[-empyre-] GIS art

[Brett Stalbaum <beestal@cadre.sjsu.edu>]

Greetings empyre. I am really thrilled to have been invited to join this
list and discuss C5's research and work with GIS, along with Teri Reub and
John Tonkin, and alongside their work. I expect to learn from them and
you, to test some of my thoughts and some of the ideas that have been
developed by my C5 colleagues. Hopefully, empyre can make a collective
contribution to an emerging understanding of the broad range of issues
that artists working with GIS systems are thinking about and working with
(or against).

Looking back through the empyre archives, I note a tendency to begin many
of these discussions with somewhat didactic (or at least, extremely
self-assured), texts around which the conversation spins. I will include
an excerpt from one below - a reflex I can't avoid.

I am not however convinced that this is the best way to start. Why?
Because GIS related art is still an emerging form. My sense is that this
is a better time for discourse than tutor texts or defense of thesis.
(Although - that is always fun:-) I don't sense any critical mass for GIS
art as of today, and there relatively little theory or discourse
surrounding GIS related work per se. (At least as compared to other forms
of computer art...) Indeed, there are relatively few artists working with
GIS. Teri is an early pioneer. Other names come to mind, Masaki Fujihata,
Rosemarie McKeon, Hugh Pryor / Jeremy Wood, Marc Tuters, and Stephen
Wilson, who maintains a list of artists working with GPS and from where
most of the above are linked.
(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~infoarts/links/wilson.artlinks2.html). I think
that there are also good reasons to look back further to the traditions of
landscape painting, land art, and information mapping, data analysis and
visualization, for more ideas. (I note that John Tonkin spent many years
as a visualization consultant for the South Australian Department of
Fisheries.) No doubt, this preliminary list of artists and influences
should be developed much more over the course of our discussion. There is
a lot more to know, and no better place than the empyre list to pull all
of the various sources together.

But as a starting point, I offer the excerpt below, is taken from a text
I presented at the C5 Landscape Projects Field Mediation, UTM 10 589631E
4145735N, January 12, 2003. (A field mediation is C5's formal method for
presenting research and ideas to one another "in the field", so to speak.)

	The very first question that C5 raised internally about working
with landscape data as a participant in an expanded landscape practice was
how we could overcome the obvious applications of landscape data and work
toward the development of a practice that is exploratory and not merely
explanatory. Let's take two examples. Elevation grid data available from
the United States Geological Survey is voluminous and interesting, but to
a large degree the applications of such data are what we would expect them
to be. Essentially, this data set is a three dimensional terrain
description that can be used to render models of the landscape, such as 3D
mapping, and that can also be used to perform a variety of predictive
functions such as watershed analysis, natural disaster predictions such as
flooding and landslide risk analysis, and a wide variety of other
environmental, scientific and engineering analysis such as required in
forestry, geology, and road construction. The example of the Global
Positioning system is also conceptually straight forward in most of its
applications. GPS can tell you where you are, and through extrapolation,
your direction and velocity. Most applications of GPS technology, such as
in agriculture, construction, forestry, military, maritime, public safety,
surveying, and surveillance derive value from these positional
capabilities in pretty obvious ways. Much the same holds true for consumer
applications. GPS is popular with hikers, hunters, boaters, bikers,
fishing enthusiasts and even outdoor gamers participating in geo-caching
activities. Both GIS data and GPS technology explain a condition relative
to place. How can we get outside of these explanatory modes of application
for geographic information systems?

	The application of such technologies in cultural enterprises such
as in the arts, introduces the possibility of other domains of practice
for geographic information system technologies. One of the keys to
catching an alternative glimpse of the possibilities for global data and
GIS technology is to recognize that data is the actual expression of our
ability to model the planet as a system. The models and data that let us
know where we are or what is there are not mimetic, or fake. Because it is
actual, data plays an intermediary and "actualizing" role in the human
relationship to the landscape. This is not surprising: consider for
example the role of cartography in the history of discovery that led to
the very understanding that we stand on a globe. What is new however, and
that which contemporary artists are beginning to take interest in, is how
the ability to computationally explore space through model based
processing is opening possibilities for global explorative practices that
extend beyond the superficial limits that may seem to be implied in the
contemporary applications of GIS systems. In a sense, the intermediary
role of data is vastly enhanced through the contemporary informatization
of cartography. The role of the virtual in the unfolding of the actual is
quickened, more dynamic, more widespread, and more embedded in our culture
at this moment in time than at any other. So the question becomes, how can
we position the role of geo data in high-tech cultural practices so as to
escape assumptions regarding the applications of geo data?

http://www.c5corp.com/research/landscapeculture.shtml

So, perhaps we can begin our journey here. But again, I'd like to think of
this month as an opportunity to do more than spin off of the ideas of
Teri, John, and C5. I'd rather think of it as a chance to think about the
work of a number of artists and groups, and in that context for us to
openly build what I hope will serve as significant document of GIS art and
theory. And as Christina McPhee said in the introduction to this
discussion "[I]n the current context of war, we are seeing satellite
imaging and GPS technology used to guide missiles, construct high
definition maps, direct movement of troops and aircraft, and image space
as territory. Questions regarding the representation of space and
corollary constructions of identity are raised with every broadcast, press
briefing, illustration and photograph. Real-time unpacking of the rhetoric
behind these cartographic texts is urgently needed..." Thus, we should
also note that we have the opportunity to continue thinking about some of the
issues presented in March, spinning of Jordan Crandall's CTHEORY essay,
"Anything that Moves: Armed Vision". (http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=115)

Finally, it is nice to 'be here' with you all.

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