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On April 17^th and 18^th 2008 the department of Politics and International Relations at the Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL) organized Politics: Web 2.0: an international conference. The conference was large and diverse, with six distinguished keynotes, 120 papers organized into 41 panels, and over 180 participants drawn from over 30 countries. The big star of the conference was…. You!

Of course we all remember winning the TIME’s Person of the year award in 2006 for seizing the reins of the global media and, whilst working for nothing, founding the new digital democracy. TIME rightly observed a new trend in the Web – a shift that allows for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. We call it Web 2.0.

Web 2.0, coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004, is the idea of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by dynamic information sharing and creation. Web 2.0 includes all those Internet utilities and services which can be modified by users whether in its content (adding, changing or deleting- information or associating metadates with the existing information), or how to display them, or in content and external aspect simultaneously. The user generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia, the million-channel people’s network YouTube and online social network conurbations such as Facebook and MySpace are a mere few examples of the new web direction.

Though it may not be obvious, the road marks in Web 2.0 are political: grassroots participation, forging new connections, and empowering from the ground up. The ideal democratic process is participatory and Web 2.0 is about democratizing digital technology. It may therefore be relevant to ask if there has been a shift in political use of the internet and digital new media – a new Web 2.0 politics based on participatory values. Moreover, how do broader social, cultural, and economic shift towards Web 2.0 impact, if at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the communication of politics and policy? Essentially, does Web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship?

After an hour travel from London I arrived in Egham, a small town in the Runnymede borough of Surrey, in the south-east of England. The picturesque houses of Egham are home for a population of six thousand people. Just outside Egham is the Royal Holloway University of London which caters eight thousand students. The campus, which is set in 55 hectares of parkland, is dominated by its original building, known as the “Founder’s Building”, designed by William Henry Crossland and inspired by the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France.

The department of Politics and International relations, Andrew Chadwick (Director) explains in the opening speech of the conference, was created to study the ‘new’ in new media technologies, such as the Internet, mobile technologies, and global TV. The main issue with new media phenomena is that they get over estimated in the short term and drastically underestimated in the long term. It is therefore essential to analyze and research changes in the Web without delay. The current accent of the web seems to be on social networking and sharing. Its success hints at possibilities for a working political and social system based on mutual respect for each other’s cultures, free of prejudice.

This article is divided in two sections: firstly I will discuss the keynote speakers; then in the second half I will discuss six case-studies. The article will be wrapped up with a short conclusion including comments on the overall event.

The keynote presentations include:

· Professor Rachel Gibson – Trickle-up Politics? The Impact of Web 2.0 technologies on citizen participation.

· Micah Sifry – The Revolution will be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America.

· Professor Robin Mansell – The Light and the Dark Sides of Web 2.0

· Professor Helen Margetts – Digital-era Governance: Peer production, Co- creation and the Future of Government.

The case-studies include:

· Severine Arsene – Web 2.0 in China: the collaborative development of citizen’s rational discussion and its limits.

· Cuiming Pang – Self-censorship and the rise of cyber-organizations: an anthropological study of Chinese online community.

· Maura Conway & Lisa McInerney – Broadcast Yourself: A History & Categorization of Terrorist Video Propaganda.

· Kostas Zafiropoulos and Vasiliki Vrana – An exploration of political blogging in Greece

· Paul Zube – VulnerableSpace: A comparison of 2008 Official Campaign Websites and MySpace.

· Rebecca Hayes – Reaching out on their own turf: Social networking sites and Campaign 2008.

PART 1 – KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

BLURRING AND EMERGING TRENDS

Professor Rachel Gibson’s presentation ‘Trickle-up politics?’ concerned the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on political communication and citizen participation. ‘Trickle-up politics’ in fact refers to Reagan/Bush’s ‘trickle-down’ economic policy – which is used in political rhetoric to classify economic policies perceived to primarily benefit the wealthy and then ‘trickle-down’ to the middle and lower classes. What Rachel means with trickle-up is a bottom-up tactic, referring to the deregulated, decentralized political space that is the web. Rachel’s talk was particularly interesting because she set-out a concise historical trajectory to define the present-day web/politics.

Politics before the web – early 20^th century through to WWII – can be characterized as being direct, localized and face-to-face. The town meeting, for instance, used to be an effective intermediate. In fact, Rachel continues, politics at this time had a ‘live’ quality, the emphasis was on an ‘in the flesh’ confrontation. Politics gradually became more mediated and indirect between WWII and the turn of the century. With advancement in electronic mass media, the position of the mediator increasingly became independent and subjective, as well as a critical factor in the election outcome. Hence, personality driven candidates have become vital in persuading publics to vote for a party, consequently parties lost their supremacy. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats in the 1930’s and the first televised presidential debate in 1960 – John F. Kennedy versus Richard Nixon – are two defining moments, or as Rachel calls them, seeds of change.

In the period between 1990 and 2004 the Internet progressively became a consumer friendly domestic commodity, and with it political communication found a new medium, one with a potential to evade sound-bites and negative ads. Of course the Internet had a long history prior to the emergence of the WWW. It is debatable when exactly the WWW was invented, however, one common date is 1990 when TBL published ‘Proposal for a hypertext project’. The immediate consequence for political communication was an increase in speed, volume, and individual user control over consumption and production. Moreover, it provided a new way of targeting and allowed for ‘narrowcasting’. The internet opened a decentralized control structure and offered the user new forms of interactivity, putting an accent on multi-media formats.

The expectations were high; in ‘The Virtual Community’ (1993) Howard Rheingold wrote that “the future of the Net is connected to the future of community, democracy, education, science and intellectual life… The political significance of CMC lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy’s monopoly on powerful commercial media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizen-based democracy.” Nicholas Negroponte wrote in ‘Being Digital’ (1995) that “as we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation state will give way to those of both larger and smaller electronic communities. [there is] …A decentralized mindset growing in our society, driven by young citizenry in the digital world. The traditional centralist view of life will become a thing of the past.”

And in 1998 Esther Dyson wrote in ‘Release 2.1: a design for living in the digital age’ that for her “the great hope of the Net is that more and more people will be led to get involved with it, and that using it will change their overall experience of life… The Internet is a powerful lever for people to use to accomplish their own goals in collaboration with other people. Its more than a source of information, it’s a way for people to organize themselves. It gives them power for themselves. Rather than over others.”

But, then, what did all this buoyancy bring forth? Rachel answers by showing slides of Tony Blair’s incredibly meager home page from 1995, plus some other laugh-raising political campaign sites familiar to British voters. Obviously it takes time to master technological innovation, Rachel notes. Then, in 2004, came web 2.0. The technological definition of Web 2.0 is that the web functions as a platform, supplanting the desktop and PC. The browser is now the key tool to access a suite of new increasingly interoperable applications that work behind the scenes to link up a wide range of online functionalities – i.e. manage a home page.

At its core, this frame refers to social and participatory elements of the web: communicate with friends, share/publish pictures, and receive news. Web 2.0 is based around social networking activities as it relies on and is built trough ‘social or participatory’ software. Typical applications are blogs, wiki’s, social networking and file sharing sites, such as Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Hallmark of these applications is the way in which they devolve creative and classificatory power to ‘ordinary’ users. In a nutshell Web 2.0, as defined by blogger Nicholas Carr, concerns “the distribution of production into the hands of the many”.

But what does it mean for politics? It is more and more difficult to identify media ‘effects’ at the individual and collective/societal level. We therefore need new methods and data to capture how and why people are using the technology. The Web is becoming an ‘environment’ and a context. Where it is probably having most effect is in changing the culture of participation particularly among younger people. However, Rachel argues, we are not at the stage yet where we can definitively point to changes in citizen participation. Yet, there are significant signs of a shift taking place coming from recent elections in the US, France, Australia and beyond.

Emergent trends include the blurring of boundaries between users and producers, causing what Rachel calls an ‘amateurization’ of politics. On the other hand politics is speeded up; Rachel observes a ‘quickening’ of coordinating citizen demands and responses, fostered by tools like MySociety and Central Desktop, hopefully leading to a more open form of decision making. In addition, the boundaries between public and private are blurring, which causes an ‘informalizing’ of politics. Furthermore, Rachel notes a pluralizing and disaggregating of choices, hinting at a long tail of politics. In politics the long tail has been talked about in terms of tapping small donors, but she argues that it also applies to people’s discrete interests and the opportunity to respond to more than the top four survey items in a poll.

In this sense, Rachel’s ‘trickle-up politics’ refers to diffused and decentralized individualistic micro-networks that are continuous, citizen-based in a non-institutional setting, and characterized by niche audiences. So, where do we go from here? While we ponder the nature of politics associated with the Web 2.0 era it is interesting to think about what the next shift might be. Web 3.0? If Web 1.0 relates to a receive/read mode and Web 2.0 includes a send/write mode (user generated content), then Web 3.0 could very well be, Rachel reasons, a more immersive mode, for instance create/speak/act. So, does this mean we will all be having avatar-to-avatar fire-side chats with upcoming politicians in Second/Third Life?

