Taking up the Tweeting baton from @shawnsobers. As he was DJing yesterday, thought I’d start with a morning music suggestion, something appropriately sci-fi from Patten, which he recorded during lockdown:
Early in my research, I was reading Patten's publication, 3049, which accompanied an exhibition at London’s Tenderpixel. They say, 'It sets the stage for a non-dystopic reimagining of a positive collective future, asking; "how do we make it to 3049?": issuu.com/555-5555/docs/…
I’m Paul Clarke and, on my #DigitalPlacemaking Fellowship, I've been exploring tools for better future-making, asking who gets included in processes of neighbourhood visioning and in the futures imagined.
Like @shawnsobers, I’m an academic Placemaking fellow. I teach performance @UoBrisTheatre, but, when I’m not doing that I’m making work with Jess Hoffmann & @RichardDufty as Uninvited Guests @UGuests. Can't quite believe we've been collaborating now for over 20 years!
And somehow still going! Right from the start – way back in 1998 – we were exploring what you could do with tech in performance. In our first show, Guest House, we worked with vision mixing, 3D Studio Max & used architectural walk-throughs as projected backdrops. Anyone see that?
Think I first worked with @wshed in 2002 on Live Chat, which involved a wireless link across the Frome from Arnolfini to Watershed’s Digital Café. @_dspk & I worked with Bristol Wireless who set us up a “cantenna” made using a Glenmorangie whiskey tin:
Just laughing at how much younger I look in that vid. Looking back, this piece was already about hybrid physical-digital spaces. We were exploring the relationships & differences between online & offline social spaces; their entanglements. Anyone remember @wshed Digital Café?
Bristol Wireless said, ‘We felt that perhaps Glenmorangie would offer us better reception than the J&B tins we'd used previously due to the improved quality of the whiskey that had been inside’. Thought you might like that breadcrumb @StephenHilton! See: mbharris.co.uk/articles/water…
Alongside touring performance, @UGuests have made theatrical guided tours, pieces integrating apps, & collaborated on an interactive visitor experience for @HRP_palaces called #TheLostPalace. As well as using emerging tech, our work's often place-based, locative or site-specific.
And check out uninvited-guests.net/projects/live-… for our version of what we were up to.
#TheLostPalace was commissioned for Banqueting House & it was a collaboration with designers @ChomkoRosier, @calvium, sound designer @mrlewisgibson, & @LimbicCinema. You can hear @TCP1980's presentation on it here: presentations.thebestinheritage.com/2018/lost-pala… & watch here: vimeo.com/183286524
We wanted you to experience past events where they happened, to feel you were touching history & to be immersed in historical scenes. We were interested in the city as a physical interface, with place-based content triggered by our bodies’ movements through streets, & by touch.
#TheLostPalace used binaural recordings & was described as audio AR. We liked revealing the conjunctions between today's seat of government power & the Palace of Whitehall. Seemed a coincidence that The Cabinet Office is roughly where King Henry VIII's cockfighting pit once was.
#TheLostPalace was an interactive historical audio tour, but the root of my Digital Placemaking Fellowship was in another piece, made with @UGuests & @_dspk, Give Me Back My Broken Night, which was a guided tour, not of the past, but of the future of a place.
Give Me Back My Broken Night was originally developed through @wshed's Theatre Sandbox scheme and presented by Soho Theatre, with support from @calvium & AntiVJ @JoanieLemercier. Went back to the blog from 2010 the other day: watershed.co.uk/ished/theatres…
Here's a vid of that early version. Remember it chucking it down with rain so much my script disintegrated & we worried for the Pico projectors worn by the audience. What could we expect @_dspk's renowned for bringing the rain for atmos at his Subtle Mobs! watershed.co.uk/audio-video/gi…
This video's of the version remade for Guimarães, in Portugal, as part of @wshed's Open City programme for the European City of Culture: watershed.co.uk/audio-video/op…
Love this audience quote: 'When you picture something in your head, it stays in your head, but when you see it being drawn it makes you feel like it’s coming alive & it’s a real possibility & you engage with it in a very different way than if it is just in your imagination'.
Was so great to hear @rose_kala_dias mention Give Me Back My Broken Night in Bristol's Enterprise Zone in her talk with @StephenHilton here, and that it's in his trail of place-based digital Bristol breadcrumbs here: bristolbathcreative.org/assets/uploads… soundcloud.com/user-229048143…
Using performance, locative devices, portable projectors, & a Bristol-specific sci-fi score, the audience became urban planners, collaborating on their own imagined architectures. As they describe their future visions, they appear on a blank plan as a series of glowing lines.
You can read more about the version of Give Me Back commissioned for Temple Quarter here: watershed.co.uk/projects/give-…, and see the artists impressions of participants' imagined architecture (by @animatesteer & @sergiocameira) here: …vemebackmybrokennight-blog.tumblr.com
It's so interesting to look back over the speculative architecture from different years and places. Here's the collaborative proposals participants came up with for Deptford, in the version for @TheAlbanySE8 & @DeptfordLounge, produced by @FuelTheatre: …emebackmybrokennight3-blog.tumblr.com
And finally, here's the artist's impressions by @animatedsteer of possible futures for universities, specifically University of Bristol's campus, drawn collectively for the @HelloBrigstow launch: …mebackmybrokennight2-blog1.tumblr.com
In 2018, drawing on Give Me Back, @UGuests & @_dspk made Billennium with @MPanegrossi & Luca Biada (@fenyceworkspace), an Augmented Reality (AR) performance, commissioned by @wshed & Bristol's @bristol_smart for the Layered Realities 5G Platform in Millenium Square.
You can watch a video of that here:
We went on to show Billennium @strpfest, Eindhoven's festival of art and technology, and as a STRP Festival pop-up at @dutchdesignweek: strp.nl/program/augmen…
ddw.nl/en/programme/2…
There's a clip of that here:
Jess, Duncan and I started to ask ourselves whether aspects of Billennium could be applied; whether our fictional or theatrical set-up could be used in actual situations and have civic or social impact beyond the art world.
In each of the contexts we’ve shown it people have identified real-world applications, in particular its potential as a way of engaging local communities with planning consultations. And that led to me applying for a Digital Placemaking Fellowship: bristolbathcreative.org/article/digita…
You can hear more about @UGuests' work with performance and tech, about Billennium with @_dspk, and our interest in applying approaches from this AR performance in neighbourhood visioning in our @PMStudioUK Lunchtime Talk 'Dreaming Future Places':
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