Strata Collective

Locative Media and DH Lawrence

2010-11-12T23:59:00.134Z

Jackie and Jane worked with 28 year 9 students from Eastwood Comprehensive for an intensive day workshop on the DH Lawrence Blue Line trail, student responses, and how this could develop into locative media to augment the trail.

What a fantastic day, everyone worked really well together and tackled a big range of activities with some really creative results.

Thanks to Miss Hale, head of English, and Miss Lee, at the school on PGCE placement for the valuable preparatory work introducing the students to extracts of Lawrence's writing - in particular the kitchen argument scenes - set in the Breach House, where Lawrence lived from 2-6 years of age.

The day started with quick introductions and a recap of themes identified in the preparatory work: childhood, weather, arguments/aggression, mining/work, uncertainty/suspense, to which Strata added: identity, home.

Then we split into 2 groups to walk parts of the trail and visit in turn the Breach House and the Canyons (where Lawrence played as a child). At each location we asked the students to word-storm 3 words for each of the themes, stressing the importance of their individual response, as we'd return to these word-storms throughout the day.

On return to school, students paired up and were given one of the themes on which to create an improvised mini-drama, or cameo scene. Using their word-storm responses to each of the locations, they created an 'argument' which might reflect difference of opinion in the responses, difference between the locations, tensions in the theme, or reflections on the original texts. In just 15 minutes some great ideas evolved, and each pair then 'performed' their mini-drama to the rest of the class.

After a full and interesting morning, the afternoon activities tightly focused ideas and responses into paper-based form.

We discussed Lawrence's poem, Discord in Childhood (1916, from the collection Amores).

The 2 verses follow an ABAB ABBA pattern and contrast inside with outside, touching on other themes already identified.

Each pair then had just over half an hour to workshop their word-storm responses and the actions of their mini-dramas into an 8 line poem, drawing on elements of Discord in Childhood to inform the construction of their poem.

Not everyone completed 8 lines, but there were some fantastic original efforts to develop further in school over the coming weeks.

Meanwhile the next activity focused on the images in the poetry, asking each pair to storyboard their poem, a frame per line, as if to create a short illustrated film.

The considered approach behind this was that students would have started with an in-situ, embodied experience of the world through Lawrence's eyes, overlaying their own response to the locations as young people growing up in the area today. This would distill into a physical drama, creating action- images based on the words and themes of their response. Those actions would condense into words in the form of poetry, which could then easily expand again to consider the framing and imagery to accompany the text. Ideally the combination could then be recorded - participant voices with screenshot storyboard frames, as a series of young people's works based on two of the locations of the Blue Line trail. A natural flow from location through embodied reflection to creative output as text and image in time.

The final pair of activities were intended to demonstrate the way this creative work could augment the trail using locative media.

Jackie gave a quick introduction to gps-triggered locative media, the empedia website and the Blue Line Locative Media project development. The project is a partnership between DHLawrence Heritage, IOCT De Montfort University and Cuttlefish Multimedia, funded by MuBu. Paul from Cuttlefish, who was filming some of the activities and creative work for use on the project, explained how empedia will work, demonstrating QR codes as a trigger for media content, and dazzling us with the content coming to life on his ipad and iphone.

Students were quick to grasp the implications of the technology, and were then challenged in the final activity to think about the challenges of organising routes through the vast amount of data/content that could potentially be 'out there' in the virtual environment or online.

Seven coloured balls of wool represented the themes we had explored during the day. Two high tables represented the two locations, Breach House and Canyons.

Each student was asked to write down their word-storms relating to the theme they had focused on, a word per coloured paper, and to peg them onto the theme (wool) near the location described. 6 words = 6 sheets per person x 28 people = quite a lot of pegs!

Next, using coloured mini-post-its, everyone wrote down key words from their word-storms related to the other themes, and attached these to the growing cats-cradle of tags.

A visualisation of tagged data relating to two locations!

What I hadn't anticipated was that in doing this, 7 new poems had been collaboratively created, one per theme.

Students who had completed poems volunteered to read out their own pair's poem to the class, and then to read the new 'poem' created on that theme by the tags of paper.

Quite a lot of words repeated in the new poems, emphasising the importance of giving your own unique response rather than discussing and sharing word-storms amongst friends. It also emphasised how the students had responded in some similar and some contrasted ways to each theme. Surprisingly the second theme narrated had NO words in common with the first theme. The third theme, again very different in responses, had just one word in common - raising the example that text could be narrated not just in a linear way along the themes, but also across themes, offering more ways for 'users' to explore the 'content' or 'data' according to their own interests.

The final pair chose to recite their own poem with different voices for alternate lines, and reflected this in narrating the new collaborative theme 'poem' by reading tags from each location in turn, gradually moving in to reach the mid-point together. Lots more room for experimentation.... and a great way to visualise the technical context whilst returning to our starting point of the day - themes and word storms, collaboration and individuality.

Jane and I both felt what a pleasure it had been to work with such and engaged and inspiring group of young people and two fantastic members of staff - a real pleasure to go away tired but invigorated and wishing we had a couple more days to work up the material further with the students.

The staff have plans to develop the poetry and the storyboards further with in-school media support, so we look forward to hearing how the work evolves and hopefully to experiencing some of it on location when we next visit Eastwood to walk the trail, empedia app in hand!

DHLawrence, Eastwood and the Blue Line Trail

2010-11-03T22:50:00.000Z

We've been busy planning a day workshop for Year 9 students at Eastwood Comprehensive for the Museums and Locative Media Project with DHLawrence Heritage, De Montfort University, Cuttlefish Multimedia and other partners.

The photos are from Jackie's site visit a couple of weeks ago.

Students are already working on Lawrence texts and researching the trail with Elizabeth Hale, Head of English, in preparation for the workshop. We've got an action-packed day lined up, hope it doesn't rain!

Soundlines featured in Mailout journal.

2010-07-02T18:17:00.003+01:00

Soundlines article features on pages 24 and 25 of the June-July-August 2010 publication of Mailout.

Enlarge this document in a new window
Digital Publishing with YUDU

strata collective article

2010-05-27T19:35:00.004+01:00

Lovely full page article about Strata and Soundlines in the new SPAEDA magazine.... you can see more about SPAEDA from their website, and read the article on page 12 of the Summer 2010 magazine.

More in the Mercury

2010-05-07T23:59:00.004+01:00

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/content/twm/education/story.aspx?brand=Westonmercury&category=education&tBrand=westonmercury&tCategory=education&itemid=WeED05 May 2010 16:22:36:910

Documentary films online

2010-05-05T14:50:00.000+01:00

Check out the Strata channel, with long (21 min) and short (5 min) versions of the Soundlines documentary by eShed and TCTV at:
http://www.vimeo.com/strata

Soundlines premiere event at Worle School

2010-04-29T20:29:00.005+01:00

A warm and balmy evening for people to try out the mediascape, watch the documentary film, look at the school displays and slideshows, chat to the team and students, check out the website, and interact with the web walks ......

Thanks to everyone who came, and to those who took time to give us feedback - lots of positive comments.

' This has been an amazing opportunity for XX, she has really enjoyed being a part of it. It was great to be invited this evening having heard so much about it and not really understanding! A truly creative use of technology – well done to all of you!'

