Running Stitch
Jen Southern & Jen Hamilton
18 November - 17 December
Running Stitch is a 25sq/m tapestry map, created live in the gallery
over four weeks that charts visitors' daily journeys through the city.
For Running Stitch, artists Jen Southern & Jen Hamilton will be
re-configuring Brighton & Hove by 'capturing' its space through
the movement of its inhabitants.
Visitors to Fabrica will be given the opportunity to take a
GPS-enabled* mobile phone with them to track their journeys through the
city centre.
These walks around the city will result in individual GPS 'drawings' of
the visitor's movements that are projected live in the gallery to
disclose aspects of the city unknown to the artists.
Each individual route will then be sewn into a hanging canvas to form
an evolving tapestry that reveals a sense of place and interconnection.
Over the past four years Jen Hamilton (Canada) & Jen Southern (UK)
have been using Satellite Navigation technology to explore urban
environments.
Data generated from the walking routes they invite people to take are
often processed in their installations to create collaborative and
personalised maps.
Two recent projects: Distance Made Good:Flow Lines (Morecambe and Lancaster, 2004) and Satellite Bureau (Cardiff, 2005) each involved people in making new maps of their locality determined not by formal topographical or geopolitical conventions, but by their own choice of journey.
"Running Stitch sews together our routes to work, to the sea, and our walks for exercise or shopping with the meandering and more personal journeys we might take within the fabric of the city."
*Satellite navigation or GPS (global positioning systems) can detect exactly where someone is on the planet in terms of latitude and longitude by receiving satellite data.
