My
research interest will focus on the production of an entangled[1]
interface distributed through Singapore's urban fabric. The interface will
explore the dialectics inherent to the extraction of information from the surface
in the form of surveillance and its transformation, or re-signification, into
an infosthetics[2] network,
perceivable through mobile devices. The information running through the network
will make ambivalent use of the metaphor of a zero-player game[3],
still its stellations[4]
will be fed by human interaction.
Then,
the purpose of this research is to reinstate the poetics of space into a highly
pressurized surface as a strategy for applying critical thought to the newly
introduced ways of the information age.
The
city is one of the oldest technologies known to mankind, as it is a system of
archiving and classifying information, but also fertile ground for interaction.
Such a technology has been upgraded slowly but surely, as its systems and
networks constantly renew or improve. Though at breakthrough points in history,
emergent phenomena have radically reshaped human behavior while imposing new
habits and ways. [Think of the water closet]. The so-called information age has
brought substantial changes in the way we interact with reality; moreover, it
has deeply affected how we perceive it. The exponential nature of the evolution
of new technologies and their adoption in society tend to quickly blur limits.
This project is rooted in the volatile nature of our world where those limits
between the impossible, the possible and the feasible are shifting ever faster
and the same is true for the limits between the unimaginable, the imaginable
and the imagined.
Although
we tend to adopt new technologies quickly, it seems we sometimes lack a
critical approach towards them. Many of us hail a new era with no regard to the
potentially disastrous outcomes that may befall humanity without the
application of critical thought. One such social landmine revolves around the ubiquity
and invasiveness of mobile devices, becoming a distributed and ever-present
decentralized network of Little Brothers, watching and recording human
activities 24/7, which may well lead to the end of privacy as we know it.
However, top-down surveillance by the dominant control mechanisms is no longer
needed if we take control of the situation and do it ourselves.
Therefore,
there is an essential need to adopt critical imagination in the design and
implementation of such new medias that will once again reshape the way we
humans communicate, interact, think, etc.
Cognitive
surfaces, like the city fabric, are subject to varying amounts of pressure and
that pressure itself is defined by the strategic deployment of specific
structures within it, being tangible or intangible, including: the void or the
constructed city, deployment of wireless networks, streets, etc., which shape
our daily cognitive processes. When an entropic element is inserted into a
highly pressured surface it tends to create emergent phenomena, which question
our notions of reality.
It
is already too late to try and create a distinction between the real and the
virtual, or the so called worlds of atoms and bytes[5]
which used to be interpreted as polar opposites within the spectrum of perception.
Nowadays we interact within a presence reality, which includes but is no
limited to one or the other. Our interactions arise from perceptions we make in
a holistic reality Ð the reality we live. The diversification of the human
experience, largely influenced by the adoption of technology, has led to
diversification of realities. Our worlds are our own, and though this has
always been true, technologically-assisted realities have lead to heightened
divergence. Despite the fact that we are packed ever tighter and tighter across
the face of the earth, we live alone. We live apart. No one entity can pretend
to have a monopoly over anyone's reality Ð not the church, the state nor
purveyor of video games. ÒLive in your world, Play in ours[6]Ó
is no longer a valid statement.
Augmented
Space is a term used to describe a matrix of possibilities that enhance human
experience through technological means, this kind of space is the next
iteration of the one we nowadays move, think and interact within. This space is
not confined to a computer screen or a walk in the park. It permeates, and will
do so even more, every aspect of human life while generating a hybrid system of
knowledge, perception and interaction. Like Lev Manovich suggested in his paper
ÒLearning from PradaÓ[7],
this research proposal Òconsiders the 'invisible' space of electronic data
flows as substance rather than just a void, something in the need of a
structure, a politics and poetics.Ó
With
artistic concerns and an architectural background, I have been exploring the
spatial qualities and potential of the once called 'virtual' spaces, or to put
it in other words, my main concern as an artist is the study that could lead to
a redefinition into n-generated perceived space. I have worked with computer
games as they are a suitable platform to speculate and investigate Ð a lab to test realities existing in
parallel worlds, a phenomena coherent to the latest scientific approaches to
reality.
