The Albions

A week of thinking about this whole project and I realized why it was a bit like walking through treacle... I have no real passion for what I have discovered so far. Certainly, it is interesting and would not bore me, but where will the passion come from?
Thinking about the way in which His Video was received, and the pleasure I got from constructing it, I must get back to that situation again.
Four or five days thinking about this, and an 11 hour drive to Germany gave me new ideas and perspectives.
The project now has arrived. It is The Albions.
A documentary-based environment that I will set up at the final show. The documentary will investigate the little-known artist group called The Albions.
With access to previously unknown archive material, I will report on this group and their work, and in the show, create an environment to contextualise their work and offer an insight into their ways of working.

Environment

Further to The Bruce Lacy Experience and ideas from Happenings and in particular Alan Kaprow and his ideas and thoughts about the everyday, an idea has come to me for the presentation of the final work and its presentation.
I will create an environment in which aspects of the final work (at this stage, a documentary film) will be the progress and workings of it's construction. I will include maps, drawings, designs and ideas for it's presentation. I will complement it with a video version of myself and further add to the involvement of the audience by offering a small library and ways for them to participate and be involved in the work.

Bruce Lacey 2

The Bruce Lacey Experience at the Camden Arts Centre in Finchley was my destination yesterday, and what a productive day it turned out to be.
In the same way as I cam to get the Pilgrims' Way project sorted in a day, so too did this exhibition prove to be the catalyst for cementing many disparate ideas I have had for the past couple of months.
This exhibition, through the reasonably eclectic strands of Lacey's career, helped point me to place where my various ideas could work together rather than be the father fragmented things I hitherto saw them as.

Poetics Of The Motorway

Went to quite an interesting post-launch of In the Company of Ghosts: the Poetics of the Motorway, 2012, edited by Andrew Corkish at Beakonsfield yesterday evening.
I find it interestigg as I attend more and more of these, that very often it is a way for panelists to indulge themselves and enthuse about a subject about which they are passionate, without, what I would argue, ios the important thing to include us, the audience, who do not know as much, but by being there could easily be enthused and informed more.
No sonic references!

Mapping

Looking at some Google maps of the Canning Town area, I find there are some interestingly diverse locations there. Having recorded for two days there this week, I am thinking that there might be some way to work within a restricted, or at least defined area. Perhaps look more deeply into the diversity of on area, comparing and contrasting the sonic and filmic qualities.

Project

Began filming and recording for some experimental pieces this week around industrial parks, scrap yards and edgelands.

Radio 4 Book Of The Week

Had a listen this morning to the abridged version of Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways.
Never come across him before, but the first episode was very interesting.
You can listen here.

Topic Idea 3: The Edgelands

This book and its ideas were very useful to me for the BA project. It looks at the strange areas at the edges of urban sprawls.

Britain From Above

                                     
Today was the launch of a new website, www.britainfromabove.org.uk, and as the name suggests, features thousands of aerial photographs of Britain taken between 1919 and 1953.
I've only had a browse today, but there are some really amazing and deliciously bland images to help with the project.

London Orbital

I found a lot of connections to my research in this film by Christopher Petit and Iain Sinclair. It is a documentary, connected to but not of Sinclair's book of the same name.
Working similarly to Kieller's Robinson films, this is great film commenting upon contemporary culture and politics through topographical movement and history.
Filmed without a crew, it has a very personal feel to it and creates a believable and intriguing narrative.
A real must for repeated viewing.

London Sound Survey

An article in this month's Wire magazine reminded me of this great site that I hadn't visited for months.
Geographically it is ideally suited to one part of my project.
http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/

Personal Stereos.

Personal stereos interest me, as well as other personal media, because of the detachment the user begins to have with their surroundings. Heralded as one of life's most influential gadgets, the personal stereo is often said to provide us with our own sound tract to our life. Maybe it does, but at what cost to the community and surroundings of the user? If the user is detached from their surroundings and sonically elsewhere, what can their relationship to a location, situation, society actually be?
As smartphone owners, tracked by GPS use their hand-helds to find a location, what omission from their actual surroundings are they experiencing, and to what cost?

Cartography

Having made a few maps for small projects recently and beginning to use Mind Maps more regularly, I have been drawn to the idea of using maps as a documentary device for this project.
Black Dog Publishing's excellent book Atlas and The Map As Art by Katharine Harmon have been quite an inspiration, too.
Visual references are obvious, but a more conceptual idea about the charting of place may be an intriguing direction.