This digital postcard, comprised of audio and video material alongside the print version published in the journal, evokes an emergent set of practices and training prompts that arise from my wanderings with a digital mobile device in urban ‘wildscapes’ – environments in cities where ‘natural as opposed to human agency appears to be shaping the land’ (Jorgensen 2012, p.1).  In the past year, I have attempted to train myself to use my device differently, intersecting playfully with its capacities to capture, record and ‘sample’ the spaces I move through. I have challenged myself to think through and re-position the computational processes of the mobile device in relation to my encounter with the processes of nature happening in such spaces. This practice has been led by an interest in wildness as present in nature, the digital device and within me too.

What has emerged so far is a set of prompts and provocations that I have been using as part of this training process, alongside practices that have arisen from the implementation of these. They are shared below in a couple of different forms, which have proliferated from my initial idea that this would be disseminated through a single video. Firstly, there is an audio track, mixing text and sound with prompts to engage the device you carry into a wild green space in new ways – it is designed to be activated in situ. In addition, there is a video representing the encounters between a device, a space and I, as experienced through the reflections and prompts shared in the audio track. It combines video, panned and glitched images (as referenced in the postcard within the journal), song, text and sound. I suggest that you watch this video after completing the activities proposed by the audio track, as it echoes and responds to some of the prompts and reflections there. 

For ease of reference, the training prompts are also included separately from their interweaving in the sound and text of the audio track, as a text-based document, alongside a transcript of all the text included in the audio. I would love to hear any responses you have to engaging with these materials or receive results of your explorations in urban wildscapes. Please get in touch with me to share these at [email protected].

References

Jorgensen, A. (2012). Introduction. In: A. Jorgensen and R. Keenan, eds. Urban Wildscapes. London: Routledge, 1-14.

Audio Track

The full reference list for the audio track is included in the transcript below. All music on the audio track and video below is composed, performed and recorded by Jo in Salford, apart from the excerpt of a Beatles track at the end of the audio, which is referenced in the transcript.