Its' been a long day. A long day after a couple of long months. But we're nearly there. Today we fitted all the electronics into the post, the icons to the outside, gave it a dust and tidy. Paul came round in the evening to resolder a couple of the jack sockets as some of the connections were a bit loose. He also PAT tested everything just to make sure my wiring and connections were all in order. Will also popped over to have a look at the final build and was very happy with it...just as we are. So, we're off to bed and have our alarms set for early.

Below are some photos of the cabling inside the post, icons stuck to the outside and the PAT testing device.

The Signpost has just arrived at our house, delivered by Ian in his van. He said 'I've delivered some things in my time, but...!' So now we have to prep it, fit all the electronics and test...best put the kettle on then!

Below is a few pictures of the Signpost in our front room. Luckily it fits, as that's where it'll be living after the weekend.

Ok, so two days to go and we took a trip to Great Burstead on our bikes (and the train) to see the physical Signpost in the workshop...well, what was ready at the time. The guys there have been doing a great job in such a short time frame (for which we apologise!) and they are getting there but there was still quite a way to go. But, it was really good to see the main body of the post upright and to  see its actual size and feel its presence. When I was first thinking about the construction of the post I wanted to have a similar imposition as a totem pole, for it to be oversize and really quite different to, but still recognisable and functioning as, a sign post. We wanted it to be noticeable (some of our other work has been placed a bit 'apologetically') and to draw people in and for it to be a focal point. Seeing it there, even in an unfinished state, we could feel all of these things being realised and as well as being very pleased with it, we were really relieved. They've actually designed the interior very differently to how we'd originally envisaged, and made it mainly out of MDF instead of soft wood as we'd originally intended, but applied a veneer to make it look like its been hewn out of a single piece of wood. It is all bolted to a metal frame which is connected to the base to give it extra stability. All this extra work bumped up the price, but with some amazing budgetary gymnastics by Damien, we're just about coming in on target.

The guys there explained how the base all fits together, how the access panel works, where the power cable fits through and so on. We are very grateful for all their hard work, especially as we know they'll be working late tonight on it. When its all fitted together and had a couple of coats of polish, it'll be brought down to our place in Ian Rumsby's van for us to fit all the electronics inside, put the turf on and test it.

The photos in the gallery below show the unfinished post upright in the workshop (with Barry thinking he was out of shot), with close ups of the base design, DVD and jack socket window, and the unfinished finger with 'Colchester 26'.

Every day we get closer to the event day, the more the pressure mounts. It's quite frustrating not actually having the post itself as we're waiting for the Joiners to finish making it. They are doing a great job, and we are in constant contact checking smaller points and details. We're also very grateful that they are aiming to meet the deadline which was very tight indeed. With every project I always try and set out to push on at the beginning of the project so that it doesn't come down to the wire at the end, but somehow that always happens. So now we have 2 full days left and the post is 80% completed. Tomorrow they hope to have it finished by the end of the day so we're planning a visit to the workshop to check it over in the afternoon. Then it will be delivered to us first thing on Friday morning so we can fit all the electronics, turf, icons, and test that everything is functioning properly. Then on Saturday morning we'll transport it to the site and it needs to be up and running by 11am. Think we can do it?

So today I went to TAP (who have secured another years lease on their building from the water company!) and to Chalkwell Park to make sure there were plant of flyers around and poster up. I also picked up the information plate from Sign Right (see picture) from around the corner. Not much else we can do now apart from press on with the application and budget for the larger project, which has to be submitted by the 1st October.

'It's been a funny old day...' as Arkwright used to say. But it has. We're feeling bit drained and there is so much piling up that all we want to do is do nothing. But on the other hand we are waiting for the Signpost to be built and the sign to be made and so it also feels like there is nothing we can do.

So, today we done quite a few small things, made phone calls, checked the sign artwork is all in order and that it's going to be ready for Thursday, arranged transport for the post from the workshop to our house and then again to site, more work on the application for the expanded project, checked the DVD's of the final version and made copies, did an electronic mailout, agreed a few more volunteers for added muscle to erect the post on site, talked through the functionality of a desired website for the expanded project and how much that might cost (pending the funding being granted)..blah blah etc etc...time for bed.

We've had another hectic few days, starting with obtaining our turf on Friday morning. Gary from Tuff Turf was working in our area and kindly came over to show us the offcuts he had available and check the size we needed, culminating in rolling out and cutting our turf on the roadside, giving us an inkling of what it looked like here when it was all fields...we now have the turf in the front room ready to add to the base next week. Our Thanks to Gary for his time and generosity.

Stuart also picked up the vinyl icons from the Sign Factory; these come in two parts, the coloured circle base and the white icon shape which goes on top, so we've been sticking these together carefully and have enough ready to use, with spares available in case of problems (such as air bubbles). As a spin off, it means the icon shapes are slightly raised on the surface, which gives them a slightly tactile quality, although possibly not enough to make them more accessible. Since we also heard from a contact at Disability Essex who is running a stall close by to Signpost at Village Green, we're hoping some of her visitors will help us find out! The information plate is being made by Signright, round the corner from us on West Road, so we've been pretty effective in using local firms, which saves on transport costs and also makes it easier to talk to someone about what you want, particularly important on a pilot project, where we're both learning as we go along. For example, the Signpost needs PAT testing as it is technically an 'electrical appliance', but we're able to call on Paul Malone's skills again for this. It's an important learning aspect for us in terms of our hopes to scale the project up, as any more permanent version will need rigorous testing to ensure it fulfills health and safety requirements. Right now though, our brains feel pretty full; less than a week to go and plenty to do.

