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Part 1 – TransportA4 | US Letter PDF 2.1Mb
Part 2 – MovementA4 | US Letter PDF 2.6Mb
Part 3 – ListeningA4 | US Letter PDF 2.3Mb
Part 4 – CommunityA4 | US Letter PDF 2.9Mb
Part 5 – GettingInvolvedA4 | US Letter PDF 3.5Mb
Part 6 – PerceptionsA4 | 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Download Expeditions in Paper ScienceA4 | US Letter PDF 330Kb UnguidedA4 | 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
December round-up « Matthew Sheret Online [...] My two Pitch Up & Publish eBooks (Unguided and Expeditions In Paper Science) were published over at the Diffusion… Comment posted on 12-18-2009 at 00:07
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 GuideA4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 1A4 | US Letter PDF 115Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Treasure 2A4 | US Letter PDF 160Kb
Chenxi Cai – London’s Canals, Documentation eBookA4 | US Letter PDF 350Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube TortsA4 | US Letter PDF 710Kb
Marie Dugo – Tube Torts DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF 610Kb
Lauren Dyson – Ludic London DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF 1.6Mb
Sara Leon – Moda Mapping DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF 1.1Mb
John McCartin – Trashscapes DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Avey Venable – ITS LondonA4 | US Letter PDF 930Kb
Avey Venable – ITS London DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and foundA4 | US Letter PDF 1.4Mb
Michael Zipp – Foundry: lost and found DocumentationA4 | US Letter PDF 450Kb
May Newsletter | Proboscis [...] by Matthew Sheret http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1700 City As Material Student Project eBooks http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1693 Creative Methodologies for the Creative Industries by Lorraine Warren & Ted… Comment posted on 5-20-2010 at 09:09
Recent eBooks made with bookleteer [...] & Ted Fuller, as well as myself. The students on our City as Material course have created a series of eBooks… Comment posted on 12-14-2009 at 17:00
uberVU - social comments Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by dpr-barcelona: City As Material.… Comment posted on 12-12-2009 at 15:46
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.
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
Case Study – Niharika Hariharan | bookleteer blog [...] Once the workshops were completed, Niharika scanned all of the eBooks as part of an archive of the event.… Comment posted on 9-22-2010 at 20:41
International languages & bookleteer [...] week we published Niharika Hariharan’s Hindi/English eBooks for the Articulating Futures project on Diffusion – they are a great… Comment posted on 12-7-2009 at 20:31
uberVU - social comments Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Articulating… Comment posted on 12-4-2009 at 00:18
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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
Baby Product Reviews Kudos for giving such a terrific website. this site happens to be not only useful but also bvery imaginative too.… Comment posted on 1-5-2010 at 19:30
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.
uberVU - social comments Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Blakewalk… Comment posted on 12-1-2009 at 19:25
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
May Newsletter | Proboscis [...] 3 by Tim Wright http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1639 From an outer suburban life by Linda Carroli http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1628 Belo Horizonte Anarchaeology by Giles Lane [...] Comment posted on 5-20-2010 at 09:10
TEMPORARY | Community Building « placeblog [...] specific activities and events, resources are available to the community to make the most of it. In From an… Comment posted on 1-31-2010 at 05:18
Recent eBooks made with bookleteer [...] is growing by the week. We’ve recently published new Transformations series commissions by Linda Carroli, Julie Myers and Will Davies… Comment posted on 12-14-2009 at 16:59
uberVU - social comments Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: From… Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 22:52
Twitted by TommyManuel [...] This post was Twitted by TommyManuel [...] Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 16:51
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.
Giles Lane Thanks Renata, that's extremely kind of you. There's an other translation on the main Anarchaeologies site kindly provided by Diego… Comment posted on 11-23-2009 at 12:55
Renata Marquez translations for you "Fragmentos para uma anarqueologia de Belo Horizonte" é uma série de eBooks criados como parte da contribuição… Comment posted on 11-22-2009 at 21:34
uberVU - social comments Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by proboscisstudio: new on #diffusion: Belo… Comment posted on 11-17-2009 at 17:55
About : In August of 2009, Dodolab was invited by the Confederation Centre of the Arts to Prince Edward Island to respond to issues surrounding the Experimental Farm in Charlottetown. During our discussions about the future of this large parcel of picturesque land, the concept for the Postcard Places project developed out of an interest in the relationship between iconic landscapes and a place’s sense of identity.
