In July a few of us went down to the lake to do some locative drawing, only to find that others had been before us. Not only that, they’d outdone us - beautiful prints of indigenous insects had been created on mass to make a paper palace as part of Architecture Week. Geraldine, willow architect and insect workshop leader, has agreed to let us add the insects to the theirwork ‘drawing folder‘ I will post some real soon, along with some of our locative drawings. We drew near the leftovers of the paper palace -

Feeling: air, fresh, relaxing, doebury-furkin, tranquil, peaceful, clean, natural, open, safe, tranquil, birdsong, quiet, peaceful, relaxing
Colour: blue, green, muted, blue
Physical: walk, drink, pool, sea, wooded, muddy, pssh, wild, natural, water, sea, rocky, sandy, scenic, clean, high, sky, open, woodland, parkland, beach
Weather: sunny, sunny, muddy, fresh, mild, cold, sunny, sunny

These are tags that developed from winter fieldwork. After a series of one-to-one interview walks at the lake, a ‘paper workshop’ enabled the words to be combined into a group tagging system. I hope to gather some summer words soon.

The last group drawing we did. The picnic we're going on is the south side of the lake, which is showing brown.
People keep talking about how they've walked the lake at night - so I turned the drawing into night.

Next week, Bevan, Elly, Nikki, Sarah and I are going to Loe Bar to do some ‘locative recording’, that is, we are going to draw and photograph things whilst eating. This trip has been inspired by Bevan’s drawings.

And this is one of his gorg. drawings.

Today I presented theirwork to Karel Dudesek, which was a fun inspiring experience as well as extremely helpful to the development of the project.

Are you making visible your stats? Do you want to put a stats button there? You could see all traffic then, and so could everyone else. Some people don’t want people to see their traffic. I will email you some easy software for that.

Can you specify what needs to be done to different programmers? If you use rentacoder can you write about different aspects that need to get done, in their language? You are creating an enterprise now. You are an agency if you want to carry on. You have the framework, which was your plan. Now plan for a year’s budget - PR, equipment, travel and technical development… - then apply for funding but have money coming in and going out. You can target the Arts Council, you are hitting some buttons… Operate like Readers’ Digest.. It’s rubbish right? But they get articles and images from all over the place, for like £10. Say a school comes in and gives you 50 images, then give them £50 back. It’s not great to do all for free. Don’t rely on acts of the voluntary. People have to invest a lot. Free can create a tension and it’s hard to get rid of that then. It’s better to take away emotional attachment. Put a Paypal button there. Create an economy, even if you just give a programmer or someone a £1. Go auction.

Don’t take this criticism to heart. There’s quantity but it’s still text based - bring in more of the visual, and touch on the emotional, which is a chance thing. It is serious, too formal still. If you can hit on some emotion then you’ve got content and you need to keep getting content. Content is king, otherwise the thing dries out. The imagery of the childlike map and the logo buttons are fine, but bring in the design. What’s still missing is the visual representation of the data, and in a way which captures people’s emotion. Just percentages and points are not good. The text is nice on the right [the tagging] but it still needs to appear with things. Flickr hit by a mistake, it’s not an easy thing to hit emotion. They were so focussed on gaming environments for so long, the photographs were just one tiny part.

What’s missing is also the relationship of the lake to other things. The size of the lake, its dimensions, its mass.

Think about how much size you want to give something, how far should a car or building be from it? How much space do you need to give yourself? How much space to you need to give a flower? A fish?

People need to see more than, oh, there’s a focussed researcher; they need to see the thing. Don’t bring it from reading now. Your reading again now, into the imagery - don’t analyse that way. Look at the emotion and humour. Bring in the humour. Yes, it is serious; for sure climate change is here. We know in the world we are going to stand at the gates of heaven stripped bare and get sent down to hell. It is serious, people are being stupid but bring in humour with the daily changing of habit…with humour comes positivism…positivism alone can be contrived.

