[-empyre-] week two | transnational collaboration research/practice

[Leila Christine Nadir]

Hello everyone:



It's a pleasure to be working with all of you to build upon the discussion
initiated by Dale and Patty's Thinking through Digital Media book.



First, I'd like to provide this URL so that readers might be able to see
some imagery and get a feel for Indeterminate Hikes+ if they like:
http://www.ecoarttech.net/project/indeterminate-hike/. I'd also like to say
that we have a in-depth essay forthcomin
​g​
​​
​ in Leonardo about Indeterminate Hikes+ project, part of a special issue
on mobile media art, edited by Mimi Sheller and Hana Iverson.​



Our Indeterminate Hikes+ mobile media app project originated in our desire
to rethink the way mobile media devices are used, and to test some of the
criticisms leveraged against mobile computing devices by media theorists
and environmental thinkers--and to also adapt psychogeography, happenings,
and maybe even a little Buddhist meditation and mindfulness for the
smartphone era. We are environmental artists, so we are involved in a lot
of ecocritical scenes, where it was quite common a few years ago to hear
that smartphones will destroy the planet because all those screens are
directing attention away from the world around us.



In that context, Indeterminate Hikes+ was a sort of test, a social hack, a
way to break down the instrumentality of GoogleMaps, and to work against
what Jason Farman calls the "default mode" of mobile media use. We use this
quote a lot, so if you've ever seen one of our talks, you've probably
already heard it: "While our devices can and do pull us away from a deep
engagement with people and spaces, this doesn’t have to be the *default
mode* for the ways we use our mobile media… if used in a dynamic way that
addresses the medium’s strengths, mobile media can actually get us to
engage with each other and with the spaces we move through in deep,
meaningful, and context-rich ways." At the same time, we were adapting the
discourse of wilderness--most famously deconstructed by historian William
Cronon--for urban settings. Misusing "wilderness" and turning it into a
poetic concept rather than a geographical or ecological label.



Here's how the app works:



After downloading the app, IH+ users input their starting points (usually
their current locations) and their destinations. The app, rather than
providing the quickest route from one location to the other, mis-uses
GoogleMaps to create an indirect, meandering path that makes no sense in
terms of efficiency. As their phones direct them along these spontaneous
trails, participants are stopped at Scenic Vistas. In traditional
wilderness discourse, a ‘scenic vista’ signifies sublime nature that is
supposed to awe and inspire: views atop mountains where one can see for
miles, a canyon where one pulls off the road for a closer look, a majestic
waterfall where one sets down her backpack. *Indeterminate Hikes*+,
however, does not work this way. The app’s Scenic Vistas have a decidedly
different character than the special markers we are accustomed to. Rather
than landmarks designated on a static map, predetermined by either cultural
values or an authoritative human guide, IH+ provides Scenic Vistas entirely
at random, so you might end up at a rain gutter, alleyway, or abandoned
house. To put this in terms of media and mapping: IH+ does not use mobile
media technology to communicate pre-established environmental data, simply
linking hikers with pre-approved places understood easily as beautiful
nature or sublime wilderness. This would repeat, in effect, the privileging
of wilderness that Cronon criticizes. And such an approach would not take
advantage of the unique qualities of mobile media; it would entail simply
uploading the age-old, hierarchical experience of print cartography onto
our smartphones. Instead, IH+ reworks navigational technologies in order to
create Scenic Vistas that are always changing, using mobile media to
navigate the earth without a captain in charge. As a result, the app
creates the possibility of place-making and ecological awakening anywhere,
unrestricted by prior assumptions about what that place should look like.

With *Indeterminate Hikes*+, mobility, rather than detaching us from our
immediate environment, becomes a tool enabling us to spread our capacity to
experience wildness—or environmental otherness, as Cronon puts it—to any
geographical space. At each Scenic Vista, participants are asked to
complete a directive and engage in a meditative task that facilitates
mindful awareness. They are also given the option to send a text, take a
fieldnote, or capture an image. Examples of directives include “Follow the
path of falling water,” “Listen to the mood of the walking path,” or
“Wander the caverns on the surface of the earth.” Wedding wilderness
vocabulary to non-wild places requires the stretching of environmental
imagination. A walking path may be a nature trail or it may be a
well-traveled concrete sidewalk; wandering caverns may entail spelunking
through underground caves or taking the stairs or elevators into the vast
depths of basements or skyscrapers.

“The whole earth is a great tablet holding the multiple overlaid new and
ancient traces of a swirl of forces. Each place is its own place, forever
(eventually) wild.” --Gary Snyder

Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermin
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*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*.*.*.*
Leila Christine Nadir, PhD
Lecturer, Sustainability & Environmental Humanities, University of Rochester
2015 Artist-in-residence, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
2015 Artist-in-residence, Center for Land Use Interpretation
Art+Food+Environment: www.EcoArtTech.net <http://www.ecoarttech.net>
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