In the Melbourne we heard from three speakers and then opened out into two groups to discuss the questions and provocations that FSGR had sent. The discussion was lively, with a great mix of artists, librarians, historians, arts managers and interested locals and it was clear from the way our audience launched into discussion that libraries are places that ignite imaginations.

OPEN LAB welcome

Here is a snapshot of some of the discussions and and  some attempts by the groups at answering the questions….

What kind of librarians and cultural managers will we be?

Facilitators, Match makers, Distillers, Quality managers, Trusted guides, Conduits for information, they will act as points of access.

How do the public talk to each other? 

Musically… perhaps there might be musical instruments in the space.

Through common objects… perhaps there might be a comment book, a shared book that is built with each visit to the library.

In shared spaces… with a common focus, storytimes, homework and community groups.

The books exist so that people can use them collectively…Perhaps philosophy groups might run in the library making use of the books available to discuss areas of common interest.

SPACE + MATERIALS + COMMON INTERESTS

“In the future… when we blink we will go online” Michio Kaku

In  this new context of online reading, how can we attract new audiences and what will the relationship between the digital and virtual spaces be like?

Is Web 2.0 content knowledge in the sense that libraries are accustomed to? and are these social or cultural exchanges archiveable in the way in which libraries are used to? If what is dawning is an age of greater social democratisation, how do libraries help facilitate these changes and adapt? And is this idea of co-creation in libraries a way of keeping people in the space for longer in the same way people stay in galleries etc…Will drastic changes alienate current users of passive services?

Someone suggested that libraries might like to host a “data furnace”…

…in the end this group decided that libraries have an ongoing role in contextualising / brokering and mediating knowledge and information and in bringing all these formats together and presenting them in meaningful ways. Libraries  have a role in helping us to build stories out of all of these disparate sources.

The group was interested in the difference between the precision of the knowledge that is available vs the informal colloquial knowledge that libraries attract particularly in rural centers.

bits and pieces

How this will all fit together no one knows…. Its like fog, little molecules all strung together in a three dimensional curtain, pieces of material that move in and out of focus as the viewer scans it with their gaze.

We divided the workshops into 4 parts; community, collaboration, consumption, communication,  using an icebreaker game at the beginning of each section. Luckily, the casting section proved useful in that everyone who participated had an  opinion to share and it was quite hard to follow with everyone talking over each other! Again, thanks to our great translator for helping us to understand what the discussions were about.

This reasearch phase helped to illuminate a few things about how Penarandinos feel about emergent technologies. Pretty much everyone was online, using email and Facebook and Twenti to keep in touch. People had less experience in using digital technologies to explore their own creativity, making us realise further the value of the project and the desire of FGSR to engage with technologies, but to make sure they take their audiences along with them.

If we approach the discussions as another way of getting to know the people of Penaranda and the landscape in which we are working, then they were a success. The discusssions, the written and drawn material produced, and the diaries that the participants will be keeping will find their way into the final event. This research is an integral part of our practice, even if formalised by using a basic ‘focus group’ model.

We are super aware of the need within this project to have the staff of the centre see practical results of the works and to see the effects of new kinds of creative practice. So with the centres help we invited the users of the centre to participate in various ways over the three weeks to give feedback and insight from a new set of perspectives.

We are looking for dreamers

In the first week we carried out a sort of “casting” process to find people willing to help us with the research and share stories about their online habits.  A flyer advertising the project was posted around the town (the flyer above was made by Olga Sánchez y Florencia Corrionero, staff of the Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez). We met each person individually and we sat on a stage,  like hollywood directors, with lights and cameras while each person shared a one minute story about fog. It could have been something that they remembered, heard, saw in a film, read in a book or were told as a child. Fog memories are interesting as there is a metaphorical likeness between fog and memory (this is not the first time this has been observed) and it was a lovely to have these Spanish memories float across the stage into the darkness as we selected our researchers.