Politics 2.0 – Open source campaigning

Since the 2004 United States elections, the internet has become much more participatory and interactive with the popularization of Web 2.0. This participation, the idea goes, lends new currency to the notion that these technologies can be employed to allow citizens to ‘reprogram’ politics. One of the earliest examples is the way that the Macaca video spread virally through the internet on YouTube and contributed to the electoral defeat of Senator George Allen of Virginia during the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The old ethics of politics allowed candidates to get away with making ad lib comments if journalists did not pick up on them, but services such as YouTube have changed that, and now politicians must be more careful not to say things that will come back to haunt them.

Various Internet prophecies involve a new wave of fashionable democracy as fundraisers meet on MySpace, YouTubers crank out attack ads, bloggers do opponent research, and cell-phone-activated flash mobs hold mini conventions in Second Life. Open source political campaigns, Open source politics, or Politics 2.0 are about the idea that social networking and e-participation technologies will revolutionize our ability to follow, support, and influence political campaigns.

In The Nation (2004) Micah Sifry wrote open source politics means “opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. It would mean moving away from egocentric organizations and toward network-centric organizing.” Since Micah’s article, the term has appeared on numerous blogs and print articles. Micah was invited to talk about open source politics and how it relates to this years US presidential election.

Micah’s perspective on politics and the revolutionizing authority assigned to the network, provided for some fascinating insights. According to Micah political communications must move from being egocentric to network centric; less about individuals and more about loosely connected networks of supporters that unite and self-organize around specific issues, allowing voters to become co-creators of the political campaign and outcome. Micah’s presentation was named ‘the revolution will be networked’ and concerned voter-generated content, donations, and a potential retreat from sound bites (or the even shorter sound ‘barks’).

Because of the interactive quality of modern campaign sites (comments, polls, upload options), users currently are co-creators of campaigns. This network of users, Micah argues, makes modern campaigns not solely about getting donations or votes; issues can be discussed in depth. Obama’s top 10 YouTube clips are on average 13 minutes long (with approximately 900 videos posted). These videos get millions of hits, which is unique because YouTube only registers a hit when the video is watched completely. The Race Video has had over four million views, demonstrating that there are a lot of people interested in in-depth content that without the Internet cannot be obtained.

The Internet opens up meaningful spaces and changes traditional processes. For instance funding is done in new ways; Ron Paul opened up his funds by putting all his campaign donations online. The database of donations was entirely searchable. Supporters started expanding the site with useful tools, for instance, graphs that displayed funding from specific places, organizations or persons – they then set-up the website ronpaulgraphs.com; the result can be considered a form of open source donors in real-time. With micro-economics emerging on the web, big money doesn’t go away – but now there is a counter force. The mobilizing force of the internet allows for a long tail of donations, potentially assigning power to the people. Those who are only able to donate a small amount and thus generally have little or no authority, can mobilize via network technologies and have a say at what direction a candidate’s party should take, as an alternative to the established domination of the corporation.

The voter generated content, Micah emphasizes, is not solely about raising funds; the contributions extend to full scale voluntary operations. Great examples are “Vote Different” video from Obama supporters and the new “VoterVoter” site, where citizens can develop their own ad and pay to have it placed on TV. Micah believes there is a shift in centrality; the focus is on the user. This shift is evident in the importance of MySociety.org and its toolset for citizens to monitor and exert pressure on government. Obama seems to understand the network power better than the other candidates before him and still in the race; his campaign site is all about providing a channel or a portal to other users and sites, not necessarily trying to control them. The heart is the user.

To get to a position of open source politics we need to give supporters authority. To what extent is this achievable and smart? Ron Paul supporters were given full authority to shape his campaign, but then they raised money to spend on a branded blimp – as it turned out not the most efficient course. A more interesting question is what happens to the network and peer production after the candidate is placed in office? And where will the balance of power lie? Once you have given supporters/voters a sense of power, they probably won’t let it go so easily. The speeding up of politics: this quickening of coordinated citizen demands and responses, fostered by tools like MySociety or Central Desktop, will this lead to more open decision making? What about collaborative government?

ROAD TO ENLIGHTMENT OR CONFUSION?

According to Professor Robin Mansell (New Media – London School of Economics) we are on our way to collective intelligence. The Web 2.0 ideology demonstrates a new narrative and an end of hierarchies. The new narrative, which is put forth from end-to-end networks, is an astonishing emphasis on cooperation ascendant over competition. Information wants to be free.

When thinking about technology from a bureaucratic or a scientific perspective, it is important to ask if convergent and divergent interests in capitalism and democratization are characterized by superficial or fundamental change. Robin notes that historically, shifts in power have been partial and often local, in their consequences we should expect the same in the Web 2.0 age. In order to study ongoing transitions and affect Robin sets out the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ side of Web 2.0. Her presentation was not so much an attempt to close things down and determine all facets of the Web 2.0 phenomenon; but instead aimed to stimulate speculation, further empirical research and a call for governmental involvement.

The success and achievability of Web 2.0 can be explained by steady increases in information connections and social connections over the past decades. Historically the web can be grouped in the PC Era (1980-’90), Web 1.0 (1990-2000), and Web 2.0 (2000-’10). The PC Era commenced as PC’s and in particular the desktop became a household commodity, however, the stand alone character of the PC made it lack information and social connections. Web 1.0 is identifiable by the World Wide Web and although there is an increase in social and information connections, the web is still, at this stage, focused on databases, static websites and one-way communication. Web 2.0, on the other hand, does have a strong focus on user-generated content and social media sharing. Assuming this trend will continue, the upcoming Web 3.0 (2010-’20) is thought to focus on semantic databases and distributed search and Web 4.0 (2020-’30) characterized by intelligent personal agents.

Today, being profitable on the Internet means reliance on user-generated content. Large multi-nationals have come to understand the power of the mass; by winning them over with innovative interactive tools and integrating their creative and immaterial input. Successful businesses respect the small contributions of the multitude and adjust the communication and production structure accordingly; slowly businesses are implementing a horizontal, bottom-up organization. Web 2.0 embodies this change and in this respect stands for the emancipation and an end to repression; everyone’s contributions matter, everyone is listened to and – this is different in a traditional disciplinary organization – you are stimulated to actively participate/volunteer in fine-tuning the social/corporate order.

At first glance Web 2.0 primarily seems to be about upbeat, optimistic and emancipatory qualities. However, there are a lot of negative aspects to be considered in the same way. It is for instance an addiction that consents to collective intelligence; mass collaboration is achieved by encouraging people to get addicted to new media practices. Children, adults and the elderly need to be active in order to belong to the ‘new society’. Those that do not contribute and participate are automatically excluded. All our daily practices slowly seem to be reliant on new media technologies. Being part means to be addicted.

Currently active audiences are participating in television shows via sms, speaking out their every day frustrations on blogs and tweaking their profiles on social networks. What this brings, however, are new forms of competition. Companies are competing in who has the most people working voluntarily for them. This obviously raises juridical questions concerning labor and compensation. In addition, Robin continues, mass collaboration mostly occurs within a circle of friends. This means that the focus is inward looking and therefore not as open as many optimists proclaim. Furthermore, Robin notes, adverts increasingly get mixed with editorials. Trust is devaluated by an overload of information. The gatekeepers of information, the editors, moderators and monitors are ‘you’; hence it is increasingly difficult to dependent on one source. Mass collaboration might be a way to collective intelligence, it is predictably also a road to mass confusion.

In the end the scarce resource is data/info management capabilities and time for servicing ourselves. What we need, Robin asserts, is more speculation and empirical research; a turn to governance of communicative spaces in ways that encourage active passivity; a turn to achieve control over data/info management – the driver of the economy, Web X.0 and political outcomes. Bottom line is to understand that network effects are not neutral for the economy or for democratization.

DIGITAL ERA GOVERNANCE

In the public administration debate about new public management (NPM), Professor Helen Margetts (Society and Internet, OLL, UK) claims traditional themes of disaggregation, competition, and incentivization are worn out. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled or been reversed. Helen sets out the case that a range of connected and information technology-centered changes will be critical for the current and coming wave of change. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward “digital-era governance” (DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, and progressing digitalization of administrative processes.

DEG has three key elements – reintegration (reversing fragmentation, joining up, re-governmentalization, new central processes, squeezing process costs, simplification, bringing issues back into government control, like US airport security after 9/11); needs-based holism (client-focused structures, end-to-end redesign, one-stop processes, co-production, agile government, reorganizing government around distinct client groups); and digitalization (electronic delivery, centralized procurement, new automation, disintermediation, open-book governance, web2.0 for government, fully exploiting the potential of digital storage and Internet communications to transform governance). DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects.

