Loop-Pool II
Loop-Pool II was another collaborative project that involved both Yellow House, led by George and Gosia McKane, and Philip Courtenay, who was now a part of e-space lab with the artist Peter Hatton.
Peter Hatton and Philip Courtenay share a liking for projects that subtly intervene within the usual civic relations of cities and towns that have established what we in the UK call "twinning" relations, becoming "sister cities", and so on. What is fascinating to explore are the resonances that are generated in this type of work that emerge out of the gaps between people and places, in the experience of difference guided to some extent by the fugitive illusion of similarity. The e-space lab group identifies common interests in collaborative work that includes a concern with people, places, spaces, identity, history and change. The focus of research for e-space lab in 2002-03 was on the potential of streaming video and other virtual spatial effects to become an a way of exploring the realities in a world where every becomes the centre of an information environment. This research environment was about new types of space for new forms of public art in a sort of hybrid territory where the electronic and virtual aspects of the art event have a capacity to modulate a view of real spaces, the "real" world.
The technology e-space lab accessed for this project was provided by the IT Research and Development Unit at the London Institute (now the University of the Arts London), in the form of a flash based interface that would allow texting and face to face streaming video, an early example of what we all now take for granted when we "skype". This programme was engineered because of the e-space lab desire to use an interface of this kind - it was tailor made for us by Sam Kennedy, and with the brilliant support of David Rowsell, leading the unit at that time.
Poland in 2003 was on the way to becoming a member of the EU in 2004, and so it was thought a good idea in the lead up to this significant political, cultural and economic moment, to build on the connections to Gdansk once again. This resulted in setting up a pilot project during August 2003 at the ICDC in Liverpool and the Health and safety Meeting Room in the Gdansk Shipbuilding Yard, the place where Solidarity was born in the workers strike of August 1980, and had now become the Solidarity Museum.
Yellow House would interact with a group of people from a High School situated in front of the Shipyard Gates via internet and flash based streaming video. This is what happened:
