fisharepeopletoo

La Noche de los Muertos and igfest 09

I'd been waiting to write about igfest 09 till I'd photographed and uploaded the Book of Monsters, but seeings as it's nearly 2 months later and I still haven't had chance, here we go...

I played La Noche de los Muertos on the Friday evening. I'd never taken part in one of the city-wide chase games before, so there was some "always remember the first time" added awe from not knowing what to expect, but it was wonderful.

The Day of the Dead theme was the perfect clothing for the chase structure (which is to navigate from point to point across a city centre while being chased by baddies).

I wouldn't want to understate the pure joy of being chased around by zombies, but what really made it was the thoroughness and detail with which the Day of the Dead theme was carried through, and the care, wit and artistry that had been put into the little theatrical events at each checkpoint.

From the zombie Mariachi band to play us off, to the Zombie Marilyn in her grotto singing Happy Deathday Mr President to the red London bus ride to the cemetery at the end, the amount of effort that had gone into these was fantastic, and each checkpoint really did feel like a reward for getting so far.

At the final checkpoint we all made ourselves skeleton masks so that we could be ancestors of the dead, and this was a nice touch as well, involving our artistry in the making of the event, and making a keepsake, as well as "making" meaning to be there as an audience.

I took my god daughter Cherry along, and 14 was a great age to do something like this because she was happy to throw herself into screaming the loudest and running the fastest while keeping up just enough teenage coolness, and that made it even more unselfconsciously fun for me.

The final section was a walk through the very spooky and overgrown Arnos Vale cemetery at night, which was a great location, more of a damp, decaying wood with broken gravestones between the trees than an ordered graveyard, and one that I was glad to have seen just in itself.

Right in the middle of the walk through the cemetery me and Cherry managed a horror film moment so comic-dumb you couldn't have scripted it by slowing down because we thought we'd seen a zombie in the trees, then realising by the light of mobile phones that "it's only a statue" just as two real zombies jumped out from the other side of the track, which had us both screaming so loud (I changed mine into a  pretend  scream almost straight away of course) that it left everyone, living and undead, rolling around on the floor laughing.

The rest of the weekend I spent on Free All Monsters! The igfest base was in a great spot on a busy walkway next to the harbour, which made it very open to passers-by who just happened to be on an afternoon out and looking for something to do.  Most of these very warm pictures are from igfest and a good guide to the sunny feel of the whole weekend.




Big thank yous to the Simons and Helen for igfest and Clare Reddington for a space on La Noche de los Muertos at the last minute.

An email from a student signed with xxx

We collected some lovely, strange and sad things yesterday playing 100 Things at Sandpit at Battersea Arts Centre.

The messages reminded me of Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara

And it is surprising how much concentration is needed to think of a thing that has happened, especially a visual one, even on the same day.

You have to find a starting point and replay your day, almost like rewinding a film, but then something will jump out. It seems an illuminating process though, judging by the loveliness of some of the things.

I worked with some clinical psychologists once, and they were very keen on the difference between concrete and abstract memories. People who are feeling unhappy tend to remember in abstract terms - "That was a horrible time." - rather than remembering the detail of things that happened.

So maybe playing 100 Things is a good brain training exercise.

Try it out. Here are the rules.

And here are some things that happened on the 19th October 2009:

An italian waiter repeatedly whistling the same christmas carol. His colleague shouts at him in angry italian but he carries on regardless

A 15 year old boy in an RE lesson. He is manipulating his genitals. The teacher tells him to stop. "but i've got a wedgy sir."

I saw a workman's trench with a man's face down in it. He was very still. I couldn't tell whether he was working or asleep.

Two men stand outside a balti house. The older man teaches the younger man. 'Good afternoon gents, can i interest you in some lunch?' he says.

A man shook out a rug in a Bristol back garden.

and this one, my favourite of all:

A girl on the tube going to work falls asleep on a man's shoulder. As soon as she realises she stands abruptly and gets off a stop early.

more things on Flickr

100 things are enough for any day.

at Sandpit, Battersea Arts Centre, tonight, 19th October, more info here

Don't comment. Don't judge. The rules of 100 things.

You are a reporter. You are not a historian.

You are a reporter.

Think of something you've seen today.

Like this: a mum takes her toddler down onto the narrow strip of shingle in front of the Royal Festival Hall at low tide to pee into the Thames

Start a text with BAC then a space.

Describe what you saw.
Remember the details that only
a witness would know.
Don't comment. Don't judge.
Write no more than 160 characters.

