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About : This eBook contains the texts of three key charters of rights spanning almost 900 years. The first, originally published in 1100, was the Charter of Liberties confirmed by King Henry I on securing his throne despite widespread opposition. His reign was subsequently regarded as a golden age of the rule of law and justice, particularly as it was followed by a brutal civil war.

The People’s Charter of 1838 was a response to the Great Reform Act of 1832 which widened the franchise, but stopped short of universal male suffrage, secret ballot, and other elements of parliamentary reform. It was supported by working class ‘Chartists’ seeking representation through enfranchisement and participation in the parliamentary process through MP’s being paid (not having to rely on private wealth).

Charter 88 was a demand for a written constitution, electoral and constitutional reform for the UK arising out of the period of the Thatcher government. Many of its demands are still unmet and pertinent today – visit Unlock Democracy to follow their recent projects.

First Published in 1100, 1838 and 1988
Sourced from Wikipedia, www.thechartists.net and www.britannia.com

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About : The 1689 Bill of Rights is an Act of the English Parliament setting out the rights of citizens and the relationship between the Crown and Parliament. It was passed, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by the dual monarchs William III and Mary II and declared James II’s flight from the country to be an abdication of the throne. The Bill of Rights is one of the cornerstones of the ‘unwritten’ English constitution, as well as a predecessor of the US Bill of Rights and is also enshrined in the laws of many countries of the former British Empire.

First Published 1689
Sourced from The Constitution Society

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About : Magna Carta is commonly perceived to be the foundation of English rights and liberties, but in fact was a legal charter forcing King John to concede rights, follow legal procedures and agree to be bound by the law, mainly for his barons’ benefit. The 1297 version remains in law in England and Wales and guarantees these rights for all “freemen” – most notably the writ of habeus corpus. Magna Carta is often cited as a milestone on the development of English common law, constitutional law and the US Constitution.

First Published 1215
Sourced from The Constitution Society

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About : The Dominion Dundas eBook has been produced to accompany the exhibition of Canadian cartoonist Seth’s model city at the Dundas Museum & Archives (Dundas, Ontario, Canada). Organized by RENDER (University of Waterloo), Dominion takes Seth’s distinct vision of urban space off the printed page and into the format of an installation infused with the cartoonist’s characteristic air of melancholy and ambiguous nostalgia. This eBook features images of 10 of Seth’s buildings and has been developed as a story collecting tool to accompany the exhibition, encouraging museum visitors to reflect on their own town’s history and to share stories of buildings, people and sites of the area.

Published February 2009

Seth is the cartoonist behind the painfully infrequent comic book series Palookville. Currently he is serializing the story Clyde Fans between its covers. This is a task that has gone on for a decade now and will likely continue for several more years. His books include It’s A Good Life I You Don’t Weaken, Wimbledon Green, Bannock, Beans and Black Tea, and the above mentioned Clyde Fans Book One. One volume of his sketchbooks has appeared under the title Vernacular Drawings and another will likely appear within the following few seasons. His books have been translated into 5 languages.

As a book designer he has worked on a variety of projects including the recent Penguin reprinting of The Portable Dorothy Parker. He is the designer of the 25 volume series The Complete Peanuts and the upcoming two volume series on Canadian master cartoonist Doug Wright. As an illustrator/hack he has produced commercial works for almost all of the major Canadian and American magazines. His work has appeared inside and on the cover of the New Yorker. Last year he serialized the story George Sprott (1894-1975) in the New York Times for 25 weeks and will appear in an expanded form as a book in the spring of 2009.

Seth lives in Guelph, Ontario with his wife and three cats and appears to rarely leave the basement.

For more information about RENDER and the Dundas Museum visit:
www.render.uwaterloo.ca
www.dundasmuseum.ca

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The Petition of Right was a landmark episode in the history of English, and later British, democracy. As a check to the increasingly despotic rule of King Charles I, the English Parliament sought to confirm many of the rights and privileges established through earlier Acts against violation by the king. The Petition of Right confirmed Parliament’s exclusive right to levy taxes, the writ of habeus corpus against imprisonment without trial, no martial law in time of peace or billeting of soldiers in civilian homes. Key figures such as Sir Edward Coke and John Pym were the driving forces behind its drafting.

