Output details

Urban Provocations 1: Chapel Street

A body of print and digital works forming part of a multimedia playback system authored for the exhibition "Urban Provocations 1: Chapel Street", Ellis Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, 10 – 24 October, 2013. Shared output – Collaboration with Raz Barfield, with each researcher producing a large body of separate material for the artefact and with distinct roles in the project as described below.

This project examined questions relating to perception of urban space and how these can be recorded through mapping of individual experiences. It considered the degree to which the results could be transformed through practice and applied as tools for cultural regeneration. The theoretical context included psycho-geographical concepts by Debord and Foucault’s Heterotopia and more recent applications as alternative models for city redevelopment. The method included visual surveying and recording of a single street in Salford and translation through creative practice to produce an original artefact of combined visual and audio narratives.

The research presented conditions through image- and text-based provocations relating statistics taken from census, economic and crime data with the intention of stimulating new cultural projects for urban renewal. The artefact was exhibited in the context of collaboration between UK and US institutions and particularly based on discussions with the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. This explored close similarities between Salford and the Braddock district of Pittsburgh in their experiences of post-industrial decline and associated problems.

Both visual researchers contributed 50% of the total printed work of 118 photographic and digitally produced images. Allan Walker was the project lead and curator. Raz Barfield was co-producer of printed forms and complex digital play-back machines and Steve Davismoon, produced audio compositions of found sounds. Professors Martin Hall (industrial archaeologist), and Huw Morris (Management and Creative Industries) wrote contextual texts.

Displayed in the Ellis Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh with accompanying presentations and symposia has created institutional research collaborations with CMU staff. Further impact includes plans for involvement through the Carnegie Museum in the Braddock Project and a related exhibition at Columbia College, Chicago, with agreement to explore themes relating to the role of fine art research in design thinking particularly in fields of applied health, crime and cultural amenity.