Temporary / mobile / everlasting in London...2

The studio congregated at Pontoon Docks, and just 15 minutes east from the bustle of the City the difference in landscape was quite incredible; the view from the DLR station was of derelict factories, disused land, and an unwanted, windswept feel to the place. Here we met Rowan a can-do type of guy who was responsible for helping to consult local people on the up and coming London Pleasure Gardens. LPG is the brainchild of a group of companies led by people behind Shangri-La at Glastonbury, and is looking like the project most likely to be realised out of the winners of the Meanwhile London competition launched by Nehwam Council.

The site is a fantastic historic dockland but surrounded by an unusual context; the Listed (apparently untouchable asbestos-laden) mill building, out of scale suburban housing, the dominant Excel Centre that will host a number of Olympic Events, and further afield the Thames and the towers of Canary Wharf. In the face of a seemingly impossibly complex set of site conditions (including 40000 a day crossing the site during the Olympics) LPG proposes a light-touch semi-permanent carnival, which will be open the public at times and ticketed for weekend and events. Their model is 100% privately backed, and includes a music stage in a geodesic dome, a temporary hotel made of caravans, 'wilderness park' with 'architect-designed' pavillions (Rowan seemed confused when asked if architects were involved for most of the other temporary elements!).

The proposals are certainly ambitious, especially given the requirement to be ready by June (a condition of the free lease), but LPG did not appear phased by the tight timescale. This reflected a key aspect of the project; coming from the tradition of festival-making the team behind LPG are expert at programming, haggling and borrowing, getting in the right expertise to 'get on with it', and doing the right amount to 'put on a spectacle' within the limited budget they have (such as the construction techniques of scaffold and hoardings). Whilst these skills are clearly centred around 'event-driven' architecture, they are all skills that many architectural practices could benefit from.

From Pontoon Docks, another DLR ride northwards through Newham took the studio to Stratford, where the impact of the Olympics is immediately apparent from the colourful panel-clad blocks that have sprung up along the main high street. Within the broad spectrum of the architectural profession/discipline it would be hard to find a much greater contrast than between these speculative commercial blocks and the nearby warehouse taken over by the architecture collective 'Assemble'. Here we met Lewis and Louis, our enthusiastic guides to the work of Assemble and two of around 20 young designers and makers that make up the collective, which is predominately Part 1 architecture graduates who met in Cambridge. After graduating and all desperately wanting to do 'something' (note here that working as a Pt 1 CAD monkey for a large practice was not considered as something), they brainstormed derelict space in London, found a disused petrol station and designed and built a temporary 'Cineroleum' all for a miniscule budget of £6000 (mostly their own money!). Directly of the back of this (and Louis' contacts in MUF), they also completed Folly for a Flyover, which won great acclaim within architectural circles for its witty design and cheap DIY construction ethic.

Perhaps the most interesting part of a long (and generous) discussion was the current status of the group; having taken on the warehouse on a temporary (free) lease from the ODA and also having just won a ‘real’ commission to reimagine New Addington High Street, Assemble were in the process of reshaping themselves as a functioning practice, with salaries, invoices and proper decision-making. It was obvious that this process runs the risk of tarnishing their chaotic but defining characteristics (bargain recycled construction, volunteer builders, ‘do anything’ mantra, and pub meetings), and might make the group think hard about whether this type of practice can be maintained as a lifestyle beyond the ‘student days’. However it was fascinating to see a group of 19-20 year olds ‘doing something’ that many in the architectural profession dream about but are too fearful of leaving the security of an established practice.

The third appointment of the day saw us meet up with SSoA Studio 15, who are investigating self-organised practices within the creative melting pot ‘wasteland’ that is Hackney Wick. Beginning as a research project into other self-organised communities, and several of the students seemed to be grappling with the idea of a kind of ‘architectural manifestation’ of a community that didn’t actually require top-down architectural design. To get to the meeting point, a newly formed ]Performance Space[ studio converted from an old plumbers merchant, we traversed the incredible site of the Olympic construction. The scale and pace of change in this area is quite astounding given its proximity to (and often built right over the top of) so much rich history and ‘stuff’. The impact on Hackney Wick is also clear, with the artists in Performance Space already talking about the next cheap and empty area that people were talking about moving towards. There was also the idea raised that the commercial and residential developments being built off the back of the Olympics becoming a future slum, although the almost constant pressure for private housing in London seems to make that unlikely. After a busy visit, the day was appropriately rounded off with a presentation from Andreas on public works, accompanied by fantastic supper (and vodka) by our hosts.

Compass Festival of Live Art, Leeds

Held over three unfortunately miserably wet and windy and days in late November, the Compass Symposium and accompanying live arts festival is a new venture by East Street Arts, festival curator Sarah Spanton and director Annie Lloyd. The programme of events, workshops and discussions set itself apart from other similar arts festivals through on two fronts; its setting in Yorkshire (and the Humber) an area keen to expand its realtively small live arts community, and a strong focus on socially engaged practice. Both of these aspects appealed straight away to the research agenda of RECITE PhD one, and with links between Compass and the Sheffield School of Architecture already established through MArch tutor / fellow researcher Carolyn Butterworth, the decision to attend this exciting-looking 3 days of art just up the road (or train line) seemed like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, other commitments in Sheffield meant that I didnt see a huge amount of performers, and as a result this review focuses on the symposium half of Compass.

While I have a genuine appreciation / interest in live art as a spectator, I sometimes feel that the elusiveness of the language that is often used to describe some the practice is a little difficult for other academic disciplines to access. This was certainly one feeling left by Intimacy and Generosity, a workshop held to question issues around how willing people are to share their deepest feelings, public & private space, one-to-one encounters, and the awkward relationship between contemporary society and the 'intimate'. Although the coordinator Rajni was very skilled at creating a real sense of intimacy within the group, I felt the personal level conversations perhaps restricted a more interesting debate about the wider social context of the issues.

This theme continued at the late afternoon Show & Tell session (where the Pecha Kucha style format quickly broke down reinforcing the cliche of artists being unwilling to stick within the rules). While I was not really in a place to be too critical of the presentations (having failed to find the time to produce one myself) there seemed to be several practioners who either failed to either gauge their audience or were just simply not interested in socially engaged practice! Fortunately many of the others were fascinating, and both Rita's smartphone dance documentation and Rich from Invisible Flock sparked really useful conversations and plenty of ideas.

The trade-off for a friday night back in Sheffield was a very rushed Saturday morning to get to Sensing the City, and after the first day full of discussion it was nice to be told that the workshop would commence with a silent walk. The walk is of course a well used tool for the urbanist-artist, and there was little embellishment here other than the suggestion of a 'perfomative' single file parade, and an instruction to really focus on the relationship between your body and the soundscape. Artist Bob Levene suggested that experiencing the sometimes harsh urban environment in this concious method enables an 'awakening' from the dominant passive modes of experience. A number of aspects of the sound walk, not least the intrusion of the somewhat in-your-face documentor, meant that it somehow fell short of providing an immersive subjection by the environment. I think the fairly linear route to Patrick Studios (and with most of the attendees having already walked there yesterday) made it feel more like a 'route' to a destination rather than a journey or drift. The tone was (dramatically) shifted by Bradley Garrett's ethnographic research into the (sometimes literal) underworld of urban explorers, venturing into Victorian sewers and to the top of half-built skyscrapers. A well-paced delivery of fascinating anecdote and theory mixed with hyper-real photography was well-received, with the suggestion that this activity, apparently 'useless' in capital terms, was a meanwhile use that fell outside or subverted the sensory experiences normally 'on offer in the city. Some of this grandstanding stood him for criticism, particularly the some strong critiques of his method, the overt 'masculinity' of the explorers and the underplayed ethical / political implications of this type of work, particularly when disseminated via the stylised imagery.

Sennet's idea of the regulation and pacification of the body in 'public space', very often for capitalist consumption, is one strong theme that emerged from several of the workshop and informal discussions, and one of the key contributions that can be made by art/performative practices is to be critical / transformative of this situation. Coming from an architecture background (and SSoA in particular) participatory practice, social engagement, intervention, mapping, site, space and are second nature both in terms of design and research, and the wide range of other disciplines that engage (or are now engaging) with the same set of issues is therefore very interesting and may open up space for more collaboration. From the point of view of an architecture trained researcher/practioner, one potential criticism of artists working in urban public space that struck me over the weekend (albeit perhaps a generalisation)is that there seems to be more of a concern about making an impact and not so much interest in following up or developing the situation to develop a more tangible legacy. Legacy could be in terms of feeding back responses to inform policy, establishing new programmes, or proposing wider projects off the back of a performative intervention. Perhaps there just needs to be a better understanding of just how much an architectural toolkit of skills can contribute; it was perhaps telling that the architect-dominated conversations in the third workshop, Intentions and Unitentions, architecture was still thought of by most as being concerned only with static / permanent buildings designed for a paying client.

Ways of Looking Festival, Bradford with Donovan Wylie, Daniel Meadows & Invisible Flock

Its always a pleasure when my somewhat obsessive phd interests happen to coincide with my girlfriend's more regular ideas of how she'd like us to spend the weekend together. Last weekend Bradford was the setting for this fortuitous coming together of interests at the UKs newest photography / arts festival 'Ways of Looking'.

The festival had an ambition of attracting internationally renowned artists while retaining a clearly sense of locality, and of the exhibits that we saw for one day in the city, it seems to have achieved this. But we began by making our way from Forster Square via the 'hole in the ground' - the disaster that was to be the half-excavated Westfield Shopping Centre, which now dominates a huge part of the city centre to the north west. At least they have now taken down most of the signs promising 'urban energy' and other nonsense (ridiculed in Owen Hatherley's new ruins of Britain). A particulalrly half-hearted attempt at an 'urban garden' occupies the section that isn't a huge hole, but at the moment (and even in the bright autumn sunshine) this 'temporary' intervention only serves to depress the spirits further. We also later found out that this was in fact one of the sites of the festival - but the photographs stuck onto blue hoardings hardly shouted out 'outdoor gallery space'.

At the one of central sites for the festival, the national media museum, we were distracted by the hugely popular exhibition of retro computer games in the foyer before making our up to the Donovan Wylie exhibition. Having been awarded the 'Bradford Fellowship' he had meticulously documented the everyday and mechanical nature of sites of conflict, in Northern Island and Afghanistan. The landscapes photos, almost all of military outposts, are packed with incidental detail and were fascinating to stare at, with the scale and lack of people making the photos appear more like intricate scale models of battlefield gun emplacements and radar posts.

Next up, the Gallery 2 at the NMM had a retrospective of the early work of Daniel Meadows. As a newcomer to his work documenting British life (particularly in the 1970s and 80s), I was enthralled by human portraits of people on one Manchester street, the colourful moments captured at the Butlins holiday camps and documentary videos of the 'Omnibus' tour around Britain, undertaken in his early 20s. For me, this (apparently well known) piece of work got to the heart of the 'Ways of Seeing'; both in the political spirit of this free portrait service, and the subsequent documentation of the moments captured - then reunited with their owners 30 or so years later, which often left a sad trace about the passing of time and snatched memories.

Leaving the NMM and heading via a fry-up in the sunshine, we got to the relatively newly opened 'Impressions Gallery'. This forms the 'cultural bit' of a slightly uninspiring arcing commerical development that forms one edge to the 'regenerated' Centenary Square (ie its going to have some new granite paving, funky shaped seats and a new lighting scheme). The urban realm has yet to be finished, but the given some of the other occupants of the new units (budget drinking establishments) the future 'success' of this public space is still in doubt. Our arrival at Impressions coincided with one of the festival talks - on curating photography - but unfortunately (not being particularly interested in this subject) the lack of a dedicated event space here meant that it put the rest of the Red Saunders exhibition out of bounds - not too good for a Saturday afternoon!

