getDialogue

James Bridle: Unmoored

I’ve put off from writing about Unmoored for a number of reasons, the initial being that it is an anchor project for Hack the Barbican and deserves a fair critical text as an accompaniment. This introduction seeks to unpack some ideas surrounding the work and the resultant text is a set of notes to be developed further by myself or others. This is an open discussion. The point of where the critical framework begins here is most problematic and it must be stated that this position is not the fault of the work. A work with a variety of probable positions is more interesting to explore in the critical sense than work, which promotes soliloquy. The most problematic ideas arising from Unmoored are James Bridle’s own theories on aesthetics, specifically the New Aesthetic. It is hard to determine whether divorcing these ideas, of which he is very well known, will benefit the understanding of Unmoored. There are a number of reasons for wanting to do this, regardless of how dismissed this may be. For one, there is still validity in reading a work in relation to historical visual culture and the subsequent cultural contexts. There is also integrity in reading a work as it presents itself to you, to prevent an arm reach into the bag of convenient discourse. The purpose of using both these methodologies is of course to widen the scope of how the work is received and to donate new narratives. Despite stating this, there will be links back to ideas that have been formed through the New Aesthetic, although it won’t be pointedly referenced to prevent convolution (see: drones).

One of the hypotheses that lingers relates to the New Objectivity movement around the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany. In brief, the New Objectivity sought to explore photography as a medium separate from the simulacrum of painting. There was also a desire to explore mechanical production and its relationship to repetitious forms in nature - Alfred Renger-Patzsch is most acclaimed for establishing this visual relationship. Why in particular this area is of interest in this context, are the parallels in trying to articulate and explore new cultures that have grown due to the development of technology. There was also the spectre of war, ailing economic systems and technological developments in military hardware hanging over the Weimar which, it could be argued are also suspended over us now albeit manifesting in different ways. There are further parallels with the New Objectivity and the present technological society hinted at here but, these notions are perhaps best elucidated on in a subsequent, more considered, well referenced text.

There are loops here to run in relationship to Unmoored, which admittedly will take sometime to enunciate. Unmoored is an adaptation of  A Ship Adrift, originally commissioned and produced for Artangel’s A Room for London in 2012.  A Ship Adrift is a virtual craft blown across the world by a weather station positioned in London. For Unmoored at Hack the Barbican, Bridle has utilised the same process to blow an untethered Barbican across the globe. Using weather data gathered from the Barbican, visitors could watch the vast concrete complex float across a virtual landscape.  A Ship Adrift and Unmoored both appear to subtly narrate a new type of military hardware as both can be linked to Bridle’s interest in drones. Free of pilots and anonymously mapping a landscape, these virtual drones roam without any invitation or discernment for sovereign territory or culture. This could sound utopian, free and liberating. The virtual landscape allows for a world without borders. It is utopian to a point, until real drones are considered. The drones of the US military are technically pilotless but, they are programmed with political rhetoric, histories of world power and foreign policy. Assuming a recognisable colonial position, they are anonymous to territory and culture in order to fulfil their programmed objectives. The fact that Bridle uses Google Maps as space for the drones to navigate, speaks again about US global dominance - the drones don’t track over alternative mapping systems or make suggestions towards any other virtual global mapping.

This is where New Objectivity photographer August Sander comes in at a complete right angle. Sander wasn’t overtly interested in military hardware or objectives. He was engaged with the supposed objectivity that technology / photography brought to representing society. Using the photograph, he began to document German farmers by their trade prior to WW1 and in the run up to WW2. This project slowly expanded to all of German society. He had a photographic catalogue of German archetypes, defined by job or by social class, even by disability. This activity and the resultant visual output in retrospect becomes an omen of the machinations of genocide that would later be enacted by the Nazis. It is worth stating that Sander did not have political sympathies with the party, his interests were with a whole society, not with the vision of a society destroyed by the action of eugenic thought. This assumed digression now needs to link back to Unmoored. Unmoored and A Ship Adrift could similarly be sinister omens of a future world landscape. Like Sander, Bridle is picking up on a precursor of something. A socio-political landscape that we can’t yet articulate but, is likely to be formed by world powers positioning unmanned ships across the world, programmed with foreign policy objectives that are operative regardless of cultural space or territories.

Continuing with Germany and the upheaval between WW1 and WW2, there is another visual trope that Unmoored ties into. There is a difficult foundation in aerial footage that can always be traced to the opening sequence of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. If Unmoored is as militaristic as assumed, then there is a relationship. There are crossovers, the pilot of the plane carrying Hitler is not visible, the real interest lies in staging omnipresence over landscape. Maybe, just possibly, Triumph of the Will is not only the first film to feature aerial footage but, also the first to visually suggest a drone concept. The visual narration of the opening sequence has a resonance when one elects to look out of the window from Unmoored. This omnipresence over landscape was replayed in real time to all visitors at Hack the Barbican during August. The viewer could watch Unmoored’s journey from the point of view of the craft / object. All those encountering the work are implicated in the omnipresent position and are transformed from being the surveyed to the surveyor. In an age where the viewer is often aware of and comfortable being in either position - social media has turned us into surveyors who expect to be surveyed ourselves, it is hard to discern a true critical distance from this voyeuristic mechanism, other than to say it feels somehow natural. Once making this realisation, this assumed ease becomes sinister and questionable. We know we can take on either role, we just aren’t sure why we need this skill yet. It’s a concept that at times seems intangible but, is a definition of the contemporary age. For A Ship Adrift and Unmoored the greatest challenge for both works is trying to discern the intention of either. When work takes on mechanisations that mimic socio-political atmospheres, it is hard to make a decision if the work is critical of, sympathetic to or merely observant of these atmospheres.

barbican.shipadrift.com

In Dialogue | Tim Murray-Browne / Cave of Sounds

Can you give an overview of your project?

