psy.geo.CONFLUX

Peter Lamborn Wilson

project title
Sacred Sites of Ulster County

project description
lecture

name
Peter Lamborn Wilson

location

profile
Peter Lamborn Wilson is a radical Islamic scholar, poet, and founder of "The Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade" (WBAI-FM, NYC). His recent books include "Avant Gardening" (w/Bill Weinberg) and "Plowing the Clouds: The Search for Ancient Irish Soma."

links

contact

Nick West :: Proboscis

project title
Urban Tapestries:
A Project to Promote Public Authoring in the Wireless City
[presentation]

project description
In this multi-media talk I'll describe and show examples of our ongoing progress in building a system to let people read and leave multi-media annotations on the fabric of the city, using their mobile phones or PDAs.

The goal of the Urban Tapestries project is to design toolsets and skillsets that will allow people to annotate the urban spaces that they inhabit and pass through every day. Our premise is that, given half a chance, lots of people would like to "leave their mark" on the city in some way - whether that means leaving notes for friends, devising their own walking tours, developing in-place information resources, or any one of dozens of other possibilities. In short, we have a strong group hunch that the best path toward enhancing the geography of the city necessarily involves designing a way to allow contributions from a broad section of the population.

We approached this premise by using one research method that is technologically-agnostic, and one method that involves no (electronic) technology at all. First, we explored the desirability of urban annotation, and the possible approaches to it, with a series of "Bodystormings". During these sessions, we laid a huge map of a central London neighbourhood on the floor, gave the participants a stack of coloured post-it notes, and sent them out on the map in their sock feet to create whatever string of annotations that they fancied. We found that almost every participant was interested in creating multiple annotations, and many created dozens. This was true not only among the denizens of the usual high-tech demographic, but
among multiple groups of seniors that we worked with at a local community centre.

In a parallel research track, we designed a public authoring tool for the "wireless city". Not wanting to tie ourselves to a particular technology, we designed a version of this tool for a PDA (to be used with Wi-Fi
networks), and a version for mobile phones (to be used with GPRS networks). We designed the bulk of the information architecture from a level abstract enough to be adapted to almost any mobile device. This approach led us to some findings that run counter to some conventional wisdoms, including

- GPS and other location technologies do not really need to be any more exact than they currently are; in fact, they are often superfluous, because the urban user often knows (generally) where they are; and

- Although security and privacy concerns are often voiced in the abstract, they are rarely encountered in the particular.

In addition to these research tracks, we conducted a set of ethnographic interviews in conjunction with the MEDIA@LSE Department; and we conducted a public trial of one of the prototypes last December, where 100 participants created annotations and described their experiences in a group blog [see links below].

(Urban Tapestries is an ongoing research project led by Giles Lane with a core team of: Alice Angus, Daniel Angus, John Paul Bichard, Katrina Jungnickel, Rachel Murphy, Zoe Sujon and Nick West, with assistance from Paul Makepeace, Nigel Palmer, Huw Jeffries and James Wilkes.)

name
Nick West

location
London, England

profile
Nick West is an information architect and researcher who focuses on the interplay between interactive technologies and the surrounding physical environment. Currently he is working with Proboscis, a London-based think tank and creative studio, to develop Urban Tapestries. This software will allow people to create annotations of any spot in the city using text, pictures and sounds. Anyone passing these spots can then read the annotations using wireless devices like mobile phones or PDAs. A second trial of this system will be starting soon in Central London.

As an Adjunct Professor at New York University, Nick managed research projects for Viacom and Verizon on geoannotation and creating online communities through interactive television. As a Visiting Scholar with the National Fine Arts Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nick designed traveling museum exhibits utilizing GPS technology. He presented his research results at several conferences throughout Europe and North America.

Nick has a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University, and is studying towards a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, London, studying the effects of new media technologies on our evolving conceptions of urbanism.

links
proboscis.org.uk/urbantapestries
diablo.proboscis.org.uk/MT/UT/archives/cat_trial_feedback.html

contact

Zack Winestine

project title
"Can Psychogeography Change the World?"
[lecture]

project description
"First of all we think the world must be changed. We want the most liberating change of the society and life in which we find ourselves confined. We know that this change is possible through appropriate actions." -- Guy Debord, 1957

When Psychogeography was developed by members of the Lettrist International and Situationist International, it was considered a practical tool for advancing revolution. Believing that life should be organized so as to provide the most intense and varied experiences possible, the Situationists saw the urban landscape as a laboratory in which the emotional effects of various environments could be investigated. The lessons learned could be used to not only redesign the built environment, but by extension to redesign the entire society.