' Very enjoyable thank you. The students all worked together with all the staff to make it great. Thanks.'

More news...

2010-04-28T23:00:00.000+01:00

In the News!

2010-04-21T21:53:00.001+01:00

Soundlines Premiere in the news... for more info on the event, see the poster on the Strata website.

http://www.thewestonmercury.co.uk/content/twm/education/story.aspx?brand=Westonmercury&category=education&tBrand=westonmercury&tCategory=education&itemid=WeED19%20Apr%202010%2010%3A17%3A44%3A677

www = Watching Web Walks

2010-04-20T18:23:00.003+01:00

Today Jane and Jackie were in Weston to show the website walks gallery to the Sand Point walkers from the three different schools, to encourage reflection on this different way of experiencing the walk, and to gather feedback which will be added to the web gallery.

Here's a quick preview from one of the Locking walkers..

"When I got on the hilltop there was very long grass, I was excited. It was very wet, muddy and cold but still was fun. My walk was amazing, fantastic and I felt free. I felt the music was elegant, scary and calm. The place and music made me feel excited, amazed and freedom. My favourite thing was not being at school!!!"

http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines/playback/index.php?logfile=porkchop_30-03-10-10-11

Behind the scenes

2010-04-07T12:16:00.003+01:00

A quick peep behind the scenes, at what happens away from the hilltop to turn walks and traces into single audio tracks for web playback.

As well as the 'public' face of Soundlines it has also been a pioneering project to develop and pilot a system of capture, playback and reflection as part of the Strata learning tool-suite. Ben's been doing an amazing job of turning our wish list into reality.

Now I'm going through all the logs, and using the processes he's created for us, to turn the 58 walks into 58 unique mp3 audio tracks.

We asked everyone to come up with a code name for their walk - some reflect the animations and stories about Sand Point, others are more of a personal memo!

Each ipaq (pda hand-held computer) was set up to record a 'log', a text list of things about each walk, including the codename of the walk, time, the position of the walker every 10 seconds (using gps - satellite tracking), the audios that they triggered by their movements, and the end time of their walk.

There are 50 different audios, most made by the participants and recorded in the music improvisation workshop back in November.

Those 50 audios were mapped, sometimes several times, onto the Sand Point hilltop, spread over about 75 different 'regions' (active trigger areas) for walkers to find as they explored. Some chose to stay in a 'region' listening to the sounds in that place, others ran around, or moved backwards and forwards to catch the sounds they wanted to hear - or to avoid!

So the first job was copying all the logs from the 21 ipaqs used, onto one computer.

Then checking through and changing any codenames that had been used more than once so that it's easy for their authors to locate them later.

Next job is to use the system that's been especially written for the project, to turn the 58 walk 'logs' into 58 music scores - but not the traditional score with manuscript and notes. Instead we want them as instructions to audio software that can then re-compile the audios as they were triggered on the walk, and make a digital 'score' with the correct audio coming in and out at the correct time!

The picture below shows what just one part of the digital 'score' of one walk looks like. The walk codename is '1998' and you can see that it was made on the 30th March '10, starting at 10:00am. Each block is an audio that was triggered.

This screenshot shows 9 or 10 audio tracks - music made with Sand Point themes including geese, fanfares, submarines, hilltop ambience.

The whole walk (and so the whole digital 'score' also) uses 37 of the 50 available audios, and lasts 30 minutes.

The 'score' then gets 'mixed down' and exported as an mp3, ready for use in the web playback system. - That's another story!

Fingers crossed, the walk, with it's full mp3, and extra surprises, will be up on our website in the Soundlines gallery later this month!

A folder with some of the 58 walk 'logs' to be processed.

Screenshot showing a tiny part of the log for this walk codename '1998'

Screenshot of part of the 'digital score' for one of the walks.

Hilltop Soundlines!

2010-03-30T18:57:00.000+01:00

Soundlines Create and Connect

2010-03-29T18:34:00.036+01:00

Today was our Soundlines: Media Goes Mobile! workshop for BBC Blast's Create & Connect conference at @Bristol. Aimed at school students and staff, in particular to inspire their approach to the new creative media diploma for 14-16 year olds.

The hour-and-a-half session was overflowing (34 people) with more turned away - great to have so much interest in Soundlines!

I started my workshop with an introduction to Strata and Soundlines, how it has worked with the Weston schools, and fits with the diploma and Arts Award. A bit of background - mscape, create-a-scape, filmmaking mediascapes with e-merge and Something More. A bit of context, creativity, engagement, supprot and equipment from the pervasive media studio.
Then we moved on to Sand Point taster activities - a taste of interpreting landscape through stories, acting and animation, to a slideshow of images from the Point. None of the participants had been to Sand Point, and only a few to Weston, but they responded well to the challenge of conveying stories from the place to the rest of the group.

Then we went outside for a mobile media experience in Anchor and Millennium Squares, complete with ipaqs and headphones, and even a little brighter break in the weather! I'd remapped the audio from Sand Point to areas around the squares - water features, markings in the paving stones, statues, walkways and the Big Screen. At Sand Point the visual experience is all about looking at the land. In Bristol it seemed important to bring Sand Point and the Weston students' interpretations into the view, so the 70 or so regions triggered 50 different animation clips (boiling landscapes from our animation workshop, which will be featured on the Soundlines website shortly), playing as the walkers explored the space and sounds.

After the walk, and checking back in all the ipaqs and headphones, we had a preview peek at the website, and then brain-stormed responses to the Soundlines experience, and ideas for what these students would want to work on - if they were to take part in a media goes mobile project - at school or with Strata!

Thanks to Lis, music teacher from BristolMet, for the photos and feedback:

"Lovely to meet you too. We have used lots of ideas that came out of your workshop already. Good luck with the premier."

Soundlines link Sand Point and Millennium Square

2010-03-24T22:46:00.002Z

The last couple of days I've been checking through final adjustments to the Sand Point audio mediascape ready for Tuesday's walk. The content sounds great, and plays well. Just tweaking the start and end - because we're recording data from the walks for web playback, it all gets a bit more complicated... worthwhile though, website is looking good (thankyou Ben!)

At the same time, I've been remapping the Sand point sounds, along with the students' animations, into a mediascape walk for Millennium and Anchor Squares in central Bristol. Why? Because Strata were asked to present the project at the BBC Blast conference, Create and Connect, on Monday 29th March.

So here's testing the new format in a very different place...

This one shows the gps trace, undercover areas where it gets lost, and test regions. Not too bad, but a few minor adjustments to improve it before Monday.

Hilltop event coming up

2010-03-24T09:42:00.005Z

Next Tuesday sees the 'live event' of the Soundlines project, with participating students spending a day on the hill experiencing the Soundlines mediascape experience in situ.
Students will be encouraged to record their thoughts after the walks. This feedback will be worked up later into comments for their webpages, which will also reveal the traces of their walks, the animations, and their soundscapes.
They will also work with Tim from eShed to document the event, whilst others will be photographing the landscape for a slideshow to be shown on April 27th at Worle School.
During the day Russ will be working on a hilltop panorama with visual and personal landmarks.
We expect the students to:
• Investigate sources of inspiration
• Use those to develop creative outcomes
• Develop ideas and present them to an audience
• Keep a record of investigations into sources of inspiration used for generating creative ideas

The only thing we're not so sure of is the weather!

Printed Cards

2010-03-23T18:49:00.000Z

Hot off the press - postcards for Soundlines and Strata Collective.

6 fronts + 3 backs = 8 designs!

descriptions

2010-03-15T17:14:00.001Z

A taste for adventure.
An impression of the past
A breadth of understanding.
A consideration of the unknown
A storying of possibilities.
A lungful or two of fresh air.
A sense of place
An intimacy with horizons.
A stirring of the imagination.
A learning through doing
An exploration of sound and silence
A chance to look up
An adventure with immersive technology and mediascapes
A personal relationship with a constellation of satellites.

Descriptions - Dull or Delightful?

2010-03-15T13:00:00.000Z

OK, the strata manifesto suggests that documenting should be fun.
I'm bored of writing (long) formal descriptions. Anyone have any suggestions for snappy stuff that sizzles with the smell of soundlines?

Here's a slow start..

Story and inspiration

Exploring the landscape

Music improvisation and recording

Bubbling animations

Tracks and traces

Mentoring and making mediascape

Documented on video

Reflected in writing

Portrayed with photography

Mapped with music

Map for the website

2010-03-14T21:27:00.000Z

Ideas from the creative media diploma students in a mentoring session in January have gone into the pot along with Strata's ideas, Ben's playback system, and the requirements for the website... The animations will be triggered over a grid of nearly 200 squares, so it should be pretty cool with lots to watch and listen...

2010-03-09T23:59:00.011Z

Warm and well-fed in the tea-room, with the beautiful view of Sand Point out of the windows!

And out onto the hilltop for more testing... amazing light, icy cold wind!

cliffs tea rooms

2010-03-09T10:10:00.003Z

Good place for a Soundlines meeting. Wind howling, choppy waters, Sand Point across the bay in bright March sunlight.

Talking about interpretation, and transformation. Artist / content / user / place.

Initially you have artist, user, place. (a)
Finally, you still have artist, user, place. (b)

We assume that artist and user can but need not meet.

We also suppose (?) that place is not altered.

The interface (intervention) between (a) and (b) is pervasive media.

This interface becomes a tool for the interpretation process.

This interpretation is either created by the artist or by the user with guidance from the artist.

We need to prove that transformation occurs through the interpretation.
We also need a definition of transformation, and to consider whether it applies both to user and artist.

New places and projects

2010-03-08T23:59:00.009Z

Strata visited the site of our next project.. an audio tour with commentary by local people and friends of the cemetery at Milton Road, Weston.

We hope to launch the gps audio tour at an event to welcome people to the cemetery to re-open the chapel, sometime this summer.

There's also plans afoot to combine the talents of the Soundlines participants with the audio tour structure to create a special kind of themed cemetery walk for later in the year...

Strata

2010-02-23T18:07:00.002Z

Strata on a Dorset beach.
- Beautiful.

Creative apprenticeships: young people, creative media and heritage in Wiltshire

2010-02-12T13:50:00.000Z

Great to see these new opportunities in Wiltshire:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RebXFnp8lhk for video
and
http://www.mla.gov.uk/~/media/South_West/Files/2010/Wiltshire_Creative_Apprenticeship_vacancies.ashx
for a leaflet

And More Tests

2010-02-01T22:22:00.000Z

An evening walk, beautiful platinum skies and metallic blue sea. Stunning panoramas and of course sumptuous sounds too! 40 minutes seems a good length of time to record a walk. Still more left to explore, but lots of atmosphere and contrast as you cover the hilltop. Log and keyboard are working fine, and most of the tweaks from Russ & Jane's visit yeaterday have been made and are working fine. Exciting to feel it coming together. Iterative not just in technology testing, but also in approaching layers of creativity through revisiting the landscape.

Soundlines field trial

2010-02-01T09:25:00.007Z

A bitterly cold day with pale skies ..... snow on the hills around and the tide very far out. Sand banks glittered like huge fish.

Trialling the user generated sounds mapped by Jackie and Russ was interesting and exciting (especially as I didn't know where sounds had been placed.)
Everything seemed accurately place - but there was hardly any wind.
Birdsong mingled with it's real equivalent leaking round the edge of my headphones, the far away shouts of children playing ... a monks' bell ....
A few tweaks and we're nearly there.

Mapping the maps

2010-01-24T21:38:00.000Z

Traces from the three walkers (Russ, Jane, Jackie) last Tuesday - overlaid on a new map for the live area, co-ordinates to be used by Ben for the web playback too - although the map image will be redesigned for the website.

Hilltop Harmonies...

2010-01-19T23:59:00.015Z

Very exciting today - hearing the students' sounds, post-produced last week by Alex, Jane and Russ, and mapped as a first sketch on SandPoint by Jackie this weekend... and here we are, listening, dancing, captivated by sound, trying not to be blown away! Russ beating the boundaries so we have an accurate trace of the area that will be used in March ready for Ben on the website.

And then an afternoon of mentoring sessions with the Media Diploma students: Jane on project planning and management, Russ on mapping music and creating the landscape, Jackie on traces for mapmaking and video editing.

Looking forward to the Party in April...

Mscape Workshop

2010-01-18T23:59:00.002Z

On Monday 18th January we welcomed Dr Constance Fleuriot of Featherhouse and the Pervasive Media Studio, to join us for an mscape workshop with Locking students. Despite delays caused by a supermarket fire and road closures, Constance showed the students how to successfully navigate around the mscape toolkit. The apple training room was turned into a pc environment to run the mscape software, and the interactive whiteboard (touchscreen) added to the demonstration! In pairs, the students made their own mscapes - programming regions to trigger music, show photos, use speakers in which the sound gets louder towards a central point, and to use the map aligner to show where they are walking outside. The scapes were rapidly loaded onto ipaqs and tested outside with great success.

Thanks to everyone for another action-packed day of Soundlines!

new cultural journeys

2010-01-15T11:54:00.001Z

inspired by this blog today

Post production

2010-01-13T13:47:00.004Z

The music post production event in action, deep in the heart of Alexs' music den.

Music maestro mastering the majestic mish mash of swirly sound......

Thanks to Alex for clear concise work and 100% focus. Soundlines becomes a step closer to becoming a hilltop reality.

Community gathering day - December on Sand Point

2009-12-07T15:30:00.006Z

What a WINDY day! The sea was boiling up into a big clash with the thick river Severn water. Extraordinary. Brrrr.
Strata C. (plus dogs hats jumpers and scarves) were on the loose gathering film for the film generating mediascape and comments from the 'community' - aka the general public. Thanks to everyone who gave time on this brisk and blustery day to say a few words.

A meeting at the Pervasive Media Stuio afterwards was warm and tranquil by contrast. Ben Calders' can-do attitude makes us full of optimism for the Soundlines website.....

soundlines animation day

2009-11-11T23:59:00.000Z

36 lovely 'boiling' 'roobarb-and-custard style' animations made by students and staff will be ready for the website walks....

soundlines music day

2009-11-03T17:50:00.003Z

Up-helly-aaa!
Amazing, well done Worle and Locking, and all the Strata team, and the staff who supported us so well - we have come away with tons of really interesting sounds, rhythms and new compositions which are going to make the best Soundlines walk ever.
You just wait till you hear it.