TMB: The Cave of Sounds is an interactive sound installation formed of a circle of eight original musical instruments, inspired by ideas of prehistoric people using music as a means to form a sense of collective identity. The instruments were all created to exist together as an ensemble, but were each made an individual over a period of ten months with regular meetings and jam sessions forming a key part of this process. As an exhibition, audience members are invited to experiment and play with the instruments and connect with others around them through making music.

I was really intrigued with how Cave of Sounds is something without structures yet is aware of community? That is at least the sense I had when observing and playing in the installation.

TMB: Yes, one of the ideas behind the Cave of Sounds is to dismantle the distinction between performer and audience to some extent. Like many things in our society, music has become a specialised activity performed by professionals and consumed by the masses. But for many (perhaps most) cultures throughout history, creating music is something a group does together rather than for the benefit of spectators.

Following on from this, I was intrigued by the remarks you made in the film for Cave of Sounds about prehistoric music making. Could you expand on this briefly and are there any references for the project?

TMB: A big inspiration behind the project was Werner Herzog's film The Cave of Forgotten Dreams that documents 30,000 year old paintings in the Chauvet cave, as well as the remains of ancient stone circles across the UK. I was also influenced by Christopher Small's ideas in Musicking, where he considers music as an activity rather than an artefact and the social consequences of this. These ideas resonated when we were first getting to know each other as a group, as well as theories about the evolution of birdsong - how bird species evolved to sing in different areas of the spectrum to make it easier for those within a single species to hear each other.

Additionally, I was interested in how individual sound artists / composers (if that is the correct terminology?) produce new instruments to be used within an environment that could be orchestral but, is obviously lacking in that formality. How do discussions work around how they blend together or is that even important? Are you a composer or a facilitator?

TMB: Creating instruments that fitted together was one of the biggest challenges of the project - particularly given the diversity of different sounds everyone in the group works with. It formed a big part of the process - every few weeks we would meet and listen to each other's work and different sound references people wanted to share. Any kind of musical collaboration involves a process of finding the balance between individual ideas and the sound of the ensemble, and seeing if we could do this with a set of original instruments was a key question we were exploring with the project. Even so, the final third or so of its development was mostly focused on improving the collective sound, both by modifying individual instruments and by increasing the scope of the networked component to keep them more in sync with regards to rhythm and harmony.

How do you define the word hack and how do you relate that back to Cave of Sounds?

TMB: I'm actually not that keen on the word myself as it's used to mean so many different things, although I'm composer in residence at the Music Hackspace so obviously I can't avoid it. However, I would say a key part of the stuff going on with the Music Hackspace is creating new music by using existing technology in original and personal ways. So perhaps, I would go with that. I think the personal element is key though.

Early on with the Cave of Sounds, it was occasionally referred to as the Hacked Ensemble which captures the fact that each instrument is an original personal technological artefact from a different musician or artist. But calling them 'hacked instruments' also seems to imply that they were hobbled together last weekend which is definitely not true! Fundamental to the Cave of Sounds has been the gradual co-evolution of the different instruments that form it and the formation of a single unified work out of many individual's personal practice.

How did you find the process of working within / with the Barbican Centre?

TMB: Architecturally, the Barbican remains one of my favourite buildings in London and it's been amazing to be there. I was really happy to get the cavernous lower ground floor with the stairs leading down to the installation. It doesn't look like a cave but the lighting, concrete multitude of surrounding passageways creates much of the same essence.

In Dialogue | Geoff Howse from Thickear / Ministry of Measurement

Can you give a quick overview of your project?

GH: The Ministry of Measurement was an installation/performance, transforming the Barbican’s giant cloakroom area into a sinister bureaucratic data collection centre. Through sound, visual cues, performance and an eye for the Barbican’s Brutalist aesthetic, members of the public were coerced into collecting bizarre measurement data, which was duly fed into the eleven enormous databanks, printed and hung up as lengthy data sheets.

A study of the subjectivity of data readings, the intricacies of measurement and our inherent suspicions about data exchange, The Ministry of Measurement was also an homage to classic sci-fi and dystopian film and literature, visual echoes of which are abundant within the Barbican’s architecture and interior design.

As the work developed we consulted with Ulrich Atz from the Open Data Institute and Michael de Podesta from the National Physical Laboratory on the subjectivity of data readings and the intricacies of measurement and the idea to present a fictional bureaucratic organisation grew from the setting and our research. We also collaborated with Anthony Evans to provide programming for our receipt printer and Daniel Lopez to build and support a MoM website.

How did you find the process of working within or with the Barbican Centre?

GH: Inspirational on many levels, tiring and occasionally poignant. Firstly, we felt honoured to have the opportunity to present work in an wonderful institution, wonderful both as a cultural centre and aesthetically. We wanted to present work that was sympathetic to both aspects, as well as to Thickear as a collective.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with the Barbican staff who helped greatly to facilitate the work and who did everything they could to aid us, personally I can't thank them enough, yet the irony of pushing a work concerned with bureaucracy through all the necessary levels of bureaucracy was not lost on us.

Finally, the experience of 'working' at the ministry day to day, in the dim cathedral of the lower level, was often as tedious and tiring as any administrative job. Interacting with the public was often deeply enjoyable yet observing from afar the lives of some who through necessity find the Barbican their daytime sanctuary, was very sad.

How would you define the word or concept ‘hack’?

GH: An intervention. A re purposing for some use other than that which intended. Unofficial, tacked-on, crude yet effective.

What are your main influences or references for the project that visitors would be interested in?

GH: Before we heard about Hack the Barbican we had become interested in data sonification and how information can be processed to produce supposedly representational sound. Our research had revealed how subjective that transfer can be; essentially any data can produce any output. As we initially walked around the Barbican building we were conscious that we wanted to create work that was sympathetic to the buildings aesthetic but was also a re-purposing of the space in the spirit of the HTB festival. When we looked at the cloakroom space, we were struck by its symmetrical beauty and epic proportions. It was pertinent to us that was here was a space where another type of transfer usually took place, an exchange of item for code, with eleven gargantuan banks of data storage.

