SEED: Orienteering Fictions (in the Docklands SDZ)
CATALYSTS: Jessica Foley, with Eva George Richardson McCrea and Building City Dashboards (MUSSI)
HOST: CONNECT, Dunlop Oriel House, 34 Westland Row, Dublin 2.
DATE: 26th June 2019
TIME: 1pm to 5pm (approx)
A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape, and to follow a route is to accept an interpretation, or to stalk your predecessors on it as scholars and trackers and pilgrims do… If the body is the register of the real, then reading with one’s feet is real in a way reading with one’s eyes alone is not. And sometimes the map is the territory.
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust
The map is a way of exploring territory unknown to you…but not unknown to somebody else… its not unknown to the person who drew the map. And so, you have a map in your hand and you’ve the map in your head… and the better a map reader you are the more they are close to one another.
Anonymous Orienteer
There is a great deal at stake in finding ways to turn toward these unexplored, under-explored, and often denigrated territories of thinking and awareness. These stakes concern the role of fiction in moving us beyond the impasses of the present, in opening to the radically new, embracing or reinvigorating the incoming future, and of turning toward the abstract, even numinous, outside.
Jon K. Shaw and Theo Reeves-Evison, Fiction as Method
Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.
Homer Simpson
This session of Engineering Fictions aims to bring maps of the Docklands SDZ into touch with our feet.
Catalysed through a screening of Made Ground, a film by Eva George Richardson McCrea and Frank Sweeny made in collaboration with the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, this session will explore themes of orientation, monumentality and progress in the context of the Docklands SDZ.
We’ll be continuing our conversations around themes from previous sessions, particularly our discussion of Ground Truth, Digital Media and Deep Mapping opened up with Oliver Dawkins and the BCD team during the Monumental Scraps session last week.
Rough Schedule (subject to minor changes):
1- 2.30pm
A screening and discussion of the film Made Ground, with artist Eva George Richardson McCrea.
2.30-2.40pm
A short break with light refreshments.
2:40 – 3pm
Intro to Orienteering Fictions and the mapping/writing/walking exercise.
Note: The underlying purpose of this experimental expedition is to begin preparing a different kind of Orienteering map of the Docklands SDZ. This is part of an effort to produce a ‘literal-metaphor’ that might help to creatively critique and explore narratives around ‘smart’ cities and ICT innovations. No prior experience of either map-making or Orienteering required.
3-4:15pm
We will equip ourselves with maps, some writing/mapping prompts, and a sense of open-ended inquiry to explore various corners and pockets of the Docklands SDZ.
4:15-4:50pm
Re-grouping and discussing the walking/mapping process and themes so far.
4:50-5pm
Wrap up and head homewards.
Practical Stuff:
While light refreshments will be provided, you might want to arrive with some food in your belly!
Please come prepared for all sorts of weather (sunshine, wind, rain, who knows!). Wear layers, bring umbrellas, all the rest.
Also, please come prepared to use your ‘smart phone’ if you have one (perhaps bring a charger, just in case). A Whatsapp (or equivalent social media) group may be set up (if you are open to it) for sharing images/audio/text as we move around the city.
For anyone who is not interested or able to physically go exploring in the Docklands SDZ there will be a small team remaining in the seminar room to process any materials coming in through the social media group.
While these workshops are devised with the Building City Dashboards project team in mind, we welcome others to come along and contribute. If you are interested in getting involved in this session please contact Jessica.Foley@mu.ie, I will need to know numbers by Tuesday 25th. Places are limited!
engineeringfictions.org 