[Synapse elist] souvenir Zeeland update

[Brian Degger]

Hi Esther + list,

The new work you describe sounds sublime.

Your Milk projects were mentioned today at the Urban Climate Camp
forum at ISEA2008. There was a very strong focus on locative
media/geogrphy this year, and it was great to debate on whether or not
locative technologies give us a better or worse sense of place,
whether they connect us/situate us or disengage/alienate us from our
landscape or environment.

cheers,
Brian Degger
transitlab.org


2008/7/30 Esther Polak <epolak at dds.nl>:
> 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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