Articles by Giles Lane
Giles Lane is founder and co-director of Proboscis. He conceived of and developed the Diffusion eBook format with Paul Farrington and designed the Proboscis StoryCube.
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About : Photographs and a brief description of the second week of the Empty Shops Network Tour in Carlisle, Cumbria, hosted by Arcade Art.
Published March 2010
Dan Thompson is an artist and writer with an interest in using redundant spaces which has taken in theatres, cinemas and empty shops. He has written widely about empty shops for arts and regeneration magazines. He is founder of the Revolutionary Arts Group and the Empty Shops Network.
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About : an eBook by Alice Angus to accompany a set of drawings (Ecologies, Time, Landmarks, Traces, Wilderness, Perception, 2010) created for a touring show during the 25 year anniversary of Ivvavik National Park in Canada which was created by a historic Aboriginal land claim settlement. These works are a reflection on the experience of a Parks Canada residency in Ivvavik and the long term issues of ownership, belonging, common space and environment, raised by the trip.
Landscapes in Dialogue is connected to Topographies and Tales a body of work in collaboration with Canadian artist and guide Joyce Majiski exploring the perceptions of landscape and of the North. You can read more at: Topograpies and Tales
Published March 2010
Alice Angus, co-director of Proboscis, is an artist inspired by rethinking concepts and perceptions of landscape and human relationships to the land. Over the last six years she has been creating a body of art work exploring concepts proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, against the lived experience and local knowledge of a place. In 2003, Alice was the only non-Canadian to participate in the first Artist in the Park residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon, organised by Parks Canada.
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About : Brandon Cummerbund is an Edwardian wag, gastronome, gargler and semi-retired topiarist whose salutary tales, bizarre friends and chaotic household have entertained those in the Twitterverse for, ooh … more than a year. He can be followed at twitter.com/CummerbundEsq and his tweets are regular herded onto http://russbravo.wordpress.com
Cummerbundery Vol 1: The Collected Tweets of Brandon Cummerbund provides a brief introduction to the considered work, breakfasts and nonsense of this eccentric gent. Enjoy. His agent, the Rt Hon Russ Bravo, may be contacted for speaking engagements at the above blog.
Published March 2010
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About : A book of drawings by Alice Angus made during a week long project exploring Granville Arcade in Brixton Market on the first leg of artistsandmakers.com Empty Shops Network Tour to six towns across England, created by artist Dan Thompson. Alice joined Dan, Jan Williams (Caravan Gallery), Steve Bomford, Natasha Middleton and podcaster Richard Vobes, for lively discussion and to create new work on site, you can hear Richard Vobes podcasts of about the project here.
The tour has been organised by the Empty Shops Network, with the first event happening just a week after the project was conceived at a meeting of organisations involved in bringing empty shops and spaces into meanwhile use. After Brixton, the Empty Shops Network project will visit five further towns, with dates in Shoreham by Sea, Coventry, Cumbria and Durham to be confirmed in coming weeks. See artistsandmakers.com for details.
You can see drawings and images from the Brixton week here.
Published March 2010
Alice Angus, co-director of Proboscis, is an artist inspired by rethinking concepts and perceptions of landscape and human relationships to the land. Over the last six years she has been creating a body of art work exploring concepts proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, against the lived experience and local knowledge of a place. In 2003, Alice was the only non-Canadian to participate in the first Artist in the Park residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon, organised by Parks Canada.
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Twitter StoryCube A4 only PDF 850Kb
Christian Calendar 2010 StoryCube A4 only PDF 650Kb
About : “The calendar cube was about making it 3D: the fact that the cube has 12 sides fitted brilliantly with idea because there’s 12 months. I searched for and downloaded the images from www.google.co.uk, which had its own christian verses and made the calendar a bit unique. Put the cube together and get the first 6 months, then undo and redo the other side for the next six months.
The twitter cube was based on the idea of giving information on what twitter is actually about. Once again I searched for downloaded the images from www.google.co.uk, arranged them with info text, and the story cube was made, quiet easy when you have an idea to run with.”
