Last Sunday we entered the world of butterflies via butterfly expert Phil Harris. He took us out for a four and half-hour butterfly foray. It was an amazing time. As soon as we hit the path, not only did we come across a colony of about 40 Silver-studded Blue, we realised that in our midst was our first theirwork hero. Phil led us through a journey that none of us had experienced before. In no less than about a 2 mile length of land we wound our way through snake pits, found disbanded parking-lots, investigated miniature stinging nettle tents and sought out rare moth sand tunnels. Phil lives up the road, and so what’s more, not only is he as passionate and enigmatic as the great Simon King, he’s green - just like our picnic, he was sourced locally.

Phil offered to take us out again in the Autumn. We’re close to booking the date already. We saw 2 of our target speices, the Silver-studded Blue as mentioned, and the Small Heath. Our unsighted was the Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary. Incidentals we picked up were 1 Painted Lady, and 6 Meadow Browns. We maybe saw a Brown Argus of which Phil says ‘the 50% sighting of Brown Argus should be further investigated during the second brood in August to ascertain whether this is a definite site… Brown Argus are quite rare along this stretch of South coast of Cornwall’. In the meantime, we’re having a moth and bat night, and there are plans building for a water mapping session.

We collected a huge amount of data from this walk. This will be entered onto the map via me, and a computer butterflyshop session later in the summer. More on this later. and photos will come later.

This evening I am talking at the Takeaway Festival Emmet can’t be there so here’s a link about technical development. This page will change soon as we’re taking down the wiki as a development area for project organisers and developers and replacing it with a Google Code space. (The rest of the wiki is crawling with spam so it will be good when it’s gone. For the moment, comments are turned off on this blog for the same reason.)

Come and visit the project at Takeaway!

Benchs.JPG, originally uploaded by theirwork.

I forgot to say, one of the best parts of the trip to Dublin was to see that the amount of bicycles in Dublin has increased. That’s just cool. But I thought one of the saddest things was that the amount of benches around seemed to be less. Or that could just me, cursing that I had to buy frothy coffees if I wanted to sit on a seat?

Even at home around Loe Pool the bench situation is important, though of course you can sit on the riverbank and no one will move you on. Going back to Dublin’s centre, it’s getting so posh or hipster, it’s hard to get away with supping whilst sitting on a window front or some parts of the river bank. And I wonder where the homeless are sleeping?

This is my favourite Dublin bench.

100_0069_2.JPG, originally uploaded by theirwork.

i think this is Eric’s bike that Emmet, Paula and I spotted outside Sustainable Ireland. Shame we couldn’t catch up with him.

I’ve just come back from Dublin as Emmet and I decided it was time to meet face-to-face again. The main goal of the meeting was to discuss the future direction of theirwork and to look at its current status in relationship to other online Green mapping projects.

We made these decisions.

-The summer is about collecting new data and putting it on the map and on flickr
-The late summer is about standing back and looking at the data
-The autumn is about making contact with Green Mappers to check on our direction
-The late autumn is about finding and writing a grant so the project can develop

The main Green Map project we looked at was the Glasgow Green Map project because it seems like us; one of their main goals is to release an open-source way of Green Mapping. Their code was originally taken from the Cork Green Map which was developed by Diarmaid, and his code was developed from Emmet’s code via this cool wee project he did some time ago - Galway Free WiFI hotspots

Here’s in part how the project was introduced to the Green Map network this February.

“My name is Kevin McDonagh. I am a web developer and programmer living in Glasgow, Scotland. Recently I have been part of a community project to make a green map for the city of Glasgow. It is our aim to make both a paper and web based green map that will attractively outline eco-friendly resources in our dear city. We are working with the code that was originally developed for the Cork green Map. Seb and Diarmaid begun developing their map with the intention that it could one day be open sourced as an ‘Open Green Map System’. This would be a fully developed open source software package that anyone could use to develop their own Green map for their community.”

Here’s notes from this blog about how we planned to develop the project.

