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

[Geri Wittig <gwittig@adobe.com>]

To the question: "what do you find most interesting about the 
possibilities with locationaware art and technology?"

I would have to say that what I think is of major interest to us at 
C5 is what data reveals about a location rather than what the 
creator/narrator describes or inferences about a location. In 
surveying a variety of locative media trends, it seems to me that 
much of the locative media work focuses on a narrator/creator's input 
of information for a user to navigate. One of our major research 
focuses is on what the data collected from various locations through 
GIS technology has to say - this is where I think things get really 
interesting. I think this is a classic case of what my colleague 
Brett Stalbaum pointed to when he described the "semiotic reversal of 
syntamatic axis and paradigmatic axis within the more general 
cultural logic of database", in his "Database Logic(s) and Landscape 
Art." For instance, as part of the Landscape Initiatives project that 
is currently underway at C5, in the spring of this year, I traveled 
the length of the Great Wall in China, recording my GPS tracks from 
the northwest desert to where the Wall ends at the Yellow Sea. 
Currently we are working on developing various algorithmic models for 
determining the Great Wall of California based on the data I brought 
back from China, the data is directing that research exploration and 
will have a direct impact on revealing the landscape we will traverse 
in CA.

geri wittig
C5 Corp


> > if you could overlap two different periods (or more) in a place, which
> wou;d you choose?
>
> what do you find most interesting about the possibilities with location
> aware art and technology? now....in 5 years...in 20.......
>
>
> can you think of better terminology for all this ?
>
>
>
>
>
> > Wow.
> > I agree with you that content is absolutely crucial.  I am really
> > concerned about what I call the "whizz bang kapow" or "gadget factor"  So
> > much is made of cool gear and interesting experiments , but rich content
> > and a new artistic work in terms of methodology and metaphor is often
> > lacking. t
> >
> >
> > "I" and linearity are not what I see in a city.  In 34n the narratives I
> > wrote are from the pov's of people in many different places and times and
> > place is resonant with multiple voices, nonlinearity and the application
> > of new approaches to content, not a rehashing of what could work in a more
> > traditional form. There can be situationist type work too in a sense of
> > questioning governmental controls, and of place  (what if it is a place
> > one knows but all the data is of a place that is far off..and
> > misunderstood.....afghanastan for example......)
> >
> > "style is a personal form of originality".   that is a horrible construct
> > for any work .....if you mean as style over substance.....
> >
> > ayers.......rich with meaning.......artistic skill in researching and in
> > placing to heighten awareness of place while also questioning it
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I agree with you that content is crucial ( thy soat is m
> > > Dear empyreans,
> > > this type of silicon-augmentation of the meatscape brings a number of
> > > things
> > > to mind. They are, in no particular order:
> > >
> > > 1. Benjamin's Arcaden-Pojekt. Antecedent for the flaneur is the
> > > Baudelairean
> > > dandy for whom "style is a personal form of originality". (I would like
> > > to
> > > juxtapose here the impersonally totalised reading of place with the
> > > "monument to sentiment" (Deleuze and Guattari) I understand as both
> > > underwritten by Baudelaire's idea of style and as constitutive -might
> > > one
> > > use the word hypostasis? - of the art act);
> > >
> > > 2. The legend of the Golem - place augmented by data as Golem-like;
> > >
> > > 3. From 1984 onward, New Zealand (whence I write) underwent a
> > > thoroughgoing
> > > and abstract reorientation of its social and economic structures towards
> > > a
> > > Friedman-esque 'free' market system. This one local commentator has
> > > called
> > > "the New Zealand experiment". The impact of the experiment on cultural
> > > institutions has been immense, experientially, although unmeasured. But
> > > I
> > > am
> > > bringing to your attention one aspect of this transformation of the
> > > socius:
> > > there is no longer - outside the field of transformative processes - an
> > > effective means, media, for critiquing%
> > _______________________________________________
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