FRIDAY 21ST FEBRUARY 2003

TALKING ECO-TECHNOLOGY

Richard Povall, Director, Aune Head Arts

First to step up to the microphone was Richard Povall, Director of Aune Head Arts and co-Artistic Director of performance company half/angel. He said: “I think of my work in both roles as eco-technology. In my performance work, I make systems that use motion-sensing; I think of them as ecosystems, because they are living and breathing as ecosystems should be.”

“I shall attempt to give a definition of an ecosystem. First, it is a system that works and is sustainable. As far as I’m concerned, a sustainable system is one that gives as much as it takes, one that lives and can develop and a system that has meaning. A true ecosystem resonates with its inhabitants.”

“I’m trying as an artist to make work which uses various technologies and functions both as an ecosystem and within an ecosystem. Aune Head Arts is a rural arts organisation based on Dartmoor. AHA is not Luddite: our focus is on using contemporary art and technologies when appropriate within projects to do with the park and place. We work with local and national artists, and make a very big point of working deeply within the community.”

“We started in 1997 with the idea of doing a digital mapping project, but we didn’t get funded, which was just as well: the notion of the project didn’t speak to the local community. AHA uses appropriate technologies where they are appropriate.”

Povall then talked about some of Aune Head Arts’ projects: “Last year, we did a project called Dartmoor Sensing, in which we brought 10 artists from across the country onto the high moor for 10 days. We tried to work in a specific and local way and spent the first three days of the project in a Youth Hostel with no technology. From day 4, the group had access to computers. The end results reflect that process, because the work is not dominated by technology but by place.”

“The next project was Dartmoor Profile, an artists’ handmade book, of which 28 copies were made. It was a complete mixture of primitive, sophisticated and experimental work. Then we did Sounding Dartmoor, in which we distributed postcards around Dartmoor, asking people to nominate their favourite sound, and then attempted to record those sounds. Some of which proved impossible, such as the sound of gorse seed pods popping.”

“We’re working on two new projects. In Focus On Farmers, three professional artists will live with three farming families for 30 days over a period of six months. Hopefully, the farmers will get involved with the art and the artists will get muddy. And in Dartmoor Changes, we will record every peal of bells across Dartmoor – there are 30 of them – and talk about what those bells mean to people.”

Povall finished with a brave and convincing attempt at defining the slippery subject of Eco-Technology: “An eco-technology project uses technology to engage its ecosystem, works deeply with its ecosystem and has patience – sometimes it takes years to work with an ecosystem before an outcome can even be dared.”