[-empyre-] [Science of the oppressed and garageScience]

[Ricardo Dominguez]

> dear Ricardo and Micha,

hola soft_skins,

>
> I really love your linking of Augusto Boal  to this idea of a
> subversive nano garage scale of production-- pervasive under the radar
> wet assembly~!
> and your nearfuture scenarios (2011,2019, etc)

Speculative diagramming has one of the methods that I have had the
pleasure to
play with since my days with Critical Art Ensemble - and question of
fractalized
links are always useful/useless in breaking away from sociocultural
ectoplasm(s)
and pre-frabricated game-plans - and towards rhythmic performativities
that can
become the (real)/s.

>
> is it possible to talk a bit here about your fall 2009 launch
> ( presumably real world?~)
>
> I am referring to  your comment below " Electronic Disturbance
> Theater’s Transborder Immigrant Tool, a
> work-in-progress (in collaboration with Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas
> and
> Amy Sara Carroll), is ready to move from alpha stage software design to
> beta testing in the Fall 2009"
>
>
> Your very long first post is much appreciated and I am just picking up
> on the last bit here.

Yep...the Transborder Immigrant Tool is an attempt to re-locate locative
media
and its predominately urban condition as the aesthetic sites of assemblage
and
towards the desert of the real. For EDT this question of reshaping the scales
for social rehearsals of effective/affective border disturbance gestures
for us connects
with Boal's theatre-as-rehearsal experiments....

The border between the U.S. and Mexico has moved between the virtual and
the all too real since before the birth of the two nation-states. This has
allowed a deep archive of suspect movement across this border to be traced
and tagged – specifically anchored to immigrants bodies moving north,
while immigrant bodies moving south much less so. The danger of moving
north across this border is not a question of politics, but vertiginous
geography. Hundreds of people have died crossing the U.S./Mexico border
due to not being able to tell where they are in relation to where they
have been and which direction they need to go to reach their destination
safely. Now with the rise of multiple distributed geospatial information
systems (such as the Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global
Positioning System) and the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist
Brett Stalbaum it is now possible to develop a Transborder Tools for
Immigrants to be implemented and distributed on cracked Nextel cell
phones. This will allow a virtual geography to mark new trails and
potentially safer routes across this desert of the real.

The technologies of Spatial Data Systems and GPS (Global Positioning
System) have enabled an entirely new relationship with the landscape that
takes form in applications for simulation, surveillance, resource
allocation, management of cooperative networks and pre-movement pattern
modeling (such as the Virtual Hiker Algorithm) an algorithm that maps out
a potential or suggested trail for real a hiker/or hikers to follow. The
Transborder Immigrant Tool would add a new layer of agency to this
emerging virtual geography that would allow segments of global society
that are usually outside of this emerging grid of hyper-geo-mapping-power
to gain quick and simple access with to GPS system. The Transborder
Immigrant Tool would not only offer access to this emerging total map
economy – but, would add an intelligent agent algorithm that would parse
out the best routes and trails on that day and hour for immigrants to
cross this vertiginous landscape as safely as possible.


Some other readings:

http://mobileactive.org/artivists-and-mobile-pho

Locative Media as War. By Sophie Le-Phat Ho
http://dpi.studioxx.org/demo/?q=en/no/12/locative-media-war-by-sophie-le-phat-ho

For me both ends of the scales - from particle capitalism(s) to border
disturbances
are connected to the themes of (de)harmonization of globalizations need to
tune-out
the counter-songs that are yet heard...what is the sound of that which is
made and kept
invisible?

over and out,
Ricardo



-- 
Ricardo Dominguez
Assistant Professor
Hellman Fellow

Visual Arts Department, UCSD
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/
Principal Investigator, CALIT2
http://calit2.net
Co-Chair gallery at calit2
http://gallery.calit2.net
CRCA Researcher
http://crca.ucsd.edu/
Ethnic Studies Affiliate
http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/
Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Affiliate
http://cilas.ucsd.edu


Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics,
Board Member
http://hemi.nyu.edu

University of California, San Diego,
9500 Gilman Drive Drive,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0436
Phone: (619) 322-7571
e-mail: rrdominguez at ucsd.edu

Project sites:
site: http://gallery.calit2.net
site: http://pitmm.net
site: http://bang.calit2.net
site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom
blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom