The Art of Conversing with Disappearing Buildings.
Socially engaged Art Practice through Practice Led Research.
The Sheps.
On approach, the door and windows afford no view of whos inside. This
is a “hiding place” a form of shelter. The building makes
a face, perhaps an Tawney Owl - a bleach face.. The front windows
and above the door, frosted Irish panes exclaim 'BAR'... On and in,
the experience is distinct from pubs of our age. It is spatially different,
materials are those of 50 years ago or more - never renovated - chipped
white and red, or were they black linoleum tiles, old varnished and
painted wooden benches. The scène forms a sympathetic soliloquy
of aging disinterest in modernity. The pub provides migration front
through side to back, as each generation ages and takes up their habitual
seat – So what is so special about the Sheps ?
Gaston Bachelard says '...we return home.., that home is a shell within which we may dream... in this sense we live in our skulls... psyche’s also return home to sleep...' Poetics of Space
The project was created for a pub; the Shepherds Arms free house (a public bar) in Cwmaman a small Welsh village in the industrial valleys of South Wales UK.
Specifics relating to people or institutions have been left out of the following:
Our idea in association with our collaborators was to project on to the outside of a building as if the building was wearing thoughts memories and ideas of its own. The building was to be bought back to life and its importance to the community explored with a public “conversation” of live text messaging and images. Underlying the work is the potential loss (demolition)of the building and ignorance of the local value held for this a traditional valleys pub.
Throughout the South Wales valleys (and further a field) old buildings can now be knocked down providing they are not of significant architectural merit.
Below we also post a PowerPoint addressing this problem using art and communication. Our proposal also seeks to support and enhance the principle of “County Treasures”
http://www.artstation.org.uk/cwmaman/sheps.ppt
The proposal (PowerPoint) was rejected apposing the concerns of a significant number of community members who are not organized but represented a strong “community of interest”.
We became aware
of community tensions through research on a previous project Arising
Nature in Cwmaman in 2007. Historically, many of the older people
who no longer drink in the bar - a middle and younger aged contingent
who use the bar regularly consider the building an essential resource
within the character of the village. Many biographies intersect with
the pub in interesting ways and giving the pub a strong sense of place
www.artstation.org.uk/cwmaman/cwmaman.htm
A
projected image
A composite of image, text, and real-time text messaging.
Projection illuminates the playback of building history on its exterior
face for all to see.
- A process which could be used for other buildings or places of social importance
Content
Pictorial media composition: video, image and design, created by artists
interacting with pub drinkers and community of Cwmaman Overlaid with
questions answers and statements arising from local social interactions
on the theme of the pub are converted into live text messages overlaid
in counter reaction to the bid for demolition.
Project
background:
The Installation addresses suppressed social patterns and politics
found within Cwmaman and which are broadly indicative of parochial
interests everywhere. It also addresses through micro and macro reference
issues that make buildings important places to communities as apposed
to the architectural academic classification (the genus loci or distinguished
and representational design).
Through this work, we want to discover and eveluate a “cultural understanding” of the building and to find ways to celebrate the free spirit of biographies that intersect with this place through history.
Ethics
of various kinds
A planning application to demolish the Shepherds Arms had
been tabled to make way for a car par for an adjacently situated building.
Public concern
had no way of being heard conversation about the pub had been controlled
and effectively silenced .
The projects proposals for a method of open dialogue, was deflected
away from Shepherds Arms, toward claims that an “open txt system”
could and probably would be abused by the community for bullying or
naming. No evidence was presented in support of this and a range of
negative scenarios were suggested. Opposition to the original title
Mash-up and Guerrilla txt for the Shepherds Arms, was also noted.
Artstation have around 20 'symmetrical' emails concerning negotiations
- they remain more or less diplomatic but culminate in complete negation
and rejection of the project. The documents will be retained and mat
be used later.
We had even bent
over backwards to accommodate questions and worries raised , many
'checks and measures' were placed to filter out undesirable or coded
messaging.
Negotiations
left a strong negative impression unimaginative and obstructive. It
seemed local people could not be trusted to constructively contribute
to our proposed scheme. Our own experience of Cwmaman could not have
been different to this impression. local people were highly supportive,
it is this that has most motivated our continued interest.
The projects adversarial relationship caused another problem. Kath Williams works with codes of practice laid down by the University of Glamorgan. These state that research involving external parties must operate with their approval. The University is also a financial stakeholder in our project.
What is the purpose of research if not to push at problems, with reasonable and justifiable risk ? Genetic engineering in animal and plant life, with its clear financial incentives, is still widely researched in spite of serious ethical questions and risk, ditto many other examplesWe understand the precautionary principle but feel a greater good is better served by our undertaking this research. We had set out to appose the corralling views into a uniform and homogenised agreement; where decent is not allowed. The Sheps PowerPoint was our last proposal but an attempt to find acceptable methods of compromise and work around had been exhausted.
