[Synapse elist] elist Digest, Vol 7, Issue 16

[Jen Southern]

I have been inspired and motivated by reading this list over the  
month, and meaning to post something, so here it is, I hope its not  
too late.

I’ve been particularly interested in two discussions, that of the  
relationship between the performative qualities of walking with a  
gps, and how that quality is enhanced when it is felt that it is  
viewed live. In collaboration with Jen Hamilton and Chris St Amand we  
have been working with a gps and mobile phone to make installations  
that evolve live in the exhibition, so anyone coming to the show can  
see a route evolving, and can take the equipment themselves and add  
to the drawing (in a similar way to Esthers work Amsterdam Realtime.)  
Each line is stitched into the exhibition as it is walked, so a  
relationship builds up between the walker and the stitcher.  Because  
the walker was making a line for the stitcher to stitch, many walkers  
felt that instead of being watched they also had a method of using  
the tracking system to contribute to the work, and to control the  
stitchers movements, and so a feeling of both push and pull evolved  
between them, both as performers.
www.hamiltonandsouthern.net

In past projects & workshops we’ve found that participants really  
start to perform their sense of place, in both the path they take and  
where they choose to go in order to ‘put it on the map’. This is due  
to a different awareness created by the gps and this kind of workshop/ 
project. The action of making the tracks allows for a different  
reading, and an amazing attachment between the walker and their  
route, as I think Esther mentioned.

The second thing I’ve been thinking about is the interpretation of a  
gps line, not so much as a mapping of each individuals movement, but  
that the resulting image is a more general sign, or mark, for a  
particular kind of movement. And this is sometimes, I think, how it  
appears to someone not involved in making the tracks. We’ve been  
tracking our movements whilst flying huge power kites, wanting to try  
to track the effect of wind on us, the resulting drawings become  
recognisable, and you can tell wind direction, and general activity,  
but its less easy to think of it as a map. A gps track made by  
children running around a small playground has a frenetic and random  
quality to it that has something of the activity in it.  There seems  
to be something similar happening with the farmers tracks. Instead of  
being individual journeys, for me, start to stand in for a more  
general action of farming; ordered, methodical, productive work.
We tracked the route of a lobster fishermen during a project we did  
in Cardigan, Wales, (who also uses GPS to find his lobster pots). His  
routes had a very distinctive quality to them too.  
www.satellitebureau.net

And finally, seeing Esthers robot prints on her blog today, I was  
reminded of a project with the Kit collaboration and Art engine, in  
Ottawa www.greylands.com. We used a gps controlled robot to make  
drawings of blueprints onto an open grassed landscape with chalk. At  
least that's what we planned. The lumpyness of the terrain meant that  
the robot we had tested on smooth indoor surfaces could not reach its  
precise co-ordinates on rough grass, which although interesting,  
sadly wasn't the aim of the project at the time. In retrospect I wish  
we’d gone ahead and drawn blueprints that were wildly distorted by  
contact with the real environment.

Members of the list might be interested in the Dislocate festival in  
Japan later this year – www.dis-locate.net - we’re going to be doing  
a version of our stitching work ‘Running Stitch’ in early September &  
there are lots of other interesting locative projects too.

Thanks for all the inspiring posts

Jen

Jen Southern
jen at theportable.tv

Hamilton, Southern & St Amand
www.hamiltonandsouthern.net
www.landlines.org
www.satellitebureau.net