This wasn't too big a deal, because the aspect of the festival that first drew me in was the four interactive 'adventure games' created by Invisible Flock, which also began from the base in Impressions. These games, each designed around mobile phones and semi-scripted treasure-hunt style routes across the city centre are another good local precedent for the work I hope to be implementing next year. Unfortunately this event also began with a let down. As the artist's assistant at the gallery explained - the augmented reality / QR technology for our preferred route only worked on Android phones and even then was prone to be 'buggy'. Sure enough, 5 minutes outside of the gallery and the first tile (hidden on the exterior of the crumbling Odeon cinema opposite) failed to scan. Undeterred, we opted to try out a different route that relied on far simpler SMS technology and 'physical clues' scattered across the museums and public spaces of Bradford. Structured around John Ruskin, early Daguerreotype photography, and a riddle about the sea this became a hugely enjoyable 2 hours, and even though it took us back into places we had already visited (the bloody Urban Garden) it demonstrated many of the pervasive / immersive elements that make this art form 'work' so well in the context of urban exploration and forcing you to stop and think about your surroundings. The 'showstopper' moment and perhaps the most memorable aspect was the culmination of the riddle back in Centenary Square, where for a fleeting moment (and if they solve the clue), players get to 'control' the big TV screen normally reserved for rolling BBC sport. Great fun, but while it was perhaps meant as nod to the idea of being able to become an 'author' of your environment, a look around at the rest of the public realm in the city centre (especially the big hole) is a stark reminder that the citizen has very little say outside of the rules of the game.

A quick skirt around the nearby popup gallery (complete with slightly condescending red sign declaring its 'PopUp' status - in case the people of Bradford haven't yet heard of the concept) and we headed home.

"This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved"Project Context / SUAS Debate

Its hard to know exactly what Project Context stand for, if indeed they do have (or need) an overarching political motivation. Their manifesto is deliberately fuzzy or fluid, and their recent impressive efforts in reviewing graduate output are self-titled as both a 'research project' but also a 'mirror'. It is this second aspect that might be most interesting. By making a much bigger noise about what talented graduates of architecture end up doing (or not doing) post-part 2, hopefully some of those responsible at the top of architectural education (heads of school, course leaders and those in admissions) might begin to think more about why so many students feel unequipped for current practice, and why so many are unemployed.

Fluidity is a theme that cropped up again and again in the Project Context & SUAS-organised debate "This House Believes Schools of Architecture Should Be Dissolved". It was interesting that this debate was held at Sheffield, a school that has a reputation for challenging traditional models of architectural practice, though in reality is still part of a red-brick institution, and is still very much bound to conform to the requirements of the RIBA and ARB.

In the event, both sides on the debate began to meld into one, as it became quite apparent that the proposition team very well knew the value of the school of architecture and its graduates (especially in the sheffield mould); lateral thinking, spatially & socially aware, polymaths that developed a huge range of design skills and critical thinking over the 5 or so years they spent in architecture school. In terms of reshaping this model, the consensus was built around the idea that (especially given the construction crash) the route through architectural education needed to be more flexible and much less tunneled towards to become an employed 'architect'. Instead we should be offering different routes (and valuing those routes) to become writers, entrepreneurs, developers, planners, councilors etc. In order to achieve this clearly more work also needs to be done at the top (perhaps wholesale changes at the RIBA) to communicate the value of architectural skills and pull down the artificial barriers that are suffocating the profession. As put forward in the debate by the proposition panel: 'if we are so good at designing buildings, why are only 2% * of new constructions designed by architects?'

Alastair Parvin (Sheffield alumni now working for 00:/) robustly critiqued of the social disconnection in student projects, along with providing the evening with some typically memorable soundbites: 'we don't need active dissolution - if things carry on the way they are Schools of Architecture will dissolve themselves'.

Several other people picked up on the potential contradiction illustrated by this point, which to me became one of the most telling aspects of the evening. If there is a genuine feeling amongst graduates (such as those within Project Context) that the current pedagogy in schools of architecture and the relevance of the skills we acquire for todays market needs questioning - why is the celebration of the 'best' of the graduates (as demonstrated in the Project Context exhibition) still represented by a gallery of beautiful but abstracted representations, or to quote Alastair again; 'Trout farms on Mars'?

(*the source for this stat wasnt given)

A Machine to See With - Blast Theory

However nice it is to visit a city with a partner, friends or family, there is something undeniably joyful about spending time wandering alone - there are no compromises on what to eat, no discussions on whether do shops or museums, and no agreement needed on which direction to drift. There can be few things more pleasurable than doing all this amongst the excitement of an unseasonably warm late summer day in Brighton.

This was the situation I found myself in recently while visiting to take part in Blast Theory's 'A Machine to See With', which had been redesigned for the Digital Festival in their home town, following a critically acclaimed run at Edinburgh. So while in a way it was a shame to drag myself away from the market stalls & people-watching in the Lanes, I had high expectations for the experience - it cam off the back of taking part in the excellent 'Ulrike & Eamon Compliant' in Sheffield, and I was trying to see as much of their work as possible with a view to a possible future collaboration.

With all their expertise in this form of performance, it was no surprise that Blast Theory are very skilled in arranging the setup, instructions and meeting point. Phone messages - a week before and morning of my allotted time - gave clear instructions as to the meeting place and that I was to come alone with my phone and cash. As the moment approaches (and then passes) and I am stationed nervously underneath a railway bridge, I begin to think that there has been a mistake - perhaps Im in the wrong place? But then the phone buzzes, and Im engrossed in the details; Im not to answer my phone to anyone except the automated voice. Im responsible for my actions if I get arrested. I am going to be robbing a bank.

Much like the experience of other 'single-player' interactive walkabout performances (surely a new term needs coining), Blast Theory immediately exploit the participant's state of excitement and anticipation to make the everyday come to life. Simple instructions for the precise route to take mix banal details into a more poetic urban narrative - and suddenly, walking down a street or back alley becomes a gripping experience. The walking element form roughly half of the overall performance, with the rest made up of carefully timed interactions as it becomes apparent that this isn't a solo mission after all, but I am undertaking the heist as part of a team. The first hint of this is when directed into a pub toilet cubicle - "lock the door behind you" and answer a series of questions on my personality (here it does feel a bit like being on the phone to a customer service desk), which later transpires to affect what role I will play in the robbery. Meanwhile I must hide all of the cash I'm carrying "somewhere on my person". The experience of being enclosed heightens the stress - blurring the tension built by the fiction with other questions wondering if the pub are in on it - are people queuing to use the toilet?

Back out in the bright sunlight Im behind schedule - I must hurry to the meeting point at the NCP car park with cash rattling around in my trainers, and the phone is beginning to feel hot on my face. A place in the city that is associated with another everyday activity - parking for the shops - takes on an altogether different filmic association (a deliberate choice Im sure). We have all seen enough Hollywood heist or spy films to fill in the gaps of the vague plot of AM2SW (for the whole hour I have imagery from the Bourne series and Un Flic running through my head), and in part of my brain the rooftop of the car park becomes a set - or maybe - just for a moment- even a 'real' meetup point prior to a 'real' heist. Either way, the Silver BMW I am supposed to get into already has 2 of my 'partners' inside, so instead I am instructed move off the bank itself.

