the upper levels of the center, whilst waiting for their companion. I’ll be doing more observational sketches later on but at places where people might not move around as often as they would in a shopping center!!
Public Goods : a survey of the common wealth
February 2, 2011 by Giles Lane · 3 Comments
This year we will begin a major new programme of projects exploring the intangible things we value most about the people, places and communities we live in : Public Goods. Through a series of projects over a 5 year period we’ll be making artworks, films, events, exhibitions and publications in places across the nation (and hopefully abroad too) working in collaboration with both other creative practitioners and local people.
In this first year we’re planning a series of smaller research projects to help us meet and engage with collaborators, identify places and communities, themes and activities. We’ll be using our City As Material format for collaborative urban exploration and zine-making as a method of investigating new places with local people, and also focused projects, like Alice’s As It Comes, in both urban and rural settings exploring other knowledges and experiences that are often overlooked or are being swept away by the fast pace of social change. We also plan to continue our research collaborations into new technologies for public authoring, play and sensing the world around us (such as Urban Tapestries, bookleteer and Sensory Threads).
Our aim is to build up an archive, or archives, of the intangible goods that people most value and want to share – transmitting hope and belief through artistic practice to others in the present and for the future. In the teeth of a radical onslaught against the tangible public assets we are familiar with (libraries, forests, education etc), Public Goods seeks to celebrate and champion a re-valuation of those public assets which don’t readily fit within the budget lines of an accountant’s spreadsheet.
We’d love to hear from communities, practitioners or organisations who’d like us to work with them around this theme – do get in touch.
