Landscape-Portrait

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As part of the Landscape-Portrait project a billboard art work was created. The project was a collaboration between Kevin Carter, Karin Coetzee and Media19. (2007) Image by Nick Oldham/Media19

Landscape-Portrait (2007)[1] is a public digital artwork that has been touring around the UK since its launch in 2007. In 2007 public arts agency Forma[2] commissioned the work as part of a series of public art works for the Dott Festival (Design Of The Times) Newcastle, UK.[3]

This image is a screen shot of the Landscape-Portrait website, showing the geographical location of the video portrait on a Google map.
The image details the Landscape-Portrait website, currently playing Sonia's video portrait.

Methodologies and practice[edit]

The artwork was conceived by Kevin Carter[4] and produced by in association with Forma, SCAN,[5] web designer Pete McDonagh[6] and d|Lab at the University of Teesside[7] and features collaborations with artists and practitioners across the UK. These included: Tony White,[8] Diane Humphries,[9] Craig Gilbert,[10] Richard Jeffery, Steve Lewis, Helen Sloan,[11] Media19[12] and Karin Coetzee.[13]

Landscape-Portrait investigates how postcode demographics, as represented by the Acorn System[14] might reinforce certain stereotypes of communities across the UK. The work hopes to promote a dialogue around the possible effects this practice entails, for example in around social service provision, types of commercial investment undertaken as well as personal decision making, all of which arguably exacerbates a reductive perception of person and place, potentially at odds with an experience on the ground. In response to the reductive methodology of demographics the work makes use of public art practices in combination with digital technologies to author a complimentary dataset, with which to critique a purely statistical understanding of person and place. Participants are interviewed online and offline using a standard questionnaire which is based on that used by the Census. The revised questionnaire employs a subjective reasoning as opposed to an objective one that used by the Census. For example, where the Census questionnaire asks how many people the recipient lives with, the Landscape-Portrait questionnaire asks “How do you get on living with the people in your house?”.[15]

Kerry is asked the question: “How do you get on living with the people in your house?”

The resulting data - video, text, meta data, image - will be made available under a creative commons license, allowing it to be reused by other practitioners, aligning it to ideas about public arts relationship with use[16] and legacy[17] value. Landscape-Portrait is an example of a digital public artwork which derives from a practice which makes use of digital technologies and community focused public art practices.[18]

Defining a new practice: digital public/community art[edit]

Landscape-Portrait is an example of a digital public artwork which derives from a mixing of digital technologies and community focused public art practices. This practice although derived from Digital art or more accurately Digital Public arts,[18] but might be better understood as digital community art. As such it is at an early stage of development, and invites further definition. Other works and artists that might be included in this discipline are Graham Harwood.[19] This approach to the use of digital technologies within a public art practice is differentiated from other digital public art works, such as UnderScan (2005) by Raphael Lorenzo Hemmer[20] whereby the audiences relationship with the work is mediated via a formal spatial method of interaction rather than as a result of a dialogical practice familiar to community based arts [21]

The work and its practice (methods and methodologies) have been presented at various conferences. These include Digital Engagement, Sheffield, 2010,[22] Public Interfaces at Aarhus University, Denmark, 2011 [23] and CCID 2011: The Second International Symposium on Culture, Creativity and Interaction Design [24] held in Newcastle. An article about the work and the practice of digital public art has been published in a peer-reviewed journal [25] and Dr Ann Light [26] for Sheffield and Hallam University has written about the work Landscape-Portrait in Interactions magazine.[27]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Main project website can be found here: http://www.landscape-portrait.com Archived 2012-01-05 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2011-10-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ^ Lewis, Hannah (October 21, 2007). "* Dott 07 Festival". [re]design. Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved December 20, 2023.
  4. ^ "Kevin_Carter_CV_08.zip". March 31, 2011. Archived from the original (ZIP) on April 25, 2012. Retrieved December 20, 2023.
  5. ^ See Scan's website here: http://www.scansite.org/scan.php Archived 2011-11-29 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ see examples of his work here: www.codesign.it
  7. ^ "Home". tees.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2021-01-11. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
  8. ^ "Electra". Archived from the original on 2012-05-02. Retrieved 2011-10-28.
  9. ^ Diane Humphries (2013-04-22), toys games, archived from the original on 2022-12-29, retrieved 2022-12-29
  10. ^ Craig is a community worker who runs the Townsend community website at: www.townsend.com
  11. ^ Helen Sloan commissioned Landscape-portrait in Bournemouth and runs arts agency SCAN: www.scansite.org
  12. ^ Media19’s work can be seen here: http://www.media19.co.uk/ Archived 2011-09-03 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "Kevin Carter". Flickr. 11 February 2008. Archived from the original on 2022-12-29. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
  14. ^ "ACORN, ACORN Classification, Demographic Data, Consumer Classification". www.caci.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 April 2010. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  15. ^ See full questionnaire here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16463134/questionnaire.pdf[permanent dead link]
  16. ^ See Lacy, S. Mapping the terrain : New Genre Public Art. Seattle, Wash., Bay Press. (1995) and Sutherland, A. Grizedale Arts. Locating the Producers. Arnolfini, Bristol, UK. (2010) for a discussion of 'use' value in public art.
  17. ^ See Nina Pope’s description of legacy as the ‘long tail’ audience for the work, in that audiences can engage long after the public art project has finished. See ‘Searching for Art's New Publics’, 2010
  18. ^ a b For a more complete discussion of this practice see: http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/?p=109 Archived 2011-10-23 at the Wayback Machine
  19. ^ "Coal Fired Computers | YoHa". yoha.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2022-12-19. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
  20. ^ "Rafael Lozano-Hemmer - Under Scan". www.lozano-hemmer.com. Archived from the original on 2022-12-29. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
  21. ^ For a critique of technical rather dialogical interaction see Grau’s quote where talks of works which are ‘Poorly interactive, they at times enclose one into a schema of manipulation rather than propose a real space for dialogue/ - Also look at Manovich essay ON TOTALITARIAN INTERACTIVITY (notes from the enemy of the people) which can be viewed here: "Lev Manovich | Essays : On Totalitarian Interactivity". Archived from the original on 2011-11-23. Retrieved 2011-11-07.
  22. ^ "Inspiring Digital Engagement Festival – Sept 15th, Sheffield - MDDA". 2010-08-17. Archived from the original on 2010-08-17. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
  23. ^ See conference details here: http://darc.imv.au.dk/?page_id=1656 Archived 2012-04-25 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ^ "About". The Second International Symposium on Culture, Creativity, and Interaction Design. 2011-02-21. Archived from the original on 2022-12-29. Retrieved 2022-12-29.
  25. ^ Nyhedsavisen, See Kevin Carter, 'Hybrid Public Art Practice.' HYHEDSVISEN (Public-Interfaces), 1, Vol. 1 (2011), p 12
  26. ^ "Dr Ann Light". Archived from the original on 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2011-10-31.
  27. ^ Light, Ann (2011-03-01). "Digital interdependence and how to design for it". Interactions. 18 (2): 34–39. doi:10.1145/1925820.1925829. ISSN 1072-5520. S2CID 15733593.
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