Ok, firstly today we'd like to say that we've been getting some comments and having some discussions with a few of you by email. We really value your input and it helps us to shape our thinking about the project and our work in general. But we feel that by emailing us personally that others may miss out on the dialogue that is happening, so we invite you to use the comments function on each blog post which you can find at the top right above each post. Alternatively you can use the forum, which as yet only has a test post on it.

Today was a continuation of yesterday in the fact that it was pretty flat out. We got a phone call from Urban Print to say that our flyers and posters were ready to collect. I then phoned Tuff Turf to talk to them about getting some turf to cover the base of the post. Since we are only covering a small area, and he usually does whole gardens, we can probably get some offcuts which will save us some cash. He's a local guy too so we should be able to sort that out this week.

So we cycled down to Urban Print and picked up the Fyers on our bikes. Damien put them in her pannier and since they were a big heavy (2000 x A6) it made it a bit difficult for her to take left hand corners, but she made it home ok. Not bad for a girl with no balance (I don't know how she stays on two wheels, even unladen!). So we split the box and I took half of the to Sean at Metal. They will be promoting Village Green with BBC Blast in Southend High Street on Saturday so will hand out our flyers at the same time :o) (we planned that!). After a deluge of rain I carried on to The Sign Factory on London Road in Leigh to speak to Louise, who did our vinyl graphics for the Vibe Cube. We went through the designs for the icons (see earlier blog post) and will pop back tomorrow to pick them up. I then headed home to tidy up the front room, as for over 3 weeks its been full of Signpost stuff strewn about, so tidied up everything, vacuumed, dusted and made somewhere to sit down. But not yet, more work to be done....

The last few days have been super hectic, and by the end of the day my eyes have been sore from too much time spent staring at screens. We've been testing and checking our renders of the sounds and subtitles for each recording, and then each route, and then everything as whole. But we've now got a finished version and can concentrate more on the other things that need doing...of which there are many.

This morning I went to Pure Joinery in Billericay (formerly Carters Joinery in Shoeburyness) who built the Vibe Cube, to talk through the plans and how they are going to build the Signpost. I was kindly picked up from the station by Jim, who will be making the final working drawing from which it will be made. He, Neil and I talked through each of the pieces that were to be installed in the work and how they might be fitted. After quite a while they decided that the way we had intended for the post to be constructed wasn't going to work so we started from scratch. After some discussion they decided on another way we it could be made without impacting on the overall appearance of it, which mainly came about from a big change in the internal design. but this should make it more rigid and enable an access panel to be incorporated into it allowing us easier aces to the contents and workings inside. It is a tight turn around though as there is less than two weeks to go...ouch!!

On the way back from the meeting I did some thinking about the whole process and how little we knew about building things, the function of materials and how they can be used, their properties and adaptability. But that is what doing a 'pilot' project is all about, learning and experimenting, discovering and solving problems, developing relationships and treading new ground. So even thought I'm feeling a bit out of depth at the moment, I'm a pretty good swimmer and should see us resting contentedly on a nice warm beach in a few weeks. Metaphorically of course, as we won't actually be sunning it on a beach until October when we'll be taking this years holiday...a few days in Norfolk.

Ok, on another note we also sent off the Flyers and posters to be printed at Urban Print in Southend and will be abel to pick those up on Thursday.

We've been working hard on the transcripts and making them into movies. But until we got the screens, we couldn't know for sure what resolution would work and therefore what text point size would be possible, and where the line breaks would be needed. Although there isn't a huge amount of dialogue to transcribe in the sounds as a whole, it's important to get line breaks correct so that the captions make sense, whether you're transcribing dialogue or ambient sound.

This is where my (limited) typographic training comes slightly into conflict with my deaf end user persona; as a typographer, you're aiming for legibility and readability. It's the same for a deaf end user, but you're reading captions at speed, and the line breaks that make the neatest blocks of text, don't always make sense when you take them in quickly. The photo here shows one example; the neatest line break would be after 'people' which would create two lines of text of a similar length. The problem with that is it means the second line reads 'eating, cutlery sounds' and at speed the comma makes less impact. As someone who has been using subtitles for over 25 years, I've seen a lot of these kind of line breaks, and you don't have time to re-read, because the next caption will have replaced the one you've just gone 'huh?' about.  In typography this issue comes up more with word division, when a word has to be split over two lines (e.g. sci-ence, us-ing, juxta-position). Geoffrey Dowding's "Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type" gives the memorable example of a face cream ad with an unfortunate break "For skin that's as soft, smooth and fresh as a camel-
lia petal...".

We'll try and avoid both the camels and the edible cutlery.

The text that appears on the plate and the flyer isn't so easy to read from our pictures, so I'm going to include it here in the blog...

Signpost

is a sonic and tactile installation by Southend based artists Stuart Bowditch and Damien Robinson.
It plays back sound journeys taken through the town of Colchester, put together from recordings donated by the public, sourced from the Essex Sound Archive and made by the artists themselves.

As well as spanning the entire town, Signpost also features archival recordings dating as far back as 1906, meaning that you can travel through the town simultaneously in place and in time.

You can experience the work in several ways:

Listen (privately) - insert your personal headphones in the jack sockets
Listen (publicly) - to the sounds played back through the post speakers
Look - read the information about the recordings on the screens
Touch - touch the posts 'feelsound'  panel to experience the way the sounds resonate

or any combination of the above.

The Signpost is a pilot for a larger scale project that intends to place similar signposts at different locations around the country, each pointing to the next and playing new sound recordings of each area.

Stuart and Damien value your input so if you have any comments or suggestions then please visit
the project website  www.signpostproject.co.uk