Artist in residence at the Cambridge Museum of Technology

July 5^th 08

Digital Photography workshop for Volunteers

Again in the Spackman building – six volunteers arrived excitedly awaiting the workshop… Jean multi-tasking and making sure everything was ready for the Newsletter before she went on holiday! But she still managed to make some lovely images.

I was not sure at what level the participants were at, so once we had ascertain that, they all went out to view the pumping station in a different way to how they had before… emphasis was on using their own or the Museum’s digital cameras in a way that they had not done before. In some cases, this might have been about putting the camera onto a manual setting rather than on automatic, and using the cameras on aperture or shutter priority settings. Working in this way encourages actually understanding the photographic process rather than having it all done automatically.

We projected the results from the workshops onto the walls and they looked great – many of the photos taken were exceptionally well composed and colourful. Different themes emerged – nature gradually creeping and taking over brickwork and rusting metal, close ups of machinery with blurred backgrounds to emphasise the shape of the foreground artefact.

The time went very quickly; we managed to look at Photoshop elements and to manipulate some of the images very simply but it was just a start. Hopefully it has encouraged the volunteers to use the equipment that has been bought through Awards for All and other funding bodies so that they can use it to document the Museum in more creative ways.

Images will be posted later on…. comments from the participants very welcome too….

22^nd June 08

Arrived at the Pumping station, having arranged to meet Mark Palmer (events organiser) to organise the Spackman Building, where the arts day would take place. Found him trying to move large sodden pieces of carpet that had lined the boating pond, so we managed to move them and lay them flat to dry out in one end of the building.
At the other end we created a workshop area with the tables. We opened up the large metal doors, and the sun was shining…At 2pm, several people came to find out what was going on… we all introduced ourselves and showed what we had brought and what ideas we all had . I showed people my 5” x 4” pinhole camera… had just managed to get an exposure ½ hour before coming to the pumping station. I also brought a 2 ¼ square Bronica – I have decided to use mainly alternative techniques and to use film rather than digital techniques during the residency. Very odd to be using a light meter again. It felt that I was re-learning all my “old” photography skills… very satisfying and it gives me an excuse to get in my darkroom again over the next few months…

June 18th 08

In the darkroom, getting ready for a group of 10 young people from the Education Other Than At School (EOTAS) group. They are teenagers, doing GCSE art out of school. I have already done two sessions with them - one on digital photography and one on pin-hole photography, using the cameras that I made a month or so ago. They loved the sessions so much that their teacher asked if they could come back and do some more pin-hole photography, hence today’s blog and waiting for them to arrive. The darkroom is working well, and although limited, very useful to have this space.

A couple of weeks ago on the 4th June I had two groups - the Castle School and the EOTAS (see above). The pin-hole cameras I made were from a Ilford photographic paper box and one from a box of screws. The most important part of these boxes is that they overlap and that no stray light is able to enter and expose the photographic paper that we put in to make a paper negative. I had never made a pin-hole camera before and it was exciting to see the results (see photos on this site). One the day of the 2 workshops, I was feeling a bit worried about what work I would produce myself, as most of my energy so far has been going into creating a darkroom, making cameras and planning and pubicising workshops, all part of the residency - as one of the Museum’s aims is to get more people to visit and to open up the site for people to respond to it creatively. That bit is going well. Sunday 22nd will be the first Arts Day of three (see ad further down) and a lot of people have said they will come. The idea is for artists to come and be inspired by the atmosphere, history and technology that makes up the Pumping Station’s charm! the purpose of the artists days is for people to inspire each other and to share their influences. They come out of my belief in creativity as a positive and essential part of people’s lives and an antidote to an increasingly materialistic society; I want to encourage people to take time out of their busy lives to play, to enjoy and to inspire other artists.

After my initial worry about having the time and space to create some new work, i had a brainwave and decided to get a pin-hole camera and make some photos myself. I found a pin-hole camera that will take 5″ x 4″ film, on ebay.. Watch this space for an update and images of my experiments, peaks and troughs of emotion, failure and success as I learn to use this new medium!

Today, pouring with rain, but managed to start creating the darkroom from the porta-cabin. I have organised two different school groups to come in and do some pin-hole photography and digital photography. It was fun bringing in some ply-wood that I had measured up for last week to fit in the windows, and along with some very black sticky tape, will be able to keep as much light out as possible. Hoping to borrow some pin-hole cameras. The theme that is emerging is the use of new and old technologies and what could be better than the low and high tech. cameras that the children will be using. Watch this space… the residency continues!

An interesting day. It doesn’t feel that I have actually done very much, but have looked around and got a feel of the place, a sense of its size, its sprawling ground and building; it has a sense of being from a by-gone era, an anachronism in the present day, in the 21st century. Machines, analogue, not digital, large wooden, dials. Piles everywhere - a classic sense of things being given to the museum of having been left there. Rather than “throw them away”, they have remained. Plans and maps of projects unfulfilled, lottery bids that have gone un-won. A love and commitment to the place by people who volunteer, who choose, to spend their time with the engines. A mythology is already emerging - one of the volunteers remembers crawling on the floor of the engine room when his Dad used to polish and perhaps tinker wiht the engines. another man is reminded of his Mum who used to be a comtometer operator. At lunch, going to Tesco, incongruous next-door neighbour to the pumping station. Walking up the slope into moern day life. Tesco seemed alienating and brash, plastic, signs purely functional, no artistic thought or effort.

So what will this residency bring - I have thirty days, a day a week over six months.

Already the ideas are flowing - perhaps too many ideas, but that is how the first few weeks will go. I want to set up a darkroom in one of the cabins. Have written a spider diagram of my ideas… A good day, a good beginning. Met R and T who came to visit. R lives on a boat and wants to campaign against the restrictions being put on the people who live there and make a photographic exhibition to show in August this year.  And T. who wants to make his living as an artist and photographer. I want him so much to succeed and all barriers to his success swept out of his way!