Re: [-empyre-] locative city, annotated space

[hight@34n118w.net]

> Hello,

I sent out a reply earlier today but it didn't go through

You bring up a lot of interesting points...

There are different interpretations and strategies related to augmented
space. Some are working more with adding visual data and/or specific
pragmatic detail like sales at a store, who is at a bar, dangers etc...

Others, like 34n are working more with sound and data and this allows a
focus on physical place and content can work with layered data, metaphor,
juxtapositions, ghosts of past incarnations as sound files so a person
sees the physical place and learns to question it as well learn more of it
in present and past.  The funny thing about the 34n photos (funny that you
are the first to mention it) is that they are to encapsulate a wide range
of information about the connection of technology and physical exploration
and functionality.  The thing is, most people explore it in groups up to 5
in a sort of collective social jellyfish formation with only the one
person with the map stopping at times to look at upcoming hotspot
triggers, choices to consider and movement.  Even when it is only one
person it is experienced most of the time not looking at the map, but at
places being viewed.

Some of the sound files are old wooden carriage wheels, an older car horn
and trains where remnant tracks appear in streets or where trains would
have passed.  The effect is almost always people startled looking for the
car or train or even carriage (all what would have been heard at different
times in the past) and then realizing what just happened.

 I am buddies with andrea.

"Authentic"   wow.  one of those words that is really near a balloon
stretched translucent in its broad nature and span.  Another one is
"Normal"         Subjective to the point of having basically abillion
definitions , each written by another personal point of view.

I do see these technologies becoming quite commonplace in a not too
distant future.  A lot will utilize smart lens technology which is
currently being developed for such applications as high rise building
visual field data overlays for hostage situations.....data placed on rooms
with security officials, rooms overlaid with data of possible suspects,
danger levels color encoded.......

The artistic applications are endlessly exciting




> Jeremy, et al.
>
> I'm interested in your thoughts on the slippage involved in the mediated
> experience of place, with the danger of the participant being so wrapped
> up in the interface that she loses sight (literally, figuratively) of
> the actual landscape surrounding her, something Andrea Moed briefly
> mentions in her "Annotate Space" essay: "[T]hey [location-based
> software] tend to narrow the experience of place.  Some cultural critics
> believe that location-based software can make people more indifferent to
> their environments--at home or away.  To the extent that a handheld
> device provides a consistent interface to all places, it eliminates the
> need to relate to a particular place on its own terms.  For example,
> where you previously would have asked a local to direct you to the
> nearest post office in a strange neighborhood, you can now punch the
> query into a street mapping program on your PDA . . ." (Moed, 5).
> (http://www.panix.com/~andrea/annotate/research.html)
>
> In the photographs on the 34n118w site, for example, in all but one of
> the photographs the participants are gazing intently down at the screen
> or off into middle space listening to the narrative.
> http://34n118w.net/htmldir/Descriptn.html
>
> As a poet and sound/visual artist involved in mapping place, I'm all for
> annotated, locative place experiences, and I think it is a rich and
> inspired (and inspiring) means of renegotiating the landscape, but I'm
> wondering how far the PDA/tablet goes in replacing authentic experience
> with mediated experience (rather than augmenting), or does this
> technology function as merely a tool similar to a street map or tourist
> guide?  (And what is "authentic" place experience?)
>
> Obviously, when the technology advances and the hardware shrinks, the
> annotated interface will become more ubiquitous, so perhaps this is just
> a matter of familiarizing ourselves with a new way of walking through a
> space that will someday be ordinary?
>
> G.
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>