Locative Media & The City

Let’s finally turn to Uncle Roy. Something I find problematic (and, quite frankly, slightly annoying) is the emphasis that the authors of the survey (Steve Benford et al.) place on the game’s success in provoking “compelling experiences”. Success on the experiential level, however, even though possibly sufficient from the point of view of corporations interested in commercial applications of the game (and hence, possibly, from the point of view of Blast Theory themselves, quoted by Tuters and Varnelis to have claimed on their website that the group has “a history of working with corporate clients to deliver … commercial projects that draw global audiences to compelling, high adrenaline interactive experiences”) is scarcely enough when it comes to an evaluation of the critical import of the game within the context of locative media. Let me be clear: I have nothing against compelling experiences, and I certainly don’t think that high adrenaline per se is incompatible with critical thinking. However, the specific type of experiences that the game, according to the participants’ feedback, brings about is of a kind that doesn’t strike me as particularly significant in critical terms. Fine as a game, then, but not really worth of attention as a locative media work? Here’s what a player has to say:

In my previous posting I tried to make explicit my position on the issue of whether or not it is appropriate to require that PG have some kind of impact on how people perceive, navigate through and relate to their spatial and social surroundings. I suggested that a worthwhile PG (worthwhile, that is, from the perspective of locative media practices) is one that makes us think critically about the city in a topographic, historical, social or political sense or, even better, in a way that brings together all or some of these dimensions. Admittedly, I didn’t offer much argument in support of my suggestion (I was merely trying to disentangle it from some of the other things that have been written lately on the blog about this subject). I believe, however, that the argument can be found in the overall theorization on locative media and, more specifically, in the claim (subscribed, it seems, by several practitioners) that locative media “can reconfigure our everyday life … by renewing our sense of place in the world” (Tuters and Varnelis). Once we subscribe to the aim of “renewing our sense of place”, however, it seems to me that the commitment to a critical rethinking of the space we inhabit becomes unavoidable. Therefore, insofar as PG purports to be a locative media practice, it must at the very least provoke critical rethinking of our environments.

I feel that the whole discussion of pervasive gaming is getting a bit confused. The original question, as I understood it, was whether it’s appropriate to require that PG have some kind of ‘impact’ on our ways of experiencing (and moving through) the city. Before rushing to answer that question, however, I feel that we should have clarified what we mean by ‘impact’: I feel that lots of the misunderstandings that have marred the discussion are a consequence our different ways of answering the latter question.
Sugey begins her post by suggesting that the “value and authenticity” of PG does not (and should not) depend on whether or not PG has a “long lasting impact” and concludes by suggesting that it would be enough if the only effect of PG was to “change one’s experience in the city”.

I enjoyed Erwin Redl’s talk. I liked the way he spelled out the connection between his music background, his computer art and his current practice. He made the transitions sound conceptually elegant, smooth, and yet not obvious or easy. As for his current work, I’m not quite sure I entirely know what to make of it. For one thing, as I may have had a chance to mention to some people, it seems to me that in terms of scale and production value the work belongs to an altogether different tier from the one I look at as a reference for my own practice. It’s Matthew Barney’s and Bob Wilson’s tier, and although I sometimes enjoy that kind of stuff, there’s a way in which I don’t really engage with it as a maker.

Listening to Shawn Micaleff talk about Murmur as, among other things, an attempt to help Toronto “build its own mythology” (I believe I’m quoting him almost verbatim), made me think about urban mythologies, and how they influence our ways of moving through and perceiving cities. That our first encounters with new places are strongly influenced by our expectations is no news: the way in which our experience of a place is affected by what we know about it, and sometimes by the mere sound of its name, has been explored many times in literature and elsewhere (two entire sections of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past are dedicated precisely to the painstaking exploration of this psychological phenomenon: “Towns’ names: the name” at the end of Swann's Way, and “Towns’ names: the town” in Within a Budding Grove). Having said that, my question is: What kind of enduring influence (if any) does the “mythology” of a city have on our way of perceiving and navigating through that city ONCE WE KNOW IT? Can our way of looking at (and moving through) cities that we know be influenced by their mythologies? And if so, how? Are New Yorkers or Parisian influenced by the mythologies that surround their cities? I’m sure the answers to these questions are different in relation to different cities and, more significantly, different people. People are inclined to fantasize about places to different extents and in different ways, and there’s no doubt that these differences have an impact on how they react to those places. This is so clearly true that I even wonder where any useful generalization can be made in relation to this issue, or if the only appropriate answer to any of the questions above is: “It depends”. I need to think more about this.

