ART511 - Locative Studio Spring 2008

We want to beautify the Fine Arts building on the San Francisco State University campus with student interactive texting and computer controlled projections of scenes, artwork, or photos to make it a more inspiring place to learn and make art.

The Fine Arts building is nothing like either of us imagined it would be when we first attended school at SF State.  Not only is it difficult to navigate through its various disjointed parts, but it is visually uninspiring both on the inside and the out.  Vast walls of cheap beige spray-plaster, white walls, windowless classrooms, fluorescent lighting grey floors, and blank modern functional fascades all contribute to the lack of creativity and inspiration that this building vibes.  Both being art majors, this was very disappointing.  The building’s exterior is bland, gentrified even, and above all, completely uninspiring.  It might as well be a hospital.  This is not an accurate reflection of the students working inside…or is it?  Would a more inspiring place to work and learn and develop one’s craft and art and style affect the output of the creative projects and evdeavors produced therein?  This is our assertion.

Since the physical features can not be altered without serious ramifications, graffiti projects can not be executed without having to remove the artwork, and the processes that allow “approved” artwork and/or murals can take months, even years to complete, we would like to use projection as our main media.  It is completely removable, portable, and has the potential to remain dynamic and changeable.  If an outdoor location is not viable for successful projection–conflicts with the sun–the interior is almost as uninspiring save for a few temporary installations sprinkled throughout the building.  Students will be able to text a disclosed word (disclosed perhaps on posters or in a text or BlueTooth issued text image) to a texting service number that will activate the projector and potentially a particular image matched to a certain word.  The associated word used may reflect in some way the image shown.  I like the idea of stickering or wheatpasting in public places the words and our webpage name to complete the circle as Loca did in their BlueTooth project “Set to Discoverable.”

We would also like to create a webpage (probably WordPress blog format) to share the project’s intentions, documentation, and potentially, an interactive interface where students can upload their own image and attach a text word to the image.  This will allow other students to help spread the word about the project by sharing the text password for their image plus the texting service number so other people can call up that image.  A digital projector is needed, along with a laptop computer with WiFi capabilities, electrical supply, a texting service account, a little programming time, and some ugly blank walls and corridors (which we already have a lot of).

We aren’t certain on the texting process but will be doing research to ascertain the direction we need to be headed in.  Any suggestions would be appreciated in lieu of that and also in lieu of connecting the texting to a computer to a projector.  Perhaps blue tooth might be a better way to go about the interactivity part, and would add to the locative value of the project; students would have to be in the area to upload a photo or other image to the computer and to activate it.  I discovered the “Use As Remote Screen” on my phone We aren’t certain what is possible given time, equipment, or programming, and would appreciate a little coaching, but that so far is our initial dream for this project.

“Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access”

A Professor of mine recommended this book and for those of us concerned with the subject of cell phones and culture I thought this book would be relevant. So far I’m enjoying reading excerpts from this book even though I am using it as a resource for a term paper.

First of all I wanted to say how much I enjoyed being involved in this project. I had a great time working with my team to try and create a project using a type media that is new to me. After going on the other two hunts, I am imagining more that can be done than just what we accomplished. I learned a lot from the other teams.

That said, some of the things I learned that could be improved. For one thing, me and my team didn’t take into account the fact of GPS drift. For the most part this didn’t affect us too negatively, but we were unable to find the final location on a team’s project. We got close, but we never found their marker. As for our project, had we not pointed the team in the right direction of the first point, they may have never found our markers. So…that in mind, I think it is doubly important to make the first marker really easy to find, and the clue to the first marker a bit easier to decipher.

Another little tid bit I noticed is the design of the web pages. One group had a really sleekly done web page…but it didn’t seem to match the rest of the project. Another group had simple yet elegant pages done and they went really well with their markers, but in the light of the day, it was very hard to see the screen. We chose to make our web pages rudimentary because we felt like it would match our markers, tie into our overall message, and with the high contrast be easy to read outside. Although I liked this idea, when I saw how amazing the other team’s web site’s were, I was truly impressed and starting thinking about the other elements we could’ve incorporated to give more visual clues to our markers.

The final thing I took away from this project is that I feel like I had a ton of energy for the first hunt. By the time we got to the last location on their hunt I started getting tired. When we encountered technical difficulties with the second hunt my instinct was to give up. In the future as a designer, I might want to make my hunt fool proof so there would be no chance of technical difficulties. How I would accomplish this is something I have not yet worked out. But what I did enjoy about this media type is the social interaction it brings coupled with interaction with the physical space.

Here is a project that uses community to find the lines between the upper and lower classes as evidenced by the presence of surveillance cameras. Lower classes feel alienated by the security cameras which seem to exist just to keep them under control. People go out into the city and document the locations of any cameras they encounter. There is also an audio component that tells them when they are approaching a previously marked camera.

It is a sort of way of finding public spaces that aren’t really public because they exclude certain types of people and private spaces that aren’t private because they are being watched. It offers people another way to experience and hopefully gain control of public/private spaces.

It took me a while but I found something: Socialight. The demo video kind of creeped me out. Not only was it backed with a jazzy, muzak, shopping mall soundtrack, but there was no mention (of course) about the surveillance issues surrounding this service. Of course, I have been reading a lot of Naomi Wolf lately, so that could just be the paranoia about closed societies talking.

Anyway, this Socialight service offers location based information generated by consumers for consumers that loads to your cell phone to give you suggestions on where to shop, dine, and be entertained. Think Yelp.com but tagged to locations for you to discover as you move through the environment. The example in the video of looking for the pretzel cart–that happens to be right around the corner–raised many questions for me personally: Would they have ever tried this pretzel cart if they hadn’t been notified? Will this help fill out entertainment venues? Is this service likely to aid impulsive purchases? Will this drive people further out of reality and into the lcd screens of their mobile devices? This service/project looks like the beginning of corporate/capitalist adaptation of the locative media format. Would anyone use this service, or is it too Patriot Act creepy?