A TRACKING VEHICLE
a text, image and sound project by Mick Douglas that departs from the tramways of Melbourne
Welcome, driver. This project, A TRACKING VEHICLE, is now ready and awaiting departure. The project inquires into the design of art in public space. It is concerned with an artistry of design practice and with the design of a network of art; with the tramways of Melbourne and with concepts and experiences of public space.
The project makes tracks. It is a project that is in itself comprised of a networked collection of text, image and sound tracks. It is a project which makes moves of departure from enclosing modes of thought and action toward a non-essentialist mode of thought and action sustained by a regenerative poetic momentum. A TRACKING VEHICLE attempts to open up a renewed repertoire of movements for the conductor of the project, whilst evoking reverberative memories and resonant imaginings for those who might encounter it.
Like any new beginning, the project “contains” what Martin Heidegger has described as “the undisclosed abundance of the unfamiliar and extraordinary, which means that it also contains strife with the familiar and ordinary.” In order to facilitate new departures for art and design practice, the project mobilises a dialogue between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Specifically, this is a dialogue between the tramways of Melbourne and reflections upon art and design practices in public space. But such a dialogue soon drifts to also be one that echoes between specification and general abstraction; between a focus on the experientially particular and ‘real’, and the conceptually vague and imaginary. The project gathers a curvilinear momentum from this dialogical turn, openly extending outward in movements that re-turn upon themselves to mobilise an undisclosed abundance of departures.
The project proposes an allegorical approach toward the design of art in public space that is concerned with modulations of movement and the connected-ness of a network of relations between art and urban structures. The net effect of A TRACKING VEHICLE is the intertwining of the dialogical momentum of its tracking, the way it moves back and forth, and the network of tracks that mobilise its approach.
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Text shown here is an excerpt. The complete text from the project is available in pdf format below, comprised in sections.
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD
CONTENTS [96kb]
TOUR ROUTE [384kb]
ROUTE 1 [384kb]
ROUTE 2 [640kb]
ROUTE 3 [640kb]
ROUTE 4 [576kb]
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CONTENTS - a tracking vehicle
TOUR ROUTE …
manoeuvring toward departures
orientating toward practices of designing art in public space
narrating toward renewed ways of making art public
manoeuvring toward art encounters with the collective
DERAILMENT 1
following a speculative enquiry
Imagining A Tracking Vehicle
imaging the project’s allegorical structure of movement
orientating toward a network of tracks
DERAILMENT 2
poeticising designerly ways of knowing
manoeuvring en tracks: the network of an art and design practice
remembering tracking: a figure of interwoven design vectors
poeticising the exemplary departure of derailments
remembering a proposition for an art of Melbourne tracks
imagining the remembrance of A Tracking Vehicle
imagining the conduct of A Tracking Vehicle
DERAILMENT 3
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ROUTE 1 …
seeing Melbourne
storytelling Melbourne via tram
reiterating conventional narratives of design knowledge
modeling traditional images of design knowledge
conceptualising narrative
evoking images of non-linear movement
DERAILMENT 4
poeticising a system of transportation
visualising the track
reciting the rail-track
figurating movement en track
reiterating the tracks of ambivalent knowledge
DERAILMENT 5
forming images of movement
abstracting a space of the track
conceptualising public space
unfolding allegorical modes of memorialisation
DERAILMENT 6
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ROUTE 2 …
mobilising the Melbourne tramways
reiterating tramway momentum
amplifying an operative logic of movement
DERAILMENT 7
tracing intentions in design
spatialising intentions
displacing logocentric intent in art and design work
DERAILMENT 8
amplifying tracks
supposing the subject of tracking
reiterating learning and knowing in following
negotiating a dialogical momentum in public art and design
mobilising dialogical design know-how
displacing objects and subjects
reiterating a poetics of design practice
DERAILMENT 9
attuning the figurations of technology
apprehending contemporary public space
approximating an interface between different space-times
modulating potential resonance of artwork in public space
DERAILMENT 10
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ROUTE 3 …
approximating positions and times
following vehicles and shifts of space-time
attending toward an adjacency of proximities
activating a dynamic of nearness
supposing self, other and community
posing the subject of design
negotiating the line of the track
departing the line of the track
engaging non-essentialist identities, communities and locations
motivating tracks of renewable trajectories
enunciating space-time for manoeuvring
amplifying difference en track
DERAILMENT 11
situating tracks of Melbourne
figurating sensibilities
DERAILMENT 12
shifting locations
reconstructing possibilities for public space
DERAILMENT 13
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ROUTE 4 …
returning tracks
repositing urban traces
transposing memory, material, form
attending toward images
memorialising past / present
apprehending knowledge of the city
DERAILMENT 14
habitualising tracks
conceptualising absent traces en track
registering memory and arrangement
mobilising the imagination
DERAILMENT 15
redeeming the flow-on effects of the track
revisiting the street
imagining memories
recreating home
DERAILMENT 16
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