The backlash, however, is a move to a digital super state, in which information and organization is chaotic and lagged. Research concerning UK government representation and recognition on the internet shows that users rate government websites reasonably well but quality has improved little since 2002, design is text heavy, public sector sites lack innovation (particularly Web 2.0) and popular features of good private sector sites. Furthermore, Central government websites cost 208m pounds annually (estimated) – but some deparments/agencies still have weak information on costs/usage of online provision and many lack channel strategies. UK government has embarked on a high risk ‘supersite’ strategy, Helen continues, to centralize e-government provision in two sites – Directgov and Businesslink – which have low brand recognition and problems competing with other information sources.

Helen states management culture for digital-era governance should include the use of pervasive information; it needs to de-couple information analysis from control (contrast to targets-based culture); be customer orientation and segmentation, with attention to channel strategy; and use pro active and experimental tools. A citizen culture for digital-era governance could entail an ‘isocratic’ government which helps citizens do it themselves; stimulate co-production and peer production. Essentially Web 2.0 should run for government.

The only problem with a potential Web 2.0 candidacy is that the cultural vibe in government is that only ‘old-fashioned’ Web is easy to use, and the “government doesn’t do cool”, in fact, “it’s only working if it’s boring” (i.e. all on-line communication is text-based). Governments avoid part-authenticated information and para-state involvement – “we stand alone; we don’t integrate into society’s networks”. The general idea is that people will come to the government site and can be directed to government sources of information.

The risk of Web 1.0 in government is that it ignores young people at peril – internet change is lead by them. Planning for text-only communication, Helen argues, leads to disastrous under-investment. Moreover, people go where they want to go, with increases in competition, a focus on Web 1.0 will bring forth a net loss of visibility for government – loss of ‘nodality’ (information dissemination) as policy tool.

Web 2.0 could provide the government with rich information and content (not just text) – video, pictures, audio, podcasts, high-intensity graphics (e.g. video games). Conventional information asymmetries can be reversed with a highly specific ‘deep’ search. Also, Web 2.0 allows users to play back information about what they do and how they feel. It can offer part-finished products (e.g. part-authenticated information) to leave for e.g. experts outside the government, allowing for co-production, leading to co-creation, and ultimately making users enter the front office. Web 2.0, Helen adds, offers strong customer segmentation – opening space for social networking (peer production) – possibly involving a wide range of organizations – 3^rd sector and private firms.

A 2.0 approach in the health sector, for instance, will permit performance data to be freely available, not only leading to peer-production amongst health-experts, but also offering a direct voice for the patient. This may socialize the manager to be customer orientated. So, the patient input replaces controls.

PART 2 CASE STUDIES

In between the theoretical lectures of the keynote speakers, the conference covered 120 case-studies organized into 41 parallel sessions. Naturally it was not viable to attend all 41 panels within the restricted occasion. Still I was able to attend an especially exciting selection. Such as Severine Arsene’s and Cuiming Pang’s talk on collaborative development of citizen’s discussions and self-censorship in China – outlined in the next section.

What’s more I will discuss Maura Conway and Lisa McInerney’s research concerning terrorist video broadcasts. After that I will discuss Kostas Zafiropoulos and Vasiliki Vrana’s study of political blogging in Greece. Followed by two sections about social networking sites and its usage in the U.S. 2008 Presidential campaigns; I will write about Paul Zube’s study of what he calls ‘vulnerable spaces’ and Rebecca Hayes’ research results regarding social networking sites. In the last part I will wrap up the article and give commentary on the overall conference.

WEB 2.0 IN CHINA

According to Severine Arsene (Science-Pro/Orange Labs, Paris) 210 million Chinese internet users share and tag videos and make use of Web 2.0 applications. Moreover, with the rise of an urban and connected “middle class”, there are more and more discussions taking place online. The content is mostly concerning cars, flats, salary and dogs – in other words lifestyle and values. More interesting are Severine’s observations from fieldwork and interviews with internet users in Beijing.

Apparently there is a wide range of popular debates on morality issues, corruption and other social scandals, making one wonder how China’s strict censorship rules will adopt. Severine states that between harsh nationalism and moral indignation, self-regulation and responsibility, moderators as well as users are collectively elaborating formal and informal rules of politeness, and setting new criteria of objectivity. Censorship and control might be self-regulating at the time, the question is, to what extent is it an effect of to the top-down decision-making norm that is China?

Closely related to Severine’s talk was Cuiming Pang’s (University of Oslo, Norway) presentation concerning self-censorship and the rise of cyber-organizations. Cuiming’s results were based on an anthropological study of a Chinese online community: Houxi Street. According to Cuiming the broad use of Web 2.0 applications in Chinese cyberspace, has provided a platform for individual exhibition and open communication, created a new type of social participation, and facilitated the proliferation of cyber collectives in recent years. It is evident that collective action is more influential in spreading public opinion and organizing public activities than is separated and unorganized individual action. However, Cuiming adds, when faced with the threat of a more powerful authority, a grassroots collective would possibly become more fragile than the individual, and is liable to compromise in order to avoid complete annihilation

Cuiming’s observation of the Chinese online community and in-depth interviews with informants both on- and offline, tell a story about internet users and internet service providers’ perception of and reactions to the Chinese government’s censorship, especially regarding how they learn, perceive, and practice self-censorship. Cuiming argues that many Chinese cyber collectives organized in the format of online communities tend to withdraw collective rather than fight for free speech when they encounter the government’s censorship. Even though there is a wide range of criticism towards the government’s political suppression, the community managers still learn and practice self-censorship, rather then taking risk to challenge the government authority, for fear of penalties.

In addition, because technical censorship is complicated and expensive, the focus is on soft-censorship. Cuiming calls this social moderation; community managers tend to establish a friendly relationship with ordinary users, and adopt strategies of negotiation and dialogue rather than restrictions and sanctions, to remind users to be cautious of their own behavior. What this brings is users spontaneously helping managers, and collectively maintaining and protecting the community, ultimately making it easier for the government to practice internet censorship (and more difficult to become more democratic). Well, let’s put it this way, Cuiming had to go to Oslo to study Chinese censorship…

A History & Categorization of Terrorist Video Propaganda

An interesting approach of the history and categorization of terrorist video propaganda was set out by Maura Conway and Lisa McInerney (Dublin City University, Ireland). Maura and Lisa have observed a trend of violent jihadis and their supporters worldwide that are exploiting internet technology to pursue an extensive and cutting-edge media campaign. Jihadi media outlets are influencing perceptions of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere among large chunks of the Arab population and, increasingly, also further a field. Video products arising out of the Iraq conflict in particular, Maura and Lisa add, are a key asset for jihadist media worldwide, which employ materials produced in/about Iraq to underline their broader message.

Their presentation traced the ‘history’ of video technology and its use by terrorist organizations: from Hezbollah’s use of ‘camera crews’ to record their attacks on IDF troops in South Lebanon in the 1980’s to the ‘martyrdom videos’ produced by Hamas and other organizations in the 1990s, and from the establishment of al-Qaeda’s al-Saha productions to the ‘do-it-yourself’ contributions widely available on YouTube today. Particular attention was given to the types of jihadist video currently being produced and attempt to broadly categorize these.

Maura started by saying there is a relation between the emergence of new technologies and terrorism. For instance the print set off further forms of terrorism, mobilization and propaganda. The television satellite in 1968 enlarged this process. Imagery, a central aspect of television, is far more persuasive. Hezbollah immediately began to use its power, but, and this is an important fact, the power of the press is limited to who owns it, and because Hezbollah could not own its own television station (before Al-Manar, 1991), its power was limited to who showed their actions. Consequently Hezbollah began broadcasting themselves in the 1980s using ‘camera crews’ to record their attacks on IDF troops in South Lebanon. It was the first form of self-broadcasting.

In the late 60s and 70s hijacking attention became an effective means to draw the attention of television stations – i.e. Black September (PLO). The hijacking genre, Maura states, is the central means to propagate awareness within the television medium. Hijacking videos currently, like its medium, stands for the traditional, the old and the past. Hezbollah’s self-broadcasting activities in fact paved the way to its broad application currently on the internet. There is a wide variety of propaganda videos now residing on such channels as YouTube and LiveLeak. Juba Baghdad Sniper, for instance, is a famous example.

Juba is an Iraqi sniper who has his actions filmed. The videos show unaware American soldiers being shot from a large distance. The videos that contain soldiers falling to the ground are the most popular; some of them have been viewed more than 300,000 times. What makes contemporary propaganda videos different from those broadcast via satellite/television is the co-creative value. Many of the Juba videos have been edited by other users in order to enhance the essence, for example by putting a red circle around the victim prior to the shot, or adding a slow motion filter and repeating the moment the bullet hits the soldier. Another common user generated add-on is subtitles (in English), or a written overview of an up to date body count. The Juba videos are modern propaganda videos aimed to convince viewers around the world that Iraq’s people will not give up and in fact are winning the war.