Once more, the timing is calculated and very carefully explained - so that as the voice counts down from 10 you must be inside the bank ready to reach the counter.

This type immersion takes a very different from other media - it could be argued that depth of experience is all of your own making with the audio narrative simply as a tool to prompt the imagination. Depending on the will of the participant, at any point the fiction can be questioned and stopped by taking the phone away.

But its too late - I am walking into the bank heading towards zero when I hear THE HEIST HAS FAILED GET OUT OF THERE.

After the adrenalin of escaping a 'near-miss' the finale takes place nearby, outside another location that stirs the emotional imagination of cinema and youth - the arcades. Here the participant is faced with a choice; the heist went wrong but there is still a chance to make a difference, to somehow have an effect on the city. "It is not a personality test" but an opportunity to make a connection. I am instructed to take out all of the cash and give it to a stranger. This is something that on one hand sounds like a theatrical sleight of hand - while it is unrelated to the plot - it is an instruction that gets you thinking hard enough not to immediately question this. Can I do it? What will they say? Will they think I'm actually a 'real' criminal? After an hour or so invested really trying to feel the experience, the deliberate car crash of real and fiction is disorientating, not to mention the personal questions it raises in my (frugal) head about giving away £20. In Sheffield, a previous Blast Theory outing called for a similar choice (albeit without the financial sting), and agreeing to enter the story resulted in a final interrogation scene, so part of me wondered whether if I could do it, I would somehow carry on the adventure.

In the end, I don't and its over. And anyway its nearly time to get my train back to normal life. But for such a simple final question, it makes me think for a long time about myself, the nature of immersive theatre, and how suddenly I don't want to be in the city alone any more.

City Futures Conference, Sheffield Hallam University

Subtitled 'New Perspectives on Placemaking', this one day conference at the other Sheffield university looked like a timely opportunity to open a specifically local conversation about urbanism wide range of practioners, arts and environmental organisations. The two Universities don't often have much to do with one another (I was the only delegate from TUOS), particularly the two architecture departments which are often characterised as being at opposite ends of the spectrum. While SSoA prides itselfs on its independent critical approach and social/political awareness, while Hallam's architecture course sits within the department for the built environment and arguably has a greater focus on the commercial and technical aspects of the profession.

My own interest in the subject of 'city futures' is at least threefold; the RECITE research project is very much interested in how people define 'places' and how this knowledge might aid designers, as an architect and design professional I am interested in the other side - how best practice current and planning policy are being using in urban design, and from a personal political level I have a keen interest in the direction the city is headed after the mini boom and subsequent failures of Sevenstone and Housing Market Renewal.

The conference - essentially made up of 5 keynotes and a series of afternoon workshops - kicked of with Kevin Murray of the Academy of Urbanism, an independent British think-tank for urban regeneration that seek the development of progressive, sustainable, economically viable and attractive cities. Though they promote that they are a-political, there was a clear belief that better cities are achieved in the Scandinavian model; top-down, with progressive government and long-term, creative strategies - in partnership with designers, planners and businesses. A telling moment of this engaging run-through of principles of urbanism was in the discussion of the AoU award for outstanding city. This annual prize was intended to alternate between a British and European example - but they had already run out of British cities. Even the most recent British example - Glasgow - felt a bit thin now that the New Labour millennium money has run dry (and they are building yet another motorway through it). As a result the presentation borrowed heavily from the lessons learnt in Freiburg - which essentially seemed to be that at least 30 years of clear strategic committed policy and investment were required. Unlikely to be happening here any time soon!

Next up the new Head of Planning for SCC, David Caulfield. His talk - about how important 'quality of place' (which roughly seemed to be equated with plenty of tended grass and granite paving) was for the economic competitiveness of the city. To crudely summarise what was a fairly crude argument - if we give lawyers and financiers a nice place to eat their sandwiches and go for after-work drinks they will be more likely to move their HQ here rather than say, an M1 business park or Leeds. This same economic argument was then able to be reused to explain why we need more car parking, why we need to 'regenerate' the markets and various other controversial decisions. However, thanks to the broad range of Sheffield voices in attendance, David had a much more difficult Q&A than he might have expected, especially in relation to the politics of keeping the station bridge public and the increased difficulty of access that have resulted from the much lauded revamp of the train station.

With many of the workshops appearing to follow on from the morning's theme, I opted to take part in the one that sounded most different - based on some of the entries to the Forgotten Spaces exhibition. Unfortunately the structure was not well thought through - and two short presentations (akin to 'provocations') from the speakers left the rest of the group unsure how to participate. However, the essential thrust seemed to be that cities are not all about the commercial and main public spaces, but the other lifeblood of urban areas is the terrain vague and in-between bits; spaces that people might colonise, daydream about, or simply pass by on their way to work. This is a conversation that has been going on at SSoA since Jermey Till's Softspace in 2005 (and probably for many years before that)!

Fortunately a much more resonant tone (though pre-judged as 'alternative' by the chair and Head of department) was struck by Owen Hatherley, who took us on a romp through the failures in planning and design of the 20th century, some the most notable of which were identified in Sheffield (the student flats by Park Square - a slum in waiting). Though Owen seemed unafraid to heavily criticise the politics of regeneration in the UK, it was interesting that his critique of Urban Splash's Parkhill was not nearly so strident as in his Guardian article a few days later.

The day finished with a very brief but fascinating sales pitch from Martyn Ware (formerly of the Human League & Heaven 17) and his new venture in 3d sound interventions. Though he couldn't say exactly why, he was sure that these installations 'somehow change the way you look at the city' (I have paraphrased). After a day severely lacking in the subtle nuances of what 'place' is and the uncertainty and delight of cities - this was good note to end on for my own research interests.

TaPRA Annual Conference, Kingston

The TaPRA (theatre and performance research association) annual conference in Kingston was packed in between arriving home from a month-long stay in France (a working holiday!) and the chaos of moving back into the Arts Tower, launching the new SSoA website, and writing up my first year research.