Published October 2009
Lisa Hirmer has both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Architecture from Waterloo Architecture Cambridge. She joined DodoLab after completing a thesis about the significance of nature and wilderness in contemporary culture, particularly within a Canadian context. She currently splits her time between working with DodoLab and more traditional work as an Intern Architect. As an emerging landscape photographer, she is particularly interested in sites where the relationship between human intervention and natural process is ambiguous and complex. She recently won an Ontario Association of Architects Award of Excellence for her landscape photography.
Laura Knap has an education in architecture from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her work orbits in design, community building, photography, writing, and construction; and focusses on the agency, imagination and inhabitation of green spaces; as well as questions of sustainability.
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] The Postcard Places Project by Lisa Hirmer with Laura Knap http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1602 [...] Comment posted on 11-2-2009 at 15:53
Dodolab » Blog Archive » Two New eBooks [...] just published two new eBooks, Lisa Hirmer and Laura Knap’s Postcard Places project from our PEI lab and an… Comment posted on 10-21-2009 at 00:43
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Book 1 A4 | US Letter PDF 4.6Mb
Book 2 A4 | US Letter PDF 6.2Mb
Book 3 A4 | US Letter PDF (to come)
About :
“Many of us returning were surprised and grieved to hear of the death of Brown, the furnaceman, who has held the position for several years and was generally liked and respected.” The Mitre, Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, Quebec, Volume IV, No. 1, page 8, October 1896
The Rustification of Henry Thomas Brown eBook series was produced to accompany, and extend the narrative of, an exhibition of the same name at the Foreman Art Gallery, Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, Quebec, CANADA. They capture the playful mix of fact, fiction and personal narrative that is typical of Andrew Hunter’s work. The publications include images and texts drawn from the exhibition and research project which is based on the obscure life of the university’s former “furnaceman” (Henry Thomas Brown) and Hunter’s attempt to reconnect Brown with the history of the university and to explore Brown’s continuing spirit presence in the community that Hunter believes continues to cause unfortunate consequences.
Published September 2009
Andrew Hunter has produced exhibitions, site projects, publications and writings for institutions across Canada in the United States and Europe. At the core of Hunter’s work has been the exploration of the holdings of public institutions (museums, art galleries, libraries and archives), private collections, local history and national myths. At heart, Hunter considers his work to be an elaborate form of storytelling, engaging collections and history as a source for narrative play. Working in a gray area between fiction and non-fiction, he draws on such models as Truman Capote’s concept of the “non-fiction novel” and Jorge Louis Borges’ playful twists on the academic essay. The methods and processes of the museum/archive (forms of display, cataloguing and dissemination and accessibility) inform the structure of many of his works.
Currently the Director of RENDER, a unique arts based research and presentation center at the University of Waterloo (Canada), Hunter will begin a new position as Director of the DodoLab (a joint community/creative research program of the Musagetes Foundation and UW School of Architecture Cambridge) in January, 2010. Since 2008, he has taught in the Curatorial and Critical Studies program at OCAD University (Toronto). Hunter continues to work independently as an artist, writer and curator. His innovative thematic and fiction-based museum projects have been presented at the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (Concordia University), Museum London, Art Gallery of Alberta, Mendel Art Gallery, The Banff Centre, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Yukon Arts Centre, University of Toronto Arts Centre, the Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik (Croatia), among others. His project Lalla Rookh: A Poetic Archive was commissioned by Proboscis and Deborah Smith as part of Navigating History. Hunter has received numerous grants and awards from The Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council and received the Western Canada Magazine award for writing on arts and culture.
Andrew lives in Dundas, Ontario with his wife Lisa, daughters Maggie and Claire, dogs Penny and Nigel and the ever-present spirit of his late dog Roger. He continues to struggle to be a competent banjo and mandolin player.
