Wednesday 6 May 2009

Ideas for Tangled Feet's residency

The other Feet were very excited when I fed back to them about our meeting at Tallis, and ideas have been flying about thick and fast.....

Our sound designer, Guy, had ideas about soundscapes and sound tours, like creating a sound-tour for one person at a time, using bi-naural mics (special headphone microphones which record sound exactly as the listener hears it and roots the recording in a specific location). You can do clever tricks with bi-naural mics by recording the sound in a room or open space when there's activity going on, and then playing it back to another listener standing in the same spot through headphones when the room is empty - makes it sound like the space is still full of invisible people and activity.

I've been thinking about the potential of the tents that we've been using, for different scenographic interactive installations. (they're from IKEA: http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/20072454)

We've found them to be a really versatile material - you can cut them up, throw them around, squash them, put lights inside and make them glow....you can see some images of some of the things we've found they can do here... http://picasaweb.google.com/KamPraShots

What else can we do with them? I think that the white tent walls might make a great surface to project film or photography onto. What would happen if you projected different images onto all four walls of the tent? Could you make a panorama for someone inside? I think it's worth experimenting.

The tents are also really good for writing on with permanent markers. How could we use some tents to create a new, relaxing designated space for people to contemplate the notion of home, and also to record their thoughts at the same time? I was thinking about this installation by Helen Storey http://www.helenstoreyfoundation.org/mental_ex.htm# - a giant book whose pages got filled with the thoughts of everyone who encountered it over the lifespan of the installation.

We've also had a couple of conversations with a professional chef about how you'd make a feast. Could we make a "map of the world" feast, with foods from every continent? How might we utilise the recipes from around the world that pupils and parents at Tallis cook at home - and bring them all together?

Over and out.

3 comments:

Amber Rowe said...

The pictures of the home projects look great.
Were they arranged audiences or were they set up for people to come across? Or both? in the previous school.
The sound ideas are exciting. I think the school have used the same form of recording before with the headphones? so I think that's a great idea. Creating past scenes through sound into the present space in a room is brilliant I can already imagine the atmosphere.

The videos - and the tent projections, maybe coming from a tent? - sound good maybe this could be a way of bringing the more academically perceived subjects into the picture.

Subjects with home tents? so then people can intergrate tents and mix up the subjects and ideas.

What about the idea of somehow have a recording that is also the showing at the same time? Like someone in one tent being projected into another one. Like webcams throughout tents - a maze of projections to each one? Again with the sound and headphones this could be done here as well?

Jon said...

By strange coincidence, we have the scale model for the Helen Storey Amygdala book in our school library. If you remember, we used it as inspiration for some writing by Year 7 students anout their fears when they moved to Tallis from their primary school. I like Amber's idea of connecting the tents in some way. A few years ago we celebrated a Feast day on the Ferrier and food has been an important part of the Black History Month celebrations for the last couple of years. I'm sure we could get parents to help us organise something similar. Keep the ideas rolling in.

Soren Hawes said...

It's interesting to see how many elements of their existing work and future plans echo the discussions that the group have been having.

Some of the key elements of our discussions were:
quests, links, sharing and discovery; new media sound and film; performance and challenging expectations and reinventing spaces.

It strikes me that these ideas seem to echo Tangled Feet's early ideas. Do you think we should share the mindmap we created with them, or has this already happened? Part of the purpose of the visit to Rivington Place was to find out about commissioning and curating work. How can we use what we discovered on that day to have an impact on plans for Tangled Feet's residency?

Soren