Anecdotal City

Anecdotal City, 2002, Cardiff

Commission Artworks Wales.

Anecdotal City is formative as a map of how my participatory, action research methodology would develop. It is also an interesting work to look back on because it was a really early peice of ‘Web Art’. Ironically the website is currently offline l and I now have to work out how to get an antique HTML site back up and running.

Anyway, about the work. I was interested in the idea that cities are their stories. High Streets change, areas get developed and fall into decline, but what remains consistent is the idea of that place that people carry with them. In many ways cities live, as much in memory, as they do in real time. This project set to test out this idea by creating an online archive that users could navigate a virtual city via peoples stories and memories, using hyper links.

I was artist in residence at Cardiff Central LIbrary and invited residents to come in and talk to me. I met about 60 or 70 people who I interviewed using a Mini Disc recorder. I then edited their reflections on the city into ‘anecdotes’ – about 4,000 in total. In fact I had alot of help with the edit from Victoria Tillotson and Ali Roche and I think I may have significantly under paid them (!) I worked with ‘Cool Pants’ digital designer/ coder who built the site and embeded all the audio clips.

The Bus Tour

I worked with an open top bus tour operator to map an alternative tour of the city, navigable by the narratives people shared with me. I then collaborated with artist/ DJ Chamelionic to mix the audio live, as we drove around the city. As we drove, people’s stories were inscribed on the route and therefore changed the city.

The Shopping Centre.

Finally there was an exhibition in the st davids shopping centre. A place that had no stories.

Below are a few pages from the website and if you keep scrolling there is a gallery of pics from the bus tour.

Online archive and live bus tour.