N Burisch I'm looking for some help on how to assemble this publication. I can't seem to access the comments sections to… Comment posted on 4-5-2010 at 16:21
Giles Lane Hi Zea, this is a 'book' or long edge type. The sheets are folded horizontally (as opposed to vertically). If… Comment posted on 10-8-2009 at 19:49
Zea Morvitz Glad to see a new version of the generator, I want to try it out -- never could get the… Comment posted on 10-7-2009 at 17:55
kirsty white what is diffusion i need a explantion Comment posted on 10-3-2009 at 12:39
Chris Warren I don't know Andrew Hunter's work, but the description of his efforts to combine fact, fiction and personal narrative in… Comment posted on 9-30-2009 at 10:19
Update 20/10/2009: a modified eBook has been prepared that can be used in any location. DownloadA4 | US Letter PDF 438Kb
About : This eBook has been produced as a collaborative field research tool for DodoLab’s community research at the 2009 ICASP Colloquium (Improvisation, Community and Social Practice – www.improvcommunity.ca) and Jazz Festival in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. DodoLab is interested in exploring the idea of the Creative City and this eBook is designed to engage colloquium participants and festival goers in the process of identifying and documenting what they individually consider to be “signs” of a Creative City. Participants will use this ebook to describe signs and their locations and these will then be used by a team of DodoLab photographers to produce a series of photo essays that will be published as eBooks. Like other tools developed by DodoLab, this ebook can be easily modified for other locations.
September 2009
DodoLab is a dynamic and experimental co-creative lab for engaging with communities, organizations and events that is collaborative and fluid. Based at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture (Canada) and lead by Andrew Hunter in collaboration with Musagetes Foundation (Canada), DodoLab brings together creative researchers/practitioners, community leaders, educators and students to challenge accepted ideas, assumptions and methodologies and to develop insights into contexts, processes and situations. DodoLab is not a predetermined package, program or methodology, it is a process-based exploration that emerges out of the needs, challenges, concerns and ideas of the communities, organizations, groups and institutions we collaborate with and draws its strength from the rich combination of skills, knowledge and experience these collaborations contain. The environment, youth, knowledge sharing, leadership, social innovation and community are central concerns of DodoLab and our philosophy of cultivating true collaboration and co-creation reflects the firm belief that we cannot solve the complex problems we face if we don’t work together with openness and respect. DodoLab looks to build relationships with its collaborators that are meaningful and lasting and that emphasize shared responsibilities for action and learning.
DodoLab’s current principal researchers are: Andrew Hunter, Lisa Hirmer, Laura Knapp, Barbara Hobot and Proboscis.
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] DodoLab Wants to Know: What Are The Signs of a Creative City? http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1352 [...] Comment posted on 11-2-2009 at 15:53
Virginia DWI Attorney There is a big probability that DodoLab could be a great help for improving a city through the help of… Comment posted on 10-5-2009 at 13:47
About : DodoLab Wants To Know: About Green Space is a research survey designed to investigate ideas about green space. While many people feel quite strongly about the need for “green space” this term is often quite ambiguous and can refer to a number of very different kinds of space. This survey is meant to collect data but also to initiate discussion about the characteristics of green space. The data will be used to generate “Green Space Scales,” which can be used by communities as a place to start more complex discussions about green space and what it means. To use one of these books is to join the DodoLab research team and we encourage those who use them to share their findings with DodoLab.
Published September 2009
DodoLab is a dynamic and experimental co-creative lab for engaging with communities, organizations and events that is collaborative and fluid. Based at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture (Canada) and lead by Andrew Hunter in collaboration with Musagetes Foundation (Canada), DodoLab brings together creative researchers/practitioners, community leaders, educators and students to challenge accepted ideas, assumptions and methodologies and to develop insights into contexts, processes and situations. DodoLab is not a predetermined package, program or methodology, it is a process-based exploration that emerges out of the needs, challenges, concerns and ideas of the communities, organizations, groups and institutions we collaborate with and draws its strength from the rich combination of skills, knowledge and experience these collaborations contain. The environment, youth, knowledge sharing, leadership, social innovation and community are central concerns of DodoLab and our philosophy of cultivating true collaboration and co-creation reflects the firm belief that we cannot solve the complex problems we face if we don’t work together with openness and respect. DodoLab looks to build relationships with its collaborators that are meaningful and lasting and that emphasize shared responsibilities for action and learning.
