Complex-cities. Under the new digitised city space from artists walks to virtual cities.

Around the 1900 century the city became the focal point for an intense debate about the dynamics of technological civilization and its effects on the quality of human life. The Futurist manifesto of 1909 identified the city as the pre eminent theme of modern poetry and painting.

Ezra Pound pointed out in his comments on Eliot’s The Waste Land: “ the life of the village is narrative…..In a city the visual impressions succeed one another, overlap, overcross, they are cinematographic”.

The city ceases to be pictured as a social environment and it is transposed on to an existential plane. The metropolis ultimately becomes a metaphor – a dynamic configuration of the confiding hopes and fears of the twentieth century.

Writing played a huge part in the metaphorical and poetic interpretation of world cities. But it is through cinema that we can appreciate the scale, pace movement and patterns that where emerging in the modernist city.

The imagined city is constructed in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). It is an imagined city, a city of the future a city that is seen time and time again in modern science fiction films like The Fifth Element.

Lang referred to The Tower of Babel, the massive control tower in Metropolis is called “The New Tower Of Babel. The comparison to Babylon within the city has become common in metaphorical language of the city ever since cities really became too large for easy assimilation. Lang’s city thus becomes a city of “idea”.

 

The flanuer.

While Baudelaire characterized the flâneur as a “gentleman stroller of city streets”, he saw the flâneur as having a key role in understanding, participating in and portraying the city. A flâneur thus played a double role in city life and in theory, that is, while remaining a detached observer.

This stance, simultaneously part of and apart from, combines sociological, anthropological, literary and historical notions of the relationship between the individual and the greater populace.

This term refers to a person who plays a sensor role in understanding the urban environment.

Any pedestrian environment that accommodates leisurely exploration of city streets. Walter Benjamin adopted the concept of the urban observer both as an analytical tool and as a lifestyle….. making social and aesthetic observations during long walks.

The wrap it seems, is the collections of observations about the cityspace. These can be made into histories and documented, sights and sounds, experiences of the city.

The flaneur is a suitable metaphoric vehicle for the ‘witnessing’ of this space because ‘the flaneur moves through space and among the people with a viscosity that both enables and priviledges vision.’

Being a product of modernity, he was a spectator of modern life in the urban sprawl; now a product of post-modernity, the cyborg-flaneur is an androgynous spectator of virtual spaces.

A person’s whose aim is to disappear in the spaces of the city – ‘a prince who is everywhere in possession of his incognito’ – is the person who has the best view of the basic nature of cyberspace, a space where anonymonity is maintained by a process of vaporisation upon departure.

The flaneur is also an ‘image of movement through the social space of modernity’ – an explorer who finds their identity among the realizations of the city. The cyber-flaneur’s exploration of virtual spaces is achieved through their natural propensity for movement; they wander anonymously within the boundaries of virtual space, developing a virtual identity while connected.”

The Situationist City.

A precursor of flash mobs, CCTV performances, interactions with GPS and networked performance the Situationists existed to politicize the urban domain.

The networked internet and virtual city space allows the movement of sources and codes that can be re mashed, played with to be “re-routed”.

By cutting up maps of the city Guy Debord and Asger Jorn where re coding city space, creating new patterns and urban forms. Or see Constant’s, “North New Babylon”, watercolour on collage. It is a single continuous organic structure spreading to the edges across the landscape. Unit blocks are repeating in an organic web like structure. The most famous of these images was “The Naked City”, criticises traditional mapping and at the same time investigates the relationship between various urban elements by re- assembling the map of Paris.

“Situationists promised that their architecture would one day revolutionise everyday life and release the ordinary citizen into a world of experiment, anarchy and play.” Simon Sadler.

The HP media platform for mobile computing the city based games using GPS tracking all continue this theme of playing in city space.

Simon Sadler, draws a comparison between Jackson Pollock’s Autumn Rhythm (1950) an  (p87  The Situationsit City) abstract expressionist painting, and the webs traced by both Paris metro and London railways maps. Debord insisted that interest was because of the content however the aesthetic comparison cannot be ignored.

Future Cities

Future cities will be merged into real time connected up data cities connection of networks of real time information flows.

The internet presents of a myriad ways to create ephemeral art across cross networks using all sorts of data information and media. The internet provides gateways and access for all, the editing process, mash-ups, authors as editors, as choice makers, as decision makers.

The key to a multi/plicities project is the nature and openess of the gateways so that its acts without borders.

One has to experiment with the technology and understand how to get under the bonnet, and then new  outcomes will shed light on how data flows overlap in live streams demonstrating what are the possibilities for novel artistic experiences and outputs as well as new business models which will benefit from sonifications, visualizations, and sculptural objects; as well as apps, and feedback into other networks and intergrated systems.