Sand Point - school visits / Soundlines project

2009-10-06T16:53:00.008+01:00

Well, yes, we were biting our fingernails about rain, wind, weather in general .... but the puddles receeded (fortunately for the cycling animator), the clouds lifted and thick shafts of light and land revealed themselves all around.
A brilliant day with two batches of students from Worle College , Priory School, and Locking Primary. We looked at views,tried to decide if it was Wales, China(?) or France ... everyone worked away at their sketches for the animations, and stories just - dropped from the air. Including the tale of the Incredible Tsunami of 1607 (pictured above). A sobering tale.

Here are some students racing Jane up the hill to find some treasure:

And some more on Swallow Cliff filming and taking photos.

So, many thanks to all the staff who made today possible - we're looking forward to the music day, and can't wait to see all the sketchbooks , film, photos and animations.

Soundlines Starts!

2009-09-29T20:14:00.000+01:00

After nearly a year 'brewing', a summer of planning, and juggling diaries with all the different people & places, today was the first workshop session of Soundlines at Worle School, with staff and students from Worle, Priory and Locking Primary.

Come rain or shine!

2009-07-26T19:41:00.006+01:00

Just a few of the walks made by today's 20 or so walkers, who admirably braved the torrential rain to explore Soundlines on Sand Point. (They weren't really swimming in the sea - though it may have felt a bit like it at the end! I think the mapping of Sand Point is as variable as the tides!)
(Pictures and video documentation to follow later)

2009-07-25T15:44:00.000+01:00

We went to the liminal zone and back again. Now a different rhythm & view, time to sit and feel the elements, smell the sea, move inside to the rolling tides of rhythm, enjoy a moment of infinity

Spot on, and sunny!

2009-07-25T12:40:00.000+01:00

The trigger point and all going well, beautiful music, sunshine and happy collies too.
See you all tomorrow x

Live from the field...

2009-07-16T10:00:00.004+01:00

Mapping traces and soundfeatures for interactive avebury.

(sent by mobile from the secret little area in Avebury that does have phone signal!)

Triple Traces and Rainbows

2009-07-04T10:52:00.009+01:00

Mapping Sand Point.

3 traces by 3 walkers.

All the colours of the rainbow...

Sand Point - making the Trace

2009-06-23T11:53:00.004+01:00

Me slowly turning round - Russ determinedly striding out!

Amazing sunset over Cardiff ..... strange green light on Exmoor, shimmering edges where land meets sea, on and on into the west.

Living Landscapes

2009-06-22T23:10:00.004+01:00

Living Landscapes, AHRC conference at Aberystwyth University last Thurs - Sun was a back to back rich multidisciplinary wonderful pool of interesting experiences.
Lots of sound and space and walking - not much technology. This beautiful collage sent to us as lovely souvenir, with photos by Cara Brostrom, captures some of the magic moments..
Who's in that tree?

finger on the pulse

2009-06-22T10:43:00.002+01:00

finger on the pulse
ears open
look up look round
walk the paths
connecting
yesterday's horizon with tomorrow's horizon
listen
see

Fwd: Living Landscapes - thursday

2009-06-18T23:23:00.000+01:00

I tried emailing this from my mobile - but it didn't reach the blog.. so here it is, sorted..

Date: 2009/6/18
Subject: Living Landscapes - thursday

Im at Aberystwyth University for a 4 day, action-packed conference on landscape & environment.
So first thing we learnt how to say welcome in Welsh.. Croeso... And the welsh word for locality, place to which one belongs, locating humanlife in the environment is Cynefin.
George Monbiot gave a moving opening address, with todays climate report an ominous challenge, but stressing the need for us all to engage with climate breakdown as the pervading issue, and using creativity to get peoples prefrontal cortexs waking up from denial, and minds changing.
Then a plenary on 'post-discplinary' exchange, from material science to theatre research and cultural geogaphy.
Next a performance/pesentation/paper from the weeklong body weather residential in snowdonia - bhuto, permeable nature and body/landscape as continuously changing and bringing eachother into being. Nice.
Acoustic landscapes with wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson was great, loved the female cheetah purring. And the amazing mini habitat of flies and vultures inside the carcass of azebra. Freshly killed zebra.
For a bedtime dreaming his 16 min. Installation of 12 hour desert night sounds of the kalahari... I can still 'see' the stars!And inbetween all that was an hour performance of an audio piece for and about the Ancolme valley in lincolnshire. (look s a lot like the somerset levels...)
More tomorrow.... With an early 7am start for performances in the landscape workshop.

Whitesheet Soundlines

2009-06-17T11:24:00.008+01:00

Sunday, Strata test walks on the hill...

With wonderful old hawthorn tree.

[This is using a pre-release version of mscape, which I was testing out for e-merge.

It's fine playing Soundlines on the ipaqs but a few teething problems running on the HTC phone - appears to rotate the whole map by 90` which was very confusing!]

Apart from the residency of two very large bulls, one in each of the mapped fields, it was a beautiful day to explore the hill discovering sounds and getting a suntan!

Tuesday evening I went back for a solo experience. I love the overlays of rythms and textured sounds, intensifying with the contours of the land. Moving slowly the sounds and patterns in space start to connect - a feeling of absence when I left the rich sounds of the round barrow. Quickly enchanted by discovering a tiny band of flute, that blows in the wind. The wind catching the headphones - sounds inside or out? Recapturing the flute, staying very still, a shaft opening up in the space of the landscape, if I stay still the melody uncurls, telling a story of time deep and passed. Then I follow a surface line, traversing the hilltop, crisp and sharp, rattley rythm.. has someone walked here before.. As I follow the sound follows the path. A new area beyond the ditched earthworks. And an invisible sound-mirror of the barrow - sound echoing form, creating a new sense of place, relationship and passing. Walking back I see a cow and calf following an unmarked path. Soundlines connect me as I follow them on my own unmarked path. Soundlines reaching out to the paragliders in the air, to the ripples in the grass, perfumed by orchids. Captivating, enhanced.

soundlines thoughtlines

2009-06-12T15:46:00.005+01:00

The soundlines walk becomes a different experience depending on the time of day.

Afternoon is business like and you can stride out, cover the ground / sounds with ease.
Late evening turns the user to the sunset clouds, draws the feet to where the view is best. It's easier to linger.
Beyond dusk, coming into dark, you can enjoy an isolation of sound and motion, there's leisure to stop, no distraction. Firefly lights from the PDA making traces through the dusky shadows. Solitary dancers.

Test 2 - for Whitesheet Hill

2009-06-11T23:24:00.004+01:00

So here's the second test - lots of different combinations of layering sound to test in the open spaces and ancient landscape of Whitesheet Hill on Sunday with Strata.

This is a screenshot from the mscape software I'm using to map the sounds onto the land.

Should be an interesting walk...

First Soundwalk!

2009-06-09T23:43:00.002+01:00

Walks in Lower Coleford after dusk...
Elemental rythms, melodies and ambients as first demos of the Soundlines experience. Wonderful! Soft beautiful imagery watching a shadowy figure, lit by PDA, twisting and turning exploring the sound of the place - each figure moves in its own special way, soft round lines, dashing zig zag marks, structured solid blocks.

