Soundlines / Sightlines

The field matrix for Soundlines crosses over well to the Sightlines project.
Because Sightlines follows R and D, arrows could then become double ended, pointing both ways : elements informing the aims, aims informing elements.

My current definition of the mission statement of Sightlines is:
'The Strata Collective will provide a creative educational experience, backed by an interactive website and online resources, which introduces young people to a new slant on their landscape and heritage.'

principles and provocations

A quick sketch of initial thoughts, to add to, query and amend as the project develops.

The project crosses into several disciplines/ fields of work, so ethics & principles from those areas will need to be embraced along the way.
The intended aim of the project is central, the core. There needs to be a constant awareness and rebalancing of the matrix of different parts/context, appropriate parameters, (responses to ethics from other disciplines) so the aim doesn't 'drift' through external pressure.

Fields - principles and provocations include:
Landscape - countryside codes; respect SSI; access, landowner's permission etc.

Education - ethics of best practice, health & safety, child protection etc in education/youth arts practice. Need to adapt within these constraints, facilitating project aims of individual learning and freedom of experience, ease of access etc.

Technology - constraints and mechanisms of technologies (incl. web, mscape) eg. privacy, moderation, access and spam issues with website as feedback mechanism. Provocations around identity, observation, tracking of individuals.

Young people - respecting and valuing involvement. Fun, freedom, own time, recognition (accreditation/acknowledgement of participation etc), exit and progression strategies.

R&D - ability to maintain open-ended research; exploratory and emergent; freedom, focus, depth.

Documentation - balancing r&d needs, advocacy, potential evaluation and funding requirements, project ethos, strata manifesto ethos, young people's freedom and privacy, codes of best practice.

Ownership and Rights - balancing participants, artists, prospective funders, genre/sector development, IP, knowledge sharing, etc.

Artists, innovators, facilitators - 'fair trade facilitation', valuing creative exploration; roles, acknowledgement, sharing workloads and feeding own creativity.

- that's a few things to think about, just to get started!
Tracing and monitoring these looks like an additional strand (and field)...

Music for mediascape

Challenges! Today I think the music should not intrude, but sit lightly - or even float above. But it could drive you on, or make you turn, or turn with you: it could stop and wonder,  re-inforce a moment, and maybe linger long after.

ethics of pervasive media

I went to a discussion group on the ethics of pervasive media at the PMS recently, and started to think about some of the issues raised, in relation to soundlines and sightlines. One outcome was the usefulness of creating a 'Principles and Provocations' guide to use in (pervasive) media projects.

If an evolved contemporary media is made from, and an artefact of, cultural mileaeu; is that also true of pre-literate times? Are those artefacts carriers of the great thinking of the day? Do we really leave our mark in words, films, artefacts? More than by our actions, emotional release, passing on of hereditary tendencies? EMF would suggest otherwise - that on an electromagnetic level we contribute to the environment/humanity/universe more potently, more significantly, through the 'charge' we carry/accumulate/release. Is it possible to read this 'invisible' mileau? Is it the other side of the coin to artefacts and words? even images? Or is there a more complex interwoven relationship that is yet to be unravelled?

Whilst we heard about Bernard Stiegler's work, from Patrick Crogan I kept thinking of the Qaatsi trilogy. From time and space across the earth to peoples, patterns and rituals. And finally onto the virtual location - media as place and basis for relationship - which I found harsh and dysfunctional. For me the real strength is in the first part of the trilogy, the physical existence that is so easily overlooked as we get more 'sophisticated'. So I think I'm agreeing with Stiegler's ideas that the media industries are tied to an outdated, 'expert' driven "battery farming of attention" and that media needs to find ways to access and respect the majority mind (I'd call it collective consciousness) and the individual's critical faculty ('psychic and collective individuation' to quote wikipedia).
I think that is what excites me about the values of Sightlines - at the heart is the raw landscape through the passage of time. As people we are wrapped onto and into that passage. But the land sustains. And what we pass on in that place is not through words, artefacts or even music - they are just the tools to facilitate our awareness that our energy is part of the place, has a relationship with it, and perhaps lingers to communicate with future others in a way far beyond the substance of normal words and media.