Published March 2010
Karine Dorset is a Communications Assistant at Proboscis as part of the Future Jobs Fund Placement scheme. Originally trained as a chef, she is broadening her creative horizons and exploring other forms of creativity.
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About : Photographs and a brief description of the first week of the Empty Shops Network Tour in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex.
Published March 2010
Dan Thompson is an artist and writer with an interest in using redundant spaces which has taken in theatres, cinemas and empty shops. He has written widely about empty shops for arts and regeneration magazines. he is founder of the Revolutionary Arts Group and theEmpty Shops Network.
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Download A4 | US Letter PDF 2.3Mb
About : For the Voz/Voice exhibition in Whitehorse (2009) I invited viewers to participate in my installation Canto; 10 etched copper cylinders which turn like prayer wheels. Each wheel related to an endangered species, space or culture. Viewers were asked to add their “wishes or prayers” and this eBook is a compilation of the notes they left in each wheel. Images printed from the etched copper plates before they were rolled into the cylindrical wheel appear alongside the notes. For more information on the LLAMA Project and Joyce Majiski see www.llamaproject.com
Published March 2010
Joyce Majiski is an artist, biologist, naturalist and guide whose work with printmaking, installations, artists books and video focuses on the natural world and relationships between nature and humans. Her recent projects include the groundbreaking Three Rivers project where the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Service invited prominent artists, writers and journalists to join native people on three simultaneous journeys along the Snake, the Wind, and the Bonnet Plume rivers. www.joycemajiski.com
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StoryCubes (27 A4 PDFs) Zip Archive 18.2Mb
eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 3.6Mb
About : The Imagination Age is a broad approach to rethinking systems through a prism of technology, held up to amplify the bright beam of the imagination. Both the Diffusion eBook and the Story Cubes explore The Imagination Age through the perspective outlined by Giles Lane when he commissioned the project: Transformation: How We Become Who We Are. The Story Cubes take shape across three planes of perceived reality:
Physical Reality: First, the 27 cubes were designed on paper, meant to act as a catalyst in the physical world for people to build stories the way children build castles out of blocks. I thought it would be fabulous if people could make the cubes tremendous or tiny to show the significance of each element in the overall scene of the story created anew each time the cubes are approached. In the physical world, the cubes remain stubbornly one size fits all. You can’t make some of them disappear into the ocean while others float in the sky. That can only be accomplished in the virtual world, so that’s where I went next.
Virtual Reality: For several years I have been working in the field of “virtual reality.” In the virtual world Second Life, participants create avatars for themselves and can design and collaborate on any three-dimensional content they can dream up. Second Life is a creative paradise for those with the vision to give dimension to their own previously intangible imaginations and then allow people from all over the world to enhance their created landscapes. To illustrate the installation in Second Life and segue to the third plane of reality, click the link: www.youtube.com/dancinginktv#p/u/2/Y4KwvsTEHKY
Augmented Reality: Lately, my company, Dancing Ink Productions, has been working in the field of “augmented reality,” which goes a step beyond “virtual reality” by changing the fabric of one’s immediate perceptions in the physical world. Reality is becoming a multilayered collage. 26 of the cubes correspond to letters of the Roman alphabet from which stories are told. The 27th cube has no corresponding letter, so instead, it activates the possibility for a whole new realm of understanding through an Augmented Reality marker printed on it. If you have a webcam, you can print this Augmented Reality marker out and activate the webcam at the following site: www.1000inchesinloveland.com to see the 27th cube create a new reality.
“Welcome to the Imagination Age,” documents some of the main ideas behind a worldwide collaborative movement toward a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. If this message of transformation speaks to you, consider it an invitation to join the experiment. Follow @RitaJKing on Twitter and ping me..
Published March 2010 in the Diffusion Transformations series
Rita J. King is CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions. Creator of The Imagination Age. Innovator-in-Residence, IBM Analytics Virtual Center. Senior Fellow for Social Networking and Immersive Technologies at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, where she collaborated with Joshua S. Fouts on the “Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds” project that spanned four continents as well as the digital culture. Investigative reporter, essayist, artist and adventurer.
