Author: MK

I’m currently on Suomenlinna Island, which is a 10 minute ferry ride from downtown
Helsinki. Suomenlinna was an active military fortress from approximately 1750 to 1948, and today it functions mostly as a tourist attraction. A few people live on it full-time, but most of the people seen strolling Suomenlinna appear to be tourists, or young Finnish families looking for a little diversion.

Suomenlinna was first called Sveaborg (“Swedish Fortress”) and was built under an order from Swedish King Fredrik I. Sveaborg was referred to as Viapori by the Finns. Sveaborg/Viapori only faced direct military action twice. It suffered a surrender to Russian forces in 1808, and was bombed heavily by the French and English during the Crimean War. Sveaborg was renamed Suomenlinna (“Finnish Fortress”) after Finland’s independence was achieved in 1917. In 1991, UNESCO named Suomenlinna a World Heritage Site.

I’m here as part of the latest deployment of the Makrolab. We’re currently setting up a base of operations on Suomenlinna using the new MAKROLAB-RDU (rapid deployment unit), an instant architecture rapid deployment building. There are full details of what we will be doing as part of this workshop on the locative.net website.

Some wonderful people are here: Marc Tuters, Christian Nold, Jo Walsh, and others, not to mention our indefatigable host, Marko Peljhan. I’m looking forward to a productive and fun time, and hope to post reports here often.

But for the moment, I’ll share some pictures of the island:
{{popup si.jpg pink buildings 400×300}}For a former military island, there are a surprising number of pink buildings
{{popup si2.jpg sea 300×400}}A view from the dock with threatening clouds
{{popup si3.jpg bridge 400×300}}A bridge connecting two parts of Suomenlinna

This was another panel moderated by the intrepid Marc Tuters. The panelists were Chris Byrne, Jaanis Garancs, Drew Hemment, and myself.

I don’t feel as though I should say much about the presentations of others, since as one often does when one is on a panel, I was reviewing my own presentation before I started, and so my notes on the presentations of others is a bit sketchy. I’ve asked Chris, Drew, and Jaanis to forward me their notes, and will post summaries of their talks here when I’ve received them.

Below is a brief summary of my talk, entitled “Performers and Parasites”, that mainly addresses how artists piggyback on systems already in place in the city to deliver experiences that can entice the public to become more performative.

An opening question: How do users perform the space?
When we think of performance we think of artists, but when the conditions are right people can be “tricked” into performing in public. What separates great art works in public spaces from good ones is often the element of “engage-ability” that allows the public to lose inhibition and become performers, truly activating the space with their actions.

The public sometimes performs in public already, and it is up to us (artists and technologists) to determine how to enhance this latent tendency. Witness the little performances people give everyday as they use their devices in public – chucking and gesturing upon receiving an SMS or playing with a portable gaming device. Witness karaoke. Witness an elegantly placed hopscotch outline.

Artists are resourceful people. Ever ones to grasp a chink in the armour of context to insert radical content and commentary, artists often use the systems of the city that are already present to create interventionist media projects that are not necessarily “locative media”, but certainly located.

Some of these pieces demand high performativity from the public, some demand less, but they all involve some kind of “call to action” that inspires them to trigger or engage the piece. These works are elegantly interwoven with existing urban infrastructure to provide subtle opportunities for delight and surprise.

Case Studies:
Teletaxi by the Year Zero One Collective – piggybacks on a failed advertising system in taxicabs
Transmedia by the Year Zero One Collective – piggybacks on one of those ubiquitous video billboards
[murmur] by Shawn Micallef, Gabe Sawhney, and James Roussel – piggybacks on the pervasiveness of cellphone use
Vilnus Voice Track by Will Kwan – piggybacks on automated telephone systems

Here at ISEA 2004, locative/located/site-specific media is holding a place of prominence, with at least three panels that deal with it directly, and a few panels that could be described as close cousins.

Two panels, Mapping Space and Tracing Space, were both moderated by Marc Tuters and provided two distinct perspectives, political/technical in the case of Mapping Space and artistic/aesthetic in the case of Tracing Space.

Mapping Space featured speakers Chris Heathcote, Ben Russell, and Andrew Morrison.

Chris Heathcote’s talk was entitled “Exhibitionists and Voyeurs”, which basically referred to his idea of a community (2% produce and everyone else watches.) He related this idea of community to “situated software”, that is, software that is produced for a limited group, usually geographically specific. He cited bass-station.net as an example, where internet users can control a single ghetto blaster that is accessible to a closed group of people. In general, he predicts a movement towards hinternet and localized darknets.

Ben Russell is a great storyteller. He displayed a wild and wonderful {{popup ben_marc.jpg ben and marc 300×400}}mind map (with nodes entitled things like “infinite meets the finite”, “the question of land refuses to go away”, “location of hair on the body”, “east coast code/west coast code”, and “salmon”.)

He spoke a bit about his recent interviews with archaeologists, which revealed a working definition of archaeology: it is the study of how people related to each other through objects. He then applied this thought to a concept of an archaeology of digital media, which might be less material but still exchange of “objects” (media objects.) He described how capitalism preys on this basic human tendency to collect things. This tendency makes an archaeologist’s job more interesting, and keeps the capitalist economy going, as well.

He said many other interesting things, including a story about a salmon that can communicate with you and tell you a lovely story that convinces you to buy it even though it is going bad. A collection of his thoughts will soon be available in book form.

Andrew Morrison spoke about a new initiative at the University of Oslo called “Re-public”. He discussed four focii of this research group: Expression, Gaming, Museums, and Services. One of his interests seemed to be performative public communication with mobile locative technologies, and he asserted that “performativity is the next frontier”. (I agree with him there.) He also posed some good questions, that the Re-public research group will investigate, such as:
-> What challenges to interpretation are posed by public electronic works?
-> How may audiences be included in their completion and circulation?
-> How may interaction design be artful, adaptive and participatory?

The audience had some good questions. Susan Kozel asked about the significance of performance to locative media, especially since the word “performativity” seems to be bantered about quite often in relation to the potential of locative media. She wondered if we will perform with our bodies differently because of locative media. Chris responded by saying he didn’t think performance was relevant (which I disagree strongly with), but he was speaking from the perspective of marketability of locative media (his words were that he didn’t think performance was significant to market-driven locative media.) Ben was more open in his definition and posited that performance can simply be acting differently, and that devices can trick people into being more performative (something I referred to in my talk the following day.)