Dec 23
Wishing you a peaceful and dream-filled Holiday Season and many warm wishes for a wonderful, “off-grid” New Year!
As a small gift to you, our readers, we wanted to share this micro illustrated video – Ode to Our Forests – that we made recently. It was inspired by efforts from Forest Ethics to protect the Boreal Forests of North America.
Nov 8
Here is a little audio/visual glimpse of our piece, “If you’d like to….Taos Off-Grid” at The Paseo in Taos, New Mexico, for you to enjoy.
We hope you liked our novel Notes from The Paseo blog. To further delve into our recent experience at The Paseo we are exploring a new post format over at our News Feed at www.claireandanna.com. Check it out HERE.
Writing creatively together is a lot of fun!
Oct 23
A curious Paseo visitor approaches. “Are you part of The Paseo?” he asks.
“Yes! ” says Claire. “We’re number 19, would you like to have a listen?” She hands him the headphones.
It’s Friday, Sept. 26th in Taos, New Mexico, just a few minutes after 4pm and there is tangible excitement in the air.Volunteers are rushing around or expectantly waiting at the info window to help with enquiries. Something is happening in Taos that has never happened before; the first ever “Paseo” is beginning and Claire and Anna’s “If you’d like to….Taos Off-Grid“ is on the move!
The man puts on the headphones and inclines his head, listening, a finger poised ready to press a button when the inclination strikes. He smiles and settles in to listen for a while, enjoying the experience.
“If you’d like to let cactus fruit dribble down your chin, please press five. If you’d like to apagar las luces para siempre, please press six. If you’d like to inhabit the wilderness of your dreams, please press seven. If you’d like to….” The man presses 7 on the keypad to confirm his choice.
“You’ve gotta hear this! And it’s SOLAR POWERED!” he calls to his wife, who is gathering info at The Paseo info booth. Part pet, part machine, the”If you’d like to….” Unit has a private message for Claire.
“My new solar panels seem like they’re working well!” it says.
“Anything else?” says Claire, eager to hear more.
“I love being centre stage, people listening to me pressing my buttons. I live for moments like this, I’m thriving on the buzz.! And I like the way the roads are laid out here in Taos, I can relate to that. But am I all terrain enough for these wonky sidewalks? And what will happen if we take a dirt side-road?”
Another visitor approaches and hesitantly puts on the headphones. “Is it working?” She asks. “Nothing is happening when I push the buttons!?”
Claire is glad that no one else can hear the unit’s next utterance.
“That part is up to you, silly! You DO HAVE an imagination DON’T YOU!? I can’t be expected to do everything, can I?”
“Yeah, Its working!” Claire reassures the woman, “You see, in this piece low tech meets high tech and the high tech part is your imagination! The wooden buttons are there for you to physically register your choice, they don’t do anything to the options soundtrack. Your imagination is the thing that makes it ‘work’ and the most important part of the piece!”
A light comes on in the woman’s head and she smiles. “Oh I see,” She says. “Cool. Interesting idea!”
At this location, people are a little wary and are slow to interact, so Claire approaches passers by with an upbeat “Would you like a listen?”
Some do stop, but some hurry on their way. “No thanks,” they say.
Anna across the pond is lying awake in her cozy bed in Devon.”What’s happening at the Paseo? I wonder if it’s busy?”
“Time for a new location,” says Claire to the Unit, as the two of them make their way to the opposite end of The Paseo. By the time they reach the festival’s North end, The Paseo is in full swing.
“This is more like it!” says Claire. At the new site near #4 on the map, Axle Contemporary Gallery piece, “The Potato,” Claire and the mobile unit are literally “mobbed” by eager participants who all want to listen.
The Unit thrives on attention. Just as more people really begin arriving en mass, it whispers to Claire between listeners, “I love community! I want to start conversations and set imaginations whirring!”
Claire and the Unit are fascinated that each individual has a different experience of and reaction to their piece. Lots of folks chuckle and stare off into the distance while listening.
“I want to do all the options!” Exclaims a pregnant Mama who comes up to listen. “My favorite one is, “If you’d like to plant a forest garden!?” she beams as she repeats what she has heard.
Now its the turn of a young child; she is enthusiastic to try it, but then says “It’s too fast! I can’t hear the options! Mama I want you to listen too… erkkk… yau…” She dissolves into tears and leaves questioning her parents about the piece. 
Later a group of kids comes along and the supervising grown-up has to enforce a time limit for listening so that everyone gets a turn. “But I haven’t gotten to hear all the options yet!” protests one child when it’s the next kid’s turn.
One man listens for a very long time, fully engaged with the piece, but he presses very few buttons. “Nice piece,” he says. I had to listen really carefully to find some options that I wanted to do.”
There are so many people on the streets and not everyone gets to listen. “Hmm I wonder what that is over there?” says a man as his eyebrows lift. “What do you think people are listening to?” says another.