A place with few roads

2009-06-03T17:10:00.006+01:00

Apparently roads are quite a new concept in this place! (Sheep's Head peninsular, north side) ....
when you find one, you can drive slowly for miles, escorted by swallows, meeting - no-one.
Journeys would have been by boat.

Stone circles tend to be in the lee of the hills. You don't see them till you stumble on them.

The whole peninsular is crossed by hundreds of waymarked footpaths, down old boreens and up mountain tracks. Some tending towards the ficititous. Thrushes and blackbirds sing till nearly midnight leading the way across twilit mountainside down to groves of trees.

22 Letters/Rider of the white horse

2009-05-26T18:12:00.003+01:00

These books were recommended recently... anyone got a copy??
From wikipedia:
The 22 Letters is a children's novel by Clive King written in 1966.
In the Phoenician city state of Gebel the master builder Resh has three sons, Zayin, Nun and Aleph, and a daughter, Beth. The three sons go on three journeys: to Egypt (Sinai), to the court of King Minos (Crete) and north to Ugarit. They return and save the city from invasion with the help of the three inventions they find or discover: celestial navigation, horsemanship and alphabetic writing. Then Thera explodes. Gebel is now known as Byblos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Sutcliff
Rosemary Sutcliff was a British novelist, best known as a writer of highly acclaimed historical fiction. Although primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults, she herself once commenting that she wrote "for children of all ages from nine to ninety."
Due to her chronic sickness, she spent the majority of her time with her mother, a tireless storyteller, from whom she learned many of the Celtic and Saxon legends that she would later expand into works of historical fiction. She then worked as a painter of miniatures.

35 000 yr old Venus!

2009-05-26T14:48:00.000+01:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/after-35000-years-erotic-art-for-cavemen-discovered-1684569.html

How time flies...

Wayfarer wanderings..

2009-05-06T11:34:00.002+01:00

... are surely how we can be encouraged to walk with mediascape in the land.

"Wayfarers, by contrast, work out their trails as they go along, adjusting their movements in response to an ongoing perceptual monitoring of their surroundings, and invariably overshooting their destinations. It is in these thoughtful and improvisatory movements along ways of life that inhabitants' knowledge is forged. Though the traces left in the landscape by pedestrian movement may be long lasting, or alternatively may fade as quickly as they are made, these trails remain firmly etched in the memories of those who follow them. Thus locomotion and cognition are inseparable, and an account of the mind must be as concerned with the work of the feet as with that of the head and hands."

- from the abstract for Thinking on one's feet: walking as a way of knowing, presented by Tim Ingold, Dept of Anthropology, Aberdeen, UK

at A 3-day seminar on the sociality of walking, hosted by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.

Interesting : call for submissions

2009-04-26T21:09:00.002+01:00

sound art, sound and images work and cross art work....
A call for submissions from EXPO Leeds

swirling seas, volcanoes

2009-04-15T14:26:00.003+01:00

The green shelves of Sand Point were beaches once

And some of these rocks are volcanic tuff - airborne material from a volcano. ....

media dancescape

2009-04-10T12:31:00.002+01:00

Creating sound clips today, based on elemental themes - water, air, fire, earth. Polyrhthms.
Here's an idea: a dance mediascape ....

Dancers in an open landscape
interpreting soundlines through dance
(filmed, watched )

sand point

2009-04-06T20:25:00.001+01:00

Looks like a good location for a soundlines experience!

Soundlines

2009-04-06T20:02:00.003+01:00

A definition of a soundline :
a unique composition created by an audio based mediascape walk.

This composition is layered music which includes found sound, site specific sound, and improvised sounds inspired by engagement with the place in which the walk happens.

media box

2009-04-03T11:52:00.001+01:00

Now here's another idea - new funding strands announced

time to look beyond

2009-04-01T14:14:00.003+01:00

Commissions for projects? or should it be discovering places? time to establish links with the Cultural Olympiad....

Whitesheet PhotoMontageMovie

2009-03-04T16:32:00.005Z

Just found this lovely sequence from my summer 2008 mediascape on Whitesheet Hill - 'Something More' and thought I'd put it up here as a reminder of things past and things to come...

I like this photo-montage-movie technique as a way to capture movement and snippets of attention within a panoramic landscape.

(No audio - make your own accompaniment!)

absence and presence

2009-03-02T23:13:00.002Z

Almost a month has gone by since the snow.. daffs are out and I heard a cuckoo yesterday morning, early.

I've spent the last 3 weeks working round the clock on my mediascape for the London film festival Birds Eye View, that opens on Thursday. It's been great, and there's a lot of useful things we've learned and developed that will feed into Soundlines and later Sightlines.
The e-merge blog tracks the development of the project. A dedicated website will track the traces of walks and the resulting films made by people taking the mediascape for a walk in St James's Park during the festival. There's more about the background of the project on the BEV blog. And if anyone reading this is in London between 7-13 March, come along and try it out at the ICA!

snow reveals landscapes

2009-02-09T12:39:00.004Z

Inspiring pictures of White Sheet - living up to its' name!
Snow reveals landscape features which can surprise. I remember seeing a rath (ring fort) from the top of the hill where we lived in West Cork. We'd looked at the view so many times, and never noticed this until the snow came.
The rath, an old homestead, was in fact perfectly sited, facing the southerly sweep of the mountainside, sheltered and with the most beautiful view.
No trace of pathway or trach or field was left, only the circular banks picked out by the snow.
Lives lived, forgotten.

Whitesheet snowlines

2009-02-08T16:32:00.007Z

In the snow the earthworks stand out prominently - dark lines on the white hill.

Closer up and there are new lines revealed - a diagonal path of higher land.

The ditches have dark tops where the snow has blown clear, and white white fills where one step can take you from a crispy smudge of snow on grass to a couple of feet deep, the wind has evened out the contours of the land!

The round barrow has no snow, and fiery heat emanating from it.
And the centre ring - a nectar like silky soft honeylike feeling of energy swirling, spinning clockwise, rising up and down with rainbows lighting the air.

Close your eyes, listen inside your body - what does the land whisper to you?

snowlines

2009-02-05T20:39:00.002Z

We were exploring animal tracks on the snowy wood margin. Hare, deer, fox, badger. All seemed to do the same thing - meander - round and round - it's not just humans and dogs then!

The joy of being in the landscape, crunch of snow, just going from here - to there - with no sense of arriving. Another kind of journey.

Lots of human trods too, way away from anywhere, doing the same thing - meandering. Making snowlines.

Snowsounds, snowlines

2009-02-05T14:00:00.003Z

We went to the sun temple at Stourhead in the snow and low-hanging mist today.
The atmosphere is so still, new and ancient. Just single bursts of birdsong, ducks, geese, the water, and two woodpeckers echoing eachother. Sounds became crisp and clear, individual and tangible. The snow and mist together held the land in a way that made me feel just a glimpse of what it might have been like for HER, travelling through the woods and over the hills, on her journey back then.

We found a perfect bowl of untrod snow, surrounded by beech, to make our snow lines running in circles and rolling on the ground.

Soundlines / Sightlines

2009-01-31T14:31:00.005Z

The field matrix for Soundlines crosses over well to the Sightlines project.
Because Sightlines follows R and D, arrows could then become double ended, pointing both ways : elements informing the aims, aims informing elements.