DodoLab’s current principal researchers are: Andrew Hunter, Lisa Hirmer, Laura Knapp, Barbara Hobot and Proboscis.
Zipped Archive (all 16 eBooks) A4 | US Letter PDF 28Mb
About : An A-Z of The Ting: Theatre of Mistakes comprises 16 ebooks with documents (texts, letters, photographs, diagrams, artworks) drawn from this 1970s performance collective’s private archive and from original research conducted by Marie-Anne Mancio and Jason E Bowman. Each book has 26 pages, referencing the alphabet, however there is no more reason to begin with ‘A’ than ‘V,W,X,Y & Z’ and the democratic format of the set means entries are placed in unexpected proximity. Encouraging circuitous rather than linear, multi-perspectival rather than singular, readings and reflecting The Theatre of Mistakes‘ interest in chance, mutuality, and inconsistency, the A-Z is part introduction, part photo-essay, part-question, and part gossip.
Published September 2009
Marie-Anne Mancio is a writer and independent researcher who trained as an artist . She is intrigued by the notion of contradiction. Author of a doctoral thesis, Maps for Wayward Performers: Feminist Readings of Contemporary Live Art Practice in Britain (University of Sussex, 1997), countless art reviews, and a novel, Trio (forthcoming). She is currently collaborating with Jason E Bowman on curating a retrospective of The Ting: Theatre of Mistakes. Her website is www.hotelalphabet.net
George Oh Sorry, I didn't realise the stupid format is part of the art. My mistake. Comment posted on 1-27-2010 at 21:07
George really f***king stupid format Comment posted on 1-27-2010 at 20:59
George interesting, but the format is pretty frustrating. Why is the reader olbiged to get scissors, staples and glue out, rather… Comment posted on 1-27-2010 at 20:53
About : A few weeks ago I was privileged to take part in a project which brought Porer and Pinbin, two Negkini speaking people from Reite (a village on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea) to the British Museum’s Ethnography Dept. They were with Dr James Leach (Head of Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen) who has done extensive field work in their village over the past 15 years, and who hosted their visit to the UK this summer. Their visit to the BM was to take part in the latest stage of the Melanesia Project, a project bringing indigenous people from Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to look at and discuss objects in the collection to increase understanding of their social, cultural and spiritual significance, as well as details of what they are made of, how they are made and by whom.
The Melanesia Project explores the relationships between a wide range of indigenous art and artefact forms, socially-significant narratives, and the indigenous communities from which historic collections of Melanesian art derive. Focusing on the important but largely unstudied Melanesian collections in the British Museum, this project aims to bring new perspectives to both the study of indigenous art, and the understanding of ownership, heritage, and relations between museums and communities.
James and I had discussed meeting up during the project sometime before and then I had suggested using Diffusion Notebooks to create documentation of the process that could be easily shared with Porer and Pinbin’s own community (who enjoy a subsistence lifestyle in the Papua New Guinean rainforest without electricity or many of the communication technologies we take for granted). Our colleagues at the BM, Lissant Bolton (Head of Oceania Section) and Liz Bonshek (Research Associate) agreed, and I was invited to come in and observe and assist with the process.
It was a remarkable opportunity to see how people from a very different culture and civilisation respond to objects collected up to 170 years ago from their locality – how their relation to the objects was one rooted in the materials and the craft with which they were made. It was impressive to see the depth of tactile knowledge Porer and Pinbin have in their hands, how the act of touching was fundamental to their process of recognition of the plants and other materials used in making the objects as well as how they would have been made, as though the touching of the objects conducted a current to complete a circuit of memory.
Several of the notebooks of their observations of the objects made during the week are here to download, print out and make up. The notebooks, written in both English and Tok Pisin (the lingua franca of PNG) by James, have images of the objects as well as the people in the discussions, taken with digital cameras and printed out using a Polaroid PoGo printer (the sticky-backed prints placed directly into the notebooks). The notebooks were then taken apart and scanned in as flat A4 sheets to become Shareable PDf files. This enabled us to transform unique hand-written notebooks into digital publications that can be printed out, made up and shared as often as necessary. It was also an opportunity to give physical records to Porer and Pinbin that they could return to their village with and share their experiences and what they interacted with with their own community – making tangible some of the experiences that would be almost unimaginable and very difficult to communicate to people whose lives are lived within an entirely different relationship to the environment around them.
