Tuesday, March 16. 2010
Design Approaches for the 21st Century City
Event:Electrosmog Festival (Amsterdam, March 18-20)
Wednesday, March 10. 2010
Foursquare + Google Maps = FourWhere
New location-based social search tool FourWhere shows Foursquare tips and comments using Google Maps so you can search and discover what everyone is saying about nearby places.Users simply input a location or address into FourWhere, right-click (control click) on the map and select display preferences. The map can display all comments nearby, all venues in the vicinity and/or remove venues without tips.
It’s a simple app with a powerful purpose. For those of us preparing to journey out to Austin for SXSW, FourWhere’s release couldn’t have come at a better time. A search around the downtown area yields comments with insightful information about restaurants and bars. Essentially the application offers a map-based search experience for socialites looking to plan a fun night out.
FourWhere currently only pulls in data from Foursquare, but Sysomos, the company behind the app, has plans to integrate more social data in the future.
Reviews: Foursquare
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Via Mashable
Tuesday, March 09. 2010
Sensity V & A, an interview with Stanza
A few weeks ago, and against my better judgment, i stopped by Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the Victoria and Albert in London. The exhibition showcases recent developments in digital and interactive design through three themes: Code, Interactivity and Network.
I have nothing particularly flattering to write about the exhibition. I wish i had done like Furtherfield and visited the Digital Pioneers exhibition instead. The exhibition takes place at the V&A as well but doesn't benefit from as much advertising as Decode.
In theory, Decode looks like a very glam affair. In reality, it has a bit of a fancy thrift shop feeling with all the works crammed in a confined and confused space. I was left in shock when i saw how little space each work had to breathe while all around me a group of school girls were laughing their way from one work to another, frantically waving their arms/head/some bathroom appliances in all directions in order to trigger some kind of reaction... sorry "interaction" from the works. The code section of the show wasn't a much more pleasant experience. I had to fight my way through a narrow corridor jam packed with people taking pictures or videos of the strikingly beautiful works on screen. I'm glad the exhibition is such a success. I'd even go as far as confessing that i'm perversely happy that interaction and digital design are being thrown in the direction of the broad public in such an informal way.
Damn! it's not like me to bad-blog an exhibition like that. Maybe i was not the right audience for that kind of exhibition but then maybe i am because some artists whose work i admire are participating to the show. Stanza is one of them.
As his bio says, Stanza is an expert in arts technology, CCTV, online networks, touch screens, environmental sensors, and interactive artworks. Recurring themes throughout his career include, the urban landscape, surveillance culture and alienation in the city.
Sensity on a round globe display tested at County Hall London (Live data on globe 2006). Image copyright stanza
His artworks have won prestigious awards and have been exhibited all over the world, from the Venice Biennale to the Tate Britain, from the State Museum in Novorsibirsk to the Biennale of Sydney. I blogged so often about his work, it's quite embarrassing. Stanza is exhibiting Sensity at Decode. Some 20 custom made environmental sensors units are distributed in the V & A Porter gallery and around the city of London. They measure, light, noise, sound, humidity, and temperature. The data is turned into a online real time visualisation of the space for everyone, whether they are gallery visitors or city planners, to see and ponder on. Sensity V & A opens up a discourse about networks and surveillance technologies and questioning the social political fabric of the landscape around us (more details and pictures about the V&A version.)
The Decode exhibition wasn't that bad. After all, it gave me an excuse as good as any other to blog this little interview with Stanza about his work.
How visible are the sensors in the city?
Actually I don't advertise where they are exactly, they are too expensive to loose. The visability is virtual and presented via its GPS location. All the data is presented online via XML feeds that are open source.
Do you have to keep them hidden lest they get stolen or damaged? How do you select the location of the sensors?
The location is based on the network and the distance apart one can place them so that they still transmit and send data. But you're right, having them stolen is a big issue since I cannot afford replacement
Image copyright stanza
Do you need a special authorization to place the sensors and collect the data?
In theory yes, in practice, I don't. There are more complex issues about security of space and surveillance. In fact because of the potential of this project for larger scale urban monitoring, noise and pollution monitoring in real time I am surprised I haven't been approached to develop this on a larger scale.
By measuring all sorts of physical data the sensors reveal also some social aspects and variables of the environment. The text that presents Sensity states that "The output from the sensors display the "emotional" state of the city".
So what is the emotional state of the city?
The condition of change of time represents the emotional state as measured by the varying sensors.
Image copyright stanza
Do you perceive patterns according to the time of the day for example?
The patterns and shapes in the visualisation are what is being affected by the real time environmental conditions.
Well the time of day affects the patterns that are relayed to the screen.
The sensors have time stamp, light, temperature, humidity, GPS, noise and sounder
What can the 'general public learn from Sensity?
I want the public to explore new ways of thinking about interaction within public space and how this affects the socialization of space. The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences experiences of the event and space and gather data inside the space.
The project also focuses on the micro-incidents of change, the vibrations and sounds of the using these wireless sensor based technologies.
Imagine walking out the door, and knowing every single action, movement, sound, micro movement, pulse, and thread of information is being tracked, monitored, stored, analyzed, interpreted, and logged. The world we will live in seems to be a much bigger brother than the Orwellian vision, its the mother of big brother.