I
began actively studying through modding[8]
the Tron[9]
game [based on that 80's movie] where the gamers move into a faux 3D space with
their true range of interaction a planar one. I then directed a code-deep
approach to a real appropriation of 3D space inside that software which
resulted in the game 'Oversaturation'[10].
On other terms, my first commissioned piece was 'Narrowcast'[11]
an installation about surveillance in downtown Mexico City and the impact on
the passerby. After 'Oversaturation', I attempted to diagram an ambivalent
relationship between this game structure and Mexico CityÕs surface. That
resulted in the Overmachinima[12]
Movie as an attempt to give neutral ground to parallel realities existing
within the same surface. Basically, my work over the past few years has been
oriented towards the exploration and resignification of presence space, be it
real, virtual, physical or not.
A
ludic approach to reality: Situationist example.
Through
a situationist approach, this project tries to lead psychogeographical[13]
experiences in a new dimension through the deployment of situations in
augmented space. This project tries to resignify the way users perceive the
urban landscape through technological means. This project urges people to
follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical, new way, a
situationist approach taken into a new stellation as an alternative to being
prisoners to our daily routes and routines, living in a complex city,
navigating it with complex technologies, but treading the same path every day
and using available tech in the same, predictable ways.
Current
trends in videogame production are interesting in terms of how we as a
collective are forced to imagine hyperreality. Given the latest trends in
successfully commercial games [or movies, for that matter], it appears the way
we want to imagine ourselves is like a higher-res image of ourselves. Here we
must again apply critical thought towards where/how we really want to imagine
ourselves and our environment. I think that we have already achieved
significant technological success and that such a paradigm of HD-zation of life
only corresponds to marketing trends. Essentially, a consumer will buy a new
computer with a high-end videocard just to be able to keep up with the latest
version of Doom which is CPU -GPU intensive, but in the end, it's the same
product they have been playing since the late 80's. Therefore, what we lack is
not trillions of floating-point operations per second, but an intelligent way
of putting them to work.
To make a historical example, let's look
at Rez[14]
a videogame launched in the early 2000's, which, under 300 Mb imposed a new
paradigm for a 3D game and achieved a certain level of success becoming a cult
game. Most of the games that came out at the time, of course, didn't, as they
were concerned with the market trends and aspiring aesthetics of the time,
occupying larger amounts of CD or even DVD memory, just to provide a poorer
experience. This game is a good example of the power of critical imagination.
Other
current trends in the use and application of technologies, especially mobile,
is to make reality more manageable through higher-def information, this research project will deal with
strategies towards the emission of a smaller level of detail into the flux of
information. While it is true that these devices are ÒConnecting People,Ó[15]
they also carry vital pieces of information for human beings, and they will
surely carry more in the near future.
The
distributed panopticon example comes into play here once again. While it is
desirable to visualize information and interconnect networks, it is highly
dangerous to do so in a fine grain of detail, because of the privacy and
control problems we have already talked about. This project will also deal with
notions of absurdism in communicative flows like 'What will happen if I want to
take the longest route from point a to point b?' 'What if I want to see
irrelevant data, like how many red cars pass on a street? I am interested in impractical or
deviant, but moreover anonymous, uses of these technologies towards dislocating
the perceptions of reality trough augmentation. The amount of absurdism in this
project is yet to be determined but should be a component of the study.
I
have suggested using the ambivalent metaphor of the zero-player game in the
sense of giving the system a set of rules to follow once certain conditions are
established, but those establishing the conditions are living, unaware humans.
This project is to have a ludic component that researches relationships between
those contradictory systems in order to potentiate actions towards the general
objectives of the project.
