Download We Are All Food Critics : The Reviews – A3 | Ledger PDF 6.1Mb Read Online We Are All Food Critics (eNotebook) – A3 | Ledger PDF 1.6Mb Read Online
About : Proboscis supported the children of Soho Parish Primary School at this year’s Soho Food Feast – a community fundraising event held for the school at which many of London’s celebrated chefs and restaurants provide signature dishes to raise money for the school. We designed a special eNotebook alongside Fay Maschler, Restaurant Critic of the London Evening Standard, encouraging the children themselves to become food critics and experience the food through all the five senses. After the event we scanned all their reviews and made a sample selection to be printed in a compilation eBook, which has forewords from both Rachel Earnshaw (Head Teacher) and Fay. Everyone’s already looking forward to next year’s Food Feast and more budding food critics.
Published by Proboscis for Soho Parish Primary School in 2012
Authors : Children of Soho Parish Primary School, Forewords/Introduction by Rachel Earnshaw & Fay Maschler, Illustrated by Mandy Tang, Photos by Stefan Kueppers, Designed by Giles Lane.
More recently printed books | bookleteer blog [...] ‘We Are All Food Critics: The Reviews’ was printed for Soho Parish Primary School, so that every child who… Comment posted on 7-11-2012 at 11:11
About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Sonic Geographies to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
About : DodoLab has collaborated with the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) on the creation of A New Workers Songbook. The project is based on WAHC’s collection of books and recordings of songs that reflect Hamilton’s history of industry and organized labour. The goal of this project is to create songs about current realities for working people in Hamilton. Reflecting on the shifts in jobs and work, this participatory and process-based project explores current perceptions from both an individual and collective perspective. Artist/curator Caitlin Sutherland has worked with DodoLab on the design of the installation and the various surveys and has also been the lead on statistical research. Hamilton artist, performer and musician Tor Lukasik-Foss is the lead on the songwriting component of the project he has designed this workbook to help aspiring songwriters to create their own worker’s songs.
Published December 2010
Tiny Bill Cody (Tor Lukasik-Foss) is an artist, performer and musician based in Hamilton, Ontario.
DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.
About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Underside to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
Book a place at Underside (Friday 26th November) or the last event of this series, Sonic Geographies on December 10th.
About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Skyline to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
Includes a photo essay by Skyline’s event special guest, Simon Pope.
Book a place at Skyline (Friday 12th November) or one of the other forthcoming events, Underside & Sonic Geographies.
About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on River to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
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Completed Field Trip eNotebook A4 only PDF 1.12Mb
Blank eNotebook A4 | US Letter PDF 1.12Mb
About : A notebook compiled during a study visit to Germany to learn about Passivhaus building design principles. Created with a combination of note taking, Polaroid prints, QR codes and links to web content.
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] from the City http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2188 Passivhaus Field Trip eNotebook by Rob Annable http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2182 Streetscapes eNotebook by Proboscis http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2175 Tangled Threads… Comment posted on 10-27-2010 at 11:20
Proboscis Newsletter October 2010 | newmediafix.net [...] from the City http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2188 Passivhaus Field Trip eNotebook by Rob Annable http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2182 Streetscapes eNotebook by Proboscis http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2175 Tangled Threads… Comment posted on 10-26-2010 at 13:56
About : a notebook designed by Haz Tagiuri for participants in the Pitch In & Publish : City As Material event on Streetscapes to use to collect notes and ideas, paste in pictures and cuttings.
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Graffito Vintage Festival ScrapBook A4 only PDF 875Kb
Graffito ScrapBook (blank) A4 | US Letter PDF 400Kb
About : A scrapbook of screen grabs from the Graffito iPhone/iPad App as used by festival-goers in the Warehouse Tent at Vintage in Goodwood Park. The images were captured live and printed out via Bluetooth on a Polaroid PoGo printer and stuck into an eNotebook during the event by Jennifer Sheridan (project leader of Graffito) – working from the control booth. See more photos of it in action on Flickr. The ScrapBook is a tangible souvenir for any of the people who played with Graffito at the Festival to have as a memento of the experience they took part in. We’ll be exploring other ways to use bookleteer, eBooks and StoryCubes to make more personalised tangible souvenirs for Graffito users in the near future.
Make Your Own Graffito ScrapBook
If you have an iPhone or iPad, download Graffito free from the AppStore, play and draw with it, capture your favourite images as they happen and print out the pictures to stick in your own Graffito ScrapBook.
Published August 2010
Jennifer Sheridan is a researcher, interaction designer, digital artist and founder of Big Dog Interactive. She is leading the Graffito project with partners : Interactional Sound and Music Group at Queen Mary University of London, Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham, Glasgow University and Proboscis. Graffito is supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute.
