A group converges on a location to build a Story Cube 'cairn'.
In this collaborative endevour, readers of a new, location-specific Story Cube converge on a pre-defined location, leaving behind the Story Cube that they have brought with them, to form a 'Cairn' or loosely-arranged stack of cubes.
The 'cairn' is to be found in both ancient and contemporary forms, marking summits, waypoints or memorial-sites in the hills and mountains of the UK. Increasingly, the habit or ritual of carrying a stone from the base of the hill to the summit is recognized as an everyday practice of hill-walking. This practice has also been used to produce artwork, such as in Richard Long's carrying of a single stone, transposing it from one site to another, as a formal exercise. In the hills themselves, this practice is contentious, condemned as imposing a 'liberal monument' (John Wilson) identifying our location and offering an unbidded reassurance that we are "in the right place" or "on the right track."
This project offers an exploration of this cultural phenomenon, in the wider context of navigation, way-finding and especially in the joint- or collaborative-processes of negotiating a route. The project will use the API to call on online mapping tools to bring map-images and route information (from Google or the like) from the participants location to the gathering-point into the Story Cube PDF. The map covers all 6 sides of the cube, which participants print and fold, taking it with them on their journey to the gathering-point; they use the cube as a navigation aid as they travel; on reaching the gathering-point they leave the cube with others, forming a cairn, marking their destination.
Initially, the cairn's location is pre-determined and within a city - within a close proximity to Proboscis' studios for example - but an extension of this project would aim to enable the joint-negotiation of its placement through an online tool in which locations could be nominated, their merits discussed and so on.
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