Using the Situationists' theoretical writings about psychogeography as well as their accounts of actual derives, this talk will consider the ways in which psychogeography was expected to encourage a revolutionary transformation of everyday life, and the degree to which the Situationists were able to put their theory into practice. There will be time for open discussion so that participants can share their
thoughts as to how their own psychogeographical activities have (or have not) changed the world, and why despite 50 years of psychogeographical activity the built environment remains overwhelmingly banal.

name
Zack Winestine

location
New York, New York

profile
Zack Winestine has directed the feature film, "States of Control", distributed domestically by Phaedra Cinema and represented abroad by Cine-International Gmbh, and is currently completing a feature-length documentary about an anarchist bicycle caravan traveling 500 miles across Germany and the Czech Republic for the Prague protests against the IMF and World Bank. His 1986 film, "On Some Consequences of a Passage by Guy Debord", resulted in his arrest but did not change the world.

He has also been active in many zoning and landmarking battles to preserve Manhattan's West Village waterfront. A book of his photographs of historic structures on the waterfront, "Maritime Mile", has been published by Mikaya Press. He generally hates lectures.

links
www.statesofcontrol.com

contact

Chris Taylor

9 SEP 2003 Gloria J. Haag prepares for video Baptizing on the Bonneville
Salt Flats, near Wendover, Utah.
Photo by Chris Taylor

project title
Psychogeography in the desert: between LAND ARTS OF THE AMERICAN WEST
[lecture]

project description
Spending two months and 10,000 miles traveling throughout the American West to visit and make work in response to contemporary and pre-contact land art is to open oneself to the space between the destinations. This presentation will document the growing history of a new academic program and cast forward a set of relations between psychogeography and traveling through the arid land of the American West.

LAND ARTS OF THE AMERICAN WEST is a studio-based, field study program that investigates land arts from pre-contact Native American to contemporary Euro-American cultures. It is a program that views place as a continuum across time and cultures, a program that demonstrates the potential of situating questions between disciplines and definitions, between the land, art, and design. Land arts practices can include everything from constructing a road, to taking a walk, building a monument, or leaving a mark in the sand. We learn from the fact that Donald Judd surrounded himself with both contemporary sculpture and Navajo rugs; that Chaco Canyon and Roden Crater function as celestial instruments; and that the Very Large Array is a scientific research center with a powerful aesthetic presence on the land.

Land Arts is a collaboration between Studio Art at the University of New Mexico and Design at the University of Texas at Austin. Fourteen students and two faculty, spend a semester living and working in the southwestern landscape with guest scholars in disciplines including archeology, art history, architecture, ceramics, criticism, writing, design, and studio art. Occupying the land for weeks at a time, living as a nomadic group and working directly in the environment, students navigate issues of culture, site, community and self. They develop skills of perception and analysis unattainable in a standard classroom setting. LAND ARTS is an interdisciplinary model of education that hinges on the relation between place and human interventions in the land.

The desert provides an amazing laboratory to read the lines of force that exist in the world. It is a pedagogic landscape that exposes itself in ways that are both unforgiving and highly focused. Creating a situation where students are exposed to and engaged by the realities of the land; the marks left by past inhabitants—water, wind, animal, human, industry, carelessness, willful conquest, and hopeful coexistence. We strive not to differentiate the value of traces left by humans, animals, or environmental factors. Instead we ask what can be learned from reading those traces, those marks, and what is the particular nature of that reading. Unlike a model that seeks to explain or deduce a truth from a set of conditions, here we are seeking to re-invigorate invention (not in terms of opposition, but in terms of connection). The goal here is one of opening out and connecting work to conditions beyond oneself. LAND ARTS transposes the studio and classroom into the environment. Set apart from the Grand Tour, a tradition of collecting and consuming, LAND ARTS is about making. As artists and designers, we move away from issues of interpretation towards the possibilities of what we can make.

LAND ARTS hopes to confirm the idea that if you bring students out into the world instead of the world into the classroom, you can fundamentally change how we learn, create, and view our surroundings. In this context we strive to make deeper and more precise connections within our work and be inspired to create work that makes broader connections outside of ourselves.

name
Chris Taylor

location
Austin, Texas

profile
LAND ARTS course topics have included:Site-specific Sculpture places contemporary site work in the context of a continuous tradition of landscape based art making that is thousands of years old; Site-specific Shelter investigates issues of inhabitation, the record of life in the landscape, and asks students to construct, detail, and document site-based interventions; Indigenous Ceramics introduces artists and designers to the use of native materials gathered on site to make, decorate, and fire vessels related to the functional and ritual needs of the group; and Documents: Body, Landscape, Memory explores the question of mapping within the landscape and the relation of the body to site.

links
art232.art.utexas.edu/_la/index.php

contact

Karen O'Rourke

Workshop cancelled.