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About : A practical, step-by-step guide to using empty spaces for arts and community projects – and while empty shops are a focus, the skills can be applied to other temporary and meanwhile projects. Produced by the Empty Shops Network with support from the Meanwhile Project and a-n magazine.
Published as a Diffusion eBook February 2010
Dan Thompson is an artist and writer with an interest in using redundant spaces which has taken in theatres, cinemas and empty shops. He has written widely about empty shops for arts and regeneration magazines. he is founder of the Revolutionary Arts Group and the Empty Shops Network.
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Conference Question Cube A4 only PDF 260Kb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 1 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 2 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 3 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 4 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 5 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 6 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 7 A4 only PDF 2Mb
Total Place Early Intervention Set Cube 8 A4 only PDF 2Mb
About : A series of StoryCubes created by Alice Angus and Orlagh Woods of Proboscis, specially commissioned for the Early Intervention strand of Birmingham Total Place, including a set of 8 designed to bring the everyday voices of families, parents and carers into the BTP conference, and a StoryCube designed to elicit responses from the conference participants.
Published February 2010
Alice Angus, co-director of Proboscis, is an artist inspired by rethinking concepts and perceptions of landscape and human relationships to the land. Over the last six years she has been creating a body of art work exploring concepts proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, against the lived experience and local knowledge of a place. In 2003, Alice was the only non-Canadian to participate in the first Artist in the Park residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon, organised by Parks Canada.
Orlagh Woods is an artist whose work explores how diverse people and communities engage with each other and their environment – how they connect, communicate and are perceived both through digital and non-digital means. She has been working with Proboscis since 2004 and also curates a professional development programme for British Asian theatre company, Tamasha, in London.
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About : Printed in an edition of 100 as a giveaway and designed by Julia Scheele from We Are Words & Pictures for the Modern Romance event held on February 14th 2010 at the Notting Hill Arts Club.
Published February 2010
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About : A Short Film about War is a narrative documentary artwork made entirely from information found on the worldwide web. In ten minutes this two screen movie takes viewers around the world to a variety of war zones as seen through the collective eyes of the online photo sharing community Flickr, and as witnessed by a variety of existing military and civilian bloggers. See the film at animateprojects.org.
Published by Animate Projects, February 2010
Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator and writer based in London. She is Senor Lecturer in the Department of Art at Goldsmiths. Between 2005 and 2009 she directed the contemporary art programme at the National Maritime Museum, commissioning work by Dan Holdsworth, Esther Shalev-Gerz, Lawrence Weiner, Simon Patterson, Renée Green and Jeremy Millar. In 2009 she curated the exhibitions Joachim Koester: Poison Protocols and Other Histories at Stills, Edinburgh and Economies of Attention from the Arts Council of England Collection. In 2010-11 she will co-curate with Tom Morton British Art Show 7 and edit Failure, published by MIT Press / Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Animate Projects Limited is a UK-based, not-for-profit arts organisation, developing initiatives that explore the relationship between art and animation, and the place of animation and its concepts in contemporary art practice. We offer artists a unique space to create work and develop initiatives that allow an international audience to engage with the work via broadcast, gallery, cinema and online. Animate Projects is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. animateprojects.org
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About : This eNotebook for students at the collège Evariste Galois in Epinay sur Seine was designed as an “adventure book” for the first-year students’ library orientation programme. The flexibility of the Bookleteer publishing platform allowed for quick and easily implementation of the modifications suggested by the author’s own observations, as well as advice from the students and teachers involved in the orientation programme itself.
Published February 2010
J. Thomas Maillioux has been the librarian for the collège Evariste Galois middle school in Epinay sur Seine, France since 2005.
