artist's plan - march 26

*collecting process:*

1. walking:
- between springs, following waterways, walking the length of a river, around a reservoir.
- between dawn and dusk, and in relation to specific times/measurements
- finding on foot what I view from Google Earth, making connections, finding translations.
- as a way of encountering people, non human life, plants, narratives.
- tracking boundaries, perimeters and movement across them
- collecting sound. ideas and images

2. driving:
- as a way of crossing and navigating the neroche area and finding my way, including passing on the M5
- as a means of getting to interview and talk to people
- collecting images, video and sounds
- contributing to pollution and climate change

3. google earth & internet:
- a satellite perspective from above the landscape to find curiosities, traces of contemporary and historical movement, and to map places to walk
- as a source for other materials and connections such as youtube blackdown hills sites



4. investigating and researching:
- Rebecca Solnit, Richard Long, Alan Solnfist, The Harrisons, Miranda July, Simon Whitehead, Francis Ayls, Annie Dillard & Richard Mabey.
- rural politics, conservation and leisure, agriculture and migration, countryside as depository, darknesses, isolation, contemporary and historical perspectives.

5. mapping:
- routes and paths, water flow including water table and rivers, geological shifts, weather and prevailing wind, animal bird and butterfly migration, dust and air, seeds, flights paths, historical migration and human movement.
- tracing a map of Neroche landscape through springs and waterways and some additional transient and moving features (emotions, stories, memories, ideas, particles)

6. interviewing / speaking with:
- conservationist
- butterfly and moth expert
- waterways engineer
- migrant worker
- person who held, or attended raves
- postwoman, or horse rider


*outcome / realisation*

at present i am seeing the outcome (the thing that’s lasting and public) as a website directly linked to the neroche site, driven by my artistic interpretation of the neroche landscape. currently it manifests as a mapping (drawing) of all the springs and waterways in the neroche landscape and using them as 'portals', routes or hotspots to reveal collected images, sounds and stories from the moving and changing landscape. It ideally would work in a similar way to google earth - the user would be able to move across the surface, drift across the landscape, and then click on hotspots to reveal other layers, memories and ideas in relation to things which are migratory, transient or passing/passed through, including me as the artist in relation to trips/walking I’ve made.

- some of these collected pieces (audio clips/video/images) could also work on the hand held system.

*questions I’m asking*

- how practical or realisable is this? is this the best manifestation of the work?
- could there be a way of using Google Earth / You Tube to host/ghost some of the work so that people come across it in different ways?

- I would like to avoid making DVDs or books that won’t necessarily find a life or be distributed. I like the idea of making something that is ‘immaterial’ in itself - it reflects the nature/content of the work. The website would need to be very accessible and user friendly, and crucially, simple to maintain.