My current definition of the mission statement of Sightlines is:
'The Strata Collective will provide a creative educational experience, backed by an interactive website and online resources, which introduces young people to a new slant on their landscape and heritage.'

principles and provocations

2009-01-29T10:43:00.005Z

A quick sketch of initial thoughts, to add to, query and amend as the project develops.

The project crosses into several disciplines/ fields of work, so ethics & principles from those areas will need to be embraced along the way.
The intended aim of the project is central, the core. There needs to be a constant awareness and rebalancing of the matrix of different parts/context, appropriate parameters, (responses to ethics from other disciplines) so the aim doesn't 'drift' through external pressure.

Fields - principles and provocations include:

Landscape - countryside codes; respect SSI; access, landowner's permission etc.

Education - ethics of best practice, health & safety, child protection etc in education/youth arts practice. Need to adapt within these constraints, facilitating project aims of individual learning and freedom of experience, ease of access etc.

Technology - constraints and mechanisms of technologies (incl. web, mscape) eg. privacy, moderation, access and spam issues with website as feedback mechanism. Provocations around identity, observation, tracking of individuals.

Young people - respecting and valuing involvement. Fun, freedom, own time, recognition (accreditation/acknowledgement of participation etc), exit and progression strategies.

R&D - ability to maintain open-ended research; exploratory and emergent; freedom, focus, depth.

Documentation - balancing r&d needs, advocacy, potential evaluation and funding requirements, project ethos, strata manifesto ethos, young people's freedom and privacy, codes of best practice.

Ownership and Rights - balancing participants, artists, prospective funders, genre/sector development, IP, knowledge sharing, etc.

Artists, innovators, facilitators - 'fair trade facilitation', valuing creative exploration; roles, acknowledgement, sharing workloads and feeding own creativity.

- that's a few things to think about, just to get started!
Tracing and monitoring these looks like an additional strand (and field)...

Music for mediascape

2009-01-29T10:22:00.002Z

Challenges! Today I think the music should not intrude, but sit lightly - or even float above. But it could drive you on, or make you turn, or turn with you: it could stop and wonder, re-inforce a moment, and maybe linger long after.

ethics of pervasive media

2009-01-26T09:56:00.007Z

I went to a discussion group on the ethics of pervasive media at the PMS recently, and started to think about some of the issues raised, in relation to soundlines and sightlines. One outcome was the usefulness of creating a 'Principles and Provocations' guide to use in (pervasive) media projects.

If an evolved contemporary media is made from, and an artefact of, cultural mileaeu; is that also true of pre-literate times? Are those artefacts carriers of the great thinking of the day? Do we really leave our mark in words, films, artefacts? More than by our actions, emotional release, passing on of hereditary tendencies? EMF would suggest otherwise - that on an electromagnetic level we contribute to the environment/humanity/universe more potently, more significantly, through the 'charge' we carry/accumulate/release. Is it possible to read this 'invisible' mileau? Is it the other side of the coin to artefacts and words? even images? Or is there a more complex interwoven relationship that is yet to be unravelled?

Whilst we heard about Bernard Stiegler's work, from Patrick Crogan I kept thinking of the Qaatsi trilogy. From time and space across the earth to peoples, patterns and rituals. And finally onto the virtual location - media as place and basis for relationship - which I found harsh and dysfunctional. For me the real strength is in the first part of the trilogy, the physical existence that is so easily overlooked as we get more 'sophisticated'. So I think I'm agreeing with Stiegler's ideas that the media industries are tied to an outdated, 'expert' driven "battery farming of attention" and that media needs to find ways to access and respect the majority mind (I'd call it collective consciousness) and the individual's critical faculty ('psychic and collective individuation' to quote wikipedia).
I think that is what excites me about the values of Sightlines - at the heart is the raw landscape through the passage of time. As people we are wrapped onto and into that passage. But the land sustains. And what we pass on in that place is not through words, artefacts or even music - they are just the tools to facilitate our awareness that our energy is part of the place, has a relationship with it, and perhaps lingers to communicate with future others in a way far beyond the substance of normal words and media.

It takes confidence to travel slowly in today's racing-car world.

It was good to be reminded of the strength of a personally-significant (media)art work. The Qaatsi films hold that role for me, consequently I can relate any issue back to them, and they become a 'personal truth map' to guide me in unravelling those other structures in a 'personally-significant' way too.

The other strong re-membering I had during the discussion was a story related to Community Building. I was quite into Scott Peck's work and experiential community building a while back.
It was a story of story of a community building leader who had just returned from 6 months living on and reconnecting with ancestral land, and drumming. In a group meeting where noone could understand anyone else and there really seemed no way out of conflict (as the story goes), this man quietly picked up his drum and began a simple heartbeat rhythm. Before long everyone was moved to stillness, tears in eyes, the spirit of community awakened from deep within.
I love that story, and often remember it when words just don't quite seem to reach the spot.

(In Peck's model of community, any group will go through stages from finding superficial common ground, to the clash of chaos, silence of emptiness in which any barrier to community 'comes up', to community - a tangible state in which people respect eachother's differences and work collectively towards a common goal. If you're like me and sometimes find it hard to talk in groups, this is the enjoyable state where there's always a pause when you need it and people literally feel moved to speak.)

unusually similar but strangely different

2009-01-20T21:12:00.002Z

http://www.ralphhoyte.net/
has asked us to come and play music for his Cristabel event at Halsway Manor.
significant?

magical....mistily....tor

2009-01-15T11:30:00.006Z

You are meant to keep your eyes on the road whilst driving.
Its the landmarks that break the journey though isn't it?

Most westward journeys take me down the A 361, so I'm lucky - its things like
- mistleltoe orchard
- starlings in trees
- Quantock Hills maybe Dunkery Beacon on a clear day
- and of course, Glasotnbury Tor.

Yesterday it wasn't there! Strange. Even from close up, it was completely invisible in its own pod of freezing fog. Everything else was bright and pretty normal.

Just enough to be slightly unsettling .... it reminded me of this picture, anyway. (Same place, different weather)
You never know what is on the other side - unless you float above it.
Don't rely always on your sightlines. Even a bird may be confused.

Squiggles

2009-01-13T11:06:00.004Z

I am excited by the idea of the trace unfolding as the music plays.

Sometimes I use a music workshop warm up called 'squiggles'. Players pair up, and both draw a squiggle. (- these look very similar to the traces.)

The idea is that you then play your friends' squiggle on your instrument - it's another way of writing music. Responses and interpretation vary a bit as you can imagine.

The traces of our significant journeys across ritual landscapes could be close to geomancy.

It also opens questions of how landscape affects our culture, our language, our vernacular architecture, our music..... perhaps less now than before : time to reconnect?

traces in the wind and rain

2009-01-12T23:05:00.003Z

Here are a couple of gps traces from Whitesheet Hill - the bottom one was yesterday's visit, you can see the centre circular ditches as I walked round them a couple of times.
This top trace was today, in a storm, with 3 short films made through walking. The trace to the left is driving back down the track afterwards...