Realisation that there is no out of the box solution to help Green Maps get online (unless they are going to use Google Maps)
Discussed usefulness of the project as an open source release aimed at getting Green Mappers off the ground
Noted a big difference in the *type* of data that we’re going to use on a map - soft data, stories - not just hard data, points.
A new aim - to bridge the gap between environmentalists/designers, and open source programmers/developers
Stated that open source programmers need designers, Green Mapmakers need designers, designers need programmers

Whilst I was in Ireland, Emmet introduced theirwork to a Glasgow team member online. I hope in the autumn, once we have more data, and we can see further how they are developing, we can meet for a chat. Emmet and I went to visit Sustainable Ireland to have a catch up too but it was closed. I usually try and catch Eric or Ray whilst in Dublin and tell them how we are getting on. (I often see Davie there, putting out some of the latest green products in the shop.) I am sure it was Eric’s bike that was parked beautifully outside. Next time, I will book in with them.

In general the rest of the trip was about hanging out and taking a breath. In the past, we have just caned a bunch of work and put in a few Guinness’s. This time, Emmet and his girlfriend Paula and I did lots of walking, talking and eating. We did some computing and drinking of course. All in all I am refreshed to run the next set of theirwork workshops which I will post up here soon. Technically things will be on hold until decisions about direction and developers are found. Emmet’s cancelling out our wiki development area and has set the project up on Google Code instead, which is way cool. We can now at least link to Glasgow this way, and this is their blog.

The first full moon of 2007 saw our first night walk. We had to cancel the mulled wine and mince pie full moon get together due to a massive week of storms. This moon was also framed by days of wild wind but we were so lucky on the night. It was fantastic and we’re going again. Thanks so much to Becky here, who drew and captured some of the night as we walked.

Becky feeling the road beneath her feet.

A stop at the Oak trees. Everyone always pauses here.

Everyone comments on the Chinese patterns of the branches too.

It’s full moon tonight.
The night walking is making me think about time differently.

After a long break, theirwork is back. Things have been going on but I just haven’t been finding the time to post or do other virtual bits. Tonight we are going outside in the moonlight to walk, talk, write, draw and do some geotagging. If the night is clear, it should be great. And we might get some real night drawings done and not imagined ones like this.

This event is post the drawing picnic at which we drew things like this.

(It is a full moon tomorrow night.)

Thought I should put up a bit of written work about the project. It is a piece that keeps me inspired to work on the project - a snippet to help focus on ways forward…

This project aims to de-centre governmental legislative practices by creating a highly personalised, visual, kinaesthetic, emotional, sensory and tactile copyright-free bioregional map, via actual bodies walking and talking in real-time space. These bodies are located in the importance of place through the sensory body, and through human interaction. The map aims to make the ‘world into a home’ via re-experiencing the importance of small places through texture, sound, image and emotional experiences through positive localised action. In a sense place is valued and brought into consciousness via theirwork.

In July a few of us went down to the lake to do some locative drawing, only to find that others had been before us. Not only that, they’d outdone us - beautiful prints of indigenous insects had been created on mass to make a paper palace as part of Architecture Week. Geraldine, willow architect and insect workshop leader, has agreed to let us add the insects to the theirwork ‘drawing folder‘ I will post some real soon, along with some of our locative drawings. We drew near the leftovers of the paper palace -

Feeling: air, fresh, relaxing, doebury-furkin, tranquil, peaceful, clean, natural, open, safe, tranquil, birdsong, quiet, peaceful, relaxing
Colour: blue, green, muted, blue
Physical: walk, drink, pool, sea, wooded, muddy, pssh, wild, natural, water, sea, rocky, sandy, scenic, clean, high, sky, open, woodland, parkland, beach
Weather: sunny, sunny, muddy, fresh, mild, cold, sunny, sunny

These are tags that developed from winter fieldwork. After a series of one-to-one interview walks at the lake, a ‘paper workshop’ enabled the words to be combined into a group tagging system. I hope to gather some summer words soon.