On cities, mapping, psychogeography and the experience of places.

A new book exploring the political, social and cultural implications of visualising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology.

“The Bio Mapping tool is therefore a unique device linking the personal and intimate with the outer space of satellites orbiting around the earth.”

A collection of essays by Raqs Media Collective, Marcel van der Drift, Dr Stephen Boyd Davis, Rob van Kranenburg, Sophie Hope and Dr Tom Stafford brought together and edited by Christian Nold.

Book launch, with talks by the editor Christian Nold as well as Dr Tom Stafford and Sophie Hope, Friday 24th April 2009 6.30 -9pm at SPACE, Hackney.

SPACE, 129-131 Mare St, London E8 3RH

Lately, my work has taken me to a college in Reading where I teach 16-18 years old kids; Weirdly perhaps, I haven’t been round so much juvenile display for the past 10 years. Being there was like jumping back in time, suddenly putting me back face to face with what I must have been like at that age. Yet because of the progressive evolution of my circle of acquaintances (and my aging!), I didn’t realise how I came to look retrospectively at the places I lived in with a strong connection to a particular age band – London being the most “grown-up” environment, dispossessed of any immaturity, as if pranksters had ceased to exist just because I became oblivious to them.

Coincidentally, Reading was also the set for a comedy series of 6 episodes running last autumn on BBC2, starring two teenagers as they are grappling with the hopes and dreams of moving to London in order to fulfil their lifelong ambition of becoming respected hair-dressers and being around the ‘Beautiful People’. The series amusingly managed to capture the essence of the nineties pretty well – thanks to a heavy load of girl-bands-era soundtrack [CD sold separately]. Besides, the acting was pretty good, especially from one of the characters who struck me by the physical resemblance he bore with me, and the similarities of his views on life.

The journey to London they undertake towards the end of the series is a lot more than a mere 30-min train ride: it tells of the irresistible attraction of the big city, the very embodiment of ambition, freedom, stardom: everything one craved as a teenager. It clearly represents the symbolic transition from one age to another, from one status to another. Only to realize that after all, the life of the Beautiful People isn’t as desirable as one might have imagined.

Beautiful People on bbc.co.uk

The Monument Project (Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice), a new digital video installation by Chris Meigh-Andrews commissioned by Julian Harrap Architects on behalf of the City of London Corporation opens on the 21th of March at the Nunnery gallery, Bow.

The installation, which produces a continuous stream of ambient responsive panoramic images from the top of the Monument in the City of London, 24 hours a day, 7 days per week for 3 years, can be accessed at http://www.themonumentview.net/

The launch event will take place at The Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts Trust, 183 Bow Road, London E3 2SJ, from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM, Friday, March 20^th, 2009.

Finisterre is a collaborative film project, part-documentary / part-music promo, between film-makers Paul Kelly, Kieran Evans and the electro-pop band Saint-Etienne, produced by CC-Lab and supported by Onedotzero.

I watched this film for the first time shortly after it came out in 2003, and remained fascinated by it ever since; after watching it again recently I was inhabited by the same irresistible feelings of nostalgia and tenderness. Beyond the innovative format of the film, which seeks to explore the possibilities of a 60-minute music-promo at the scale of an entire album, the combination of Saint-Etienne’s melancholic or energetic tunes and Kelly/Evans thoughtful shots successfully captures the alternating moods that London has to offer to the unsuspecting visitor.

The film starts and finishes with a train journey in and out of the city, dusk to dawn, unknown to familiar, and transports the spectator on a journey of discoveries and insights into the ‘London Nobody Knows’, through a succession of interviews of local artists and residents connected to the story of Saint Etienne, blended with powerful musical passages accompanied by imagery ranging from architectural patterns to urban scenes and walking crowds, always meticulously shot as stills documenting the city area by area, punctuated by an overwhelming voice-over narrative that features the observations and reminiscences of Lawrence. Finisterre sheds some light on London as a source of influence, inspiration and curiosity for many, offering a trip through the city that is largely reminiscent of a line of psycho-geographic films such as ‘London’, ‘Robinson In Space’ (Patrick Keiller), and ‘Orbital’ (Chris Petit).

The result is a touching tribute to London, marvelously conveying the essence of the place while forming a visual record and musical impression of the city today.

On the subject of “the ability of sound to instil even the most mundane images with beauty or new meaning” and matching mood with space, I remember visiting a show appropriately entitled “Shhh… Sounds in Spaces” at the Victoria and Albert museum back in the summer 2004.

The rather unusual aspect of this show was that the museum displays hadn’t been altered in any way; Instead, the museum-goer was given headphones connected to a player containing a set of pre-recorded tracks that was triggered as you crossed specific doorways. The portable technology used (IR sensors and a lightweight headset) was transparently integrated, giving way to the stunning experience of entering a room just to be surprised and self-conscious of our own presence and motion into the space, revealing the hidden aural dimensions of architecture. This ‘invisible exhibition’ was actually turning the experience of visiting a gallery upside-down while engaging visitors with the space in an unparalleled way: the wandering visitor was the focus-point of the art, rather than being simply an external observer of it, by creating their very own audio-cinematic display in (and from) their head as they moved along the rooms and corridors of the museum.

Ten sound artists and musicians were commissioned to create aural pieces re-defining specific rooms and spaces of the museum from their own perspective. The results encompassed a wide variety of approaches to making sound, through a game of contrasts and comparisons between sound and space: compositional, concrete, conceptual, in response either to the architecture, to the objects, to activity, or associations of meaning: from Roots Manuva’s outspoken social commentary in the Norfolk Room to Cornelius’ work which was particularly moving – It was almost as if you felt the music was a direct echo of the light twinkling on the glass and ceramics objects you were looking at.

