[Synapse elist] souvenir Zeeland update

[Esther Polak]

Dear All.

I had promised to keep you all updated about the developments of our  
Souvenir Zeeland project so here it comes! We have been updating the  
BLOG but during the intense week of setting up, I never found time or  
space for a moment of quit reflection. Sunday afternoon we had our  
opening, and yesterday we spend swimming at high tide, and collecting  
oysters, cockles and mussels at low tide at the Oosterschelde see  
arm, so today finally is a good moment to write down some thoughts  
and reflections.

I promised to write about the successes and failures of the project.  
First the project was a good opportunity to observe and test the  
behavior of our sand robot. The robot is special designed to draw GPS  
tracks in a manner that expressed the subtle richness of GPS drawing  
as described by Jeremy Wood. There is still a lot of interesting  
visualization development possible in this field, and I try to  
contribute to this with the development of the sand robot. The robot  
draws the map directly on the surface of the earth, it results thus  
in a map drawn on the ground. Also it is very suitable for outdoors  
GPS drawing in the field. The nice thing is that it works as an  
hourglass on wheels: the robot draws the GPS tracks, scaled both in  
time and in space. So we can make it run a track that in reality took  
5 hours, in 15 minutes, and it will then also wait at moments where  
in reality the person stopped for a while….. ore slow down where the  
person slowed down. The speed is shown in the movements of the robot,  
that, to use Jeremy’s words, becomes a ghost of ones selves, or  
rather a representation. The nice thing is that the differences in  
speed are also represented in the sand track that the robot leaves  
behind: a slow movement results in a thick line, and a fast movement  
in a thinner line… a stop results in a heap of sand.

This is how it works in theory, but the robot is still under  
development, and the (visual) possibilities for it, the effects it is  
able to produce and subsequent adjustments that I still would like to  
make are in a process of constant development. I expect it will be  
never possible to make the robot perform as perfect as a computer  
screen visualization: the sand drawing will always be a subjective  
and partly imperfect representation, as we use dead reckoning for its  
orientation combined with an electronic compass. Our robot is for  
this reason partly blind for its directions and distances. This  
decision was first made for technical reasons, but also as we  
wondered how much precision and perfection was actually needed to  
evoke the effect that Jeremy describes: a recognition of ones selves  
tracks and movements: as being a memory machine of space. So we  
decided to develop, step by step, from out of experience, how much  
perfection is needed for a good enough performance, and what the  
needed standards are to have an experience of identification. Our  
workweek in “De Bewaerschole” was again a great opportunity to test  
the robot in its current state. The crop farmer’s tracks do have  
distinctive different characteristics than the tracks that we worked  
with so far (tracks of nomadic herdsmen in Nigeria and Cameroon) And  
both turn out to have different precision needs. The tracks of the  
Zeeland crop farmers are very geometrical, and therefore all the  
deformations produced by the robot stand out merciless. The results  
are now all published on our  BLOG: so I invite you al to judge for  
yourselves.

What we tried in “De Bewaerschole” installation is make the very  
temporary sand drawings result in permanent monoprints: I developed  
this technique, where we run the sand tracks over sheets of paper,  
spray-paint over them, then remove the sand after the paint has  
dried. This process is documented clearly on our  BLOG. What I did  
not anticipate so much was the real cartographic effect of this  
visualization: the tracks continue from the one print into the other:  
just as with a set of “normal” maps. Also the feeling of the track  
extending over/out of the frame of the print, as is the case with  
normal maps and the fact that the borders of the maps are  
contingently chosen parts, depending on the grit of the total amount  
of maps.

The monoprints are now made in sets of 9 sheets per robot run. We  
planned to make a lot of prints, so we would be able to sell them  
relatively cheap, for the majority of the public here consist of  
tourists, and for a real interaction and involvement with them, a  
prize that competes with other souvenirs was needed.

During the opening this was tested for the first time. And it was  
really interesting to observe how the audience interacted in deciding  
if- and which print to buy. They found out pretty soon that it was  
nice to buy a set of two ore tree print that are connected, and even  
got temped to buy two or tree in a row. This reminded me very much of  
myself in process of buying maps of a new terrain to explore: I  
always get greedy and tempted to buy some extra maps: to buy more  
space, more possibilities: expecting to walk, bike ore travel always  
further: beyond the borders of the map.


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