sand point - looking to the atlantic

If you were here, would you want music? or silence?

awakening mind - primal knowledge

"...The knower is transformed in a dynamic process; the knower and the known become unified through immediate mutual participation.
Primal knowledge belongs to the Buddhist traditions as well. Here, too, the primary challenge is moving beyond the egocentric mind. In letting go of the "object of knowledge," genuine knowledge is realized; in letting go of the ego–knower, primal knowledge is realized. Knowledge blossoms with the awakening mind that participates in the boundless interplay of things.

In Zen experience, the interplay between the knower and the known is so profound that egocentric language is totally inadequate. The connection is like that in archer, where archer, bow, arrow, the action of taking aim, and the target all merge to become a holistic process. Knowledge is more about the process of awakening mind than about "content" of thought or "object" of knowledge. This is the Zen way of knowing. "

From:
"The Awakening of Primal Knowledge"
by Dr. Ashok K. Gangadean
from Parabola, The Magazine of Myth & Tradition
Spring 1997
http://www.awakeningmind.org/pages/pkarticle.php

coincidence? - from the Guardian : discuss!

Have a look at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/dec/20/ipod-instinct

Extract:
"Instinct acts as a kind of behavioural satnav. It's a quiet and reassuring inner voice that will always give you guidance, provided you can be bothered to tune into it. However, humans are always suspicious of inner voices, especially if there's more than one of them.

Instinct is the accumulated wisdom of a thousand generations of human beings hard-wired into our little heads. Sadly, this is then very quickly obscured by the formal process of education. Instinct is a mixture of the common sense that tells you when something supposedly good is actually a load of cobblers, and also of the uncommon sense that warns you of things that normally come without warning.

Seeing things with your own eyes is generally held to be a good way of verifying things. But eyes are screens, and like any screen they don't tell the whole story. Getting a feel for things is much more effective because it lets your sixth sense have a sniff around. As a French philosopher once said, instinct is the nose of the mind. It sounds slightly odd, but instinctively you know it's right. "

By Guy Browning
The Guardian, Saturday 20 December 2008

Strata at Sandbox

Thought it'd be good to post a reminder from Jane & Jackie's visit to the media sandbox launch at Watershed on Monday, of some of the things that may be relevent to prototyping Sightlines....

The top 5 golden rules (we preferred to call them 'platinum TIPS') to consider when setting out on your innovative multi-platform pervasive media project..... (as voted by attendees)

• What’s the point?
• Know your target audience
• Know your platforms and their features and constraints
• Identify a desire/need that this product is filling
• A single/simple idea

Some of our favourites were also:

• Innovate or improve
• Consider potentials, adaptability, flexibility, extendability of your concept
• There are no rules
• Expect the unexpected
• Keep communication simple
• Develop/have a strong idea and stick to it (we thought: stay flexible & responsive at the same time as not being sucked into other agendas/doing things just because you could!)
• Interdependence of platform, content, audience

We also found these 'scenario' questions interesting..

• What dimensions are valuable to people as they go about their everyday lives? How can those dimensions be sensed and presented?
• How would we go about engaging with Bristol people to start re-using public drinking fountains instead of buying YAPB (yet another plastic bottle)?

And we realised that innovative multi-platform projects have 90% same requirements as any other creative/arts/education project, so we've already got a lot to give!
- oh yes, and it's great to have different coloured pens when writing on a flip-pad. And much easier to draw/spatialise/visualise as you talk (for Jackie, anyway!).
- aha, and very important to illuminate the stereotype that grannies don't get out mapping on their bike with their pda - they DO!

a good place to trail an Mscape living landscape journey

You look out west straight into the Atlantic ,,,,, lots of history, lots of light, lots of ... topography

smoke

This is this view from our kitchen window on a December morning.

This morning there was woodsmoke coming up from the valley and failing to rise in the cold still air.

It's not a place I've seen smoke before. There's no house there but there are some very old coke ovens by two ponds  which were once associated with a small coal mine. I suppose someone is coppicing and clearing and keeping warm with a fire.

I want to add smoke in the landscape as another sightline. Smoke is people, a fire, a focus. 

If we are aligning journeys by topographical features, then smoke would once have indicated the way between the hilltops and landmarks : hearths, warmth, welcome.

In a sparsely populated and wooded landscape, imagine the spicy smell of a bright blackthorn or hazel fire, smelt, seen, heard: refuge and company.

