Ashden Directory

ashdenizen: not bothered by parallels

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The big new Christmas movie, James Cameron’s Avatar, which opened yesterday, has some striking green themes.

There’s deforestation: a truly massive tree gets destroyed. There's a threatened indigenous people: the home of the Na’vi tribe gets obliterated. And there’s a new-agey idea that that there’s a mutual thing going on between the people living in forest and the forest itself and there may even be scientific evidence (Sigourney Weaver tells us) of electro-magnetic impulses that allows the forest to act like a brain, communicating between its many constituent elements.

The baddies of the piece, of course, don't have such a sophisticated brain. What the US military has is muscle – a massive arsenal of weaponry which it aims to use ( ‘shock and awe’) to get the ‘savages’ moving out of an area where there they have discovered a very precious mineral called – yes! – ‘unobtanium’;.

This raises an interesting question. I assume you can't have a successful blockbuster movie that’s anti-American. So there must be plenty of people watching this movie who aren’t remotely bothered by the parallels suggested by the storyline.

Update: in this interview Cameron refers to the themes of imperialism and biodiversity and attacks the way America has ‘had eight years of the oil lobbyists running the country’. But he points out that anti-imperialism is American too. ‘You can take it back to the origins of America in a fight of rebels against an imperial dominating force.’ Except the rebels in question were hardly fighting on behalf of indigenous people.

via ashdenizen: not bothered by parallels.

Climate changes: Steve Waters interview

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Many had considered climate change an impossible subject to dramatise. But two new plays that opened at the Bush in May proved them wrong.

Steve Waters talks to Robert Butler about ‘The Contingency Plan’, his double-bill of plays about climate change, and how they were inspired by James Lovelock, the 1953 floods, and the Transition Town Handbook.

http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2009122_59406680&view=

To coincide with the UN Conference in Copenhagen, Radio 3 also broadcasts a version of ‘The Contingency Plan’ (this Sunday, 8pm) and two readings of the play, with the original cast, will be produced at the Bush on 15 and 18 December.

Video Chat in Artistic Endeavors

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skype-iconIt goes without saying that the travel associated with our artist endeavors is not the most sustainable. I’ve been to so many conferences this last year, mostly traveling by plane. Next week I’m off to Europe where I’ll be staying in Copenhagen for COP15 and Wooloo.org‘s New Life Festival, but I’m also headed to London for the Future Arcola Launch and, it’s looking like Prague as well, to check in with a project for the next PQ in June of 2011.

I personally love traveling. I feel guilty, yes, but I love going places. I also feel there is no substitute for in-person discussions. The spontaneity and intimacy of direct contact is important and this is easiest to accommodate face-to-face and in the flesh. And, even when it’s not about having a one-on-one, there is also that just showing up most of the time is a big deal. I maintain that our “success” with the CSPA is due to persistence and “showing up”.

Two weeks ago, I was in Orlando for LDI for a full day of Green Sessions for the show technology crowd put together by Bob Usdin and Annie Jacobs from Showman Fabricators. There I had the chance to meet Bryan Raven of White Light in the UK again. We had been on a roundtable panel at the Theatre Materials/Material Theatre conference at the Central School of Speech and Drama‘s Center for Excellence in Theatre Training in April of 2008. That previous conference was also when I was able to meet, and have a drink with, Ben Todd from Arcola. Ben, who was not able to come to Orlando, and was instead in Stockholm (maybe you saw his post early this week) , was present via a video chat to talk about Future Arcola.

With the ubiquity of broadband connections, more and more people seem to be relying on video conference/chat technology to get other busy, high profile, greener guests to be able to be in two spaces at the same time. And, as it tends to shake out, the resident technophile/ show technologist, I get the pleasure of making a lot of them work.

Google_Talk_icon_by_hungery5Last night, at California Institute of the Arts I set up a video chat audition for guest artists that will be in residency at REDCAT, CalArt’s downtown LA space. The Artists of Invasion from the Chicken Planet, are based in New York and, though of no sustainable intention, weren’t going to fly out to audition some of our actors to use in their residency for two hours.

The day before, we had tested the connection. We used the same computer with the same software on the same network (hardwired into the wall) that we’d use the next day. We tried Skype, which was too choppy, garbled and had a couple seconds delay that made it less than ideal. We then switched to iChat with AOL Instant Messenger accounts and after realizing another computer being connected was preventing a decent video link, it proved the smoothest and most immediate.

So last night, when we moved the computer into the room that we would be conducting the auditions in, we configured the machine the same way, but were not able to make a connection on iChat. Skype had the same issues. At the prompting of a student director who was assisting, we tried Gtalk Video chat. It ended up working immediately and with excellent quality.