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Part 1 – Transport A4 | US Letter PDF 2.1Mb
Part 2 – Movement A4 | US Letter PDF 2.6Mb
Part 3 – Listening A4 | US Letter PDF 2.3Mb
Part 4 – Community A4 | US Letter PDF 2.9Mb
Part 5 – Getting Involved A4 | US Letter PDF 3.5Mb
Part 6 – Perceptions A4 | US Letter PDF 3.1Mb
About : These 6 eBooks comprise a downloadable version of an artists’ bookwork created by Proboscis for Green Heart Partnership with Hertfordshire County Council. Proboscis were commissioned to explore peoples’ ideas about community in four very different geographic communities to get a broad range of opinions across the county: in Watford, Stevenage, rural North Hertfordshire and the commuter areas of Broxbourne. The project focused on finding out the reasons why people get on with each other and feel part of the community and, developing a better understanding of our communities in order to help Hertfordshire County Council and its partners to plan their work supporting communities over the next few years.
Published February 2010
Alice Angus, co-director of Proboscis, is an artist inspired by rethinking concepts and perceptions of landscape and human relationships to the land. Over the last six years she has been creating a body of art work exploring concepts proximity and remoteness, technology and presence, against the lived experience and local knowledge of a place. In 2003, Alice was the only non-Canadian to participate in the first Artist in the Park residency in Ivvavik National Park in the Northern Yukon, organised by Parks Canada.
Orlagh Woods is an artist whose work explores how diverse people and communities engage with each other and their environment – how they connect, communicate and are perceived both through digital and non-digital means. She has been working with Proboscis since 2004 and also curates a professional development programme for British Asian theatre company, Tamasha, in London.
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Download A4 | US Letter PDF 380Kb
About : An essay on modernist housing schemes commissioned by Axis Design Architects to inform discussions between the design team and the city council during their work on Birmingham’s Municipal Housing Trust project.
Published January 2010
Owen Hatherley is a freelance writer, a PhD student at Birkbeck, and author of Militant Modernism (Zero Books, 2009).
http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com
Proboscis wishes a happy and productive 2010 to all our Diffusion readers and contributors.
This year we’re hoping to take Diffusion eBooks and StoryCubes to new heights with bookleteer.com and some exciting new services we’ll be announcing in the Spring.
Meanwhile we’ve just published a case study by Kati Rynne on using bookleteer as a creative writer over on the bookleteer blog and yesterday we heard from Thomas Mailloux in France via Twitter that he’s created a library exploration field notebook for his students. We’d love to hear from other users of the Diffusion notebooks (and bookleteer) about what they use them for too.
If you’d like to use bookleteer.com to create your own Diffusion eBooks and StoryCubes please write to us at bookleteer [at] proboscis.org.uk for a test account.
Download A4 | US Letter PDF 3.5Mb
About : I Feel Different is a provocative multi-media exhibition that explores both the experience of feeling different from others and the transformational power of art to make one feel differently. Featuring Nao Bustamente, James Luna, Monica Duncan and Lara Odell, Lezley Saar, Susan Silton, Nina Yhared (1814), David Wojnarowicz and Raquel Gutierrez. Curated by Jennifer Doyle and on view at LACE through 31 January 2010.
Published December 2009
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) both champions and challenges the art of our time by fostering artists who innovate, explore, and risk. LACE moves within and beyond its four walls to provide opportunities for diverse publics to engage deeply with contemporary art. In doing so, it furthers dialogue and participation between and among artists and those audiences.
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About : “State of the Union” is a thirty-two page pamphlet published by Printed Matter and a separate thirty-one print installation. Both projects focus on the U.S. states that have amended their constitution through defense of marriage act ballot mesures to explicitly define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Each page (or print) is dedicated to one of these states and includes the state ballot title, text of the ballot measure and the official voter results in numeric count and percentage. All text is printed in white Humanist font on a solid lavender background. The opacity of both the printed text and the lavender background are controlled by the numbers of “yes” and “no” votes received. The shade of the lavender background is tied directly to the “no” votes in the state. The higher the percentage of “no” votes, the more opaque (saturated) the lavender becomes. For example, if thirty-five percent of the vote was against the measure, the lavender is thirty-five percent opaque. Likewise, the opacity of the ballot text is linked to the “yes” vote and becomes more prominent with the higher “yes” percentage. Lavender was chosen as the dominant color because of its historical association with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered rights and liberation movement.
Every ballot measure has been copy edited by the artist to reverse the negative connotations and render marriage between any two people legal. “State of the Union” is a poetic call to action and a necessary record of this shifting and contentious moment in history.
First Published in 2009 by Printed Matter, NY
Robert Ransick is an artist who works in a wide range of media and has exhibited in New York City at such venues as Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Exit Art, Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Howard Greenberg Gallery and White Box Gallery. In addition he has shown at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois and at the Palazzo delle Esposizione in Rome, Italy, among others. He has received funding from Franklin Furnace and the Mellon Foundation and has been an artist in residence at Eyebeam Center for Art and technology. He has worked as a curator and cultural producer in collaboration with Creative Time, the Aperture Foundation, and Blindspot. He is a co-creator of the Blur conferences and other events focused on current creative practices in digital art and culture. Previously, he was the Director of the Photography Department and the Director of the Computer Instruction Center at The New School. He has taught at The School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, and The New School for Social Research. BFA, Photography With Honors, The School of Visual Arts; MA, Media Studies, The New School for Social Research. He is currently a full-time faculty member in digital arts at Bennington College.
Robert Ransick lives and works in New York City, but spends a good deal of time in Southern Arizona.
Download A4 | US Letter PDF 440Kb Read Online
About : The financial crisis promised a new chapter in political and economic history. But this appears to have been delayed. Modern consciousness is shaped by the notion of crisis, which the idea of ‘post-modernity’ then threw into doubt. But now, as we grow bored of the banality of change and financial uncertainty, and fearful of our inability to respond to disasters, we are waiting for a crisis to finally go critical.
Published December 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series
William Davies is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Science Innovation & Society at Oxford University. He is author of Reinventing the Firm (Demos 2009) and Public Innovation: Intellectual Property in a Digital Age (ippr 2006). His writing has appeared in The Guardian,The Financial Times, Prospect and The New Statesman. His weblog is at www.potlatch.org.uk
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Expeditions in Paper Science A4 | US Letter PDF 330Kb
Unguided A4 | US Letter PDF 1.3Mb
About : These two eBooks were created by Matthew Sheret at the first bookleteer Pitch Up & Publish event in October 2009. Matthew writes, “Expeditions in Paper Science was my first pass at the system, a reasonably off-the-cuff collation of some of my blog entries this summer. I’ve long been interested in the idea of physicalising web articles, and while an industry has solidified around POD in the last few years they remain a step removed from the immediacy I’m itching for. Bookleteer instantly unlocked that; simple cut-‘n’-paste gave me a nice little document I’ve been throwing around since.
“The speed of delivery got me thinking about incorporating illustrations into the format. With content just a link away I turned to a story the We Are Words + Pictures team created for an anthology earlier this year. Unguided was another speedy job, knocked up in less than five minutes. Finding the source images was just a matter of dropping links into Bookleteer’s interface. The end result was admittedly rough and ready – I’d done it without much consideration of the effects of shrinkage on the A5 illustrations – but the story is still very much intact. It would be the work of ten minutes to optimise the images, and an easy design decision next time to say to an illustrator “Okay, let’s go for an A6 format” which is the kind of space a panel from a webcomic could thrive in.
“Seeing two diverse types of content drop nicely into the format actually sparked a lot of thinking among We Are Words + Pictures about the restrictions of our work in an online environment. The physical nature of the books is a joy; cutting and folding them together doesn’t make them any less robust, and when you introduce them to a group they’re thrown, passed around and digested in a way that even link blogging can’t replicate.”
