In the studio, working

I made this colour grid at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=51.171204,-115.562782 using http://twitter.com/gathererapp

Things I see here are:

Intersections layered but not yet fused

I notice:

Everyone seems tired today, a little disjointed

The colours in this grid are like:

Work with strong form taking presence on the right.

Two areas on the left, one is partially of form, the other still not yet material.

Rocks and maquettes

 

 

First threads, fragility of acupuncture

 

 

Meanwhile, Over the Seas...

Someone is stirring from sleep...

The magical creature of the Yorkshire Dales springs into life as the Geoartcache begins.

Today, 14th May, marks my first cache, Hunter Gatherer Birthplace, Ingleton going live.

The project launches on 28th May, when another four caches will come to life. Over the summer, the story of the magical creature unfolds online as hunters find the caches and gather their responses to the places they explore. 

I'm working remotely (on behalf of the creature) to collate the responses and create content for the Gatherer3 website as the story unfolds. And there may be some geoartcaches springing to life in Canada along the way... with creatures communicating across continents!

More about: the Hunter Gatherer, the Chrysalis Arts GeoArtCache project, Hunter Gatherer iphone app and project blog.

Hunter Gatherer - remote

// Aha! Time catches up now from remote places - the camel has surely arrived! (10 days after I arrived! Someone told me a couple of days ago that it takes a day per hour of timezone crossed - I'm a bit behind the times! (7 hours from UK to Banff. Maybe my camel took the weekend off.) This is the original post that the bane of blogger 'lost' . I wonder how different it was to my replacement... and how to I categorise this in the posts - from the date of posting, loss or rediscovery? Let's go for a now back then. So if you're reading this from then, this could just be how premonition works.... Spaces of thought folded back in time. Actually, there's a clue I give myself (23:59)//


Whilst I've been here I've also been working on content for the website of my UK project Hunter Gatherer. The caches were all completed in a busy period with two Yorkshire trips in the couple of weeks before leaving for Banff. But inevitably there's more... the first task was sending final info on cache locations and 'care' to Chrysalis, the project commissioners and co-ordinators, to manage in my physical) absence. Then there was the rest of the content for the Gatherer3 website which Sean is compiling to integrate the 'blip' display mechanism he's built, and hence the gatherer gallery and map view, alongside the films, info, audio and photos that will tell the story as the creature emerges.

It's a lot of work. Enjoyable but continuous. And interesting in some aspects to do from afar, but equally I'd like to be finished, so as to get on with bringing Canadian magical creatures to life through material and interactions gathered here...

The great thing is that the website should be able to multipurpose and accommodate magical creatures of many kinds. It was most exciting to write the text and make 'future-casting' colour grids for the Canada Commons and 'future projects' of geoartcaches that may spring up as the creature travels the world.

My plan is to build and hide caches in the man places I am staying this summer. If any local cachers read this and fancy taking on surrogate care of an extra (friendly, living) cache - please let me know!

Colourful Commons: Invitation

Colourful Commons explores what a magical creature of the 'Commons' might be, as we sing it into life.

This magical creature will be coming out of hibernation at the Banff Centre in the wonderful Rocky Mountains, with the help of participants on Banff Research in Culture's On The Commons; or, Believing-Feeling-Acting Together residency program. The creature will be travelling around Canada during the summer 2011, and invites you to contribute.

·         What does 'the commons' mean to you, at its best? Common land? Creative commons? Community? Common experience? Common goals? Or maybe something more personal… a sense, sound, smell, touch, taste… an inspiration or a vision, an idea?

·      

      Notice what you notice and imagine what the magical creature of this 'Commons at its best' is like….

·         Make a colour grid to express the magic of the Commons at it best (use the free Hunter Gatherer iphone app)

·         Quote cache key '30003'

·     

      Email your grid to gatherer3@gmail.com

·         To take part without an iphone just send your response to these three questions by email, quoting cache key '30003'  
                        In imagining the Commons at its best:

o  I see….

o   I notice…

o   The Commons at its best is like…

An Invitation - or Two

Now I am ready to post an invitation, for anyone who may stumble upon or be directed towards and read this blog.

It is a (very honest and open) accounting/recounting of my experience here in a place at a time, of a journey made. It is diaried and documented in a number of ways - text, photo, colour grid, maybe more.

I am interested in the pictures that will emerge in this tapestry when I look at it from afar, through the metaphors of different coloured lenses. And of how experience documented (and revisited) might open up spaces of thought and interactions (communication) across time and space.

I am interested in whether it communicates to you at all?

And if so, how you might choose to experience this (blog) in your own life (context of the moment), if at all - is it a whispering, a picture, an imagining, a provocation (I hope not!), a news-stream?

Do you see synchronicities, have rapport;
see things I'm missing (yet), or just find it all a bore?

So I'd love to gather responses - I may not read them yet (let's see!) - but it would be great to start to collate a strand online (say if you prefer to be anonymous or for my eyes only! No hurtful or hate mail please!)
Email to me direct or add a comment below any of the posts.

The other invitation is to contribute to the gathering of colour grids - calling all iphone users, please download the Hunter Gatherer app from itunes and try it out on your iphone, ipod touch or ipad and start colouring! Feedback on the app is very welcome (updates planned shortly)
and more specifically, include cache key 30003 if you make a grid on the theme of The Commons... what would a magical creature of the Commons be like for you?

