Research into RFID and the Internet of Things

Glass and RFID Gallery Installation
Karlyn Sutherland and Duncan Shingleton

Proposed is a working concept for an installation which allows an audience to engage with memories and objects central to the identity of a particular community. Lybster, in Caithness, Scotland, was – prior to the decline of the fishing industry in the early twentieth century – famous for being the third biggest herring port in Scotland. Recent times have seen its reinvention as a centre of excellence in glassmaking; the richness of the local environment, community and culture has proved to be inspirational to the visiting artists, with much of the resulting work embodying experience, associations or attachments.

Object, memory and place has the ability to inspire creativity and it is this close relationship, which the work will investigate. The people of Lybster will be invited to donate objects that have a significant meaning and stories attached. This association of memory to object will be recorded through a variety of interactive media and these artefacts will then be passed onto a group of chosen artists. With minimal intervention or guidance, the artists are invited to create work which responses, represents and communicates their feeling towards the area and those artefacts they have selected.

All artists already have a connection with Lybster and its surrounding area, having spent time in residency at North Lands Creative Glass, and we hope the work will build upon this relationship, tying together landscape, people, and object. In this way the creative output of their work not only incubuses the residents of Lybster’s reflection of their surroundings, but also that of the outsider, intertwining their instinctive association with place and identity.

The work produced will then be shown as part of an interactive installation. The audience will be invited to handle the work produced, triggering the original memories that formed the work, projecting into the gallery space. The work will then be returned to Lybster and shown to the people who participated, allowing new associations and interpretation of the relationships that underpin the community, both on a local and national scale.