Being in Common Catalogue of Ideas
March 27, 2009 by Giles Lane · 6 Comments
As part of our commission, Being in Common, for the Art of Common Space project at Gunpowder Park we created a pack of cards containing our catalogue of ideas. The catalogue is a playful exploration of ‘common space’ drawing together fragments and ideas from across the project, to be played with, read individually or assembled into narratives and stories making unexpected connections and perspectives.
The Catalogue is inspired by the collective nature of playing cards. It includes writing, photographs, imagery and ephemera created and collected during the project, and includes material from the Exploration Packs that Proboscis sent to people around the world to investigate their perspectives on ‘common space’.
The Catalogue of Ideas is one of several works made for Being in Common. Proboscis also created three site specific works in the Park using optics, mirrors and viewmasters, to reveal different perspectives of the site.
Buy Online for £10 including post & packing
A Flash Viewer of the Being in Common Catalogue of Ideas Cards, created by Niharika Hariharan:
Being in Common: Catalogue of Ideas (20Mb)
Being In Common Exploration Packs
December 8, 2008 by Orlagh · 1 Comment
As part of our commission (Being in Common) for the Art of Common Space at Gunpowder Park, 21 Exploration Packs were sent to participants around the world to explore what ‘common space’ means to different people in both urban and rural areas and of different ages. Participants were carefully selected to get a wide variety of responses from various walks in life including a market stall owner, computer programmer, wilderness guide, NASA space worker, parkour artist, mother, social scientist, tourguide and sea-kayaker, and from diverse places such as London, Sweden, Vietnam, Spain, Australia, Canada, India and Greece.
Each pack contains objects and questions exploring what the phrase ‘common space’ means. Participants have been asked to respond in whatever way they wish – write, draw, use stickers, take photographs, use sound recorders or video. The packs include a guide, eNotebook, Matchbox, StoryCube, Photos, Feltboard, Collage Pack, CD, a World Map and International Reply Coupons. Each was designed to offer an understanding of what ‘common space’ means within the participant’s particular context.
Some of the questions include:
- Describing a common space :
– what does it look, feel, taste like?
– What do you like about it?
– What makes it a common space?
– Who else shares the space?
– How do you navigate around it?
– What are the edges / limitations / restrictions you encounter? - What are the features of a common space? Who belongs to / owns the space?
The responses will feed into Proboscis’ artwork to be made for Gunpowder Park early in 2009.
Rita King has blogged about receiving her pack here.
UrbanSense08 Workshop
November 6, 2008 by karenmartin · Comments Off on UrbanSense08 Workshop
The third in a series of workshop on the theme of urban sensing, UrbanSense 08 took place in Raleigh, North Carolina in November 2008. The workshop explored ideas, prototypes and realised projects around participatory sensing. Karen Martin made a presentation of ‘Participatory Sensing for Urban Communities’ which described the Robotic Feral Public Authoring and Snout projects which Proboscis had created in collaboration with Birkbeck College, University of London.
Read the paper ‘Participatory Sensing for Urban Communities‘ (PDF 650Kb) by Demetrios Airantzis (Birkbeck College, University of London); Alice Angus (Proboscis), Giles Lane (Proboscis), Karen Martin (Proboscis), George Roussos (Birkbeck College, University of London), Jenson Taylor (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Here is the workshop abstract:
Sensing is going mobile and people-centric. Sensors for activity recognition and GPS for location are now being shipped in millions of top end mobile phones. This complements other sensors already on mobile phones such as high-quality cameras and microphones. At the same time we are seeing sensors installed in urban environments in support of more classic environmental sensing applications, such as, real-time feeds for air-quality, pollutants, weather conditions, and congestion conditions around the city. Collaborative data gathering of sensed data for people by people, facilitated by sensing systems comprised of everyday mobile devices and their interaction with static sensor webs, present a new frontier at the intersection between pervasive computing and sensor networking.
This workshop promotes exchange among sensing system researchers involved in areas, such as, mobile sensing, people-centric and participatory sensing, urban sensing, public health, community development, and cultural expression. It focuses on how mobile phones and other everyday devices can be employed as network- connected, location-aware, human-in-the-loop sensors that enable data collection, geo-tagged documentation, mapping, modeling, and other case-making capabilities.
http://sensorlab.cs.dartmouth.edu/urbansensing/
Perception Peterborough
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · 3 Comments
Peterborough is currently one of the UKs four Environmental Cities and it aims to become the Environmental Capital.
Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough over the next 15-20 years. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates.
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.
Read more about the Workshops
Read more about the Impressions
- 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).
- PP Launch Event Booklet (PDF)
- Final Report & Appendices (PDF)
Team: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Sarah Thelwall, Carmen Vela Maldonado & Orlagh Woods.
Commissioned by Peterborough City Council; Arts Council England, East; Opportunity Peterborough, East of England Development Agency, MLA, Natural England, Sport England and English Heritage.
