Light Painting WiFi

The city is filled with an invisible landscape of networks that is becoming an interwoven part of daily life. WiFi networks and increasingly sophisticated mobile phones are starting to influence how urban environments are experienced and understood. The creators, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen are exploring the immaterial terrain of WiFi looks like and how it relates to the city. See more;

"The measuring rod is inspired by the poles land surveyors use to map and describe the physical landscape. Similarly, our equipment allows us to reveal and represent topographies of wireless networks. The measuring rod uses a typical mobile WiFi antenna to measure reception, and draw out 4 metre tall graphs of light."

TRIANGULATION BLOG SOURCE

Immaterials: Light painting WiFi from Timo on Vimeo.

MTA: Advertising Goes 3D/Dynamic | Advertisers Taking Over Entire Stations/Trains

"The MTA earns more than $100 million per year from sales of advertising space, mostly through traditional print media, but this traditional advertising has suffered as a result of the recession," said MTA Chairman Jay Walder. "Our uncertain finances mean that we have to think creatively to maximize the value of our physical assets. One way we are doing that is by creating more dynamic advertising opportunities."

Among the MTA's recent or planned initiatives designed to increase ad revenue are station domination campaigns in which advertisers are invited to take over entire subway stations and digital displays on trains, buses and stations. The MTA is also exploring 3D images, and in-tunnel subway advertising. Last week, New York City Transit began its first trial of in-train video advertising displays.




Cick here for full article

MULTI-LEVEL

Dennis Crompton, Computer City Project – Axonometric, 1964. Photoprint from ink

drawing with added color film, 40-1/8 x 28-3/8”. Courtesy of Archigram Archives.

A GUIDE TO ARCHIGRAM 1961-74

Are cities still necessary? Do we still need the paraphernalia of a metropolis to house the executive function of a capital city? Do we need the agglomeration of five, ten of twenty million people in order to learn, be entertained, enjoy good food or take part in higher productivity?

The idea of cluster, and then of grouping of parts and functions that are so different but sited to close together that elements cease to be defined, is a further sophistication of metropolitan organization. This leads us to the proposition that the whole city might be contained in a single building. The concept of vehicular/pedestrian segre-gation is now an accepted part of planning theory. But once one accepts this and the idea of multi-level single buildings, it is only logical to conceive of multi-level cities.

NYC Nano-Cloak of Eden (Scenario) - Hugo Lemes

Borrowing from Huizinga’s idea of the magic circle, and Archigram’s projects: Dreams come True INC and Instant City:


The intention of the NYC Nano-Cloak of Eden is to actually cause the opposite of what Archigram’s Instant City’s proposal aims to do. Its objective is to negate the urban in favor of a less agitated augmented reality created by the person or many persons and their individual or collective imagination, particularly in times of high-stress in their lives. We all know how urban life can be exciting, but also dreadfully stagnant, and repetitive (as we have seen through Situationist dérive studies like Paul-Henri’s plotting of all the trajectories effected in a year by a student inhabiting the 16th Arrondissement), particularly in NYC during winter, where the gray is everywhere, emphasizing the cold Metropolis / Gotham feel that the city has been associated with.




The NYC Nano-Cloak of Eden would allow the people of NYC and tourists to create and share their dreams of peacefully idyllic scenarios that could take place away from the city, through a network of connected mobile/non-mobile phones and computers. These conscious/subconscious imaginations would involve and ‘cloak’ the city fabric, resulting in a virtual reorganization of the city, in preparation for an eventual reformation to take place once nanotechnology allows us to easily and quickly destroy, modify, and build any architecture or scenario we wish or dream to come true.

Therefore, this project will begin with a virtual compilation of idealized Huizinga’s magic circles through the cloaking of certain parts of the city, and the consequent replacement of these cloaked areas with idealized architecture/situations/landscapes/art created by the minds that have experienced NYC and its daily stress. This could be done, for example, through software applications (including BuildAR and Google Earth) that would allow the user to cloak a building with another, overlay an area with a video from YouTube, replace building facades or wipe them out, introduce bird-chirping sounds for car horns, insert 3D models of waterfalls, windmills, cliffs, mountains, rivers, etc. The second stage would involve blurring the virtual with the real by introducing some of these ideas physically, maybe with the help of a business organization similar to Archigram’s Dreams come True Inc. Finally, the third stage would be to actually bring some of these imaginations almost instantaneously into fruition through the aid of nanobots and new nanotech innovations.

A place to start this experiment might be Times Square, nano-cloaking its spectacular, chaotic nature with spectacular, peaceful interventions!

P.S. This scenario would also, in the end, break the stereotypical identities that the city has developed through its grid and block system, with each block having its own symbolic/iconic integrity and life (as pointed out by Koolhaas in his Delirious New York).

