Saturday 26 February 2011

Grid 1000012

{ "grid": { "id": "1000012", "latitude": "50.6770133972168", "longitude": "-3.243603229522705", "date": "Sat Feb 26 2011 14:42:00 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }Sea from Victoria, Sidmouth

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Second Visit and Meeting

Yesterday I met with staff from the National Trust and Dales National Park, Stuart (the other artist working in this part of North Yorkshire) and Rick and FranceLeigh (project manager and coordinator) from Chrysalis, at Buckden.

Lots of good tips from Karen about how people interact with the 30 or so geocaches she 'manages', and extra things to consider when placing caches in the Park. Bird nesting patterns, rare flower cycles, military land use and local food production were amongst the topics raised discussing the landscape.

It was interesting to hear how Stuart's project is developing. Recapping Hunter Gatherer reminds me how much has happened just since my last visit 2 weeks ago - with the app in its third iteration and a definite pattern for number of caches, interaction with the locations and cycle of the digital media artwork, and a clearer idea of size, shape and necessities of the vital physical artefact - the geoArtcache container.

Just spending a couple of days and nights here, meandering around the park, soaking up the ambience and making a space to notice the things and places that catch my attention has been very useful. I can feel movement of the magical creature whose song we can almost hear whispering on the wind and sparkling off the dry stone walls. Maybe we'll get to know it more as people interact and share their stories about the treasures they discover.

Colour grid library

The colour 'chords' I've made so far....

View that initiated my response

Message sent from a handheld device.

Jackie Calderwood
www.jackiecalderwood.com

Screengrab

On the iPhone with location shown on google maps

Grid 1000008

{ "grid": { "id": "1000008", "latitude": "54.06251525878906", "longitude": "-2.1522252559661865", "date": "Wed Feb 23 2011 08:54:16 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }Morning from Malaham YHA

Tuesday 22 February 2011

A much softer landscape than I'd imagined ...


Dropped Pin  - Maybe the creature lives here sometimes ;)

Grid 1000007

{ "grid": { "id": "1000007", "latitude": "54.19135284423828", "longitude": "-2.0903666019439697", "date": "Tue Feb 22 2011 16:36:23 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }Outside Town Head Barn Buckden, colours of the landscape late afternoon dusk, looking West. No phone service.

Malham

View from my room at the YHA.
Woke up in the night with the next part of the picture of how the geo cache hunting & gathering will take form.

Monday 21 February 2011

Alternative view as screengrab

The v. 3 app as screenshot. Very strange to see the google mapview of daylight image as I've arrived in the pitch black fog of night!

Grid 1000006

{ "grid": { "id": "1000006", "latitude": "54.06222152709961", "longitude": "-2.151808500289917", "date": "Mon Feb 21 2011 22:09:15 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }At Malham YHA, supper, wooden bench, a moment to take in, the colours of bright curtains with chicken patterns and the dark steamed up window leading out to the night with the silvery call of an owl hooting.

Grid 1000005

{ "grid": { "id": "1000005", "latitude": "52.886512756347656", "longitude": "-2.173630952835083", "date": "Mon Feb 21 2011 18:02:23 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }Tired and ready for a nap! Service station car park,m6, Staffs.

Grid 1000004

{ "grid": { "id": "1000004", "latitude": "51.44015884399414", "longitude": "-2.61033296585083", "date": "Mon Feb 21 2011 15:18:01 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }Ham egg& chips en route to Yorkshire!

Grids

Third iteration of developing app from Sean, this ones emailing itself and it's info automatically, I'm just adding in text!

The top one was an excited first test
And the second one is standing by the window  inside the PMStudio to get gps and see how it tags my location; extremely happy and excited whilst feeling creatively grounded - colourful, exhilarating, well on the way, content & strong....


{ "grid": { "id": "1000001", "latitude": "51.45061492919922", "longitude": "-2.5993447303771973", "date": "Mon Feb 21 2011 13:44:07 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }
{ "grid": { "id": "1000002", "latitude": "51.45061492919922", "longitude": "-2.5995821952819824", "date": "Mon Feb 21 2011 13:45:52 GMT+0000 (GMT)", "notes": "xxx", "order": "xxx", "status": "saved" } }


Message sent from a handheld device.

