Soundlines / Sightlines

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

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)...

magical....mistily....tor

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.

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

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

.