the great abstraction of exchange

as of sunday nov.26 my curtains will be kept opened as a sign of exchange for borrowing from my window's view.

details: private public - as i observed i am being watched with the deep desired for a wonderful imagined narrative.

panoptic dream

"we are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselfs" -Foucault-





details: what is under the surface of images? . . . s o u n d
do bodies mean something when abstracted from their life?
p l a y o f s i g n s (as power)

disciplined surveillance

(intended to observe a great multitude of men at the same time)


"In a society in which the principal elements are no longer community and public life, but, on the one hand, private individuals and, on the other, the state, relations can be regulated only in a form that is the exact reverse of the spectacle" - M.Foucault

inspiring rituals

disappointing walk

The PSG (Peter Stuyvesant’s Ghost) public-phone walk was a project with so much potential, that I was extremely disappointed with how it turned out to be. What seemed as a highly interesting interaction resulted in a very disjointed experience, with little relation to its spatial context , which seemed to be one of the key elements of this project. Every single component of the project was calling out for the designer’s attention for it to be attached with some kind of meaning. In this, was the project’s biggest flaw; it laid out its element as a sketch but failed to bring them together as a finalized design. As users, we were baffled in between resulting in a very negative experience that lacks among other things the element of surprise. As I walked from one point to another I had to remind myself why was it that I had to move from one place to another. There was nothing directing me there other than the map that had already all the codes laid out for me. I might as well have stayed home and try to communicate with the phone number (which was constantly busy) from my bed and dial in the codes that I already had, than try listening to the very low quality sounds that were overpowered by the sound of the city in an unintentional way.

It is interesting how even a project that not only has a full potential in itself but that as well has the participation of so many interesting people and organizations can fail without the proper guidance and execution (maybe even lack of testing). What was most interesting in the end was the website of the project itself, that included among other things the above sketch-map laid over a GoogleEarth rendering of the path of the tour.

re-thinking elements

Public Phone: The use of the public phones seemed more random than not. They were hard to spot and once you did, there was nothing rewarding about them. Questions with Ideas: Why was the phone number always the same? What could the user discover on each individual public phone? What was the difference between using a public phone or a cell-phone? ? Could the use of cell-phones be further explored; as in being able to tag spaces? What would happen if the public phone would actually ring for users to answers?

Walk + Spatial Context: The idea of layering urban space with its past was a great idea but completely unsuccessful. The idea of walking through a space with “new eyes” was not well explored and the spatial seemed to lack the right context. To successfully integrate urban space into a new context the viewer has to be submerged into an experience that alters in someway or another there senses to experience something new and different that layers, as a collage does, over what is already “known”. Questions with Ideas: How can the user be submerged into an experience through walking? Can surprise change a context? See: AngelProject, Memory of the City News.Box.Walk

Surprise: This project lacked the crucial element of surprise. The most obvious way that this could be integrated is through a “scavenger hunt” type of interaction that can lead to a special narrative. Questions with Ideas: Is discovery necessary for surprise? How can a narrative be constructed through discovery?

Map: Even though the idea of having a downloadable map was very successful, the idea of urban mapping today, opens a lot more possibilities. Questions with Ideas: Can the map be tagged and thus altered? Can the user input something to the experience that changes it? Can the map be downloadable for a cell phone? How will the map for a cell phone user differ from that of the public-phone user? See: Soundseeker

Codes: The use of the numbers of the codes (1,2,3,etc) was extremely arbitrary limiting the narrative to a lineal one. Giving out the codes for each sound on the map immediately resulted in a lack of involvement of the viewer. Questions with Ideas: What are codes? What happens if the user has to discover the codes? If one code leads to the other? How can the codes be attached to a specific public-phone? What relation does the number of each code have to the sound or the place or the experience? Can the codes be attached to the map in some other way other than just as a label?


Sounds: The sounds were extremely low quality and some seemed they had nothing to do with the specific place they were supposed to be heard at. Questions with Ideas: Did it make a difference if I heard one sound in one place or another? Was the use of the medium (phones) considered when creating the sounds? How important is the quality of sound when using it as an experience? See: Her Long Black Her


Website: The website was the strongest part in this whole project. Having a map that could be downloadable by anyone was very interesting to me as it immediately opened up the possibilities of new audiences. As well, it enabled anyone to distribute the tour (through email, etc). I specifically enjoyed the sketched out map over the GoogleEarth image and reading where the idea for the tour came from. Questions with Ideas: Would this project benefit from a website with dynamic contents? With the user being able to upload changed maps, comments, tags etc? See: Yellow Arrow

these are my neighbors

+

i see my neighbors

+ first domain map for a none-tangible project: a study of my neighbors.

Walking Urges

as i was walking home today i had an urge to go into a bookstore i grabbed the first magazine i saw and found this unviersal coincidence inside:


+su-mei is my favorite artist for the day

"if something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. if it is still boring, then eight. then sixteen. then thirty-two. eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." -john cage

more on virilio coming soon

Becoming a Spider

+ photo by: automania

Justyna and Clara successfully transformed a corner of our classroom into an interesting spider-maze web. Their no-technology game consisted in a maze of intersecting glow in the dark strings that had to be crossed by each team member, without him/her touching the strings (the first time, one way to pick up an object at the other side and then back again to the starting point). The group that was able to perform this in the least amount of time won the game. I appreciated how they came up with a game that was very simple and very adaptable to any space. The interaction limited the user into a strange space that made him/her hyper aware of their own body. This space changed depending if you where outside or inside of it, which created an interesting interaction dynamic. The solution they came up with of attaching bells to some strings to tell by their sound if a team-player had touched a string, gave the whole game a magical touch. As well, the idea of not having every string sound was very interesting (although I believe it needs to be expanded upon). I was very interested in the fact that their starting point was numbers and for this, I think that this game would benefit from a process of investigation of numbers systems, spider webs, etc.. so it could eventually have a true system of its own and not just a random arrangement (although they had a number grid it seemed as though it was more random than not). Scott Pobiner, the guest critic for our class mentioned the importance of consciously determining what the objects that each team player had to bring back where. I believe that this is a key point to give some type of second level meaning to this game (perhaps some type of "inner narration"). I see in this game a lot of potential. I think that Justyna and Clara would benefit from gaining control of all the beautiful details of their game that came about unconsciously. Once acknowledged, this details, can be given a specific purpose and control that could make this game more interesting.

for more info visit the ultimate string crawler