The conference was a first chance to have the work done over the first year of RECITE properly critiqued by an audience who really knew the subject area. TaPRA is structured around the 'working groups', which form the bulk of the conference programme and provide a platform for smaller-scale, specialised discussion within the conference sessions as well as helping to foster a close-knit network one the conference has finished. Coming from outside the field I was initially unsure in which working group my project would be most appropriate, but given my interest in the effects and legacy after performances (and the lack of specific group for site-located theatre), the 'Documenting Performance' group seemed to offer the best fit.

The documentation working group was making its reappearance at TaPRA after disappearing for a few years, and referring to this absence Toni Sant (co-convenor) suggested that a mentality had set in in performance research whereby ‘if everyone is documenting now so why do we need a specific group?’. However he felt that it was the interdisciplinary nature the group (with presentations covering web media / mapping / information design / archival studies) that made the new direction distinct. Though from a personal perspective it was very useful to be part of a cross-disciplinary dialogue, it will be interesting to see if the working group has a long-term future, given this fragmentary nature of documentation research.

Perhaps a product of this new mentality across the discipline, there was surprisingly little questioning in the working group about the fundamental philosophy of why we to document live performance and the ‘secondary’ nature of documentation. The majority of the presentations assumed that you would document ‘as much as possible’ - with the debate then about how you create access to archive (digital, social media documentation, wiki etc) and how to ‘activate’ archive material (re-embodying, inspiration). Perhaps therefore the debate has moved on - there is an assumption that ‘documentation’ will happen whatever on youtube & flickr (with performance being subsumed into the mass media) so the aim should be to discover methods of doing this in a way that will be useful for future performers & academic study. The panel session, where delegates were more free to move between working groups, saw Heike Roms (Senior Lecturer in performance studies at Aberystwyth) present her long-term research project into Welsh site-specific work from the 1960s and 70s, which employs an admirable array of methodologies and techniques to uncover how these performances became embedded in the cultural memory of a place.

Beyond the working group, we heard interesting keynotes from Ian Brown on Scots playwrights and Louise Jeffreys, director of programmes at the Barbican. However these sessions (and much of the other discussion around the conference) only really served to highlight the marginal of performance research that interests me and that I am able to engage with to any kind of informed degree!

Overall I came away from TaPRA with mixed feelings; one the one hand very pleased that the presentation went down well and the the first year pilot produced results that appear valuable to theatre research community. That said, I couldn't help but come away considering the disadvantages of crossing disciplines - that its easy to miss out on significant attitude changes in performance research and end up covering ground that is well-established (albeit with an architectural spin), or worse - that the audience don't know enough about architecture, urbanism or the research questions to feel able to criticise.

National Youth Theatre - 'Slick' at Park Hill

I very rarely buy local newspapers, but feel very fortunate that last week I picked up a copy of the Sheffield Telegraph, which devoted its centre page spread to the National Youth Theatre (in orange boiler suits) preparing for their takeover of the behemoth that is the Park Hill flats in Sheffield. Before this, I had somehow missed all publicity for the 'outdoor spectacular' that has come north to Sheffield following the success of 'Swarm' in London last year.

And, particularly in the sunset, Park Hill makes a beguiling setting - with its commanding views of the city, complicated and contested history, and current half-finished transformation into trendy Urban Splash apartments. The narrative of 'Slick' reimagines Park Hill as a ship that will transport those gathered for the performance - both audience and 200 or so actors mingling as fellow passengers- to a Utopian island made entirely of recycled plastic where they will volunteer to make the world a better place. There are clues here of what might have inspired the story - the huge geometric form of Park Hill cut into the hillside has a resemblance of an ocean liner, and the original intentions of much of this large-scale deck access housing was to replace the horrors of back-to-back terracing with an idealised form of new social utopia.

Perhaps to most impressive thing about the performance (apart from the sheer scale) was the dramaturgical ambition - the tone for which was set by the initial excitement and anticipation generated by the actors mingling and preparing to board. The audience of 100 or so (also 'playing' fellow volunteers) were then split up into manageable groups (built into the narrative), to enable the plot to unfold with the closer spaces inside the building.

On climbing the amazing new spiral staircase almost to the top of the structure, the concrete decks and unfinished apartment spaces were perfectly suited to the intimate scenes aboard the boat, where the early excitement quickly gave way to scenes of fear and distress as the ship's security forces searched for stowaways and a disturbing group of malnourished 'islanders' warned of the true atrocities that were taking place at this 'utopia'. In some of these chaotic scenes the distinction between actors and audience became blurred - a relationship which dramatically changed once we left the 'ship' for the breathtaking final scenes of mass-coordinated dance and action. The outdoor courtyard spaces of Park Hill lent themselves perfectly to the dramaturgy - this time as an auditorium / stage and the building's facade as a huge backdrop to the action. With the story coming to a head (basically a simplified battle between environmentalism brought down by capitalism in turn brought down by popular revolution), hundreds of orange boiler-suited actors came together amidst sound, smoke and lighting display to create a stunning visual finale.

Park Hill tends to polarise those within Sheffield, and its reputation lies somewhere between iconic and detested. It has been written about and talked about to death - and then unexpected rebirth through its Grade II listing and massive Council investment. And given its current state of flux there is still so much more to come. In this context there is probably already too great an excess of meaning written over it for the ideas of 'Slick' to stick - but given the enormity of the project the NYT handled the scale brilliantly, and created unexpected moments of exhilaration in a city that is often lacking in such bold and brave outdoor theatre.

http://www.nyt.org.uk/news/news-slick-sheffield.html

Intransit festival _ Zero hour bus tour

The marketing for Zero Hour promised "a series of postapocalyptic audiojourneys on night buses across London" in the early hours of the morning on Night Bus route N11. The first difficulty (for both organisers and myself) was caused by the timing, with the date associated with the 12.30am start slot causing all sort of confusion. Secondly, the promised download link never arrived (and the use of mp3 format seemed to be designed to make it deliberately difficult for Ipod/Iphone users). However despite this and the booked (free) ticket being moved back and forth, I made it to Liverpool Street for the Thursday night (or Friday morning?) for Greg McLaren's 'End of the World Show'.

The appeal of this type of audio show is two-fold; it allows us to project the story onto the often post-apocalytic scenes of everyday life that you come across at night in the city (both in and out of the bus), but on another level it the audio lets the audience into the fictional world, permitting us the audience to behave transgressively (we were asked to wear face-masks) and accept the transgressive behaviour of the actors, thus confusing and entertaining the non-participants.

