Simply by a Push of a Button
March 5, 2012 by mandytang · Comments Off on Simply by a Push of a Button
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.
Compendium of Public Goods
February 27, 2012 by aliceangus · 6 Comments
One of the definitions of Public Goods in economics terms describes them as goods that are not diminished by a persons consumption of them. The air is cited as an example, sometimes the beach, street lighting, free broadcast television and so on (though in the ‘real world’ perhaps nothing really fits this description). Are there other interactions we value that might be called public goods? Things that people feel are precious about the places and communities they belong to – stories, skills, games, songs and so on. Maybe they are more intangible than a place, or element or thing, like the way people use local markets as places to meet, converse or share knowledge.
The notion of Public Goods comes up often in our work; common space and ‘the commons’ as a public good for Being in Common; the role of markets and independent traders in Lancaster for As It Comes, and in Hertfordshire for With Our Ears to the Ground and the social impact of technologies for Urban Tapestries, Snout and Social Tapestries. I can’t quite pinpoint what these public goods are and I want to try and make a bit more sense of them for our Public Goods programme so I’m working with Mandy to create a Compendium of Public Goods – a series of short animations inspired by many of the conversations and interviews we have had with people about their lives and communities. We are starting with a look back over conversations I had with the March History Group in Lancaster about jumble sales, hand me downs and knitted swimming suits… remember knitted swimming suits anyone?
Material Conditions 1
November 29, 2011 by Giles Lane · 2 Comments
On December 15th 2011 we will be launching a new series of Diffusion commissions called Material Conditions. This series asks professional creative practitioners to reflect on what the material conditions for their own practice are, especially now in relation to the climate of change and uncertainty brought about by the recession and public sector cuts.
The contributors are : Active Ingredient (Rachel Jacobs et al); Karla Brunet; Sarah Butler, Desperate Optimists (Jo Lawlor & Christine Molloy); London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist & Jo Joelson); Ruth Maclennan; Jules Rochielle & Janet Owen Driggs; and Jane Prophet.
The first set of 8 contributions will be published as Diffusion eBooks (made with bookleteer) and available as downloadable PDFs for handmade books, online via bookreader versions and in a limited edition (50) of professionally printed and bound copies which will be available for sale (at £20 per set plus P&P).
Material Conditions is part of Proboscis’ Public Goods programme – seeking to create a library of responses to these urgent questions that can inspire others in the process of developing their own everyday practices of creativity; that can guide those seeking meaning for their choices; that can set out positions for action around which people can rally.
Public Goods Update
September 23, 2011 by Giles Lane · Comments Off on Public Goods Update
Over the summer we’ve been beavering away in the background exploring new partnerships and planning project ideas and proposals for our emerging Public Goods programme. Although its too early to reveal the projects and partners we’re engaging with just now, we are excited that our aspirations for the programme are beginning to cohere around some specific topics and themes. As the projects and partnerships take shape over the next few months we’ll be posting more about them as well as the experiments and activities we’re developing alongside them.
We’ve also welcomed two new members into the Proboscis team : Gary Stewart and Stefan Kueppers, both of whom have collaborated with Proboscis in different capacities before. Gary is an artist and researcher, currently an Artist in Residence/Research Associate at Queen Mary University of London; Stefan is a designer and technologist who has most recently been a Design & Collaboration Technology Specialist for the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London.
Meanwhile, since the Spring we have been working on a collaborative research project with the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies (CARET) and Crucible at the University of Cambridge which is now in its final stage. The public output of the project will be a set of books made with bookleteer that explore the methods we used; an account of the project’s process, the insights and observations that resulted and the outcome of our reflections. We’re hoping to launch these publications at an event in Cambridge in November this year and will post details nearer the time.
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.
Public Goods
January 30, 2011 by Giles Lane · 7 Comments
a survey of the common wealth
Public Goods is the conceptual umbrella for a programme of discrete projects that have a focus on making and sharing tangible representations of the intangible things we feel are most precious about the places and communities we belong to, such as stories, skills, games, songs, techniques, memories, local lore and experiential knowledge of local environment and ecology.
What is most precious about the places and communities in which we live, work and play?
How can we begin to communicate the value of the intangible goods and assets that define our attachment to people, places and things?
In 2010 Britain entered into one of the most radical phases of transformation of our public services and social infrastructure since the establishment of the welfare state in 1945. Many of the more recognisable tangible assets (libraries, forests, public art and culture venues, arts activities) have been run down, sold off or cut back. Public Goods aims to re-invigorate our appreciation of the immense ‘common wealth’ that persists in everyday life across the diversity of cultures in our society. It remains a critical trajectory of artistic opportunity to investigate the resilience, adaptability and future of local communities.
Proboscis’ long term trajectory is to weave together self-initiated projects with collaborations, research partnerships, new commissions and residency opportunities to create and distribute new artworks made in collaboration with other artists, technologists, researchers and educators as well as local groups. We continue to build on our previous experience of developing innovative online and offline tools and techniques to help realise and share these artworks with the public, as well as developing education and outreach programmes that connect Public Goods with schoolchildren, teachers and young people. In an earlier phase, our Creative Placement programme was also a key element : creating opportunities in the creative industries for young people unlikely to otherwise gain employment.
Public Goods underpins almost all of our current work, as we continue to develop collaborations with other organisations and institutions, local people and groups as well as with other creative practitioners. It feeds into all the various ways in which we investigate the intangible goods that people value in their own environments and communities, and what they wish to transmit to their fellow human beings both in the present and the future.
Public Goods has the ambitious aspiration to re-value those things that are often over-looked or considered to be “of small beer” through artistic and creative engagement, and to find new ways to share them, a wealth both common and uncommon.