METHODOLOGY
In
order to affix a coherent nature to this project, I will use a mixed methods
research approach. While the input to the project may be of a qualitative
nature, done through direct observation, participation in the setting and
analysis of documents, the output will be driven by quantitative research
methods, like the production of algorithms. Science, technology, culture, thought and action
describe a noetic[16]
and ontological continuum. In this holistic approach to reality there is no
difference between in and out, nor between before and after, thus our temporal
and spatial figures change, our semiotic horizon changes.
The
cycle begins by either gaining access to surveillance networks or starting a
mini network myself in particular nodes in the urban fabric where information
tends to stratify, ontological places which resignify existence in the way we
behave and interact. The information perceived by the network will be operate
through software in order to extract significant or insignificant data. This
data will then trigger algorithms in another node within the system in a
continuous loop, which can be represented through a variety of 'skins'
utlilizing AR strategies [a data garden, ovnis flying in the city, masses of
polygons, etc]. The idea is that the information produced and gathered in a
certain node, will be displayed in another, completely different node and so
forth, while completing a loop based on the idea of the Borromean rings[17]
topology. This topology will be effective throughout the network, proposing a
notion of entanglement where nodes in the feedback loop work together and
depend on each other regardless of their geographical location, approaching a
deferred media reality, which will introduce a playful situationist notion in
the urban fabric, suggesting cognition through mobility and the improvisational
nature of thought and knowledge in what can be called a dislocative gestalt[18] approach.
RELATED
WORK
I
have been influenced by various projects that both emphasize the need and are
making possible, through augmented reality, the arrival of the augmented city
and, moreover, augmented space. These projects operate in a wide matrix of
technological languages, but thinking only how these projects function is
futile if they are to be assessed in terms of communicational semiotics medium,
which offers a means for understanding how the medium helps us determine the
way meaning is constructed. We will then need to think as well towards the
apprehension of how meaning is understood. These projects might be aimed
towards none or more of the following communicational tasks:
Induce
critical thinking
Prove
a technological feasibility
Disseminate
poetry
Promote
ludic or playful activities
Promote
an array of didactic activities
By
the means of none or more of the following techniques[19]:
Body
sensitive installations: the silhouette of a passerby gets involved
Light installations: light as dominating medium
Digital Graffitti: icons projected onto city walls
Leaving thoughts and ideas: passer-by communicate thoughts and ideas
Facades: building walls become a medium
Visualization devices: new devices entering the urban realm
Urban gaming: entertainment as primary objective
Hidden layers in the urban realm: unseeable information made visible
TiBe - Optical Tracking of Animals[20] [Project]
From their site: We
implemented a observation system for the VetMed Vienna which allows an
efficient method for the research of learning behavior of rats. Several
training conditions can be investigated by recording the paths chosen by the
rats in a labyrinth or a field and then statistically analyzing those paths.
The rats are filmed from above and their paths are computed in real-time from
the gained images. In an open field these tests are conducted in darkness;
infrared lighting makes the tracking possible even under those conditions.
Relevance to this study: A
very simple yet powerful approach to psychogeographical patterns in a
predetermined terrain. Map generation through surveillance.
Synthetic Environment for
Analysis and Simulations[21]
[Work in progress]
From wikipedia: Purdue University's Synthetic
Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS, is
currently being used by Homeland Security and the US Defense Department to simulate crises on the US mainland. SEAS
"enables researchers and organizations to try out their models or
techniques in a publicly known, realistically detailed environment.Ó It
"is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations,
including Iraq, Afghanistan and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news,
census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along
with proprietary information such as military intelligence. [...] The Iraq and
Afghanistan computer models are the most highly developed and complex of the 62
available to JFCOM-J9. Each has about five million individual nodes
representing things such as hospitals, mosques, pipelines, and people."
Relevance to this study:
High end technologies used by a state apparatus both to invoke an idea of power
and omnipresence and an attempt to put them into practice.
SPOTS Project.