First Published 1628
Sourced from The Constitution Society

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The Charter of the Forest is the lesser known companion to the Magna Carta issued during the reign of King Henry III. In force from 1217 until 1971, recent interest in the charter has focused on the very real rights, privileges and protections that it offered to common people to use the Royal Forests for forage, grazing and fuel. Under a succession of previous monarchs these forests had been greatly enclosed and harsh penalties imposed, including death and mutilation, which the charter repealed.

First Published 1217
Sourced from The Constitution Society

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About : 3 Cubic Conundrums by Raqs Media Collective, 2009
 – The Curse of Invariable Good Fortune
 – Door to Door to Door
 – The Fugitive Never Escapes Himself

Published January 2009  in the Diffusion Transformations Series

The Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta) has been variously described as artists, media practitioners, curators, researchers, editors and catalysts of cultural processes. Their work, which has been exhibited widely in major international spaces and events, locates them squarely along the intersections of contemporary art, historical enquiry, philosophical speculation, research and theory – often taking the form of installations, online and offline media objects, performances and encounters. They live and work in Delhi, based at Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, an initiative they co-founded in 2000. They are members of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader series, and have curated “The Rest of Now” and co-curated “Scenarios” for Manifesta 7.

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Portrait Versions
Multipurpose classic A4 | US Letter PDF 800Kb | book A4 | US Letter PDF 800Kb
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Landscape Versions
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About : Inspired by the enthusiasm for Paper/Digital Hybrids at the recent PaperCamp in London, we have prepared a range of Diffusion Notebooks. Proboscis has designed custom Diffusion eNotebooks for many of our own projects going back five or more years, however we’d not created generic ones that could be used off the cuff. This selection of Notebooks is based on some simple notepaper designs that we like to use: blank and lined pages, graphs and squares. Each Notebook is made up of 4 sheets of paper with 14 pages for you to use. The Multipurpose Notebook combines five types on 7 sheets (26 pages). Print them out using different paper stocks and colours for different effects. Once you’ve filled them up, take them apart, scan the pages and you’ve got an instant digital shareable notebook.

Customisations : We are happy to design customised variations of these Notebooks (with more pages, additional page designs or various combinations of the ones used here). Please add your suggestions to the comments section below and we’ll endeavour to oblige. We are also happy to take on design commissions to create Notebooks for exhibitions, conferences or other activities.

Update : two new variations have been added – music staves and storyboards.

Update (22/5/09): the notebooks have been completely re-created using our new Diffusion Generator and now include landscape as well as portrait options and both Diffusion eBook bindings (book and classic).

Published January 2009

Designed by Giles Lane for Proboscis

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About : ‘Bring Me Sunshine (after Dubravka Stojanovic)’ continues Tony White’s Balkanising Bloomsbury project. The story was created by cutting up, remixing and re-narrativising fragments from various sources including London’s Metro newspaper, and transcripts from the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to create a completely new story. A number of pilot publications in the Balkanising Bloomsbury series were previously published as part of a Diffusion case study residency in November 2007.

Published December 2008

Tony White is a writer and author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber) and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans. He co-edited the fiction anthology Croatian Nights (Serpent’s Tail/VBZ) and edited the Brit-pulp collection (Sceptre). Tony has edited and published the artists’ book imprint Piece of Paper Press since 1994 and produced fiction in collaboration with visual arts and interdisciplinary projects by London Fieldworks, Bob and Roberta Smith, Alison Turnbull, Chris Dorley-Brown and others. Tony is currently writer in residence at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) supported by the Leverhulme Trust through their artists in residence programme.

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About : along the beach – a disturbing but enlightening encounter. Sixth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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Selected and Introduced for Short Work by Stephen Bury, Head of European and American Collections at the British Library

Thomas Carlyle, ‘Hudson’s Statue’ in Latter-day Pamphlets (1850)
The writer and historian, Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), is an acquired taste – Pursewarden, in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet (1962), described his work as “haggis of the mind”. Nor have Carlyle’s ideas on democracy endeared him to the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

‘Hudson’s Statue’, dated 1^st July 1850, is the seventh in the series, Latter-day Pamphlets. George Hudson was a railway speculator – the ‘Railway King’ – and Carlyle uses the proposal to make a statue of him as the armature of a pamphlet that explores whom his contemporaries think are heroic, and therefore worthy of worship. As Hudson’s speculative empire burst in 1849, the statue was never built, but this does not stop Carlyle making it into a – literally – obscene reality, and which he remorselessly uses to examine mid-nineteenth century England.

