NIEUWE (MEDIA) TOPOGRAFIE presentation
From CopyCult
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public space in technology
Explain how talk is set up: Show some projects, explain org. Constant, talk about ethics and esthetics geo projects. ...
question: what is difference space / place, how does this apply to technology ?
reciprocal relationship humans - technology not only: we, humans use technology for purppose of defining space, but also: technology itself as a space for reinvention experiment sharing
comparison: info - consumer "What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." Herbert_Simon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon) in: Computers, Communications and the Public Interest, 1971
topographia, from Greek, from topographein to describe a place, from topos place + graphein to write —
writing defines place:
Space is the opportunity; place is the understood reality.
Physically, a place is a space which is invested with understandings of behavioural appropriateness, cultural expectations, and so forth. We are located in ``space, but we act in ``place. Furthermore, ``places are spaces that are valued. The distinction is rather like that between a ``house and a ``home; a house might keep out the wind and the rain, but a home is where we live. (Paul Dourish en Steve Harrisson)
could you say: softwares are technological islands ( places if you like ) in a technological sea of potentiallity (space)
Public space and anonymity
Mostly geo-spatial technology colonizes space. Most of it comes from the joint research and infrastructure of the army and the industry. Having more technology in public space, at the time being, often rhymes with a dichotomic (and simplistic) understanding of what constitutes public space. Not because it physically occupies space (on the contrary, it seems less and less physically intrusive). But because, for instance, it reduces my anonymity in the public space.
I quote a text from Mireille Hildebrandt, Privacy in public, the right to (re)correlate the self (http://www.imbroglio.be/site/spip.php?article21),
Last year I was in New York first time and afterwords I read the essay by E.B. White on the NY of just after the second world war. On the first pages he celebrates the ’gift of privacy’ one can experience walking around Manhattan. This hit me as a profound truth: like in other metropolitan cities one can acquire an acute sense of privacy in the middle of NY that even goes beyond the privacy of one’s own home. Beyond solitude or exclusive intimacy. It is somehow related to both anonimity, the public eye and a sense of security. I doubt I would feel very private if I felt treathened or if I would be recognized at every corner (as I am in the village where my parents moved after raising me in a city, and as I would be if I were a celebrity - let’s not forget that the right to privacy in the US was very much connected with the exposure of celebraties in the press). The curious thing is that the public gaze, however disinterested, however much the opposite of intimacy, is part and parcel of this acute sense of privacy. This refutes the idea that CCTV cannot be an intrusion on privacy just because I have entered a public space, but it also shows that privacy seems to be connected to such seemingly contradictory phenomena like anonimity, intimacy, the public eye and solitude (nobody will deny that the ability to retreat into the home and be on oneself can be a way to experience privacy). It seems that even while the home and the family are prime examples of a private sphere, it cannot be ruled out that a person might feel more private in the middle of Times Square than within her home and/or family (if that family or home is a place where her bodily or psychological integrity is not respected).
Now let's look at two examples from recent development of geo-locative technologies.
Examples:
- http://www.192.com that cross-references high-res (4 meters precision) aerial imagery with UK electoral roll, national demographic statistics to track individuals.
- http://www.digitalangel.com/
"Digital Angel GPS and RFID products are utilized around the world to save lives, ensure the safety of our food supply, reunite loved ones and improve the quality of life. We are a leading developer of technologies that enable the rapid and accurate identification, location tracking, and condition monitoring of what is important to people. Applications of our products include identification and monitoring of pets and fish with our implantable RFID microchips, identification of livestock with our ear tags, GPS based search and rescue beacons for aircraft, ships, boats, and individuals."
collective space
for rethinking cultural practices.Making a change only happens when you start with yourself, money where mouth is research through practice: practical work scrutinised as conditional for cultural ork which emerges from it
feminism, open source, copyleft
why do we choose perspective in between genres, genders, disciplines social / cultural sectors,
How do we structure Vereniging zonder winstoogmerk: ?????? compare to football team: anybody who wnats to play the game can join, the org. changes according to rules, conditions, intensity of the game and who plays it (Brian Massumi - political econompy of belonging) maybe Laurence has one of those beautifull structure images for us ?
what do we do
summ up difference types of projects: seminars, software and artproduction, blend between what we do and cultural practices that many people do and are spontanoues, between constant work strategieen die niet zijn voorbehouden aan kunst / media maar alemeenbekend zijn,
Tresor
Towards is an attempt to represent the territory of Brussels in a subjective way which leads to the creation of a collaborative tool for subjective mapping. Two years ago, not-for-profit organizations Recyclart, City Mine(d), Constant, and the graphic designers from Speculoos launched the project “Towards a subjective collective cartography,” whose aim is to examine questions concerning the subjective representation of the territory of Brussels and to promote the passing on, exchange and pooling of those questions…
Software as (public) space
Ownership of data? Sharing the infrastrcuture. Can technology provide space for publicness?
Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods --moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former --but no opinion. Hannah Arendt
Open StreetMap explain principle, re-appropriation of geo-locative technology, learning process
show images recyclart
three layers of rights which can lock the process: - copyrights on geodata - property rights of software - rights on the produced maps
benjamin henrion sounds in tresor
how is the national geographic institute financed, what are the costs of public data ?
Warchalking is the drawing of symbols in public places to advertise an open Wi-Fi wireless network.
Inspired by hobo symbols, the warchalking marks were conceived by a group of friends in June 2002 and publicised by Matt Jones who designed the set of icons and produced a downloadable document containing them. Within days of Jones publishing a blog entry about warchalking, articles appeared in dozens of publications and stories appeared on several major television news programs around the world.