A few observations on the idea of calm technology. According to Weiser’s definition, a calm technology is a technology that can move back and forth between the center and the periphery of our attention. The first crucial aspect of such technology is its capacity to disappear in the periphery, where it can be “informing without overburdening”. Technology’s capacity to withdraw in the periphery, however, is not per se sufficient to ensure calmness: this withdrawal could, in principle, be perceived as threateningly elusive and become a source of anxiety if we had the feeling that, by withdrawing, the technology was actually evading our control. So this is where the second crucial feature of calm technology (i.e. the ease with which it can be repositioned at the center of our attention), comes into the picture.

I posted this a few weeks ago as a comment to Melissa’s entry on Lynch and Buffalo, and I’m not sure if people have seen it (I often overlook comments myself). As I’m still relatively new to the city, still mapping it out (so to speak), I’d be very curious to hear more about other people’s mental maps. I’m posting this again hoping that someone may want to follow up. It would be interesting to compare notes.

I liked your posting, Melissa. I think we should all follow your lead and sketch our Lynch-ean (?) maps of Buffalo: it would be interesting to compare the maps drawn by those of us who are not from here (and have been here for different lengths of time), and the ones drawn by those who are actually from Buffalo (is there anyone in the class?). So here’s my map.

I wanted to elaborate a bit on something I have mentioned towards the end of last week’s class. With reference to the fictional world portrayed in Minority Report and, more in general, to control societies, I was noticing how one of the ways in which control is exercised is through machines and tools of daily use. What I was trying to say is that many of these tools and machines (I cannot find a better way to put it) have now double or multiple accesses. The users are not anymore the only ones to have access to these tools and machines, and they know that ‘others’ can access them as well (at the same time or later on) and check on the way they are or have been used. This is very badly put, but here’s an example. Think of the way credit cards have changed the nature of economic transactions. Paying in cash for products or services used to be to a large extent an anonymous operation. With credit cards, on the other hand, not only we leave traces of these transactions, but these traces can be accessed by other people for a wide variety of reasons (checking our credit history, reconstructing our spending habits for the purpose of market researches, etc.). In completing an economic transaction using a credit card, in other words, we are aware that a third party could be ‘watching’ us (in real time or in the future). A similar sensation of ‘being watched’ is also there when we write emails, or surf the internet. Again, the point is that in using the net we are using a ‘tool’ with multiple accesses; we are not alone, we do not have exclusive control of the ‘tool’ we use. (An extreme case of this is portrayed in the film, where cars can be stopped remotely and redirected). What makes this kind of cases akin to panopticism is, among other things, the fact that we can never know for sure if we are actually being watched or not, but we always know that we could be.

I’m still trying to get my head around the chapter from Levebvre’s The Production of Space that we read last week. Something that I find particularly puzzling is the way in which L. first traces a clear-cut distinction between the concept of production and the concept of creation, and then blurs the line between them. More specifically, I wonder how this dialectical move impacts on his answer to the question whether a city is produced or created (73).
Creation, L. suggests, is the process of bringing into existence “works”, understood as irreplaceable and unique “things” (as in “work of art”). Production, on the other hand, is the process of bringing into existence (through organized sequences of repetitive actions, i.e. through labor) “products”, which by definition can be exactly reproduced and lack any of the uniqueness and individuality of works. Insofar as we define works as “unique, original and primordial, as occupying a space yet associated with a particular time” a city like Venice (L.’s example) has to be considered a work, i.e. something that is created rather than produced (73). Yet it has been labored on: “behind Venice the work … there assuredly lay production [sinking pillars, building docks]” (76). This brings L. to conclude that there is no good reason for positing “a radical separation between works of art and products” and that “even in Venice, social space is produced and reproduced in connection with the forces of production” (77).

Two little thoughts on the Vertov film. One has to do with those early shots of the city in the morning. The city is almost empty; there’s only one car passing through an intersection, or a lonely passer-by cutting through the corner of the frame. And my first thought was: Why not entirely empty? I guess the answer has to do with the idea of the city as an organism, as opposed to a mere architectural structure (social constructivism vs. spatial determinism?). I mean, imagine shots of an entirely empty city: that would just be an architectural arrangement, something inanimate, a monument. Here, on the other hand, we see the city as a sleeping, living organism; it’s almost as if the city was breathing in its sleep through these sporadic, solitary crossings.