Juba is just one example of an effective Web 2.0 propaganda video. Maura and Lisa have established seven different propaganda video types on the Internet: political statements, beheadings, attack footage, living wills, instructional, memorials, and the music video. The beheading videos popped up since 2004 and are considered new. In the past videos containing such gruesome aspects as stabbing and detaching body parts would not be broadcast via satellite. The global and ostensibly anonymous character of the Internet makes it a medium to rapidly reproduce virtually any type of content. Beheading videos primarily are intended to provoke shock and demonstrate devotion to both local and Western viewers. Similarly the living wills characterize a global aspect; they are meant for an international audience and speak to non-Muslims.

On the other hand instructional videos are mostly Muslim-oriented. The genre can be divided in theological and operational instructions, such as for bomb making and transport systems. The latter category are not always accurate, they often miss vital information. There are videos circulating the internet with directions in how to make an IED, however they will regularly be ineffective when used in combat. Possibly these incorrect videos are placed on the Internet by Americans/Europeans to cause confusion (produced or re-edited in the West), or are spread by people who lack fundamental understanding, but pretend/believe they do.

Also the memorial videos are mainly distributed amongst Muslims. The content acts as a virtual tombstone and is considered to hail the victim. Lastly there is the jihad music video. The style is rap. Some popular videos get more then 125000 hits. The music video, Maura and Lisa assert, is aimed to target the youth in many countries. Not only are users of the Internet commonly younger generations, rap music in general has an international and youth appeal; it acts as a universal fashion.

Maura and Lisa observed that production is becoming more professional and is vastly multiplying. This has to do with advancements in technology and the global participatory quality of the Internet. There are now even dedicated media production units: Al Saha/As Sahas and Islamic state of Iraq (ISI). In addition there is the do-it-yourself amateur on YouTube who collaboratively create videos, branding, mimic each other, and cause rivalry (leading to snipers similar to Juba going into the streets with more successful kills on their name).

Lisa and Maura conclude that there is a diffusion of power downward. Video are integral to Web 2.0, easier to access, highlight targeting of younger generation, and make use of the persuasiveness factor of the image. Web 2.0 makes it that you do not need your own website, now you have multiple platforms at your disposal. Finally, Lisa and Maura note, there has been a big shift these past 40 years; print had little persuasive value and could only reach literate people, satellite television (1968) had far more power but lacked distribution (airing of videos depended on who owns the station) and grassrooted control, this evolved in a period of 40 years to co-created easy accessible videos in seven established genres.

Politics of Blogging in Greece

Kostas Zafiropoulos and Vasiliki Vrana (both University of Macedonia) presented an exploration of political blogging in Greece. Their research was based on a sample of 1367 Greek bloggers.

Blogs have the advantage of speedy publication and in socially constructing interpretive frames for understanding current events. Blogs appear to play an increasingly important role as forum of public debate, with knock-on consequences for the media and for politics. In Greece where the ratio of internet users is relatively small there is however an expanding portion of bloggers who comment regularly and have the power to a certain degree and in certain circumstances to trigger off political movements. Based on the relative literature, Kostas and Vasiliki use Technorati.com in order to track Greek political blogs and provide indicators of their popularity and interconnections. Additionally the aim of the case-study was to test whether the hypothesis of Drezner and Farell (2004) – Skewedness of incoming distribution and formations of core blogs – apply for Greek political blogging.

Drezner and Farell argue that blogs with large number of incoming links offer both a means of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential readers of these posts can coordinate. When less prominent bloggers have an interesting piece of information or point of view that is relevant to a political controversy, they will usually post this on their own blogs. However, they will also often have an incentive to contact one of the large ‘focal point’ blogs, to publicize their posts. The latter may post on the issue with a hyperlink back to the original blog, if the story or point of view is interesting enough, so that the originator of the piece of information receives more readers. In this manner, bloggers with fewer links function as ‘fire alarms’ for focal point blogs, providing new information and links’.

Currently 40% of the Greek population uses Internet (with percentages being higher among young people and men). According to Karampasis (2007 http:ereuna.wordpress.com) blogging started to expand during 2002-2003 in Greece. There are currently 9610 blogs written in Greek, but only 4639 of them are active. The content includes multiple subjects – with an emphasis on personal interests, art and culture, and entertainment (news and political subjects are rarer). The majority receives less than 100 visits daily, and perhaps as a consequence, do not have any advertisements. The typical Greek blogger is a male (64%) with a college education around the age of 30, and lives in Athens (53.1%) , Thessaloniki (12.4%), or resides abroad (11%). Mostly bloggers tend to use the medium for the purpose of keeping a diary, experimenting, taking action while being anonymous, or creating of a community. 38% of the bloggers consider blogging to be a form of journalism, while 51 does not.

The case-study examines the posts of blogs that were about George Papandreou (the former and current President) and Evaggelos Venizelos (contender) during the period prior to the general elections – from September 16 to November 13. The blogs that were examined contained posts linking to the two candidates sites/blogs. Blogs connectivity, closeness and variations over time were the main characteristics of this investigation. In addition, the research discusses skewedness of the blog incoming links distribution and how this is affecting the formation of central or core blog groups, which serve as focal point blogs. Central in the methodology was recording blogs (from friends and followers, party members, dedicated blogs, non political commenting), link from blog rolls, and affiliation of blogs.

The results, Kostas and Vasiliki argue, demonstrate that political blogging in Greece although limited, conforms to the characteristics described in the literature regarding political blogging. Blogs may frame political debates and create focal points for the new media as a whole. In this way, blogs sometimes have real political consequences, given the relatively low number of blog readers in the overall population. Skewedness of incoming links distribution and the formation of core blogs have on the provision of information and discussion. Empirical evidence from Drezner and Farell is also reproduced in the present analysis. Greek political blogs act within a social network of blogs, which form authority core groups where the discussion is taking place. Political affiliation is partly reflected on the formation of blog core groups. Because of this, it is easier for citizens that need information to coordinate and find where the interesting debate is taking place.

message and image control on myspace

Each election provides researchers studying politics with rewarding material, especially in the last decade; in each election political candidates have made use of new web technologies to reach out to voters. With the 2008 U.S. presidential election looming, Paul Zube states, it appears that social networking sites (SNS) will be the newest web tool utilized by candidates.

Paul’s research examines the ways in which campaigns are making use of one particular SNS, MySpace. MySpace is a popular SNS in the U.S. with a relatively young population of users. This represents an interesting strategic move by U.S. candidates as they have traditionally put little effort into courting young voters, especially as young voters are infrequent visitors of the polls. To study how candidates are using MySpace, two approaches were used. First, the 14 candidates that had active MySpace accounts in the spring of 2007 were “friended” by the researcher to allow full access to the candidates’ spaces. The MySpace and official website spaces of these 14 candidates were then frequently observed during a one month period. Particular attention was paid to differences in content and useable site features. In addition to this comparison, the comments posted on cadidates’ MySpace pages were analyzed. This, Paul adds, provides a glimpse into the potential interactivity promise of SNSs.

The results of these methods found that there are significant differences between the official website presence and the MySpace presence of candidates. The use of MySpace seems to represent a relinquishing of control by campaigns. Although this may be encouraging for those interested in the deals of democratic governance, it is a counterintuitive strategy for the candidates. Candidates have historically sought the maximum electoral benefit from the minimum image/message risk; whereas, SNSs seem to represent a great risk with potentially very little electoral benefit.

Paul start by explaining how the candidates website traditionally acts as a surfacing stage, allowing the candidate to become visible, create a name recognition, establish a personalized image, spread the core message, and ultimately call for funds and votes. At the same time the level of control allows the website to avoid early miscues and build the moment.

Paul believes there are plausible reasons to assume that SNS might be different from previous web campaign tools. Namely, campaigns are not directly in control of structure, moreover, SNS acts as a 3^rd party management. Also, the Web 2.0 character makes it difficult to control content supplied by users, meaning that also the interaction with candidates is not filtered. So, is message control compromised in MySpace? Paul asks.

There are several differences between website and MySpace to be considered. Websites are business as usual, Paul says. They are about informing, mobilizing and engaging. Websites are polished and professional. MySpace on the other hand is near uniformity in layout, it contains sporadic content and is non-informing. MySpace is similar but more image focused and the information is personal.

Commenting is an essential part of MySpace and SNSs alike. Paul has established five types of contents: gratitude alone (thanking for accepting ‘friendship’), support (“I am glad you are running), intention to act (“I will vote for you”, challenge (explain such and so – which is never answered by candidate or other users), and spam. The latter actually has initiated some embarrassing situations for candidates; for instance spam adverts concerning illegal drugs are out of place on the site of a candidate who is running a strong anti-drug policy. This and the unfiltered user generated content place candidates at significant risk, making Paul wonder why candidates draw on MySpace.

