October 18, 2004
Traces of Fire
Barium Meals for the City force-fed
Traces of Fire, by Volkmar Klien & Ed Lear, starts with a pub-tour. "Couple of drinks, couple of cigarettes, off to the next bar...Next day, same thing...In each of the pubs we leave behind a nice silvery lighter...equipped with a nice little transmitter and its own transmission id. For several weeks we track the transmissions - tracing the lighters, tracing the fire, collecting the data; echo-soundings from within the urban habitat. Relaying times and locations to their observers, the lighters build an information model giving a sense of position and distribution--a presence in physical space. We toggle between information model and urban life. Logging data, tallying positions, extracting telling trends of behaviour. Reacting to the situations our roles as observers lead us into and pointing cameras in our specimens’ common grounds. Recording the soundscapes of places regularly passed...Marking encounters with inhabitants, handing out sparklers - capturing the moment for posterity. Recapturing the fire. Discovering traces left in an urban habitat we leave traces of our own."
Posted by jo at October 18, 2004 09:10 AM
