Choose Two Tools

Two tools to take to my area and experiment with would probably be string and speakers. I've been thinking about ways to interrupt the natural flow of this space by introducing man made obstacles to throw people of enjoying their natural surroundings. The speakers I would use in  a sound projection piece, rigged into the tree tops and hidden from eye site. They would play a variety of unnatural man-made sounds like chainsaws, machinery, excavation equipment, banging and crashing. I could even use actual voices of people yelling and cursing as part of this dialogue. The aim of this type of piece would be to see how people react to such confronting noises in a place they would not expect to encounter such things, it would be as much a social experiment as an installation piece. The string I originally thought of using in a similar way, to create physical boundaries that prevent people from walking the paths and judging how they react to this but the idea of creating a string web across the path, although it interrupts their course, it actually helps them to engage more with their surroundings if anything because they would have to walk off the set path and into the bush to get around the obstacle, this action of stepping into an actual space rather than following the set path can be really beneficial to connecting with your surroundings. So these two tools could create two very different installations with different social experiments and incredibly different outcomes.

week six

Week Six Task:

• Consider the concept of the weathered body in your site. Does it enable/inhibit extreme physical conditioning?
• What are some extreme physical exertions that are related to your current site? How was it built/cleared/constructed?
• What modes of performance training/preparation might be enabled/suited to the particulars of your site/space?

The site itself doesn’t have anything to do with physical exertion but the trip to get the sight certainly doesn’t. You need to have strength- mental and physical to get to the flat. You can not expect to get there without a bit of sweat and muscle burning unless you are extremely fit. The circuit itself is about 5.4 k. to get to it you obviously don’t have to walk all of this, you can enter the circuit at other points. But the shortest distance between an entrance and the flat is to climb up the ladder, a series of very steep concrete, uneven steps to get there.

The physical component of getting to this site is completely unavoidable unless you want to fly in by helicopter. The tracks were probably made around the same as all the others around the gorge were, in the 1800s for the elite to stroll along. This track is not exactly strolling stuff so it’s a possibility that it was made for the men to train/ exercise on because e of course women wouldn’t have been seen physically exerting themselves in public back then. What I love about the tracks is that they haven’t just been dug out with machinery or made with concrete, they are rocky, muddy and natural because they are simply maintained by peoples footsteps and use of them.

week 5

Week Five Task:

• Reflect on the nature of tourist traffic through/in/around your chosen site. How does the history of your site affect various modes of a visitor 'reading' it?
• How do you anticipate audiences will engage with your work based on the sites past/current/future civic use and purpose?
• Can your work accommodate the accidental visitor and the visitor who arrives specifically to engage with your work?

Well the week five task has pretty much already been answered by past descriptions of my chosen place. Because the flat is at the top of the hardest art of the track, 99% of the tourists that wonder onto the looped track on either side turn back before they get to the flat because of the intense climb on either side. The only people that go anywhere near this flat are people that are purposely exercising. The place doesn’t really have a history that is different from what it is now. Its one of the beautiful places that hasn’t been changed by humans all that much. The only change is maybe the adding of paths and the marks people leave by walking. I think the audience would probably best engage with the place through silence. Through being quiet they will be able to connect with the natural place through the sounds of the wind in the trees, the birds, the animals moving in the bushes and all of the other beautiful things that are associated with a place like this that hasn’t been overtaken by humans. The only accidental visitors to a work in this site would be those using the area for exercise. Because the place is hard to access, this will also deter a lot of people, minimising the audience to able bodied people with no aversion to exercise and sweat. Through the location it makes the audience a selective type of person and it would be good to make the work cater to this type of in dividual by making it something physically and mentally challenging.