Sensing Place in Hulme Park

One of the first projects seeded through the Local Alternatives platform in 2017, Sensing Place involved children from a local community arts centre in Hulme, an inner urban neighbourhood of Manchester, UK. The project was an open-ended exploration of place as a sensory ecology. Children worked as co-researchers to develop a range of art-based experimentations with sensory technologies and media in a nearby grove of trees in Hulme park. These experiments were documented on the Local Alternatives website using a mix of photographic imagery and poetic text: https://www.localalternatives.org/place


each week we go back to this little grove of trees
on top of a little hill in Hulme park

every time we cross Stretford road
our air pollution sensor spikes
with toxic gases and particulate matter

it's like Hulme park is an island
and all the roads surrounding
invisible rivers of pollution

the trees here have grown the same height
but when we look closely
they are multispecies of ash and oak
maple and beech

​it's the hottest summer
ever recorded in this place

how to sense this day in Hulme park
as an ecology of sensation
with multiple layers and scales

we wire the trees up with sensors
multiple cameras and microphones
a meshwork of string

drift from forest fires
smoke and ash
from distant events

the alarm beeps on our pollution sensor
triggered by the drift of the day

our sensation of place
is characterised by this drift

Hulme park is a nexus of atmospheres
invisible movements, currents, flows
not just what we see, smell, and hear
​
we gather clothing and sheets from local op shops
imbued with people's lives and sensations
saturated with the everyday affects of Hulme

we lay them on the ground beneath the trees
and experiment with different compounds
using foods we brought along from home
strange mixtures and consistencies
an edible landscape
with sensory regions and zones

place becomes a medium
for feeling and thought
an atmosphere you can eat, metabolise, digest
​
zooming in and zooming out
backgrounding and foregrounding
part-whole relations
details and totalities
patterns of contrast
harbouring a dark beauty

when we wire the trees together
with microphones that listen
and strings of fabric that sense the wind
we can play this little forest like an instrument

the proxemics of place
the closeness of this tiny urban forest
makes for intricate feelings
and an excess of value
​
this forest senses and is sensed
this forest feels and is felt
this forest thinks and is thought
this forest shapes and is shaped
this forest values and is valued

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