Proboscis | SoMa | projects

projects & experiments

Proboscis realises its aims and objectives through projects and experiments, many of which develop out of, or contribute to, research themes explored through the SoMa think tank.
Experiments are short, low or no budget activities that help define research themes and devise longer projects.
Projects are more focused medium term activities extending and developing research themes.

CURRENT PROJECTS

	Lattice
	Proboscis has been invited by the British Council to design a framework for a series of collaborations and residencies with organisations in East Asia, as part of their Creative Cities programme. Lattice is a framework for Proboscis to work collaboratively with different partners in the region to engage local communities in developing their own tools and techniques for public authoring, anarchaeology and cultures of listening. The initial project Lattice:Sydney is hosted by ICE (Information & Cultural Exchange) in Western Sydney during 2008.

	Anarchaeology & Public Authoring
	Proboscis is collaborating with Render, a programme at the University of Waterloo (Canada) which creates and presents art projects beyond the gallery. The focus of the first stage of the collaboration is the development of an 'Anarchaeology' course for Bachelors and Masters students in fine arts and the humanities which will be taught in Winter 2008. The course will introduce the students to contemporary approaches to curating and collecting, using tools developed by Proboscis. The second stage of the collaboration will be a design competition and build lab for architecture and design students to develop a portable/mobile 'toolshed' for public intervention projects that excavate (anarchaeology) and share local knowledge and stories - public authoring.

	Social Tapestries
	Social Tapestries is a research programme developing experimental uses of public authoring to demonstrate the social and cultural benefits of local knowledge sharing enabled by new mobile technologies. These playful and challenging experiments will build upon the Urban Tapestries framework and software platform developed by Proboscis and its partners. Through collaborations and partnerships with other civil society organisations we will address education, social housing, community arts and local government. Projects include: Experiencing Democracy, Snout, Conversations and Connections, Everyday Archaeology, St Marks and Robotic Feral Public Authoring. Begun 2004 \| To Be Completed 2008

ONGOING INITIATIVES

	Diffusion Case Study Residencies (2008)
	Proboscis is hosting a second series of residencies at our London studio during 2008 enabling a number of creative people from different fields to explore the potential of the DIFFUSION Generator for creating eBooks and StoryCubes. This year we plan to focus on uses for schools/education, local museums/archives and in developing world contexts.

	Diffusion Generator
	Proboscis is building a web service enabling people to create their own DIFFUSION eBooks without the need for graphic design expertise or access to professional DTP software. Our aim is to extend the usefulness and accessibility of the DIFFUSION publishing format beyond designers with access to dedicated desktop publishing software – to create an online community tool that is useable by anyone with access to the internet. A proof-of-concept prototype was developed in summer 2003 and work on a full working system (database driven content management system with on-the-fly eBook previewing and print-to-PDF) started in July 2004. Proboscis began testing the Generator in March 2006. We aim to complete the testing and development phase by March 2007 and to launch the Generator to the public in Spring 2007.

	StoryCubes
	A storytelling tool from Proboscis StoryCubes are a tactile thinking and storytelling tool for exploring relationships and narratives. Each face of the cube can illustrate or describe an idea, a thing or an action, placed together it is possible to build up multiple narratives or explore the relationships between them in a novel three-dimensional way. StoryCubes can be folded in two different ways, giving each cube twelve possible faces – and thus two different ways of telling a story, two musings around an idea. Like books turned inside out and upside down they are read by turning and twisting in your hand and combining in vertical and horizontal constructions.

	Bodystorming Experiences
	A participatory experience for exploring ideas and innovation issues in a designed physical situation to take innovation practices beyond ‘brainstorming’ by giving ideas physical form and acting out situations. Bodystorming Experiences are designed to reveal how modes of exchange between people, places and things affect ideas in ways that scenario design and written descriptions cannot. The experience creates a model situation in which rapid iteration and understanding of underlying assumptions can be explored.


COMPLETED PROJECTS


	Diffusion Case Study Residencies (2007)
	Proboscis is hosting a series of residencies at our London studio during 2007 enabling a number of creative people from different fields to explore the potential of the DIFFUSION Generator for creating eBooks and StoryCubes. The residencies include: artist and community development consultant, Bev Carter; novelist and writer Tony White; artist, Andrew Hunter; social researcher, Paul Goodwin; artist and programme manager at New Media Scotland, Michelle Kasprzak; and a group of young aspiring writers and comic artists.

	Experiencing Democracy
	A week long Social Tapestries workshop with Year 4 students at the Jenny Hammond Primary School in Waltham Forest investigating children's experiences of democracy and democratic behaviour. Developed and delivered with Loren Chasse. Download the learning diary eBook (A4) and final Group eBook (A4) A project report will be publishd in Winter 2008. Begun 2007 \| Completed 2007

	Snout
	Snout is a new Social Tapestries collaboration between inIVA, Proboscis and researchers from Birkbeck College exploring relationships between the body, community and the environment. It builds on our previous collaboration on Feral Robots (with Natalie Jeremijenko) to investigate how data can be collected from environmental sensors as part of popular social and cultural activities.

	Endless Landscapes
	The Endless Landscape, polyorama or myriorama (meaning ‘many views’) was a popular 18th and 19th century storytelling game also known as a tableau polyoptique. It consists a series of paintings of fragments of a panorama that can be arranged in billions of combinations to form a continuous landscape for creating stories – each card extending, adding to or changing the narrative. A neverending journey of imaginary landscapes. Endless Landscapes is of several Proboscis projects seeking to enable and reflect this 'public authoring' of people's knowledge and experience using visual, three dimensional and spatial techniques.