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] Bliss http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2122 Graffito Vintage Festival ScrapBook by Jennifer Sheridan http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2115 Ode to Dawson by Joyce Majiski & John Steins… Comment posted on 10-27-2010 at 11:21
Proboscis Newsletter October 2010 | newmediafix.net [...] Bliss http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2122 Graffito Vintage Festival ScrapBook by Jennifer Sheridan http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2115 Ode to Dawson by Joyce Majiski & John Steins… Comment posted on 10-26-2010 at 13:57
Download Kitchener Field NoteBook A4 | US Letter PDF 280Kb
AC Youth Workshop Book 1 : Kitchener Market A4 | US Letter PDF 8Mb
AC Youth Workshop Book 2 : Victoria Park A4 | US Letter PDF 9.5Mb
AC Youth Workshop Book 3 : Interview with the Mayor A4 | US Letter PDF 4.5Mb
About : A youth workshop developed by DodoLab in collaboration with The African Canadian Association of Waterloo Region and the Healthy Communities Research Network. The workshop took place on June 25, 26 & 28 2010, in Kitchener Ontario with participants from the African Canadian Youth Leadership Project.
A field notebook was designed for the workshop participants by DodoLab and three eBooks were created by the participants in the workshop.
Published June 2010
DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.
October Newsletter | Proboscis [...] REP) by DodoLab http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2066 Kitchener African Canadian Workshop by DodoLab http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2054 Meet Us At Kont by DodoLab http://diffusion.org.uk/?p=2060 Rijeka,… Comment posted on 10-27-2010 at 11:22
About : This is a field research work book for participants in a Youth Workshop on public spaces run in Rijeka, Croatia, by Andrew Hunter and Lea Perinic, June 18-19, 2010. Part 1 involves groups of participants responding to questions. Part 2 asks the participants to engage the public in conversation. Part 3 will involve photographing the spaces to generate publications and online surveys. The three sites in Rijeka being investigated are the Korzo, Pier and Cont Square.
Published June 2010
DodoLab is an art and design based program that employs experimental and adaptive processes to spark positive change and resiliency. We work collaboratively with a diversity of emergent thinkers/doers to imaginatively and critically repurpose familiar tools of the social sciences, marketing and activism to engage with the public in public. Our focus is the complex relationships between people and their surroundings and how communities define, and are defined by, their environment. DodoLab puts the creative process at the heart of confronting social and environmental challenges.
Download
Large version A3 | Ledger PDF 10.5Mb
Small version A4 | US Letter PDF 9.6Mb
About : A 12 month schedule decorated with illustrations by Alice Angus who has been experimenting with creating different kinds of books for writing in to use herself, “I like the fact that I can create something physical, then use the computer and internet to make that into a yet another physical object; a book to write in, carry around in my pocket and use, but I can also share that book digitally.”
Published May 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.
Introducing the eBook Observer | bookleteer blog [...] different people and organisations. As part of the research, I created an eBook of my own – the eBook… Comment posted on 8-26-2010 at 12:37
About : This eNotebook for students at the collège Evariste Galois in Epinay sur Seine was designed as an “adventure book” for the first-year students’ library orientation programme. The flexibility of the Bookleteer publishing platform allowed for quick and easily implementation of the modifications suggested by the author’s own observations, as well as advice from the students and teachers involved in the orientation programme itself.
Published February 2010
J. Thomas Maillioux has been the librarian for the collège Evariste Galois middle school in Epinay sur Seine, France since 2005.
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
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.
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
Download
English Version A4 | US Letter PDF 5ooKb
Spanish Version A4 | US Letter PDF 5ooKb
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.
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 : eBooks help to promote ongoing communication between students in Umulogho Village, Nigeria and students in Watford schools.
Bev Carter’s eBook A Little Something About Me (generated by with support from Proboscis) was used to assist a series of workshops in six schools in Watford during 2008 to communicate through words, paintings and photographs the life, experiences and interests of students attending a secondary school in Umulogho, a rural village in Imo State, Nigeria, West Africa.
During school workshops copies of this eBook were handed out to the students and a discussion was encouraged and facilitated by Bev. The pupils really liked the eBook and it served to generate more curiosity and questions about life in Umulogho. As part of the process another eBook created to capture all the thoughts and enquries the students had.
The next eBook was called ‘Kedu?‘ This means ‘How are you? in Igbo, the main language spoken in Umulogho Village. This was a collection of further questions from students in Watford using pictures created by Umulogho students to give them added visual interest. In July 2008 copies of the ‘Kedu’ eBook were hand delivered to Umulogho Village by Tony Amaechi, a Trustee of Friends Out There, and some Umulogho Village students then filled in their response to the questions in the eBook. Five eBooks were collected by Tony on his return to the UK and some students told Tony that they had enjoyed filling in the eBooks, were thrilled to see their paintings scanned in to them and were happy to know that students in the UK were interested in them, their dreams and concerns.
