The computer is moving out into physical and urban reality. Since Mark Weiser’s call for a ‘computer for the 21st century’ in 1991 a migration from the screen and the desktop towards integrating computers and networks into our surroundings has been a part of contemporary computer science research; for example, in augmented reality, ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and pervasive computing. A number of technological developments (such as big screens, new smart materials, GPS, RFID tags, and ever faster and cheaper wireless networks) have helped carry the research agendas out into ordinary reality.

This article will discuss how we experience the urban space of ubicomp. It will do so by introducing the concept of ‘scripted space’ in order to discuss how ubicomp is related to new developments in public urban space. Focusing on the experience of the urban we will argue that scripted space is a concept that highlights the written, coded quality of ubicomp. As opposed to that suggested by such titles as ‘The Disappearing Computer’ (Streitz, Kameas and Mavrommati, 2007), we believe that embedding the computer into the environment will not render it transparent or invisible.

For me the Internet has always been a physical space. Working as a sculptor, the first moment I started experimenting with HTML code and viewed the results in the browser, I witnessed a physical installation. - Jan Robert Leegte talking to cont3xt.net

Notes on a New Nature is a physical manifestation of an ongoing research project conducted by artist, writer, and curator Nicholas O’Brien. The research critically examines and compares the relationships that contemporary artists working with digital media have to practices started in Modernist Painting – specifically the pursuit of capturing the virtual qualities of what constitutes a landscape. How does an artist depict a space faithfully enough to show its affect on a subject? Can art capture the space between the viewer and the horizon, and where does that horizon reside now that we can digitally circumnavigate the globe? Can the digital reconcile the physical?

One way that we know how to understand the natural is through the domestic spaces of our daily lives. The interior shelter allows for reflection on what is “outside,” and as a result positions civilization away from the natural. However, as various digital and virtual landscape permeate the domestic space, our notion of what constitutes the natural has become more complicated than a simple inside/outside dichotomy. We use all forms of digital and analog technologies to simulate the natural world daily, and artists in this show point to how these tools affect the ways in which the “realness” of the natural is no longer as simple as locating it outside your window.

This newfound complication highlights the central argument of Notes on a New Nature: our varied notion of what constitutes the natural is shaped by technology, which is a narrative that can be traced all the way back to the advent of agriculture and the dawn of civilization. Through employment of various digital approaches, artists in this exhibition reference this long-standing problem we face when attempting to represent landscape and acknowledge the ways in which digital technology has forever changed our understanding of nature.

Participating artists include: Duncan Alexander, Mark Beasley, Chris Collins, Petra Cortright, Theo Darst, Marjolijn Dijkman, Paul Flannery, Joe Hamilton (aka Hypergeography), Jan Robert Leegte, Sara Ludy, Garrett Lynch, Michael Ray-Vaughn, Sherwin Rivera Tibayan, Nicolas Sassoon, Rick Silva, Pascual Sisto, Krist Wood, Kate Steciw, and Wes W Wilson.

Marked Territory is a physical Twitter client in the shape of a typical carnival strength meter. Participants utlize a large mallet to hit a strike zone that drives a typical carnival light meter to a higher level. Each strength level of the meter equals a “Retweet” of different types of Twitter users from the “Marked Terrority” Twitter account. The lower the strength of the user the client retweets childish celebrity gossip tweets such as those from Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Degeneres, and Paula Abdul while the moderate / medium levels retweet sports celebrities such as Lebron James, Serena Williams, and Shaquille O’Neal. The highest leevel of strength on the meter retweets important news stories from all major news networks (CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, AL Jazeera, etc) such as those regarding international events, breaking news, political announcements, and other world events. Since the project is based on strength, a digital scale is built into the flooring where the user stands to hit the “strike zone” thus compensating for male and female strength differences.

Invisible Fields brings together over a dozen internationally known artists, designers and scientists to explore the radio spectrum - the invisible environment that underpins contemporary technology. Co-curated by José Luis de Vicente and Honor Harger, the show includes Timo Arnall (BERG), Thomas Ashcraft, Matthew Biederman, Anthony DeVincenzi (MIT Media Lab), Diego Diaz and Clara Boj, Joyce Hinterding, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Trevor Paglen, Job Ramos, Semiconductor, Luthiers Drapaires, and Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits (RIXC).

