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BACKGROUND
This footage was shot in Brighton and Hove’s urban fringe, high open patches of land near fast roads that you can walk to from housing estates on the outskirts. I first walked out here as release from parenting a small child, then later during crises of stress and anxiety. A lone woman without a dog, some paths did not feel safe, and I found myself vigilant to any movement in my surroundings: spider silk in a hedge, a flapping tarp in the woods, traffic on by-pass, trees in the wind. I noticed more. The adrenalin spiked my perception and this was euphoric. I began filming what captured my attention, how vistas revealed themselves or closed in, and how the land reeled past through my own forward motion. INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE: NB VIEW ON A TOUCH SCREEN WITH THE SOUND UP!
This touch screen experience offers a reciprocal connection to phrases of movement through your active input. Your swipe speed affects the speed of the action. Swiping quickly and then lifting your finger from the screen sets the action rolling free, or you can move through slowly frame by frame. Swiping left and right, you move forwards or backwards in time. TUTORIAL: https://rock-pipit.herokuapp.com/collection?id=coldean EXPERIENCE: https://rock-pipit.herokuapp.com/collection?id=coldean |
POSTSCRIPT
Parts of Brighton and Hove’s Urban Fringe have been designated housing land, councillors pressured by government policy on housing need to sign away what they may think of as neglected wasteland, not proper countryside, and so disposable. People's distress at the rough handling of local natural refuges by intensive development is dismissed as NIMBY gripes, yet many such places are near the most deprived parts of the city. Our remaining nature is finite in the UK, especially the surprisingly biodiverse scrubby bits mixed up with human habitation. Recent developments seem stuck in the past: tower blocks between fast feeder roads and the bypass interrupt existing green corridors that radiate out from the city: missed opportunities for livable, nature-connected new neighbourhoods. Yet there’s mounting evidence that living near natural habitats even equals out some of the detrimental effects of poverty on health. Simply witnessing the shimmer of self-willed natural habitats makes us better, physically and mentally. Seeing something that shifts your sense of reality, opens you to what’s there, rather than what you expect to see, and once you see marvels in the scruffy patches of wild walkable from your own front door, they become part of home rather than incidental or expendable. |