I was part of the Apps for Artists workshop run by Alex Peckham, the technical lead at Blast Theory, on the second week I was here. It was brilliant, crammed with references, strategies and concrete advice and guidance about taking artistic ideas forward and making them happen in the digital /interactive field, as they have been doing for 26 years now. It was like an uber rich chocolate cake that you can’t quite digest all in one go but you don’t want to miss one bite so you keep eating. The 20 or so people who were there had brought projects from interactive web documentaries, to mobile-mediated performances to apps that make you sleep. One of Blast Theory’s projects which was talked through and very helpfully dissected was the making of Karen, a disconcerting coaching bot you can download on the App store, try her out, she is full of surprises..
It was inspiring to realise in how many directions /platforms you can take an idea these days (I worked in the digital industry in the late nineties and so had the contrast of now and then) and how cheaply you can test things out. Blast Theory use a lot of post it notes and paper tests before they even touch the digital, they have a database of people up for testing and they have a rigorous task-based process of development and production, with one lead artist but everyone pitching in and included, from what I can see. There is a feeling of great clarity and focus which I am appreciating being close to, its what I need and sometimes with this project it has felt like it could go in so many directions that it might not find a focus at all.
When I arrived at Blast Theory, my aim was to find some focused time and space to listen in to what the form as well as the focus of the project might be. Last October, as you can see from this short film made by Kings, it seemed like it was turning into the next stage of a pilot project I co-created in 2005 called The Loom: from text to textile. This focusing on an outcome was against advice given in the winter that it is a long term research project and I shouldn’t even try and imagine what it will end up as…however I find this hard as often the end image of a work informs the way I work the process of making it, so, as it was only the first week I was there, when I came to present my project during the Pecha Kucha session on Day 2 of the workshop, this is what I presented:
‘ Let me speak to you of textile. As symbolic, a site of memory and ritual, a social fabric that evokes the drafting of code as well as the experience of touch and the remote engagement with an unknown other. 2500 years before writing, narratives were woven into cloth and textile functioned as a text. I love how it can be performative, speak deeply of social and political life and connect the long threads between past and future. From The Jacquard loom to the Babbage machine, the links between textile and digital culture are well documented.
Textiles can also speak of those who are long gone, disappeared,unseen or unheard and draw them into a single frame, a piece of cloth, whether worn, slept on, hung or held. In 2005 we set up a loom that took emotionally rooted data (via a project website) – the names, GPS location of birth and death of two loved one, one living and one dead and wove it, live into a 20 metre cloth over 4 days. the weaving was webcast inside an installation chamber within which people could write on, tie up and read often deeply emotional texts on ribbons about those who were being woven into the textile.
The textile itself was a beautiful though abstract work, carrying 18 ribbons running its entire length, each linked data submitted by each contributor. It was a pilot project but There wasn’t much that could be technically done to literally embody texts into the cloth. There is a lot of talk about smart textiles – that can respond to heart rates, body heat and emotional states.what if the textile, instead of transmitting its memories through silent touch, could be an actual space for a more vocal kind of narrative interaction or dialogue?
What if you could assign to each thread to be woven the disparate elements of self or society – the warp and weft – of a violent conflict or the disconnected and broken relations of a family, community or nation, caused perhaps by migration, prejudice, belief or emotional/economic crises along with any routes learned through to alternative ways of thinking, resolving, transforming,subverting or accepting situations or each other..
So…What if you could put your ear to the textile and literally hear embedded within it, the story of each strand contributed by strangers across the world to its DNA ? This might happen remotely or in real proximity to it and this send of distance becomes part of its narrative . What if the textile could listen to you and find what you need to hear in response ? And you could whisper to it, like those who put their mouths to the wailing wall, and have it find a place in which you can stand in along its length and hear the one, two or more sides of a story you can only right now perceive a small piece of because , well, you are just one, not many.
What would that look like and is it even possible!
(Note: Maybe this textile is not an actual textile, maybe it is a space of performance or a digital space ..)’
In the light of this workshop, and what has happened since, though underlying aims are the same, I have put this focus on a textile output to one side and tried to bring it down to working with the narrative imagination of the audience in the simplest way I can find and then seeing what happens. It may well be a live /digital project that draws inspiration from textile culture thinking (which I will inevitably talk about and use more as it is central to my practice) or it may end up as something you can touch and exchange, within a textile installation. I had to drop my attachment to what it will end up being as it was getting in the way of moving forward. Then there was a space. Which was a bit scary and disconcerting.
So something became clear after that. I needed to:
Begin the next stage of the development of this project in the imagination of the individual and their own unconscious and work outward. The idea that came seemed so simple that it almost felt like nothing, but it did quietly excite me. And when I had my first mentoring session with Matt last week and he came in and read it on my pinboard – or the beginnings of it – and talked about the possible ways of taking it forward and reminded a doubting me of the value of distilling ideas down, taking tiny, concrete steps and using a rigorous testing process to take it forward (all qualities of Blast Theory I admire) I felt a kind of relief. And he reminded me that the thrashing around in the dark is all part of the creative process, it is what we do if we are creating something new.
And all this reminded me that what I love with my work most – and what I often fear the most – is interactivity, and it’s why I am here.To connect with and find new ways for me to bring what I do to this project that we can use later, in a fresh but clear and focused way. So that’s what I am doing.I have already written a simple script and done talk -throughs on 7 people and with each interaction it gets a little clearer. It’s not the thing but its moving towards it. But it is tiny steps. More next time.
