May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
721 Broadway
at Waverly Place
4th Floor
South Elevators
New York, NY 10003
For additional
information email
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or call 212.998.1880
| 2mph | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Emily Conrad | |
| Instructor: | Barton, Jake | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://emilyconrad.com/2mph.html | |
| Keywords: | audio installation, space vs place, locative media, contingent object, psychogeography, serendipity. | |
| An audio installation of recordings taken from urban walks investigating personal impressions of space. | ||
| I intend to explore the use of cell phones as other than a means for person to person conversation or text messaging and will build a scenario in which the phone is used as a wireless broadcasting microphone. This exploration will be done in the context of psychogeography and personal experience so that the result is a collection of qualitative information of the urban environment. In 2mph, narrative is used to create a verbal infrastructure of the city, particular to the narrarator\'s perspective. I suspect that in the near future, either the quality of cell phones or the accessibility of PDAs with microphones will increase, as will the rate of transfer for large internet files, openining up more possibilities for alternative recording devices and audio documentation through the internet. | ||
| Personal Statement: | My interest in this project is twofold; I am interested in how the individual perceives the city in relation to their own experience, and how this information is best expressed. For this latter part, I tied in my interest in sculpture and physical computing to create a booth to illuminate the experience for the listener. And ultimately, I wanted to create a multi-perspective
installation that, while it remains strictly linear, allows for the user to choose which and how many walking experiences to listen to at once. I am fascinated by the phenomenon that occurs when a group of people is formed through the witness of a crime or accident. In this case, most often every person has their own account of what took place. In a less dramatic and more personally related reenactment, I wanted to similarly create a uniform situation in that each person experiences under the same circumstances but highlights an individual perspective. Creating an installation that informs the audience of these disparate narrations. | |
| Context: | The background of this project is in the fields of locative media and experiments in social psychology.
Locative media projects have an underlying context of motion. Place, space, and location, along with the semantics of these words, are currently being explored to a high degree through the use of digital media, especially in relation to physical motion. Mobile phone applications that depend on the user parading around space in search of a person, people, or in general, a search to be better informed about one’s surroundings, are rapidly being developed by a new wave of artists, technologists, and researchers. In March 2004, the web site we-make-money-not-art.com defined locative media simply as, “digital media applied to real social interactions and real places.” More comprehensively, though with a different connotation, the Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in Bangalore explains in a post written earlier this year, “Locative media may be understood to mean media in which context is crucial, in that the media pertains to specific location and time, the point of spatio-temporal ‘capture’, dissemination or some point in between. The term locative media has also been associated with mobility, collaborative mapping, and emergent forms of social networking.” The term was originally coined by by Karlis Kalnins of gpster.net who claims \"locative is a case, not a place.\" The locative case (pronounced lah-ka-tiv) which designates the place or state of the noun, in space and time. This project also borrows from the histroical tendency to think and walk. The Sophists, Aristotle, Beethoven, Kirkeegard, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein among others have been famously associated with relying on the rhythm of walking to sort the internal through the external. | |
| Audience: | The audience is anyone who has a cell phone and looking for additional uses, as well those interested in personal narrations of space, psychogeography and internal eavesdropping. | |
| User Scenario: | The way it works is that each person participating in the walks starts at 247 Broome street in New York City. She walks down Orchard, onto Grand and eventually ends up on Houston via Crosby. The entire walk takes 19 minutes and 49 seconds, as I am there to keep consistent pace.
The audience is able to listen to these narratives and thought bits in a structure I built for this purpose. This structure stands six and a half feet tall and made of steel and white plexiglass. Inside this booth are graphics such as a map and images taken of the area, a well as a series of toggle switches. The audience is able to toggle through the narratives and choose which and how many of these urban narratives they listen to. Each of the narratives are in sync, so the geographical place of the walkers are synced in time. | |
| Methodology: | 2mph works by connecting a cell phone call to a computer using a recording device. From here the recordings are piped into a custom made sound booth using a computer running Max/MSP and controlled by a series of toggle switches. | |
| Sources: | Books
Bachelard, Gaston, \"The Poetics of Space\" Buskirk, Martha,\"The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art\" Gould, White \"Mental Maps\" Hall, Edward T., \"The Hidden Dimension\" Knabb, Ken \"Situationist International Anthology\" Lynch, Kevin, \"The Image of the City\" Montfront, Nick \"Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction\" Solnit, Rebecca,\"Walking\" Taun, Yi-Fu, \"Space and Place\" Vidler, Anthony, \"Warped Space\" Virilio, Paul, \"Open Sky\" Web Sites The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network, http://openplan.org Glowlab, http://glowlab.com Locative Network, http://locative.net Probiscus http:/urbantapestries.org http://proboscis.org.uk/sonicgeographies/ Artists Vito Acconci Janet Cardiff Rebecca Horn | |
| Conclusions: | There are a wide range of perspectives that emerge when individuals are exposed to similar circumstances. This project presents these voices. | |