As mentioned The Ministry of Measurement was also an homage to classic sci-fi and dystopian film and literature - 1984, Brazil, THX 1138, Kubrick etc. We didn't read, watch or research any of these any further than the residues they have already left in our cultural consciences, yet the references I think were clear.

  If you could re-imagine the structure of Hack the Barbican in your chosen medium, how would it manifest? Is it possible to articulate this?

GH: In many ways Hack the Barbican follows a modern mode of thought reflected in open data and open source networks. Here the Barbican is the code that has been ‘opened’ and all comers have been allowed access. Participants do not need to have already had successful careers to be involved and they do not need to stick to the usual designated ‘art’ or ‘performance’ stages within the Barbican. They only need the drive and ability to make their vision happen. This is a very interesting direction for an organisation such as the Barbican to take.

In our collective we both do and don't follow this structure. We believe in collaboration, the free flow of ideas and talents, and we open our doors to others. Yet we decide when those doors open and to whom. So we could be much more open -  but do we want this? Well, if we follow the HtB model, I guess it it isn't up to us to decide.

About Thickear:

Ian Willey: Barbicoin

"When Aristotle argued that coins are merely social conventions the term he used was symbolon - from which our own word “symbol” is derived. Symbolon was originally the Greek word for “tally” - and object broken in half to mark a contract or agreement, or marked and broken to record a debt. So our word “symbol” traces back originally to objects broken to record debt contracts of one sort or another.”

David Graeber Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Ian Willey has run a series of workshops at Hack the Barbican where the public were invited to change the surface of 2 pence coins with tomato ketchup. A variety of designs were temporarily etched onto the surfaces, personalising the currency. The coins can go back into circulation or preserved with clear nail varnish and turned into a keepsake. The workshops were borne out of an interest Willey has had in alternative currencies. Originally trained as in Fine Art, Willey now works in the gaming industry and is currently developing an App. According to Willey within the gaming realm, a lot of resources and discussions can be centred around virtual currencies: how they will look, how they will work and how they will ultimately influence the narrative of the game. In terms of real virtual currency, Willey discussed Bitcoin and the disruptive waves it is passing through our current financial systems. Bitcoin is the evolution of money as a symbolic token to just pure numbers. In recent years the world has been preoccupied with alternative and sustainable currency systems; Barbicoin taps into the current interest in local currencies such as the Brixton Pound and skills exchanges.

In relationship to hacking, Willey offered some useful references from The Heretic’s Guide to Finance by Brett Scott:

“Many hacker approaches attempt to blend three categories of action:

Exploring: Empathetically getting to know the nuances of systems, and gaining access.

Jamming: Rebelliously and mischievously seeking out the systems’ vulnerabilities and exposing them.

Building: Creatively seeking to recombine the elements of systems to create something new.”

These categories are particularly useful in unpacking the projects at Hack the Barbican. The majority of projects would probably come under exploring and jamming, there is an element of rebellion but, only within defined parameters. In terms of Barbicoin there are elements of  allowing the public to explore and build personalised currency, rather than a viewing currency as a system of enforced symbols. Perhaps categories one and three have to occur in order to open space for individuals and communities to become more rebellious towards their environment. An exploratory action becomes research into potential new knowledges and what one then does with these new discoveries depends on how limited a community could feel. Therefore, Barbicoin has the potential to seed thought about local currency after the public have explored and built monetary symbols of their own.

Further Reading:

The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money by Brett Scott

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Bitcoin.org

Matthew Lee Knowles : 3 Discourses

I recall being in Japan in the run up to a general election, everywhere I went there were smartly dressed people speaking into megaphones. Being unable to understand the language removed the effect of their rhetoric, instead the megaphone functioned as a device to imbue their words with authority. I had a sense what they were saying was profound and important, I just wasn’t sure why. There was a similar disconnect in Matthew Lee Knowles’ performance at Hack the Barbican on Thursday the 22nd of August. Wrapping Penthouse 4C in thin paper ribbons of text, Knowles proceeded to read the words through a megaphone. He is a composer, a writer and poet and the essays read navigated the realms of physics, mathematics, cosmology and the universe. Meaningless, written by Knowles himself and Black Holes of the Mind, written by Laonikos Psimikakis-Chalkokondylis were both relayed to Barbican visitors lingering around the lobby area. The performance was an act of endurance and according to Knowles partly inspired by American composer Morton Feldman. Feldman would attempt to play a piano as quietly as possible requiring yogic balance and concentration. Whilst Knowles’ performance differed from this, moving around the strands of text in the space and talking consistently for a prolonged period of time requires a similar physical dedication to executing the work.

Knowles has an enduring relationship with, unsurprisingly, John Cage. 3 Discourses was very much in the style of a happening from Cage’s golden era in the 1960s and had traces of the Fluxus movement in its inception. There was also a visual element to the piece that dealt with the relationship Cage had with notation. The strings of text on paper added a structure to the performance. Knowles himself considers writing poetry to be something very similar to writing music, as words have a rhythm - so in a sense an alternative score is formed to be performed and interpreted. The open nature of this in 3 Discourses extends to Knowles using a text ‘composed’ by a collaborator. In terms of definitions of hacking, Knowles offered that interventions at HTB move the term towards something new and improved instead of indicating something with sinister motives.

The public nature of the performance became a point of controversy. There wasn’t an invited audience, its acknowledgement relied on passersby. Penthouse 4C is located next to the Barbican Library. Some regular users of the library were finding the unusual sound emanating from the lobby distracting and annoying. Whilst this is a misfortune of architecture - the library is not sealed from the lobby so sound can leak over its balcony, the blame often lied with the performer. When Knowles was performing a woman interrupted him to register her disapproval. Although not an intended effect of the performance, it raised interesting issues about how the public may view such an intervention in an institutional space. There was an element in her argument that suggested Knowles had no integrity to carry out what he was doing. She may have changed her mind if she had been introduced to him performing at Wigmore Hall (which Knowles has done), I did wonder if this would somehow change the validity of his performance in the eyes of this woman.