Earlier in the year, at Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS), when Moe Beitiks had tried to link up Brent Bucknum to present his bio-remidative work via video chat, we tried ooVoo, which we gave up on in favor of iChat again. We had almost just given up, but I only thought to use iChar from the decent chats I had experienced with my brother-in-law who was living in Edinburgh at the time. Also at EMOS we had a video conference in the University of Oregon library with a panel in London arranged by the Ashden Directory, which used their dedicated video conferencing package.

aim_logo_2.jpgIn both situations the video wasn’t great, but we could sort of communicate. The Ashden Session involved each end of the discussion/video conference going into another room to watch a video and then coming back to discuss together. But there was lag and the video wasn’t particularly clear. The Brent Bucknam session was not bad, but very one-way. For Green Day at LDI, the audio was great, but in one session, with Seema Sueeko from Mo’olelo Performing Arts, the video was minutes behind the audio connection.

Having now had extensive experience with video conferencing in less than ideal situations, I do long for the day when we’ll be able to turn on whatever client we’re using to video chat and it works smoothly and immediately, let alone with high resolution. But, that day isn’t particularly close. There are a lot of variables in the way of making that happen. Network connections, equipment, client servers, client and local network traffic, sunspots, radio waves and the phases of the moon. Even when we tried to eliminate as many of those variables in Eugene as possible, it still didn’t work ideally. Or, what was ideally was not enough to convince.

Will our broadband video connections be able to save us the footprint of air travel for conferences and internationally collaborative meetings of the mind? Not yet. There might be some expensive corporate system out there, but we lowly green artists aren’t going to hold our breath waiting for that. Oprah’s skype seems to work fine, but I’ve never had such luck, so I leave that package just to replace my need for international phone calls.

I’d still rather sit and talk to you, especially when we aren’t both staring at our monitors in our Pajamas.

Also yesterday, Enci Box of Rebel Without a Car Productions came to speak to my and Leslie Tamaribuchi’s class, Sustainability Seminar. She can to talk about producing a short film as sustainably as possible. This included not using cars and transporting everything by bike with the help of the LA Greensters (green teamsters). She made the trip from East Hollywood, in the center of Los Angeles, to the edge of the county, where CalArts resides in Valencia, without a car. She came up on a Metrolink commuter train, biking from the station to campus. She and I had worked out the options for getting there and she had the time to dedicate to coming up. Also, she was lucky to had met a guy who regularly made that journey to visit his girlfriend at CalArts and could relay the benefit of his experience. She then went back home, via bike. all roughly 30 miles of the trip. Coming up to CalArts, it took 2 hours. Returning was supposedly going to be one and a half hours. All for a 45 minute presentation.

I suppose we could have had her “skype” in (even if we don’t typically end up on skype), but having her there in-person was a much greater thrill and much more in the moment for the students and for her. Instead it took dedication to not leaving a footprint, and finding alternatives to get to the class. I’m very much indebted to Enci for making the journey, which some might say was epic, to present for a fraction of that travel time. But, I think it far surpassed our alternatives.

Theatre Materials: What is theatre made of?

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Theatre Materials: What is theatre made of?

Eleanor Margolies, editor
published by Centre for Excellence in Training for Theatre/Central School of Speech and Drama (CETT)
ISBN: 978-0-9539501-5-7

Artists, engineers and architects look at the raw materials of theatre in Theatre Materials: What is theatre made of?. An illustrated collection of essays, edited by Eleanor Margolies, it delves into the matter of performance, from portable theatres to street arts, the physics of materials to low-energy lighting, mirror neurons to acrobatics.

Eleanor Margolies writes ‘Theatre artists are experts in materials: the costume maker records how different textiles respond to dyes, the prop maker seeks out compounds and techniques developed for boat-building and aeronautics, the director and actor study the body. But these forms of knowledge, which combine tactile experience with thought and imagination, are too rarely articulated outside the workshop’.

Contributions include:

  • reflections on ‘six real things’ by celebrated American director Anne Bogart;
  • theatre critic Robert Butler trying not to sink into a muddy swamp;
  • scenographer Pamela Howard auditioning fur and lace for an opera set in 1950s New York;
  • cartoonist Tim Hunkin taking off his kid gloves;
  • Zoe Laughlin, curator of the Materials Library, smashing roses and blasting memory alloys back into shape;
  • puppeteer Sean Myatt rambling around a landscape of performing objects;
  • professor of theatre Alan Read on anthrax, cement and the lure of material facts.
The book is a record and continuation of the The Theatre Materials/Material Theatres conference at CETT.
Other contributors are:

  • Rene Baker (puppeteer and lecturer at the Institut del Teatre, Barcelona)
  • Anne Bogart (Artistic Director, SITI Company, New York)
  • Jane Heather (illustrator and theatre designer)
  • Joanna Parker (scenographer, Central School of Speech and Drama)
  • Paul Rae (performer and lecturer, National University of Singapore)
  • Bob Sheil (architect, the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL)
  • Ben Todd (Executive Director, the Arcola Theatre).
For more information, contact Gail Hunt at CETT:
cett@cssd.ac.uk
t: 020 7449 1571

See Eleanor Margolies articles here on the Directory on puppets and animals onstage and on the first feast.
Robert Butler blogs here.