Let's get some inter-continental (and interdisciplinary) debate going on The Commons; or believing-feeling-acting together at it's BEST!

The colour grids are a quick, easy, geotaggable, tweetable, emailable way to send your imaginings - or if you want to write more then email me or add a comment to this post.

How the soul gets lost and found

Another victim unfortunately of the Blogger crash...

I'm sure this was one of the most interesting posts before it disappeared into blogger's bin vacuum somewhere in cyberspace.... maybe one day it'll magically reappear. Or maybe I could whizz back to a time before when.... It was still there on Thursday, so I didn't worry to back it up. On Friday when the site was 'mended' it had gone.... Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back!  Maybe I can remember what it said...

I was writing about time. How strange time had been since arriving in Banff. Sleeping odd hours. Waking odd hours. A feeling of folding back in time, more so than just a few time zones apart. Geological time. Time to think. Time to do. Time communicating here, online, across days and nights. Making work to change with time cycles, for people in another time zone to hunt, how will that interact with time to come when people may hunt caches here too?

I'd decided it was high time to get into the present time, to wake up in the morning (not half way through the night), plan and structure the day, keep to time, and have a sensible bed time (even if that meant staying vertical until such time as it would be considered 'norm' to go to sleep!  And so the plan for the day - blog updates (time gone, now the evidence is no more), email stuff, meditation, studio time, lunch, movement, lecture, yoga, supper, evening (novelty!), bed.

I was reflecting on the pace of the soul.

So the colour grid (above, 1000063) is an intention for the day, a structure to be in the present time, a tentative framework for the camel to stable.

The musings pause and the day 'begins' with breakfast, half-eaten, thrust into the mini-fridge and a dash up the stairs just in time for meditation (to experience a moment of timelessness?).

I can report back from two days in the future, post-crash, that I did indeed stick to time, even if it didn't quite stick to me. A late night, followed by an early morning. Time to begin, again...
I wrote about camels and souls, before realising that post had survived from the day before the trouble started. So the camel (and maybe even the soul) was lost, found, found again, and then the duplication rectified!

The magical creature of the believing-feeling-acting together ... imagining the Commons at its best

- Developing ideas from the Hunter Gatherer geoartcache project, app and gatherer gallery within the context of the BRiC summer program On The Commons, Banff Centre.

Catching up!

Yes, a morning swim was a good idea, I think my soul's catching up! There's a saying I love (from the middle east ? sufi maybe?) that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. Since first drawing up the structure for my thesis 18months ago there's been this little message I slip in (one of many..) with that saying. I know it has something to say on the way we experience pervasive media, connections across time, space (real and virtual).

It was great to hear Plan B's project recently at the Nottingham Towards Pervasive Media event, Soul tracking, where Dan talked about the soul travelling at walking pace, and both he and Sophia were using an iphone app to track their emotional response to his journey and separation by travel. Early findings were that flights between Berlin and the UK with short research/work visits would take about a 3 day lag on his 'soul'.

I prefer the camel though, it feels more scope to run with wind in your hair. It sits well with me that the soul can carry a person with it, trot and gallop, play stubborn and refuse to move, carry it's own resources and survive even long times in the desert. So 3 days into arriving across the Atlantic (and most of this massive East to West landmass too) I wonder if my camel's caught up with me yet? How far can a camel swim! Or can they fly... a magic flying camel sounds like a creature for an Arabian geoartcache!

Which brings me to the catching. Swimming and a whirlpool. The light is different in the pool in the morning. Not the same beautiful ripples of light bouncing off the surface and reflecting on walls and windows that I love about evening swimming. Instead a much more work-like, present focus of moving through the water. Three things clarified as i swam over the same small area of the pool back and forth:

1. The magical creature of Canada is the magical creature of the Commons; that I can start to explore and invite people to bring to life with me here, and continue singing with it on my travels back and forth in Canada. This will be the 'public' project that I focus on here.

2. Spaces of Thought. Inspired and pondering by the 'space to think' , I realised that there are many spaces for thinking - thinking in different ways, and different kinds of space. Of course Clean Space (where I heard that I had been offered a place to come to Banff) may be a key to approaching and understanding, thinking about, this. 'Spaces of thought' feels like a structure that could deal with and address the various ideas I've come with - revisiting journeys, communication across time and place, interactive walks, reflection, creation and collaboration.  It feels good. It feels appropriate for here. More of a 'private' project. That I can share and learn from, articulate and interrogate with others whilst I am here.

3. Writing: I've been writing loads, and enjoying it, since modelling writing at my best. Now it's time to model academic writing at my best here in Banff, so that I can make use of the time to do that also, effective, enjoying and efficient.

With that, geology walks and messages from Jen, the day is comfortable, full and fluid... I may even have an evening before I fall asleep!

Interactive Walks: Sounding out

..the potential for interaction between there and here.

Jen is in the East Midlands, and will be joining New Research Trajectories for the

Contemporary Art of Walking - A curated walk in the Peak District by Alison Lloyd

Tuesday 10th May 2011

Start time from Castleton 11:00 am

Finnish time at Winnats Pass 4:00 pm

I will be in Banff, seven hours time difference. 

How can we share the experience of the walk, through our individual research interests?