One of the key elements of propeller's work is our ongoing research practice. All five members share a fascination for ecology and for interrogating ideas. In our ongoing series of workshops and lectures, we strive to open up the conversation, to bring our research out of the libraries and into public discourse.

We are currently involved in an exciting research endeavour, The Light Switch Project is produced by BAC, in collaboration with actor Toby Jones and performer/director Lucy Foster. We are researching the question 'what happens when you turn on a light switch?' We have staged participatory research events and are working towards a performance.

A key outlet for our research is Desire Lines, an annual Art and Ecology symposioum. To learn more about our contributions please click here.

Please find below a list of sources and inspirations: 
: Books : Cinema : Places : Miscellaneous : 

Books 

Abram, David
The Spell of The Sensuous 

Askwith, Richard 
Feet in The Clouds 

Auge, Marc 
Rovine e macerie: il senso del tempo 

Auslander, Philip 
Liveness: Performance in a Mediated Culture 

Auster, Paul 
The Invention of Solitude 
Moon Palace 
Oracle Nights 
The New York Trilogy 
The Red Notebook 
Leviathan 
Collected Poetry 

Bateson, Gregory 
Steps towards an Ecology of Mind 

Berger, John 
Here is where we meet 
A Seventh Man 
And our faces, my heart, brief as photos 
Pig Earth 
Ways of Seeing 

Beuys, Joseph 
Energy Plan for the Western Man 

Bryson, Bill 
A short History of Nearly Everything 

Calvino, Italo 
Invisible Cities 
If on a Winter's Night a traveller 
The Path to the Spiders' Nest 
Six Memos for a New Millennium 

Capra, Fritjof 
The Web of Life 
The Hidden Connections 
The Turning Point

Chatwin, Bruce 
The Songlines 
On the Black Hill                                                                                              

Collis, John Stewart 
The Worm Forgives The Plough 

Conrad, Joseph 
Heart of Darkness 

DeLillo, Don 
Underworld 
White Noise
The Body Artist 
Cosmopolis 

Dylan, Bob 
Chronicles 

Flannery, Tim 
The Weather Makers 

Gablik, Suzi 
Conversations Before the End of Time 
Magritte  

Gelbspan, Ross 
Boiling Point 

Hemmingway, Ernest 
The Old Man and The Sea 
Death in the Afternoon 
A Farewell to Arms 

Hoban, Russell 
Ridley Walker 

Hughes, Robert 
The Fatal Shore 

Jack, Ian (ed) 
Granta: The magazine of new writing/83 Autumn 2003 This overheating world

Jansson, Tove 
Comet in Moominland 

Kastner, Jeffrey 
Land and Environmental Art 

Kennedy Jr, Robert F. 
Crimes against Nature 

Kundera, Milan 
The book of Laughter and Forgetting 
Immortality 

Lacy, Suzanne, (ed) 
Mapping the Terrain 

Levi, Primo 
If This is a Man 
The Truce 
The Periodic Table 
The Drowned and the Saved 

Lindqvist, Sven 
Exterminate all the Brutes 
A History of Bombing 

Lippard, Lucy 
The Lure of the Local 

Lovelock, James 
The Return of Gaia 
The Revenge of Gaia 

Lynas, Mark 
High Tide 

McCarthy, Cormac 
The Road 
Blood Meridian Child of God 
The Border Trilogy: All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of The Plain 

Nabokov, Vladimir 
Nabokov's Butterflies 
Lolita 

Nadolny, Sten 
The Discovery of Slowness 

McKibben, Bill 
The End of Nature 

Michaels, Anne 
Fugitive Pieces 

Mitchell, H.J.T. 
The Last Dinosaur Book 

Mistry, Rohinton 
A Fine Balance 

Pavese, Cesare 
Il mestiere di vivere 

Ondaatje, Michael 
Coming Through Slaughter 
The English Patient 
In The Skin of a Lion 
Handwriting 
The Conversations (With Walter Murch) 
Anil's Ghost 
Running in the Family 
The Collected works of Billy The Kid 

Orwell, George 
Animal Farm 
1984 
Down and Out in Paris and London 
Homage to Catalonia 

Schama, Simon 
Landscape and Memory 

Schumacher, E.F. 
Small is Beautiful 

Sebald, W.G. 
After Nature 
Austerlitz 
The Emigrants 
Vertigo 
A Natural History of Destruction 
The Rings of Saturn 

Sessions, George (ed)
Deep Ecology for the 21 st century

Solnit, Rebecca 
Wanderlust 
A Field Guide to Getting Lost 
Hope in the Dark 

Thoreau, Henry David 
Walden 

Tompkins, Peter & Bird, Christopher 
The Secret Life of Plants 

Viola, Bill and Robert, Violette (eds) 
Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House
Wenders, Wim 
The Logic of Images 

Winterson, Jeanette 
Written on the Body 
Weight 
Sexing the Cherry 
Oranges are not the Only Fruit 

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 
Pensieri Diversi 

Writes and Sites
A Mis-guide to Anywhere    
        

Cinema 

Hidden 
Time Out 
Manhattan 
Annie Hall 
Dog Day Afternoon 
The New World 
The Thin Red Line 
The Enigma of Kasper Hauser         

Places 

The New Forest, UK
On a PLATFORM walk 
Centraal Station, Antwerp, Belgium 
Walking the River Wandle, London, UK 
In the audience of a Deer Park show 
The Scout Hut, Edegem, Belgium 
Squeaky Beach, Wilson's Prom, Victoria, Australia 
Soft 3D, Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK 
The third draw          

Miscellaneous
 
Neil's new coat 
Cooking 
Eating 
Lovers 
Ex-lovers 
Late nights drinking
 "I see a darkness" 
The quotes: 
"We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments 
of which we are barely conscious."   - Austerlitz, W.G.Sebald 
and
"The most important thing each of us can do is to slow our individual lives down but even 
those who are most dedicated to this idea seem unable to achieve it."   - Suzi Gablik 
Bandini 
Crows 
Cows