calton hill

Touching Calton Hill 

for our trip to calton hill, my group and i decided on focusing on the experience of touch. we did this by bringing different types of paper with us and pressing these against areas or forms we deemed important to document and would show up well within the pressing. this had varying results as some imprints acted as near replicas of the object and some had to be worked on and traced with hands and feet to stay in shape. the more we attempted these, the more we found out about methods to bring out the different qualities of paper, to tease out of these forms a more mobile experience of calton hill.

our experience of calton hill was very windy which meant using paper to show our calton hill story was a difficult process. some paper escaped us and some lost their form before we could store it in a plastic folder; it was a group effort ensuring each imprint retained its shape as much as possible and were all handled with the utmost care as if the paper was highly valuable.

one of the best ways of doing this was walking over the paper multiple times which created some exciting marks reflecting the different sized stones beneath our feet that covered much of calton hill.

moving into the gallery space felt like more of a challenge as suddenly the noise of traffic and people had stopped and the space seemed like a refuge from the heavy winds outside; so overall less of an impactful experience than being outside. we carried out more imprints of Katie Schwabs work which was soft sculpture, ribbons and various tiles that people could reconfigure and play around with. we found the results to be much softer too with lines being less contoured and more wavy. i felt because the inside space was an artist’s work that there was less room for experimentation as this was already established as art and felt like more rules were at play here rather than being outside where everything was free and waiting to be used.

overall, i think this was a good way of presenting an experience and through completing this trip, enhanced the experience of calton hill for me and the group. this made us consider certain areas more closely and come into closer and more intimate contact with all the shapes, patterns, and outlines that make up calton hill.

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