Door alarms

I wanted to call this post 'Door Bells' but then that sort of implies the opposite of what this little experiment was about. I've been thinking more about the corridor and the ways I can make the space an open area that everyone uses- not just somewhere to pass through on the way in and out of our rooms. The idea stemmed from how whenever we enter the corridor a light sensor registers our presence and the light flickers on. I liked this sense of being welcomed into a space. I thought I could extend this so that a bell of some sort registers when we have opened our doors. As I've mentioned before, we all prop our doors open when we're feeling sociable so that everyone can come and go from the corridor and each other's rooms. So the bells would indicate when we were propping our doors open- like a call to everyone else in the flat to be sociable.

So far I've made 'bells' for Claudia, Laura and me. Each time I've only used things that belong to each person so as to project each person into the annex of the corridor. Claudia does a lot of dance and has a hip scarf for belly dancing which is covered in little jangling medallions. For Laura I made a wire frame to hook a tin around the door handle, then I filled the tin with her rings. Finally for me, I made a chime out of my cutlery ( I'm known as the mum of the flat, because I cook a lot so it seemed to fit). I attached a nut (as in nut and bolt) to a string that then attached to my door handle so the chime rang.

Claudia's room

If anyone knows why these photos automatically rotate themselves please let me know!

Laura's room

My Room

I'm not completely sure where this idea is going to lead me to next. I could put the chimes up one evening and film the corridor to see all the alarms going off. I could also make a tally of how many times I hear each different alarm. I'm not sure, but I'll keep you (meaning mum, dad, annie and granny) posted. 

More shenanigans in the corridor

.... and more proof that I have the most tolerant flatmates in uni history.
This evening I was thinking of more way to annex the corridor in our flat. I want to make it a part of the flat, not just something we pass through from the front door to our rooms or the kitchen. I noticed the other day that we all prop our doors open when we're feeling sociable, so as to show people are welcome to wonder in and out. What I like is the different ways we all prop the heavy fire doors open. A few of us use converse trainers- the gap between the door and the floor is quite wide and converse seem quite good. I used a book at first until the spine looked a bit knackered. But Megan uses her clarinet and then a pair of trainers. I thought of making a group door stop that could open all our doors at the same time and create one big sociable space.

As a quick experiment this evening I tried to create a makeshift canopy/den between Laura and Thom's rooms. Their doors are open almost all the time so i wanted to create a cosy little space for them to meet under- sort of like when your a kid . Me and Jess (my sister) used to sit under a blanket on the sofa and pretend the sofa could fly anywhere (but that's perhaps a bit off the point).

I tied thread between they're rooms, using their door handles, chairs and the radiator to wind the thread around. I wanted some more sturdy string to make sure the support didn't buckle or snap, but I don't have any at the mo. So I just had to be very very careful.

Here's a film of when I got them to open and close their doors- in turn destroying the makeshift annex. Which I quite liked. The annex only exists when they want it to- when they want to come out and use the corridor space.

Corridor

I wanted to carry on my idea of  how different areas are annexes to the north and south banks of the Thames. I liked looking at bridges and how those bridges forge connections and allow these areas to flourish. Yet when I was developing these ideas I realised I was going into an area that I've explored alot in past projects- Mapping. I wanted to avoid my work becoming too repetitive and boring, which I think can happen quite easily with me because I can often play it a bit safe. So instead of mapping around London I bought my work even closer to home, well my new uni home.

The halls I'm in is split up into lots of flats of about 6 people. In my flat, all 6 rooms lead off a main corridor. As I can't start messing about with actual rivers, as they're more often than not quite big or heavily used in London, I wanted to carry my ideas over and think about this corridor as the 'river' in our flat- our rooms being annexes to it. I asked my flatmates if they could imagine the corridor was a river and they had to find a way of getting from one side to the other using only what they could from their room.
I made an animation of how they got on. I like the way that each person chose a slightly different way- Thom made a boat out of a bin, Laura used cusions, Dan and Megan chose to use books as stepping stones and Claudia made a bridge out of her patchwork quilt. And even though both Dan and Megan had the same basic idea, they carried it out in different ways- Dan laid out his stepping stones before hand and Megan did it as she went.  
So I'll shut up now and here's the short film.