<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Hello everyone: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">It's a pleasure to be working with all of you to build upon the
discussion initiated by Dale and Patty's Thinking through Digital Media book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">First, I'd like to provide this URL so that readers might be able
to see some imagery and get a feel for Indeterminate Hikes+ if they like:
<a href="http://www.ecoarttech.net/project/indeterminate-hike/" target="_blank">http://www.ecoarttech.net/project/indeterminate-hike/</a>. I'd also like to say
that we have a in-depth essay forthcomin</span></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">g</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> in Leonardo about Indeterminate
Hikes+ project, part of a special issue on mobile media art, edited by Mimi
Sheller and Hana Iverson.</div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Our Indeterminate Hikes+ mobile media app project originated in
our desire to rethink the way mobile media devices are used, and to test some
of the criticisms leveraged against mobile computing devices by media theorists
and environmental thinkers--and to also adapt psychogeography, happenings, and
maybe even a little Buddhist meditation and mindfulness for the smartphone era.
We are environmental artists, so we are involved in a lot of ecocritical
scenes, where it was quite common a few years ago to hear that smartphones will
destroy the planet because all those screens are directing attention away from
the world around us. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">In that context, Indeterminate Hikes+ was a sort of test, a social
hack, a way to break down the instrumentality of GoogleMaps, and to work
against what Jason Farman calls the "default mode" of mobile media
use. We use this quote a lot, so if you've ever seen one of our talks, you've
probably already heard it: "While our devices can and do pull us away from
a deep engagement with people and spaces, this doesn’t have to be the <i>default
mode</i> for the ways we use our mobile media… if used in a dynamic way that
addresses the medium’s strengths, mobile media can actually get us to engage
with each other and with the spaces we move through in deep, meaningful, and
context-rich ways." At the same time, we were adapting the discourse of
wilderness--most famously deconstructed by historian William Cronon--for urban
settings. Misusing "wilderness" and turning it into a poetic concept
rather than a geographical or ecological label. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Here's how the app works: </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">After downloading the app, IH+ users input their starting points
(usually their current locations) and their destinations. The app, rather than
providing the quickest route from one location to the other, mis-uses
GoogleMaps to create an indirect, meandering path that makes no sense in terms
of efficiency. As their phones direct them along these spontaneous trails,
participants are stopped at Scenic Vistas. In traditional wilderness discourse,
a ‘scenic vista’ signifies sublime nature that is supposed to awe and inspire:
views atop mountains where one can see for miles, a canyon where one pulls off
the road for a closer look, a majestic waterfall where one sets down her
backpack. <i>Indeterminate Hikes</i>+, however, does not work this way. The
app’s Scenic Vistas have a decidedly different character than the special
markers we are accustomed to. Rather than landmarks designated on a static map,
predetermined by either cultural values or an authoritative human guide, IH+
provides Scenic Vistas entirely at random, so you might end up at a rain
gutter, alleyway, or abandoned house. To put this in terms of media and
mapping: IH+ does not use mobile media technology to communicate
pre-established environmental data, simply linking hikers with pre-approved
places understood easily as beautiful nature or sublime wilderness. This would
repeat, in effect, the privileging of wilderness that Cronon criticizes. And
such an approach would not take advantage of the unique qualities of mobile
media; it would entail simply uploading the age-old, hierarchical experience of
print cartography onto our smartphones. Instead, IH+ reworks navigational
technologies in order to create Scenic Vistas that are always changing, using
mobile media to navigate the earth without a captain in charge. As a result,
the app creates the possibility of place-making and ecological awakening
anywhere, unrestricted by prior assumptions about what that place should look
like. </span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">With <i>Indeterminate Hikes</i>+, mobility, rather than detaching
us from our immediate environment, becomes a tool enabling us to spread our
capacity to experience wildness—or environmental otherness, as Cronon puts
it—to any geographical space. At each Scenic Vista, participants are asked to
complete a directive and engage in a meditative task that facilitates mindful
awareness. They are also given the option to send a text, take a fieldnote, or
capture an image. Examples of directives include “Follow the path of falling
water,” “Listen to the mood of the walking path,” or “Wander the caverns on the
surface of the earth.” Wedding wilderness vocabulary to non-wild places
requires the stretching of environmental imagination. A walking path may be a nature
trail or it may be a well-traveled concrete sidewalk; wandering caverns may
entail spelunking through underground caves or taking the stairs or elevators
into the vast depths of basements or skyscrapers. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">“The whole earth is a great tablet holding the multiple overlaid
new and ancient traces of a swirl of forces. Each place is its own place,
forever (eventually) wild.” --Gary Snyder</span><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial;color:black">Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermin</span></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">t</div><span style="font-family:Arial;color:black"></span><br><p></p><span class="im"><div><div dir="ltr">*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.*.*.*<br><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Leila Christine Nadir, PhD<br></div><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Lecturer, <span><span>Sustainability & </span></span>Environmental Humanities<span>, University of Rochester</span></div><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">2015 Artist-in-residence, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts<br><span>2015 Artist-in-residence, Center for Land Use Interpretation</span><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Art+Food+Environment: <a href="http://www.ecoarttech.net" target="_blank">www.EcoArtTech.net</a></div></div></div></span><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><span><span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div>
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