There is much speculation. 
Some people want to experience the piece, but can’t locate it because it is “roving.”
“I’m so glad we happened to find you! I really wanted to see your piece but didn’t know where to look for you!” exclaims a friend of Claire’s.
Claire laughs, “It is all about being in the right place at the right time. People just have to happen upon us. That is part of the experience the piece!”
“If you’d like to be Off-grid all the way please press….” says the Unit and then adds under its breath, “I certainly am!”
Watch the “If you’d like to…” Mobile Unit SPEAKING Video here.
While sitting in the Tesco Carpark in Cavan Town with the Pod dodging rain showers and waiting for visitors, a crew from Cavan TV rolled up!
Check out the following feature on the Pod Tour as it appeared on “Fashion and Lifestyle” with Siohban Harton, which is featured on on Cavan TV and is a part of Drumlin Media
Almost two years in the making, Radio Dreaming is definitely our most ambitious (and expensive) collaborative project to date.
We invite you to join the final push to launch our 5-part series and Radio Dreaming Pod Tour through Kickstarter. Watch our hand-crafted video and find out how to support our project. Donations from £5/$7 are rewarded with gifts of hand-drawn dream cloud postcards and printed Place Dreamer artifacts.
Go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/radiodreaming/claire-and-anna-radio-dreaming
Oct 7
Radio as a means of dissemination is a sculpting force in our practice.
Radio broadcasts and live streaming by radio stations have become a primary medium for sharing our work with local and international audiences. (Soundartradio and Riviera Radio in Devon, Radia fm 24 countries, KRZA in New Mexico and Colorado, Cavan Community radio in Éire) We have two projects in which radio broadcasts are the primary result.
Our Travelling Residency by van and ferryboat to Finland and back in 2008 resulted in the illustrated radio journey “How Far From Home Are We?”
Our latest piece is Radio Dreaming.
Listen to Radio Dreaming Episode 1. Dreams, food and the edible landscape Thursday 11th October.If you’re in the Torbay area tune in on 106.2 FM to Riviera Radio or streaming online at http://www.riviera.fm/
Or you can always listen in to Radio Dreaming at www.dreamingplace.eu/radio
Our practice and projects all have audio elements, in combination with live events.
We combine exploration of ancient technologies with modern communication technologies in live – events and exhibitions. Multi-sensory experiences are one of the main goals for participatory outcomes of our projects.And this often requires modern technologies as well as “traditional” ones.
Eating Time, Taming Food was a project that looked at prehistoric food technology.
The project culmination was a sort of archaeological treasure hunt and “Bronze Age Tea Party” followed by a lab session and film viewing.
Approaching an Exchange is a multi-layered project embodying an intercultural, inter-temporal “exchange” with the original inhabitants of prehistoric archeological sites. We ask participants, “If you could bring an object or an idea to share with the original inhabitants of a Bronze Age hut circle, what would you bring?”
“Butter Walk – Harnessing the motion of our gait” explores human-powered technologies. This idea often resurfaces in our projects and installations. Harnessing existing motion is something that really engages us, something we are continually exploring in our work.
In our gallery installations we enjoy combining older technologies with newer ones.
Technologies have also become to protagonists in our projects. This sculptural unit that we created has taken on a sort of personality as it travels from site to site……it has little hooves… and it leaves tracks.
If you’d like to … Albuquerque This is the piece that we have here in ABQ for ISEA at 516 Arts. So if you have a chance, go check it out or join Claire at the block party on Sunday as she takes the unit on a walkabout outside the gallery. Our “If you’d like to…. Albuquerque” video short allows our “perambulatory pet” to find its voice and directly speak to audiences.
We certainly don’t have the skill sets at this point to develop the instant star-trek-like transporter technology that we so wish for at times or the ability to create the solar, wind, gravity and human powered mobile studios for land and sea that we’ve discussed. But imagining and manifesting “collections of techniques in which resources are combined to produce desired products, to solve problems, fulfill needs, or satisfy wants” (Technology definition – Wikepedia) is well within our reach and its what keeps us making ART.
Our DREAMING PLACE project (Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark in Éire and Northern Ireland), engages us in creating a kind of novel “technology” – DREAMING PLACE TECHNOLOGY, including different methods to “dream ourselves and others into place”
Listen to RADIO DREAMING Episode 1 here
Our projects challenge us all to keep our definitions of technology broad, to cast our creative nets wide and to consider how we can each invent our own technologies in our own lives and home places.
Aisling, Irish for “dream or vision” is a central focus for our project. For these 40 days and 40 nights, we are keeping our eyes peeled for Aislings in all forms, as we sleep by night and exercise our imaginations, explore places, and interact with people and things by day. We’ve learned that as well as a vision or dream, Aisling is a girl’s name and pops up on signs, on the sides of boats and in songs!
Check out the Christy Moore video below to join us in our “Quest for Aisling”.
DREAMING PLACE 