It takes confidence to travel slowly in today's racing-car world.

It was good to be reminded of the strength of a personally-significant (media)art work. The Qaatsi films hold that role for me, consequently I can relate any issue back to them, and they become a 'personal truth map' to guide me in unravelling those other structures in a 'personally-significant' way too.

The other strong re-membering I had during the discussion was a story related to Community Building. I was quite into Scott Peck's work and experiential community building a while back.
It was a story of story of a community building leader who had just returned from 6 months living on and reconnecting with ancestral land, and drumming. In a group meeting where noone could understand anyone else and there really seemed no way out of conflict (as the story goes), this man quietly picked up his drum and began a simple heartbeat rhythm. Before long everyone was moved to stillness, tears in eyes, the spirit of community awakened from deep within.
I love that story, and often remember it when words just don't quite seem to reach the spot.

(In Peck's model of community, any group will go through stages from finding superficial common ground, to the clash of chaos, silence of emptiness in which any barrier to community 'comes up', to community - a tangible state in which people respect eachother's differences and work collectively towards a common goal. If you're like me and sometimes find it hard to talk in groups, this is the enjoyable state where there's always a pause when you need it and people literally feel moved to speak.)

unusually similar but strangely different

http://www.ralphhoyte.net/
has asked us to come and play music for his Cristabel event at Halsway Manor.
significant?

magical....mistily....tor

You are meant to keep your eyes on the road whilst driving.
Its the landmarks that break the journey though isn't it?

Most westward journeys take me down the A 361, so I'm lucky - its things like
- mistleltoe orchard
- starlings in trees
- Quantock Hills maybe Dunkery Beacon on a clear day
- and of course, Glasotnbury Tor.

Yesterday it wasn't there! Strange. Even from close up, it was completely invisible in its own pod of freezing fog. Everything else was bright and pretty normal.

Just enough to be slightly unsettling .... it reminded me of this picture, anyway. (Same place, different weather)
You never know what is on the other side - unless you float above it.
Don't rely always on your sightlines. Even a bird may be confused.

magical, mistily - tor

Sightlines...
I know you're meant to keep your eyes on the road whilst driving but those landmarks do break up the tedium don't they?
I'm always off to Taunton Bridgwater Langport or somewhere, so I measure the journey by
flocks of starlings
mistletoe orchard
glimpse of Quantocks
and of course G;asotnbury tor.

Well yesterday in the freezy mists it wasn't there! Completely vanished, in its own dimension of fog. Everything else all bright all around.
which reminds me of a picture....

Squiggles

I am excited by the idea of the trace unfolding as the music plays.

Sometimes I use a music workshop warm up called 'squiggles'. Players pair up, and both draw a squiggle. (- these look very similar to the traces.)

The idea is that you then play your friends' squiggle on your instrument - it's another way of writing music. Responses and interpretation vary a bit as you can imagine.

The traces of our significant journeys across ritual landscapes could be close to geomancy.

It also opens questions of how landscape affects our culture, our language, our vernacular architecture, our music..... perhaps less now than before : time to reconnect?

traces in the wind and rain

Here are a couple of gps traces from Whitesheet Hill - the bottom one was yesterday's visit, you can see the centre circular ditches as I walked round them a couple of times.
This top trace was today, in a storm, with 3 short films made through walking. The trace to the left is driving back down the track afterwards...

One of the idea's we want to explore through Soundlines is having the trace appear (animation) whilst the soundscape composition plays, as re-presentation on the web. I imagine those traces will be very different as the incentive to move around the landscape will be very different too.

circles of sound

Round and round and round.....

I think we have all done this at some point (usually as a kid!) to make ourselves dizzy and dazed?