Published December 2009
Matthew Sheret is co-founder of We Are Words + Pictures, an occasional market stall and exhibition team that promote the work of illustrators and writers creating ‘zines and comics worldwide. They have taken part in events in London, Leeds, San Diego and Stockholm, and will announce a programme of events for 2010 in the new year. He also works as a freelance writer for clients that include Last.fm, Global Comment and Newspaper Club, and can be reached at www.matthewsheret.com
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About : City As Material was a course devised and led by Giles Lane of Proboscis for students on Vassar College’s International Study Program in London. As part of the course the students each had to research and create an urban intervention project and document it via a Diffusion eBook. Some of the students also chose to use eBooks as part of their project itself (which are linked below). Descriptions of the projects and the research conducted during the course can be found on the course website: cityasmaterial.wordpress.com
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Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, A Beginners Field Guide A4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 115Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 160Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Documentation eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube Torts A4 | US Letter PDF 710Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube Torts Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 610Kb
Lauren Dyson – Ludic London Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.6Mb
Sara Leon – Moda Mapping Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.1Mb
John McCartin – Trashscapes Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Avey Venable – ITS London A4 | US Letter PDF 930Kb
Avey Venable – ITS London Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and found A4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and found Documentation A4 | US Letter PDF 450Kb
Published December 2009
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Download A4 | US Letter PDF 250Kb
About : Lorraine Warren and Ted Fuller have created this eBook to capture some of the key ideas about their research in value creation in the creative industries and to use in participative workshops and conferences.
Published December 2009
Dr Lorraine Warren is a Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Director of Postgraduate Studies in the School of Management at the University of Southampton. She is interested in the emergence of new technologies, particularly how new business models and value creation systems emerge in volatile sectors.
Professor Ted Fuller is Director of Lincoln Business School. His research interests span entrepreneurship and Small and Medium Enterprises, emergence and a ‘complexity’ theory of entrepreneurship, and the (social) construction of futures.
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Book of Ideas A4 | US Letter PDF 1.2Mb
Future Scenarios A4 | US Letter PDF 1.2Mb
Research A4 | US Letter PDF 1.3Mb
Tell Me A Story A4 | US Letter PDF 1.7Mb
About : Articulating Futures is a 4 day workshop that was designed and facilitated by Niharika Hariharan, commissioned and creatively supported by Proboscis (London) to mobilize young students to creatively think and articulate issues that are important to them and their future as young Indians. The first series of these workshops were held at Chinmaya Mission Vidyalaya, New Delhi between the 17th-20th November, 2009. These eNotebooks were created to help the students organise and share their ideas across the workshop, combining English & Hindi.
Working in collaboration with tutors, filmmakers and artists, Articulating Futures investigated subjects ranging from the change of identity of young Indians, their views on language, traditional cultures and the importance of a global/local societies. Through discussion, debate and creative exploration, this workshop resulted in a range of exciting and insightful ideas and scenarios developed by 16 year old Indian students that showcase their vision of themselves as unique in a fast developing homogenous culture in modern India.
You can read about the project in detail at http://articulatingfutures.wordpress.com/
Published December 2009
Niharika Hariharan is a narrative designer and a filmmaker, keen on working and exploring the intersection of design with related and non-related fields such as sociology, sciences, education and traditional knowledge systems. She has worked on numerous multi-disciplinary projects in the realm of social and community design, developing innovative research methodologies, scenario building and story telling techniques. Niharika was awarded the ‘TATA scholar’ in 2007 and her work has been exhibited at many national and international festivals and events.
www.niharikahariharan.com
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I recently came across Kevin Hamilton‘s Complex Fields site, and read his description of a workshop on Critique, Collaboration, Prototyping and how he used StoryCubes as part of it. I asked if he’d write a short summary to post here, which he’s kindly done:
SUMMARY: Kevin Hamilton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
In a couple of workshops now, we’ve used Storycubes to help start the group design process in a way that also establishes critical criteria for later evaluation and reflection. We’ve found that in group work, it’s all too easy to divide tasks early and not actually do the hard work of deciding together about goals, arguing about contexts and outcomes.
Our response to this was to devise a four-part system of critical criteria – CONTEXT, FUNCTION, PROCESS, and AUDIENCE. In the classroom, we ask groups to establish goals within each of these areas, so that they can later return to their stated goals and decide on how they achieved or departed from them. I recently married this structure to the Storycubes with some success.
The projects where I’ve used this technique involved the creation of interactive site-specific artworks. Each team received four blank cubes – one for CONTEXT, one for FUNCTION, one for PROCESS, and the fourth for AUDIENCE. I asked each team to fill each side of each cube with one possible item or goal. The result was six possible audiences, six possible functions, etcetera. The team could then mix-and-match to decide on one approach scenario to explore through physical prototyping or other methods.