Invisible Fields explores how our understanding of our world and our cosmos has been transformed by the study of radio waves. With the invention of telecommunication technology at the end of the 19th century, the radio spectrum became a tool for rethinking the world we live in. Radio collapsed geographical distance, crossed borders and cultures, became a powerful catalyst for commerce and enabled scientists to study the cosmos in entirely new ways. Yet whilst the radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure that enables the technologies of information and communication, most people are unaware of the way it works, how it is managed, and how it is has shaped our understanding of our lived environment.

Invisible Fields aims to shine a light on this enigmatic landscape. The exhibition differs from past explorations of these topics, in that it is conceived as an interdisciplinary blend of social-cultural analysis, science communication, and artistic practice.

More than a linear, historical narration of the evolution of spectrum technologies, Invisible Fields can best be understood as an “observatory”, which enables visitors to perceive the radio spectrum. It sets out the spectrum as a physical space, invisible but present, a terrain that can be studied, mapped, surveyed and explored. It is an environment made of signals and waves from nature, and from us. Its topography is formed of waves of different scales, from tiny emissions given off by domestic objects to vast emissions made by distant astronomical phenomena. It’s made up of signals that are very familiar, such as television and radio, and signals which are esoteric and enigmatic. It is an ecology that has public spaces – wireless internet and amateur radio – and secret spaces – coded military transmissions and clandestine signals.

Following on from pioneers such as John Cage, Alvin Lucier and Pauline Oliveros, contemporary artists such as Thomas Ashcraft, Semiconductor and Joyce Hinterding create powerful works that allow us to understand the radio spectrum as an extension of the natural world.

Sitting alongside their almost Emersonian understanding of radio as nature, is recent work in the field of architecture, design and urbanism, which expands the notion of urban space into the invisible realm of the spectrum. “Hertzian space”, a term coined by designers, Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, is defined by our transmissions of radio, television, wireless internet, GPS data and mobile phone signals. It is a space interrogated by artists and designers such as Timo Arnall from the BERG group in London, and Clara Boj and Diego Diaz who create clever visualisations of the presence of waves in our daily life.
Elsewhere in the show, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s monumental tribute to the radio dial, enables us to physically move through radio transmissions, giving us a visceral encounter with our ethereal cultural surroundings. And experimental geographer and artist, Trevor Paglen and artist-activists, RIXC, shed light on the dark zones of the spectral landscape.

Invisible Fields is not only concerned with the topology of the radio landscape, but rather the socio-political activities that take place within it. Alongside the artworks in the show are operational workshops, which remind us that our position with the architecture of the spectrum is far from being that of a passive observer. As such, the exhibition space hosts intensive activity for a wide variety of audiences, with workshops on Sunday mornings, and a complete education programme offered to schools.

Taken together the works in Invisible Fields make the intangible materiality of the electromagnetic spectrum visible and audible. They open up the Hertzian space around us, and above us, to our senses. The visions of artists, the solutions of designers, and the experiments of scientists give us the tools we need to create our own mental maps of this profoundly influential terrain.

Credits

Organized by Arts Santa Mònica
Curated by: Honor Harger and José Luis de Vicente
Assisted by: Irma Vilà
Produced by Arts Santa Mònica, in association with Lighthouse.

In conjunction with:

British Council
Bureau du Quebec, Barcelone | Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec
Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación, Gijon
Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani, Girona

We acknowledge the support of: Proyecto PARTNeR Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), Departament d’Astronomia I Meteorologia-Universitat de Barcelona, Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria de Telecomunicació de Barcelona-Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

This paper looks at the impact of social media platforms on collective action. In particular, it focuses on spheres of activism where personal risk (bodily or otherwise) is the condition of participation. For this analysis, I discuss interviews conducted with Egyptian activists around the events of Tahrir Square. Issues of copresence, witness, and visibility are central to my discussion. This talk is based on a research paper developed with my coauthor Dr. Mike Ananny.

Coleman’s book Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation will be published by the MIT Press in November.

Hello Avatar! Or, {llSay(0, “Hello, Avatar!”); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. Hello Avatar examines a crucial aspect of our cultural shift from analog to digital: the continuum between online and off-, what she calls the “x-reality” that crosses between the virtual and the real. She looks at the emergence of a world that is neither virtual nor real but encompasses a multiplicity of network combinations. And she argues that it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency — our new power to customize our networked life. By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities — in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject — all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.

Dr. Beth Coleman’s work focuses on the role of human agency in the context of media and data engagement. She is currently a Harvard University Faculty Fellow at Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a visiting professor at the Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam. From 2005-2011, Coleman has been an assistant professor of comparative media studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is the primary investigator of the Pervasive Media/City as Platform research and design lab. She received her B.A. in literature from Yale University and her Ph.D in comparative literature from New York University.