(I was remembering how as teenagers we used to sit on a roundabout in the playground and go round and round and round whilst reading poetry out loud.... hmmm)

Dervishes of course use this as a short cut to altered states of being.

My Sightlines thought is the bullroarer. Round and round it goes. The sound is not unlike the video clip in Jackies' post below. Plus the rushing hot heartbeat in the ears.

http://9waysmysteryschool.tripod.com/sacredsoundtools/id9.html

also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullroarer_(music))

- (especially : the sound that the bullroarer makes is sacred to the Apaches, within their culture it is not to be displayed or whirled outside of sacred circles)

Hilltop circles, acoustic temples of stone? What was the acoustic significance of stone circles? Wind and space on highest points? East south west north east south west north

zenith

earth

Magic moments?

I went up Whitesheet Hill to try my Something More mediascape out in the blustery winter weather today. When I got to the very centre of the ring fort ditches the music made a perfect 2 second loop and the ipaq displayed a message about low memory (but failed to respond to my input) and then a perfect white square (above!).

Standing in the middle of the centre camp, wind gusting, beat reverberating, screen displaying this 'alien' communication, was an incredible experience! Way beyond linear time the beats were perfect, looping as though designed just for this experience; emotions powerful - excitement, fear, curiosity, stunned, compassion, interest, confusion, mystery, infinite, stunned, earth-body-sky connection, transpotative, awakened. I was fascinated enough to try and film it - but you had to be there to feel the full effect! (And the sound doesn't capture on the video at all...)

As I left the centre circle and walked back around it, a double-take, exactly the same piece of bird-like plastic was making exactly the same shape as it landed in exactly the same place as some unmeasurable time earlier when I'd first entered the circle... Circles within circles within wheels of time.

Perhaps we could use deliberate audio loops for centres of significance in the Soundlines landscape?

A breath of fresh air

..is the theme of the spring 09 magazine of the National Trust that came through my letterbox today. Lots about getting kids (and adults) outside to connect with nature, walk and be healthy!
Their article 'Natural Health Service' (pp.20-23) by Dr William Bird, Strategic Health Adviser to Natural England, says:

'Children develop a lifelong ability to connect with nature but only if they are allowed to play freely in streams and woods before the age of twelve.

...Have we drifted away from how we were designed to live?
We need to be restored to our factory settings.

...The Department of health has launched a physical activity plan in which the opprtunities offered by the natural environment are central to getting the whole nation more active. A new scheme has been piloted by london GPs whereby patients are referred to parks and places for outside exercise that may well include Trust properties.'


Another article in the same magazine is about a family of 4 who set out to see 50 of Britain's 100+ mammals, in the wild, in a year. Mammal Magic, by Dominic Couzens (pp. 72-74):

'There was a serious side to our quest too. In the last few years the poverty of Britains' children's relationship to the natural world has become a matter for heightened public concrn. In the summer of 2008 the NT published a survey showing that children, as a whole, are becoming more and more detached from their environment. Only 53% can recognise an oak leaf, and similar numbers fail to recognise common butterflies and birds. Many parents lament this loss.'


The magazine doesn't seem to be online, but here's part of a different NT report
'Nature’s Capital: Investing in the nation’s natural assets'
that has an interesting chapter, page 10, titled:
'The nation needs... access to green space for health'
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-natures_capital.pdf

Soundlines and timelines...

The proposal's written up and submitted for Soundlines R&D.

Coloured flowcharts are a nice complement/ alternative to text boxes in forms, so here's the bones of the proposal in pictorial form:

http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines.htm

Time to look beyond!!!

'The power of being outside, sound, silence, non-linear movement, opens the door to time travel!'

tools for learning

Our friendly visiting German psychologist is interested in tools for learning, for hyperactive children. Scope for future research... would need to be geared around specific learning objectives/curriculum content, and she could design a suitable scenario/test methodology around it. Exciting stuff...