And you touched on it, but how would this work in other places? If I cast a net in China how would it function? For people have the same problems there. If I cast it on that table over there, that door, what would happen? It should work. How would language work in somewhere like China? What would happen? How can the project fire off? You need to be able to cast a net anywhere…

Don’t underestimate an individual’s involvement. What they can bring can change things. Don’t set them on the wrong track by not listening and staying too focussed on your track. You’ll lose them. With community you will bring in different types of people, stay alert to seeing it and what they bring…

Now it’s locative, its location. Get more locative. I don’t mean kiosks. Literally leave stickers on a post or something. And I do mean do stuff away from the computer…You know, because some people might not even be able to access the interface. It might be mobile phones, sending message of hidden treasure…downloading and uploading. Create dialectic between the real and virtual. Think about what else is fun. How do you involve people? Don’t think, I will just give out free GPS machine, say, ‘earn five organic salads’…

You say you’re presenting a paper, when?

It’s a good project. I don’t mind if you say that’s it now, I am moving on to another project. You have to decide what to do. Well done.

HIDDEN TREASURE

I am thinking about all of this. It is tiring (good tiring) and early to form a large response but I have been thinking about hidden treasure. And oh, how my work used to have humour, I think, and I think it’s still here, there, present in this project, but I need to dig it out. I totally agree it needs to come out. With regards to hidden signage, there are previous posts I will dig out later about mobile phones and technology and perhaps I should start to do some research in the Autumn on that. Here’s a nice one from Emmet that relates. I also have user tests not posted about interface design, that talk about making it more fun, and I will do more research into look and feel - like hands on research in the future. I also have some old posts about visualisation and quantifying data, (some of which touch on humour). For instance, a past prototype, creating something that needs to be evocative, layers merging in a map, visualising methodology. I will also revisit these to help drive ideas and perhaps future specifications.

Funny enough, I had just sent this to Emmet “Quite like this - making visitors public on sites, feltron.com, which is on a site you pointed to me earlier.” I look forward to seeing the software link karel sends. I think the most important thing to dwell on at the moment is the auction. And, I was so pleased to hear this, “Create dialectic between the real and virtual” because I had just posted a new category on the forum the day before. I was worried that such a thread might lead people away from the computer. Karel has given me the confidence not to worry about building on this aspect - create events outside, and leave things about outside that help to lead people into the project - give access to people who have no access.

hidden signage developing outside (aside from mobile phones)
stuff in the sand (leave signs)
wandering trolleys (once again)
bike messengers
houses with woodchips and logos
hooks on trees
love on a tree
scratches on a bench
purple dots in a tree, purple point data on a map
the butterfly ball
bluebell notes
postcard heavens
mapping with soul
maps of steal
dog bags (both sorts)
badgers in the bush

Nikki and I have been waiting for the Yellow Flag Iris pseudacorus to flower at the Pool. Last week it did. We got a lat and long mark for one but no images. To make up for no imagery, and once again, a missed drawing opportunity, I give this nice post at this great place called the Human Flower Project

(w -5.28350, n 50.09070)
(If I had found it flowering at the right moment, it would have taken me at least two days to draw, with some serious fridge action in between.)

Here’s an example of slow drawing. I was trying to get in some time to draw the Goat Willow Salis caprea. It was so magnificent, intriguing and fun at Easter. I can only describe it as a miniature acid and mild yellow toilet brush. I knew it would take me at least eight hours to draw. I knew from previous drawings how I wanted to do it, just like this Common Fig Ficus carica.

However, I just missed focussing on the best flowering days and so I have to wait for another year to carry out the plan. I have a flower press now (a very nice donation) and I need to get a macro lens and tripod to get a better image than this. Then at least if I need to spend more than one day on it, I will have some great reference.

(Goat Willow Salix caprea Dark green, sub-glossy leaves are pointed and only shallowly toothed. Unstalked, single scaled, yellow-green buds hug the stem. Much broader, erect catkins, separate sex trees and fruit like cotton-wool. Harding, P. & Tomblin, G. (1998) How to Identify Trees Italy: Collins)

Since April, around every two or three weeks, Nikki and I have been walking around the same part of Loe pool. We meet after work, head down there, study the same trees and look at the changes. I talk to Nikki about botanical drawing and she discusses photography and horticulture. She makes me look at leaf shapes, bud activity, size variation… We both delight in colour changes.

Over the spring, there was a mass of acid green and acid yellow. This was due to trees such as the Norway Maple adorning the riverside and Goat Willow hiding in the wetland. This was all against a backdrop of yellow-flowering gorse and white-flowering blackthorne. Now, the Yellow Flag Iris Iris pseudacorus is showing yellow, and ‘helicopters’ cling to a large number of trees.

Here’s part of our re-walk forming. When theirwork’s map is editable, I will start adding descriptions for the plants that we are learning.

common alder (2), n 50.09635, w 005.28209
holly (male), n 50.08707, w 005.28550
jay, n 50.02951, w 005.24851
red fungi, n 50.09137, w 005.28367
honey suckle, n 50.09136, w 005.28374
hazle (1), n 50.08831, w005.28377
hazle (2), n 50.08633, w 005.28733
hazle (3), n 50.08591, w 005.28817
yellow flag iris, n 50.09070, w 005.28350

We hope to continue with such walking and build on ideas for recording information. Nikki’s photographing down there anyway, and I have started a new project called ‘Plant and Place’, which will be launched as a long-term botanical art project later this year. This project will be about ’slow drawing’. Botanical work takes a long time, a lot of practice and patience. To inform the work, I am continuing with such training as outlined in one of my posts called slow drawing I have planned to receive further training from Mally Francis to help guide this work. One of the spaces (or one of the places) given to this project will of course be here, this walk at Loe Pool. This work will of course link to theirwork and I hope artwork concerning Loe Pool can feed into the map, along with other peoples’ drawing and photography.

We have lots of questions about trees. Like this one, here I have drawn the Italian Alder Alnus cordata. When I started it, I thought it was a native tree to the area, the Common Alder Alnus glutinosa but I found out that some of the Alders in Cornwall might have been planted as Italian instead of Common by a mistake! The cones of the foreign variety are bigger and the leaf is heart shaped not blunt.

Italian Alder Alnus cordata

At last I am writing here again. Although I have been quiet virtually, I have been busy outside in the landscape making drawings and walkings. Emmet got a new job and I have been setting up another project. We basically got snowed in with other work. The spring then set in, and look, the summer is here. Rather than trying to get people inside for another theirwork workshop, I have been organising outside activities. This week it’s midsummer and so time to start sharing again. Aptly, first of all, a few photos of our summer solstice barbecue at Loe Bar beach. We had perfect weather.

Barbecue location looking north, then east

Sarah and Pete scoffing burgers, hotdogs, salad and strawberries. Pete heralding the sunset with some circular breathing

Tea after beer, (note the reusable cups and great whistle kettle). Beach clean-up - washed up plastic bottles on the beach. One was from Indonesia. In the picture of Pete playing the didge, you can see some of the bottles glinting in the sun. (I reckon this is the best use for an Ikea bag. Sarah took the bottles off and nobly recycled them.) Fishermen arriving to catch pollack and bass.

You have to listen to this talk at it conversations because it sums up so much of what theirwork is trying to achieve. Well, let me re-phrase that big time, so much of what Schuyler Erle mentions links directly to what we are trying to achieve. The others are way to focussed on the polluting car and so have little foresight. And I wonder what Urry would have to say about that? There is actually one little phrase that I am not going to pull out accurately, but something like the car and the gps system are one of the ways forward for the future. Um. Excuse me, climate change, asthma…I won’t go on.

Here’s a snippet of Erle’s chat. He’s discussing the fabulous consume.net project.

“…now here are a bunch of people that are attempting to share resources, they are attempting in some ways to make the city a better place but the access that they can get to data in the Uk is basically terrible. The OS license terms and the license fees raise a barrier to entry that is so high that individuals, that community groups, non-governmental organisations are just completely left out in the cold and for one of the biggest and one of the best set up community networks in the world to have a node map with a bunch of dots on a white background is frankly an embarrassment.”