Trees and open space in the neolithic landscape : the need for sightlines

Oliver Rackham ( Woodlands; Collins, 2006) is interesting and persuasive on neolithic woodland. He sees any concept as 'wildwood' as belonging to the mesolithic and open to interpretation.  Anything post-mesolithic in the British isles would not be classifable as wildwood.

In the neolithic 'pollen diagrams show a great expansion of non-tree pollens' - coppice and open spaces make room for more pollen bearing species.

'The 'obvious explanation' of the elm decline in the early neolithic period is Dutch Elm disease.

'Monuments such as henges and long barrows involved precise alignments and called for a distant unobstructed horizon.Wide areas of what was later to be chalk downland and heath were already open country.

An open landscape on Down Farm - looking across the cursus towards the place of the midwinter sunset

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Working At The Cutting Edge

binary systems fast and slow

I wanted to record today's passing thought about binary systems.

I was amused by a link between the incredibly complex possibilities of modern technology, driven by a fast binary system of ON  and OFF, and slow 'stone age' technologies - under, over, up, down : weaving - warp, weft; basketry -  wand, rod: or more simply, breathing, in, out.

What would you put in your pit ?

Reading last night about the abundance of pits in the Down Farm ritual landscape. These pits belong to the same era as, and are adjacent to, the burial of our Mendip woman.

The pits all have objects in them. Bits of pottery. In one zone, most have antlers or tines from an antler ; plus bones, broken stone axes, whatever. In another zone, lots of cow bones. Odd things too - a dog skull with a worked flint ball : a large flint nodule which looked exactly like a cow skull ; a cow skull with a toad skeleton in its eye socket; a beautiful flint all shiny and stripy like a mint humbug.

What would you put in your pit?

Why?

sandbox profiles

landscape interpreter!

musician!

Landscape interpreter meets musician

Creative Consultant explores interactivity

The other end - up Mendip

You get twice as much sky land and air when you are up the top

cursus

I drove across Cranborne Chase and back yesterday on a frosty misty day. The  December yew trees are dense  black and the old mans' beard fluffy and white.

It's definitely the sunset behind the cursus, I saw it smearing the sky with an apricot and yellow splodge. The firs of Down Farm were standing in misty shrouds.

Interestingly, the ritual landscape looked more powerful and obvious heading west (home) in the evening than it did entering it from the west in the morning. - a vast spread of undulating countryside, falling away towards the winter evening. Sightlines all mapped out, crescent moon, venus, jupiter.

Only 17 days to the darkest night.

midwinter sunset

I think the cursus was aligned on the midwinter sunset.It seems even more powerful to think of them all standing there in a stinking blizzard staring down into the longest night and willing that sun to come back. Brrrrrrr!

goalposts

Russ wants to add an item to the manifesto.

Jumpers for goalposts. We prefer the whirl of the kickabout above the straitjacket of the competitive league. Adaptive tools need adaptive thinking.

manifesto of the Strata Collective

Chicken, egg : We believe a vital ingredient for high quality as we lead and create inspirational arts and events, is to regularly and sustainably address our own inspirational needs.

Caring, sharing : As freelance artists and facilitators we value opportunities for peer support, sharing ideas and creative growth.

Access : We assert our right to roam.

Clarity : We value clear thought and clear processes.

Curiosity : If there is a hole, we will look into it.

Pragmatism : We claim the right to travel from A to B by the route that reveals itself. 

Keep connected : We aim to investigate innovative new approaches to project planning and evaluation :

●       We strive to be paper free wherever possible .We value sound, image, experience.

●       We believe that ideas grow on trees. To follow this, we intend whenever possible to hold our meetings al fresco, preferably in a environment linked to the subject of the meeting, on the hoof, or- in the nearest pub

●       We aim to record events and gather outputs as they happen and produce outcome based evaluations. Words may be optional.

●       We believe funded work should be recorded and celebrated in a way that is accessible and exciting to all members of the public.

Thought of the Day

We need to really think about how we can make sense of the link between ancient and modern technologies.

And journeys too. 

I remember seeing my first ever satellite, out on a winter night walk with my Dad. We used to go out every night and walk in the dark lanes, stargazing - learning the names of stars and constellations. The first satellite was pretty exciting, a smart new thing nipping between the hoary ancient stars. 

In 3300 BC a journey would be led by star nav rather than sat nav! Or a combination of sun and topography - time and place . 

The cursus on Down Farm demarks the point of midwinter sunrise

Sightline

Star line

Sunrise

Season

Midheaven

Moonrise

Occultation

Movement of planets

Look up!