Documentation of the R&D process for The Common Line project March-September 2018. A partnership project between Blind Ditch, Controlled Frenzy, and Geography at University of Exeter with support from Rural Recreation. Funded by AHRC-EPSRC this R&D was kindly supported by University of Cumbria.

The Common Line - AHRC-EPSRC R&D

The Common Line

The Common Line R&D process

A participatory arts project developed from crowd-sourced creative writings by bus passengers about their journies on the D bus in Exeter. Commissioned by University of Exeter, Arts and Culture 2018 in partnership with Stagecoach.

D-tour: thoughts looking sidewards

D-Tour: thoughts looking sidewards

D-Tour: thoughts looking sidewards – single channel video

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Colourful interactive map of Buckland estate in Newton Abbot

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Happening Here!

An interactive map of Buckland

Culture & Review On Phonic Fm: August 2015: Culture Hour – O-B-A-F-G Special

O-B-A-F-G

Collaborative audio work and radio documentary

A short edit of This City's Centre, 3. Here Now, a performance incorporating live video streaming, staged between a third-floor office space in Princesshay, Exeter and the streets and homes of the city. This City's Centre was a digital triptych for Exeter. Developed by Blind Ditch in 2013 in partnership with Exeter Phoenix, RAMM, Exeter College and funded by Arts Council England, Exeter City Council and Arts and Culture at University of Exeter.

Performers in order of appearance: Phil Smith, Katy Villa, Jonny Rowden, Students from Exeter College, Jane Mason, Lizzy Humber. Music is from Consort of Fower Parts composed by Matthew Locke in Exeter 1660 ca. played by Cat Radford on accordian outside Exeter Cathedral. Camera by Philibert Patricot. Edit Volkhardt Müller.

This City's Centre 3. Here,Now

This City’s Centre

This City’s Centre 3. Here, Now – video trailer

Volkhardt Müller (Blind Ditch) and John Wylie (Cultural Geography, University of Exeter) discuss This City's Centre 1. Window

Private Views and Public Art

A long journey through the city centre shopping centre livens up the morning (August, 2008).

Global Player - the long play

Global Player

Global Player – the long play

A 24 minute documentary on the process and impact of the project including interviews with partners and collaborators. Filmed in 2007 in PAL!

VANLAND Documentary

VANLAND

VANLAND documentary about our working process 2004-07

Short video work using 'home movie' footage created to be used in the performance and installation 'Who Wants to be a Hero Now' in 2006. Edit Volkhardt Mueller, sound John Levack Drever, words Natalie Mcgrath performed by Cat Radford. Child Lena Mueller.

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Who Wants to be a Hero Now?

Divine – video used in the 2006 installation

Young graffiti artist Spike gives our caravan a face-lift. Too many people on country fairs have been suspecting we're selling caravans. No more of that from now on!

VANLAND Trailer 2006

VANLAND trailer 2006

A collection of documents and media produced over the course of 20+ years.

A theatre performance &amp; networked installation exploring iconographies of heroism &amp; our hopes to be better than we are.

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Performance

Installation

In 2005 the British media seemed to be full of Iraq war heroes and celebrity Big Brother… then the London bombings happened and Hurricane Katrina struck. Meanwhile the parents of activist Rachel Corrie had filed a law suit against the Israeli government. Their daughter had been ‘accidently’ killed by an Israel Defense Forces armed bulldozer in Rafa, whilst acting as a human shield.

Henning Hegland, live projection during Who Wants to be a Hero Now? 

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We began by shooting video footage around London Bridge on Nokia phones and mini dv cams, exploring heroic tropes through everyday actions. We started reading the Baader Meinhof trial transcripts and wondered about Andreas Baader’s obsession with Easy Rider. We talked about what it takes for people to put themselves in extraordinary and dangerous circumstances for the sake of other people… or causes… or ideas… We thought about what prompts people living unremarkable lives to take action in extraordinary ways.

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Who Wants to be a Hero Now? Began as a devised theatre making process and became a cross-media investigation into the kind defining decisions that change lives and how they are manipulated. Confronted with the ever present threat of the ‘car crash’ that lurks at the edges of our 21st Century thoughts; we tried to answer the questions ‘what would I do if it were me?’ ‘could I manage it?’ and ‘what would they say about me if I did it?’ The result was a performance event, a networked installation and an intensive studio exploration into performing with and through different aspects of mediation. A kind of animated scrapbook of cut-up images – definitions and propositions  of what might constitute heroism. This was a carnival of footballers, politicians, explorers, space dogs and unwitting people in the wrong place at the right time or the wrong time in the right place. The varying perspectives of the work approached ideas about private and public versions of ourselves and how fragile notions of stability can be.

The live performance only ever took place once. The dialogues and performance fragments were then transformed into an installation that only ever happened once. It felt like our ambition for the work outstripped our technology budget and circumstances. Wireless cameras were extortionately expensive pre-smart phone launch in 2007, and our system for the live feed was made by a VJ in Cardiff and held together with electrical tape. The installation involved live streaming of crowd source videos gathered through an email call out, and installed on a PC in a gallery with a pre-wireless dial up speed internet connection – wireless technology would start to be rolled out that same year. Writing this with experience of the rapid development of digital connectivities and associated changes in understandings of what is ‘true’ or what is ‘right’, the question remains relevant Who Wants to be a Hero Now?

This 2006 networked installation for tEXt festival was an interactive thinking and performance space that asked questions about media driven iconographies of heroism. The materials in the room – questionnaires, maps, the daily papers, performance scripts – were offered for public interaction; manipulated both by the gallery visitors and during a number of timed performance interventions.

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A webcam shooting black and white stills at 5 minute intervals offered visitors the opportunity to frame and mediate themselves as celebrity heros on the world wide web. Each image was fed into a web page where for the next 5 minutes it was displayed alongside short videos curated from a public call. Each image was also ‘floated’ into the exhibition space immediately after it was taken from a black and white printer set high in the gallery resulting in an accumulation both of action and missed opportunities.

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Throughout the tEXt Festival, Blind Ditch offered a series of performance provocations in the space in which fragments of choreographic action and dialogue from the theatre work ‘Who Wants to be a Hero Now?’ were mixed with texts from the Baader Meinhof trials and distilled to form a series of close up loops that engaged with a visiting audience. The online stills performance combined with live feed videography and a series of poetic video and sound edits to translate, manipulate and comment on these actions.  For 15 days, each moment of interaction created a trace of what happened – filling both the online and physical spaces with more and more questions, diatribes, musings, rantings. Exploring people’s decisions towards drastic action, and how the media manipulates and affects our understanding those actions.
Video used in the performance and installation.

Co-devised by Paula Crutchlow – writer/director, John Levack Drever – sound design, Daniel Harris – software manipulation, Henning Hegland- devising performer, Volkhardt Mueller – scenography/videography, Cat Radford – devising performer, <a href="http://www.painesplough.com/playwrights/playwrights-k-o/natalie-mcgrath">Natalie McGrath</a> – contributing writer, David Williams – devising performer.
Developed in residency at Goldsmiths University, London &amp; Dartington College of Arts. Supported by Arts Council England, tEXt Festival and the HEFCE/DTI Business Fellow.