Today, when there are doubts about the USA prescribing one-man one-vote democracy for all cultures, we can begin to see some point in Carlyle’s caustic rant. And at a time we hero-worship minor celebrities or make proposals for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, ‘Hudson’s Statue’ can be usefully – if not pleasurably – re-read. Are we any less gullible than those Englishmen who subscribed £25,000 to erect a statue in honour of this speculator and scoundrel?

The only reference that the modern reader might struggle with is Daniel Lambert (1770-1809), a Leicestershire man, who became notoriously fat and charged admission for the public to see him.

Stephen Bury
December 2008

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was an essayist, satirist and historian, perhaps most famous for his book Sartor Resartus.

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About : turn down the heat – a gastronomic investigation. Fifth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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December 10th 2008 is the 60th Anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. It is the foundation of international human rights law, the first universal statement on the basic principles of inalienable human rights, and a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.

Proboscis is re-publishing the Declaration as an eBook in the spirit of the 60th anniversary campaign’s aim to help people everywhere to learn about their human rights, “it is timely to emphasize the living document’s enduring relevance, its universality, and that it has everything to do with all of us.”

As the Declaration’s custodians and beneficiaries, all of us must reclaim the UDHR, make it our own. While we are entitled to our human rights, we should also respect the human rights of others and help make universal human rights a reality for all of us. In our efforts lies the power of the UHDR: it is a living document that will continue to inspire generations to come.

First Published in 1948
Sourced from the United Nations

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About : An Agreement of the Free People of England is a key manifesto arising out of the tumult of the English Civil Wars and, specifically, the vision of John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Thomas Prince. It sets out to be a model for an English Constitution, referring back to the 1628 Petition of Rights, which itself confirmed numerous rights and liberties. It called for freedom from absolute power through representative government, elected for one year only by all men over 21 (though not quite universal suffrage); the removal of privileges and exemptions from the law; ban on serving military officers being elected to parliament; the abolition of corruption; the right to silence in court; legal cases to be heard in English and charges against them to be heard by defendants; trial by jury; a limit on term of office and separation of powers between legislature and judiciary; an elected judiciary; civilian control of the military ; freedom of conscience and right to conscientious objection; right to life, liberty and freedom without imprisonment for debt or without due process of law; fair taxation and free trade not monopolies.

At at time when the powers of parliament and civil liberties are being eroded by the executive and police can search an MP’s office, seize material and arrest the MP without a warrant, it is ever relevant to reflect back on our radical past and the establishment of our current democracy. Visionaries like John Lilburne remind us that what we cherish are our ‘freeborn rights’ – protected by the State but not bestowed by it. In those turbulent times three civil wars and the Glorious Revolution were needed to establish the primacy of government by elected representatives – Parliament’s role as overseer of the executive is the bastion against any over zealous government whittling away at those rights,

having by wofull experience found the prevalence of corrupt interests powerfully inclining most men once entrusted with authority, to pervert the same to their own domination, and to the prejudice of our Peace and Liberties

Liberty’s Guide to Human Rights

John Lilburne (1614–1657), also known as Freeborn John, was an agitator in England before, during and after the English Civil Wars of 1642–1650. From 1638 he engaged in unlicensed publishing championing the ‘freeborn rights’ of all. A Lieutenant-Colonel in the Parliamentary Army he fought at Edgehill, Brentford, Marston Moor and Tickhill Castle. Imprisoned in 1645 he wrote the first version of An Agreement for the People which became the focus of the Leveller contingent in the New Model Army’s 1647 Putney Debates. Lilburne was imprisoned by Cromwell in 1649 virtually until his death in 1657.

Richard Overton (c.1599-1664)

William Walwyn (c.1600-1681)

First Published May 1649
Sourced from The Constitution Society

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About : In September 2007 Tate Modern announced Stewart Home had begun a year-long engagement as writer-in-residence at their Level 2 Gallery. His brief was to write texts responding to exhibitions showcasing new emerging international artists. This publication reproduces some of those texts.

Published December 2008

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.org

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About : Transcriptions of prank calls to prostitutes that demonstrate how commodified sex, like everything else done in an alienated society purely for money, lacks excitement and imagination.