This and many
other untold activities bought a halt to the project in Cwmaman. This
was was a frustration given money and expectations had been raised
The artists now
want to investigate further the aesthetics of social networks such
as those found in the valleys of South Wales communities
The team has turned to look at ways of retaining the broad aims and objectives of the original proposal whilst allowing continued collaboration with academic partners.
See The TXT2 projects in the Artstation site that follow and benefit from experience of this project.
Photos by Diago
Vidart, Kristian Helgesen and Artstation
Seen at night a tapestry of material could build...
This work has leads to TXT2 project
see Vulcan and Chapter events www.artstation.org.uk
A surface unwrapping from the research installation Arising Nature.
Science
Shops project website:
www.ofarisingnature.org.uk
Social networking software
Open source development
Technical
documentation:
The
Project utilises open source Java software developed in association
with Dr Ian Grimstead of Cardiff University. This is used to create
a transparent frame for live mobile txt. The frame floats over other
and related applications (OpenOffice.org Impress. 2.4)
The software parses the presentation layout defined in ODP (Open Document Presentation) files (we define layout in the Open Office version of PowerPoint to keep things open and inexpensive [free!]). We have hijacked the ODP file format page description.
Note: By changing the file extension to ODP to ZIP the compressed file may be read and changed. Inside are all components including XML page layout editable files.
Note that OpenOffice also runs on Apple Macs, Linux so we have the potential to use other operating systems rather than Microsoft Windows.
The software parses the following information from the ODP file:
1/ Frame position for SMS text
2/ Font type, style, colour, etc. of the text
3/ Slide transition period (i.e. delay between change of slides)
4/ Timeout to trigger reading of backlog messages (i.e. how long to wait without receiving any new SMS messages before reading a backlog message, to maintain audience interest)A text box is ignored by the software UNLESS it has (and only has) the text word Message: in it (note trailing colon).
This is for two reasons:
1/ Differentiate an SMS box rather than background/questions/provocation
2/ To record the
required font type (Font type, style, colour, etc.)
The Java program has several parameters that enable it to discover
the connected mobile telephone and to launch OpenOffice Impress automatically.
These are:
launcher.bat <com port of phone> <full filename of ODP file> <delay before starting SMS display> <full filename of OpenOffice Impress executable>
For example:
launcher.bat com6 "HELLO THERE3.odp" 4 "c:\Program
Files\OpenOffice.org 2.3\program\soffice.exe (Device Manager, Windows
Control Panel): telephone is represented as COM port #6 (Sony Ericsson
Device 125 USB WMC Device Management (COM6) listed under Ports (COM
& LPT).
Hence COM6 as the 1st argument. HELLO THERE3.odp is the filename of
the presentation (stored in the same directory as launcher.bat, hence
local filename)
4 a 4 second delay before starting the SMS presentation overlay on top of the OpenOffice presentation.
NOTE: The Java program will start OpenOffice for you, but there will be a delay as OpenOffice loads (etc), so we must wait until the presentation starts. This is an effort to coordinate the starting of both programs (Java & openOffice Impress). This may need tweaking depending on your machine. "c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.3\programs\office.exe" this is the location of the OpenOffice Impress software (called "soffice.exe"), to enable Java to find and launch the presentation on the projector.
Audit trail
A file is
dropped out ("called phoneMessageLog.txt") every received
SMS is logged in here, it is never overwritten; each new start of
the Java program appends to this file. Each new project you may wish
to copy this file somewhere safe with a different name.
Java program: the GUI: Messages
are inserted at the top of the GUI as they arrive; they are denoted:
Live if they have been received from the telephone
Backlog if they were on the telephone before the presentation started (e.g. from leaving the telephone on overnight)
To rapidly enter a message into the presentation, simply type it into the "Enter text message:" box, and click on the "Submit" message button. It will arrive in exactly the same manner as if a SMS message was received from the telephone (and will be entered into the audit trail, etc.). The telephone number will be displayed as "Console".
Block sender :
For nuisance SMSs, click the button next to the offending message.
Any more messages from this telephone number will now be ignored.
software
Software dependencies:
smslib-3.2.1.jar (Java support to communicate with a mobile telephone
that supports AT codes e.g. Sony Ericsson. NOTE: Nokia do not fully
support these codes). win32com.dll used by smslib to contact COM ports
under Microsoft Windows. When running under Linux or anotherOperating
System, other/alternative support will be required.
Windows device
driver for Sony Ericsson mobile telephones:
This is
part of PC Suite; tested with version 2.10.46; issues were found with
alternative drivers (e.g. W810i specific drivers did not communicate
properly when new messages arrived).
Source code is mutually owned through Artstation and Dr Ian Grimstead of Cardiff Uni. It will be supplied when final version posted on Artstation website
2008 Artstation