Potsdamerplatz.[22] [Project]
From their site: For a
period of 18 months, media installation SPOTS will convert an office block
located at downtown Potsdamer Platz Berlin into one of world's largest media
facades. Commissioned by the agency ÈCafŽ Palermo PubblicitˆÇ the large scale
matrix made up of 1800 conventional fluorescent lights was designed by the
architect/artist office realities:united, Berlin for the client HVB Immobilien
AG. Some projects included were:
33 Questions per minute.[23]
[Project]
From their site:
33 Questions per minute consists of a computer program which uses grammatical
rules to combine words from a dictionary and generate 55 billion unique,
fortuitous questions. The automated questions are presented at a rate of 33 per
minute --the threshold of legibility-- on 21 tiny LCD screens encrusted on the
support columns of the Exhibition space. A keyboard allows participants to log
on to the building and add their own questions to the automatic flow.
City Gaze[24] [Project]
From
their site: ÔCity GazeÕ (Die Stadt hat Augen) is an exhibition that pursues a
unique concept. An office building on Potsdamer Platz is being transformed into
a seeing object. From 24 November to 26 February 2006, SPOTS, a light and media
installation that has been integrated into the buildingÕs facade, will be
presenting new works by internationally renowned artists that have been created
especially for this location and this medium. The show will launch with a work
from Berlin-based artists and architects realities:united Ð who also have
overall responsibility for the development of the light and media facade Ð in
collaboration with the artist John deKron.
Relevance to this study:
City-scale media facade which induces critical thinking and reinstatement of
the poetics of space. Surface
democratization.
Avoiding traffic with your
mobile[25]
[Work in progress]
Synopsis: A series of
users of a particular brand of cellphones anonymously send positional data over
a network. By mapping the information, this project determines congested routes
on particular roads.
Relevance to this study:
Anonymous, decentralized information is provided in order to provide more
efficient interaction.
DenCity[26]
[Project]
From their site:
denCity.net examines the enrichment of real urban sites by a virtual dimension
of information and networking, this being accomplished by localising the
virtual. Aka. Places in urban
space are tagged (i.e. marked) by 2D-Barcodes, that are readable by mobile
camera phones. These so called QR-Codes contain nothing but the name of the tag
and an identification (ID). The mobile will access WAP (mobile Internet) to get
the related information on denCity.net. This can be simple information like
opening-hours, description about the place, tips etc. But denCity.net also
knows the physical (real) location of the tag, since the user specified this
upon its creation. It can thus give relevant links to other tags (nearby).
Also, the user can leave information: He or she can write comments or rate the
tag (other interactions might be added in the future). Locative forums emerge -
traces of users in actual space.
Relevance to this study: A
clear attempt towards augmented space.
The Rise of the
Participatory Panopticon[27]
[Paper]
From their site: Soon --
probably within the next decade, certainly within the next two -- we'll be
living in a world where what we see, what we hear, what we experience will be
recorded wherever we go. There will be few statements or scenes that will go
unnoticed, or unremembered. Our day to day lives will be archived and saved.
What's more, these archives will be available over the net for recollection,
analysis, even sharing. And we will be doing it to ourselves.
Relevance to this study:
Acknowledgment of the need for privacy in our digital era. Critical thinking
about emerging technologies.
Architectural anatomy[28]
[Project]
From their site: Our
prototype application overlays a graphical representation of portions of a
building's structural systems over a user's view of the room in which they are
standing. The overlaid virtual world typically shows the outlines of the
concrete joists, beams and columns surrounding the room. We have built a
partial model of Columbia's Schapiro Center for Physical Science and
Engineering Research, which contains portions of the joists, beams and columns
that are in and near the lab in which our work is being performed. The model is
based on the construction drawings provided by the building's architects.
Relevance to this study:
Revelations of hidden data. Microtracking.
