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.

http://www.brianmassumi.com/textes/Urban_Appointment.pdf

I found this essay by the contemporary French philosopher, Brian Massumi (I had known of him first as having done the English translation for Deleuze and Guattari's 'a thousand plateaus' and Jacques Atalli).
This paper discusses the work of a group of artists, assembled to participate in the HUMO (HUge and MObile) workshop dedicated to projecting extremely large images upon urban structures. Interestingly, Massumi uses the metaphor of the Situationist 'Possible Rendez-Vous' in which one participant is invited to wait alone in a public place for the possibility of an encounter with another participating subject. Since the encounter is merely a possibility of an infinite number of scenarios the participant is "freed from the bothersome obligations of the ordinary rendezvous since there is no one to wait for." (Debord 3). Interestingly, Massumi anthropomorphizes the massive image projections as a potential subject of the Situationist practice. I wonder if this is perhaps stretching too far the relevance of this practice which is already taken considerably out of context.

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”.

As I type this, I am enjoying a beer by my lonesome at the JFK airport waiting for my next flight to Boston. I cant help but to think about that movie Playtime and some of its implications. Right now, I feel "at home in the crowd and alone in the crowd." There are some really interesting conversations I am overhearing here, and people EVERYWHERE walking all over the place carrying various bags and items. As we briefly discussed in class, I find myself making up stories about these people. I wonder where they are going and what their stories are. I guess where I'm going with this, is that I am more sensitive to my experiences had I not taken this class. It reminds me of how my experience watching movies has changed through my studies. The question is, are my experiences genuine in the sense that I'm just letting them happen naturally, or am I constantly scanning for hints of things that I am reading about. Im really not sure how I feel about this, but nonetheless it is interesting. It's nice to read about this stuff, but it is even more engaging to find yourself actively living and reacting to these experiences.

I don't want to let go of this idea as it was briefly mentioned by mark in passing when he was giving some comments to William after his paper presentation. I will somehow explore the idea of a "promiscuous data body" and somehow tie it to the movie Minority Report. I was reading through Francesco's blog and noticed he has some similar understandings of the indefinite "paper trail" that we leave behind us.

While we love new technologies that make our lives easier, they tend to take away certain "luxuries" as I will call them. These luxuries include things such as being truly alone, being anonymous (in any application of the word), and having the piece of mind that something you do IS NOT being traced in some way.

On MSNB.com under the Tech tab on the front page, is an entire section devoted to “Privacy Lost.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15157222/ The articles in this section cover some of the issues raised over the course of the semester, such as how we are tracked, recorded, and if anyone really even cares or not. In the article, our digital breadcrumbs that we scatter recklessly is compared to being caught naked in the 21st century (hence the title). Based on surveys, it looks as though a lot of Americans care, but no one knows enough about the issue or cares enough to take a stand. Not that this is a surprising action for Americans to take, seeing as most Americans don’t even take advantage of their right to vote. But according to a survey administered by MSNBC.com, 60% of people said they were worried about their privacy being taken away. That’s a pretty big number- particularly when you see the next percentage, which is that only 7% of Americans change any behaviors in an effort to preserve their privacy. Most people would rather take a discount and have their movements tracked with E-Z Pass rather than maintain their anonymity. And how many of you have those Wegman’s or other grocery store tags on your key chain so that you can save a few dimes on each visit? I know I do. And until recently, I didn’t realize how I was being tracked just with that little piece of plastic- let alone my bigger plastic cards, the credit cards. Like Internet cookies, which is an incredibly ambiguous title for a technology that tracks our virtual movements, it seems part of the problem is that the wool is being pulled over our eyes. There is history to fall back on for most policies, but mass tracking of movement and identity is something entirely new. While politicians try to figure out if it’s legal for phone companies to maintain a database of all calls customers make, the big guys are operating on a take what we want now and answer questions later. Or at least that is how I see it. I don’t think that the majority of the public is informed enough to realize all the little ways their information is being tracked and privacy lost, so that is a major part of the problem. And part of the reason there is only 7% of Americans changing their behaviors. How does one learn not to jaywalk without being informed of the consequences? One of the articles talks about this as well: “You may think your cell phone is unlisted, but if you've ever ordered a pizza, it might not be. Merlin is one of many commercial data brokers that advertises sale of unlisted phone numbers compiled from various sources -- including pizza delivery companies. These unintended, unpredictable consequences that flow from simple actions make privacy issues difficult to grasp, and grapple with.” Without history to fall back on, I think there is a lot of confusion about how our privacy is being stolen, who is taking it, and if it is even theft? I’m curious what you guys think: do you think that when you call Pizza Hut, the person who answers should say “Pizza Hut, may I take your order, and please be advised that your phone number is now being catalogued and sold to various companies?” Or in an age of information overload, does no one really care or have the time to care?