One of the idea's we want to explore through Soundlines is having the trace appear (animation) whilst the soundscape composition plays, as re-presentation on the web. I imagine those traces will be very different as the incentive to move around the landscape will be very different too.

circles of sound

2009-01-12T12:11:00.008Z

Round and round and round.....

I think we have all done this at some point (usually as a kid!) to make ourselves dizzy and dazed?

(I was remembering how as teenagers we used to sit on a roundabout in the playground and go round and round and round whilst reading poetry out loud.... hmmm)

Dervishes of course use this as a short cut to altered states of being.

My Sightlines thought is the bullroarer. Round and round it goes. The sound is not unlike the video clip in Jackies' post below. Plus the rushing hot heartbeat in the ears.

http://9waysmysteryschool.tripod.com/sacredsoundtools/id9.html

also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullroarer_(music))

- (especially : the sound that the bullroarer makes is sacred to the Apaches, within their culture it is not to be displayed or whirled outside of sacred circles)

Hilltop circles, acoustic temples of stone? What was the acoustic significance of stone circles? Wind and space on highest points? East south west north east south west north

zenith

earth

Magic moments?

2009-01-11T17:37:00.009Z

I went up Whitesheet Hill to try my Something More mediascape out in the blustery winter weather today. When I got to the very centre of the ring fort ditches the music made a perfect 2 second loop and the ipaq displayed a message about low memory (but failed to respond to my input) and then a perfect white square (above!).

Standing in the middle of the centre camp, wind gusting, beat reverberating, screen displaying this 'alien' communication, was an incredible experience! Way beyond linear time the beats were perfect, looping as though designed just for this experience; emotions powerful - excitement, fear, curiosity, stunned, compassion, interest, confusion, mystery, infinite, stunned, earth-body-sky connection, transpotative, awakened. I was fascinated enough to try and film it - but you had to be there to feel the full effect! (And the sound doesn't capture on the video at all...)

As I left the centre circle and walked back around it, a double-take, exactly the same piece of bird-like plastic was making exactly the same shape as it landed in exactly the same place as some unmeasurable time earlier when I'd first entered the circle... Circles within circles within wheels of time.

Perhaps we could use deliberate audio loops for centres of significance in the Soundlines landscape?

A breath of fresh air

2009-01-09T21:45:00.004Z

..is the theme of the spring 09 magazine of the National Trust that came through my letterbox today. Lots about getting kids (and adults) outside to connect with nature, walk and be healthy!
Their article 'Natural Health Service' (pp.20-23) by Dr William Bird, Strategic Health Adviser to Natural England, says:

'Children develop a lifelong ability to connect with nature but only if they are allowed to play freely in streams and woods before the age of twelve.

...Have we drifted away from how we were designed to live?
We need to be restored to our factory settings.

...The Department of health has launched a physical activity plan in which the opprtunities offered by the natural environment are central to getting the whole nation more active. A new scheme has been piloted by london GPs whereby patients are referred to parks and places for outside exercise that may well include Trust properties.'

Another article in the same magazine is about a family of 4 who set out to see 50 of Britain's 100+ mammals, in the wild, in a year. Mammal Magic, by Dominic Couzens (pp. 72-74):

'There was a serious side to our quest too. In the last few years the poverty of Britains' children's relationship to the natural world has become a matter for heightened public concrn. In the summer of 2008 the NT published a survey showing that children, as a whole, are becoming more and more detached from their environment. Only 53% can recognise an oak leaf, and similar numbers fail to recognise common butterflies and birds. Many parents lament this loss.'

The magazine doesn't seem to be online, but here's part of a different NT report
'Nature’s Capital: Investing in the nation’s natural assets'
that has an interesting chapter, page 10, titled:
'The nation needs... access to green space for health'
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-natures_capital.pdf

Soundlines and timelines...

2009-01-09T16:48:00.003Z

The proposal's written up and submitted for Soundlines R&D.

Coloured flowcharts are a nice complement/ alternative to text boxes in forms, so here's the bones of the proposal in pictorial form:

http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines.htm

Time to look beyond!!!

2009-01-08T21:30:00.002Z

'The power of being outside, sound, silence, non-linear movement, opens the door to time travel!'

tools for learning

2009-01-06T10:36:00.003Z

Our friendly visiting German psychologist is interested in tools for learning, for hyperactive children. Scope for future research... would need to be geared around specific learning objectives/curriculum content, and she could design a suitable scenario/test methodology around it. Exciting stuff...

sand point - looking to the atlantic

2008-12-23T10:47:00.004Z

If you were here, would you want music? or silence?

awakening mind - primal knowledge

2008-12-23T00:47:00.001Z

"...The knower is transformed in a dynamic process; the knower and the known become unified through immediate mutual participation.
Primal knowledge belongs to the Buddhist traditions as well. Here, too, the primary challenge is moving beyond the egocentric mind. In letting go of the "object of knowledge," genuine knowledge is realized; in letting go of the ego–knower, primal knowledge is realized. Knowledge blossoms with the awakening mind that participates in the boundless interplay of things.

In Zen experience, the interplay between the knower and the known is so profound that egocentric language is totally inadequate. The connection is like that in archer, where archer, bow, arrow, the action of taking aim, and the target all merge to become a holistic process. Knowledge is more about the process of awakening mind than about "content" of thought or "object" of knowledge. This is the Zen way of knowing. "

From:
"The Awakening of Primal Knowledge"
by Dr. Ashok K. Gangadean
from Parabola, The Magazine of Myth & Tradition
Spring 1997
http://www.awakeningmind.org/pages/pkarticle.php

coincidence? - from the Guardian : discuss!

2008-12-22T10:36:00.000Z

Have a look at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/20/ipod-instinct

Extract:
"Instinct acts as a kind of behavioural satnav. It's a quiet and reassuring inner voice that will always give you guidance, provided you can be bothered to tune into it. However, humans are always suspicious of inner voices, especially if there's more than one of them.

Instinct is the accumulated wisdom of a thousand generations of human beings hard-wired into our little heads. Sadly, this is then very quickly obscured by the formal process of education. Instinct is a mixture of the common sense that tells you when something supposedly good is actually a load of cobblers, and also of the uncommon sense that warns you of things that normally come without warning.

Seeing things with your own eyes is generally held to be a good way of verifying things. But eyes are screens, and like any screen they don't tell the whole story. Getting a feel for things is much more effective because it lets your sixth sense have a sniff around. As a French philosopher once said, instinct is the nose of the mind. It sounds slightly odd, but instinctively you know it's right. "

By Guy Browning
The Guardian, Saturday 20 December 2008

Strata at Sandbox

2008-12-20T23:08:00.001Z

Thought it'd be good to post a reminder from Jane & Jackie's visit to the media sandbox launch at Watershed on Monday, of some of the things that may be relevent to prototyping Sightlines....

The top 5 golden rules (we preferred to call them 'platinum TIPS') to consider when setting out on your innovative multi-platform pervasive media project..... (as voted by attendees)

What’s the point?
Know your target audience
Know your platforms and their features and constraints
Identify a desire/need that this product is filling
A single/simple idea

Some of our favourites were also:

Innovate or improve
Consider potentials, adaptability, flexibility, extendability of your concept
There are no rules
Expect the unexpected
Keep communication simple
Develop/have a strong idea and stick to it (we thought: stay flexible & responsive at the same time as not being sucked into other agendas/doing things just because you could!)
Interdependence of platform, content, audience

We also found these 'scenario' questions interesting..