Like this: An old lady eating a fish. A fried fish on a white tray, no chips, in a doorway out of the rain, breaking bits off. Her pink bonnet like a 40s film star’s.

Send your text to Thumbprint
(it only costs the same as texting your friend's phone)

Each text that comes in will be written
on a blackboard in BAC.
It will only last until the next
message arrives.

What you write will be completely anonymous.
You can be as personal or intimate as you like.

If we reach 100 we will stop.
100 things is enough for any day. 

You are not a historian.

[at Sandpit at Battersea Arts Centre, Monday 19th October, from 7.00pm, more info here]

Free All Monsters!

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Free All Monsters! is a game for children, families and even grown ups.

You'll use a Magical Monstervision Machine to look for invisible monsters living in the streets around you, then answer questions about the monsters to show your monster spotting skills, and set free your own monsters for other players to find.

To play Free All Monsters! you'll need a Magical Monstervision Machine, a Monster Spotter's Guide for the place you want to look for monsters, and some felt tip pens and paper.

 

 

 

Follow the picture clues on your Monster Spotter's Guide, and they will lead you to monsters that live in the streets around you.

Photos of players at Hide and Seek, London, and igfest, Bristol by Liz Milner, Paul Coulton and Andrew Wilson.

 

 

 

When you get close to a monster's lair, use the Magical Monstervision Machine to look for the monster.

 

When you see the monster, look at it very carefully.

 

 

On your Spotter's Guide you will find some questions about the monster, to test your monsterology skills.

 

First you have to answer a question to show that you have watched the monster carefully, then you have to add scientific knowledge by coming up with a new theory to answer a question such as “ Where does this monster go on holiday and what does it do there?”

 

Even though some monsters look very fierce and scary, they are really very old creatures who look after the places where they live, so they should never be captured or harmed, just watched.

 

 

 

Every monster that you find was set free by somebody else, and when you have finished looking for monsters you can set free some monsters of your own.

 

 

All you need to set free monsters is your imagination and some felt tip pens, paper and anything else you want to use to make a monster.

 

 

When you have set free your monster it can be made part of the game for other people to find using the Magical Monstervision Machine.

 

 

Where Do Monsters Live?

Monsters live outside, in the streets, squares and parks of the places where you go everyday or go to visit sometimes. The monsters live there all the time, in the cold and wind and rain as well as on warm sunny days.

 

The places where monsters live are the places where everyone should be able to go, not just real places, but places in their imaginations as well, and the job of the monsters is to guard those places, and make sure they are always open, free and welcoming for anyone who wants to go there.

 

Wherever you find a monster, it means that somebody cares about that place, and has set free a monster to live there and guard it.

 

 

Where Do Monsters Come From?

“No Gods, just Monsters!”

There haven't always been towns and cities, full of people hurrying to and fro to school or work.

Where now stand shops, factories and offices were once streams, woods and hillsides.

And every one of those places, even the loneliest tree standing by itself on the moors, had a monster to guard it.

The place belonged to the monster, and the monster belonged to the place.

So when towns and cities were built, the monsters had to stay, trapped under the tall buildings made of brick and stone and concrete.

And there they remained, for 200 years.

Until now.

Because the monsters have got very grumpy.

They are fed up of people walking on top of them, and they are really fed up of people squashing them under big, heavy cars.

They want to live on the streets in the places that belong to them, the places where they used to live, a long time ago.

Every time you play Free All Monsters!, whether you are using the Magical Monstervision Machine or setting free your own monsters for other people to find, you are helping to make a world that has monsters living in it again.

And that is a much better place for people to live in as well!

 

Children, families and grown ups have been setting free monsters in Manchester, in London at Sandpit and Hide and Seek, in Bristol at igfest, in Austin, and in Leeds at Pavilion gallery.

Secret Gardens, Things with Souls and Folk Processes

I went to Ars Electronica for a few days earlier this month (thanks to the lovely arts council) which was fantastic I thought.

There was so much to see that I didn't do it all justice once round, and I'd happily have gone round everything again when I had.

So this isn't really any sort of measured judgement, more of a "I liked this. And this. Oh, and this. And this."

The only judgement I've made is to put what I liked into three groups, themed around what I'm interested in, which is probably why I liked them in the first place.

Secret Gardens

The wooden walkway on top of the OK building – turning a rooftop into a secret garden that took us within touching distance of a church spire, out over the streets and past the smell of cakes coming out of the air conditioning ducts from a bakery below.

