Hi,

I've just subscribed to this list since a colleague forwarded some  
recent discussion about the Arts Council's withdrawal of funding for  
the Public Gallery in West Bromwich. I heard about this on Radio 4  
couple of nights ago. I'm one of the artists, responsible for the  
interactive 3D sound installation. I'm not here to air any dirty  
washing, just to give another perspective. We didn't sign any kind of  
NDA, and since it all seems to be over, it's probably worth making  
some comments for posterity. (I see Susan and Zach have just commented  
as well - thanks.)

I've just read the analysis by Simon Biggs, and I think his summary is  
100% correct. Of course the media will blame the artworks, but that is  
indeed unfair given that, to my knowledge, none of them were  
completely working, and the walkway displaying the works was never  
opened to the public, so it's not clear how they would have been  
judged (except, perhaps, as "broken").

I think there were two fundamental problems: complexity and  
engagement. The gallery media system was complicated in realisation:  
the basic design was sound, and we had the our sound installation  
coded, running and signed off against backbone systems at least two  
years ago, but things never worked properly in practice. The RFID  
sensing system has never worked to our satisfaction, constantly  
sending incorrect trigger data, which somewhat cripples artworks  
designed around the concept of tracking visitors' journeys through the  
space. The media backbone was functional at the server level but  
suffered numerous connectivity issues, often (it appeared) due to  
badly maintained cabling and connectivity.

None of these issues were unsurmountable. They'd be expected in any  
installation of this scope, and I've been involved in a number of  
commercial rollouts of similar complexity with similar initial  
problems which have succeeded. The big issue here appeared to be a  
complete lack of engagement. In our four years of off-on involvement  
with the project, we worked with a rotating succession of technical  
staff, but never had some of the fundamental problems addressed. I  
still have bug-report emails from years ago which were never actioned.  
Despite an air of feverish activity on the site - including one  
occasion when all the floorboards were taken up around us as we were  
trying to stabilise parts of the network - crucial operational issues  
were not addressed. Cables were tested and not reconnected. Servers  
were powered down or rerouted without obvious reason. Loudspeakers  
were miswired. Amplifiers broke down and weren't replaced for months.  
Oh, and on one floor the male and female signs for the toilets were on  
the wrong doors - how much effort does it take to get that right? A  
large number of people in hard-hats and hi-vis jackets came and went,  
and I never understood who was doing what, where, for whom, and why.

Some of the staff were, I presume, out of their depth and had no  
concept of the operational requirements of the site. Others, for whom  
I have a great deal of respect and some of whom are friends as well as  
colleagues, battled heroically to get things done, to no avail. There  
seemed to be little sense of proactive involvement in the day-to-day  
activities required to make, and keep, a complex installation  
functional. For example, it seems fairly obvious that we cannot test  
our installation unless it is actually switched on, but every time  
were arrived, we had to see that it was done. Most recently we've been  
working with an external IT consultancy charged with the task of  
making it all work, and making progress with them, but I guess it's  
all a bit too late.

I am not a curator, so I can't really speak on the wider argument of  
whether such a gallery in such an area was a wise planning - or  
artistic - decision. During our frequent "for the last time, really"  
debugging trips we got to speak to a large number of West Bromwich  
cabbies who saw the thing as a gigantic white elephant and a complete  
waste of money, verging on criminal. I was always a little bemused by  
the imposed structure of the gallery experience: one would enter at  
ground level, be whisked up to the top floor and the data profiling  
booths to be photographed and recorded, and then proceed in a totally  
fixed, predetermined manner down a spiral walkway through the exhibits  
and into the merchandise area to buy one's digitally customised mugs  
and T-shirts. I don't know whether that counts as a gallery or a  
fairground attraction, and I don't know what it says about the nature  
of artistic engagement. Everything about the Public Gallery had a  
sense of heirarchical, centralised, large-scale, rigid, symbolic  
design, in a truly magnificent building planted like 2001's monolith  
in the middle of an area with no cinema, no theatre, no bookshops. It  
felt like a curiously colonial approach to art.

I feel sorry for those people who poured all their time and effort  
into trying to make this work; a lot of them will be losing money, and  
some will lose their jobs, and perhaps some - undeservedly - their  
reputations. And presumably, the technical infrastructure, hardware  
and fittings - incorporating some truly beautiful works of design -  
will be thrown into a skip. It is all such a tragic waste.

	-- N.


Nick Rothwell / Cassiel.com Limited
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