British Museum & Bookleteer | bookleteer blog [...] was used in the Melanesia Project to record, Porer and Pinbin, indigenous people from Papua New Guinea discussing objects… Comment posted on 7-1-2011 at 11:05
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] Ethnographic Notebooks, British Museum Melanesia Project http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=1301 [...] Comment posted on 11-2-2009 at 15:54
Dr.A.U.Dan'asabe As my name apire above. I am a consultant witch export all African Cultural Instruments. Regards. Dr.A.U.Dan'asabe. Comment posted on 10-14-2009 at 18:44
Card Making Sounds like a wonderful experience! How long has the project been running? Comment posted on 10-1-2009 at 13:51
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About : DodoLab Wants To Know is a community research tool which asks a series of simple questions designed to encourage reflection on the things that we have lost due to cultural, social and environmental change and what we’d like to bring back. This simple tool is meant to both collect information and encourage dialogue within communities and across generations. To use one of these books is to join the DodoLab research team and we encourage those who use them to share their findings with DodoLab (www.dodolab.ca).
Published August 2009
DodoLab is a dynamic and experimental co-creative lab for engaging with communities, organizations and events that is collaborative and fluid. A shared initiative of Render (University of Waterloo, Canada) and the Musagetes Foundation (Canada), DodoLab brings together creative researchers/practitioners, community leaders, educators and students to challenge accepted ideas, assumptions and methodologies and to develop insights into contexts, processes and situations. DodoLab is not a predetermined package, program or methodology, it is a process-based exploration that emerges out of the needs, challenges, concerns and ideas of the communities, organizations, groups and institutions we collaborate with and draws its strength from the rich combination of skills, knowledge and experience these collaborations contain. The environment, youth, knowledge sharing, leadership, social innovation and community are central concerns of DodoLab and our philosophy of cultivating true collaboration and co-creation reflects the firm belief that we cannot solve the complex problems we face if we don’t work together with openness and respect. DodoLab looks to build relationships with its collaborators that are meaningful and lasting and that emphasize shared responsibilities for action and learning. DodoLab is led by Andrew Hunter (RENDER). Probsocis continues to be a valued partner of RENDER’s and a significant contributor to the DodoLab initiative.
About : ‘The Lunar House “Re-enactment”’ was commissioned by King’s College, Cambridge and forms part of a report by the author on the Arts Council England and King’s College, Cambridge Art and Law Seminar: Interdisciplinary and New Media Arts, which was held in Cambridge in October 2007. The story also continues Tony White’s Balkanising Bloomsbury project, and was created by cutting up, remixing and re-narrativising fragments from various sources including materials relating to the work of artists Heath Bunting and Rod Dickinson. ‘The Lunar House “Re-enactment”‘ was devised as an opportunity to reflect more deeply upon the work of artist Heath Bunting, which had caused minor controversy amongst Art and Law seminar participants without its being fully discussed.
Published July 2009
Tony White is Leverhulme Trust writer in residence for 2008-09 at The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He is theauthor of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber) and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans. His most recently published work of fiction is Albertopolis Disparu (Science Museum Booklet), see http://sciencemuseum.org.uk/writer . 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 or in response to visual arts and interdisciplinary projects by London Fieldworks, Bob and Roberta Smith, Alison Turnbull, Chris Dorley-Brown, Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, Alan Phelan and others. The Balkanising Bloomsbury project has been supported by Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts, by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) and the Leverhulme Trust.
About : En este pequeño libro se muestran en forma breve algunas reflexiones que han guiado mi proceso creativo: esencialmente el lenguaje de la pintura relacionado con el gran interés de la vida en el planeta: su origen, sus extinciones y sus seres.
Estado de presencia provides a brief look at some of the reflections that have guided my creative process. Essentially the language of painting in relation to my passion about the planet: its origin, animals in danger and those already extinct and life in general.
