Re: [-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

everything returns to the interaction of tools and consciousness...

It's true that we have an altered experience of landscape for the new technologies, increasingly portable and ubiquitous, that mediate our navigations, merging data, landscape and the body in evermore transforming cyborgian mutations....

The various mentions of South American (Incan, I believe) knots and corporeal systems of navigation lead me to consider what is being lost (as well as gained) as we become increasingly enmeshed with GIS technologies. There is no (pre-GPS navigation) followed by (pre-GPS navigation) + (GPS). The change is ecological, of course, as in Neil Postman's analysis. The entire cultural landscape and consciousness is effected by the emergence and proliferation of GIS technologies such that a prior state can no longer be accessed or imagined without distortion.

I think of Australian aboriginal songlines, a practice that continues to capture my imagination as it relates to sound installation, narrative, issues of orality/literacy and ocular-centrism. The practice of songlines or walkabout represents a complex interaction of landscape, body and narrative in the interests of sacred/mundane ritual, history, travel and survival (and surely more, though as an outsider I can only imagine).

The interesting contrast of this practice with Western navigation and attendant technologies is that it is an entirely corporeally-based knowledge (literally embodied). In wholly oral cultures there is no written record that extends beyond the author's place and time - only the record which is passed down through oral tradition. The oral mind is nearly impossible for us to experience as our culture and consciousness is so deeply steeped in literate modes and secondary orality (a moment which emerges from and is only made possible by the tools and forms of literate culture). Apologies if all I needed to say were the names Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan.

Visualizations of songlines are not maps in the sense that we know them. In fact, the visualization of songlines as dreamings, painted on canvas, tee-shirts and coasters is mostly a product of tourism as these images were traditionally scratched in the sand and left to the wind. Songlines are stories that unfold from memory as they are released through walking/singing. They are passed down through oral tradition and invoked through song. In an interesting inversion, they represent sonic records (typically assumed to be highly fugitive, though songlines have survived for thousands of years) that are believed to preserve what the Western mind views as the most lasting external record, the landscape itself.

Our Western understanding of space and navigation is inextricably linked to visualizations in the form of maps and signage - now increasingly generated and read via database. I wonder what changes are occurring in our consciousness as our sense of space is increasingly mediated and punctuated by mobile technologies - especially cell phones and portable stereos which are aural-, not ocular-centric. The implications of such ubiquitous technologies as they merge landscape and data are fascinating to me.

Yesterday, a young woman showed me her new Nokia phone, popularized by it's appearance on American Idol, that contains a 2 x 2 inch screen which allows her to capture and send still images and video. Sadly, the visual insists on eclipsing the aural again, but the implications are nonetheless compelling, especially as such devices suggest an experience of landscape as visually and aurally annotated space.



especially easy for me to do for some reason. But on the other hand, we
are already well into an era when the ability to process data into
information, (or dynamically access information at a distance), can be
carried by the civilian population in our pockets. (The military and
industry have had this capability for some time.) This is forging a
compelling connection between our ancient human ability to navigate by
landmarks, dead reckoning, and tactics/tactility that lie under foot, with
a complex of data processing that emerges in a more embedded way with the
world and that changes our experience of both data and world, and
potentially our knowledge of data and place, in a transformative manner.
(What if the Spanish Armada and the English Fleet had GPS and weather
satellites in 1588? We now know how ultimately unimportant the sandstorms
that occurred during Gulf War 2.0 turned out to be, even though they were
perhaps the most potent force the "coalition of the willing" faced.)

While this new complex certainly includes the image, I view it as only one
of many possible waypoints in processing, and interaction with the body.
Data, and processing, are now active participants with us in the
landscape, having a great deal to tell those who develop ways of listening
to it. I think there is a lot of room at this time for artists to explore
the various ways of listening (or seeing, feeling, acting...), because we
too have a stake in how the world is heard. That is where we are, I think.

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Jordan Crandall wrote:

 I am not sure if I got bumped off the list or if things have settled down.
 This discussion is fascinating and I've been wanting to jump in and I hope
 it's not too late. I've been thinking about the way that CNN has visualized
 the weather during the war, and also that animated EarthViewer satellite
 imagery that swoops us in from space (in the context of Teri's description
 of the casting of the viewer as pilot) . We gleefully fly over Iraq as if on
 a ride, as the weatherpeople sweep their arms about to the tune of their
 flyovers, orchestrating the animations like conductors. Where are 'we'
 supposed to be in these visions of mastery. It is as if by having ever more
> sophisticated modes of visualization from the air we can somehow control 
 what happens on the ground; or that since 'precision guiding' works in terms
 of missiles it would somehow work in terms of mappings .  Bunker-busters
 penetrate into the earth as we try to push more deeply into/through the
 image itself.  What resists ?  How incredible those sandstorms were that
 shrouded the landscape in an orange haze and reduced vision to arm's length.

 I have also been thinking a lot of Brett's description of the CNN feed at
 the gas pump. How perfect to get the flow of oil, network,
 and wind all in one place along with the struggles for their control .


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