By researching current systems, software, and artworks one can  come to an understanding about the social and ethical implications of such technologies both in artworks as well as public domain space and to speculate where these technologies could lead us in the future.

 

Future cities / spaces will be merged into real time connected up data cities.  A connection of networks of real time information flows. The results created lead to mashed up cities and real time performative city experiences.

There fore can one build an open ended platform  where the content too can be mashed up , intergrated into  non linear streams, re- assembled, used by other artists, curators, via tag  or XML streams.

(NB: I don’t like the term open source or but my work endeavours to collapse the borders created by networks so there is a free flow and exchange through the system both for input and outputs of ideas and latterly resources which I call assets (the data and the information.)

The examples below are experiments around the world in this field of location based devices maps and artworks that all have varying objectives. They mostly I believe have developed without speculating on future content delivery  scenarios.

From a recent essay with my work (Issues In Science And Technology, Spring 2012.) … “the more people online contributing ideas,  the more valuable the network becomes to all the other users”…Hillary Rodman Clinton

So the objective is to  maker a platform that  makes it easy to  contribubute from the first instancee whose structure or front might be re/ assembled depending on the flow / need/ content narrative)

Interesting links.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19267930

“It’s a good way to tell the story of a person. And we all have a story. Both the farmer, the director, they all have a story. And also it makes a visit to the graveyard much more interesting.”

http://www.notours.org/audioguides

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NoTours proposes an augmented aurality experience. In other words, you can add a new layer of reality to your place. You can leave messages, tell stories, create geolocated concerts or just share your thoughts. The team of noTours.org is looking forward to know your ideas and your possible uses. In fact we are artists and developers. Take a look at some of the sound walks we have made in the world. Some companies and individuals have already asked us about creating their own customized walks. They offer you the possibility of having your own app with your logos
http://code.google.com/p/timemap/

Timemap.js is a Javascript library to help use online maps, including Google, OpenLayers, and Bing, with a SIMILE timeline. The library allows you to load one or more datasets in JSON, KML, or GeoRSS onto both a map and a timeline simultaneously. By default, only items in the visible range of the timeline are displayed on the map.

http://www.soundcities.com/

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Stanza sound maps, softwares, performances and installations around the of many cities, big investigation around the city soundscape. he interesting thing now is the project is opened up for others allowing a re mixing or mash up. It allows these “others” to do with the “material” other things for example concerts and art installations. Using the XML feed other applications are created ie phone apps merged with you PS position or visualisation of noise across a space…all sorts of things are possible.

Regeneration squares

http://www.stanza.co.uk/stanza_regeneration/index.html

Re-animating and remapping the city. This project involves making new public squares in the city to make a regeneration of the city. Here area selection of these new squares in Liverpool. In addition I invite the public to find these squares and present situations to intervene and to regenerate these new public spaces.

http://www.huellasolar.com/

Solar-imprint cities (Huellasolar ciudades) is a project for mapping urban solar exposure. This mapping is dynamically configurable by the user to study the incidence of the sun at any time of year in various cities in Spain.

http://www.sonicwonders.org/

This a travel guide to our Sound World – listing places where what you hear is an important part of the experience. Increasingly, people are going to capture the World’s sonic wonders, whether deliberately by recording what they hear on a mobile phone, or almost by accident, as the soundtrack on a video recording. A sort of travel the world listening to  sounds guide.

http://voiceofkibera.org/

Voice of Kibera aims to give collective global voice to Kibera residents by aggregating local citizen reports, Kibera community media and other relevant news and information.

http://birdmap.5dvision.ee/index.php?lang=en#

At this url you can  track on a “migration map” some birds travelling between Europe and Africa.

http://www.equator.ac.uk/index.php/articles/c61

As mobile phones and computers become more complex, the range of media that affect our experiences of cities has expanded. What makes a city meaningful to us is not just its bricks and mortar, but the texts we read, people we talk to and experiences we have. Maps, conversations and images of a city all influences our activity and enjoyment. City focuses on bridging or blurring the boundaries between these different media. The systems we build mix local interactions and remote collaboration, using ubicomp technology, digital maps, virtual environments and hypermedia.

http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/pigeonblog.php

Art project Pigeonblog was a collaborative endeavour between homing pigeons, artists, engineers and pigeon fanciers engaged in a grassroots scientific data gathering initiative designed …. How could animals help us in raising awareness to social injustice?

http://www.christinakubisch.de/english/install_induktion.htm

“Electrical walks”, is an invitation to a very special kind of stroll in cities (or elsewhere) With a special magnetic headphone and a map of the environs, upon which the possible routes and especially interesting electrical fields are marked, the visitor can set off on his own or in a group. The perception of everyday reality changes when one listens to the electrical fields; what is accustomed appears in a different context. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.