Candidates jump from one medium to another constantly, yet the challenge of spreading the candidate’s message and image seems minimally rewarded. Not all “friends” on SNSs can vote and MySpace especially has demographics skew very young. History says, Paul adds, they will not vote nor contribute. Candidates seem to use the SNS medium, Paul concludes, to “stay trendy”, it is what is expected of the constituents. Accordingly there seems no motivation by candidates to use the medium for grass-rooted decision making or augmenting democracy, they are simply in it for the votes.

Social Networking Sites and U.S. Campaign 2008

Following Paul’s presentation, Rebecca Hayes (Michigan State University) talked about social networking sites and its usage to reach out to younger audiences. Internet social networking sites are becoming an active forum for participation in politics in the United States, with nearly every candidate in the 2008 presidential primary having a profile on the major SNSs of Facebook and MySpace. One of the main demographics of these sites, individuals aged 18-24, is known to be largely apathetic towards the political process and has previously demonstrated a low level of engagement in politics. While candidates are obviously expending significant resources to reach out to these young voters online, through both SNSs and Web Sites, little is known about the attitudes of this group towards these attempts and how they may impact intention to vote.

Voters are most likely to establish political attitudes and habits, Rebecca continues, by the end of their college careers. For an attitude to form and internalize towards voting or a candidate, the source of the information the attitude is based on must be credible. Additionally, to promote civic participation, an individual must possess political information efficacy, the belief that one has the knowledge to participate. In order to determine the attitudes of young voters (18-24) toward presidential candidate presence on social networking sites and to take the first steps toward determining whether exposure to candidate SNSs can increase participation of young voters, she (together with Paul Zube and Thomas Isaacson) studied the Facebook and MySpace profiles and Web sites of six candidates.

Before explaining how the study was conducted, Rebecca shortly explains that U.S. publics are historically inactive voters. In fact 21-51% of eligible voters actually vote. This mainly originates from constituents to be uniformed; for instance, age relevant information is lacking in campaigns. Other reasons, Rebecca adds, are apathy and voters being too online centric. This might shift as campaigns are more focused on social networking sites, consequently reaching out to young voters, web users becoming more likely to vote and be informed. The web is becoming more interactive per election; in 1996 websites were brochure-like, now they are very interactive and socially networked sites (i.e. John McCain’s site is surprisingly interactive). So, will this translate into greater participation by young voters?

The research followed two theoretical models: the Elaboration Likelihood Model – which describes how attitudes are formed and changed along an elaboration continuum (low-high) – and Political Information Efficacy (PIE) – which asserts that one possesses the knowledge to effectively engage in politics; those with low political information efficacy are much likely to vote; younger voters have much lower PIE than older voters; and exposure to, and interaction with, interactive web campaign material can increase PIE.

Therefore, possible hypothesis include that politically uninvolved young people will find candidate social networking profiles more credible sources of information than will politically involved young people. That heavy users of social networking sites will consider them a more credible source of candidate information. That exposure to candidate social networking profiles will increase intention to vote among politically uninvolved young people. And that exposure to candidate social networking profiles will increase political information efficacy among young people.

The researchers designed an online post-test experiment with control, which measures of the SNS use, the intention to Vote, and the exposure to Face Book, MySpace, Websites, or the control. Additionally experimental groups were asked about impressions of treatment in closed-ended questions and using validated scales of interest/involvement, credibility and PIE. Furthermore, the research included a content analysis by means of open-ended questions to seek initial impressions of exposures. The sample consisted of 411 undergraduate students across four majors (all from the same institute). The results were meant to determine the attitudes of young people (18-24) toward candidate social networking profiles.

The actual results showed websites and Facebook to be more credible than MySpace. Between websites and Facebook there was no significant difference, but this is only moderately credible; usually colleges and universities belong to one SNS – there are Facebook oriented colleges and MySpace oriented ones (depending on where most classmates are). The open-ended responses were overwhelmingly negative; 50% didn’t like candidates on SNSs, and 30% explicitly noted they wouldn’t base their vote on candidate presence. Non of the formulated hypothesis were entirely established – however there was a trend in the hypothesized direction. Results indicate that SNSs may be credible sources of information, but that the information available may not be fully utilized.

IN CONCLUSION,

I have written – with great enthusiasm I must add – about Web 2.0’s history, positive and negative sides of collective intelligence, open source politics, social networking sites, Juba the Baghdad Sniper, digital era governance in the UK, Campaign 2008 in the US, trickle-up politics, blogging in Greece and self-censorship in China, still there is so much more to add. There are so many presentations I have left out, such as Stephen Schifferes presentation on citizen journalism, in which he remarked how young people get their political news from such programs as The Daily Show and that the visual material watched on the BBC website rarely is about politics (hence, if content is really up to the users then we soon will only be able to watch news on celebrities and nothing about the Middle East). Excellent points were also made by Mike Thelwall about reevaluating notions of blogging and the creation of Habermas’s free discussion Public Sphere, as all user-generated content was banned during the South Korea elections.

The conference truly presented a great deal of theoretical insight and exciting new cases, but unfortunately was too large to attain clear-cut in-depth conclusions. The attention seemed to be on the international character of the conference, therefore many of the parallel sessions were about cases in ‘restricted’ places such as Denmark, Istanbul, or Macedonia. Of course it is great to have a platform for a long tail of political case-studies, yet it makes it difficult to draw up unquestionable statements. Take for instance the topic of Political Blogs (I reviewed one presentation on this topic, there were several more – all concerning local politics), none of the talks really outlined what a political blog is. What makes a blog with political content different from editorials?

What I was hoping for were panels of experts debating a single topic (i.e. on blogging, surveillance, journalism, etc.), instead of having them one after another presenting their research results. I was hoping for lively discussions and active audiences. In fact Michael Turk says it best: “The speaker began by requesting that his presentation not be quoted without his prior approval. This reflects a larger trend that Micah [Sifry] and I have discussed here. This is a conference about web 2.0, that attempts to explore web 2.0 use by political actors, but completely fails to recognize the encroachment of the Internet and Web 2.0 on its own world. Almost none of the participants here are blogging. Before the first session Micah asked if anyone present knew of a tag being used for blogging the conference. To a person, everyone in the room stared at him as if a third arm had suddenly sprung from his forehead. For a web 2.0 conference, the participants are remarkably web 1.0 (perhaps even web 0.5).”

As I am writing this article it has almost been four months since Geert Wilders announced that he is preparing a film which elaborates on verses from the Quran, showing they are still being used today, accompanied by documentary footage from the world of Islam, in a 15 minute “call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamization”. In the meantime the Dutch government has expressed great concern about the upcoming film release and has made emergency evacuation plans available to all its consulates and embassies worldwide. Also, Dutch Minister-President Balkenende initiated hardening security measurements around military installations abroad. It is feared that the film will lead to violent extremist Muslim protest such as previous protests against the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons in 2005. Some critics argue that this governmental involvement adds to the publicity of the film and possibly is the cause of its negative association. Wilders accuses Balkenende of succumbing to professional cowardice for capitulating to Islam.

Nonetheless, on March 6th 2008, the Dutch government raised its national terrorist threat level from the status ‘limited terrorist threat’ to ’substantial terrorist threat’ because it fears Muslim terrorists will launch attacks against European targets, with the film as one of the causes. Also Wilders received a substantial terrorist threat: a fatwa by Al-Qaeda, calling all Muslims around the world to assassinate Wilders in the name of Islam. In addition, various international relations have threatened to review its diplomatic stance with The Netherlands, should the film be aired. Leading to an investigation of the Dutch ministry of Justice to find out whether publication could be prevented, but this could not be done. Dutch law avoids censorship unless the content is discriminating. At this stage Fitna’s content is unknown.

Yet, Pakistani regulators banned YouTube for several days due to a “blasphemous” video clip believed to be a trailer for Fitna. Google eventually complied with the Pakistani protest and the material was removed. In their attempt to censor, Pakistan accidentally caused the YouTube site to be unavailable worldwide for hours. Moreover, on March 20th 2008, the American internet hosting provider Network Solutions took down Fitna’s website, replacing a placeholder image containing a picture of the Koran and the text, “Geert Wilders presents Fitna”, with a message asserting that complaints had prompted an investigation into whether its contents violated Network Solutions’ acceptable use policy. Notions of the Internet being a ‘free for all’, ‘revolutionary’ and ‘antigovernment’ distributed global network, should be reevaluated. Both YouTube and Network Solutions exemplify the hierarchical authority of control that exists in its decentralized design and the political pressure and power that allow manipulation.

