Sunday, April 06, 2008

Surveillance


'Surveillance' comes out of INVIGILATOR : DIGBETH the 5th in the INVIGILATOR series conceived by artists Paul Conneally, Nikki Pugh and Kev Ryan.

The poem is a direct transcript taken by Paul Conneally as he heard it of INVIGILATOR : DIGBETH participant artist Harry Palmer in the discussion workshop which formed part of INVIGILATOR : DIGBETH and took place after the Invigilators had returned to VIVID art gallery in the heart of Birmingham's Digbeth area.

The sound track is made from a snippet of Harry saying the word ' surveillance ' combined with the ambient sounds of the VIVID space that the artist led discussion was taking place in.

WARNING! The soundtrack of Surveillance contains backmasked material - hidden messages.

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Friday, April 04, 2008

Emotion Grids

Another aspect of Invigilator:Digbeth are the 'emotion grids' that participants were asked to fill in when at the work place. I spent some time last night looking at these and the accompanying emotional words list - a list of emotionally related words that participants could circle if they felt applied to them at the time - as many as they wanted to circle or not.
One group posted a filled in Emotion Grid through the letterbox of the building 'Good For Wood' (which sounds like a good title for a porno movie) and pasted another on the building itself.

Harry Palmer's Emotion Grid fell into the canal and floated off.
Those that I have been able to look at will I'm sure soon tell me something.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Invite Boredom

Listening to the Invigilator:Digbeth discussion I was struck by oblique and direct references to boredom - the gallery invigilator's job being referred to as sometimes boring.


When transposed to an outside space where the invigilator has to stand or sit and simply 'watch over' then the space and the action of simply watching over it sets up an interaction that is boring in such a way that it can transcend boredom if we let it... The space becoming bored of the invigilator throws up new facets new resonances between it and the 'watcher over' the 'invigilator'.

A couple of Invigilator:Digbeth participants said that they found the invigilating very zen like - another not at all - the invigilating passed-by with a contrived doing - a counting of and classification of vehicles passing through the invigilated space. Such actions are invoked by the space itself as it is watched over - after all it was only chance that the space invigilated happened to have cars passing through it - this counting this classifying borne out of the possibility of boredom.

"INVITE BOREDOM" - paul conneally 2008