ENGL 293 Presentation

In keeping with this course’s examinations of the database, narrative and algorithm, this PowerPoint is structured as a database. This presentation will be an arbitrary narrative constructed by you, the users. Take us on an aimless wander (or dérive) through our topic. It is our hope that this approach will continue our exploration into the strengths (and apparent pitfalls) of having a database as our dominant form of cultural logic.

BIOS

KEY TERMS

POST-SEDENTARY SPACE

ASPHALT GAMES

THEORY OF THE DÉRIVE

RING AROUND THE ROADSIE

M.E.S.A .D.G.

GEOMOSAIC

[murmur] TORONTO

WORKS CITED

BIOS

Guy Debord

Michele Chang & Elizabeth Goodman

William J. Mitchell

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Guy Debord


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• Dropped out University of Paris

• Letterist International

•Situationalist International

• Society of the Spectacle (1967)

• Influenced Paris Uprising (1968)

KEY TERMS

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POINTS OF PRESENCE/FIELDS OF PRESENCE

DÉRIVE

SITUATIONIST


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Saint Jerome in his Study by Antonello da Messina

Points of Presence

• Saint Jerome bound to the physicality of his books.

• “By selectively loosening place-to-place contiguity requirements, wired networks produced fragmentation and recombination of familiar building types and urban patterns.” (80) eg. The ATM.

• This process continued with the development and proliferation of wireless hotspots and mobile access devices – creating what Mitchell calls “Fields of Presence.”

REMOBILIZING SERVICES RESTRUCTURING LIVE/WORK

HERTZIAN PUBLIC SPACE

REMOBILIZING SERVICES“As educational and medical services increasingly depended upon accumulations of specialized equipment, supplies, and expertise, they were centralized at large-scale, purpose-built facilities – particularly modern schools, university campuses, and hospitals. Sometimes students and patients became long-term inmates of these facilities, [...] always they had to remove themselves from the contexts of their communities and enter particularized environments to access the services they needed. The ivory tower and magic mountain came to symbolize this system’s reliance upon separation, the invigilated exam room and the Nurse Ratchet its engagement with structures of control.” (82) UCLA Campus

HOME POST-SEDENTARY SPACE

“The advantages of wireless fields of presence are accompanied by subtle and not-so-subtle challenges to the regime of separation and control that has long been built into schools, campuses and medical facilities.” (83)

UCLA Campus

“The UCLA campus, at the edge of the Los Angeles basin, may be the mature masterpiece of the genre; there is a pretty piazza at the center, the pavilions of the arts and humanities occupy the green and hilly northern end, big-footprint medical and engineering buildings cluster at the more urban southern end.” (82)

HOME POST-SEDENTARY SPACE REMOBILIZING SERVICES

Restructuring Live/Work

• “Wireless networks, portable electronic devices, and online work environments now allow information workers to move freely from location to location as needs, desires and circumstances demand. [...] Anyplace was now a potential workplace. (85)

• As architects are rapidly discovering, this breaks down rigid functional distinctions among specialized spaces, and makes provision for varied and sometimes unpredictable functions increasingly critical; a home must serve as an occasional workplace, a hotel room must also be an office, a café table must accommodate laptops, and a workplace must adapt to more complex patterns of use. (85)


Hertzian Public Space


“Where networks go wireless, they mobiliize activities that had been tied to fixed locations and open up ways of reactivating urban public space; the home entertainment center reemerges as the Walkman, the home telephone as the cellphone, and the home computer as the laptop.” (88)

ASPHALT GAMES

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HOME Debord in Waking Life (a filmic, remediated dérive)

Michele Chang & Elizabeth Goodman

ASPHALT GAMES

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• Interactive Telecommunications Program, Tisch School of the Arts

•Chang: Partner ReD Associates

•Goodman: PhD student at Berkeley

William J. Mitchell


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• Degree in Architecture, University of Melbourne

• Masters at Yale and Cambridge

• Dean of MIT School of Architecture and Planning

• Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (2003)

RING AROUND THE ROADSIEAn experiment in Geoca$hing

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THE WHY: One of the organizing principles of this course is to explore the how relationship that exists between humans and technology functions. As the readings that we’ve encountered so far suggest, this relationship is more of a two-way symbiotic dialogue. As Heidegger notes, “we are turned over to [technology] in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral”. (4)

THE WHAT: Taking our cues from M.E.S.A.D.G. and Asphalt Games, we’ve devised a challenge, of sorts: Locate a Point (or Field) of Presence on campus and take a photo of your group engaging in some activity that subverts, calls attention to or otherwise challenges the function of that space.

THE HOW: E-mail the photo to [email protected] with a brief write-up of what you’re doing and why. We’ll post it on our blog and hold a class-wide vote. Just to prove we mean business, the winning group will receive $10 per person!

Here’s an example to get you started!

POINTS/FIELDS OF PRESENCE

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• When Mitchell refers to Points of Presence, he’s referring to wired technology like desktop computers, telephones and wired networks and describes them as “oases in a digital information desert” and “powerful attractors of human presence and technology.” (79) – i.e. Cubicle farms, Internet cafes, PC baangs.

• With the advent and proliferation of wireless networks and portable access devices (iPads, smartphones, laptops, etc.), Mitchell suggests that we are further recontextualizing the space around us. Where there were once designated meeting places (often located in a town square or central location in a given community) – anywhere can become a meeting place or point of interest.

[murmur] TORONTOKEY TERMS POST-SEDENTARY SPACE

SITUATIONIST

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M.E.S.A.D.G.The Mobile, Engaged and Socially-Active Digital Game

“A typical family home in North America includes at least one, and often several video game consoles. In this new age of electronic engagement, adolescents spend a considerable amount of time playing videogames, a typically sedentary behaviour. As a result, adolescents in today’s society are less likely to participate in physically active outdoor games. Even when outdoors, youngsters are often listening to an mp3 player or chatting on a cell phone; they are increasingly engaged with technological space and conversely disengaged with geographical space. This essay examines a project titled “Mobile Engaged and Socially-Active Digital Game” (MESADG). MESADG was designed from a perspective of rhetorical and cultural theory, with the intention of repurposing technology from that of a primarily sedentary activity to a physically active outdoor activity which also promotes engagement with the built environment. The project combines rhetorical theory on video games with spatial theory such as dérive, détournement, and surveillance.” – from the M.E.S.A.D.G. website

[murmur] Toronto

“[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people's personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighbourhoods that are important to them. In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.” – from the [murmur] Toronto website.

Geomosaic

Sean O’Seasnian’s Shamrock – by hand Sean O’Seasnian’s Shamrock - by foot

On the weekend of June 5-7, Critical Media Lab took part in the Spotlight on the Arts Festival in Kithener, sponsored by the Ontario Arts Council. We showcased a variety of geo-art projects at the ARTERY Gallery on King Street, including work by Jenn Doyle, Mark Kimmich, Bryn Choppick, Devon MacDonald, Adeel Khamisa, and Karina Graf. They have blogged about their work on the Spatial Theory site.In addition to these projects, we set up a public art activity called “Geomosaic,” with the help of Sean Doherty in the Dept. of Geography at Wilfrid Laurier U. Participants in the project drew a design on a satellite photo of Victoria Park, and then walked to the park with a GPS-tracking blackberry to replicate the design by foot. When they returned to the gallery, we showed them the results. The final product of these efforts is the mosaic image above, which is accessible in detail on flickr.

HOME RING AROUND THE ROADIE

Documents

ENGL 293 Presentation