EXPLORATION OF LINCOLN
Throughout the first site specific lesson we explored Lincoln to try and discover new places that we might not have been to. We were split into groups then given a list of things we needed to find which ranged from worst place to rough it, to best place to go sledging, best place to see an old couple holding hands and so on. The point in the exercise was to help us see things around us we may not have noticed before and to learn about our city.
This exercise was helpful because it allowed for me to see the city in ways I had not in the past and I feel it did help me increase my observational skills as by looking for items on the list it allowed me to think of places in a way I hadn’t previously thought of. An example of this was when we were able to find an old couple holding hands, this was a task we thought we would find difficult however we were able to find this relatively quickly in a location that we pass on a regular basis.

Exploration of the library
The next few sessions we followed up our exploration of Lincoln by exploring the library where we will be performing. We applied the same sort of practices to this where we search and try to notice rooms/places we had never noticed previously. While exploring I found several rooms such as the Zibby Garnett Library. By searching for these rooms I had to explore parts of the library I hadn’t previously been to. It also allowed for me to learn about some history to the library. By looking at a picture of the library before the extensions were added it allowed us to go outside and see where the extensions were as well as being able to see from the inside where these extensions are.
By going to all of these different places in the library it gave me a better idea of what there is to work with in the library in terms of creating a performance. Another part of our exploration of the library was exploring the sounds within the library. An exercise I did was listening to the sounds of the library. I decided to do this exercise on the 3rd floor of the library (the quiet floor) so that I could see how quiet it really is. Here is everything I heard.
• Fan from the air con
• Pages turning
• People packing their stuff to leave
• Food packets rustling
• Mouse’s clicking
• Printers
• Birds outside
• Chairs creaking
• Sneezing
• Phones going off
• Bottles being crunched
• Paper rustling
• Bags being zipped
• Cars outside
• Train barrier alarm
• Pens clicking
• Train
• Pages turning
• Rain coat movement.
These sounds showed that the 3rd floor isn’t actually as quiet as you would expect. I found that these sounds were quite irritating and annoying. This gave me an idea about possibly doing a performance where I can utilise these sounds in a smaller space where there is one person sat still and then in this confined spaces these sounds are made in a way to irritate.

Library Exploration continued
We continued our exploration of the library by finding a place in the library and drawing it. The place I sat was the food zone. I chose this because it is somewhere in the library I had not been before or even noticed, I had just assumed you could take food to the tables you were on. From there I focused in on the shelving and beams in the library. From doing this I noticed the detail that was around the library and one again I found myself seeing things is had never noticed before. One of these things were the ladders used to reach books on higher shelving. Once again because I had never had to reach anything on a higher shelf I had never thought about how to get these books down.
After we had drawn our section of the library we took somebody else’s drawing and we re-imaged that the picture I took was of a door. The part I focused in on was the door itself. This is because I was interested on what could have been behind this door. This was a no student access area and there are so many parts to the library that I have only just found out about even though it is a place I have been using for nearly 2 years. We then had to digitalise the image and so I took a photo of an open door to express how open doors can lead to new possibilities the same way that an open book can.
Also in this session we watched a video of a town crier called out news however the news was a reflection on social media because the crier was shouting about his dinner and other irrelevant stories. The same as how people on social media post about their dinner and news that no one really cares about. Following this we watched a video of Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapping the Reichstag in Germany. This symbolised how when something is covered over it can be anything it doesn’t have a main purpose. There is also the feeling that they are blinding parliament to the outside world, a metaphor which is often said. This gave me another idea, could I possibly cover a room in the library with something transforming it into a different place with a different purpose.

Rehearsal on the 3rd floor
On the 17th of March our group was able to book the space on the 3rd floor. We booked the space and began to create a model of the library on a much smaller scale to the one we plan on building in our final piece and out of much lighter materials. This exercise allowed us to gain a rough time gage of how long it took us to build a small section of the library. With that taking us nearly 2 hours we know that building the lager heavier model will probably take more time than the day we originally thought now we believe it will take somewhere between 2 and 3 days.

