participation
Connecting Across Difference
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | Conversations | 1 Comment
By Ruth Catlow
I have been a keen (if sporadic) blogger for a number of years, most regularly on the Furtherfield blog for reflection on media art- making it, curating it and translating it. I especially enjoy the way in which the format supports reflection on experiences, processes and ideas before they are black-boxed; while their forms and meanings are still taking shape. It has become natural to share this emerging stuff with other people with similar fields of interest. In this way we test the form and content of our ideas together from different perspectives and from geographically distant places, in a way that often gives rise to surprising connections and new directions.
Furtherfield.org are currently working in partnership with Drake Music on Connecting Across Difference, a season of creative music workshops with young musicians from mainstream and special schools in Tower Hamlets and Islington. The creative team includes composers (who lead on musical vision for the work), a music technologist (to support creative, light-footed implementations of assistive technologies for use by disabled musicians), a media artist and musicians. The season will culminate in a mixed media performance at Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, co-devised and performed by all participants in March 2009.
The theme for the season is Connecting Across Difference. This theme resonated for both of our organisations and is intended to catalyse imaginative and playful explorations of the joys and the strains (or challenges) of encountering, communicating and coming to know people who are different; who speak differently, have different ambitions, interests, skills and abilities, or who have different traditions and histories.
One important aim of the project is to explore ways in which technology can support and enhance participants’ individual and social experience of music making. We are working with assistive technologies to create specialist instruments according to the needs and musical ideas of individual musicians.
We are also developing a project blog. This is a platform for sharing information, ideas and experiences during the project. It will provide a place where groups from participating schools can share their experiences and see their contribution as part of the whole project. They will be able to add images and sounds and ideas from the workshops to produce regular podcasts so that others can become inspired by their work. We are encouraging everybody to use it as a tool for connecting with each other: to promote discussion, sharing and understanding. As well as acting as a platform for discussion the blog is a source of information about the project, and will make it possible for friends and family to follow the progress of the project.
The blog (which includes a private forum for the creative team to discuss the planning and framework for the project) will serve as an archive of the project; a rich document of personal as well as collective experiences and learning. If all goes according to plan, it will also provide a site for ongoing exchange between project participants and extended networks of musicians. Also as a foundation for ongoing collaboration between musicians and technologists in the development of new approaches to instrument making and music making in general.
Lois Weaver: seeking out connections
Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Lois Weaver | No Comments
Lois weaver: seeking out connections
“We have a real understanding of what commitment means… and we have a lot of guilt associated with not fulfilling that commitment - that’s our connection to our own work, that kind of passion, that thing that holds you to the failures that you face on a day to day basis in your own studio, or at your own laptop… ”
As the primary investigator for DemTech (Democratising Technology), Lois Weaver worked differently from the other artists engaged in The Not Quite Yet - she suggested other artists to the project, and worked across the whole initiative. Her contribution to the exhibition at SPACE was an evocative installation touching on some of the explorations she and participants had undertaken - time lines, memories and evocative objects.
Stacy Makishi and AGLOW - aiming at failure
Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Stacy Makishi and AGLOW | No Comments
Stacy Makishi and AGLOW – aiming at failure, and exploring its consequences
“the first day is usually about trust – about why you’re there, your intentions; making sure you’re not exploiting them, using them as materials….”
We recorded an interview with Stacy about her experiences as an artist commissioned by SPACE Media Arts to contribute to The Not Quite Yet. Stacy’s exhibits, developed in collaboration with AGLOW, a Hackney-based Older People’s group (and with additional input from others from Stacy’s network), took the form of Japanese Chindogu, or “invention dropouts” - click here for exhibition text.
Consumer Futures
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | Consumer Futures | No Comments
As I hope is strongly conveyed elsewhere in this ‘case study’ section of co-pilot, the artists who were commissioned in spring 2008 to work with groups of Older People as part of The Not Quite Yet, share a drive to engage people with their creativity - in order to draw attention to perceived injustices, or positive potentialities in the social fabric - and through doing so, perhaps take us all a step closer to addressing or embracing these. With this in mind, it doesn’t feel inappropriate to consider some points of reference from outside the world of contemporary arts (which can often feel hermetically sealed to the wider public) that caught my attention over the period that I was hearing about the results of these unique, multi-generational collaborations.
On 6 Jan 2008 a headline in the UK’s Observer newspaper ran: “Digital World Creates a new underclass: modern shopping and banking frustrate those who can’t log on or want to speak face to face.” The piece picked up on ‘Consumer Futures’ on a new report by the National Consumer Council (NCC) which highlighted the growing divide between those who have the resources and skills to play the market and those – largely the elderly and poor – who are increasingly being left behind. › Continue reading
Developing Projects with Communities
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | Developing Projects with Communities | No Comments
Have you ever wondered if there are exciting pools of knowledge out there, that you’ve spent idle time wondering about, vaguely searching for….but then, over years, began to conclude that perhaps they don’t exist - at least not in a way you will encounter? I have. And: isn’t it great when someone whose intellect you admire recommends a book you should read? It’s bound to be useful to chew on under any circumstances - but what if this book allows you access to that world of ideas you’ve been half-imagining and which you realise, now the book is in your lap, that you’ve been yearning for?
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