Record the sound around you for a map of UK soundscapes

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Researchers at the University of Salford are building a sound map of the UK as part of a study into how sounds in our everyday environment affect how people feel about their environment.

For Sound Around You, researchers are calling for people to use their mobile phones or another audio recording device to record 10- to 15-second clips from different sound environments, or soundscapes.

The information on the project website is biased towards urban environments, but there is nothing exclusive about where the sounds may be recorded. Sound Around You aims to raise awareness of the influences of soundscapes.

People can then upload those recordings onto a virtual map, along with their opinions of the sounds and why they chose to record them. Recordings and responses will be analysed by acoustic scientists and findings will be reported on the Sound Around You website.

www.soundaroundyou.com

Commissions for ‘Artists Taking the Lead’ / Cultural Olympiad announced

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The twelve regional winners of Artists Taking the Lead, the major art commissions for the Cultural Olympiad part of the London 2012 Olympics, were announced on 22 October.

Although the winners are more strongly based in installation, sculpture and visual arts, several do have performance and participation elements as well as an environmental sensibility. Those winners include:

North East
FLOW
by Owl Project, based on a concept by Ed Carter.

  • FLOW is an environmentally sustainable floating waterwheel and mill house. Entering the mill house will be like entering a turn of the century workshop where basic electronics, wood and water replace metal and steam, creating an accessible and interactive art space on the River Tyne.
  • The artwork will generate its own power and combine traditional and new technologies to monitor the river’s environmental details including water temperature, speed, and turbidity.
  • A series of Owl Project musical instruments on display in the mill house, will respond to this data. The audience will be able to interact with these instruments, performing alongside each other and the Tyne itself.
North West
Projected Column
by Anthony McCall
  • Projected Column will be a slender, spinning column of cloud rising into the sky from the surface of the water in Birkenhead’s disused Morpeth dock in Merseyside, directly opposite the city of Liverpool.
  • Extending upwards as far as the eye can see, and visible on a clear day from up to 100 km away, the column will disappear and re-appear in slow structured sequences, punctuating the skyline whilst connecting it with the city and its docks.
  • Projected Column will recycle discarded local heat, and, day or night, will operate as a self-sustaining system.
South East
The Boat Project
by Lone Twin (Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan)
For The Boat Project Lone Twin will ask the people of the South East to donate a wooden object of personal significance, be it a favourite pencil, a much used dining table, or the garden shed, to be used in the building of a sea-faring boat.
The community, guided by a professional boat builder and using a combination of traditional and contemporary construction techniques, will then build a boat from the donated wood. The boat and a book collecting the stories of the contributors will be launched in May 2012.
Crewed by trained community members, the boat will make a two-week maiden ‘Olympic’ voyage in June 2012, becoming the focus of four celebratory arts events.
South West
nowhereisland
by Alex Hartley
For nowhereisland Alex Hartley will bring Nymark, an island he discovered in the High Arctic region of Svalbard in 2004, to the South West of England. The island, about the size of a football pitch, consists of rubble and moraine around a small amount of bedrock. It was revealed from within the melting ice of a retreating glacier and Alex was the first human to ever stand on it. The island has been recognised by the Norwegian Polar Institute and is now named and included on all maps and charts.
A portion of the island will be transported to South West England through international waters and whilst en route will apply for micronation status. The new ‘micronation’, nowhereisland will navigate the entire 702 miles of the coast of the South West region, visiting its ports and harbours accompanied by a travelling embassy/support vehicle.
The project explores climate change, land ownership, national identity and the exploitation of the Earth’s remaining natural resources. At the end of the Olympic year, the island will return to the Arctic to be made whole again.
Scotland
Forest Pitch
Craig Coultard
Craig Coulthard’s Forest Pitch involves a football pitch hidden within a forest. Trees are felled to make way for a football pitch and used to create a stand, goalposts and a shelter that will act as both changing room and exhibition space. One football match is scheduled to be played on the pitch, open to spectators and once the match has taken place, the pitch will be left to become taken over by nature again. The changing room is kept as a simple exhibition space to document the project.
The pitch itself, with surrounding infrastructure will become a living relic of the Olympics, in contrast to the new buildings created in London for the Games.
Wales
ADAIN AVION
by Marc Reed
For ADAIN AVION, a fuselage of an abandoned DC9 airplane is recycled and transformed into a mobile art space. It will travel across Wales ‘nesting’ in different locations having arrived at the site pulled by a large team of local athletes, youth groups and other members of the community.
In each location the project will engage the community in a festivity marking the arrival of the plane in the form of a colourful procession, including a specially commissioned composition which will be played by local brass bands heralding the arrival of this migratory ‘bird’.
During the nesting week, a series of arts, cultural, sporting and community activities will take place in and around the space.
Shortlisetd for the commission were NVA and Red Earth. Both are companies represented here on the Directory.
The commissioning is developed by Arts Council England, with London 2012 and the arts councils of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

www.artiststakingthelead.org.uk

RSA sets up Arts for COP15 network

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RSA sets up Arts for COP15 network

