From 19th to 23rd February The Networked identity week was running, which was a creativity week for young people aged 13-19, based at the Science Museum and later in the week the Serpentine Gallery. During this time I worked with a number of other people, including Christian Nold.
Christian has been developing his work with Biomapping – essentially a small device which measures your reaction to your environment (an emotional response), a little like a lie detector. Combine this with GPS data and you can make a really engaging activity out of walking around a location and mapping your responses to it as you go.
Rob Skitmore, assistant director at the Science museum also gave us some time and worked with the group to make a simple telegraph device – from the ultra modern biomapping to a two hundred year-old communication device… but the participants all really enjoyed it!
Sophie Higgs was great, too – she worked with us at the Serpentine Gallery and showed us around the Karen Kilimnic exhibition. I was a little dubious of the reactions we would get to the work, but it was astonishingly good, and when Sophie explained some of the deeper meanings it really helped embed the experience with everyone. I certainly didn’t expect to respond to the art in the way I did, and it was an enjoyable moment or two for me! I would urge you all to visit Karen’s exhibition there and see what you make of it.
My thanks to Katy Holbird from the BBC, who was a pillar of support, but also to Sue Dewey and Chiara Hall, who worked tirelessly through their time at the event. Finally, thanks to matt and Alex who started the week off whilst I was at Gillingham! I’ll try to put some images together as a web gallery and publish them here as soon as I can.