The word is formed by analogy to wardriving, the practice of driving around an area in a car to detect open Wi-Fi nodes. That term in turn is based on wardialing, the practice of dialing many phone numbers hoping to find a modem.
Warchalking never seemed to catch on as an activity, despite its widespread coverage. Instead, the symbols were almost immediately adopted by commercial enterprises interested in or offering Wi-Fi, such as JiWire (a Wi-Fi hotspot directory and how-to site). The symbol is now widely used as a shorthand in logos and advertising.
techniek is getoond i film Wargames, self image warchalkers is based on cinematic fantasy
combine with auditive derive' VJ by julien
--- HERE WE HAVE GOOD VIDEO ----
Tensions
- Decontextualisation of mapping. Are maps produced only in reference to X and Y coordinates?
- There is a tension however between the openness and the subjective maps produced. On which basis inter-subjectivity can be exchanged? The publicness of information needs to be problematized. Given many eyeballs all bugs are shallow said Eric Raymond. But all maps don't need to be shown to everybody.
- We need to find routes across softwares not be rooted in a software. Tresor is a plea for messiness not a call for another system.
- The method is contamination rather than specification.
Space and place
Software as (public) space
Distinction between space and place. Place is more richer than space. Feeling of belonging. Needs for negociation and identity. Public place, on the contrary of public space, is not about anonymity.
women and free software
An and Agnes do a 5 + minute intervention. - control what does that mean? - server / service / conditions, ethics of hosting - group self-organisation:
Routes + Routines scratching the surface
in short:
The talk connects a few Constant projects dealing with movement and the city. I will show plenty images, explain, add remarks / quotes. The focus of these projects is not so much mapping or ways of representing a situation / location, but intervention and exploration.
- Urban anomalies
- Molenbeek borderwalk
- R+R 1: passeer pas par la
- R+R 2: Regulating impulses
- Ecos workshop
- EMF derive by Julien Ottavi
- APT: browsing the city
- R+R 3: Swap Script
How does it relate to topography?
- Moving as a form of writing place:
The world is a social topos. Fencing of personal space by attitude, writing paths on locations, inscribing motions / repetitions in our muscles / memories, copying / exercising / embodying rolemodels. Relationship between Writer / the written / the writing / the tool. Bodies as tools, message boards, messengers.
- (experiencing) time as a spatial factor + awareness as a condition for human experience: stumble blocks and awkward devices, reflectivity through language / writing / art.
- (Pre) script, rewriting, notation. Routines as prescription, norms and normality as legenda to make world legible. Law as a real life script.
- Opening sources of urbanisation
- - - - -
Routes + Routines investigate low-tech means of communication and is curious about the potential of no tech-media such as gossip, backchat, word to mouth in a world dominated by (communication) strategies. How can looking, observing and reporting be recaptured from the paradigm of control and surveillance and how can they be employed to stimulate the imagination of citizens? How can we map multi -plicity, -culturality, -layering and changeability starting from the details and individual observation rather then the bird perspective?
In an informationalist Utopian world vision everything can be interpreted as programmable and the city is no exception. Routes + Routines proposes a comparison between on the one hand romantic notions of urbanity in which the individual experience is the starting point for a subjective interpretation of locations and on the other: the structure of binary language where all information can be reduced to opposites; to zero's and ones.
If cities, social groups and identities can simply be regarded as programmable entities, can we than approach cities as hardware on which social, economic, political programme's play; directing and determining behavior, movement, norms, interactions and relations between citizens? Can we question how this programmability is employed and re-think and re-model urban power structures, dominance of capital, racial injustice, property, normality? How can urban programs that are seemingly fixed be diverted, changed and appropriated?
In Re-Place-Ing-Space (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/place-paper.html); The roles of Place and Space in collaborative systems' omschrijven Paul Dourish en Steve Harrisson, een plek als een geevolueerde set van gedrag die bestaat bij gratie van onze creativiteit om ons elementen van de wereld toe te eigenen, en ze zo te organiseren dat we ze kunnen gebruiken voor onze eigen behoeftes.
Placeness is created and sustained by patterns of use; it's not something we can design in. On the other hand, placeness is what we want to support; we can design for it.
“More then seeking its place, the artwork creates delocation of the spectator. By its reflectivity the work creates new spaces within the already existing ones, and by it’s ability to transform, a more 'democratic' art can simultanously show itself as 'public art', as 'the art of publicness' and art as a public space.” (Henk Oosterling, De verbeelding van de openbare ruimte, Interakta #5)
Het maken van publieke ruimte in de tussenruimte is een ongrijpbare kwaliteit van de stad, die theoretisch noch praktisch eenvoudig te vangen is. Zou het antwoord, zo denk ik onwillekeurig kunnen liggen in het maken van kunst? tijdelijke publieke performances en installaties, of meer permanente vormen van publieke sculptuur zoals locatie of gemeenschapsgebonden kunst (...) Het maken van publieke ruimte op bescheiden locaties en aan de hand van gebruikerspraktijken, in een breed perspectief. Een vraag waarmee we cruciale aspecten van dit project aan de orde kunnen stellen is misschien: hoe kunnen we 'urbaniseren' op een open-source manier? (Saskia Sassen in Open nr 11)
licenses,
gpl, agreements, Telenet,
picopeer (http://picopeer.net/PPA-en.html) a license formalising, code of behaviour network of wireless hotspots,