Presentations
We presented our idea for our project to the library staff and Conan. After we had told them about our idea to turn the library into a workshop and build a model of the library to represent the manual labour activities it got a varying response. The concept works and the idea of turning the library into a workshop was an idea which had a lot of potential to work with. The idea of building a miniature version of the library was not as strong because of the amount of detail and lack of model making experience we as a group had. After brain storming new ideas we landed on the idea of making shelving. This seemed like the most logical choice because they are simple to make, and could also be would be cost effective. The only tools required are a hammer, saw, nails, wood and varnish. This meant we wouldn’t have to get screws, screwdrivers, adhesives and drills as well.
Shelves also seemed a logical choice because they are something that is related to the library and they could somehow be used and stacked to create our own library. The concept has also been able to remain the same and we would be able to monitor the noise levels and attempt to dull the noise of the tool to follow the rules of quiet in the library.

Creating our first shelf
We build our first design out of cardboard and we were able to create something that looked effective and was easily stackable. We also found our dimensions and how wide and deep the shelf would be, this allowed us to figure out how many shelves we would be able to make out of a sheet of wood. And how much we will be spending on wood. We figured that for a £20 sheet we could make us between 20 and 30 shelves.
The next step was building a shelf. We were able to acquire some cut offs of wood and attempt to build our first shelf. This however did not go as well as we first thought. The wood was all cut to a correct size however while assembling the shelf we assembled in in a way that wouldn’t fit together how it should and we ended up with a box as opposed to our design. Another problem we found was the wood splitting this was because the nails we had used were too thick.
This allowed us to get our next shelf correct and we were able to create the shelf to our measurements. One thing we did find a problem with was the shape of the shelf we had a few edged which were not even with each other so we realised we would have to start sanding as well. We found after sawing the amount of dust which came from one shelf. This gave us the idea to jar the saw dust and put them of the finished shelves. This would act as the data that our library would record and store on the shelves, showing the different amounts of dust that came of each shelf.

Sound and Audacity
When we knew about the noise levels we were making with the tools normally we were then able to start applying equipment to soundproof the tools and seeing how the noise levels alter on audacity. Our quietest object so far has been the combination of dusters and sponges. These nearly halved the amount of noise that audacity was picking up, however still sounded loud to the natural ear. We then tried doing this with microphones and adjusting levels on them to create our soundscape. This worked because the combination of sawing and hammering created a sound scape that sounded accurate to workshop conditions through wireless headphones and would nicely remind us of the sounds that would have at one time occurred within the library.

Work in progress
For our work in progress we were able to get the free zone for the morning. While we had this space we were able to find out what would work and what wouldn’t. We felt as a group the work in progress was a success. We were able to accomplish a rough time scale per shelf and were able to get the input of people outside the project and get feedback which was mostly positive. The positive feedback was about the concept and the idea that we have come up with from an artistic standpoint however the negative feedback came from people critiquing our actual skills with the tools and the levels on the mic.
We did encounter problems while we were constructing the shelf. Namely fatigue. We started to feel ourselves getting tired from the sawing the wood and found ourselves changing who sawed on a regular basis. This bought up the idea of possibly including tea breaks in the performance where we can focus a microphone and bring in some other sounds to the performance, while allowing us to pace ourselves and not wear ourselves down.
One thing that did not come across clearly was the soundproofing of the hammer. It wasn’t really made clear what I was doing to it. However what did come across nicely was the slight sound dulling from a sponge and gaffer tape. This is something I would like to follow up on and need to try and highlight more.
The only other issue we came across was us forgetting a few things such as tape measure and spirit level. This did affect our finished product, however despite this I feel confident about the performance. I believe the next step for us is to now create more than one shelf and find new things to put within the space.

Bone Library
Bone Library was performed at Spill festival. It was performance where aboriginal words get carved into bones. The bones then get categorised into alphabetical order. I feel like this could influence our performance. The way she categorises bones could be bought into our piece. We could categorise our shelves by labelling how long it took them to create or by the average noise made by 1 shelf. We could show this by gathering sawdust into a jar and labelling that jar.
By doing this the performance then becomes us gathering data as well as and information as well as representing the manual labour that used to be involved in the warehouse and keeping the noise down to follow library rules. By gathering data we are also able to represent what people do at a library which is to store data in their heads. The time our piece is being performed benefits the data message especially because it is a time where the library will be full of students researching for deadline essays.
Spill Festival (2014) Bone Library. [Online] available from http://spillfestival.com/show/bone-library/ [accessed 28 April 2015].