A2AA...

My university is involved in Artists Access to Art Colleges, and as part of this the artists involved had a panel discussion for our course to learn about their practice. One of the artists, Nikki Pugh perticuly interested me due to her what she investigates in her practice. On the A2AA website Pugh describes what she intends to do in this statement: 'I will be using the AA2A scheme to develop and build objects that house landscape- reactive electronic systems in such a way that they also relate to the human body – either through being worn or being carried. Imagine wearing a wooden yoke across your shoulders that collects GPS data as you walk around the city. Imagine a dowsing rod that detects wi-fi networks. We constantly strive to build our computational systems into smaller and lighter forms, but what does it feel like to instead build them into heavy, wooden objects that must be very deliberately transported?'

By recording peoples movement on a daily basis Pugh is making evidence of someone's presence and therefore shows a form of there existence. Whereas I have chosen to show the presence of someone by showing the environment they leave being with a feeling of an absence, Pugh literally shows you the route someone has taken and can pin point where they have been.

When talking about herself she goes on to say: 'I work in the grey areas between and across Art, Science and Technology, instigating enquiry-led processes that are often participatory in nature.
          I'm primarily interested in issues around interaction: how we interact with spaces and landscapes; how we interact with each other; and how we interact with objects. Typically I will instigate a starting point and a mechanism to support exploration and criticism.
          My practice encompasses locative and digital media, walking, performative actions in public spaces (in turn including pervasive games), installation, physical computing and collaboration. I rarely work in isolation, preferring instead to work in response to a particular location, context or conversation.'

As my work moves more into site-specific work and interaction from the audience it could be worth while looking further into the work of Pugh to understand how people might react to my work in different location. 

When looking at Nikki Pugh's personal website most relevant projects of Pughs to mine where those relating to the Digbeth area in Birmingham, around the east side of town, which is where I currently live and have situated some of my work in. I found it interesting how she has literally recorded her route around the Eastside using two GPS to show when she had been on her walk. With the Eastside going through drastic redevelopment Pugh's records are perfect for revisiting to see how things have changed. As part of my development I have been going around town and trying to capture scenes that I feel give the same sort of feeling as the most successful image from last time (which I have used repeatedly on my window and on the white boards), by doing so I also have noticed the amount of buildings that have been left or are planed to be renovated. I feel like this fits in to what I'm looking at, instead of people I am capturing these places that we exist in showing it in a moment in time. Like Pugh's GPS records these drawings could be good to look at in a years time or two and see how the scene has changed.

Finally, an interesting discovery that I found on Nikki Pugh's website was a link for the an organisation called Still Walking. They arrange walking tours around Birmingham with different themes, the next one I can join is 'Birmingham Noir' on 15th March, I think it could be beneficial to get to know the city I live in and perhaps descover things about it I never knew before.