Authority and control are even more evident in old media. Wilders negotiated about a possible broadcast of the film on the Dutch television. At this stage however it appears that no Dutch broadcaster wants to show the film in its entirety without interruptions and editing. Wilders has said that he would “Rather have the film entirely on the Internet, than half on television”. Fitna is a telling example of the conformist practice in Dutch television. The only tolerant Dutch broadcaster turned out to be the Dutch Muslim broadcasting network: the Nederlandse Moslim Omroep (NMO) offered to air the film, but insisted on an assessment prior to its broadcast, which Wilders turned down. I was enthuses when I read that the NMO proposed to show Fitna in its entirety. This could solve all problems. Not only are all bases – from a political perspective – covered; it would have been a beautiful gesture from both sides, hinting at compassion and forgiveness.

Perhaps one could say the conservative structure of television represents contemporary bureaucracy. On the other hand, Fitna demonstrates the emancipating and mobilizing quality of media. Numerous petitions are distributed via Internet channels, various artists have created ‘counter-films’, and the widespread critique of the (unseen) film has spawned protest actions including a protest of 1,000 people in Dam Square in Amsterdam. People gather together allowing the streets and media to become a platform for their neglected voice. Whilst governments are repressing masses by elaborating on increase of threat, religious conflict and censorship; there actually are people who consider Fitna to be an inappropriate political expression for a politician in a country with a multi-cultural population.

When searching for Geert Wilders Fitna on YouTube, you will have a difficult time missing hundreds of unique clips with the word “Sorry”. Inspired by an apology project done in America (concerning their President), Amsterdam-based Mediamatic mobilized professional and amateur film makers on YouTube in an attempt to show the world Holland is not solely inhabited by bitter angry Wilders clones, but flooded with artistic lovable people. And they are sorry. Sorry for the commotion, confusion, and it will never happen again….

But, should we really be sorry? I mean isn’t Fitna a brilliant new media case-study? The announcement to make a film for television and Internet has resulted in a multi-media hype, a demonstration of online and offline mobilization, and has spiced up contemporary debates concerning distribution laws, internet freedom, security, global politics and ‘impactology’. No doubt in the near future Fitna will be a cuisine for many hungry scholars (in domains of media, law, politics, sociology, cultural anthropology, religion studies) allowing them to obtain their Master and Phd degrees…… thanks to Wilders.

(Thank you?)

As I entered the spacious hall of the NAi, the first thing that caught my eye was a table filled with Lego. The colorful interlocking plastic bricks and accompanying array of gear, figurines and other parts stand for imaginatively exploring scenarios and possibilities in a serious form of play. Contemporary cities are the realization of a vision that was once upon a time played with, perhaps even on a table filled with Lego. Similarly, Locative Media could be seen as a modern form of serious play, fostering creative thinking, as users build metaphors of their identities and experiences using new media technologies within a presented scenario. On the one hand, Locative Media offers new tools for designers to envision future planning; on the other hand designers will have to think differently about cities as the technology implicates mobility, practices of everyday life, politics and aesthetics.

Architecture, as Ole Bouman (director NAi) emphasizes in the opening speech of the conference, is a pillar of society in which a shared heritage is stored. The building of the NAi, for instance, is shaped around numerous proposals, political decisions, and cultural trends. In this sense one could say buildings are representations of the zeitgeist, and the city is an archive that preserves an intellectual, civilizing, cultural and political tradition. Cities present scenarios that tell a story about its makers and users. Moreover, they show us where we are, and possibly where we are heading as a society. Architects help us locate and provide a shelter, a form of enclosure and a home. It is the duty of architects to secure and carefully maintain this task. Currently digital technologies continue and aid this mission; network technologies allow archives to be accessible all over the world, and security technologies protect citizens from potential threat. However, as Marshall McLuhan aptly states in Understanding Media (1964) “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Current trends in placing CCTV cameras, tracking and tracing technologies throughout urban space, may soon reach a point from which we cannot return, after which technology imprisons publics and affects who and what we are. Instead of brick facades our future cities may be thought of as glass cages where everyone is watching one another.

For some, paranoid theories are merely entertaining narratives. Nonetheless, there is no denying that digital technologies implicate notions of urban space and place. So what can really be said about the merging of physical and digital ‘reality’? The term ‘Locative Media,’ initially coined in 2003 by Karlis Kalnins, seems to be appropriate for digital media applying to real places, communication media bound to a location and thus triggering real social interactions. Locative Media works on locations and yet many of its applications are still location-independent in a technical sense. As is the case with digital media, where the medium itself is not digital but the content is digital, in Locative Media the medium itself might not be location-oriented, whereas the content is. Thus wireless and mobile media have re-introduced questions of space and place. Cyberspace and the so-called ‘real world’ converge into what Lev Manovich called ‘augmented reality’, and in this ‘augmented reality’ it does not matter where you are. On the other hand, the technology lends itself to surveillance and control, thus in the end it might be important where you are. The network in most instances might be invisible but can you remain out of sight?

OPENING THINGS UP VERSUS CLOSING THINGS DOWN
Malcolm McCullough (Associate Professor University of Michigan) opened his lecture concerning ‘urban inscriptions’ by saying Holland feels equally homely as Michigan. As a citizen of the mobile city, Malcolm belongs to multiple places and communities. Our daily life is increasingly managed in mediated ways. However, layers of information have long been part of urban density. Locative Media let us combine these mediations with organizations in space. That in turn combines many senses of the word ‘architecture.’ However, Malcolm added, Locative Media are not as new as the hype might make you believe “layers of information have long been part of urban density, and their applications are not just in way finding.” Malcolm’s talk touched upon four main themes in relation to urban markup: history, derive, advertising and ambiance.

Inscriptions give cities more than an aesthetic character; it also sets cities apart from one another. In fact, if every city were the same all would be boring. It takes great cities to make traveling from point A to B an exiting experience instead of a tedious trap. “Whether as grand expressions carved in stone facades, mundane signage in the streets, or the various props used by communities of practice, an information layer has shaped urban experience.” Now that layer intensifies. Much as electrification did for power infrastructure a century before it, pervasive computing brings mobility, precision, personalization, and embedding to urban annotation. On a street level, participants build up an invisible information infrastructure, something that could be referred to as urban computing. At the same time the building environment is shaped as a media platform, the rise of corporate media related skyscrapers function as landmarks in the city. The KPN building for instance is a familiar sight in Rotterdam that functions as an orientation point as well as an attraction.

Dérive is a notion used by Guy Debord in an attempt to convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. The concept means to aimlessly walk, or drift, through the city streets being guided by the momentum and space itself. The basic premise in Debord’s theory of Dérive is that people are trapped in the practices of everyday life, by looking at the city by following their emotions they can break with their daily route, routine and enclosed space. Cities in fact are designed in ways to direct and control its publics. Cities are complex structures in which movement and mobility is managed by its plan, for instance road signs tell one where to go at what speed and where to not go between what times, when to stop and when to continue. But also the architecture controls the flow of people by means of the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires. Debord argues that people should explore their environment without preconceptions, in order to create a better understanding of one’s nature; as one becomes aware of its location, one can value and comprehend his or her existence. The idea is that people built forth from their insights and seek out reasons for movement other than those for which an environment was designed. Bringing an inverted angle to the world can make people assign new meanings to familiar places, produce new forms of social interaction and make public space a place where one stops to look.

Locative Media technology and artistic practices may assist publics to gaze in new ways and offer possibilities for social interaction. However, Malcolm noted, the city is increasingly getting polluted with advertising. Contemporary cities are taking the shape of a spectacle as public spaces are bombarded and overloaded with images, messages, art, signs, texts and ads. Moreover, everywhere media facades erect and our streets, the public stage of political movements, theater, playing children and social contact, are increasingly becoming virtualized with electronic screens and projections, taking away the public function of open space. Over the last decades our public space has gradually more been privatized; streets, squares and parks are more and more covered with brands and logo’s; public domains such as schools, universities, and libraries are ever more dependent on corporate sponsoring and turning in a shopping mall variant; public transport such as busses and trains are equally being privatized and transforming into mobile billboards. GPS enabled technologies might continue this trend.

GPS enabled wireless devices, such as ones cell phone, currently allow for personalized data to be sent to its user in the form of Location Based Services. When a personal profile – set up by the user via a survey, or based on the user history – is coupled to a pool of other profiles supplied by other users, then statistical algorithms can suggest other likes and dislikes, based on the similarity of ones profile to other user profiles in the pool. Consequently the user may be sent information when he or she is in near proximity of the product or service that is in accordance with the user’s taste. Yet, the question remains: “how much information is pollution?” In fact, in the past, Malcolm adds, broadcasting ads via radio was controversial (1920’s). Nowadays there are speakers blasting commercials in public spaces. Where is this leading? How much more?

