Originally uploaded by Alice Angus
Reflections on Storycube workshop with Alice
Its interesting to see all the images of cubes going up and looking at the shared themes and subtle nuances and differences within that. Its reminding me that I haven’t blogged my thoughts on the workshop.
During the one minute descriptions everyone gave of their cubes I was inspired by the way the meaning of “Campus” had been investigated in such a diverse way, so that when we brought the cubes together it was interesting to see how those meanings were changed in relation to one another, how new perspectives were formed. Having taken the collection of 25 or so cubes as the “accidental museum” and split it among three groups to explore and find emerging issues it was revealing to find that all 9 issues coming out of the exercise had so many shared concerns. Just to remind you those were:
1 – Open Communication
2 – Open Identity/self expression
3 – Open or Anti Boundaries
1 – Tactile Experience of Space
2 – Congested Space
3 – How the body experiences space
1 – Direction – visual concern – metaphor
2 – Campus aesthetics: natural vs. constructed; green-space; industrial building
3 – Art on campus – secondary concern
The discussion of the campus began to focus around the effect of the environment on the physicality of being in it, looking at positive and negative spaces and thinking about how to change it. We discussed;
- Communication spaces and tools
- Defined spaces – open creative spaces
- The general feeling of moving on the campus
- Opening up spaces and connections
- Pattern repetition and visual qualities – finding the poetry in the everyday
- Plop Art
- Expectations of Campus
- Hierarchy
- Sensitivity to students and pedestrians
- Ability for form an identity
The processes for the research and ‘curation’ of the cubes ranged from using the cubes themselves as a social research tool and getting people to write on them, using them for mathematical processes, random processes and more physical building and arranging.
In the second half we brought all the cubes together to see what would happen if we tried to build a structure: to curate this larger collection. What new connections would appear, what new ideas come out of the juxtapositions of cubes? It was also a way to see how a single work impacts on the meaning of a whole collection.
The first approach was to create a structure of positive aspects of the campus environment – things that people felt positive about – negotiating what images were covered and what are left visible. During this someone suggested sorting the cubes into types – so the second last section was spent arranging the cubes into areas of concern around the positive and negative experiences and aspects of campus. This seemed to be the most successful part of the day, it was animated and there was lots of discussion about what things should move to particular groupings and it allowed some of the research into the campus to be investigated from other angles.
My favourite phrases and quotes were:
- BLAH/sameness
- Plop Art
- Find the everyday unnoticed
You can see my images from the 2 days on flickr – search for all pictures tagged anarchaeology.
Its good to see how things are going – please keep posting work and images so we can see them from over here. All the best Alice
