DAY ONE

Over the course of this week we have been tasked by Pervasive Media Studio and British Council to try and respond to what a playable city could be. How might it feel, how it could look, how could it change. To produce the response we have been split into three groups with myself being put into project c. With four people per group (plus we get the support from the pervasive media team). I have been partnered with Bang and Lee from South Korea and Tine who lives in London but is originally from Denmark. I think all three of them would describe themselves as artists in someway and have created some amazingly diverse pieces of work. I think for myself I was really looking forward to working with a group of artists to develop something really different from my normal practice. something that could not have been done by myself alone, yet still have something of me in it (a bit vague but hey you have to start somewhere).

We have been asked to keep a blog of the project so here it goes. I think for myself being quite process driven (in a design sense) i.e. discover, translate, develop, deliver. I really wanted to understand people's values and also their language. It was really interesting to sit down and try and work around creating a series of values, words and experiences that we were interested in and then some how join these together to then create a response to a 'playable city'. We started as always with a blank piece of paper, which was quickly filled with words and ideas about things we liked the idea of exploring. We came up with three main values or attributes that we were interested in developing further, these being:

- physical

- social

- light 

 

DAY TWO 

These words needed one thing and that was a context and I think between Jun and Tine we created the context of cycling. So we are now working on developing some kind of cycling project that delivers a response to a playable city through a physical aspect, that has a social element that could be expressed through light. I think although only two days into the project the main thing I am learning that the timeframe is short, but once you stop saying the timeframe is short and get into a rhythm there is enough time. Also the interaction between all of us has been great it's challenging and compromise is a huge aspect of the project, but then I think maybe it isn't compromise but a form of critique between us all wanting to get the best project we can out of the constraints we have.

I think our idea came from a misunderstanding, which for me is always a great way of creating a project. We were chatting at the start of the day (day two) about an idea of lights and how they could blink and then we thinking about cycling and how they could be used together in someway but through a series of quick conversations we all came up the idea of proximity, and could proximity lead to a change in a bike or a light source. From here we have developed a number or scenario's that centre around our project values and context. Ideas ranging from cycling games, territorial cycling studies, social analysis of colour choices and urban planning through mass participation. We have around two more days until we have to pitch on the friday so fro the next two days I think we will be trying to develop the project a bit further.

 

Wish us luck.

 

Julian Sykes 

 

Posted by Julian Sykes