Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  The Walkies as Method: (2020) author(s): Darren O'Brien published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition sets the scene for my PhD thesis, in that it acts as a bridge between my experiments in Deep Canine Topography, (O’Brien, 2018) and my current research inquiry. Routed in the practice of walking art, and operating on the intersection between art, human geography and critical animal studies, this practice-based research is underpinned by concepts of the ‘animal turn’ in post-human, more than human, philosophy. It presents a number of short texts, which consider aspects of the human-canine co-authored walk, which will form a practice based methodology 'The Walkies as Method'. Accompanying this text is a number of short video and sound works, exploring the twists, turns and rhythms of the walkies, from the human-canine perspective.
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  10 - 10 - 10 Edgelands: (last edited: 2023) author(s): O'Brien & 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, 10 - 10 - 10 Edge-lands, is a further investigation of the methodologies of Deep Canine Topography (O'Brien & O'Brien 2018). This series operates as a visual and sonic essay for each walk and explores memory, deep topographical imprints, and entropy between wild and post-industrial spaces and sub-urban sprawl, on the edge of the city of Leicester and the county of Leicestershire. During the 2020 Covid 19 pandemic lockdown, as part of permitted exercise, we undertook 10 Walks, of up to 10 miles, within a 10 mile circle of our home, just outside of the city centre. Covid 19 restrictions, remained in place in Leicester longer than in any other UK city or region. Each title will take you to a different walk. Click return to return to the title page. Click Base Map to open a GoogleMap of the walk locations and GPS tracklogs (in a new window). Clicking on the round MAP circle, on the title page, will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
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  Further Adventures in Deep Canine Topography: Experiments in canine Soundscapes: Attending to Rhythm and Repetition. (last edited: 2023) 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.
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  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.
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  Adventures in Deep Canine Topography. Part 3: The Beach Beneath or Feet: A Hunan-Canine Exploration of Wild Space (Film) (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. 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:
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  Deep Canine Topography: Re-connecting with the wild through the artistic practice of walking with companion animals. (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, 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.
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  A Year With The Meadows (Film) (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, A Year with The Meadows offers a dog's eye view of an unfolding, edge-land landscape. Aylestone Meadows is an 8.8-hectare Local Nature Reserve in Leicester. It is owned and managed by Leicester City Council. It is Leicester's largest nature reserve situated on the floodplains of the River Soar and River Biam along with several locks of the Grand Union Canal. In this fractured, immersive film, this edge-land space is explored through the methodology of Deep Canine Topography, following a 12 month, site-specific exploration from the canine POV. Viewers are invited to navigate through a 30 min film. PLEASE WEAR HEADPHONES: Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
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  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.
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  Two Bodies Drawing: (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 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.
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  It's ok, They're Friendly. (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 dispersed collection canine led walk took place at the 2020 Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography. In this online workshop, canine participants were invited, through their human companions, to set out on a 45 min walk, wherever in the world they happened to be, sharing their adventures via a Facebook group. Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
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  360° Experiments in Deep Canine Topography: (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 visual and sonic experiment explores both 360° canine POV film making and augmented and super-sensory human-canine soundscapes. Films can be experienced with a virtual reality headset, or mobile phone and VR headset, via the Vimeo links provided. The augmented super-sonic soundscape has to be experienced in person, and therefore a document of the practice is presented and a description of equipment needed to carry out your own experiments with your own canine companion. Clicking on the round MAP circle will take you to the central exposition of my PhD: Deep Canine Topography.
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