In Sao Paulo there is a ban on outdoor advertising, including billboards, neon signs, and electronic panels. On January 1st 2007 this city of 11 million, overwhelmed by what the authorities call visual pollution, pressed the “delete all” button to offer its residents unimpeded views of their surroundings. Transforming the landscape goes hand in hand with a change in culture. Contemporary culture seems based on marketing and ads. Yet, I cannot stop thinking how dull, grey and maybe even unsafe Time Square would be without its flickering neon lights (or projections of yourself). On the other hand, it is different being a tourist on Time Square as it is being a resident. So shouldn’t place based media make public space more ambient? In ancient times way points and milestone were introduced to the city to make travel more convenient. Orthographic mapping came in the 15th century; fly posting and city street signs in the 19th; and in the early 20th century travel guidebooks, electrification and street lightning made the city more secure, itinerant and mobile. Currently tracking and tracing technologies offer new challenges in urban mark-up, they may make everyday life more pleasant, yet it can enhance annoyance as it increases information junk. When placed on a time line, public advertising is a relatively new occurrence. The privatization of public space and the bombardment of one-way corporate messages have a disturbing effect on ambiance, and add even greater urgency to the belief that concentration of media ownership has successfully devalued the right to free speech by severing it from the right to be heard.

ARTISTS SPEAK OUT
Why do artists choose tracking and tracing technologies in their works? How did they get started? Are there socio political statements announced through Locative Arts? Can Locative Arts be used to push technological progress?

While studying graphic art and mixed media in Utrecht, Esther Polak used a compass to help her navigate through the city. Her bad sense of direction had always been a frustrating factor in her everyday practices. When GPS and navigation technology developed to a consumer friendly affordable level, Esther started mapping her routes. The first time when see saw a route being visualized was after a sailing trip she took with friends on the Lauwersmeer. Not only did the map show the route of the boat it also illustrated the shape of the lake. Analysis of their sailing technique explained the wind direction. Moreover, the map pointed out decisions they made during the trip, decisions that tell a story, for instance when and where they sailed to shore in order to have lunch.

The notion of maps telling a story makes me think of The Russian campaign of 1812-1813 by Charles Joseph Minard. It shows the troops of the Napoleonic army on a two-dimensional map as they advanced to Moscow and retreated towards Poland again. The thickness of the line is proportional to the survivors at that moment. The lower graphic shows the temperatures.

Esther decided to take exploring the visual and documentary possibilities of GPS one step further with her AmsterdamREALTIME project (2002 in cooperation with Waag Society, Jeroen Kee). Ten inhabitants of Amsterdam carried a GPS tracer with them for one week. Their routes through town were made visible on a projection screen in the exhibition space. The traces on screen form an alternative, highly personal map of the city. The maps provide visualizations of every
day routes individual participants take, and in a way the routine they are stuck in, but above all they tell a story about the user. When one of the participants was given his personal map, which only had a few short lines – the man only walked around one corner – his reaction was ecstatic, he told Esther he was going to keep the map for his grandchildren.

This and the encouraging international interest inspired Esther to develop the collaborative MILKproject. In this project a European dairy transportation was followed from the udder of the (Latvian) cow, to the mouth of the (Dutch) consumer. All people who played a role in this chain received, for a day, a GPS-device that registered their movements. Again the results put forward fascinating stories. A Christian farmer, for example, drove the milk to a supplier via an ‘unintended’ detour. When he was confronted with the diversion his father asked at the top of his voice: “What are you doing there?” If it was a woman he was meeting there remains unsolved, nonetheless the map again presented a storyline. Currently the project has found its way to Nigeria. NomadicMILK records and visualizes the routes of both nomadic herdsman and regular dairy transport. NomadicMILK differs from MILKproject in that it makes use of a newly developed visualization tool: a small robot draws the tracks directly on the ground in lines of sand, allowing the tracks to be shown to the Nigerian participants along the road. Again the outcome offered remarkable anecdotes. One of the participants pointed out at what point in the track his wife had left him for another, making others wonder why he still walks that route.

The way that we experience urban place and the built environment is defined to a large degree by the places we go for social encounters, meeting: the places we go to work, for consume, to learn and for entertainment. James Stewart (Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation in the University of Edinburgh) observed an occurring alteration in these places: meetings are now less constrained to offices, shops and fixed points of service, and can take place in a range of environments, in particular the rise of branded places: coffee houses, transportation hubs, customized meeting places, and informal, locally branded spaces that attempt to offer a quality of environment for all sorts of meetings. There is a domination of branding, and consequently corporations shape publics. Brands say something about ones identity, location and milieu. Meeting with friends at “Starbucks” is different then meeting them at “Wendy’s”. In this context Starbucks stands for a mature social environment and the latter represents an adolescent (and perhaps even anti-social, as fast-food restaurants are designed – with sterile white lightning and uncomfortable chairs – to have people spend as little time as possible behind their tables). Therefore, James argues, it matters where people are when they meet, that branding is an important aspect of place, and that technologies have a major role to play in mediating brand and meaningful human interaction. In order to test this hypothesis James and his team are currently running an experiment that entails volunteers logging into the locations they visit by taking a picture of the place. Their Facebook friends are informed of where they are by text and WAP. You can try by adding the ‘BrandedApp’ on Facebook. This experiment investigates Virtual Presence, the images that people choose to represent where they go, and the linking of the ‘status’ concept in online Social networking, with ‘logging in’ to physical places.

Thomas Engel (The Saints, a Amsterdam-based company developing content for mobile devices) took the opportunity to plug a 3,5 minute NavBall commercial – that includes product placement for Heineken. Thomas argues NavBall, a team-based soccer game played simultaneously on 6 to 22 mobile telephones, is the logical result of trends in mobile content, outdoor gaming, and the upcoming European soccer championship (summer 2008). Whereas many of the discussed project presentations were about rediscovering the city, education, or establishing social encounters, NavBall seems primarily centered on fun. Players are focused on their screens more then the physical surrounding, moreover, the physical surroundings act as an obstacle that players have to work around. Of course exiting sociable encounters and discovery of the city may occur, however this seems secondary to engagement in the game.

Games Atelier on the other hand, aims to use the urban environment as inspiration, context, and a trigger for participants to co-design, actively play and share their results. In Games Atelier, Ronald Lenz (head of the Locative Media research program at Waag Society) explains, students from secondary schools are invited to create and play their own location-aware mobile games. Central in the game is the theme ‘citizenship’. Games Atelier evolved from four earlier projects developed by Waag Society (an Amsterdam-based medialab which researches how creative technologies can lead to social innovation in education, culture, healthcare and the public domain). It all started with the previously discussed AmsterdamREALTIME, which opened up new possibilities for playing with tracking and tracing technologies. Four years later in 2005 the Locative Media department of Waag Society developed a mobile learning game named Frequency 1550, in which “students are transported to the medieval Amsterdam of 1550 via a medium that’s familiar to this age group: the mobile phone”. Frequency 1550 took place again in June 2007. The game uses 3G cell phones and network to allow students to compete in finding answers to questions about the old city of Amsterdam, for history class excursion and assignment. Frequency 1550 explores the social potential of location-aware devices, inspired by the use of tracking technology and wireless media, human relationships, movement and identity, the project seeks to extend and re-appropriate the functions of locative technologies by exploring ways in which they can be socially constructive and facilitate new dynamics to occur within everyday school life. Children are taught to look beyond city facades, interact socially and technically, and move through the city in new ways.

The possibilities of Locative Media and studies in serious gaming have triggered interest from the academic community. In 2006 the University of Amsterdam and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam collaborated with Waag Society to develop a mobile package that allows students to use the urban environment as a source of knowledge, information, and study. The Mobile Learning Game Kit (MLGK) consists of a piece of mobile equipment allowing data to be collected. It displays topographical models of urban networks in such fields as culture, politics, and economics. The MLGK enables users to independently observe, analyze, and present data. The MLGK and its content are developed by users themselves and transferred to new users.

The concept of sharing and playing advanced in Waag Society’s recent project named 7Scenes – a community platform for multi-user real-time gaming with mobile and location-based technology. Waag Society considers 7Scenes one of the first Web 3.0 application platforms. With Web 3.0 they point to a future where the Internet is truly connected to our physical world. So how does 7Scenes differ from (Google Maps) mash-ups? “Of course there are some similarities – we all create layers on top of the world. Both 7Scenes tries to go beyond that focusing more on creating scenario and rule-based location interaction and broadcasting: visualizing scenes (live).”

These projects are not only about concentrating context in a coordinate point, nor are the projects merely about gaining greater understanding of place through the cell phone screen. Frequency 1550, The Mobile Learning Kit, 7Scenes and Games Atelier are not museum or digital touring guides; the focus is on opening up spaces of play through which context may be discovered. Moreover, local and otherwise hidden places possibly will get noticed.

