Solar Associates

Photo-mural from the Docklands Community Poster Project, © Peter Dunn and Loraine Leeson 1982

Here at Solar we are very pleased to announce that a recent interview we conducted with Loraine Leeson, an artist and collaborator who took part in Not Quite Yet: On the Margins of Technology, a component of Solar’s recent collaborative project Co-Pilot.net, will be made part of an exciting exhibition in Dublin.

Art for Change: a Retrospective of Work by Loraine Leeson is an innovative exhibition of work from the mid 1970’s to the present day combining activism, politics, education and research. The exhibition will celebrate Loraine Leeson as an artist whose professional practise has influenced and supported social change for over 30 years. 

Space Station Dana accelerated off its launch pad last week, with a great quartet of guest speakers sharing their knowledge and passion for space exploration with a riveted audience. Coney, the agency of adventure with whom Solar has been working closely since the summer, distributed 'astronaut training manuals' to the crowd as they entered, achieving what they do best: finding fun ways that allow people to move beyond being passive recipients of experience, and to become active players.

Coney had attached some elegant and gentle game-play stuff to the zone of expertise of each speaker: psychological testing was twinned with a small group competition that brilliantly partitioned off group planning discussion of a physical task, from the collaborative building work that followed (actually a real test in astronaut training!). In another room, a Q+A on the history of space travel was followed by a dizzying slalom through a miniaturised solar system. Teams based on continents competed to send one of their number into orbit and win a prize.

The real reward, though, was for the whole audience – a compelling description of the experience of being in space by real life astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy, who's clocked up over 375 hours being out of this world. One of the players said on final descent: “this has been the most fun I've had at a Dana event”, and we hope to work further with Coney as they evolve and refine this format in the future.

We don't usually share the contents of mail that hits the Solar Associates intray with the world, but some times it can be too intriguing to resist......notice the stamp? (a full screen view of the card is here) This can't be a fly-by-night prankster, there must be more too it than that. We may contact the email address and see what happens. Care to join us?

In partnership with [space], we've launched Co-Pilot.net, a time-limited website, which includes and links to professional development resources for artists working at points where creativity, participation and technology meet. The site includes several first-outta-the-blocks contributions from Tim, our Director, including mini essays which offer some observations on the current conditions of the UK's participatory arts scene, as well as a bunch of audio interviews with artists who took part in The Not Quite Yet - a project exploring the terms of Older People's involvement in technology design processes.

Why is Co-Pilot time limited? The clue's in the title. This is a pilot project, and we want to tactically test the responses to the idea of an online conversation space for these ideas, instead of assuming there's interest out there. Equally, we're intrigued by what might emerge from a time compression - whether it encourages denser engagement - and we like the idea of archiving a snapshot of where the centre(s) of gravity are, within these complex intersections, that stands as a snapshot of how we were thinking in late 08.

We expect that Co-Pilot will fly until Christmas, maybe a little longer if we can squeeze out the resources, before we bottle up the learning. During that time there will be a diverse selection of site 'hosts' posting provocations and stirring the forum debates. As with everything we're involved in, we hope Co-Pilot will have a life beyond its initial flight. Perhaps, if there's momentum among the site's subscribers, we might organise some offline events, and more. Keep a look out - we'll post updates on the Co-Pilot site, and here, as and when we have them.

Visit our Co-Pilot project page if you want any more details: otherwise, go here to read, listen, contribute.....