Matthew Lee Knowles: matthewleeknowles.com

But Where Is It?

By post 12 I suppose I should have some additional commentary that may somehow contextualise Hack the Barbican. However, I don’t actually know where to begin. Not knowing where to begin is a Hack the Barbican beginning. Minimal parameters are Hack the Barbican parameters. The decision for no central curatorial policy has meant my own commentary has been given these seemingly limitless boundaries. I have been proactive in seeking the HTB community out but, more than anything I’ve let the anarchic nature of the event dictate how I encounter projects to write about. At first I thought this was professional laziness but, in retrospect I had no choice. Sometimes I feel more like a visitor than I do a participant. Being in this position, where the writer has chosen to provide discourse, is an odd place of decided interloper. I need to engage but, not too much. This is hard when there are scant curatorial guidelines. There is no edge to Hack the Barbican where I can dip my toes or even hit my head. Instead, I’ve come up with the strategy of residing in a fixed place (Penthouse 4C, this may now change). I wait for conversations and work to appear organically. I’ve relied on other people for introductions. I’ve been alerted to interesting projects on Twitter. I’ve followed up some preemptive research on participants to guide who I contact. I’ve looked at Lanyrd and chased up. In the beginning I started out with a question for participants about the reimagination of HTB as a another system or space. Somehow that question has been lost in amongst discussions about work and the meaning of hacking, so I want to resurrect it now. For me, if HTB was a structure it would be Zaha Hadid’s Maxxi building in Rome. A space with different pockets or views depending on how you encounter it, a whole that you can never perceive in its entirety. The dissolution of overview is both at once fascinating and frustrating. This labyrinth space is the essence of Hack the Barbican.

In Dialogue | shelf_story

shelf_story is a collaboration between Ariane Schick currently studying at the Royal Academy, Leonore Schick author and teacher, Thomas Beesley of Resonance FM and furniture designer Romain Pascal.

 Visitors to Hack the Barbican are invited to tweet an image of an object to alter the story. As the weeks have passed, the shelf_story shelves have become filled with these images. Each week the new objects further the narrative and result in a podcast available here: soundcloud.com/cheeseandchalk/shelf-story-1.

How do you define the word hack and how do you relate that back to shelf_story and literature?

AS: I took the word hack in the sense that came to me first, and that was perhaps suggested by the logo Hack the Barbican had chosen, that is to say it might indicate a breaking into or an infiltration of, rather than other understandings of hack that might have pointed me more in the direction of cutting something up for example.

The projects primary relationship to literature, is quite pop or low brow as well as having quite a direct relationship to the idea of infiltration. This would be any writing along the lines of the story books where you are referred to this or that page depending if you decide to open a door or take the stairs... But of course I think that lurking in a more distant background you might be brought to think about people like Burroughs and co. and his/their cut up texts.

What are your main references for the project?

AS: The project was done as such – a collaborative project – rather than a piece. So by this I mean, firstly that it might not need to be read as much more than the sum of its parts, and secondly as a project that brought together quite a few people, they all came with their own sets of references. For these reasons the references are quite pragmatic - on my end at least as I can’t speak for the others - I was thinking about transmedia storytelling, online or otherwise (books like Masquerade), places where there are points of overlap between fiction and reality.

As for the choice to have a physical structure that “houses” the project - I think we all see it as no more than a signage to make passersby aware that the story is happening. It is a supporting structure for the story to exist and communicate itself.

Would you consider shelf_story to be crowdsourced?

AS: I think the project comes very close to crowdsourcing without actually ever frankly sitting within it. If perhaps the project had involved asking the crowd to tweet sentence upon sentence to build the rest of the story, creating a sort of online narrative exquisite corpse then we might have been closer to the realm of crowdsourcing. But as it stands it's more of a platform for a writer, Leonore to tell a story in parts. Its closer to a game as might be suggested by the references I mentioned.

I guess I am coming at this question from what Jonathan Jones recently said here about art sourced via social media being “boring”. I would really like to know your counter response to that ...

AS: Concerning the Jonathan Jones article, I see where he is coming from but I think that a large part of what he expresses in the article comes from that fact that in order to communicate a clear opinion he was obliged to set up some binaries that don’t correspond to the complexities of art making. He generates a kind of opposition between Elizabeth Price and Gillian Wearing that seems artificial.

He seems to say so himself in his introduction. The dichotomy he bases his article on is, on one hand that of a “romantic idea” of the artist, which is just that, a romantic idea, a sort of over simplification that does not allow itself to consider the spectrum of different practices that exist and on the other hand of that spectrum he places creative crowd sourcing managers – whereas I can imagine that that is a whole field of expertise that actually exists, in businesses and other areas. It seems that for the sake of argument he is building a simplified image of certain practices. I think its a complicated job to talk about the process that goes into making work, and that job can be even harder when the task at hand has been so radically summarised.

I think that Gillian Wearing’s work is resolutely outside or elsewhere than in that “voice” she offers the people she features in her work, that just seems to me to be part of the material she uses. Whether or not the end result is “boring” seems to be a separate question from how she goes about making, and is surely a question for which the answer would vary from work to work.

...If you find his remarks relevant to shelf_story?

AS: I do think that shelf_story is interactive in the specific way that Jonathan Jones refers to in his article, even though as I said it does fall short of being what might be called crowdsourced. That said, as I mentioned before I don't consider it as a piece so much as a collaborative project, where quite a few people pitched in to various degrees, as I mentioned Leonore did all the writing, the lions share of the work. And on my end, even if I did oversee the project, I don't consider that because I have a practice that everything I put out is art or should be read in those terms. When the project was devised the intention was not artistic so I think it would be a dead end to think of it in that way. So to answer the question, in relation to the Jonathan Jones article that speaks specifically about crowdsourcing in the context of art making, I think that in the case of shelf_story, we are dealing with a different context so the project can't really be considered on those terms.