Published July 2009
Cristina Luna nace en la Ciudad de México en 1963. Cursa estudios de música en el Conservatorio Nacional y realiza la licenciatura en Artes Plásticas en el área de gráfica en la escuela de pintura, escultura y grabado “La Esmeralda”. En 1994 es seleccionada en la Séptima Bienal Rufino Tamayo y en 1995 participa en la Bienal de Grafica de Puerto Rico. En ese mismo año es invitada a realizar una residencia artística en Villa Montalvo, en Saratoga California. En el año 2001 Cristina cambia su residencia de la Ciudad de México al pueblo de San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca donde pinta actualmente. Cristina ha tenido 16 exposiciones individuales de las cuales y ha participado también en diversas exposiciones colectivas tanto en México, Estados Unidos y Puerto Rico.
Cristina Luna was born in Mexico City in 1963. She studied music at the National Conservatory and holds a Bachelor’s degree in art from “La Esmeralda”, school of painting, sculpture and engraving. In 1994 Cristina was selected for the seventh biennial Rufino Tamayo and in 1995 participated in the Puerto Rico Biennale. That same year she was invited to be artist in residence in Villa Montalvo, Saratoga California. Cristina moved to San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca in 2001, where she currently lives and paints. Cristina has had 16 solo exhibitions and has been involved in several group exhibitions both in Mexico, United States and Puerto Rico.
About : The Octuplet: Story of Our Lives is the first published story in English by Dutch visual artist and illustrator Babette Wagenvoort. It tells the strange story of eight human-beings living inside their mother, while they prepare for their future. One of the octuplets seems better equipped for life than the others… Much like Babette’s visual work this story balances between reality and fiction, between poetry and prose.
Babette Wagenvoort (MA RCA) is best known for her red drawings from the series ‘Life According To A Rectilinear Personality‘, which she published daily on her website for years. As an illustrator she has worked for several publications like VPRO Gids, De Volkskrant, Vrij Nederland, Opzij and Hollands Maandblad in The Netherlands and the BBC, Le Gun and Dazed & Confused in the UK. Her drawings can be found as commissioned public art works and animations in schools, as wallpaper designed for Maxalot, but also as wall drawings, animations and installations within more regular exhibition spaces. She teaches drawing at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and is curator of ‘Volkskrant Oog‘, an online platform for artists of the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. A new book with Babette’s drawings called ‘Mood Swing – An Alphabet of Moods’ will come out in July/August 2009.
*** a classic landscape eBook & StoryCubes created with the new Diffusion Generator ***
Selected and Introduced for Short Work by Bronac Ferran, independent researcher and writer and Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven still causes a shiver to flow through my body now, re-reading it many years after I first heard it. This is poetry of feeling. There is a sense in which one is there, doomed forever to consider what the raven means with his incantation ‘Nevermore’. In this version, Poe’s near hallucinatory intensity is combined with a translation into French by the great poet Stéphane Mallarmé and stark images by Edouard Manet to form a magical combination.
Mallarmé and Manet, fountainheads of modern poetry and painting, were good friends in Paris in the 1860s and 70s. There were many points where their lives touched – indeed they lived in the same street and met almost daily. Mallarmé’s house was a kind of early social network node – the meeting point for a group of artists and poets called Les Mardistes who met on Tuesday evenings. We see in this work, a rare example of a great poet and great painter working in true confluence – both responding to another work and in the process, both honouring and transforming it. In many ways, this work seems to me to be a milestone – in advance of Mallarme’s later work – which broke with conventions of form and presentation in deeply significant ways. The influence of Mallarmé in terms of his dissolution of form, breaking down of the poetic into its essential parts and core components, sifting out sound, silences, analogies and tonal clarities has been acknowledged by many great 20th artists – from May Ray to Pierre Boulez and John Cage. His singular experiments which beautifully combine abstraction with performativity appear ever more significant over time as we look today at the emergence of software code and machine language as drivers of 21st cutural expression. His experiments with form exploring and revealing underlying latencies may be seen as a linguistic and poetic decoding. These were exciting developments that led directly to many of the most important aesthetic and cultural innovations of the 20th century and preceded the emergence, in particular, of serialism, concretism and forms of machine/computer art. We trace these experiments into process-based and open works of the 60s including Computerized Haiku, computer poetry devised by Margaret Masterman (with Robin McKinnon-Wood) of the Cambridge Language Research Unit as well as earlier tense exchanges between Boulez and Cage on the importance of otherwise of chance in composition and performance. Now, in the 21st century, when remix and recombinant processes are accepted as mainstream and hypertext is common we can only imagine what it might have been like to take those first steps, to reorganise the order of things and shift a cultural modality forever.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer and critic, famous for his stories of the macabre, and often credited as the creator of detective fiction.
