The Signals in the City symposium went well, and it was a very interesting day over all. I was really inspired by the first talk of the day by Jen Southern of Running Stitch. Running Stitch is a group of  collaborators: Jen Southern, Jen Hamilton and Chris St Amand  working with GPS to create artworks which map out the paths that people take through a city. Participants are given a  GPS enabled device (in this case a Nokia phone) which has their software loaded onto it. The path the participants take as they walk around a city is mapped via the GPS and then projected onto a large canvas in the gallery space where volunteers stitch the path taken by the person walking. By the end of the exhibition an intricate and abstract tapestry of people’s journeys has evolved.  

For me the intrigue in this work is not in the final piece, but actually in the processes taken to get to the “finished artwork”. I like the idea of working with people who are part of a place, and the stories that emerge from people’s journeys. Jen’s discussion of how Running Stitch’s projects have evolved over the years also was really interesting, and helps me put my own development and work into realistic perspective. These things take a long time – they took 3 years to develop the software needed to create the works…..

The other really interesting talk at the symposium was that of Chaos Computer Club, which is basically a whole bunch of devoted hackers who though hacking into systems create some great stuff. The talk was mostly focused on Blinken Lights  which started off as a project in an old building in Berlin. The windows of the building emulate pixels and are lit up to create different images. The idea is not unique, but the way in which is was done is exceptionally clever. I think the thing that resonated with me the most was that just by coincidence the day it started was 9/11 and Chaos Computer Club, in a desire to comfort people and make them feel safer displayed a beating heart for a few days… so the cynics of the world may think this tacky, but at a time like that I think that it was the best thing they could have done. As the project progressed, Chaos Computer Club invited the public to create animations for the windows, created by turning on and off a light – which in my opinion really screams Emperor’s New Clothes at Martin Creed’s Turner prize winning ridiculous light.

My artworks, for the Signals in the City Exhibition have been up for 2 weeks at the Hannah Maclure Centre, and it is only now that I can think about it, and reflect on the processes. After the flurry of getting everything done, not only was I exhausted, but I just had no more room left in my head for any of it.

At the private view, it was interesting to see the way that people interacted with my works. We have precedents or accepted ways of behaving in certain situations, when works like mine sit across different modes of interaction, some people don't know what to do. The works were print based and hanging on the wall, so one would first of all assume traditional modes of viewing... but you are invited to pick up a nearby phone to interact with it... but we use phones to listen, not to see.... and in gallery spaces people have been taught to look but no touch... and in mobile phone stores everything is chained down. So my works broke many conventions that people subconsciously have learned to abide by.

After the shock of being allowed to play, experiment and explore most people were very diligent in engaging with the works. Unfortunately the slicker designed 6300 phones were the ones which users gravitated towards to use, when in fact they don't work as well as the N70's. Goes to show how important good device design is.  Once over the fear of breaking the technology, and getting it to work, many users spent a rather long time with the works. Much more time than I would have expected. They really examined the content quite closely and referred back to original images, particularly in the home.html series, which I am quite chuffed by.

Although the medium I am working in is non-linear, and I jump in and out of my works in a non-linear fashion, viewers in the gallery looking at my works do not seem to. They work through the series of works, from the place where the pedestal with the handsets is, along the wall of images, just like people do in conventional gallery spaces. It has never ceased to amaze me (and sometimes annoy me) the way people shuffle along from one image to the next in a gallery space in one big long queue, which can be a bit boring if it is crowded and you have stopped in front of a blank wall.  Whenever I walk into a room, be it a gallery space, lounge room, lecture theatre, I survey the whole room, and then zero in on the aspects that appeal to me. So in a gallery space I stand back look at all the images then go straight for the ones I like the look of. I may ignore some things all together, while spend especially long times with other works, probably much to the annoyance of the shuffling sheep who like to follow the linear structure defined by the curator.

Perhaps I am a little odd not going in the correct order; I'd love to know -  what do other people do/ think when they go into a gallery space?