 

http://www.conormcgarrigle.com/writing_the_city.htm

Writing the city was a GPS drawing walk intervention which took place in Dublin in collaboration with Tactic. The walk with a handheld GPS to a preplanned route used the tracklog to write a giant word in a single movement onto Dublin.

http://www.walkingthroughtime.co.uk/

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Walking Through Time is a mobile application that allows smart phone users with built-in GPS to not only find themselves in the present, but find themselves in the past. By making available historical UK maps, users will be able to scroll through time and navigate places using maps that are hundreds of years old. This new iPhone app brings this imagination to reality. Just head out for a walk, set the app to play, and let the story of the birth of the solar system and the evolution of life unfold under your feet.

http://www.urban-atmospheres.net/Jabberwocky/info.htm

Jabberwocky captures a unique, synergistic moment – expanding urban populations, rapid adoption of Bluetooth mobile devices, and widespread influence of wireless technology across our urban landscapes. The United Nations has recently reported that 48 percent of the world’s population current live in urban areas and that this number is expected to exceed the 50 percent mark by 2007,

http://www.storymashup.org/

Manhattan Story Mashup is an urban game, taking place on September 23rd 2006 in Manhattan, New York City. During the event, approximately 250 players will move around Manhattan, taking photos which match a given target.

http://www.savetheelephants.org/tracking.html

Save the Elephants uses Google Earth to visualize our elephant tracking data from across Africa. Google Earth is the rich mapping application that will allow you to fly through a global database of Earth imagery and detailed mapping information.
http://www.atmosphereindustries.com/gentrification/

A transmedia game, which uses mobile technology to facilitate and augment offline gameplay. It has been presented at game and culture festivals around the world to critical acclaim. Small teams compete to collect real-world properties, “convert” them, and transform the neighbourhood. As developers, they’ll build swanky lofts, erect coffee shops, and raise property values

http://realtime.waag.org/

GPS trace maps built into flash all online.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/keir.clarke/web/thereandthen.htm

*** Check This

Historical movies on Google Streetview  (Looks Like a screenshot of streeview)

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=209536004200975525899.0004af02bf59e643ac521

Geolocate the painted tags in the mountains of Lima:

http://www.google.com/mars/  Google Mars is a great tool but when shall we geolocate our own information on Mars and the other planets in our solar system ?…that is the question.
Streetmuseum™ Londinium directs you to locations across the capital where you can immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of Roman London. As you’re guided around the city you’ll unearth exquisite artefacts as if discovering them for the first time and reveal the stories of life in Londinium (OFFLINE)

http://www.boxofficequant.com/100-years-of-set-locations/full_screen.htm

This map, showing 2100 movies locations is a great resource for people who want to geolocate the scenes of the movies in a “Walking Cinema” spirit. It could be a great starting point fo a mobile phone app.
http://www.paintyourstreet.com/

On the website “Paint Your Street” Google Maps mashup you can write words over the Street Maps view ! Nice idea ( full of script errors)

http://glowapp.com/

***Glow is the mobile app that tells people how you are doing and where you are doing it. Download Glow and discover how people around the world are feeling right now! (Use the map view to reveal areas near you where people are feeling good. We use color to show you how people are feeling as a group. Blue is “awesome” and red is, well…”not so awesome”.)

http://www.markermusic.com/

Interesting use of Google Maps for mixing locative audio recordings. “you can click and hold on the map to move it around, and use the YouTube volume controls to change the mix” :

http://sounds.bl.uk/uksoundmap/fusionmap.aspx

UK Sound Map is a online “soundscape” project from the British Library Board and the “Noise Futures” network. Welcome to our interactive map showing 1675 soundscape recordings contributed so far by members of the public: (now closed)

http://whatwasthere.com/ What Was There is A great project with Google Maps to travel in time…visit the site and test the iphone app !

http://urbansonar.com/

Urban Sonar is a personal space monitoring system that senses an individual’s experience as they move through the urban environment and records that information for review at a later time. Turning the gaze both outward and inward, negative

space surrounding the individual and their heart rate are used to visualize a lived experience through quantitative data.The visualization program was writting in Processing.
http://pixelsix.net/wanderer-gps-game/

Keep Walking! from Jonas Hansen. The object of the GPS game Wanderer is to be in continuous motion and to follow auditive commands given by the game system. Because the game is not mapped onto the coordinates of the physical space, it can be played in any location. The player is continuously con fronted with the objects in public space functioning as game obstacles. In this way the game trans­forms the meaning of the

http://www.thehiddenpark.com/

It seems to be a geolocated game for children but it is really more than this. This app and the editing tool is full of great ideas, mixind reality with animations. Let’s hack The Hidden Park for some activists purposes

http://imapflickr.com/default.aspx

Create custom Google Maps from your geotagged Flickr Photos to embed in your website or blog, or for sending to Facebook, Twitter or your favourite website.