IF: This Paper World

Interactive Film (IF) are a partnership between visual artist Karen Palmer and programmer Richard Baffoe Djan. To define them as a just a visual artist and programmer does a disservice to the immersive narratives they create. Using film as a starting point, Karen and Richard work collaboratively to develop a screen based environment that is part gamification and part viewer participation. Recognising a desire in the collective consciousness, they have brought interactive narratives to audiences who are fluent in determining the outcome of the media they consume. They have worked on four previous projects, which have been physical installations. At Hack the Barbican IF are working in collaboration with producer, director and scriptwriter Aaron Thomas to develop a interactive trailer that will only be available as an App. For IF, Hack the Barbican is a two week lab to intensely work towards a finished article. 

The tale of This Paper World and how IF and Thomas came to work together are both as significant as IF’s approach to storytelling. This Paper World is the title of a novel by American writer Jeff Lane, which IF and Thomas will be turning into a feature film.  Lane started writing in his spare time and distributed his work for free via podcast and eBook. He began to gain fans worldwide, one of whom was Thomas. He spoke to Lane via online forums and developed a relationship based on shared interests and discovered that they bizarrely share the same birthday. This Paper World is considered a tale of our modern times but, similarly is the story of the adaption of the novel into film. It is hard to imagine Thomas or Lane coming into contact like this at any other time in history. Thomas encouraged Palmer to listen to Lane’s podcasts and she too became entranced with the world Lane had created. Around this time Thomas began managing Lane’s career and with Palmer onboard started discussing the possibilities of a film based on This Paper World with IF. Their time spent at HTB is creating an interactive trailer for the film that will be available as an iPhone App. The feature film will be financed by Kickstarter, in keeping with the style of how Lane interacts with his fanbase. This will allow the script to develop inline with the author and the original novel. When adapting for film Thomas has cast the film to reflect Lane’s diverse audience and to complement the multicultural landscape of London, which forms the backdrop for the film adaptation. For fans of Lane, there are some interesting character developments in store for the film adaptation. 

In comparison with the other projects documented as part of getDialogue This Paper World differs in approach in terms of how HTB is utilised as a space for creative endeavour. Working on a project in this manner is reminiscent to how developers may use a hackday to take existing ideas or rough mark-ups and turn them into a tangible finished article. 

Interactive Film: i-films.co.uk

Aaron Thomas: fruitdistrictgroup.com

Lawrence Lek & Public Assembly: Penthouse 4C

When I was discussing Penthouse 4C with Lawrence the day previous, he mentioned an observation he had that the space created in the foyer of the Barbican is often used as a domestic space by visitors. Various reasons were discussed for this - mainly emanating from decisions he and Public Assembly had made around making as minimal an intervention to space as possible. Using domestic lighting, carpeting and an elevation of floor space, Lawrence and Public Assembly have staged an insection of the public space at the Barbican. Furnishing gives a subtle suggestion of another space, another habitat. This sense of domesticity is no more prevalent than now, where unfolding behind me in real time, a family with their accompanying dynamics have taken up residence. A girl is rolling around on one of the sofas reappropriated from the Barbican, blowing a recorder with piercing inaccuracy, her younger brother is providing a composer-less vocal accompaniment and food provided by their mother is digested mainly by the carpet. I have just heard “I’m about to lose my temper” and the girl with the recorder has been banished to ‘over there’ - the public translation of ‘go to your room’. 

The space does allow for a release of formality that perhaps is not provided for in the rest of the building. For myself in text form, I want to use the discussion of Penthouse 4C as a break in the formality of my writing so far. Talking about the space allows for subjectivity, as I have also been one of the habitual inhabitants. I confess that I have slipped off a shoe or fantasised about replacing the light bulbs in the cute lamps with more environmentally friendly versions. Similarly, for now, I have slipped away from worrying about my self imposed word count or the sacrilegious application of I. Lawrence is referred to by his first name, a more familiar mode of address than the standard repetition of the last name in most art criticism. In summary, it’s refreshing to get the chance to say hello to the colloquial in a formal setting, which I assume is why Penthouse 4C has become a vibrant destination within the Barbican complex. 

Notions of public space form an ongoing dialogue for Lawrence and Public Assembly. Lawrence considers Penthouse 4C a framework for exchange, a platform for further projects, a space to explore the continuity of the ‘event’, a residency, a stage for performance and talks, a place to eat sandwiches at lunchtime, a microcosm of Hack the Barbican, a transference of existing activity (e.g. people working on laptops), a point to form a critical mass and a site for any other (legitimate?) activity that the HTB community or the general public need to negotiate. On other terms, Penthouse 4C is a half size replica of the most privileged flat in the Barbican. Lawrence has brought this space to ground, so the community / the public can utilise its dimensions. It could be read initially as talking about the commercial systems of the city. Lawrence mentioned that within the square mile, there is a cultural and architectural pressure to always look up and beyond your current grounded position. Penthouse 4C pulls down these lofty ambitions and therefore, opens up the space for other activity that extends beyond property, the symbolic materialisation of monetary advancement. 

According to Lawrence this transfer of Penthouse 4C from the top to the bottom, could be considered as social-economic hack. A broader definition of hacking he offered was a cut through something, which relates loosely to a spatial meaning for hacking and perhaps has a basis in Lawrence’s architectural education. We did discuss that hacking has become a fashionable term due to its relationship with technology. Another explanation of hacking provided came from the tech community, where hacking could be used to break apart systems and as proof of technological prowess.  Finally, a further observation of his was the particular way those who were engaging with communities for their HTB project. They were hacking the institutional setting by inviting in those who may not usually visit the Barbican to come and inhabit the space. The notion of what the public is in this sense becomes something very subjective in this context - depending on the social networks of the individual and posed further questioning for Lawrence.

