Long Time, No See?

The Long Time, No See? project is an evolving public participation artwork about long term visions for community.

I will be part of the panel discussion at Balance-Unbalance International Conference on 1st June 2013, in Noosa, where the panel will be discussing this ongoing project in greater detail.

About Long Time, No See?:

The project seeks to engage communities through active collaboration, to imagine new pathways for sustain-able long term futures. Participants in the process are asked to take part in a guided walkshop through their local community to observe their urban surroundings, to trigger an awareness of their personal relationship with their environment. The participants’ role is to communicate their observations and responses which become the raw data for the larger artwork, while also being prompted to examine their own inspirations as a catalyst for developing a positive social and environmental awareness.

The project is run in conjunction with the roll-out of the National Braodband Network, beginning in the Brisbane suburb of Aspley.  My participation was at the trial stage of the workshops and walkshops in Aspley. This project is ongoing, with data ollected from participants being fed into an app, which will develop as a moving, shifting artwork.

I found the interesting part of my participation the collaborative process which has an embedded futuring perspective. Although not explicitly communicated, I became aware through the process that the driver is the care structures embedded in futuring, and that we were prompted by the process to think about and investigate these elements.

The project team’s creative director is artist Dr Keith Armstrong, and he is joined by: interaction designer Dr Gavin Sade, sound artist Prof Roger Dean, writer Linda Carroli, designer Robert Henderson, software developer Petros Nyfantis, research assistance Eric Lin and curator Lubi Thomas.