Full Circle Associates

Normal liveblogging disclaimer - I don't catch it all, I don't get it all right, but if I don't post it as is, it won't get posted! From Northern Voice Day 1 Moosecamp.

W. M. Gibbens of Influency
18 month project with a school, an experiment. In the web see a historical body of work. I’ve had a number of careers. My artistic and other work is embodied in photographic records. Websites as historic records. There are constraints. 2003 – 2004. The camera, Casio with articulating body, 2.1 megapixel. Captures images, video, 320 mb of storage. Open source, open standards. 3 months in Wells, BC. Everyday rechargeable batteries, go for a walk, take picture. Early digital residency. My body of work moves forward with me. I decided to go digital many years ago. 9-10 Gigs of imagery. Work in open source, do scripting, have ways to capture value of work, including editing work. One plan is to go more into artistic residencies.

This site, first php site, http://www.influency.com It’s not really a typical site, not based on SEO.

"The software developed for the project was designed to ensure both public (external web) and private (internal school) publication of imagery - fully respected the personal privacy of teachers, students and parents.

Dynamic site. Every time you load it you see the body, the story of the website. Series of publications, photography of people and moments in the garden and a species garden, plus student artwork. http://www.influency.com/naturalization/ There used to be budget and time to do evocative things in school. Now lots of stress. Kids and teachers caught in an evaluation-heavy system, things that don’t mean a lot to education. Role is to expand mind, use the senses and sensibilities we have to create something for ourselves.

First choice was to work inductively. I could not go in and say “be creative” or “look at nature.” I had voice, writing, imagery, photography and a sense of composition. There is an admin interface for the imagery which stores every step of the editing. If site would go down, I could reconstruct them from the source images and reproduce every editing step.

Inductively provide curriculum materials, a way to use the garden as place to learn about nature and think about environment. I was standing in the garden. I looked up and said “a classroom is as open as they sky.” Took me back to my student activism days of school as free, environmentalism. A moment. Wow. I’m actually there in this place and what can I do with us. Discovering our world is home for every living things. The World Urban Forum here in June. You come to Vancouver and you see concrete and asphalt. Wilderness regions are being devastated and natural systems mechanized. If we don’t have diversity around us, sensitivity, ability to pull back, to walk softly, to let diversity around us, we are lost. I wanted to stimulate the children to write and create.

There wasn’t a huge amount of take up by the teachers. Some student work. I had to take the names off. I had the ability to tag photos with people’s name and use just internally in the school (rather than public). Some kids followed teacher format. Some did wonderful things. Grade 1-3, children are not jaded, they can think in hypertext. As they get older they have other stuff going on. Anyone can kick in with a question.

I mapped the garden. Using PHP, Mysql, image package (didn’t get name), Firefox, code and mark up from standards based. SVG map. The inventory did not get a lot of take up. SVG is not highly implemented. Color coded classroom collections. Students nutured plants in classroom, then 400+ kids did a planting day all together. So with the mapping they can find their plant. Something they remember. You see this in the artwork.

There is body of maps, class collections, artwork, curricula. I viewed what the kids were doing as the curricula. I didn’t teach per se. I was testing using all levels of software components to produce things. Artistically responding to the garden as an artist. The web is not necc the best way to express that, so did some PDF publishing. Composed images.

Can now go and do this sort of residency anywhere. Can add song and performance. Very simple, talking about environment. But also very sophisticated. As an artist, the language can be simple, bt the ideas have to give people something they can work with. Not telling people. Get beyond the brochure. Still working on what’s meaningful and important.

Threads of discussion where “the weeds are talking.” A weed can symbolize a country. The kids can relate. The weeds are saying we are important too.

What were the kids interested in? Technology? No, not at all.

Categories: Northernvoice, moosecamp, Influency