By way of summary from this discussion, it could be concluded that like architectural systems, of which Penthouse 4C is a good example, hacking is an enacted proposal for many routes or definitions of activity.

www.lawrencelek.com

Kacper Ziemianin : Sound Hack the Barbican

The Barbican is patiently listening to itself in the Fountain Room. Sound artist Kacper Ziemianin has installed microphones around the material fabric of the Barbican. It is a live amplification of the building, plugged into a mixer and then released through speakers. Unfiltered and textured by vibration, the speakers are unveiling activity happening at dispersed locations throughout the building. There is opportunity to play the building too - if you are lucky enough to locate the microphones on the railing outside the Fountain Room. Intense layers of sonic activity are revealed within this supposed static structure. All sound being replayed is reflected from objects and space: steps across floors, the touch of hands on handrails and even music from the Barbican’s theatres patch together to create a soundscape. However, the type of microphones in situ pick up vibrations and are not likely to loudly replay conversations happening across the complex (this was initially a worry for the Barbican staff).

Ziemianin is a member of Music Hackspace London, a community who have a large number of members actively involved in making work for HTB and working in the organisational team. Ziemianin makes his own instruments, often using inexpensive customised equipment. It is from this making process that he articulates the meaning of hacking. Rather than buying expensive products hacking, according to Ziemianin, allows you to build what you want to your specifications. This is true of Sound Hack the Barbican, where inexpensive microphones have been used to create something sophisticated. It is a process of utilising objects in a way they were not designed to be used. For him this actively opposes the type of consumerist culture where people continually buy products they do not need. Hacking allows for making creative decisions based on what you want to do, rather than being dictated to by what products are available for sale. It also forces you to acquire skills such as soldering, using Arduino and open source software like Processing. Your discoveries can then be shared with a community (Music Hackspace, for example) and you can also engage and learn from other community members. Hacking opens up the possibilities of making and communities of learning, rather than narrowing them.

Prior to coming to the realisation that he desired to break free from making music using prescriptive software, Ziemianin was playing in bands and producing music. His practice evolved whilst at university where he learnt the principles of circuit bending by adapting toys and other electronic objects to create unpredictable and random sounds. Subsequently he has made an instrument using a light interface and a drum machine that plays rhythms with 8 arms. His work is mainly influenced by the limits of technology and what you are able to do with it. Whilst constructing the hardware for his HTB project, Ziemianin found the work of Leafcutter John and Alex Reece pioneering and referential on practical terms.

In Dialogue | Victoria Karlsson & Joe McBride : Close

Can you give an overview of your project?

VK: The project started with a discussion about or interest in how to be able to work together in a interesting and constructive way, without compromising our two different creative outputs and practices.We looked at it as more of a juxtaposition, where neither the sound nor the poetry took "centre stage" so to speak, but where they both worked together to access hidden layers and meanings within both the sounds and the text.

  The piece aimed to investigate the idea of changing states of consciousness, such as the state between being awake and dreaming, just on the edge of falling asleep. The soundscape moves from the speakers, suggesting a state of 'reality' , blending with the sounds of the Barbican Foyers, towards the headphones, suggesting and inner voice, an internal (dream) state.    How did you find the process of working within / with the Barbican Centre?

VK: The Barbican Foyers are amazing spaces, and the centre is used by so many different people through out the day, to have a piece of work here was great, and the reactions where varied and very interesting. The space that we where working in helped in developing the project, public yet secluded, open yet closed, it worked well with the idea of going 'into yourself' towards a state of dreaming or inner reflection How would you define the word or concept hack?

VK: The idea of 'hacking' something, to me, means both to make it your own, but also to be influenced by and learn from it, so a mutual exchange, a symbiotic relationship What are your main influences or references for the project that visitors would be interested in? 

VK: One of my main influences was Janet Cardiff and her sound-walks, where I am very interested in how she uses narrative/text in her work, and also in how she investigates and blurs lines between inner and outer sounds, inner and outer experience, as she connects to an outside world the listener is forced to navigate, while still maintaining and intimate and 'inner' voice/relationship with the listener.  Are there any other projects at HTB that you feel have commonalities with yours? Or are there any other practitioners present you have shared interests with?

VK: I think one of the best things with Hack the Barbican was to accidentally meet people you did not think you had much in common with and realise there was some shared ground, or that you took away something from the encounter that you did not expect. 

Victoria Karlsson: www.victoriakarlsson.co.uk

Sam Hodge : A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sublime cracks spread across the surfaces of mobile phones form the starting point of Sam Hodge’s residency at Hack the Barbican. Accidents and their aesthetic manifestation have been a preoccupation for Hodge prior to her arrival within London’s infamous concrete maze. Her previous work engaged primarily with processes related to print, drawing and found objects. The past week has started a new engagement with the narrative surrounding the found object. To the side of the space Hodge is occupying, prints are displayed accompanied with typed anecdotes, describing how these particular lines originally became etched on the surface of the phone. Often both comic and tragic, a true element of pathos permeates the personal accounts. The actual prints remove the cracked surface from the phone as object and become recategorised as organic and ephemeral forms. Hodge trained as a scientist so an interest in chance and accidental selection stems from methods of enquiry that are distanced from the irrational systems of art practice.

The concept of hacking was something more problematic to define for Hodge, mainly because the word is so closely associated with the sphere of technology. However, for her it has come to mean inhabiting a space you aren’t supposed to be in. When entering the Barbican it took some time to feel at ease making work within a space that is so imbued with the atmosphere of institution. As Hodge began to gather damaged phones from staff and visitors, a sense of purpose came together with the making process. It was after this point that she began to feel that her ‘hack’ was in existence and happening. The idea of data gathering was also discussed as a type of hack. In terms of this particular project, visitors and staff have additionally been hacked as sources of data.