	Conversations and Connections
	Proboscis collaborated on an 18 month Social Tapestries project with community development consultancy, Local Level and Havelock Independent Residents Organisation to explore how public authoring concepts and tools could be used by residents of a low income social housing neighbourhood (in Suthall, West London) to map and share local knowledge leading to an improvement in services from the local authority and housing agency. The project was funded through an Innovations grant from the Democratic Engagement branch of the Electoral Policy Division of the Ministry of Justice. Download the Evaluation Report Begun 2005 \| Completed 2007

	St Marks Housing Cooperative
	Proboscis collaborated with a small short life housing cooperative based in West London to map and record the history of the coop's activities, properties and relationships over the past 25 years. Download the Project Report Begun 2005 \| Completed 2006


	Everyday Archaeology
	A week long Social Tapestries workshop with Year 4 students at the Jenny Hammond Primary School in Waltham Forest exploring the local environment and the children's relationship to it. Developed and delivered with Loren Chasse. Download the Activity & Impact Report Begun 2006 \| Completed 2006

	Topographies & Tales
	Topographies & Tales is about the relationship between people, language, identity and place, revealing small local stories against the larger picture of how our concept of space and environment is shaped by "belonging" and "nationhood", and how boundaries, barriers and borders come to be formed. Proboscis is collaborating with and supported residencies in the UK for two artists to create new works with us for the project – Joyce Majiski (Canada) & Loren Chasse (USA). Begun 2004 \| Completed 2007

	Robotic Feral Public Authoring
	A Social Tapestries collaboration with Birkbeck College and Natalie Jeremijenko to adapt toy robots with GPS positioning, environmental sensors and wireless data upload to Urban Tapestries. Download the Cultural Snapshot Begun 2005 \| Completed 2006

	Navigating History
	A collaboration with curator Deborah Smith commissioning 11 artists' projects in local libraries and local history collections in the South East region of England. Begun 2004 \| Completed 2005

	Urban Tapestries
	Proboscis is developing a research framework and experimental location-based wireless application for public authoring in partnership with the London School of Economics, Hewlett Packard Research Labs and Orange with Ordnance Survey and France Telecom R&D. The initial prototype (for PDA and WiFi) had a public trial in London in December 2003, the second prototype (for Symbian mbile phone and GPRS) was given a field trial in June 2004. Download the Report: Public Authoring, Space & Mobility Begun 2002 \| Completed 2004

	Peer2Peer Network
	Peer2Peer is an informal network of people interested in developing collaborations and practical solutions for potential partnerships across the arts, industry and academia. The Network consists of individual artists and designers and people from academia, industry, public funding agencies, private foundations and government.

	Sonic Geographies
	SONIC GEOGRAPHIES takes sound as the entry point for excavating and mapping urban experience and invisible infrastructures of the city. A series of experiments and sketches were developed that operated as maps and journeys but also as highly personal renderings of sonic experience – sounds of the personal world in conversation with sounds of the city. Begun 2002 \| Completed 2003

	Private Reveries, Public Spaces
	Proboscis commissioned 14 proposals from leading artists and designers addressing the theme of converging media technologies (internet, radio, interactive television, wireless telecommunications etc) and their social and cultural impact on the shifting relationship between private and public spaces. Three of the proposals were selected by a panel of judges to be developed into 'conceptual prototypes' for presentation to the public, peers, academia and industry as online demonstrations and at an event at the London School of Economics on June 25th 2002. Begun 2001 \| Completed 2002.

	Mapping Perception
	A collaboration between Giles Lane, curator and producer, Andrew Kötting, the acclaimed director of This Filthy Earth, Gallivant and Smart Alek, and Mark Lythgoe, neurophysiologist at the Institute of Child Health, London. The project looked at the perceptions of impaired brain function to further understand the mind and body interaction and our relationship with its abnormality. It made visible connections between scientific and artistic explorations of the human condition, probing the thin membrane between the able and the disabled. Begun 1998 \| Completed 2002.

	Landscape & Identity; Language & Territory
	Liquid Geography questions and explores contemporary perceptions of geography, territory and landscape, at a point in time when understandings of place and space are being redefined. The initial strand of this research is Landscape & Identity; Language & Territory, a collaboration between Proboscis, MEDIA@LSE and inIVA. Two Creative Labs will be held on March 22nd and June 14th 2002 exploring how new technologies can be used in innovative ways to transform our knowledge of other societies and cultures and act as enabling tools providing a catalyst for the development of new ideas. A series of DIFFUSION eBooks were commissioned as pilots for future experiments in knowledge creation and dissemination. Begun 2001 \| Completed 2002.

	Topologies
	TOPOLOGIES was a research and feasibility study to investigate creating an initiative which could challenge existing definitions of public art. By commissioning and disseminating public artworks through the UK Public Library system, and using visual, aural and tactile media to investigate and represent abstract spaces and concepts, the works would form part of a wider attempt to broaden the audience for contemporary conceptual artwork. TOPOLOGIES aimed to change both the context and the way in which people encounter art, aiming to introduce concepts of process-based art practices (as distinct from object-based works) to diverse and new audiences, and move the experience of encountering public (or conceptual) art away from a 'viewer' experience to that of a user. The Research Report is available to download as a PDF file here. Begun 1999 \| Completed 2000.