One unexpected function of this process was to provide something of a “common enemy” in what for some seemed an overly artificial process. If a team’s members were new to each other or otherwise experiencing awkward interaction, they could at least unify around begrudgingly following the process of constructing Storycubes. (They eventually liked them, even if it seemed too elementary or formulaic at first.) The resulting cubes also added up to a sort of database archive for future iteration and design.
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Trail Song eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 2Mb
Trail Song StoryCube 1 A4 only PDF 1.6Mb
Trail Song StoryCube 2 A4 only PDF 700Kb
Trail Song StoryCube 3 A4 only PDF 700Kb
Trail Song StoryCube 4 A4 only PDF 740Kb
About : “A Trail Song uses a well known song or tune but replaces the lyrics with words of its own. These words reference objects, people and places experienced on the journey” (Trail Songs Magazine (1954) – The Whyte Museum Archive, Banff, CAN).
In the tradition of the Trail Songs of North America, we invent lyrics as we travel from place to place. Like modern day Songlines these songs tell about the geography and the people of the landscape, each song refers to a direction or path taken and is matched to the video footage we shoot en route. The original tune is something we might overhear on a street corner, in a café or on the car radio.
www.juliemyers.org.uk/trailsong
From San Francisco, US to Banff, Canada, March 26 – April 8th 2009 – 1,345 miles by car, coach and ferry
StoryCube 1 – From Golden Gate to Fort Bragg
StoryCube 2 – From Fort Bragg to Cresent City
StoryCube 3 – From Astoria to Vancouver Island
StoryCube 4 – From Vancouver to Banff Avenue
Published December 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series
Julie Myers is an artist and lecturer and lives in London. Using technology as a way of mediating social interactions, her work is concerned with space and place, collective knowledge and shared experience. Previous work has been commissioned by Arts Council England, NESTA, The British Film Institute, The British Council, AHRC, The Institute of Contemporary Art and The National Portrait Gallery, London. Industrial collaborators include, Adobe Systems, USA, British Telecom, UK and Philips Multi Media, FR.
http://www.juliemyers.org.uk
http://www.axisweb.org/openfrequency/juliemyers
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Download A4 | US Letter PDF 760Kb
About : BlakeWalking is a new way of conversing, participating, publishing, performing & *creating* on the hoof. The aim of Blakewalking is to Transform an everday walk into a *Visionary Experience*. We want you to join us out on the streets, on the web & on your mobile – making notes, recording thoughts & feelings, responding to the world we walk through – and the world *within*! See http://www.timwright.typepad.com/L_O_S for more details.
Published December 2009
Tim Wright is a digital writer, a cross platform media producer and a director of XPT Ltd. See www.xpt.com or follow @moongolfer on Twitter.
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eBook A4 | US Letter PDF 500Kb
StoryCube A4 only PDF 630Kb
About : Several years ago, Linda Carroli relocated to the outer northern suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. During this time, as a result of this experience, she was moved to commence postgraduate studies in urban planning and design. Her local area bears all the hallmarks of outer suburban development and in this spatial complex she is considering how this pattern shapes us as individuals and shapes our communities. With reference to notions of ‘dwelling’ (Heidegger), ‘redirective practice’ (Fry) and ‘synoikismos’ (Ingersoll), the eBook considers local encounters, responding in small ways, in thought and act, that disrupt – and ultimately transform – the pattern of suburban life. If we transform the suburbs and our way of thinking about them, can we transform ourselves and bring new futures into the realm of possibility? Can community and gathering displace consumerism and retreat? These works reflect on such transformative potential through experience and through relationships between self, community and place.