The RSA Arts & Ecology Centre has set up the web-based network, Arts For COP15, for artists and arts professionals who are producing work in the run up to and during the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 09.

It is designed as a site to

  • publicise arts events that relate to COP15
  • Share knowledge and resources with other artists and arts professionals
  • discuss how arts strategy around climate and social change can evolve
  • research into the range and success of these projects
  • use arts to increase the noise around COP15
  • encourage artists and arts professionals who are producing work that is about the environment over the next few months to consider using the event as a way of discussing COP15 with their audiences.
For more information, contact Wiliam Shaw, webeditor at the RSA Art & Ecology Centre.

www.arts4cop15.org
www.rsaartsandecology.org.uk

Call for artists: ‘…Louder than Bombs’: Art, Action & Activism – 4 Dec

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‘…Louder than Bombs’: Art, Action & Activism

Live Art Development Agency and Stanley Picker Gallery
call for artists: 4 December deadline
event: February – March 2010

Over the course of seven weeks in February – March 2010, the Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University, will host a series of week-long residencies entitled ‘…Louder than Bombs’: Art, Action & Activism.

Co-curated with Live Art Development Agency, ‘…Louder than Bombs’: Art, Action & Activism will focus on challenging social, political, global issues addressed by seven invited artist/activists, working in a series of weekly occupancies of the space.

The issues addressed by the programme of activities will include a range of political, ecological, social and personal causes, as to be defined by the seven participating individuals and groups.

The programme will provide each participating artist/group with the space, resources and supportive environment for their work to be developed over an intensive five-day period. During their week-long residency each participant will be required to deliver at least one participatory workshop and a public event.

One of the seven invited projects will be developed to engage directly with a local primary school, in order to pilot the introduction of performative practice into the classroom.

‘…Louder than Bombs’: Art, Action & Activism has been developed as part of the research project, ‘The Art of Intervention: The Intersections of Public and Private Memory’ between Kingston University, London and Kyoto Seika University, Japan.

For information on how to make a proposal, email: picker@kingston.ac.uk .

www.thisisliveart.co.uk

Events: ‘Anthem’ – Beth Derbyshire at Eden Project – 14 No

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Anthem

Beth Derbyshire
with Ulrike Haage
opening performance: 14 November
exhibition continues to 9 December
Mediterranean Biome at the Eden Project, Cornwall

The Eden Project and Cape Farewell present the premiere of Beth Derbyshire’s live performance and film work, Anthem, with music by composer Ulrike Haage. Anthem is a trilogy of films with a choral component, exploring notions of land, place and nation.

Anthem assembles ideas around nationality, identity and language using the symbols of landscape and song to explore our cultural relationship to landscape. Song and landscape have long been associated with expressions on nation. Derbyshire borrows from sources such as national anthems, ancient land names and etymology to capture cultural and natural settings, to explore the connections between people and landscape through balancing components of voice, music, word and image.

The opening events will feature the early music ensemble Stile Antico. Beth Derbyshire will be in conversation with Ulrike Haage and Dr. James Ryan, Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography, Exeter University.

Anthem was filmed in Newfoundland, the UK and in the Arctic during the Cape Farewell research expedition of 2007.

www.bethderbyshire.com
www.youtube.com
www.edenproject.come/visiting-eden/whats-on
www.capefarewell.com/art/exhibitions

Ashden signs up for 10:10

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We sign up for 10:10


The Ashden Directory has signed up for 10:10, the collective campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

Devised by the team behind Age of Stupid, 10:10 is supporting people and organisations in reducing their use energy in four areas: electricity from the national grid, fossil fuel use on site, road transport and air travel.
We’ll start by calculating our current energy use, see where reductions can be made, and keep track of our progress here on the news page. We are especially interested in the amount of electricity and fossil fuel use involved in supporting the internet, and in finding out how we might calculate the effects of our usage, and if possible reduce it. Beyond that, we are three people working part-time from our own homes. Any meetings are arranged to coincide with other purposes, and most journeys are by train. And, as shown in our video conference for ‘Earth Matters Onstage’ in Eugene Oregon, we are working on how more and different connections can be made without flying. We will start talking with the companies listed on the Directory, to see how they are reducing their energy usage. More on our progress here soon.