In October 2008 the completed Kedu eBooks were taken back to some of the schools in Watford that had asked the original questions. The students were amazed and pleased to see they really had been given some answers to their questions, such as ‘are there any crocodiles in the village stream? – some Umologho students had seen some and others hadn’t. The eBooks got the Watford students talking about what time they wake up in the morning and what they do before school as most students in Umulogho were awake by 5.30 am and had gone to the village stream and back to collect water before going to school. The Kedu eBooks also gave the Umulogo students a space to ask some questions that they had for the Watford students such as ‘what seasons do you have in England?’ and ‘what religions do you have?’
The next stage will be to create another eBook to continue the communication between the schools in Umulogho and Watford. The eBook is an excellent resource for schools: students like the pocket sized feel, it’s a great way to capture conversations and enquiries and, even though the school in Umulogho Village doesn’t yet have a computer or internet access, we were still able to send and receive paper copies – using more traditional means of connection and communication.
Bev Carter
February 2009
For more information please contact Bev Carter (Friends Out There)
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.
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).
About : Proboscis are running a creative workshop on September 18th at ZAIM, Yokohama as part of the Dislocate08 festival. The workshop is the initial stage of our research for Sensory Threads, engaging artists, urbanists, designers, technologists, musicians and dancers in an active investigation into the sensorial patterns and rhythms to be found in our environment. The area around ZAIM in Yokohama will become our research field as we seek out and evidence the recurring, overlapping and intersecting sounds and movements that take place as we act in, and react to, our environment.
Sensory Threads is a work-in-progress to develop an instrument enabling a group of people to create a soundscape reflecting their collaborative experiences in the environment. For this interactive sensory experience, we are designing sensors for detecting environmental phenomena at the periphery of human perception as well as the movement and proximity of the wearers themselves. Possible targets for the sensors may be electro-magnetic radiation, hi/lo sound frequencies, heart rate etc). The sensors’ datastreams will feed into generative audio software, creating a multi-layered and multi-dimensional soundscape feeding back the players’ journey through their environment. Variations in the soundscape reflect changes in the wearers interactions with each other and the environment around them. We aim to premiere the work in 2009.
Sensory Threads is being created by Proboscis in collaboration with Birkbeck College’s Pervasive Computing Lab, The Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary (University of London), the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham and the School of Management at University of Southampton.
Published September 2008.
Proboscis is an artist-led creative studio based in London, UK. The Sensory Threads workshop is being led by Giles Lane and Karen Martin with Frederik Lesage.
I’ve been working recently with Bradford Libraries (West Yorkshire, England) on a few small community engagement projects. They have received funding under the Community Libraries Programme to extend and refurbish the library at Manningham. In June 2008 I was asked to run a public event in the library to engage people with the process and open up a period of consultation.
The intention was to have a two hour early evening slot, with the architect and plans available, plus members of staff of course, but no set programme. So the first condition was to design a consultation event where people are constantly coming and going, but you want to attract their attention, inform them, provoke thinking and capture their views.
The idea of a treasure hunt as a fun way to generate interest quickly became the key component of the event. Working with library staff I developed a set of clues which would require users to go to specific locations in and around the building. The planned extension will be built over part of an existing car park and a community garden will be designed alongside, so we had the chance with the treasure hunt to help people visualise it. I was pretty sure that the Diffusion eBooks would be the ideal mechanism for linking clues to further suggestions and comments.
Here’s how it worked. Visitors were given an eBook, with the first clue printed on the first page. Each clue required the hunter to go to a specific location, inside or outside the library building, where they would find the next clue printed on a set of peel-off labels. They took one of these labels and stuck it onto a space on a new page in the eBook.
We provided space on each page for hunters to write an answer to each clue. Additionally there was a supplementary consultative question, designed to solicit ideas and suggestions for the new building.
So for example, the second clue asked “Where will the disabled parking spaces be?” This required checking the site plans, with the architect on hand to help work out the answer. The hunter then had to pop outside to the specific location, where friendly staff held a folder of labels for clue 3. If necessary, users were shown where the label should be placed in their eBook. The supplementary question asked: “What else is needed to make sure that disabled people have good access to the new library?”
At the location of the answer to the final clue, users found a note saying “Well done! You’ve finished the treasure hunt – please go back to the start and collect your prize.”