What dimensions are valuable to people as they go about their everyday lives? How can those dimensions be sensed and presented?
How would we go about engaging with Bristol people to start re-using public drinking fountains instead of buying YAPB (yet another plastic bottle)?

And we realised that innovative multi-platform projects have 90% same requirements as any other creative/arts/education project, so we've already got a lot to give!

- oh yes, and it's great to have different coloured pens when writing on a flip-pad. And much easier to draw/spatialise/visualise as you talk (for Jackie, anyway!).

- aha, and very important to illuminate the stereotype that grannies don't get out mapping on their bike with their pda - they DO!

smoke

2008-12-14T12:37:00.001Z

This is this view from our kitchen window on a December morning.

This morning there was woodsmoke coming up from the valley and failing to rise in the cold still air.

It's not a place I've seen smoke before. There's no house there but there are some very old coke ovens by two ponds which were once associated with a small coal mine. I suppose someone is coppicing and clearing and keeping warm with a fire.

I want to add smoke in the landscape as another sightline. Smoke is people, a fire, a focus.

If we are aligning journeys by topographical features, then smoke would once have indicated the way between the hilltops and landmarks : hearths, warmth, welcome.

In a sparsely populated and wooded landscape, imagine the spicy smell of a bright blackthorn or hazel fire, smelt, seen, heard: refuge and company.

Trees and open space in the neolithic landscape : the need for sightlines

2008-12-11T17:50:00.000Z

Oliver Rackham ( Woodlands; Collins, 2006) is interesting and persuasive on neolithic woodland. He sees any concept as 'wildwood' as belonging to the mesolithic and open to interpretation. Anything post-mesolithic in the British isles would not be classifable as wildwood.

In the neolithic 'pollen diagrams show a great expansion of non-tree pollens' - coppice and open spaces make room for more pollen bearing species.

'The 'obvious explanation' of the elm decline in the early neolithic period is Dutch Elm disease.

'Monuments such as henges and long barrows involved precise alignments and called for a distant unobstructed horizon.Wide areas of what was later to be chalk downland and heath were already open country.

An open landscape on Down Farm - looking across the cursus towards the place of the midwinter sunset

Working At The Cutting Edge

2008-12-11T09:00:00.001Z

binary systems fast and slow

2008-12-10T18:34:00.000Z

I wanted to record today's passing thought about binary systems.

I was amused by a link between the incredibly complex possibilities of modern technology, driven by a fast binary system of ON and OFF, and slow 'stone age' technologies - under, over, up, down : weaving - warp, weft; basketry - wand, rod: or more simply, breathing, in, out.

What would you put in your pit ?

2008-12-10T10:12:00.001Z

Reading last night about the abundance of pits in the Down Farm ritual landscape. These pits belong to the same era as, and are adjacent to, the burial of our Mendip woman.

The pits all have objects in them. Bits of pottery. In one zone, most have antlers or tines from an antler ; plus bones, broken stone axes, whatever. In another zone, lots of cow bones. Odd things too - a dog skull with a worked flint ball : a large flint nodule which looked exactly like a cow skull ; a cow skull with a toad skeleton in its eye socket; a beautiful flint all shiny and stripy like a mint humbug.

What would you put in your pit?

Why?

sandbox profiles

2008-12-09T19:24:00.000Z

landscape interpreter!

musician!

Landscape interpreter meets musician

Creative Consultant explores interactivity

The other end - up Mendip

2008-12-08T19:54:00.000Z

You get twice as much sky land and air when you are up the top

cursus

2008-12-04T13:29:00.000Z

I drove across Cranborne Chase and back yesterday on a frosty misty day. The December yew trees are dense black and the old mans' beard fluffy and white.

It's definitely the sunset behind the cursus, I saw it smearing the sky with an apricot and yellow splodge. The firs of Down Farm were standing in misty shrouds.

Interestingly, the ritual landscape looked more powerful and obvious heading west (home) in the evening than it did entering it from the west in the morning. - a vast spread of undulating countryside, falling away towards the winter evening. Sightlines all mapped out, crescent moon, venus, jupiter.

Only 17 days to the darkest night.

midwinter sunset

2008-12-02T20:26:00.000Z

I think the cursus was aligned on the midwinter sunset.It seems even more powerful to think of them all standing there in a stinking blizzard staring down into the longest night and willing that sun to come back. Brrrrrrr!

goalposts

2008-12-02T20:01:00.001Z

Russ wants to add an item to the manifesto.

Jumpers for goalposts. We prefer the whirl of the kickabout above the straitjacket of the competitive league. Adaptive tools need adaptive thinking.

manifesto of the Strata Collective

2008-12-01T17:57:00.000Z

Chicken, egg : We believe a vital ingredient for high quality as we lead and create inspirational arts and events, is to regularly and sustainably address our own inspirational needs.

Caring, sharing : As freelance artists and facilitators we value opportunities for peer support, sharing ideas and creative growth.

Access : We assert our right to roam.

Clarity : We value clear thought and clear processes.

Curiosity : If there is a hole, we will look into it.

Pragmatism : We claim the right to travel from A to B by the route that reveals itself.

Keep connected : We aim to investigate innovative new approaches to project planning and evaluation :

● We strive to be paper free wherever possible .We value sound, image, experience.

● We believe that ideas grow on trees. To follow this, we intend whenever possible to hold our meetings al fresco, preferably in a environment linked to the subject of the meeting, on the hoof, or- in the nearest pub

● We aim to record events and gather outputs as they happen and produce outcome based evaluations. Words may be optional.

● We believe funded work should be recorded and celebrated in a way that is accessible and exciting to all members of the public.

Thought of the Day

2008-12-01T17:33:00.000Z

We need to really think about how we can make sense of the link between ancient and modern technologies.

And journeys too.

I remember seeing my first ever satellite, out on a winter night walk with my Dad. We used to go out every night and walk in the dark lanes, stargazing - learning the names of stars and constellations. The first satellite was pretty exciting, a smart new thing nipping between the hoary ancient stars.

In 3300 BC a journey would be led by star nav rather than sat nav! Or a combination of sun and topography - time and place .

The cursus on Down Farm demarks the point of midwinter sunrise

Sightline

Star line

Sunrise

Season

Midheaven

Moonrise

Occultation

Movement of planets

Look up!

Blogging

2008-11-30T20:37:00.000Z

We need Russ's email address to invite him?
Be great to have lots of blogging going along.. hilltop reveries r us!
I'll change your status to be an administrator too, then you can invite Russ. Just promise not to click on the 'delete blog' button please!!
xx

collective

2008-11-30T19:11:00.000Z

Hello!

yes we should invite Russ - can I do this?

I think , later, we may invite more people to join this collective, and then they can post stuff here.

Ideally, one day, everyone who attends our hilltop extravaganzas can join too!

For now, here's this :

a clandestine landscape? well - it's been a long time since the end of her last journey.....

First thoughts

2008-11-30T14:31:00.000Z

Currently by invite only - just you & me!
Does Russ ever use email/want to join blog?
Suggest we use this as a discussion place for ideas?
Or we could make it public and then post developments to the project...??
What d'you reckon?