[-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

[Teri Rueb <teri@echonyc.com>]

Hello, empyre!  At last.  It appears that my prior email was rejected 
for having the word hello in the subject line....

My approach to the theme of this month's discussion is from the point 
of view of a practicing artist.  It is an honor and pleasure to share 
this space for dialogue with Brett Stalbaum whose work I appreciate 
very much and hold in high regard.  I'm also delighted and privileged 
to join Jon Tonkin as a discussant whose work and words are new to me 
- and all the more thrilling for that.

I would like to thank Christina McPhee and Melinda Rackam for the 
invitation to serve as guest discussant.  While so far I have only 
lurked on empyre, I have done so with rapt interest and gratitude for 
the high altitude discussions that take place here.  So, thanks 
Christina for offering a peek at my introductory comments...the full 
text follows:

My work explores issues of architecture, time, memory and the body 
through site-specific interactive sound installation.  I have used 
global positioning satellite (GPS) technology in my practice since 
1996 to explore issues of space, mapping, landscape and cultural 
identity.  My current research explores sonic and acoustic 
constructions of space, spatialized narrative, human movement and 
psycho-social geography.    Much of this work involves the mapping of 
sound to space where invisible sonic overlays are made to correspond 
to a particular geographic region: for example, a portion of the 
Canadian Rockies in "Trace," or the city of Baltimore, Maryland in 
"Invisible Cities | Sounding Baltimore".  Almost all of my works are 
large-scale outdoor interactive installations that utilize GPS 
technology and cellular networks in combination with digital 
interactive sound and/or custom web-based real-time imaging software. 
Installations are accessed and/or generated by the movement of 
visitor-participants who travel through these environments with 
custom built GPS-enabled wireless devices.

Recent works, including "The Choreography of Everyday Movement" and 
"Invisible Cities | Sounding Baltimore" incorporate the visual trace 
of human movement through urban landscapes as generated with GPS 
tracking.  These performance-drawings, made by willing participants 
as part of their daily journeys, are like charcoal rubbings of the 
physical and discursive landscape of the city as written by the body. 
Mappings, presented for archival viewing as layered transparent 
drawings, accumulate over time to provide a morphological view of the 
urban body as defined through human movement.

My recent writings examine issues of orality and literacy with 
respect to the proliferation of wireless ubiquitous computing and 
location-aware systems in art and everyday life.  This work was 
recently presented at the CAiiA Consciousness Reframed Conference in 
Perth, Australia.  Through my practice I have consistently sought to 
challenge rational, ocular-centric constructions of space and time 
implicit within mainstream urban design, architecture, digital 
systems and GPS technology itself, as a product of military and 
scientific research.  However, explicit critiques of the military 
origins and uses of GPS have remained at the margins of my practice - 
acknowledged, yet unexplored.

Given the theme of this month's discussion and the recent outbreak of 
war with Iraq, I am compelled to give the discussion over to 
questions of psycho-geographies and data landscapes as they relate to 
war.  More than any other war, we are seeing satellite imaging and 
GPS technology used to guide missiles, construct high definition 
data-embedded 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 and tactics 
is urgently needed.  I look forward to this month's forum unfolding 
as a space for such discussion and debate.

As I wrote this last paragraph last week I was thinking especially of 
the "battlefield weather reports" on CNN which have used 
sophisticated satellite imagery to create almost video game-like 
graphics of "cold fronts moving in from the north," etc..  It strikes 
me as a particularly insidious use of "neutral" data to present very 
biased, if not propagandistic, representations of the war.  Perhaps 
this might serve as a starting point for our discussion - if not, I 
would certainly appreciate triangulation on this observation off line 
or in any other format!

Thanks, again.
Teri


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.....http://www.research.umbc.edu/~rueb......