The Shift-Time Blogging Project

Over the weekend Sue Jones posted a long question about the Shift Time blogging project entitled Is Shrewsbury Talking? prompted by the absence of posts on this blog over the week of the festival and questioning the purpose of the project and the commitment given to it.

I’ve written a (quite long) reply in the comments on her post answering some of her questions and hopefully explaining where the project came from and what its aims are. As I say there I’d welcome any thoughts, comments and questions you might have. You can leave them in the comments here, write them on your own blog (leave the link to your blog post in the comments) or if you want to pick up on something in Sue’s post feel free to join in there.

At Belvidere School..

And in the Quarry Park…

From the blogs over the last week:

Monday

Martin is in a “reflective mood” after the debates on Sunday.

Sue Tortoise rounds up her experiences over the weekend with thoughts on Blue Eyed Soul’s TAKE, Umerus, Shift-Life and the speakers at Blast Off.

Sam Moore posts a couple of photos from the Shift-Life project she did the character designs for.

Steve Green recounts his weekend taking photographs around the park which you’ll find in this set.

Blue Eyed Soul thank the photographers who recorded TAKE on Saturday.

Lorna interviews Moya about Blue Eyed Soul for Virtual Shropshire:

Wednesday

Gekko reviews TAKE with photos.

Martin visits ELF at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery and finds “not a glimmer of life”.

Gekko announces she’s started a blog for the sheep that participated in Feng-Ru Lee’s performance: Marmont Jacobs, Montgomery, Wales.

Umerus moved to St Mary’s Church drawing much attention and Martin followed its journey with his video camera.

Pride Hill from Martin Smith on Vimeo.

And here it is in the Church:

Thursday

Sue interviews the creators of In Praise of Darwin’s Mistakes, the first part of The Weather Man trilogy.

Friday

Martin is still thinking about Kevin Warwick’s talk on Sunday about upgrading his body. He needs more RAM.

Jess from Blue Eyed Soul reflects on their performance of TAKE with some “backstage” photos.

Saturday

Gekko reviews Opera North’s The Weatherman and other events and pronounces it “an amazing day”.

Sunday

Sue writes with great detail about the science and philosophy underlying Theo Jansen’s work. Recommended reading.

Monday

Gekko reviews Heresy the installation by Andy McKeown and Sue Challis.

Finally…

Sue notices the sparcity of posts on this blog over the week and asks what’s going on with this project. I’ll try and answer that in the next post…

Nice to see a deluge of photos coming into the Shift Time Flickr group’s pool. Here’s a slideshow with the most recent uploads.

If you’ve taken photos during the festival and have a Flickr account please add yours to this group.

An ongoing collection of stuff found online about Shift-Time over the weekend. This is from quick scans of people I’m already monitoring or that come up in searches for “shifttime”. I’ll be doing deeper searches over the next fortnight.

Steve Green did a lovely photoshoot of Theo Jansen last week

Blue Eyed Soul are getting ready and welcome feedback through Moya’s Twitter account.

Danny, aka Flickering Velvet, has posted some photos to Flickr.

Sue Tortoise has a great set of closeup photos of Umerus

Sue checks out ELF: Electronic Life Forms.

I’ve been wielding my Through the Viewfinder camera around the site.

Blue Eyed Soul thought my photos were rather nice. (Hey, I’m just reporting what I find!)

Lorna reports on the launch night with Paul Granjon

Martin Smith is doing daily blog posts. Friday is nice with the setup but Saturday is where the meat happens.

Lovely photo of TAKE from Gekko:

And Sue has a great set of sepia-treated photos of the dance event.

As has Martin, although his as in colour.

A short video by Martin Smith of Clinton Chaloner constructing his Primordial Soup exhibit.

Clinton Chaloner puting together a Primordial from Martin Smith on Vimeo.

Trisha, aka Gekkko, has been blogging up a storm over the last few days with a great mix of words and photos which are also on her Flickr. Here’s some of her recent posts:

She had a chat with Clinton Chaloner about his Primordial Soup exhibit:

Preferring to work and exhibit outdoors, Clinton enjoys evolving his pieces in situ over time. He enjoys this chance to build up meaningful relationships and strike up conversations with people who are perhaps quieter (than this blogger, certainly). No stranger to The Quarry where he made one of a series of dug-out canoes around four years ago, he has enjoyed catching up with previous acquaintances. In an electronic world, it makes you think hard about the frenetic and often sound-byte sized nature of our modern lives.

spent time with performance artist Feng Ru who will be mimicking a sheep…

Having talked to Feng-Ru’s experienced technician David Thomas, we had allayed our minor concerns over the performance pens, this being a very different event to what the sheep are used to at agricultural shows. We discussed our worry over having Theo Jansen’s amazing strandbeest Umerus as our neighbour for the weekend, that the rustling noises and movement would perturb the sheep from the as-normal-as-possible sheep actions that Milee will mimic (for up to three hours!) and that, realistically, if both performances were simultaneous that concentration would be hard for observers. I’m sure a solution will be found: fortunately the venue is a good size.

and witnessed the arrival of Theo Jansen and Umerus…

I spoke at length to the technicians accompanying Jansen who were deftly repairing minor disconnections and damage to the five part structure which had occurred as it was removed from the beach.

The adaptability of the plastic electric conduit used for the structure to bending, stretching, flattening and even to being tied in knots was surprising. It is believed that the product has around a ten year life in UV light, and Jansen is adept at reusing and recycling materials from previous animalis models.

Excellent stuff!

While the festival is happening Anna and Rebecca will be posting news to the Shift-Time Twitter account so if you’re somehow at a loose end you can see what’s going on there. They’ll also be posting photos of photo-worthy things.

Other Twitters on site that I’m aware of are Trisha and Martin.

If you’re posting to Twitter about the festival make sure you include the word “shifttime” in your tweets so we can find them.

Martin Smith has been in Holland witnesing the testing of Umerus before Theo Jansen brings it to Shrewsbury next week. He’s writing up his experiences on his blog but here are some of the first shots he sent from his phone:

Check in here for more

Tweetup is the rather cringeworthy name for a meeting of Twitter users in a local area. Twitter, like most social networking services, brings people together who would otherwise not have met. And being people there’s often a desire to meet up offline. (See also the Shropshire Flickr Community who meet up regularly to take photos together.)

The Shropshire Tweetup started in June and plans to meet every month. The next one will be in Telford and the date is currently being finalised with the 18th looking popular.

You can get a snapshot of Twitter usage in Shropshire by looking at this search for activity in the area but it won’t make much, if any, sense. A better snapshot might be the Shropshire Twibe (again, excuse the terminology) which lists people who have explicitly declared themselves to be from Shropshire.

Like most social environments, the best way to get involved with Twitter is to follow people you already know and take it from there. But if you don’t know anyone casting the net wide with the above might help.

Just remember, at first glance Twitter doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. It’s rather like recording random 10 second snippets of conversation in a crowded pub, editing them together and expecting coherence. The trick is to hang out in the pub.