 

Walking.

http://walkart.wordpress.com/

A virtual tour of Stuttgart and London

August 6, 2012 by Ana Laura

A walk with Amy’ functions as an urban drift, in which each participant is simultaneously a spectator and traveling companion, tourist and tour operator. The intimacy of an unknown voice can lead to unexpected insights and connections, noticing details we might have overseen, as we share cities across a remote landscape. ‘A walk with Amy’ asks what is worthy of attention – without road names or landmarks, what will function as signposts and how will we make our choices?

New Artworks involved with walking

http://walkart.wordpress.com/artworks/

Misc

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/London-Wall/Whats-on/Exhibitions-Displays/LomoWall.htm

The Museum of London has collaborated with Lomography – the vibrant community dedicated to analogue photography – to create an eye-catching LomoWall display.

 

Books

http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=ATC+5

The convergence of mobile technologies and ubiquitous computing is creating a world where information-rich environments may be mapped directly onto urban topologies. This book tracks the history and genesis of locative and wearable media and the ground-breaking work of pioneer artists in the field. It examines changing concepts of space and place for a wide range of traditional disciplines ranging from Anthropology, Sociology, Fine Art and Architecture to Cultural and Media Studies, Fashion and Graphic design.

 

Cities. Visualisation Environment

http://flowingcity.com/

http://villevivante.ch/

The City of Geneva decided to take the challenge to visualize these digital traces created by our mobile phones. The objective of this installation is to make this data visible and allow you to explore these streams of connected people around the city, in their everyday life. A particle flow-field inspired map provides a view of the ‘liveliness’ of the people using their cell phone as they move about, as the activities and directions are embodied by the density of lines shown on the map.

http://stamen.com/clients/mysociety

Interactive maps of travel time and housing prices in London. an NGO which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives, came to Stamen with a remit to explore two fascinating datasets: median prices of homes throughout London, and the time it takes to travel from one place to another throughout the city.

http://www.emotionmap.net/map.htm

The Bio Mapping device was invented by the artist Christian Nold. It combines a finger cuff sensor, which records the wearer’s Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) – an index of emotional response – in conjunction with a Global Positioning System (GPS) which locates the wearer’s position on earth. The finger cuff sensor was derived from the Polygraph, where it is used by law enforcement agencies to identify the physiological symptoms of stress induced by lying. Bio Mapping uses this technology very differently.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/urbancomputing/

Urban Computing With the rapid progress of urbanization and civilization on earth, urban computing is emerging as a concept where every sensor, device, person, vehicle, building, and street in the urban areas can be used as a component to probe city dynamics to further enable city-wide computing for serving people and their cities. Urban computing aims to enhance both human life and urban environment smartly through a recurrent process of sensing, mining, understanding, and improving.

http://casualdata.com/senseofpatterns/

Sense of Patterns is an on-going project, a series of printed data visualizations aiming to depict the behaviors of masses in different public spaces. The visualizations have a focus on the patterns of moving entities in public like commuters, cars and public transportation vehicles as well as the interaction between these entities and physical structures like roads, sidewalks, buildings and parks. The project intends to provide strong visuals on what we all experience in our daily lives in different cities.

http://www.techcitymap.com/index.html#/

Tech City Map is a constantly-evolving compendium of East London’s vibrant technology and creative ecosystem. In addition to showing where businesses are located Tech City Map uses advanced technology from Trampoline Systems to reveal the web of connections linking them together and calculate each company’s influence in the community.

https://geoloqi.com/blog/2012/03/data-portraits-powered-by-3-5-years-of-data-and-2-5-million-gps-points/

These are images of map generated entirely from GPS logs gathered by various versions of the Geoloqi sample application for iPhone and Android for the past 3.5 years. Once gathered, the data was run through a custom script that projects the GPS logs onto a 2D image plane. There is a little bit of logic to smooth out the lines and remove some (but not all) GPS noise.

Other

mobilebristol (now offline)

Founded by Hewlett Packard Laboratories, the University of Bristol and the Appliance Studio, Mobile Bristol’s programme of research ran from 2002-2005. It investigated how pervasive technology could be used to enhance how residents and visitors experience and interact with their physical environment and each other in urban and public spaces.

Cityware with Imperial

Sensity by Stanza

Sensible cities MIT

London AA

Dog attention Over 115,000,000 views

 

Stanza 2012