We all use maps in our daily lives, as sources of information about places, routes, networks or boundaries. Fundamentally, they are simplified schematic diagrams that employ a universal visual language through which we codify and comprehend our world. They offer us means of describing and understanding the untangible too – This exhibition looks at ways artists have used the language and the iconography of maps to express their ideas and experiences of place.
Although mapping is a method for gathering, ordering and exploiting information, the show reminds us that all maps are to some extend the product of the imagination: no map is truly the objective description of a place that it purports to represent. Every map is shaped, coloured, framed by political and social conditions and by personal experience or imaginative projections of its maker.

Journeys made visible

Through his ‘GPS drawing’ practice, Jeremy Wood has over time amassed a considerable amount of data about his personal displacements. His work All London Tracks features all his journeys, by car, foot or air, in and over London. The tiny dark threads that represent these journeys go round buildings or through parks, along roads, to give shape to his practice of the city. The practice of walking as an image-making process is also found in Richard Long’s work A six hour run from Exmoor to Dartmoor (1975) where the artist’s footprints has marked the landscape of a continuous line.
Langland & Bell’s Air Routes of the World (2001) offers an alternative view of the world map, where land masses are omitted and instead air travel defines the important locations.
London’s Kerning (N:B Studio, 2006) is a map of the capital stripped of every line, fill and symbol, leaving only the text to represent the layout and crossings of streets (In the art of typography, kerning refers to the adjustment of space between pairs of letters).

Colours and lines

The show featured a collection of pocket tube maps commissioned by Platform for Art, playfully subverting the map itself which has become over time an icon for London.
John Dilnot’s Map draw together colours from paint charts, which often bear evocative names: Here, those colour names are arranged on a map of Britain around the places after which they are named.

Revisiting the history of map-making, exploring the mind

George Andre’s Draughtsman’s Handbook (1874) is a large volume with a very utilitarian purpose: it was aimed at encouraging best-practice in map drawing. Stephen Walter Similands humorously imitates the iconography of 16-17th century maps in his condensed sketches of the geography of Britain.

During her time as an artist-in-residence in the neuro-radiology department at the Royal London Hospital, Susan Aldworth has questioned the possibility of our inner geography, culminating in her work Birth of a thought (2007).
Michael Drucks’s Druckland Physical and Social (1974) is a self-portrait exploring personal and political identity using the idiom of mapping.

Richard Dadd, 'Sketch to Illustrate The Passions: Patriotism', 1857

Mapping the Imagination – Victoria and Albert Museum

BRENTFORD BIOPSY
April 5 – June 15

During April and May 2008, Watermans gallery will be converted into a live design/mapping studio where investigatory, locative media artist Christian Nold together with the designer Daniela Boraschi will be working with local residents to gather information for digital and physical visualizations of the ecological, cultural and economic ‘health’ of Brentford.

Instead of taking tissue samples as one would from a human being Christian Nold and participants will be using a range of cultural probes to investigate the local social body and its unique ailments. Like eastern medicine investigators will be taking a holistic view of
Brentford that looks for interconnections between problems and challenges to get a sense of the whole. The project acts as both creative art project as well as hard-nosed consultation with invited stakeholder groups like politicians, historians, the local chamber of commerce as well as ecologists and the general public.

More info: www.publicbiopsy.net.

They say there are lots of Aussies in London… This is probably what this map is about, showing the river Thames flowing through the Australasian continent:

This one-off 10-day exhibition opened in December 2006 in Bargehouse (London’s South Bank) and was curated by the Light Surgeons.
The four-storey building – a dilapidated, raw warehouse – the ligthing and atmosphere of the space lent themselves marvelously to the purpose of the show, “a journey to examine how we move through, interact with, and share the built environment”.

Spanning the interconnected themes of travelling, inhabiting cities, private/public space, the event featured audio/video installations by the Light Surgeons, talks by Scanner, Iain Sinclair on his last book ‘London, City of disappearances’, and film screenings from Onedotzero’s own ‘Digital Terrains’ programme. A couple of film/video pieces by Lenka Clayton & James Price particularly grabbed my attention: ‘conversation’, where two TV monitors playback interviews of passers-by making a judgement upon each other on the basis of appearance, thus giving a peculiar insight – not least funny – of people’s untold perceptions of each other; In the series of films ‘People in Order’, the film-makers intentionally set filming ‘rules’ contained in the title: In ‘Age’ they shot 100 people in their home, telling their age, shown in order. This was followed by ‘Relationship’, ‘Wealth’… offering as many original and alternative ways to go about documenting people and their environment.

The show also explored the dimension of travel, with some very interesting works by the Light Surgeons – one travelogue video showing upstairs, and the installation ‘transit’ on the ground floor, featuring a full-scale airport terminal hall with its luggage carrousel and passengers’ voices listing the contents of their luggage.
As Chris Thomas Allen (from the Light Surgeons) puts it: “The moment you arrive you have departed. As you leave you have begun a new experience. The fluid movements of our arrivals and departures map threads of intertwined experiences in transitory space. Within the pockets of personal space we carry memories, aspirations and secrets. These resonant whispers mark our personal cartographies in the public realm.”

www.articulatedlondon.org

“What would happen if street corners could talk? Some people believe that bricks and mortar can record sound vibration – that if you could unlock this you would be able to hear the history of the area played back to you.”

Daniel Belasco Rogers spent months recording stories told by local residents of the Greenwich area. In August 2006, the “Peninsula Voices” project will find out what stories are written through the pavements, using handheld computers connected by GPS, making it possible to walk round the area and hear the voices of those who lived there.

www.planbperformance.net/dan