Published December 2008 

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.org

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About : withstanding the gaze – a germanic literary diversion.  Fourth in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 677Kb

About : An almost fictionalised account of the sleaziest aspects of the London art and literary worlds in the mid-1990s. This is for broad minded adults, please do not read if you are easily offended.

Published November 2008

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.org

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 455Kb

About : How to go beyond punk but remain punk by grooving to soul and funk, as well as sixties garage acts like The Troggs (with the truly filthy origins of their name revealed for the first time ever)!

Published November 2008

Stewart Home is an artist who has used social networking sites such as MySpace as the location for much of his non-gallery work in recent years. He is also the author of many books of fiction and cultural commentary, including 69 Things to do With a Dead Princess (Canongate, 2002), and The Assault on Culture: Utopian current from Lettrisme to Class War (AK Press 1991). His latest novel is Memphis Underground (Snowbooks, 2007). Online resources relating to Stewart Home’s work can be found at
www.stewarthomesociety.org

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StoryCube A4 only PDF 752Kb

About : dangerous liaisons – some short and seedy criminal narratives. Third in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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StoryCube A4 only PDF 752Kb

About : ideal city – a personal tour of the destruction and reconstruction of the city. Second in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

Download A4 | US Letter PDF 597Kb

About : Social Tapestries was a programme of projects run by Proboscis between 2004 to 2008, and followed on from the Urban Tapestries project. This eBook provides an overview of our aims and objectives as well as some of the key projects which we undertook, including Snout, Robotic Feral Public Authoring, Conversations and Connections, Everyday Archaeology and Experiencing Democracy.

This publication coincides with the Digital Cities: London’s Future exhibition at the Building Centre in London (21 Nov 2008-17 Jan 2009).

Published November 2008

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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Sea Shanties Volume 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 360kb
Sea Shanties Volume 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 395kb

Selected and Introduced for Short Work by Francis McKee, director of Glasgow International (2004-08), CCA Glasgow and Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art.

Beyond society’s canons of literature there are the outlaws – songs and stories that survive in the wild. Sea shanties are among the hardiest of these forms and all the more remarkable for having their roots in a vanished world of sailing ships. There is a raw surrealism in sea shanties that is bred from endless nights in the belly of tomb-like wooden hulks floating on deep swelling oceans. The wild ramblings (‘Cape Cod kids ain’t got no sleds/They slide down the hills on codfish heads’) are tempered by the disciplined, rope burned, rhythms of the nautical work song. It is this emphasis on hard manual labour, combined with a sailor’s wicked word play, which gives these songs their enduring appeal. You can sense their influence behind Shakespeare’s sea song in The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that does fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong,
Hark! Now I hear them – Ding-dong, bell.

And you can hear them lurking in the sailors’ song in Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon – ‘Sumatra, where the girls all look like Cleopatra, and when you’re done you’ll simply barter…’ Sea shanties move with a swagger. They tempt purple prose and have given birth to long rambling movies from Moby Dick to Pirates of the Caribbean. They’re proof that not all our genetic code is in the marrow – some of it is in songs like these.

This selection is taken from the collection of Andrew Draskóy on his website Shanties and Sea Songs. As he suggests these lyrics are best heard sung and three good albums provide a starting point:

• Sailor’s Songs and Sea Shanties (Highpoint, 2004)
• Blow the Man Down: a Collection of Sea Songs & Shanties (Topic, 1995)
• Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys (Epitaph, 2006)

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About : never look at the map – a confusing entry into the city. First in a series of 6 eBooks and StoryCubes published weekly, feuilleton style.

Marseille Mix
My first encounters with Marseille were in the cinema, in films such as The French Connection, La Ville est Tranquille and Taxi. It seemed a strange place, dangerous, not conventionally beautiful, down at heel, but somehow attractive. I decided on the basis of this cinematic introduction that this was the city I wished to write about – exactly because it did not coincide in any way with what I considered to be a city, because of its defiance.

Marseille is an irreconcilable mix – of different cultures, different societies, different ideas about the planning, different images, different gastronomies. It evokes fantasy as much as objectivity. As a city it inspires dislike and fear but also pride and love.

It is not possible to investigate this city in a linear, coherent fashion, since the city is in no way linear or coherent.