A Series of Unfortunate Events takes frames of reference from Leonardo's drawings, Rembrandt's drypoint etchings, Cornelia Parker's transformations of found objects and Sophie Calle's collections of incidents. Hodge has a background both in science and painting conservation and both these areas are significant influences on her wider practice. In terms of science, D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form was mentioned as a reference and also ideas about Emergent Complexity. The preoccupation with the crack began whilst training as a conservator and informed the basis of research for her thesis. Except now, instead of being ‘fixed’ the crack is left to be explored through the printmaking process. Additionally scientific illustration and the relationship it promotes between understanding and the visual is also a continual source of interest for Hodge. There was further discussion around how artistic practice has recently taken on a pseudo scientific approach to curation. All of these ideas are tied into the space at the Barbican that has been hacked. It hasn’t just been occupied by a dweller who, perhaps under other terms wouldn’t necessarily be in residence. The dweller brings with them, as they hack, influences and references that extend beyond the space and indeed the very action of hacking. The hack is not empty, it comes ingrained with something ready to fill a space.

Viccy Adams & Fiona McLees : book/jacket

book / jacket, a collaboration between writer Viccy Adams and paper conservator Fiona McLees, draws together text and image gathered within the Barbican. The information is then represented in book format in a fragmented and anonymous way, to generate new accounts of the space. The work questions how we construct narrative and use source material (data) within a creative context.

Adams perceives hacking to be the act of accessing data and more specifically, the act of accessing natural data. In the context of book/jacket extracts of overheard conversations in the Barbican are accessed to provide source material for books hand bound using McLees expertise as a paper conservator. In terms of obtaining personal data, hacking could be understood to be a physical intervention of which, the outcomes are perhaps more sinister than what was originally intended. There was further discussion about how personal data in particular, is used in a negative or harmful way towards an individual. It is something topical: the disclosure of the NSA surveillance system and the story of Paris Brown; the former teenage drugs czar who was forced to stand down due to ‘questionable’ content on her Twitter feed. Adams and McLees edited all text and imagery within the project, so that it echoes the idea of something genuinely overheard and fleeting, rather than something revelatory and scandalous.

Additionally, there is a predisposition according to Adams to view an intervention (or a hack), in a creative context as a wholly positive act. In her previous role as a researcher as part of Ageing Creatively at Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Adams worked on a project assessing the impact of creative activities for the over 55’s. The resultant research revealed that creative activities can have a negative affect on the participants and result in a lack of self confidence, frustration or disinterest. This of course expands upon the concept of hacking and the recommendations of the project provide a useful framework for all creative practitioners who wish to stage a type of creative intervention with people. The research that Adams has contributed to certainly manifests within the way book/jacket sensitively manages the natural data hacked and gathered at the Barbican.

The inspiration for book / jacket came from Adams’ Arts Council funded collaboration with American artist Samantha Silver. Evolving over geographical boundaries, the text and image collaboration seeded an aspiration to work further with both mediums. Just as pertinent was the desire to work with McLees on a project to create engaging physical objects (books) for a wider audience. The discreet, pocket sized books are scaled in such a way to whisper a route into a bag or hand. Using Japanese Stab Binding the books contain data that can be prized as beautiful object or just as equally destroyed and never seen again. This, it was discussed, is almost the antithesis to how data is managed digitally: where corporations and governments can keep or delete what they and not the individual wish.

Viccy Adams: www.vsadams.co.uk

Sylvia Morgado : Interativos

Sylvia Morgado’s practice has grown from formal training as a writer towards performance and art practice. The work by the Brazilian writer and artist at the Barbican engages visitors in such a way that they become participants in her script. Her interactions are an intriguing discursive point for all who are interested in her project. Positioned at a long desk in the Barbican Foyer, Morgado has laid out a range of objects that become a vehicle for participant narratives, which in their telling can last for undefined lengths of time. The objects placed on the desk reveal relationships that would be otherwise hidden within the concrete structures of the institution. Incidentally, the desk becomes the supreme signifier of the point of exchange in a British cultural institution as interactions can be brought back to mundane functional requests for where the cafe or toilet is.  In a surprising development for Morgado, the richness of conversations have come to inform and inspire reflections on her own practice. Undiscovered accounts and contributions from people of all ages has allowed Interativos to develop in unexpected ways and develop into something that is shaped by encounters with those present within the Barbican. The project ‘Look Into The Mirror’ is positioned as the beginning of a talking point and has a set of instructions. However, there is in fact no set script, as participants often divert and appear to be present to interact and share, according to Morgado - often very openly and with a high level of trust. This free flowing and seemingly unstructured way of working perfectly marries with the concept of the open nature of Hack the Barbican itself.

In terms of definitions, Morgado believes all writing practice is hacking. Writing for her is an amalgamation of texts and narratives that are gleaned from literature and real life experience: conversations, overhead discussions and internal thoughts. It is almost impossible to uncover a text in existence that has not been hacked or re appropriated in some way. Morgado does go as far to suggest that if someone claims all literature is original (and not hacked) they must be lying. In Rio, Morgado developed a project that involved intercepting hire bikes (similar to Boris Bikes) with segments of poetry that appeared around the city. The hire scheme attracted controversy as Rio has no cycling infrastructure and people were killed using the bikes. This particular project resonates with the concept of hacking and with using text as a performative gesture. Morgado also draws her influences for this project and within her wider work from a wide range of references including Helio Oiticica, Fluxus, Concrete Poetry and Clarice Lispector. The Oiticica piece Tropicalia (1967), shown at the Whitechapel in the 1960s is a particular source of inspiration. An labyrinth transplanting Brazilian colour, architecture and environmental matter, perhaps resonates with her journey developing and defining identity within the modern metropolis. This journey translates into Interativos, which ultimately negotiates the complexities of identity through the narratives of her participants.

The Ministry of Measurement : A Brief Overview

“Training in the information society results in the production of papers”.

Scott Lash, Critique of Information (2002)

  To work at the Ministry of Measurement, you require formal training in the societal shift in manufacturing activity from material processing to information processing. These concerns are taken with utmost seriousness and candidates hypnotised by our collective demands for complex visualisations of data need not apply. Discreet professionalism combined with a coherent yet critical knowledge of information manufacture is demanded from all employees at the Ministry. Those with experience of working in a laboratory setting are encouraged to apply, as are those with a background in working with abstract outputs. Full training is provided to completely engage contemporary data audiences.  