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) was a French poet and critic, perhaps best known for his typographic experimental poem, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard.
A few weeks ago I came across Kevin Macleod‘s website, incompetech, where he has created a series of free graph and notepaper generators for making all sorts of useful and intriguing designs. We’ve combined a small selection of his page designs into Diffusion eBooks as examples of how we can further extend the Shareable Notebook range, and offer custom and personalised eNotebooks for different purposes.
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 June 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.
*** a landscape ‘classic’ eBook made with the new Diffusion Generator ***
About : An eBook made for participants in a workshop with the Sutton-in-the-Isle Youth Group, where we are making a short video (part of Proboscis’ Sutton Grapevine project). The group is collaborating to make a video about their recent trip abroad to meet other young people from around the world and exchange stories for their Your Stories project.
The eBook is a record of the first session’s activities, questions and a storyboard sketch. It captures the process of thinking and the questions we asked in the first session, as well providing a notebook for the group to write on, draw over or change as the sessions continue.
Published June 2009
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.
*** a ‘book’ (long edge binding) eBook created using the new Diffusion Generator ***
About : Much of the drug smuggling, drug manufacturing and drug dealing centred on London in the 1960s remains undocumented. This is an outline of various links between people such as club hostess and showgirl Julia Callan-Thompson, murky underworld figures like Alan Bruce Cooper, and art world insiders such as Francis Morland.
Published June 2009
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
*** a ‘book’ (long edge binding) eBook created using the new Diffusion Generator ***
About : The Thirty-Six Stratagems is collection of ancient Chinese proverbs whose origin is unknown, but is understood to date back to the late Ming or early Qing dynasty. Contemporary versions are all derived from a tattered book discovered at a roadside vendor’s stall in Sichuan or Shannxi in 1941, first coming to wider attention in 1961 when published in the Chinese Communist Party’s Guangming Daily newspaper.
The Stratagems (an alternative title was The Secret Art of War) are often paired with Sun Tzu’s celebrated Art of War, but lean more heavily towards the fields of politics, diplomacy and espionage. The text restricts itself to simply naming each strategy with a brief explanation, often containing allusions to the I-Ching, or Book of Changes – modern editions often also contain illustrative stories from folklore and history.
Six multiplied by six equals thirty-six.
Calculations produce tactics which in turn produce calculations.
Each side depends upon the other.
Based on this correlative relationship, ploys against the enemy are devised.
Rigid application of Military theory will only result in defeat on the battlefield.
Unknown first publication date, believed late Ming or early Qing dynasty
Sourced from Wengu and Wikipedia Translated by Stefan Verstappen
*** a ‘book’ (long edge binding) eBook created using the new Diffusion Generator ***
About : ‘Would be Disciplined’ continues Tony White’s Balkanising Bloomsbury project. The story was created by cutting up, remixing and re-narrativising fragments from various sources including the Sydney Morning Herald, transcripts from the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Richard Burton translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night. ‘Would be Disciplined’was supported additionally by the Australia Council, Performance Space, Sydney, and the Institute of Advanced Studies at University of Western Australia, Perth. The story was written at UWA as part of a series of events to mark the culmination of Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights Cast. A version of the story is also archived on the project’s website at http://1001.net.au
Published May 2009
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. His most recently published work of fiction is Albertopolis Disparu (Science Museum Booklet) – see http://sciencemuseum.org.uk/writer . 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. Balkanising Bloomsbury has been supported by Arts Council England through Grants for the Arts, and by the Leverhulme Trust. 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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