Published November 2009 in the Diffusion Transformations series
Linda Carroli is a writer, researcher and consultant based in Brisbane, Australia. With a focus on urban environments, she works and writes at the intersection of planning, design, art and culture. She is currently working on an Australia Council funded cultural writing project titled Placing, an exploration of place writing and writing place. She also writes a regular
column about urban innovation and creativity for Arts Hub. More information at http://harbingerconsultants.wordpress.com and http://placing.wordpress.com
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About : Fragments towards an anarchaeology of Belo Horizonte is a series of eBooks created as part of Proboscis’ contribution to arte.mov festival and symposium 2009. Very simply the aim is to offer an outsider’s eye on some of the outstanding features of the city by going for a series of walks and photographing the things that seem particular to the city. The walks were done during gaps in the symposium programme over two days, so are a very cursory engagement with Belo Horizonte, its people and life. However, the patterns discerned and organised into thematic eBooks perhaps give a taste or hint of what could be revealed in a deeper anarchaeology.
Waves – captures some examples of the use of waveforms in Brasilian design: from motifs printed on city rubbish bins, to the ubiquitous wave patterns embedded into the pavements.
Corners – Belo Horizonte is Brasil’s first planned city, the central district laid out on a rigid orthoganol grid cut through by diagonal avenues. At many intersections there may be up to eight streets converging leading to numerous wedge shaped buildings, almost all with elegant curved corners.
Street Art – much of Belo Horizonte seems to be colonised by elaborate street art and graffitti, on a scale I’ve not seen anywhere else. Complex artworks are sometimes run the length of an entire city block or radically transform municipal features such as bridges and stairs. These are clearly artworks, not just random graffitti – some are clearly commissioned for private or public buildings, but most seem to be tolerated if not officially sanctioned.
“Fragmentos para uma anarqueologia de Belo Horizonte” é uma série de eBooks criados como parte da contribuição do Proboscis para o Simposio do Festival arte.mov de 2009. Muito simplesmente, o objetivo é apresentar um olhar estrangeiro sobre algumas das principais características da cidade, através de uma série de caminhadas nas quais foram feitas fotografias daquilo que parecia ser particular na cidade. As caminhadas foram feitas nos intervalos do simpósio durante dois dias e são, assim, um engajamento muito superficial com Belo Horizonte, sua gente e seu cotidiano. No entanto, os padrões eleitos e organizados nos eBooks temáticos talvez possam apresentar um sabor ou uma dica do que poderia ser revelado em uma anarqueologia mais aprofundada.
Ondas – capta alguns exemplos da utilização de formas de onda no design brasileiro: desde motivos impressos em lixeiras da cidade, até os padrões repetitivos de onda assentados como pavimento no chão.
Esquinas – Belo Horizonte é a primeira cidade moderna planejada no Brasil. O centro da cidade foi colocado sobre uma grelha ortogonal rígida, cortada por avenidas em diagonal. Em muitos cruzamentos, pode haver até oito ruas convergentes levando a numerosos edifícios em forma de cunha, quase todos com elegantes curvas na esquina.
Arte de rua – grande parte de Belo Horizonte parece ser colonizada por uma arte de rua elaborada e por graffiti, numa escala que não vi em nenhum outro lugar. Obras complexas são, por vezes, do comprimento de um quarteirão inteiro ou transformam radicalmente obras municipais tais como pontes e escadas. São claramente obras de arte, não apenas graffiti aleatório – alguns são claramente encomendados para os edifícios públicos ou privados, mas a maioria parece ser tolerada se não oficialmente sancionada.
(tr. Renata Marquez)
Published November 2009
Giles Lane is an artist, researcher and teacher. He founded and is co-director of Proboscis, a non-profit creative studio based in London where, since 1994, he has led projects such as Urban Tapestries; Snout; Mapping Perception; Experiencing Democracy; Everyday Archaeology; and Private Reveries, Public Spaces. Giles is a Visiting Tutor on the MA Design Critical Practice at Goldsmiths College (University of London) and is a Research Associate of the Media and Communications Department at London School of Economics. Giles was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008 for his contribution to community development through creative practice.
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The first event was a fun evening and everyone who attended created at least 1 eBook each, with the exception of Matthew who managed to create two lovely examples. Thanks to everyone who came (Christopher, Fred, Kati, Matthew & Sara), and the team (Karen, John & Stefan).
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