This piece was a commission for We the Curious, an interactive science museum in Bristol, UK. It was a project that began before the Ph.D. and was completed during the program's final year. During this time, I worked across Southmead, an area in the outer suburbs of Bristol. Historically, Southmead was built on a garden planning structure. Back in 2018, I began interviewing people about the area and their memories. These were collected for an installation to be part of the permanent exhibition of We the Curious, in the centre of Bristol. This piece was another form of interactive storytelling, this time on a larger scale. The concept took a long time to develop, with a great deal of interaction between myself and the community groups involved in the project. The idea was to make these stories accessible to children and adults alike. The prototypes were developed with Nicholas Willsher– a long-term collaborator.
The initial idea was to have the speakers connect to the audio through copper tracks – as pictured above or found as a working video in the Appendix blog. However, it was thought that the exposed copper traces would be too fragile and breakable. These were later revised, as the speakers and design had to be hard-wearing and unbreakable to be accessible for children. Numerous prototypes were developed with children from Southmead participating in the trials.
This restriction influenced the final piece entirely. The team at WTC, developed the idea of having free-floating speaker devices. These work in the same manner as crystal radios. The final piece was constructed by Nick Banks of W19 Design, the artwork designed and printed by myself. The artwork was handprinted with letterpress type from TYPA, A centre for letterpress and papermaking in Estonia. The design is found below, and the video of the piece in action can be found in below.
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