- - -

A data centre has emerged, staged in the cloakroom of the Barbican. Conceived by collective Thickear, the Ministry of Measurement has intercepted the spatial statistics of the Barbican. The Ministry are gathering data from visitors based on a range of variables - defined distances measured by a checklist of actions such as hopping, striding and shuffling. This information is then fed into a system designed to rationalise our corporeal relationship with the Barbican. The output is sonic and paper based. Contemporary data audiences are not accustomed to material or ephemeral statistical feedback. Here, data visualisation becomes abstracted to the point of futility. Questions are raised about why and how we present this information and to what purpose sophisticated visualisation serves.

Under the dimmed lights of the hacked cloakroom, the gathering of our information takes on a slightly more sinister guise.  Clinically dressed people ask visitors to collect data for no apparent purpose or motive. The Ministry of Measurement directly questions why we so freely donate our data for free to faceless sources, information as a medium or material, information as pure refuse and the trend for hyperactive visualisations, which track almost every global experience. The cynical can relate to information as refuse and articulate ideas around the disinformed information society described by Lash over a decade ago in Critique of Information (2002). According to Lash, pollutants and societal effluence (garbage) don’t just describe the material world, they now haunt the sphere of information. Perhaps Lash was pre-empting the consequences of our current information economy, propelled by a growing compulsion to store data on all that is static, fluid or ephemeral. Rather than add to the digital flow of information refuse, the Ministry of Measurement materialises the data handed over freely on paper. Due to a societal awareness of environmental issues, the use of paper in this context draws attention to information garbage in a tangible and traditionally archival way.  Similarly, the absurdity of gathering and processing data is highlighted by the theatrical setting and the actions that visitors are asked to perform. Over the timeline of the project visitors will shape the output of the ministry but, like the work itself, they are merely adding an alteration to a pre designed architecture. 

 Staging Hack the Barbican

From the initiation, Hack the Barbican has very much been an open and fluid entity; a community that allows for growth and determination by the contributions made to it. For those outside the tech community, it is perhaps un-nerving to approach a project with so many unknowns surrounding the work you have proposed to be in residence to produce. Like any communally run hack space, you just turn up and start developing your ideas with or without technical support. At the beginning of the project on the 5th of August, there is a distinct sense of being an untethered node in a network. The Barbican is habitually used by Londoners seeking a second space to work, host discussions or meetings. It becomes hard to discern who is a part of HTB and who is a Barbican visitor. This is partly due, I suspect, to the enormity of the Barbican site. Until the hacks begin to blossom (quite literally for some), the interventions will be very subtle and in process. For a project like getDialogue that relies on other projects, it becomes problematic knowing who to approach and when to approach them. There has to be a level awareness of when I, hack the hacks. At times it may only be appropriate to do this virtually via email or social networks.

The sensation on HTB’s first day in situ is similar to encountering a work by Tino Sehgal, a nominee for 2013’s Turner Prize. In These Associations (2012) in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Sehgal choreographed a selection of untrained performers to act out various scenarios, some of which, were subtle, others which were not. Groups of supposed Tate visitors would suddenly regroup and take on more sinister or surreal guises. Sehgal’s work is experiential and therefore grows into urban myth. The performance at the Tate was widely known for changing, deviating and for supposedly ‘going off script’. The work exists as an external story and the space is only a stage for the inception of narrative. This feeling of uncertainty of who is a performer and who is not, can be related to the preliminary stages of HTB. Work / production is similarly ‘being staged’, as it is audible from construction sounds, discussions and discreet arguments dispersing throughout the Brutalist labyrinth. Other production is less obvious, for those working on screen based projects, their discussions and construction are mainly silent, sometimes solitary and possibly engaged in conversations outside the concrete network of the Barbican.

Articulating The Proposal

My initial proposal for Hack the Barbican was quite simple: to produce a blog that will run alongside the other social channels for the event. Perhaps lacking some of the excitement of the projects which involve making, performing, workshops or presenting, I aim to negotiate a space for critical discourse to run alongside projects in process and completion. I was making the assumption that the majority of the material on the Hack the Barbican Tumblr /Flickr/Twitter will be generated by the makers themselves and will not necessarily be mediated by anyone else, aside from the action of re-blogging it to that space. I thought it would be beneficial to add in some critical mediation in absence of an event or exhibition catalogue fulfilling this purpose.

There will be terminologies in flux I suspect, when articulating Hack the Barbican. Those contributing are more than just participants but, can they be defined as artists, designers, writers, technologists, makers, producers, contributors, community members, creators or entrepreneurs? This is not an issue when discussing one project or work but, when discussing the event as a whole entity, this has to be taken into consideration. How 'hack' is defined is also problematic. Within the contemporary landscape of the past 6 months or so, the 'hack' has come to substitute anything that relates to an intervention or change. The hack has been removed from the lexicon of computer science and has thus become a cultural phenomenon. Some discursive writing around this would perhaps be useful. It is hard to define at this point if projects deemed successful are those that most understand the application of the concept 'hack'. An assumption can be made that there will be projects that drift from their original proposals and develop a function towards a deeper understanding of their own respective practices.

I don't expect to answer all these questions alone, discussions with other makers (?) will have to occur in order to disseminate a community view of how these terminologies are viewed and how the project as a whole is engaged within itself. Similarly, until work starts it is hard to negotiate a critical position. Perhaps, it is better to assume that there will be no static critical position. A static position will be impossible as all the projects are potentially quite disparate. Pulling out themes and commonalities will come out of discussion and from my own subjective analytical response. It would also be engaging to work on some supplementary contextual writing taking influence from the event and the work made. As an example, getDialogue could cover the following themes:

01. Discussion around the cultural trend towards using 'hack' to describe interventions that don't just relate to computer systems. 

02. The purpose of having a critical dialogue alongside such an event.

03. The critique / documentation of art as a collaborative process unfolding in real time.