AUGMENTED ENCOUNTERS
MICRODYSTOPIA’S @ THE LEVEL, BRIGHTON
INTRODUCTION Welcome to The Level, Brighton. A park situated in the centre of the city, framed by semi-urban and semi-suburban grids of terraced housing. This park is not just my local park, it’s every city park, a shared public space. Like all our spaces it becomes familiar as we navigate our chosen routes. How we encounter this environment follows our thought patterns, tendencies and habits, where we choose to rest our gaze. However, in the cracks and mundane backdrops of these locations hide an ever-growing organism.
Away from consistent attention it morphs and multiplies, unobserved. Feeding from fleeting glances and moments of collective discomfort. Injustices and inequalities are not written in our usual sightlines, but they accumulate in the viewpoints that are overlooked. Breeding an insidious lifeforce that exists on graffitied walls and dirty windows. A rhizome of whispered conversations that absorb into the soil, breathing life into a web of everyday microdysoptia’s.
ORIENTATION Here in this ordinary pocket of green space an ecosystem of hidden encounters can be found. These can be experienced through the pages of this book, physical navigation or the digital space of the QR codes. No experience is more valid, each one an insecure simulacrum. Instead approach this book as a template for your own local park. No physical presence is needed, let the inner monologue frame the context of these experiences.
Directions: Enter the North entrance to the park and follow the wall to the right. The bench has been removed leaving an empty concrete square, void of its original purpose. The crumbling wall now becomes a backdrop to this incidental framing. A wall, a fleeting blur in our everyday is now the focal point, Stare at the space and see how the edges blur.
SURFACE COLLAPSE Digitally Printed fabric 2 x 1.5m
50°49’53.6”N 0°08’01.1”W
A whole reality exists in the peripheries of our consciousness. A parellel universe riding alongside our present. If we shift our focus from a forward-facing trajectory, we notice the walls are beginning to collapse. Without our attention, they grow tired of holding themselves upright. The background information takes a short break to rest. It sags momentarily as we forge ahead.
Directions: Follow the wall along the North edge of the park, this bench will be the first. Remember all the times this bench was taken. Did you sit on the sun-baked grass, or sit uncomfortably on the jagged wall? Perhaps you sat precariously next to a stranger. Where for a moment both of your inner projections sat side by side, before one of you broke away to find their own solitude.
ECHO OF ONE TIME Digitally Printed fabric 2 x 2x1.5m
50°49’53.9”N 0°08’00.0”W
In the now there are whispers of all events lived in a space. Thin layers that hover on the surfaces, not quite settling. If you look hard enough you can see how shadows come alive, abandoning their reference point. Past bodies leave imprints of the places they rested. Can you see your own imprints from your last visit? The holograms of words and thoughts that absorb into the earth.
Directions: Enter the ‘Sensory Gardens’ and find the back of a curved wall, of a seemingly empty building. Original purpose unknown. Lazy graffiti, peeling paint and faint letters, white-washed with glossy emulsion. The ground throws smoky discolouration’s onto the wall from heavy raindrops , colliding with unidentified junk. Notice how the building sweats with early morning condensation.
INCUBATION ENDS Digitally Printed fabric 1.7 x 1.3m
50°49’48.2”N 0°07’59.5”W
The scattered fragments of those past languages join together into an unearthly clump. The words connect into misunderstandings, incubating augmented life forms. Embryo’s growing in the crevices of where wall meets mud. It’s easy to ignore the grazes in the paintwork, the surface scratches of abruptly fallen knees. The skin which is trying to knit itself together from shards of thoughts and utterances to form a slowly writhing mass.
Directions: Along the south side of Elm Avenue there is a clearing in the bushes to your left. A slope of mud shaped by impatient hands and feet. Climb up onto the back, then lower yourself into the park. Ridges of dried mud crumble under the sudden impact. Walk towards the cafe, its closed. Edge along the vacant building. Turn back to see your elongated reflection in the curve of the window.
BIRTH SHELL Digitally print vinyl on aluminium 1.6 x 1.m
50°49’50.1”N 0°08’01.5”W
Elsewhere in the network dusty windows become a host for the next life form. The gliding passage of bodies, swaying trees, the scurried footsteps of hunched figures and momentary vanity are all nutrition for an embryo in utero. Intelligence that finds itself peeling away from its maternal background. A membrane of smeared images hardening to a shell. It hovers in suspended motion, awaiting an armature to transport it, to its next location.