Locative Media & The City

In reference to media technology and popular media Crandall states that, “Each has produced instruments designed to collapse distance and time, aiming to close the gap between the perceiving subject and the visible world”(Page 6). A connection or a gaze is built between subjects by the use of these technological objects, but what I find interesting is the way in which military use and popular use seem so much alike. Tracking, in military terms, signifies an enemy. The subject uses detection in order to violently destroy an opponent. A relationship is formed between the object and the subject.

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 used to be able to recite a seven number combination in reference to every important person in my life, locations and businesses frequented, and funny numbers that just stuck with me. Travel back to the archaic ages for a moment- their phone numbers. Now I’m lucky if I remember my own phone number, let alone knowing what is my brother’s cell number. The problem isn’t that I’m not capable of remembering these numbers or that growing older has left me less time to take notice. The problem is that my handy dandy cell phone address book does all the work for me, so my brain doesn’t have to work. Doesn’t anyone else see this as a problem?

I don’t mean to talk about folk song tradition here. But somehow the idea of the mountain folk singing and the technological influence on its disappearance are linked to my thoughts of myself singing Karaoke in the bars or listening to Ipod on the street. Compared with the mountain ordinary people, I tend to speak less through m singing. Is it just my “outsider” romantic thoughts about the mountain people or something else?
Two years ago, I had a chance to film a documentary on the folk song tradition of a Chinese ethnic group called Mosuo in Yunnan Province, China. I spent lots of time listening to and filming people singing folk songs out loud in the beautiful mountain. I learned that Mosuo people once had a tradition, in which people would communicate and even fight against one another when they walk in different mountains. Folk singing used to an essential part for these people to express their voices and pass down their culture from another generation to another. However, this tradition is dying out with television, cell phone and pop music coming into the village. Folk singing is no more cool enough for people to use “talking” in the mountains, though the kids are still singing in the form of pop singing and sharing the “modern” culture that they dream of. They still communicate, though through cell phones.

In the Timo Kopomaa article “Speaking Mobile: Intensified Everyday Life, Condensed City,” Kopomaa makes a comment that I thought was interesting. “Now that the majority of Fins have a mobile phone they have also made a commitment to it in a way which at least for the present is not possible nor perhaps desirable to retract.” We spoke in class about whether or not we feel guilty if we ignore a phone call or two, or how obligated we feel towards our mobile phone. The degree differed for each of us, but I think everyone would agree that now that we “have a mobile phone,” we “have also made a commitment to it” which is also barely possible to retract.

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I would like to expand upon the initial ideas I mentioned in class regarding a critique of the Sonic City project described in Anne Galloway's Ubiquitous Computing essay. Essentially, my comments centered around the fact that a 'categorically similar' experience would pervade a person's use of this device (this was prompted, of course, by another comment questioning the 'sameness' of the experience). By 'categorically similar' I was referring to the use of electronica (-like), dance, and similar pop music styles (as illustrated in the video documentation presented in class) for "real-time, personal audio creation" (Galloway p.13). What is the significance of the use of electronica (even pop music in general), an over-coded, populistic sound source, in the context of a spatial mapping of the city? Does this sound source act as a sonic 'mask' (referring to the acoustical phenomenon of masking), in effect removing the participant from the sonic reality of the city rather than allowing the user to more fully confront their surroundings?

I was thinking about Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control" admidst another frustrated contemplation about my own situation with credit card(s). I was reminded of an artist whose work is very much about 'identity' and, perhaps, 'the subject'. Albo Jeavons [http://albojeavons.com/] makes work that is concerned with the new ability for corporations to operate as if they were people ('individuals'). A true conflation of group and individual; a confirmation of Deleuze's thesis? Curious to know how others feel about this work.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to craft this blog post, other than to dive right in and tell you about some new technology I find quite fascinating.

Whether it's desktop technologies or developments for mobile citizens with an active lifestyle, technological advances are all highly interconnected. That which is created for one specific purpose often moves on to another or inspires other creations.

I was quite fascinated by this video: Jeff Han, multi-touch interface. It is a video about multi-touch computer sensors, from the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) event. More than 1000 people gather on a yearly basis to hear the latest ideas in technology as well as many other areas.

When one goes on a derive, one is supposed to free oneself from “their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” This freedom of derivé sounds like providing less restriction for one’s movement in a city. I had never had a chance to derivéd until I teamed up with Melissa to do our locative media homework—deriving from Niagara Square and mapping our walk. Melissa and I set out separately on a direction given by flipping a pencil. I didn’t learn how hard it is to derive until I really did it.