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Sep 25, 2020 30 tweets 18 min read Read on X
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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More from @ImmersiveArtsUK

Sep 25, 2020
Thank you so much Paul @UGuests it's been amazing to follow your thinking, insights, research and history on placemaking today.

This is @Grace_Quantock and I'm delighted to take up the baton for the final relay on the #DigitalPlacemaking fellows Twitter takeover
#GoodAfternoonDearOnes
Today, I wish us courage tempered with compassion. We can get drunk on courage when bravery tips into bravado. May our strength be consort with softness, as needed. Onwards, together.

(I start each day @Grace_Quantock w/ a blessing, so I'm offering this)
Hi, I'm @Grace_Quantock I'm a psychotherapeutic counsellor & writer, working across social care, health & human rights.

I’m an #Inclusion Fellow in #DigitalPlacemaking Grace sitting between roses wearing a pink jumper and blue n
Read 50 tweets
Sep 25, 2020
On my Fellowship, I've been asking whether science-fiction storytelling and Augmented Reality (AR) can inspire people to imagine preferable, more inclusive futures for their places together?
Can interactive performance methods engage a wider range of people in discussing plans for their neighbourhoods, and are these conversations more effective in the sites that are being developed?
I was interested in whether places can be critiqued through located science-fiction storytelling, how the distancing effect of sci-fi relates to AR, and ways in which @UGuests & @_dspk's Billennium models a participatory and democratised approach to urban design.
Read 25 tweets
Sep 24, 2020
Greetings! This is @shawnsobers picking up the reigns from @tim_lytc for this Twitter Takeover for the Digital Placemaking research project. Tim gave us lots to think about, and I hope I can do this justice and post some interesting stuff for the rest of the afternoon. Image
First.... a song. This came out in 1982, and was one of the first songs with a social commentary that I really took notice of. I'll explain more after you have a listen....enjoy!

Songs like this continue to influence what I do and how I do it, somehow trying to make my work connected to real world issues and communities.
Read 69 tweets
Sep 24, 2020
Hello world! It’s @tim_lytc checking in for the morning. I’m a NEW TALENT Fellow on the programme. I’m a Queer dance creative working across theatre, film and creative tech. My work is centred on advocating for gender, health, race and Queer issues.
My #digitalplacemaking research looks at the potentials of combining #Dance & Movement with #CreativeTechnology to create safer spaces for #Queer folks. Check out my page for a little taste of what I've done✨

bristolbathcreative.org/fellows/tim-lo
At the beginning, I was inspired by past work I had done with @LiminaImmersive @SplashAndRipple @lisamaythomas And their approach to bodies and technology - The conscious effort to create comfortable, inclusive spaces, where audiences could escape and connect at the same time.
Read 22 tweets
Sep 23, 2020
.@rose_kala_dias here wrapping up. I wanted to mention RESEARCH. it can be a scary word right? BUT this programme has changed how I feel. I've been able to follow my gut + ask questions to elicit 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 Image
My #digitalplacemaking research= qualitative data on the themes + 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 at play in creating digital spaces which centre care for bipoc... It is more than stories and data though, it is a connected web of relationships developing a momentum around these ideas
𝗦𝗼𝗼𝗻 𝗜'𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶 𝗽𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 #𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗳𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 feat. stories, thoughts + feelings exploring the intersections of rest, race, culture, disability, labour + politics as part of my #digitalplacemaking research 😍 Image
Read 5 tweets
Sep 23, 2020
If you've just tuned in, it's @rose_kala_dias on a takeover hype (first time, can you tell!? #takeupspace)... here is a thread of some of the spaces/places/thinkers/artists/collectives that have been inspiring me in my #digitalplacemaking #spacesofcare thinking...
@rose_kala_dias There's A LOT of amazing work out there facilitating radical ideas into action - linking rest, care, social justice, collective and individual practices, also just on EXISTING for those experiencing marginalisation, including #BlackPowerNaps / @TheNapMinistry / @thellpsx ❤️
@rose_kala_dias @TheNapMinistry @thellpsx Who remembers this in @ArnolfiniArts front room? comfort, genitalia + radical literature 😍#bringbackthefrontroom #fluffyplacemaking 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙖 𝙙𝙞𝙜𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙡 / 𝙝𝙮𝙗𝙧𝙞𝙙 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙠 +𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚?
arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/instal…
Read 9 tweets

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