Proboscis would like to thank the many people we encountered in our research as well as those we spoke to for longer and in particular the following: Renny Antonelli, Simon Belham, Nuno Costa, Jimmy D, Vladimir Demcak, Patricia Higham, Judith Jacobs, Keely Mills, Nathan Murdoch, Glen Nelson, New Link Translators, Luke Payn, Amanda Preston, Proteus Canoe Club, Michael Riccardi, Monika Romankiewicz, Liliana Ronseca, Phil Sheppard, Jurga Tonkuniene.
Feral Robots
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Robotic Feral Public Authoring was a collaboration between Proboscis, Birkbeck College’s Pervasive Computing Lab and Natalie Jeremijenko. Combining Proboscis’ Urban Tapestries public authoring platform with Natalie’s Feral Robot concept (first commissioned by Proboscis for Private Reveries, Public Spaces) to create a pollution sensing and mapping tool for local communities to discover more about their environments and correlate it with other local knowledge.
Working with local residents and users of London Fields in Hackney we built a feral robot to sense air pollution in the park, uploading the data via Mesh WiFi to the Urban Tapestries platform where it could be seen mapped against local knowledge about the park shared by residents. Space Media Arts provided a base for a bodystorming workshop and access to a local mesh wifi network.
Team: Demetrios Airantzis, Alice Angus, Camilla Brueton, Dima Diall, Natalie Jeremijenko, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, George Papamarkos, George Roussos & Orlagh Woods.
Partners: Birkbeck College (University of London), Space Media Arts.
Funded by EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Topographies & Tales
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · 2 Comments
Topographies & Tales is about the relationship between people, language, identity and place, revealing personal stories against the larger picture of how our concept of space and environment is shaped by “belonging” and “nationhood”, and how boundaries, barriers and borders come to be formed.
It has included short films, essays, nine Diffusion eBooks, a Creative Lab in London and events in Dawson City, Canada and is underpinning a new body of work exploring peoples relationship to water called At The Waters Edge.
Topographies and Tales is based around a body of work that Alice Angus has been creating in collaboration with Joyce Majiski exploring the perceptions of landscape and of the North. It is driven by interests in ideas of proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, and the concept of ‘wilderness’ against the lived experience of a place. The works are a personal exploration of the intimate way people form relationships with their environments. They are underpinned by an exploration of how the technologies of travel and communication impact on a sense of time, from the coming of the railroad to the ‘new’ world of data and communications: our perceptions of geography are affected not just by knowledge, but by the way it is mediated. Beginning in the winter of 2001 Alice took the railroad across Canada, from east to west, against the historic flow, creating the film, Near Real Time. Then, in 2003, Alice participated in the first Parks Canada residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon. She began a collaboration there with guide Joyce Majiski which took them to Glenmore Lodge in the Cairngorms, Scotland in 2004 and Klondike Institute for Art and Culture in Dawson City, Canada in 2005 for their short film Topographies and Tales 2009.
Films:
Topographies and Tales 2009 (12.52 min)
Topographies and Tales, 2009 (excerpts 5.30min)
Using music, oral recordings, drawing, animation and storytelling to playfully unearth local and personal stories, memories and myths against a picture of how concepts of space and environment are shaped by ideas of belonging and home. A personal exploration of the intimate way people form relationships with their environments combining animation and live documentary footage, Topographies and Tales takes a meandering journey through the myths and perceptions the filmmakers encountered on their journeys in the west of Scotland and the Yukon.
Near Real Time: Sketch of a Journey, 2002 (4min)
In the winter of 2001 Alice took the railroad across Canada, from east to west, against the historic flow.
Writings:
Near Real Time By Alice Angus, following the railroad East to West across Canada
Landscapes in Dialogue by Alice Angus, thoughts inspired by the Artists in the Park residency, Ivvavik National Park, Yukon
A Diffusion eBook series, Topographies and Tales, contains nine eBooks by Alice Angus and Joyce Majiski created as a result of the project.
At The Waters Edge with Joyce Majiski and Alice Angus
The first in a new a series of eBooks growing out of Topographies and Tales. At The Waters Edge are water based investigations exploring different perspectives of what it means to care for the environment and how it can affect the way in which water environments are managed and cared for.
Topographies and Tales website.
Team: Alice Angus, Giles Lane, Orlagh Woods (2004-09).
Social Tapestries
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · Leave a Comment
Social Tapestries (2004-08) was a five year research programme of projects that grew out of our original Urban Tapestries project. The focus of Social Tapestries was to create a series of experiments in public authoring in challenging environments and with local communities that could begin to reveal the potential for emerging mobile media in enabling change through the mapping and sharing of knowledge and experience in everyday settings. We developed projects with two social housing groups (a residents’ committee and a short-life co-op), schools (a secondary near Hull and a primary in North London), residents/users of London Fields and people who lived and worked in Hoxton.
Team: Alice Angus, Camilla Brueton, Kevin Harris, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Sarah Thelwall and Orlagh Woods.
Partners & Collaborators: Birkbeck College; London School of Economics; Jenny Hammond Primary School; HIRO (Havelock Independent Residents Organisation); St Marks Housing Co-op, Kingswood High; Getmapping.com;
Funded by Arts Council England, Ministry of Justice, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)
Landscape & Identity, Language & Territory
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · Leave a Comment
A series of workshops and artists eBook commissions held in 2002 at Iniva.