Invisible Istanbul is the first Augmented Reality (AR) Intervention into the Istanbul Biennial, using GPS positioning to place virtual artworks within the real physical space of Istanbul and the Biennial, creating surrealistic and poetic juxtapositions between real and virtual within the context of the hidden urban dynamics of Istanbul.

Viewers become as photographers: the act of viewing or making a screenshot of the objects at a specific site and time reifies the virtual objects into artworks, revealing hidden forces within the city not visible to the naked eye.

[via Network Research] Urban Echo — by LUSTlab — brings some of (the physicality of our interaction) back to real locations, connecting public places and therefore people, cities and cultures. It extends space beyond our once concrete parameters. Webcams allow you to see into another space, mirrors allow you to see your own space. Using billboard screens and cameras, Urban Echo creates a hybrid of these two things, allowing not only see into another city but maybe see yourself transported into another city or culture. A mid point between transparency and reflection, introspection and extrospection. Placed in public areas, the screens have a variety of modes. Sometimes they create a recursive loop allowing interaction between people in multiple cities and sometimes they are just a window to another place, that might intrigue a passer by. They can connect regardless of distance, folding locations together and rearranging our perspective of public space.

Tallinn Wall is a physical manifestation of the invisible city all around us, a poetic snapshot of social networking traffic from within a ten kilometer radius of the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. The artists Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead manually manufacture a collision between electronic public space and the physical public space of the museum.

In a performance that will last a couple of days, the artists collect and select publicly available status updates from popular websites like Twitter and Facebook. These will then be published as a vast array of standard sized posters and pasted onto a wall in the museum’s foyer, revealing the idle mutterings of ourselves to ourselves as a form of concrete poetry.

Thomson & Craighead work with live digital information, which they manipulate and transfer from its virtual form into a physical manifestation. Tallinn Wall represents a kind of data landscape that is usually not seen outside the digital realm. The artists’ goal is to investigate the interaction of electronic communication and physical space. The installation reflects the live online chats that take place during a certain period of time within a specific geographical space and illuminates the diverse cultural backgrounds of Tallinn’s inhabitants.

Senses Places is a dance-technology collaborative project creating a playful mixed reality performance environment for audience participation. The project stresses an integration of simultaneous local and remote connections, where participants and environments meet to generate a kinesthetic/ synesthetic engagement.

Tuning the audience participants into several whole body modes of physical-virtual body-body and body-environment interactions within a physical and virtual environment (Second Life©), Senses Places re-purposes recent Web 2.0- enabled game devices with a synergetic/ semantic approach to interface design. The interfaces include video and avatar mediations via Webcam, Wiimote©, and Kinect©, plus a biometric device.

Through an inclusive process engaging kinesthetic empathy, Senses Places deepens contemporary dance practices, such as contact improvisation and Butoh, interweaving Eastern-Western somatic based practices like Tai Chi, Yoga, Body-Mind Centering, Release, and Alexander Techniques. The improvisation evolves in a sharing of corporealised places, times and energies, encouraging a fuller experience of the moment.

Try to describe a recent dream to someone and the details are likely to dissolve into absolute nonsense. Dreams themselves are ephemeral, fleeting and altogether mysterious. But trying to figure out the connections between different events in the dream and certain components of reality can prove even more confusing than the dreams themselves. This incredible project perfectly embodies the beautiful confusion that is the dreaming mind.

Designer Maria Fischer produced the book Dream Thoughts as her diploma project at the University of Augsburg, Germany. The book is a tangible model of the most intangible subject: dreams. Scientific, literary and philosophical texts about dreams are arranged on the pages to give a conceptual understanding of the many different aspects of dreaming.

But like a dream, nothing in this book is quite that simple. Various terms and concepts are “hyperlinked” within the book. Like internet hyperlinks, these physical links lead to related information. But of course, these links are not established with computer code; they are made with thin pieces of thread.

The threads wind their way through the pages, across plains of paper and from one word to its distant partner. Their various colors paint a type of abstract picture with no particular form and no particular meaning other than that of unifying various parts of this unusual text. The winding, flowing forms of the threads offset the more concrete, stable words on the page to create a visual representation of the various parts of the stories our minds create while we sleep.

One page in the book contains a hidden message, spelled out in thread and visible only from the back side. The actual message is hidden within a folded page. Only the negative spaces of thread can be seen from the back, making the message impossible to read. The unreadable message embodies almost everything we know about dream interpretation: there is a message there, to be sure, but it lies obscured behind a curtain of interpretation and foggy memory.