Marseille Mix contains various methods of writing – narrative, essay, recipe, lists, conversations, chance remarks, and others. Sometimes it flows easily enough, sometimes it accepts the need for contradiction, disruption, lack of resolution. Of course the book is not really exactly like the city – it is a personal investigation, with its own points of view.

Published November 2008 in the Diffusion Transformations Series

William Firebrace is an architect, and teaches in various London schools of architecture. He has published one book, Things Worth Seeing (Black Dog 2001), has completed a second, Awake, and is now finishing a third, Marseille Mix, which should appear in 2009.
Unit 2, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL

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About : These StoryCubes were created by Proboscis as part of a pack of ‘Impressions’ for the Perception Peterborough project. The Impressions were created through an Anarchaeology process which Proboscis conducted with over 20 local people in the city during July and August 2008 – uncovering stories, experiences and histories of the city as well as hopes and aspirations for its future. The process sought to raise the voices of people who would not usually be heard as part of a major urban regeneration plan, and form part of a Culture of Listening. The StoryCubes themselves focused on ‘underused assets’ – those things which through conversations, observations, encounters and journeys appeared abundant within the city, yet not used or utilised to their full potential:

• creative talent of the local population
• diversity of the local population
• green spaces
• the River Nene

Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates. 

Published September 2008

Proboscis is a non-profit, artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The team working on Perception Peterborough were: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Carmen Vela Maldonado and Orlagh Woods.

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About : These StoryCubes form a key part of the Briefing Pack prepared by Proboscis and Haring Woods Associates for the participants in the Perception Peterborough workshops, held in September 2008. The illustrations and folding cube format were designed by Matt Huynh and are a playful way of engaging with the themes of the project, as well as a creative interpretation of existing policy documents. The black and white illustrations respond to the overarching theme of ‘Environment’, whilst the red panels refer to ‘growth and development of the built environment’; the blue panels refer to ‘green infrastructure and environmental technologies’; and the yellow panels refer to ’social cohesion within a climate of migration’.

Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates. 

Published September 2008

Proboscis is a non-profit, artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The team working on Perception Peterborough were: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Carmen Vela Maldonado and Orlagh Woods.

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About : Blocks of Change takes a look at the brick industry in Peterborough and how it changed the landscape and social make-up of the city. It is one of three eBooks created by Proboscis as part of a pack of ‘Impressions’ of the city, its people and environment for the Perception Peterborough project. Blocks of Change was created and designed by Karen Martin.

Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates. 

Published September 2008

Proboscis is a non-profit, artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The team working on Perception Peterborough were: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Carmen Vela Maldonado and Orlagh Woods.

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About : Lines of Mobility is a brief exploration of the role that the railways played in shaping the social, environmental and spatial landscape of Peterborough. It is one of three eBooks created by Proboscis as part of a pack of ‘Impressions’ of the city, its people and environment for the Perception Peterborough project. Lines of Mobility was created and designed by Karen Martin.

Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates. 

Published September 2008

Proboscis is a non-profit, artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The team working on Perception Peterborough were: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Carmen Vela Maldonado and Orlagh Woods.

Download A4 only PDF 2.9Mb

About : Bus Adventures traces a series of journeys taken by bus through Peterborough and its villages chatting to locals, taking images and recording sounds. It is one of three eBooks created by Proboscis as part of a pack of ‘Impressions’ of the city, its people and environment for the Perception Peterborough project. Bus Adventures was designed and created by Orlagh Woods with Karen Martin. 

Perception Peterborough is a dynamic and creative visioning project which brought together key local representatives with creative thinkers to develop innovative approaches to the challenges and opportunities facing Peterborough. Proboscis was commissioned to develop and lead a series of creative workshops alongside consultants Haring Woods Associates. 

Published September 2008

Proboscis is a non-profit, artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The team working on Perception Peterborough were: Alice Angus, Niharika Hariharan, Matt Huynh, Giles Lane, Karen Martin, Carmen Vela Maldonado and Orlagh Woods.

Staff and students of the digital photography course at London Southbank University have developed virtual StoryCubes in Second Life: 

In Second Life we can use StoryCubes as poetic and playful devices for displaying snaps in three dimensions, allowing us to reveal different perspectives and make new connections and associations. We can use them as a group to build a collective photo-narrative out of our individual snapshots around second life, and can come to a shared narrative that allow us to see new perspectives.