One of the purposes of this blog is to put markers along the way or to highlight points in the process that are problematic… the dead ends, detours or distractions. I’m sure its been said before but our limited knowledge of Spanish culture and language is a big one, especially with understanding the nuances of peoples reactions and responses to all these processes of engagement. In this week we were surprised by the formality of this “casting”  process, but in the end it worked really well and we noticed that the librarians and staff really know their audience as people didn’t seem put out by this  process. There are reams and reams to be written about cultural differences, and the relational difficulties that this might pose, but if there is anything we have learnt it is that a little goes a long way and with a lovely translator some of these problems can be overcome.

The theme of the fog came to us from the Director of the centre Javier Valbuena, by way of a Spanish book by Miguel Unamuno (a basque writer who spent most of his life in Salamanca) it is about a fictional character Augusto, whose complicated love life leads him to wanting to kill himself. Before he does however he visits the home of the author to ask his expert opinion, in their conversation the author (Unamuno) reveals that Augusto is a fictional creation and that as his life is not real it is therefore not possible for him to end. In the book the character sees “his world as full of small and almost imperceptible occurrences, some of them good some of them bad, and all of them serve to obscure his vision.”La Niebla (Fog) is then a condition under which we live somewhere between reality and fiction.

While at the Edinburgh Festival for work, I’ve seen many different shows which have provided a lot of inspiration for Banana Asylum’s upcoming visit to Spain. Importantly, it is clear how many theatre makers/ live artists are embracing new technologies of various kinds in their work. Terms such as pervasive media,  locative theatre, iterative and immersive have been ringing in my ears.

So far I’ve seen a few performances which have made me think and feel, it is only ever one or the other that I ask from an artwork.

I, Infinite by Tom Dale Company was a wholly immersive piece of choreography performed in a white dance studio. Audience members could view the solo dancer from all angles and get as close to her as they dared. The mode was a sombre look in the future as Dale created a work which looked at the ‘beauty of human movement through a digital perspective’. Of particular note was the moment in which the dancer moved underneath a haze of dry ice. The lighting was such that is felt as if she her body was brought alive by her breath allowing her to move in and out of visibility while lying under the haze. The use of ‘fog’ in such a beautiful way is something BA can explore further for this project.

Its a slightly different approach to the ideas explored here in this 1987 text by victor turner… however it gives some context to the terrain. Antrophology of performance

Our first research trip to Penaranda took place at the end of June and was quite intense! We met with almost all of the staff of the centre,  (all those that were available and on our busy schedule) and we interviewed each of them with some questions that covered their working days, home life, usage of technology, artworks that they remember, foggy days and subjects of interest or expertise.

Above all it was lovely to meet everyone and through the interviews we learnt a lot about the town, the centre and the people that we will be collaborating with on this project.

a tour around the town

It was very interesting to hear about peoples foggy memories, as part of the initial thinking about the project we have been talking a lot about the idea of Fog. We are thinking about it as a metaphor for connectivity, as a lower version of a cloud that exists between us and connects more closely to the space we are in together. Fog or “Neibla” will form a sort of structural map and metaphor for the project. It was very interesting to hear that in Spain, the Fog, has very specific cultural associations of death, sadness and loss. Some of the memories were lovely to hear but it is something to be aware to when structuring and making our project…. As we don’t want to make the audiences of the future sad!

In spending a week in Penaranada we came to learn that, well, all streets lead to the centre. It really is a tiny town, something we are both unfamiliar with, adding to the intensity of the project. We located some beautful locations around town and became very excited about what me might be able to do with them!

By the end of the week we had consumed a huge amount of jamon y queso, began to understood the rhythm of Penaranda and identified some of the FGSR staffs main concerns. On the whole people were excited, but apprehensive about the project. There is a real sense of pride for all the staff that work there, something that makes doing this kind of project inspiring for us, but also understandable that they are concerned about what we will get them to do! Fog continues to be a theme as we asked each staff member a memory they have of fog. It is useful to use this as a guding principle and to realise how murky and threatening it is to most.