LILT resulted in a Diffusion eBook series, Liquid Geography, commissioned and edited by Alice Angus between 2002-06. Contributors included: Mohini Chandra, Gair Dunlop, Roshini Kempadoo, Andy Pratt, Joyce Majiski, Kate Foster & Hayden Lorimer, Loren Chasse, Louise K Wilson, Jim Harold, David Key, Kathryn Yusoff and John Schofield.
Team: Alice Angus & Giles Lane
Partners: Iniva
Snout
November 3, 2008 by Giles Lane · 1 Comment
Snout investigates how data can be collected from environmental sensors as part of popular social and cultural activities. Proboscis collaborated with inIVA and researchers from Birkbeck College’s Pervasive Computing Lab to design and build two carnival costumes (Mr Punch and the Plague Doctor) that were instrumented with environmental sensors and LED displays. A website was created (using free social software tools) to show the sensor data mapped against other local knowledge (drawn in via RSS feeds) and contextual data (about local health, poverty, education etc) scraped from the Office of National Statistics.
In April 2007 we staged a mock carnival in Shoreditch to collect pollution data and stimulate conversations. The procession started out from the new inIVA building on Rivington Street and weaved a route up Charlotte Road to Hoxton Square, down Hoxton Street and round Shoreditch High Street to finish up with an afternoon public forum at Cargo.
Team: Demetrios Airantzis, Alice Angus, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, George Roussos, Jenson Taylor & Orlagh Woods.
Performers: Bill Aitchison & Jordan Mackenzie
Partners: Iniva; Birkbeck College (University of London)
Commissioned by Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts)
Funded by Arts Council England and Esmee Fairbairn Charitable Foundation.
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.
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).
Monsters and Mermaids
September 1, 2008 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Monsters and Mermaids
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.
Hydrous, V2 Rotterdam
August 22, 2008 by aliceangus · Comments Off on Hydrous, V2 Rotterdam
Alice Angus presented at Hydrous’08 STS and the ARTS Read Changes in Water Governance” at V2 Institute for Unstable Media in Rotterdam and organised by Katie Vann at the Virtual Knowledge Studio of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Hydrous brought together scientists, anthropolgists, filmakers and artists to look at issues and initiatives in water management and governance around the world looking across a range of issues and areas of conflict and crisis from how small desert communities manage their water source to the governance of large watersheds. Alice brought the first of her new series of eBooks At The Waters Edge to Hydrous and
discussed how her practice and the work of Proboscis finds itself emerging into dialogues around water.
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.
Landscapes in Dialogue
November 17, 2007 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Landscapes in Dialogue
Cultural Snapshots No. 15 November 2007
Landscapes in Dialogue : Thoughts inspired by the Artists in the Park residency, Ivvavik National Park, Yukon by Alice Angus
Endless Landscape Magnets
November 20, 2006 by Giles Lane · 5 Comments
The Endless Landscape, polyorama or myriorama (meaning ‘many views’) was a popular 18th and 19th century storytelling game also known as a tableau polyoptique. It consists a series of paintings of fragments of a panorama that can be arranged in billions of combinations to form a continuous landscape for creating stories – each card extending, adding to or changing the narrative. A neverending journey of imaginary landscapes.
Proboscis’ first Endless Landscape, by Alice Angus, depicts 21 fragments of a panorama based on London and was part of Social Tapestries – a 5 year project about mapping and sharing knowledge, storytelling and public authoring using cutting edge mobile and internet technologies and revisiting traditional paper based methods. The flow of ideas from Social Tapestries has increasingly emphasised the importance of storytelling and narrative as a living, everyday process that underpins how people co-create and inhabit culture and society. Part fact and part fiction, the Endless Landscape alters geography and connects events across the timeline of history. Its panoramas are littered with improbable landscapes, curiosities, ghostly evocations, historical anomalies and architectural conundrums.
Set of 18 Magnets – Price £25.00 – Buy Online
Everyday Archaeology Report
September 15, 2006 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Everyday Archaeology Report
Social Tapestries Everyday Archaeology Report (September 2006)
Topographies and Tales (excerpt)
November 30, 2005 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Topographies and Tales (excerpt)
Topographies and Tales (excerpts) from Proboscis on Vimeo.
Excerpts from ‘Topographies and Tales’ by Alice Angus and Joyce Majiski (2005).
A personal exploration of the way people form relationships with their environments and home combining animation and live-action footage. A meandering journey across parts of Scotland, London and the central Yukon and through the experiences of the filmmakers crossing the miles that separated them between the UK and Canada.
Botanizing the Library by Rob Kesseler
October 15, 2004 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Botanizing the Library by Rob Kesseler
An artists’ book by Rob Kesseler accompanying his commission for Folkestone Library and Museum for Navigating History.
Paperback 48 pages, 4 colour throughout ISBN: 1 901540 36 7
Published October 2004
Price £10.00 – Buy Online