Jackie Calderwood
www.jackiecalderwood.com

Friday 18 February 2011

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Travel

We have our next meeting in the area I'm likely to be working in, at Buckden next Tuesday. Just looking into travel plans and thought I may as well document them here for future reference.

Buses from Skipton to Buckden: 72/R (nb timetable last updated 2008 - worth a phonecall to check times haven't changed!)
Craven Routes - list of bus services

To get to Buckden by 1 I'd need to get the 12:00 bus from Skipton, thus leave Leicester by train 7:57 via Derby and Leeds, arr. 10:55 (time for early lunch/quick wander round Skipton!)
If returning same day: last bus from Buckden to Skipton is at 13:15 (before the meeting starts!)
Last train from Skipton is 19:18 via Leeds & Bm'ham arr. Leciester 23:20 BUT the last train I can use a return on (via Leeds, Derby, Beeston) is 18:16 and the shorter, more direct route (via Leeds & Sheffield) is at 17:19 arr. Leicester 20:23

Places to stay:
in Buckden - Redmire Farm  (doesn't mention if dogs allowed)
                    - Low Raisgill b&b (doesn't mention if dogs allowed)
                    - Hillcroft cottage - 1 bed,s/c (no dogs)
in Cray - White Lion Inn (dogs allowed in some rooms at small cost)
in Kettlewell - YHA (no dogs) - (reopens 11th March)
in Malham - YHA (no dogs) open! (however I can't find any bus routes that fit from Skipton to Malham or Malham to Buckden...)

Had thought I'd drive up Monday and spend a couple of days exploring/testing for phone signal etc/gathering material & developing ideas. Weather forecast's not looking too good at the moment, hence looking into alternative options - might be better to spend the time on the train instead!

Thursday 10 February 2011

Night stop

Location of Night stop
Message sent from a handheld device.
Jackie Calderwood
www.jackiecalderwood.com

First gathering on location...

Just spent the afternoon with Sean at Cuttlefish setting me up to test the first iteration of the interface for Gatherer iphone app. Exciting! Brilliant to try this out on screen for the first time after months of behind-the-scenes paper experiments, ideas and 'what ifs'...  Already lots of new ideas for how I could use it, and very interesting to experience the differences between paper (which we based it on as a starting point) and touchscreen. Much moreenticing to remake and play with 'what ifs' on screen. For now I can just save the images by making screen grabs, as below. When complete there will be various options for saving, geo-tagging, publishing, contributing to other things...

16:58 Loughborough station, grey , tired but pleased, long journey ahead- already in the road in my mind
Message sent from a handheld device.

Jackie Calderwood

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Geocache and colour grid responses combined

Today was a day full of ideas flowing and threads coming together, so I decided to enjoy the sunshine and give the dogs a treat by going out to Bradgate Park for a run through of an experimental walks workshop activity I'm planning for later this week. Of course I've now got the geocache bug, so decided to kill two birds with one stone (do twice the research at one go, I'm not sure about the killing birds metaphor really!) and have a look and see if there's any caches around or near the park. The geocache.com map of caches in and around Leicester is quite staggering! I ended up downloading a free trial of the Groundworks app which would check for local caches when I get there. Ended up exploring Rough Hill Woodlands looking for the Great Galaxy Seekers' cache... and allowing myself 3 moments to document along the way (the third of course had to be finding the cache...)



Rough Wood Location 1, everything flows

1, flow
A sense of all the parts coming onto harmonious being
2, new beginnings, growth, endless cycles of nature
2, location of catkins
How simple the geocache app is on iphone4, great woods, planted as part of new national forest, dogs happy, beautiful golden late afternoon light, and somewhere to park without spending loads on a parking ticket ( especially useful as I didn't think about cash when getting grids, colours, caches and device ready, and 26p ain't enough these days!)
Grid 2: response, new growth









Only just dark at 6pm - what a treat, spring really feels on the way!