The plot, set in a future scenario of a energy melt-down, involved snippets of a radio broadcast implicating listeners in a late-night escape, which was spliced up along with 'sci-fi' adverts and recordings of everyday memories of the city. Though I found this pseudo-futuristic format I found a little grating, there were several moments when the effect of the audio, the passing scenes outside and the drunken character(?) scrawling messages on the bus windows (ITS NOT REAL!). The final piece of music, listened to now off the bus at eerie public space at the 'End of the World' in Chelsea, worked genuinely well.

Unfortunately by the end of the night I was too exhausted to fully appreciate the return leg, and the lack of coordination by the organisers made the event feel like a missed opportunity.

Interface 2011 review

Despite finishing just 48 hours ago, the Interface conference now feels a long way away as I write this from the first stop of my summer break at La Tranche sur Mer on the beautiful west coast of France! However this review looks back on two and a half engaging days of talks, workshops and conversations around the idea of Digital Humanities. In fact, to me Interface very much felt like Humanities+, with a significant number of delegates (including myself) dealing with subjects that are either on the fringe of the traditional humanities or much closer to the arts. There was a sense that the use of ‘advanced’ digital or technological tools (whether programming, XML, web science, or computational analysis) was the common framework within which a diverse range of disciplines were able to come together and share skills, ideas, and the experience of undertaking a PhD.

Stephen Scrivener’s keynote talk on design innovation in the context of research was a fascinating lecture as a designer that also covered many of the issues raised by inter-disciplinary research. The way he moved between arts and computing (and research and practice) throughout his career was encouraging, and as a PhD student from a School of Architecture, the way the design was described as a research activity (and not just in research by design) was highly resonant. Categorising three processes of research design; ‘problem solving’ (traditional research question), ‘projective’ (perceived as risky in the context of academia) or ‘reflective’ (not often done explicitly by designers) was useful, and the admission that many projects written up as a clean ‘problem solving’ thesis came out of a messy ‘projective’ process made many in the room feel a lot better about the confusion in their own projects!

Melissa Terras (UCL) questioned the relevancy of defining a field for ‘digital humanities’ in the age of everyone using Google or databases. She also suggested that in order to define yourself as ‘digital’ you need to develop expertise across a range of tools and disciplines – and as the conference progressed it became clear that many individuals were trying to become ‘multi-lingual’ in digital tools across the disciplinary spectrum.

The format of the ‘lightning talks’ seem to make people more nervous than one might have expected, as the stress of what to leave out from a detailed research project led to two approaches; focus in more detail on one aspect or try and give a very light overview of everything that is of interest. The fear was heightened by the fact that any slight overrun would be immediately cut off by the two-minute horn. As they flashed it was hard to keep up, though the ones that stuck out for me were the more alternative interpretations of ‘Humanities’, such as Eve Forrest’s (Uni of Sunderland) phenomenology of Flickr users, Tim Murray-Browne’s study of the interactive effect of interactive art, and Jenny Steele’s art projects in China. The type of researchers one might expect at a digital conference meant that there was the obligatory simultaneous conference proceedings and commentary via Twitter – though it was hard to tell how much this added to the relatively tight-knit conference or whether it was simply a distraction.

One benefit of the lightning talk format was the acted as a social ice-breaker, with people suddenly approaching to say “was yours the one with the site-specific theatre…?” This led into the afternoon workshops, but a late withdrawal by the representative from Mandelay (a rival of Zotero) led to Leif Isakson (all-round digital researcher from Uni of Southampton and former host of Interface) leading a really useful session on Geo-Spatial technologies including Simile Exhbit, Google Fusion, GIS, and Geo-databases. We covered a lot of technology I was familiar with but it was good to see some different applications as well as being another chance to get to know some like-minded PhD students.

Next up, Martin Zaltz Austwick of CASA led a hands-on introduction to programmatic visualisation of social and spatial data. Many of the recent CASA examples demonstrated the compelling nature of beautifully presented and analytic communication of complex datasets (but also a continued preoccupation with Twitter). The popular open-source Processing (Java) language was used in conjunction with CSV data, with the basics of parsing and projection explained in an accessible manner. The work of CASA will definitely continue to be an important reference point for my research as I progress.

Claire Warwick’s (UCL DH) session on studying users may have been framed a little too narrowly, with all of the examples related to the digital archives. However the principles of user-orientated design; participation, testing, redesign could all be related to the wider disciplines that all involve some form of user interface. Indeed, a recurring issue that came up in informal conversations with other delegates was the lack of engagement or ‘fear’ of studying users in the arts.

From a personal point of view, the rest of the talks that made up the morning of the third day felt somewhat less relevant (though this may well have been a product of staying up very late to see some experimental theatre on a night bus (see the separate post for a review of ‘Zero Hour’). These sessions concerned academic publishing, funding, and careers, which may feel pressing for ‘pure’ Humanities scholars, but it’s a route that I have yet to be sold on post-PhD.

Though many including myself found the management-speak title of the final ‘un-conference’ a little grating (I was still tired), the principle of opening up a whole session to address topics raised by delegates is a good idea, and one that the Interface members took on with gusto. Having chosen to participate in the crowdsourcing subgroup (an area of genuine interest but one which only impacts on my project indirectly), we had a lively and well-informed discussion covering participant motives, incidental and designed interfaces, when crowdsourcing works best and worst, and the reliability of the data generated.

All in all this was very enjoyable and engaging conference, principally because of the open, intelligent and truly inter-disciplinary group of researchers. The workshops were the most successful element as these were skills-focussed sessions rather than subject-specific. However I do feel that in future Interface could be made stronger by focussing more on the digital (and being inviting to arts & social science) and keeping the larger Digital Humanities conference more strictly for the humanists.

PQ 011_day seven & roundup

With little time left in the city, I managed to spend the last hour buying a couple of souvenirs and a very nice bike seat for the new bike I have been working on as a birthday present! There was just enough time for a couple of last stops on the PQ trail. Firstly the exhibition of Edward Gordon Craig, who challenged the elaborately realistic theatrical design of the early 20th Century and pioneered the use of more abstract and mobile scenographic elements. The final event before heading to the airport was Doina's lecture, where the notion of what 'performance' might mean in an architectural context was challenged, and instead a proposal put forward for a 'social & political performativity', where the architecture is just one actor in the 'performance'. We were walked through examples of aaa projects in Paris, where the architect works together with local citizens as a agent for change, enabling those people to become agents themselves. Mapping was shown as way of representing both space and process. Critically, it was the architecture of the process here that was important, not necessarily the products or outcomes.

