Heritage Site, 2016

A new media art and archaeology project, 'Heritage Site' (2014-2016) centred on a major industrial heritage landmark in central Scotland known as the ‘Five Sisters’ on the edge of West Calder, a small town in West Lothian. Two hundred and forty metres high, the Five Sisters are spoil heaps (or ‘bings’), products of the oil shale mining industry active in this area in the nineteenth century. Since the demise of this industry the site has been the subject of various Land Art, Geo-Science, and community-led town planning activities. Once considered eyesores, the Five Sisters have now completed their transformation from utilitarian industrial structures to being a nationally recognised heritage site by being given Scheduled Ancient Monument status in the 1990s. This fascinating transformation was the context for the project, which was provoked by local community memory of a house that is buried deep within the Five Sisters bing. This living memory – belonging to the familial, domestic sphere - will soon become ‘history’ as a generation passes. In terms of intangible cultural heritage and social identity, as well as the practicalities of visualising an impossible to reach site, the project faced compelling challenges leading to two questions: how can the practices of new media art and heritage visualisation come together to investigate this site of layered histories and shifting identity politics? How did Heritage Site work with fact and hard evidence as well as memory, imagination, and speculation?