Return to Ritherdon: Eyes and Ears

Note: This project is no longer active.

Return to Ritherdon Overview

Before I describe what 'Eyes and Ears' and 'Return to Ritherdon' are, I though it would be best to give you some extra context surrounding it.

'Return to Ritherdon' was an arts-based two year residency, funded by Arts Council England. Nicola Ellis devised the residency alongside Ritherdon & Company Ltd. and Castlefied Gallery. Ritherdon is a manufacturer of metal enclosures and based in Darwen, Lancashire, U.K., Castlefied is an art gallery in Manchester, U.K. and Ellis is an artist. She is, also, based in Manchester. Use the links below for more information on those listed above:

• Nicola Ellis
• Ritherdon & Company Ltd.
• Castlefied Gallery
• Arts Council England

Note: The residency has finished and the information of this page is more for archive purposes than anything else.

Eyes and Ears and 'Personal Flash in Real-Time' Artworks

Eyes and Ears is a dashboard program for monitoring the state of the 'Personal Flash in Real-Time' series of artworks. The artworks were part of the 'No Gaps in the Line' exhibition (2021), hosted in Castlefied Gallery. Each piece in the series was responsible for detecting when a member of staff in Ritherdon (factory) was welding and relaying that information to Castlefied (gallery) by turning a set of lights on and off. If someone was welding, the lights would turn on and vice-versa if no-one was welding.

If you would like to know more about how I the 'Personal Flash in Real-Time' artworks were made, or more about the exhibition itself, please the following links:

• No Gaps in the Line (Gallery's exhibition page)
• 'Personal Flash in Real-Time Exhibition' (Galleries Exhibition literature, shows images of a welding booth and the lights in the gallery)
• Light Meter (Git repository)
• Midpoint (Git repository)
• Relay (Git repository)

I wrote Eyes and Ears in C# and is a UWP application so it only works on Window 10 or above. It's intended use was for it run on a Windows 10 tablet off to the side -- allowing people to glance at it throughout the day to make sure it was the whole system was working. I, also, gave it some text-to-speech tricks so people in earshot could hear when a device powered up or down for the day -- or an error occurred. If you would like to see the code and documentation for this project, please use the links below,

• Eyes and Ears Git Repository
• Return to Ritherdon Documentation (rtr-docs) (Home Page)
• Eyes and Ears Documentation

Links Collection

Below is a list of all the links dotted throughout this page:

• Nicola Ellis
• Ritherdon & Company Ltd.
• Castlefied Gallery
• Arts Council England
• No Gaps in the Line (Gallery's exhibition page)
• 'Personal Flash in Real-Time Exhibition' (Galleries Exhibition literature, shows images of a welding booth and the lights in the gallery)
• Light Meter (Git repository)
• Midpoint (Git repository)
• Relay (Git repository)
• Eyes and Ears Git Repository
• Return to Ritherdon Documentation (rtr-docs) (Home Page)
• Eyes and Ears Documentation