Radio 101 Interview

Had a great Place Stories Matariki Radio interview 29 June 2015 with  Radio NZ's Music 101 Show and Emma Smith.

We walked the town and showed off the talent of our wonderful artists....

 Place Stories Matariki weaves together the sounds of seven different community artists and groups from the Papakura area. Each audio track is located in a Papakura space or place that needs cherishing in some way.

The audio is accessed via an app downloaded onto a GPS enabled smart device, and heard via your own headphones. This  'locative mobile technology' allows you to be immersed in a number of different realities as you walk around the town.

Waiata, spoken word, samples and synthesised tracks, and sound effects, are all part of the town-wide installation. Different genres and cultures come together to celebrate the town's diversity, and the wairua of the town at Matariki, a time when the boundaries between worlds are at their thinnest.

Place stories is  available from the Google Play Store and iTunes

Participating artists:

• Fred Harrison (Audio Foundation)
• Whiri-Aroha (Papakura Marae Korowai Weaving Group)
• Uniform (Audio Foundation)
• Moe Lolesi
• Haare Williams
• Mahu Rawiri
• Kim Newall

Curator and Producer: Maggie Buxton
App Development and Visual Design: Kim Newall
 

Funding is kindly provided by

Additional supporters include the Audio Foundation (who have two artists participating), Papakura Art Gallery, Papakura Business Association, Auckland City Council and Papakura Local Board

and

Imersia Group who are kindly providing the technology to support the experience.

Whanake

I just had an article published in the new journal 'Whanake: The Pacific Journal of Community Development'. Take a look here It discusses my work with locative mobile and is based on my PhD Research.

Augmenting Elders, Placing Stories and The Concreteness of Poetry

It has been an exciting month for me with lots of projects on the go. The big news was that my PhD was submitted for examination in February - the wait begins.

AwhiWorld is taking off and the Te Ngira project is entering another phase. More detailed information can be found on the AwhiWorld  website or on my personal site but for now a summary:

• In February I spoke at the UNITEC Community Development Conference on my work - hopefully I can put some links to this up soon
• David Sinfield from AUT South Art and Design, and myself have begun a project with his students on Place: Concrete Poetry. Concrete Poetry is a type of practice where typography and visual elements mix together artfully. In this case sites around Papakura form the nexus for  each students practice and eventual work. This is an AwhiWorld - AUT South collaboration.
• Kim Newall and myself conducted an AwhiWorld workshop at Elmwood Retirement Village showing them the wonders of augmented reality. Residents turned themselves into augmented creatures and made some wandering creatures their own.  More events and projects are planned this year as part of our Augmenting Elders programme.
• Our youth oriented Awhi_Creatures special event at the January Accelerating Aotearoa Geek Camp was a success - we are now planning a major Awhi_Creatures related exhibition for later in the year.
• The next version of the Papakura Marae app is under development in collaboration with Imersia Group - it will have clearer graphics and a more user friendly interface. More details will be provided when it launches in a few months.
• Place_Stories (Matariki) gained CNZ funding. This is an AwhiWorld project that geo-locates seven sound installations around Papakura. The sounds emphasise the liminality of the time of year, the technology, the artist's concept and the spaces and places themselves

All of these projects are designed to support the spirit of place in some way - whether it be through creating magical workshops using emerging technology, through activating spaces as points of creative practice, or directly laying information into locations to be magically encountered
.

The Reemergence of AwhiWorld

AwhiWorld is back!

AwhiWorld an innovative arts, education, social and economic development project that aims to open minds, shift perspective, and generate opportunities for people (particularly young people) to creatively connect to the places where they live.

AwhiWorld is a world that sits beyond our world. From time to time it generates portals from which

magical creatures, fantastical people, odd artefacts, and amazing technologies spring forth to reveal the wonder just beyond our eyes. AwhiWorld demonstrates that the places we live in are alive with knowledge, beauty and fun.

AwhiWorld first emerged in 2008. At that time, police, artists, horticulturalists, interdimensional investigators and other individual all appeared through portals to help children in a South Auckland school see the world that existed beyond their world. You can read more about these activities here.
Six years later, AwhiWorld has grown into a large scale multi-event concept aimed at generating learning, innovation, connection and perspective shift in and around the places (digital and physical) where we live, work and play.

Our world faces tricky problems that require complex, cross-boundary solutions. AwhiWorld teaches us new ways to relate to each other and the world around us through playing in the spaces between.

In 2015 AwhiWorld is generating a series of place-based projects. AwhiWorld can be found on Twitter @awhiworld, Instagram and Facebook. From to time I will update this blog on AwhiWorld adventures.

MINA 2014 Talk

Am providing a link to my recent MINA 2014 presentation..



....see my talk from 26 mins onwards or watch the whole thing to see a great presentation by Marsha Berry on disconnection and mobility.