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.

I had a few thoughts to continue on the subject of pervasive gaming, and your question, Sugey: “What if it is simply enough to say that the structure of pervasive gaming exists in order to change one's experience in the city?”
In order to be successful, does pervasive gaming need to change one’s experience of the city? I know that this is a question we’ve been continually asking throughout the semester- how, or how not, did something change one’s experience of the city? But I think that this question may sometimes simplify an artist’s project too much. In the case of Murmur, there is definitely an attempt to consciously influence one’s walk through the city and have an effect on the walker. In “Beyond Locative Media” by Marc Tuturs and Kazys Varnellis, locative media is talked about in terms of taking the traditional gallery space, placing it in the city, and claiming the unchartered territory of locative media. In regards to the .walk project by Social Fiction, Tuturs and Varnellis say “The success of this simple project is representative of a larger event taking place in the media art world, in which, having left behind net art, locative media escaped the bounds of the screen to enter the city at large.” A couple weeks ago in class we took sides- Bob and I on one side arguing for locative media in the city being capable of success by simply making a statement or some type of research. On the other side was Chris and Francesco (sometimes wavering) desiring for locative media to have a measurable outcome. But if the point is to move beyond the screen and the gallery space and into the city, then why should locative media art be limited by such confines? A painting in a gallery space does not actively do anything or create an outcome or change our way of living in a significant manner. But the painting may have a significant effect on the viewer based on the content, intensity of the brushstrokes, or ability to draw the viewer into the space of the canvas. It provokes the viewer to think critically about something, or at least notice it. So maybe the job of pervasive gaming and other locative media artworks is to provoke the person in the experience to think critically or differently about the space they are inhabiting, instead of trying to change the way they inhabit it. I suppose this got away a bit from the original topic of pervasive gaming, but I think my thoughts still apply to gaming as well. Pervasive gaming is supposed to move beyond a typical game and pervade our reality through normal forms of correspondence. Since when is a game supposed to change our lives? Ludologists typically argue against games as narrative and games as being real life simulators (i.e., the are not capable/responsible for provoke kids to go shoot up their schools). Game theory is not about how can games change our lives, but about issues such as immersion, how to make better artificial agents, etc. So, I don’t see why when we start discussing locative media in the city we want to have measurable outcome for how something changes the way we move or think. It reminds me of how conferences typically seem to go today- someone presents their project, and the first question from the audience is “what technology did you use/how did you do it?” so they can gauge how difficult it may or may not be, rather then thinking about the critical issues the piece may raise and what the artist was thinking about. The art gallery space doesn’t ask for these measurements and neither does game theory…so why should locative media in the city?

This is in response to Sugey's blog post on Pervasive Gaming.
Let the battle begin! ^_^

So if these games somehow change someones experience in a city, I still ask what the value of this actually is. For some reason, I'm thinking of some kind of technology that can change the way that I go to the bathroom. Maybe it might make it more fun, or somehow entertaining, it might even make me visit the bathroom more, but at the end of the day, I'm still just expelling waste materials from my body. This is a natural function of the way I was designed. Its what I have to do. As blunt as it may sound , I'm still doing the same thing even though I am thinking about it in a different way. My analogy (gross, I know) is that people are still in a city having experiences because they are either going to work, visiting a museum, or getting a bite to eat. They are there and doing as they will anyways. Do they need pervasive gaming to alter this? The city is a living organism that has rituals, patterns, and its own way of working (which may include pervasive gaming). What Im getting at is that my experience in the city might change or my bathroom habits might change, but who cares? Why should someone care if it doesn't add to some good?