Please visit A Map Larger Than the Territory for an online version of the project.

Glowlab [Dave Mandl, Christina Ray]

project title
One Block Radius
Walking tour and presentation

project description
One Block Radius is an extensive psychogeographic survey of the block where New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art will build a new 60,000 square foot facility beginning in late 2004.This block spans the area from Bowery to Chrystie Street and from Stanton Street to Rivington Street.

While the block is bit-size in relation to the surrounding metropolis, the changes it is about to undergo are massive. One Block Radius plays with this idea of scale, aiming to zoom in and physically data-mine the tiny area for the amount of information one would normally find in a guide book for an entire city. This feature-rich urban record will include personal perspectives from diverse sources such as city workers, children, street performers, artists and architectural historians. Engaging a variety of tools and media such as blogs, video documentation, maps, field recordings and interviews, Glowlab will create a multi-layered portrait of the block as it has never been seen before (and will never be seen again).

Organized by Anne Barlow and Defne Ayas for the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

name
Glowlab [Dave Mandl, Christina Ray]

location
Brooklyn, New York

profile
Dave Mandl
Dave Mandl was born in Brooklyn, where he still lives. His photography has been exhibited in New York and various European cities, and will be featured in the book Signs, to be co-published by COLORS magazine and Taschen. In 2002, he collaborated with British sound-artist Peter Cusack on Your Favourite London Sounds, a CD collection of field recordings and photos of London based on a massive survey of London natives. He also edits books for Semiotext(e)/Autonomedia and produces a weekly radio show at WFMU-FM in Jersey City. He co-produced the Psy-Geo-Conflux 2003 with Christina Ray.

Christina Ray
Christina Ray was born in San Diego and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her projects include mixed-media installations based on urban walks and street photography, as well as experimental psychogeographic walks, public-space works and web-based projects. In 2002, Ray founded Glowlab, a multimedia arts lab, and in 2003 co-produced the first Psy.Geo.Conflux. Her work is represented by DCKT Contemporary in New York.

links
One Block Radius
Glowlab

contact: Dave Mandl
contact: Christina Ray

Shawn Micallef, James Roussel, Gabe Sawhney

project title
[murmur] project presentation

project description
[murmur] is an interventionist public audio art project that connects people with their city. Pedestrians walk past sites marked with a sign indicating the presence of a story and a number that can be dialed to access it using a cellular telephone. This method allows the listener to hear the story of that place in that place; the details come alive as the listener walks through, around, and into the narrative. The stories are as personal as the relationship people have with the spaces they inhabit. Secret histories unearthed, private truths unveiled and tales as diverse as the city itself are discovered and shared.

By engaging with [murmur], people develop a new intimacy with places and "history" acquires a multitude of new voices. The physical experience of hearing a story in its actual setting - of hearing the walls talk - brings uncommon knowledge to common space, and brings people closer to the real histories that make up their world.

name
Shawn Micallef, James Roussel, Gabe Sawhney

location
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

profile
[murmur] was conceived by Gabe Sawhney, James Roussel and Shawn Micallef while residents at the Canadian Film Centre's H@bitat New Media Lab. During their six-month tenure, Habitat residents undergo an intensive team-based new media training programme under the mentorship of key international faculty and guests. The final four months are dedicated to the practical application of the knowledge accumulated during the previous two months with the creativity and innate skills with which they came to the programme.

Gabe, James and Shawn gravitated towards each other based on their shared desire to blend their love of cities, urban theory, psychogeography and public art with new media and to use technology in a way that is relevant and accessible to people who are not typical art connoisseurs.

Shawn Micallef attended the University of Windsor, obtaining a BA and MA in Political Science. His scholarly interests included modern and postmodern theory. His Masters thesis, "Liberation Theology as a Transnational Social Movement: The case of the North American Sanctuary Movement" examined, in part, how Liberation Theology practitioners used new technologies to build and expand the movement. Shawn has also produced and hosted a world issues radio programme and was active in student government.  Currently, he is a freelance writer for various publications including www.sceneandheard.ca; a Toronto-based web magazine. He also likes to walk around and explore cities. Shawn is a board member of the Toronto Public Space Committee (publicspace.ca) and writes a column about the Toronto Flaneur experience in Spacing , the committee’s magazine.