So, back in the warm inside, and cache logged on the website, I'm completing my response experiments.

An overview for the whole walk, and a 'perception' diagram based on the things that caught my attention on the way.

I've made two copies of the colour grid responses, one set to go onto the perception diagram, the other onto a 'measuring' chart which I made before I set out. They're very sketchy and by no means at final form, but do give an indication to test out how I could work with different ways of perceiving, that come from the walkers themselves. I'm interested in the extent to which making a structure after and before the walk give different frameworks and throw up different relationships between the walker's moments and also the walkers and other attributes. 

On this walk, my attention was quite different to other walks - influenced heavily by the limitation of 3 notations, and the excitement of the treasure hunt for the cache - and maybe using the app to follow my location, too. They were hard to 'define'. On reflection, I settled on : state of being, sight, emotion and emotion as the ways in which my attention had been triggered.

Here are the two charts as rough sketches.

As an aside: The numbering of the colour grids is to trace the sequence in which each square is filled - this informs colour grid animations and enriches the data that can be used later ... in ways yet to be revealed!




Observations:
I find the drawings fascinating: there is so much information in them. 
I'm not convinced about the recoloured grids. At first I wasn't keen on the smaller size, but actually the scale is right for these sheets of paper and drawings. The denseness of the colouring makes them quite different to the spontaneous ones made on location - and that's something that I now will be of consideration with the iphone app to record colour blocks instead of using paper and pens or crayons. But I think the main thing is that there need to be more - from other people. I'm convinced the secrets lie in the relationships between the groups of colour grids made by one person and another, or by people at synchronous times in comparison to people at other times or places. between cohorts, not individual responses necessarily. So I'm keen to see how this scales up when the relationships of one person's varied experience to anothers are implicit and explicit.

Ah! They need to be viewed side by side.... Two pictures next to eachother become the two halves of the brain. Each moment is perceived as a unified experience (colour grids occur in both pictures) but each is read, networked and related to differently, according to the underlying structure of that half of the brain and its functions. [Or substitute 'brain' for mind/body, yin/yang, inner/outer, etc]
...Wouldn't have expected that to have come out of this exercise!!


So a moment not so much of paying particular attention , more of feeling part of the flow ...

Thursday 3 February 2011

Found first geocache!

"Bridge 169 - Under and Over" hidden in 2008 by Silver01Fox

Just outside Gargrave:






Trial and error



is a good way to incorporate both spontaneous enthusiasm and learning!

During the walk from Gargrave station to the Arts Depot I tested out various ways of recording responses and sending them 'live' to this blog. A 15 minute walk turned into a 2 hour meandering in the cold but brilliant sunshine as I experimented with colour grids, clean and not-so-clean questions, photos, texts, emails, gps markers and blog posts.

I was delighted to find emails returning to me during the walk, showing the link to the map location, photos and comments all beautifully laid out. ...But I made the mistake of thinking they were copies of my blog posts returning to me from the blog (which is how I've set up other project blogs in the past). Not this time - it's just because I've set up mobile email to automatically cc me on anything I send - not surprising then it looked as good coming back as it had when I'd sent it out!

So it was a bit disappointing to get back later and look at the blog from another computer only to see pages and pages of unwanted v-card text, and a lot of the photos missing... ah well, room for improvement!

I'll collate the various things I sent in, and make one post - below - to show the things I was documenting as catching my attention at various moments along the way.

9 points along the way

Church St Gargrave Station

Arriving at Gargrave




Message sent from a handheld device.
Jackie Calderwood

Questions:

2, here, now!


2, response


3 smell of wood smoke

3, no smoke to see cept trails in the sky changing colour in the light


4, neon yellow...


4, response


5, I know, even if google doesn't!  sign posting....



6 but not time for a colour grid



7, view


Skipton Rd, noticing the noticing, you start to get a trail




8 to the west (direction walked after meeting to search for geocache - see next post!)
8 in the middle
Now to work!


9,here