The data is also used to create visualizations in an open source environment. Other online users can also re- interpret the data and interrogate the various sensors in the network as this is open sourced as well (xml streams).
How about you?
What I have learnt from mixing the cities and creating mash-ups online with the data from various city set is that there is a new space, a 4^th space, a new world of possibilities.
These works are focused on the wider picture of city experiences which are being played out in real time. This sort of experience of multi nodes and multi threaded spaces, demands a refined gathering of data, a sensitive accumulation which can then lead to some kind of modeling and visualization. [audible and visual (mils)-representation] of the social network as it exists and is impacted upon.
Image copyright stanza
Do you navigate cities differently after you have submitted them to Sensity?
Within this project no.....and it's a good question. However within a project like soundcities.com the experience and the relationship to place is different. Soundcities is my online open source database of city sounds from around the world, that can be listened to, used in performances on laptops, or played on mobiles via wireless networks.
The project soundcities is completely made up of found sounds and soundscapes from the thousands of samples I collected.
The sounds of cities also give clues to the emotional and responsive way we interact with our cities. Cities all have specific identities, and found sound can give us clues to the people that inhabit these spaces, as well as provoking us and stimulating our senses in a musical way. Within soundcities the aim is to create an online aural experience that evokes place, both as literal description but also developed musical composition. The sounds of cities evoke memories. So this idea of assent gathering of sounds creates a different feeling that the gathering of data.
With sensity although we are the body in the data space; we again control it but because its on a micro scale it's harder to relate to. That's why a project like Sensity is so important.
You've installed Sensity in many cities around the world. How is the V&A one different?/
The way Sensity is exhibited can be scaled up and this depends really on the commitment of the host organization.
I now have several version of this artwork.
A local version can be made and then projected and also shown online. I have already made versions for several cities. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation.
Making it real time so sensor data isn't recorded but real time. This involves set up of technology, adding some code to router, using my sensors, using my computers, set up of the sensors in the correct location, programming them, replacing batteries and care for the duration of the show and insurance. In this case I test and deploy my sensors and make the visualisation and leave the sensors and the computers running all the time.
How it looks in the gallery or the actual displays ie, what it is seen by the audience. It can be experienced on plasma screens, projected or shown on 3d globes. Once the visualisation is made there are a numbers of ways to present it.
The Decode show is a much longer term real time colloborative deployment of my two networks in the gallery and across the city. I can monitor all the sensors remotely tell the gallery to change batteries, etc. The issue is that the V & A and their technical team has to be able to support the technical needs of the work.
What becomes of the data once the show is over?
None of the data as the system is set up is archived.... it's all real time. I do plan to allow the database to have a history but this now requires further funding and development.
Thanks Stanza!
All text copyright stanza.
Pictures i took in the Decode exhibition.
Decode: Digital Design Sensations continues until the 11 April 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
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Via WMMNA
Related Links:
Personal comment:
I somehow have the same remarks as Régine Debatty about the V&A Museum's show, but I also believe it's an important shift nonetheless (so as the recent Design & the Elastic Mind at the MOMA NY) as Digital art & design comes out of the box into mainstream museum. The time of specialized shows and "ghetto exhibitions" is getting to an end. Which also means that discourses will change to more general art and/or design questions and will be less and less focused on the media, or how you use the media, etc. This is over for a while anyway.
The work of Stanza is now one among many that treats the questions of environmental capture in the city or architecture. I think there a lot to do out of this "environmental capture". Variable architectures and environments or nomadic way to inhabit hyper vernacular and sustainable structures?
Monday, March 08. 2010
Rethinking Curating
Colleagues and friends Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham have just published Rethinking Curating: Art After New Media. I had the privilege of writing the Foreword for the book, and this is, in part, how I discuss their thesis.
“Graham and Cook strategically define so-called new media as a set of behaviors, not as a medium. Once you go down this road, it becomes readily apparent that a similar strategy is equally useful for much of contemporary art. At one time, the new media of photography both changed the aesthetic understanding of painting and participated in the creation of a cultural understanding of (fixed) time and representation. At another time, the new media of video changed the aesthetic understanding of film while participating with television in the creation of a cultural understanding of (real) time and distance. The art most recently known as “new media” changes our understanding of the behaviors of contemporary art precisely because of its participation in the creation of a cultural understanding of computational interactivity and networked participation. In other words, art is different after new media because of new media–not because new media is “next,” but because its behaviors are the behaviors of our technological times.”
It is perhaps wishful thinking that this book will end the eternal recurrence of the same set of questions about what is new media, but it is a huge step forward.
“In Rethinking Curating, the sheer depth and breadth of intelligent reflection among a dedicated, global group of loosely aligned peers belie every summative, simplistic question or statement one has heard or made. “How much does it cost?” “What’s new about it?” “Why is it art?” “What’s next?” “It’s about process.” “It’s computational.” “It crosses boundaries.” “It’s new.” These questions and statements are not “bad,” but in this book Beryl and Sarah give them the context they deserve–the context necessary to move on to the real-world questions and issues of working with dynamic and emerging contemporary art.”
Buy it. Read it. Enjoy it. Ask some new and different questions.
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Via Northern Lights
Personal comment:
Following an earlier post about the same book, some short developments here by Steve Dietz.
fabric | rblg
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations.
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