The Magic Circle

Pretending is the act of creating a notional reality in the mind, which is one element of our definition of a game. Another name for the reality created by pretending is the magic circle. This is an idea that Dutch historian Johan Huizinga originally identified in his book Homo Ludens (Huizinga, 1971) and expanded upon at some length in later theories of play. The magic circle is related to the concept of imaginary worlds in fiction and drama, and Huizinga also felt that it was connected to ceremonial, spiritual, legal, and other activities.

Huizinga did not use the term magic circle as a generic name for the concept. His text actually refers to the play-ground, or a physical space for play, of which he considers the tennis court, the court of law, the stage, the magic circle (a sacred outdoor space for worship in “primitive” religions), the temple, and many others to be examples. However, theoreticians of play have since adopted the term magic circle to refer to the mental universe established when a player pretends.

Adams, Ernest. Fundamentals of Game Design. Second Edition. Berkeley, CA: Pearson Education Inc., 2010. 4-5. Print.

Huizinga’s thesis, which was more widely distributed and readily acknowledged than Bakhtin’s, had a different emphasis, positing that the wellspring of all culture, or at least all great culture, was the instinct for play.

Simon, Sadler. The Situationist City. Cambridge (Mass.) ; London : The MIT Press, 2001. 35. Print.

Expendable city

Archigram gave the notion of an expendable environment in 1963. Foodbags, paper tissues, wrappers,etc, so many things about which we doesn't have to think became the first generation of expendables. "We throw them away almost as soon as we acquire them."

The expendable city is the product of a sophisticated consumer society, rather than a stagnant (in the end, declining) city.

video link here

I seem to be a verb

"I live on earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I'm not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe."

(Buckminster Fuller, 1970)

Build AR Competition to Win their 'Markless' App

AR Competition Ad 2001a

Installation Proposal

Feb. 4, 2011


Based on what we discussed today it seems that the logistics of what we agreed upon resume as the following:


1. Create a framework for a layered NYC in which 'situations' or our proposals would be introduced throughout the semester (they could be more individual for the moment, and more collective later). The blocks of NYC that we select will, for now, feature an iconic building. Blocks that do not have an iconic building will have a generic one. Maybe we should focus on Lower Manhattan, or some other area of interest). Layers that we may consider including for Monday may include: virtual topography and the subway system. This layered framework of the city with proposed 'situations' or general data would in the end of the semester produce a time capsule containing all the relevant data we collected/proposed throughout the semester. Photographs or other forms of documentation should be done for the projections and other interventions (physical/etc) so that we can publish a document in the end of the semester. The time capsule could be sealed to be opened in 50 years or so? This layered NYC would be located in the center of the room, on top of one of the tables.

2. The barcode will be the most elemental form of data to identify or link (the new hypertext) an object/person to information (media, text, etc). All objects/creations/creators will have a barcode associated with them.

3. Each creator will have both a symbol and a barcode of association located on their desk. The symbol can be used to project proposals/ideas during presentations, and also to identify the creator. The desk will be a laboratory/creation station in which more abstract ideas can be projected and later be turned into more architectural/situationist proposals for the main NYC layered framework in the center of the room.

4. In addition to the NYC layered framework/dreamworld, each of us should also select a website that is connected to ourselves and turn it into a barcode. A symbol should also be selected. The image has to be high-contrast (black preferably), and in png format. Please email me the images and your website link. Also, think of something to project on your desk that begins to propose something that you have been thinking about (can be abstract, created on rhino or downloaded). Good sources for 3D models include:

http://artist-3d.com/

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/


List of other logistic things we need to do in order for this to happen:


1. Create symbols for the blocks
2. Create barcodes for the blocks
3. Select buildings of interest and find 3D models + barcodes to link to media related to the site/building
4. Make sturdy bases for the symbols (we might use chipboard/museum board/etc).

Urban Tapestries

The following project uses GPS enabled phones and PGA's to annotate areas of London,

"embedding social knowledge in the landscape of the city for others to retrieve later."

34n 118w

mapping los Angeles

"Locative Media"

It is the kind of media that situates the user within a pre-existing geographic space. It is based on place, not cyberspace.

"locative media projects can be categorized under one of two types of mapping, either annotative—virtually tagging the world—or phenomenological—tracing the action of the subject in the world. Roughly, these two types of locative media—annotative and tracing—correspond to two archetypal poles winding their way through late 20th century art, critical art and phenomenology, perhaps otherwise figured as the twin Situationist practices of détournement and the derive." (Kazys Varnelis)

http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media

USPS Priority Mail Simulator

Underground World

"When one presses his/her ear against the floor and listens closely, the sound of the surrounding environment is heard."

Inspired by "The Augmented Reality", I am thinking about creating an underground virtual experience. This experience provides both visual and audio composition of the city. People can use the app to see and hear what happen above them from underground.

In other words, from the underground perspective, the objects that drop, roll or touch the ground create sounds and visuals. They create more than reality.

Augmented Reality Apps for the Iphone

37 Best Augmented Reality Apps for the Iphone from the website IphoneNess.com