We anticipated that some users would rather get on with the hunt, and then perhaps settle down afterwards to write comments in answer to the questions. In practice, we found that most took this course and staff were on hand to encourage and support comment. Nonetheless, it was obvious that a number of hunters lacked confidence writing in the English language and were reluctant to offer any comments. Aware of this, staff engaged most of them in conversation and anyway it didn’t matter – they were in the library, taking part, willingly engaged and ready to contribute in other ways.
What worked well The treasure hunt clues and the eBooks were developed remotely, with staff locally printing out the eBooks and, never having encountered them before, making them up a day or two in advance. As always, one or two showed greater dexterity than others, but it was done. I travelled to Bradford on the day of the event knowing that the documentation was ready.
In terms of helping to guide people through the treasure hunt process, the eBooks worked flawlessly. No-one got lost or did the clues in the wrong order. And no-one got into any difficulty with the sticking of labels: every one was placed in the right place on the right page.
We printed some eBooks on A3, giving a page format of around 21 x 15cm. These proved more popular and suited being carried around for 15-30 minutes, allowing plenty of space for notes.
What I’d do differently We had the smaller eBooks printed on yellow paper, but ideally I’d like to introduce some colour in other ways and the obvious place to do this is with the sticky labels.
A key point It’s important not to see this as an engagement technique in a vacuum. If we did, we wouldn’t get results. We ran this exercise while the library was open, with staff having conversations with users, an SMS option for comments, and other opportunities for people to get involved in the decision-making process. The eBooks fit perfectly in the treasure hunt and the treasure hunt is just one component in an ongoing mix of engagement activities and processes.
Kevin Harris: eBook Treasure Hunt | bookleteer blog [...] this post on diffusion.org.uk Kevin writes that the eBook Treasure Hunt worked well and no-one had difficulty [...] Comment posted on 8-18-2010 at 08:03
Business trainer bruce This is a brilliant idea. Simple but very effective. Although time can always be an issue… Comment posted on 3-11-2010 at 08:44
About : an eNotebook created for a Treasure Hunt at Manningham Library, Bristol.
Published June 2008
Kevin Harris is a community development consultant and writer (Local Level). He blogs on neighbourhoods, neighbourliness, social capital and life at local level.
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eNotebook 1 by Graham A4 only PDF 145 Kb
eNotebook 2 by Michael Evans A4 only PDF 176 Kb
eNotebook 3 by Agnieska Gryglewicz A4 only PDF 163 Kb
eNotebook 4 by Laura A4 only PDF 136 Kb
eNotebook 5 by Lucy K Wills A4 only PDF 180 Kb
eNotebook 6 by Alex Haw A4 only PDF 197 Kb
About : Six eNotebooks completed by participants at geeKyoto2008 (Saturday May 17th 2008, Conway Hall London).
About : This eNotebook has been created for geeKyoto2008. Proboscis and the organisers have collaborated to design this notebook for delegates (and others who can’t make it to the event) to share their thoughts and ideas, observations and hopes, fears and aspirations for the future of the planet. The completed eBooks will be collected up, scanned and made into an online library of ideas to inform and help shape future geeKyoto events. If you can’t attend but would like to share your ideas download and make up the eBook, fill it in and post it to Proboscis at 1st Floor, 24 Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4SX, UK. We will scan it in and add it to those completed during the event.
geeKyoto2008
Fixing The Broken World
10:00 – 16:30 – Saturday 17th May 2008. Conway Hall, London. £20.
We broke the world. Now what?
A one day conference in central London organised by Mark Simpkins and Ben Hammersley, with designers, technologists, artists, architects, policy-makers, explorers, economists and scientists, and clever people like you, to discuss the future and how we’ll live in it.
About : This eBook is by Tak Tran, a member of the Popperbox artist collective, working mainly on the technical side of things. He builds gadgets for art projects, websites and anything else that needs engineering.
As part of the Lattice::Sydney project a simple Sketchbook was produced to explore the projects and ideas being generated in the workshop. It was created on the Generator and printed out so that it would be filled in by hand – with space to write, draw, glue and attach. The resulting books are scanned in and remade into eBooks to be shared and distributed.
Lattice::Sydney aims to explore new approaches to creatively transforming our cities and included a workshop with a diverse group of artists and cultural leaders to produce new ideas, perspectives and plans of action. Lattice is part of Proboscis’ larger Lattice East Asia exploring the ways diverse communities engage with their environment and issues of cities and sustainability; viewing the city through the eyes of those who live in it. Lattice is part of the British Council’s “Creative Cities” – a three year cultural and artistic partnership between East Asia and the UK.
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[...] ‘We Are All Food Critics: The Reviews’ was printed for Soho Parish Primary School, so that every child who…
Comment posted on 7-11-2012 at 11:11