The Game of 3D Life[29]
[Research]
From a website[30]:
In an M-dimensional Life a point has 3M - 1
neighbors, i.e. 8 for 2D (M =
2) and 26 for 3D (M = 3). Therefore in 3D we can get richer rules and structures. Synopsis: A cellular automata[31] game, based on John Conway's Game of Life[32]
if given a three dimensional grid instead of a flat one.
Relevance to this study:
Instates a higher order in complex relations between individuals given simple
instructions. Instates poetics of space and negotiates its use.
GPS::Tron[33]
[Project]
From their site: Is an
adaption of the classic arcade game Tron for mobile phones. What makes it new
and different is that the original gameÕs concept is expanded by adding levels
of reality and virtuality that blend into the realm of augmented reality. The
players move in real space, they are tracked by GPS and their position
influences their position in the game. Each player is represented by a line
that gets longer and longer. However, the playerÕs own line is not allowed to
cross itself or the opponentÕs line. If it does, the player causing the crash
loses.
Relevance to this study:
Ludic practices in the urban realm. Simple interaction in urban space
rationalization. Invites exploration in augmented reality.
OUT[34]
[Project]
From their
site: Two women in gear are on the ground. One with a laptop and the other with
a projector pointing onto building walls in key locations in New York City.
They are connected through a mobile wireless bicycle to an online team of five
game players located around the world. They intervene on servers in a popular
online military simulation game with performance actions carried out by the
whole team. The live projections in the city can also be viewed through web
cams on the OUT website.
Relevance to this study: Induce
critical thinking. Appropriates the urban fabric as a canvas - Surface
Democratization. Simple prototype of augmented space.
FNVN[35]
[Project]
From their site: Free Network Visible Network is a project that combines
different tools and processes to visualize, floating in the space, the
interchanged information between users of a network.
The people are able to experience in a new, exciting way about how colorful
virtual objects, representing the digital data, are flying around. These virtual
objects will change their shape, size and color in relation with the different
characteristics of the information that is circulating in the network. But you
already know this, right?
Relevance to this study:
Feasible approach to augmented space. Induces critical thinking towards public
space, networking and sharing.
Reactable[36]
[Project]
From their site: Is a
collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop, tangible,
multi-touch interface. Several, simultaneous performers share complete control
over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round
table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of
a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic
topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible,
modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.
Relevance to this study:
Proposes an entangled interface within a certain surface. The interface uses
both central and distributed intelligence in order to produce a clear aesthetic
and ludic pleasure. The GUI is infostethical to a certain extent.
SVEN [Surveillance Video
Entertainment Network][37]
[Project]
From their site: The
project that asks the question: If computer vision technology can be used to
detect when you look like a terrorist, criminal or other
"undesirable" - why not when you look like a rock star? SVEN is a
system comprised of a camera, monitor, and two computers that can be set up in
public places - especially in situations where a CCTV monitor might be
expected. The software consists of a custom computer vision application that
tracks pedestrians and detects their characteristics, and a real-time video
processing application that receives this information and uses it to generate
music-video like visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and
audio are displayed on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard
security camera type display each time a potential rock star is detected. The idea
is to humorously examine and demystify concerns about surveillance and computer
systems not in terms of being watched, but in terms of how the watching is
being done - and how else it might be done if other people were at the wheel.
Relevance to this study:
Absurd nature of technological applications and critical thinking about
implications of surveillance practices.
Levelhead[38]
[Project]
From their site: levelHead
is a spatial memory game by Julian Oliver. Uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube
as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a
little room, each of which are logically connected by doors. In one of these
rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the
exit. Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they
started in, a trick designed to challenge the player's spatial memory. Which
doors belong to which rooms? There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of
which are connected by a single door. Players have the goal of moving the
character from room to room, cube to cube in an attempt to find the final exit
door of all three cubes. If this door is found the character will appear to
leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish.. The game then begins
again.
Relevance to this study:
Complex interaction in space rationalization, a simple, yet well-executed
approach to augmented reality in a ludic nature.