Very much like architecture, scenography is currently experiencing a difficult period - as a contested discipline and one in flux- with a dialectical erosion and expansion of the profession. As Arnold Aronson suggested, perhaps its not the profession that has changed but everything around it - the digital age has matured into a new culture of online-all-the-time, social connectivity and a saturation of imagery, which has fundamentally changed expectations of the audience. It was therefore interesting that the PQ adopted a new name and that this caused so much debate, and at the same time the key message of the architecture section was the theorists were challenging the nature of a theatre building while the architects were struggling to see where they fitted in.

There was a almost total absence of traditional dramaturgical examples; taking a text and composing it onto a stage. Instead contemporary practice suggests an increasing blurring between dramaturgy and the visual arts, performance arts, digital media, architecture and urban studies. In this context, by far the most interesting 'exhibits' were the new experiences - either installations or site-specific events, rather exhibition of costume/set design/theatre buildings from 'other' past performances. This shift perhaps reflects the altered digital society - where swithced-on audiences are always hectically chasing the next new experience. This became quite exhausting - possibly just due to the nature of being at a biennial / quadrennial type event, or possibly the nature of the city of Prague, where everywhere you look another type of social 'performance' is going on. Whether tourists or audience, the amount of '3rd-hand documentation' (Richard Gough's term for photo / videos of documentation) was staggering, with everything recorded via Smart phones or expensive-looking digital SLRs. At times it was a real shock how much people pushed to the front of a carefully crafted live scene in order get a clear photo without the back of anyones head in it!

Almost everyone referred in some way to the recent events in Tahrir Square and the Middle East (and social media in general) as 'performative' and therefore having some sort of fundamental impact on performance design, but no-one that I saw managed to articulate this connection in anything like a convincing manner. This was perhaps due to a lack of political assertion amongst the groups chosen to represent at PQ; the slightly underwhelming response to Doina's presentation was further evidence that theatre-designers are not necessarily inspired by the hard graft of social and political reality.

PQ 011_day six

A warm day six began with a trip back to the Veletrzni expositions, as I was particularly intrigued by the Netherlands' walking trip '7Scenes'. This IPhone walking tour / treasure hunt / game was part of the new genre of 'performative user experiences' that are not theatre in the sense that they do not necessarily involve a live actor, but utilise mobile technology (phone, gps, bluetooth, 3G) to network 'live players' either together or to some central system. In this way players create their own experience from the instructions or narrative given by the creator of the performance. The freedom in space and time that these forms open up was demonstrated by 7Scenes, where players were guided on a route through the city using picture clues. The 'performance' was constructed around a set of old photographs, taken in Prague in the 1960s. When you arrived near the scene of one of the photos, a GPS trigger played a audio clip, instructing you to take a photo inspired by the original. As you couldn't see this, the audio offered a series of clues, such as 'take a self-portrait with your eyes closed'. The heightened awareness of being 'part of something' had a tangible impact in terms of framing the city - opening your eyes to things that otherwise might have seemed banal. Having said that, the mobile interface became a bit of a distraction. The nicest touch was that photos were automatically uploaded and printed in the exhibition space (alongside the 1968 ones), providing a fascinating insight into the multiplicity of ways that people looked at the city and interpreted the instructions.

There was just enough time for a coffee on the roof terrace before a hurried tram ride across town in time to get a seat at the packed architecture section where Professor Marvin Carlson was giving the task of answering the central question of the section, 'What is a theatre?'. This was a hugely relevant talk for both myself and the large crowd gathered in St Annes, as he sought to cram the recent history of site-specificity and future developments into a hour-long lecture. Taking Peter Brook's 'empty stage' quote as a point of reference Professor Carlson explored notions of scenographic control, the framing of the everyday (optical unconsciousness), through to the techno-theatre of Smartphones. He suggested that the digital (web 2.0) era had further opened up Peter Brook's ideas about 'I' to 'we' (can take any space, real or virtual, and call it a theatre). Interestingly this statement was qualified using the social science term 'interpolation' whereby the creation of something (theatre) just by giving it a name relies on your 'authority to do this, ie. you still need an 'audience' willing to 'buy into it' or 'go along with it'. Responses from Jane Rendell & Christopher Baugh were also though-provoking, and raised questions about a new definition of 'architecture'.

After 2 hours of exhausting notetaking I needed a break, and got to the Czech Bridge just in time for the start of Christina Bosse's hour-long public 'situation' and to see what was going to happen in the place of 500 people. The bridge had been closed to traffic and it appeared that she had managed to get some chairs - after a slow start people began to congregate around these focal points, and individuals / groups of people subtly but gradually took over the bridge as a public space. Here is a link to an animation I produced as a web-based documentation experiment and as part of my learning process of flash.

The remainder of the evening was spent talking with Doina Petrescu, tuesday's keynote architecture speaker (and my Masters tutor), but I also managed to catch he Scenofest Fourth Act installation, where an interesting back street had been converted into a outdoor living room - but lacked any real invention beyond the use of furniture in an unlikely setting.

PQ 011_day five

As the programme on the morning of day five looked fairly empty and the weather looked damp, I decided to take advantage of the comfort of my free room upgrade and work on my overdue literature review and methodology. This productive session was in danger of taking over my day when a break in the weather forced me out into the city centre to return to visit the remaining 10 or so Intersection 'Boxes'. The architecture of these pavilions was somewhat less inspiring than the first visit a few days previously, perhaps something to do with the weather or general wear and tear - the ongoing plastering and repainting suggesting a poor choice of construction and detailing given that the buildings only needed to sustain 10 days of intensive public use. Once inside the 'black box' interiors this was soon forgotten as the theatrical experiences continued. The three standout installations were the total sensory deprivation of Brett Bailey's labyrinth (and then the chilling 'sculpture' when you found the middle), Ionoa Mona Popovici's 'Cosmic Harmony Club' - a miniature and realistic recreation of a techno-club where users were invited to become part of the installation, and Egon Tobias' 'Comment Dire' - where an interactive projection of an 'audience' watched and responded (laughed, yawned, cried) to your voice as you were invited onto a podium to give a speech / song / stand-up routine.

Just down from the Piazetta of the National Gallery was the site of the highly anticipated Third Act (Vltava) by Louise Ann Wilson and students. The crowds gathered at the bridge across to the Slovansky Island were disappointed to learn that the increased interest had led to a late ticketing policy for the event, but I was extremely fortunate to meet someone in the queue with a spare ticket. On the Island, viewers were greeted by a series of eerie living sculptures and vignettes, each of which told a story about someone (historic, fictional or recent) whose life was connected to the river. The audience were then presented with an unexpected surprise - a fleet of pedalos and other small boats was awaiting them (the ticketed policy suddenly became clear). Once on the water, your perception of the relationship between the city and river suddenly changed, though this feeling was interspersed with the surreal and ridiculousness of being part of a pedalo flotilla for the sake of art. However the return of the rain, along with further encounters with performances as we journeyed across the river, changed the atmosphere of the group. The sight of three women dragging themselves out of the water and clawing the muddy riverbank was a particularly poignant image. On a personal note, I was lucky to share a boat with Nigel Stewart (partner and collaborator of Louise Wilson), who I chatted to about Fissure (their last project in the Yorkshire Dales), architecture and northern humour, as well as receiving PhD advice and references.

Despite the soaking and the chill (or maybe because of it), this was group experience that will live long in the memory for those lucky enough to take part.

PQ_011 day four

The morning began with a 3 hour session presenting current research in scenography, in particular phd students associated with Universities of Zurich and Vienna. This was hugely informative for my own work, as the students were all at various stages through the process of and there was a mix of research by practice, purely theoretical, and one student who was looking at community performance from a more ethnographic / social science perspective. It was also another chance to have coffee and appreciate the dramatic panoramic view of the city from roof terrace atop the Veletrzni Palace.

A quick tram ride across the river was required to ensure a seat for the Richard Sennett lecture. He had been invited to address the Architecture Section on the subject 'when is a theatre', but quickly confounded then charmed the audience with a different topic; his 'sideline' as a professional cellist. The experience of becoming a craftsman of the musical instrument was analogised with the master craftmans - both, he suggested, must learn the skill of 'minimal force' and both are essentially about arriving at form through a difficult process of 'collaging ambiguities' - rather than beginning with a 'quick fix' clarity of form or identity. Form is an arrival from a multiplicity of means, not a start point, and if you can create this type of form or beauty you are more 'in touch' with the world. Unfortunately it seems that contemporary online condition and more passive/easier 'user-friendly' interfaces (both digital and physical) are eroding this sense of 'touch'. Inspiring stuff from a man who's voice and style reminded very much of a cross between Garrison Keillor and Larry David!

Following Richard Sennett, I finally had a chance to properly take-in the architecture expositions. Commissioner Dorita Hannah had asked participating countries to submit a 'table', as one of her interests is table as a site; one that can be read as 'feminine' / domestic or 'masculine' / confrontational. One thing I found frustrating is the fact it wasn't clear how participants were invited and under what criteria; as a result we had both dour entries (such as the UK exhibit - a history of the thrust stage in traditional architectural scale models set into a 'table') next to highly pretentious but totally illegible. Very few were actually to do with table as site! Of the more interesting exhibits, Serbia had an amazing and disorientating 3D video shot in a building site that is half-constructed (stalled) project for new national theatre, while the Chilean exposition used video and text to ask questions about choreographed / mediated 'public performances' - with particular reference to the nationalistic outpouring that followed the rescue of the 33 miners.

PQ 011_day three

A slow start had been planned for Saturday morning (day 3), but a talk at the Veletrzni Palace caught my eye; a panel discussing on the future of scenography with reference in particular to trends in the PQ expositions and Intersection programme. It was well worth the effort as a lively panel led by Arnold Aronson explored the surge of recent developments and fragmentation of a discipline which now informs (and is informed by) a multitude of (performance) art practices beyond the text-based narrative of traditional theatre. Richard Gough, Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research gave a particularly engaging presentation, drawing a divide between the redundancy of 'museum-like' national expositions and the enchantment of more immersive and performative environments. Following this I made my way down via the student submissions of which just a few stood out as truly inventive or beautifully executed; students from Serbia composed dramatic characters and compositions by extrapolating the details openly accessible on a random selection of facebook profiles, the Australian submission mapped the forensic traces of urban walks through Prague, and one of the Spanish exhibits was a pod for exchange crafted from recycled juice cartons.

The main programme looked a little empty for saturday afternoon, but a quick check of the PQ+ events found that the nearby Fabrika arts centre (which boasted a beautifully detailed industrial interior) was hosting a 'site-specific' opera by renowned director and scenographer Pamela Howard. Her staging of Bohuslav Martinů's 'The Marriage' broke

down the formal conventions of the opera by taking place in a backroom / warehouse-type space, with the orchestra packed in one corner and the audience seated on a random assortment of chairs and tables on hastily constructed terraces. While the plot and scenography did not only faintly referenced the unusual setting, the overall effect was to bring the incredible singers immedaitely proximate to the audience and give the whole performance a fun, community feeling - a radical departure from the stuffiness of most opera events. Of course, such an the informal arrangement is likely to have potential downsides, typically the acoustics (which were great) and/or the sight-lines, and though I was well positioned the woman next to me repeatedly disrupted the atmosphere by complaining she couldn't see!

An already busy day was completed by the first of 'Six Acts', a series of site-specific performances created by Scenofest students in collaboration with an experienced performance-maker. The First Act took place at dusk in the atmospheric Frantiskanska gardens, with a large audience free to move around and follow a series of alien creations using paper/cardboard costumes and animal-like movements. As dark fell, the choice of setting became magical, as sound and light in particular were used to 'key' each new performance in a different space - the audience were kept in flux; rushing, turning, moving and crowding round to see the next strange character. The most popular of these was a comedic ball-on-human-legs in the rose garden, and as viewers moved round onto the four sides of the space, the creature revealed itself as a girl (albeit still a crazy girl) who had been holding up her paper dress. By the end the group had the spectators exactly where they wanted them confused yet delighted and on tenterhooks as to where the next spectacle would show up. And as we drifted away at the end, there was the sense that they had not only created some entertaining physical theatre, but a palpable feeling of community and 'shared experience' among the audience.