Soulby Stanza.


Soul.

-Using cctv camera networks to re-imagine, to re visualize the soul of London.
-The idea is to capture the soul of the city of London and make a piece of sculpture that is a constantly evolving data sculpture.
-This data sculpture is a live real time evolving or generative artwork.
-It re-contextuales the way we experience the city .
-An online interface and navigation system gathers visual data from cameras across London.
-The data is captured and merged into a data visualization of London representing its ‘Soul’.
-The output is also made as data display sculpture out of special ‘Smartslab’ material to be built.
-The sculpture represents the emotional state of the city.
-The result is a space or installation with unique patterns and output to the displays and online.
-A software system captures images from cctv live in real time.
-The images are taken and then manipulated as idealized landscape.
-The sculpture will utilise specialised materials and display technologies that will have to be adapted to create this work.
-Soul is a public sculpture embedded with the emotional charge of city experience.

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CONCEPTS

Cities offer the opportunity for unique types of data gathering experiences via a variety of sources. An emergent process data mining from all sides, online for all. My objective is to 'mediate' data into conceptual artefacts. With this perspective there are many unimagined threads of data and connections that describe our world that can be explored through networks within which we can create artistic interpretations. An example of this is CCTV.

Uses of this information and data should allow rich new interpretations on the way our world is built, used, and designed and how we relate to this as it happen around our data bodies. The possibility is to extend our imagination and enable that perception of the city as a dynamic network. By putting systems in place that can re-employ our perception we can create new understanding of how this behaviour unfolds. There are patterns, they are connected and the systems that evolve, can be simulated and acted upon by us. We can influence this process and the system. We can also create variables into this system that allows understanding of the bi-products of the system, the data and the resulting information.


Online installation viewable to a global audience.

Offline data sculpture viewable to a local audience....

Soul is an artwork that collects web cam and CCTV feeds and live audio from London in real time. These real time images are fed into a software system where a series of specialized channels rework these images. The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of London changing and evolving around the clock. The system uses specially created software and technology to randomly travel London and to integrate the images from the cameras. The images are taken from live web cams in real time and will evolve forever (or until the cameras break).This is never the same again always different....forever. The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of the world changing and evolving around the clock.

This work turns the notion of surveillance upside down, since in this work we are all watching everybody and opens up a question about the legality of the imagery. It also turns us all in voyeurs and creates an insight into the imagery and happenings that exist in various 'parallel realities'. The data is opened out to a global online network of observers.

It becomes an online global repositioned world view unfolding in real time. Soul is a work about real time data in networks and cities and about the ownership of these image rights. This new work incorporates live London images and data to make Soul. The idea is to capture the soul of the city of London and represent these images as a piece of sculpture in a constantly evolving data sculpture.

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BACKGOUND INFO AND IDEAS TO ‘SOUL’

The city also has millions of CCTV. In essence the city is the biggest TV station in existence. Millions of hours worth of data are recorded every day by these cameras on city TV. One can take the sounds and images off live web streams and re-represent them thus creating new interpretations of the city in the process. The increase of technology infrastructure in the daily existence of a city means that technology will, more than ever be everywhere in our environment. Mobile data mining will be part of the fabric of the landscape. We will be carrying this data in pods, phones and IDS cards. Everything is or will be tracked. CCTV, car sensors, tracking inside our phones and id card movement tracking in the guise of anti- terror activity. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world. The value of information will be a new currency as power change. The central issue that will develop will be the privilege and access to these data sources.

THE CITY EXPERIENCE

The city experience is a web of connected networks and multi layered threaded paths that condition us to the emotional state of the city space. In essence, the city fabric is a giant multi user multi data sphere. To take part you really have to put something back in, that's like life. In this case, to take part you have to input data so others 'may' see the output of the data response.

The city has a history of stories relative to time and place, stories from the street. Love stories personal and extreme, crime stories, stories that are small or that can affect global parameters. All of these spheres can be represented by media and therefore by data within the digital realm and becomes a data source so powerful so interwoven that its scale can only be imagined as metaphor. The size and scope of such an archive, of such rich mediated data experience would support many projects. As such it can be interpreted as history via one sort of interface or as a game via another sort of interface. A possible objective is to 'mediate' data into a conceptual artefact. With this perspective there are many unimagined threads of data and connections that describe our world that can be explored within which we can create artistic interpretations.

CCTV systems are everywhere in the public domain. We are all actors, bit part actors, in a giant movie called life. Except we cannot watch, it is not on public display and the results are monitored, filtered and distributed without our permission. The city also has millions of CCTV. In essence the city is the biggest TV station in existence. Millions of hours worth of data are recorded every day by these cameras on city TV. One can take the sounds and images off live web streams and re-represent them thus creating new interpretations of the city in the process. Using data from CCTV, you can bring the outside inside. Selected feeds are collected from around the world in real time. These real time images are fed into a software system where a series of specialised channels rework these images. The channels are always on, and always changing, a constant view of the world changing and evolving around the clock. This uses specially created software and technology to randomly engage the cameras.

The increase of technology infrastructure in the daily existence of a city means that technology will, more than ever be everywhere in our environment. Everything is or will be tracked. CCTV, car sensors, tracking inside our phones and id card movement tracking in the guise of anti- terror activity. The patterns we make, the forces we weave, are all being networked into retrievable data structures that can be re-imagined and sourced for information. These patterns all disclose new ways of seeing the world.

Stanza’s interactive digital artworks from the past decade relate to wide ranging technical and cultural concerns. There is also a whole body of work online encompassing twenty years development and production into the urbanity of cities.

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FUNDING

This project needs funding......if you would like to support my work ....email me: stanza@sublime.net