 

 

 

I liked the secret meadows that were growing on the rooftop, and on rooftops all over Linz. 

Then down at the other end of the scale was this miniature secret garden, filled up with snow and no bigger than a table top, where tiny fairies lived, if you could find them using a magic lens.

These are terrible photos, but this fish pond, that you could play with and remake by sprinkling gravel:

 

It could also go in the folk processes section, and in fact these headings and the things in them all cross over.

Things with Souls

The were lots of things with souls, from a chair:

to a building:

to a mechanism:

and I think this sense of a world that is alive is going to be a big area for creative technology to play around in.

And of course people have souls. Like this guy: 

who proved that people aren't all that much smarter than robots. Or at least I'm not.

I had a conversation with him, and was amazed by it. He didn't look very real, but because of the AI. I thought to myself “this is stunning, I had no idea that chat bots were so good”, and I had to stop talking to him because I got a bit self conscious thinking, “I'm having a proper chat with a machine.”

 It was only later that I found out that there was a bloke upstairs listening to me and telling the puppet what to reply! Still clever, but not quite what I thought it was.

Folk Processes

These were open spaces where the people taking part made the thing for themselves.

I've previously thought of these as digital archives, but at Ars Electronica there were spaces made by physical interactions by one or more people – there was a nice piece in the sound art retrospective exhibition, for example, in which movement triggered sound, so several people at once would be creating the event, and in the Device Art exhibition the video game with the circular screen hanging in the middle of the room, which two players had to run round in order to see what they were shooting at like a children's playground game (no photos of either of them sadly).

There was this Nam June Paik piece in which you could make sounds in whatever order you wanted from those strips of audio tape stuck to the wall, by running a part from a tape player along them.

And Yoko Ono's very poetic instructions for making music: 

Both of which are from the 60s.

And this net of LED lights strung on threads that you could slide backwards and forwards like beads on an abacus:

 

which took me ages of fighting off little kids to customise. 

"Jimbob I love you from Ming XXX" Helloworld and Speakers' Corner Revived

The Fourth Plinth event on Sunday was a revival of early 00s SMS media art projects like Speaker's Corner and Helloworld among many others (there was another nice one that Media Lab in Dublin did, and one by Jonah Brucker-Cohen as well not so long ago).

But I'd forgotten how warm and lovely these events can be if you get the right feel. Watching on the web cam, the delight of people in the square on seeing their message held up was clear.

More than any other technology (more so even than pen and paper in my opinion), SMS welcomes people to take part.

If you use text messages you invite everyone in, and don't leave anyone outside.

We've lost that a little bit recently in our understanding of how participation happens.

My favourite message was this one:

"luis miguel, wherever you are, you are always in our hearts..."

Whoever wrote that must have turned up for a tourist afternoon on Trafalgar Square, and was given an unexpected and touching few minutes by being able to send it from the Plinth out to someone, somewhere.

And with the benefit of ten years experience, using a whiteboard was even more sweetly engaging than the architectural of Speakers' Corner or the epic of Helloworld.

We could have done it without even using Thumbprint, but it allowed us to archive the messages and add a cute thing with the reply texts which was nice marketing for the SW11 Literature Festival. That was fair to everyone because it was Lorinda from the festival up there on the Plinth!

Church Halls are Participatoriums

Church halls are good reference points for participatoriums.

They can be home to lots of rule sets - for table tennis clubs and band nights, campaign meetings and Cubs.

Governed by overall rules of civility - stack the chairs and do the washing up when you are finished.

They are one big room.

But it can be reconfigured - for band night put the amps at one end, for a jumble sale put the trestle tables round the edges, for a film screening put the chairs in rows.

There is common investment and ownership, with negotiation and compromise over use.

They are landmarks, and membership is open to everyone who lives round here.

The Participatorium

The participatorium is the place where the people of our towns and cities present themselves.

The participatorium is one space.

The participatorium has no permanent internal walls.

The participatorium must be hackable -  the walls, floor and roof must be cut-openable, and reclosable.

The participatorium must be temporarily but not permanently sub dividable into both open and secret spaces.

The participatorium must be a landmark.

Everyone who lives here is a member of the participatorium.

Guests are welcome in the participatorium.

The participatorium has rule sets.

The participatorium is free.

Let's Close All the Theatres and Art Galleries

And build participatoriums instead.

A particaporium is the place where the people of our towns and cities present themselves.