James Roussel is a Toronto-based performer who has long been immersed in many different aspects of the storytelling process. He has gained extensive experience from working in performance for film, television, stage, sketch comedy and radio.  James was recently a guest star on the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

Gabe Sawhney is an experienced application developer, with production credits for many Internet, web and wireless applications whose clients include Eye weekly (www.eye.net), Openflows Networks Ltd. (www.openflows.org ), and Klein-Lewis Productions (www.nologo.org ). Gabe has also collaborated on a number of interactive art installations. With an academic background in architecture, film and semiotics, Gabe balances a keen understanding of technology with a passionate interest in visual design, usability and information architecture.

links
www.murmurtoronto.ca
www.murmurvancouver.ca
www.murmure.ca

contact

David Pinder

project title
Lost in space: dis/orienting psychogeographies

project description
Intoxicated rambling; playing games that displace familiar surroundings; wandering in one area of the city while blindly following the directions of a map of another – such strategies are common in psychogeography, where getting lost has often been something to cultivate. Losing oneself in the city requires a particular schooling, Walter Benjamin once observed. As such, it contrasts with the banality of simply not finding one’s way. This talk follows strands of psychogeography into realms of the disorienting, intoxicating and the labyrinthian. It focuses on the significance of these themes for earlier urban wanderers, especially the situationists for whom they were part of radical efforts to transform city space and everyday life in the 1950s and 1960s. “Life can never be too disorienting,” they once declared, as they envisaged whole cities being built for a perpetual drift. Yet they also attached importance to mapping, navigating and locating in their attempts to confront the alienating conditions of the society of the spectacle. What is the significance of these strategies of dis/orientation in the city? How do they relate to those of other psychogeographical adventurers, including the surrealists before them as well as current practitioners and contributors to this event? What is their interest today in an age of electronic surveillance, global positioning systems and increasingly sophisticated geographical tracking systems? The talk aims to explore some of these questions and open them up for debate. It will be followed by a period of extended discussion to allow issues raised in this and the previous talk to be explored further, including in relation to contemporary experiences of cities and psychogeography.

name
David Pinder

location
London

profile
David Pinder writes and teaches about the geographies of cities at Queen Mary, University of London. He has particular interests in psychogeography and the politics of urban space, and in the ideas and practices of the situationists and other avant-gardes. His publications on these themes include a forthcoming book Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism (Edinburgh University Press, 2005). He is also co-editor of Cultural Geography in Practice (Arnold, 2003), and is currently compiling an issue of the journal Cultural Geographies that focuses on contemporary urban explorations and psychogeographies.

links
www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/pinder.html

contact

Lawrence Levi [Flâneur]

project title
a Flâneur reading

project description
Among the contributors reading their essays, stories, and poems will be the art critic Meghan Dailey; the writer and lexicographer Rachel King; the book editor and Wide Right drummer Brendan O'Malley; and the poet Scott Zieher, co-owner of Chelsea's ZieherSmith art gallery.

When: Sunday, May 16, 4 p.m.
Where: The Slipper Room, 167 Orchard Street (corner of Stanton), Manhattan
phone number: 212.253.7246
Nearest subway: F to Second Avenue
Admission: FREE

name
Lawrence Levi

location
New York, New York

profile
Flâneur is a Brooklyn-based, city-centric webzine dedicated to the celebration of urban life, the sanctification of the stroll.

links
www.flaneur.org

contact

Michelle Kasprzak

project title
Locative Media (Lecture)

project description
This lecture will focus on Teletaxi, a project initiated by the Year Zero One collective. This ongoing project that initially took place in Toronto, Canada in the Autumn of 2003. Teletaxi is a site-specific media art exhibition in a taxicab. A taxi is outfitted with an interactive touch screen that displays video, animations, music, and information triggered by an onboard GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver which allows the displayed artwork to change depending on where the taxi is in the city. With the combination of the media/GPS technology, the mobile environment, and the passenger/audience inside the cab, the seven artists involved in the initial Teletaxi exhibition were offered a unique set of possibilities for showing their work, both technically and thematically.

Teletaxi also exposed interactive media art to a "captive" audience, presenting works that explore notions of intimacy, mapping, subterranean space, simulated cities, information architecture, data-visualisation, public interventions, and surveillance.

The talk will present an overview of the Teletaxi project and other recent projects, including user interface challenges, curatorial challenges, content creation issues, the advantages and disadvantages of this method of delivery, and the projects' relevance within a psychogeographic framework.

The presenter will also overview other locative media projects she has been involved in, and provide a historical context for the current work she is presenting.

links
www.year01.com/transmedia2002/
michelle.kasprzak.ca/MK_CV.pdf
www.year01.com/teletaxi/index.html
www.year01.com/forum.htm
michelle.kasprzak.ca
www.psychogeography.net
www.iloveaparade.net

contact