Deep Canine Topography: Re-connecting with the wild through the artistic practice of walking with companion animals.
(2024)
author(s): Darren O'Brien
published in: Research Catalogue
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored, multi-species act of ‘making’ and ‘performing’ together.
This exposition operates as a central point from which to explore a number of mini expositions, undertaken as part of my practice based PhD.
Instruction:
When you arrive at the page you can use the map legends as hyperlinks to navigate to random points, or the mouse/trackpad to move around the page. Alternatively, you can navigate the page via the page map in the collapsible header menu.
An accompanying soundscape will automatically play throughout and documents a single walk from the human sonic POV. You can leave this to play whilst exploring the canine POV videos or pause it if you wish.
Click on the videos to play and again to stop. You can play more than one at a time.
X returns to the map.
This central Exposition acts as a meeting point through which to explore various experiments in Deep Canine Topography. Titled hyperlinks navigate to individual mini expositions. Each mini exposition has a route back to the landing page via the round MAP link.
You may feel lost or disorientated at times, but don't worry, this is all part of the process of navigation and hopefully offers a playful interactive and performative meander.
PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES: Headphones are advised throughout to explore the immersive sonic elements of some of the practice encounters.
Adventures in Deep Canine Topography. Part 3: The Beach Beneath or Feet: A Hunan-Canine Exploration of Wild Space (Film)
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Darren O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
Adventures in Deep Canine Topography Part 3 ‘Wild Spaces’ explores walking on the very edges of landscape and deep time connections with co-evolution of humans and canines. In this three channel video and binaural sound work, I’m interested in the role of immersive sound and film, from the canine POV, allows us to become entangled within the canine sensory experience as a way of enhancing and extending relational connections with wild spaces.
PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES: Duration 10min:
Two Bodies Drawing:
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Darren O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, this experimental embodied drawing practice employs global positioning technology, not as a navigational tool, but as a drawing tool which tracks relative and relational movements between human and canine bodies. Drawings are generated by tracking the movements of both human and canine bodies which in turn are animated using open source software to create a collaborative, human- canine mark making practice.
Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
Further Adventures in Deep Canine Topography: Experiments in canine Soundscapes: Attending to Rhythm and Repetition.
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): O'Brien and O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, this practice based investigation of the performance of human-canine hybrid aesthetic walking practices, focuses on the rhythm and repetition of the urban walkies through Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis. Using sound, photography and GPS to document the daily repetitive morning walk, in urban Leicester, this presentation explores two such walks, one taken in January 2020, the other in March 2020, during the Covid 19 lockdown period. Both walks follow the same circular route. Both attend to the rhythms of the human-canine bodies, traffic, human conversation and canine olfactory signs and signifiers, exploring harmony and disharmony between the linear rhythms of production and more messy rhythms of nature. Binaural microphones are positioned close to the canine body to capture a soundscape from the canine perspective. Duration of both walks is around 13 minutes. Headphones are advised for a full spatial experience.
The sound will autorun on opening the exposition.
PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES:
First presented at the Midlands 4 Cities, ARHC, Research Festival: July 13th_14th 2020:
Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
A Singe Breath
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Darren O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, this 11 min video and musical composition is built around series of urban walks and utilises rhythms and repetition of breathing, walking, traffic and more than human encounters, including chance encounters with winged beasts. It explores the rhythms of nature and the human -canine hybrid body as a compositional strategy.
A Version of the work with the title 'Little Gestures" was also publicly exhibited at Two Queen Gallery, in October/November 2020, and featured geolocated sound walk which could be accessed via the Echoes Sound Walk app, on approach to the gallery.
Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
Why Look at Humans?
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Darren O'Brien
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together.
As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, in this series of photographs the composition is framed by the canine body, through a chest mounted action camera, set to capture stills at intervals of 10 or 30 seconds.
The accompanying text is an adapted extract from John Berger's 1980 book Why Look at Animals, although in this version of the text the word animal and human have been swapped, thus shifting the position of the animal, looking at the human.
Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together. Adventures in Deep Canine Topography Part 3 ‘Wild Spaces’ explores walking on the very edges of landscape and deep time connections with co-evolution of humans and canines. In this three channel video and binaural sound work, I’m interested in the role of immersive sound and film, from the canine POV, allows us to become entangled within the canine sensory experience as a way of enhancing and extending relational connections with wild spaces. PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES: Duration 10min:open exposition comments (0)
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together. As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, this experimental embodied drawing practice employs global positioning technology, not as a navigational tool, but as a drawing tool which tracks relative and relational movements between human and canine bodies. Drawings are generated by tracking the movements of both human and canine bodies which in turn are animated using open source software to create a collaborative, human- canine mark making practice. Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.open exposition comments (0)
Operating at the intersection of fine art walking practice, psychogeography, critical animal studies and ecology, the practice of Deep Canine Topography seeks to reframe the humble act of the ‘walkies’ as a co-authored act of ‘making’ or ‘performing’ together. As part of the practice based element of my PhD thesis, Deep Canine Topography, in this series of photographs the composition is framed by the canine body, through a chest mounted action camera, set to capture stills at intervals of 10 or 30 seconds. The accompanying text is an adapted extract from John Berger's 1980 book Why Look at Animals, although in this version of the text the word animal and human have been swapped, thus shifting the position of the animal, looking at the human. Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.open exposition comments (0)