daniel belasco rogers
::news::projects::texts::cv::contactlocative media
- plan b locative media (fortysomething etc.)
- peninsula voices (independent photography greenwich 2005-7)
- our house (trampoline nottingham and berlin)
- a description of this place as if you were someone else (bristol 2004)
peninsula voices
Project Description
Peninsula Voices is a sound walk using location-aware technology to annotate the urban landscape. People's stories and associations are triggered when the user approaches the area they are talking about. The project was made by interviewing participants while walking with them in areas that they had associations with. These interviews were then edited and placed in a software environment (the Mobile Bristol Editor) that runs on handheld computers (HP iPAQs) that read location from GPSs. The software triggers the recordings when the user is in the corresponding region so that the user can walk around a landscape, without being guided, exploring and discovering for themselves the stories that might be associated with different areas.
Peninsula Voices is a project in the 'Peninsula' series, run by Independent Photography, taking place throughout 2006/7 featuring the artists Christian Nold and Lottie Childs as well as other community based projects.
Peninsula Voices builds on our other locative media projects such as A Description... Stimmen über Berlin and Mapping Bröllin. This time, however, the geographical scope of the project is larger than we've ever tackled and the interviews longer than before. The geographical limits of the project are nearly the entire local parliamentary ward of Peninsula / East Greenwich in South East London, from Woolwich New Road / Trafalgar Road in the South to the tip of the Peninsula (where the Millennium Dome sits) in the North and the width of the peninsula itself.
How we made it
Most participants were asked to accompany one of us on a walk of the area and show us the sites of their stories and memories. This technique provoked an extremely intimate as well as detailed recollection. Although only eleven different voices are represented in the project as it stands at the moment, it would take four hours to listen to all the material - without walking between the stories.
The process of talking to the people who contributed to the project in this way was fascinating and made us even more committed to presenting the recollections and associations in as clear and simple a way as possible as well as allowing a wider audience to share our privileged position of meeting these people and hearing what they had to say. We met one of the chaplains of the Millennium Dome, a man who had done many of the jobs in the Gasworks that were on the site over the years and had lived in the area all his life, the deputy leader of Greenwich Council at the time of the Millennium exhibition, a local industrial historian and councillor, a woman who remembered walking on the Peninsula with her grandmother and is now bringing up her child in the new housing as well as a security guard working nights in the new Sainsbury's and a former lollipop lady.
The recordings - almost 15 hours of them, were edited down to 178 different sound files varying in length from a few seconds to fifteen minutes. These were then placed either directly on the site they were talking about or where they were recorded or in sight of what they were talking about. In terms of covering the area, the entire riverside path is pretty much a constant narrative of different voices, Central Park is full and around the Pilot pub as well as partial coverage in John Harrison way, outside the Greenwich Millennium Village. The area around Independent Photography's office, in Rothbury Hall, i.e. Mauritius Road and Azof Street, as well as Christchurch Road are also pretty dense in terms of stories.
Launch
The project was launched on Saturday 29 July at the Millennium Primary School on the Peninsula. We were delighted with the amount of people that came in addition to many of the participants themselves. After a brief introduction by Isabel Lilly, the director of Independent Photography, Dan explained some context for the project in terms of our fascination for discovering the stories that lie hidden, as it were, between the geographical location and the memories of the people and finding a way, through technology, of making this accessible. After this, the audience had a chance to experience the project for themselves. The University of Bristol, once again, leant us 6 hardware kits consisting of an iPAQ and a GPS and headphones and these, in addition to 4 kits purchased for Peninsula Voices, made it possible for all who wanted to sample the project to do so over the course of the afternoon. Because of the limited time, most people walked on a circuit near the school but some groups were more ambitious, walking around the top of the Peninsula and even cycling to a start point away from the school. The older hardware had some battery and connector issues but on the whole, the afternoon went very well from a technical point of view. The feedback from the afternoon was very positive and many were very impressed with the technology and what was possible with it.
How to experience Peninsula Voices
If you want to experience Peninsula Voices, you can contact Andy or Isabel at Independent Photography and make an appointment to take the equipment on a walk. They can be telephoned on +44 (0)208 858 2825 or emailed at info@independentphotography.org.uk.
Supported by
Peninsula Voices was commissioned by Independent Photography as part of 'Peninsula'
Peninsula is supported by
project links
our house
In 1936 a young couple got off a train at a brand new station and looked at a house on a new estate in South East London. It was the first house to be built in the immediate area, next door the Kent orchard was still standing, shortly to be ripped up to complete the row of houses; the very edge of London. The young couple were my paternal grandparents and that house, 3 Wincrofts Drive, is where my father grew up, I grew up and where my mother still lives to this day. I remember changes in wallpaper, successions of Christmas trees, the garage that my father used to play the drums in, the changes my mother made to the house after my father left and even more after I left
The house does not only represent the building as it stands today but all these other states that I remember, under the paint and carpet underlay. This is the first house I really knew and to this day I can pace out the route from the bedrooms to the toilet or kitchen in the pitch black and feel when the staircase should end even if I can’t see it. It is the house I explored before I learnt to walk, a house I shall know as no other, it is written indelibly into my body and informs my image of every house I enter.
Our House projects this 1930s semi-detached house into another larger building, as if a ghost house from a different dimension co-existed within its walls. The spectator doesn't just encounter the house as it stands today, but the layers the house contains, old family photographs of different generations squinting into the sun outside the front door, the voices of my parents remembering what the house was like from their childhoods on, recordings of each room, the taps running, the fridge, the creak on the third and tenth step of the staircase.
Moving through actual space, the virtual space of the 1930s house appears as a ghostly yet navigable apparition, starting and ending within the ground plan of the house itself. By documenting a family house in this way and opening up its space virtually, in a public building, the work examines the evocation of spaces from our past, a wealth of which we all carry around with us and how these memories can be triggered by and effect other spaces we encounter. As in my other solo work, through uncovering the detail of my past and surroundings, the work evokes the spectators’ own personal history, raising issues of memory, personal documentation, the persistence of these spaces in our minds, the mnemonic function of spaces and the inevitable sense of loss encountering spaces that have changed.
Our House employs location-aware technology to deliver image and audio content to the spectator’s palm and ears. Building on the relationship with HP labs and Mobile Bristol, initiated by the Arnolfini, I use portable computers (iPAQs) equipped with IR sensors to trigger media events based on location.
a description of this place as if you were someone else
