The Real Time Laboratory
The Real Time Laboratory – is a series of three art-form workshops led by experienced artist-facilitators ivon oates, Sally Watkins and Marc Yeats:
1) Image Makers – still images, drawing and mark-making [October]
2]Performance Place – sculpture, walking, mapping [November 6 & 20]
3) Percussive Coast – composition and sound-work [November 22 & 29]
The Real Time Laboratory is designed to appeal to individuals interested in art, design and science who will, among other aspects, explore the dramatic predictions on the impact of climate change on our coast and the people who inhabit it.
Suitable for participants 16 – 60+. No particular level of art-form experience
is necessary in order to participate.
To sign up for workshops call Mandy Rathbone on 01308 459071
or mail mandy@pva.org.uk
SALLY WATKINS: Performing Place – [November 6 & 20]
mapping and walking practices in site specific performance
This two day workshop will explore creative strategies and methodologies for making site specific performance with a particular emphasis on walking and mapping as a creative practice. We will work outside, exploring our locale, finding the gaps, the idiosyncracy, the intimate and the extremes of our environment. We will look at the ways our bodies respond and react to the ecology of the locations we work in and we will find our own unique ways of turning this information into creative performance. We will choreograph the opening shot of a film, perform impossible tasks, be guests of a day in sites hosted by others.
During the workshop we will be joined by Phil Smith of Wrights and Sites, referencing his work and that of practitioners such as Simon Whitehead, Mike Pearson, Lone Twin and Sue Palmer, finding our own ways to document and reflect upon our work and observations.
MARC YEATS: Percussive Coast – [November 22 & 29]
We will explore and discuss works from the recent EX-LAB exhibition [Bridport Arts Centre] that map the coast and skies. Working inside and on location at Charmouth beach, we will use mapping techniques as the starting point for our own investigations and research. We will map a small area of shoreline and examine it’s content – rocks, pebbles, sand and shingle, and where these are placed in relation to one-another and plot the position of these objects onto a grid using pencil and paper. I will show you how to transform the mapped objects on this grid into a musical score from which we will be able to perform. On the same beach visit we will spend time gathering found objects – stone, wood and who knows what, that can be struck, scrapped, rattled or scrunched to make various sounds. These found objects will become our orchestra of percussive instruments. Playing from the scores we have made, we will perform and record a new abstract percussion work that changes what we have mapped and found on the beach into musical scores and then into sound – the sound of Percussive Coast – new music for found objects.
Shared transport from Bridport to Charmouth can be arranged for a contribution towards costs.
Selected workshops may have invited guest contributors whose specialism is geology, earth science and the natural environment to help us make sense of what we find and how these findings relate to coastal erosion and global warming.
The Real Time Laboratory will invite participants to conceive and produce individual and collaborative responses to the stated theme, guided by lead artists. Participants will undertake research, exploration and creative activity in the studio (PVA MediaLab) and relevant off-site locations. The Real Time Laboratory will reference scientific methods and the starting points of two chosen art works, drawing on creative methods underpinning other works. Workshops will include time for reflection and evaluation.
“… This land so newly revealed, land which has lain below the crushing weight of the ice for thousands of years, land on which no human had ever stood. This new land, so freshly released, was indeed our land, and part of me was left behind there…”
Alex Hartley
“My work explores the relationship between geology and daily life. Whether boiling milk in a 100 degree Celsius sulphur spring in the crater of an active volcano, celebrating my birthday with a landmass of the same age or recording the sound of a melting glacier – the geologic history and environmental situation specific to the locale directly informs the development of each piece.”
Ilana Halperin
The work created by participants will become part of an expanded Big Picture Portfolio – made in response to its projects and made available for exhibition, screening or public presentation in the future.
IVON OATES: Islands of Imagination
Image Makers – still images, drawing and mark-making
http://labculture.wordpress.com/the-real-time-laboratory-workshop-ivon-oates/
We will experiment at a chosen site on the Jurassic Coast, evoking imaginative conceptions and myths of ‘Island’, exploring the dramatic predictions on the impact of climate change on our coast and the people who inhabit it. Participants will consider observational and personal responses using, as a starting point, art-work from the Exploratory Laboratory exhibition.
We will consider the concept of ‘island’ and ‘otherness’ where the mark becomes an articulating medium, opening pathways for the maker towards magical resonances within their own memory or imagination. Image-making techniques ie.camera (stills), traditional markmaking materials (‘natural’ processes), and video (time based mediums) will be demonstrated and used. Layering primary and secondary investigations by participants will encourage a deeper consideration of issues raised in the exhibited works. Participants may work together facilitated within a framework of individual experimentation and joint sharing.
EX-LAB is brought to you by The Big Picture, a collaboration between Artsreach, Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset Visual Arts, PVA MediaLab, Sherborne House Arts, Sherborne School, Walford Mill Crafts and Dorset County Council.
Funded by The Arts Council England, Dorset Strategic Partnership, Dorset County Council, Jurassic Coast Arts, West Dorset District Council, Fine Family Foundation and DepARTure.
Further information:
http://www.bigpic.org.uk
