Locative Media & The City

The representation of bodies in art is ever-changing and can be studied in conjunction with cultural history. Media Study faculty member, Bernadette Wegenstein wrote “Getting Under the Skin, or How Faces Have Become Obsolete.” The article explores the fragmentation of the body in new media and film, and how the body has become “organs instead of bodies,” (OiB) a continuation from Delueze and Guattari’s theory of the “body without organs.” (BwO) Wegenstein sites several examples of how she views the fragmentation of the postmodern body becoming a body without organs, including architecture projects. For example, digital artists Aziz + Cucher created a virtual reality environment, titled Interiors (1999-present), composed of a “skin architecture.” Quoting Wegenstein, she says, “Aziz + Cucher express a desire for getting under the skin insofar as they show us digital “interiors” (paradoxically, there is no exterior to the digital environment, for it is always an “inside,” within a set frame, i.e., the screen) that are actually represented by “external material,” the human skin.” Aziz + Cucher actually turn the skin inside out in order to get underneath it. (also Diller + Scofidio’s withdrawing Room installation in San Francisco explores these issues) Wegenstein states that the face- historically considered in art to be the “window into the soul” had to be decoded and other body parts (organs, limbs, etc.) overcoded, in order to get inside the body and allow every body part the possibility to be the “window into the soul.” The Von Hagen exhibit Bodyworlds, which was in Toronto last year, so some of you may have seen it, is a good example of how internal body parts have come to be inscribed with meaning, and the face is no longer the priori of the body. The reason I’m bringing all of this up, you are probably wondering by now, is because I’m interested in how this modern representation of the body appears in locative media. Or does it? If architects, artists, marketers, and scientists are exploring turning the inside of the body out and recoding body parts, surely locative media is not excluded from this process. Cognitive mapping seems to have the potential of exploring the representation of bodies. Guy Debord’s The Naked City, 1957, is a visual fragmentation of the city. The term “cyborg” comes to mind when I see people walking the city with mobile phones, iPods, Bluetooth headsets, etc. attached to their bodies. The map that we looked at yesterday in class, the where cell phone signals at a Madonna concert where charted can also be read as a representation of bodies in a central place. We form a synthetic flesh, of sorts, with the networking of our mobile connected bodies in the city, which can be mapped. Even the words that Wegenstein uses, “coded,” “decoded,” and “overcoded,” in reference to body parts, brings to mind computer coding and cyborg bodies. I’m posting below the website for Aziz + Cucher’s Interiors project and am curious to see what you all think about this concept.

[sexuality]
an article written by an old calarts friend of mine:
Cellular phones as sexual objects

I heartily enjoyed the Foucault reading. The most interesting thing to me is that he isnt making a judgement whether or not this is a good or bad thing. I feel as though his tone throughout the reading has a "warning" feel to it. He can see the future through the past and is throwing up a flag for us to realize what is happening before its potentially too late. People like the Surveillance Camera Players are doing the same thing, but in a more tangible and approachable way. So if Foucalt wont make a judgement, I'll have to do it for him!

During some conversations I have had with people on the subject, I have heard things like, "Surveillance projects are overdone and uninteresting." They might not be all too interesting to some, but I believe they are addressing a serious and important issues that are relevant to all of our lives. I recently cams across this project about a week ago. RFID Sniper. Please take the time to read it over. In summary, an artist created a hoax in which he displayed plans for a rifle that would shoot RFID tags into people from long distances. Large defense companies from all over the world jumped on this and wanted to fund/buy the project. This goes to show the level to which government agencies want to be able to track us.

Sassen’s article attempts to unravel how the global economy is made up and how it differs specifically with the use of technology. What telecommunication then creates is the notion of ‘capital mobility.’ Production development draws upon international realms where management control creates a new set of organization in reference to products and in the end...a global financial network. It seems that Sassen’s article focuses more on how the global market is made up, instead of understanding how the term globalization functions outside of economic means and the ‘international regime.’ Globalization can not be looked at as a simple beneficial movement that produces international employment and capital mobility, but instead it needs to be read in a global perspective.

I found the Davis chapter interesting for a number reasons.
First, it contains a number of examples of both the discipline and the control society.
Numbering housetops to form a grid to allow police helicopters to quickly respond, police substations atop the public library, gated communities and ubiquitous security cameras are examples of the . The control society isn’t so obvious but can be found in databases like used by the police to match criminals. These devices aren’t always obvious because of the level of modulation.

Its worth mentioning that the control society doesn’t necessarily deny the discipline society. Deleuze credits Foucault seminal work on the panopticon for capturing the eighteenth and nineteenth century mechanisms of power. A variety of factors in more contemporary times (computers/internet, military technology, corporations, globalization, to name a few) have shifted the paradigm of the discipline to one of control.

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.

Did anyone notice during the scene where John (Tom Cruise) visits the containment center to find out about Ann Lively, that it is a Panopticon model? The building appears to be round, which is evident from the hallways that surround it where John enters. The warden’s center is in the middle, located at a high level. When he pulls up all the bodies in containment, they all are visible and circle around the warden’s station, exactly like Bentham’s Panopticon prison described by Foucault. The inmates in containment are both visible and unverifiable. Of course, it could be argued that the entirety of Minority Report is a Panopticon model society. Every person is always being watched, coincidentally, by the organ they use to watch others. Even those in power are being watched, as we see when the system turns against their own, John. Foucault says, “Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged.” In the scene where the pre-crime agents invade the dilapidated building and release the spider-like creatures, it becomes evident that everyone is behind these “light bars,” of sorts. There is no escaping being watched; the technology sees your warm body before the human eyes. Privacy is nonexistent; when the pre-crime agents or spiders enter into private space, the residents barely even seem to notice their invasion of privacy anymore. Foucault also states, “Power has its principle not so much in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces, lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce the relation in which individuals are caught up.” The bodies of the pre-cogs and agents distribute the power, and the pre-cog reports (and agent’s abilities to stop the crime before it occurs) determine the fate and powerlessness of the individuals within the society.

Below are links to the topic for the second paper and the description for the second project.

Paper Topic II is accessible here.

Project II description is here.

I find it a pity that we never really get to talk about the film “Run Lola Run” in the Locative Media class, since I am really interested in how everything related to “locative media” works in the narrative development and the film analysis for “Run Lola Run.” In the film, under the creative script writing of the story, we got to see Lola run three times, with the same stressful goal of gathering 100,000 marks to save her boyfriend’s life within the next 20 minutes. With the slight various elements in the space, time and chance, the plotline or the life of Lola and her boyfriend is totally changed. I would like to share some thoughts about how the elements of space, time and chance interact with each other to resonate with the physical and psychological world of the running Lola. In all these “20 minutes” of Lola’s running, it is hard for either Lola or me to have any heart to map the city. However, interestingly, Lola’s running and halts on the same routines along the streets create a psychological mapping for the part of the neighborhood she ran through. Mapping here for me is a way of interpreting the space with direction and description.