Laurence Claeys & Marc Gordon (senior researchers at Bell Labs-Lucent, Antwerp) moved the broad research of the use of the touch-paradigm to interact with things forward into different test cases concerning the relation between home and city context. Their projects aim to empower users to stage, participate in, engage with, and experience media on the ‘cross-reality web’. One of the SmartTouch projects involved a ‘Do it yourself city experience kit’. Another was an album in which city souvenirs may be collected, conserved, collaged and shared with. In their research Laurence and Marc observed a long tale of creative initiatives in the city (the city mass is most dominant and the sociable city is in between). There are a lot of creative proposals but attention is given to commercial initiatives. So, the problem is who will fund people playing around the city?

Currently Locative Media projects receive large academic and commercial funding. Various theorists assert the history of media to have moved from analogue to digital to virtual and now to locative. Commercial ventures are interested in Locative Media projects for their experimentation value. The city is used as a testing ground for technological applications, usability and reliability. Christian Nold (a London-based artist and lecturer) observed that Locative Media do not exist anymore as a community but has splintered into a number of different directions; on the one hand Locative Media can refer to the technology (mobile devices connected to the Internet, security equipment and navigation technology), on the other hand it refers to outdoor gaming and art practices with the use of portable location aware devices. What has emerged, Christian states, is a strong focus on audience and the specificity of place. Christian believes Locative Media should focus on gathering, sharing, playing, visualizing, imagining, contextualizing, archiving and meeting educative challenges. Locative Media has a decentralizing value that allows social spaces to be opened up and empower communities.

Locative Media also allows publics to experience familiar places from an alternative perspective. In Sensory Deprivation Mapping participants were deprived of sight and hearing and asked to roam the city in order to create a map based on other senses. The result is a map based on how fresh the air is or how windy certain areas are.

Locative Media has a quality to bring the local, hidden, repressed and silent to the surface. People are constantly bombarded with signs (ads, road-signs, neon lights, screens, facades) when traveling through urban space, making it difficult for certain places to stand out, places that might tell an interesting or important story. In one of Christian’s projects people in Stockport (UK) were asked to draw emotional arousal in relation to their geographical location in the town. The Emotion Map of Stockport had one striking detail: the Mersey River – which flows through the town center – was not represented. The participants had drawn the shops next to it, some were not even aware there was a river. Emotion Maps can point out suggestions for improvement. In the case of the Mersey River Christian suggests that there is a whole range of cultural and physical interventions that could allow people to re-engage with the river, such as canoeing trips under the Merseyway, marking the course of the river in the street or drilling spy-holes through the road surface to allow people to see and hear the Mersey.

Maps can be used to form communities to adjust the community. We should move away from the fantasy of the mass; the public is you and your friends. Christian has observed a change in publics; communities are becoming more important and the local is being recognized. The alteration of the notion of the public will change the method of advertising too. Advertising as we know it is designed to reach the mass, this will disappear when the transition to community emphasis continues: people do not want to advertise to their friends because for most advertising is considered an anti-social act.

CITY/PRISON: DISCUSSING PARANOIA AND REFUGE

Before a panel of experts took the conference stage Anne Nigten (Lab Manager V2_Institute for the unstable media, Rotterdam) presented StalkShow, a project done in collaboration with media artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat. StalkShow deals with the threat of insecurity and isolation in public space. It invites the audience to give this threat a personal face and space; to show both its horror and its beauty. A performer carries an interactive wearable billboard containing a laptop with a touch screen around these spaces. People are invited to touch the touch screen and to navigate through texts about the threat of insecurity and isolation. Connected to the backpack is a webcam that shows the ‘intruders’ face on the screen (and in 2006 at ArtInPro, Moscow, on an urban screen). The act of touching and being in contact with a stranger’s personal space is for most people, Anne says, a creepy experience. There is an invisible barrier to overcome, and most ‘victims’ felt as if they were performing a forbidden act. What the project tries to display is that, like the technology used, the zone of intimacy is shifting to a more pervasive intrusive one. The question becomes: who is stalking whom? The act of making contact with someone from the back, instead of face to face, enhances the whole idea of being watched. The touch brings it to a close. After a series of lectures and presentations that mainly concerned the playful and innovative character of Locative Media it was interesting to see a project that highlighted the augmentation of surveillance culture.

The panel discussion that followed touched upon various themes, but was dominated by the fear of advancing and promoting privacy intrusive technologies. The panel contained four experts from different domains, allowing the topics to be discussed from diverse perspectives. Rob van Kranenburg (head of Public Domain, Waag Society) is involved in negotiability strategies of new technologies, predominantly ubicomp and RFID (radio frequency identification), the relationship between formal and informal in cultural and economic policy, and requirements for a sustainable cultural economy. Marc Schuilenburg (who teaches at department of Criminology, VU University Amsterdam), co-author of “Mediapolis: Popular Culture and the City” (2007), is mainly focused on the risk society. Joris van Hoytema (BBVH Architects & Multimedia) worked on “Baas op Zuid”, an architecture game in which players can design their neighborhood, and make decisions that directly influence their environment. Nicolas Nova (researcher at Media and Design Lab, Swiss institute of Technology, EPFL) is researching gaming experiences (location-based applications, ubiquitous computing) in mobile/urban contexts.

Rob observed an increase in agency, yet with it there is a lack of unpredictability and poetry. Performance artists (happenings, Yoko Ono, situationists) play with the certainties and expectancies people find in everyday life. These certainties are increasingly being formed by technology. Artists should be encouraged to again wake people up from the routine of everyday life. Our life, Rob adds, is increasingly dependent on technology. Of course technology is able to take away tedious activities, yet the more we (the West) outsource our activities to technology the duller we become. “In Delhi they can still fix their car! Just imagine if here in the West the hardware breaks down…”, Rob shouts. Our fixation on technology and outsourcing of activities is dangerous, it may lead to a militaristic society; Napoleon was able to conquer Europe on a horse, just imagine what he could have accomplished with a mobile phone.

On the other hand, Joris interrupts, technology is able to assist participatory decision-making to take place from local level. In relation to his own projects Joris believes the technology is used for good. The technology motivates people from the same neighborhood to get in contact with each other. Furthermore, it provides them with a chance to partake in urban planning (for instance by means of referenda, allowing residents to speak out their need for more green, parking space, youth facilities, etc.). Nicolas understands the positive aspects of location-based media, but underlines the difficulty in motivating people to use it. It is difficult to mobilize people, currently there is not enough awareness, and moreover, people do not know how to communicate with each other. “I don’t know the email address of my own neighbor” Joris says. “So why doesn’t every place get its own email address?” Marc agrees with the capability of Locative Media to assist notions of collective intelligence (following Levy) and smart mobs (following Rheingold). What this brings, Marc adds, is a break off from autonomous creations; design and production is a collaborative process, every creation is build forth from previous ones, and moreover, spaces are increasingly being capsulated, supporting community building, which add to shared production. “There is no more genius” Marc states, “the ‘senius’ is the new genius”.

Marc believes our attention should focus on citizenship, which, as the word in French articulates, is bound to physical space. Our spaces are increasingly being capsulated (museums, plaza’s) and guarded by mobile media. Currently urban places are more and more being privatized, and this adds to the increase in security techniques. Office buildings, commercial zones, and adverting space are kept safe by mobile media (iris scans, mosquito’s, code). In fact what this brings are enclosed spaces. Hence, technology not only unites, it also divides! Therefore, concentration should be more political; continuation of privatization and commercialization bring forth a city under corporate control.

Nicolas agrees with notions of a gated community, yet believes the focus should be on designers; they facilitate serendipity, assist the discovery of new people, and create awareness of local identities. Rob counters by saying the role of designers at present is only limited to the work that has already been done. Their input and decisions are restricted to what color something should be or what visual shape something needs to have. Therefore designers should be included in the early stages of the process. Rob proposes a level down participation. “Currently the public is only given security cameras, mosquitos and other controlling technologies, if we don’t stop this now we can never get back!” Rob adds loudly. “Designers should see how they can give trust”, Marc replies, “right now the lowest risk factor is ‘low risk’, there is no ‘no risk’. Again the focus should be more political”. “There is no way back”, Rob states, “you can walk around the city covered in aluminum, but you can only keep that up for a few days”.

IN CONCLUSION
Architecture encloses, occupies, it is for the people, stands for values, and is hatched in stone. Architecture covers privacy, security, property, gives individuality, and representation. There are optimistic and pessimistic ways of looking at technological advancement. Ambient, ubiquitous or locative media, like all new technological systems, tend to become hidden and disappear at precisely the moment that they become important. They weave themselves in the practices of everyday life. Infrastructure is embedded, transparent, temporal or spatial reach or scope, is learned by its users, and is linked to conventional practices (e.g. electricity). From the cerebral discussions, the project presentations, and questions from the audience it can be concluded that there are three domains which technological expansion and the ‘hybridization of space’ influence: consumerism, militarism/security, and urban activism (art + activism). Technology is placed in the city with good intentions, but now the architecture is there for control. Database coupling and searches result in that we have become statistical persons. Political choices establish how algorithms are determining networks; it can be used commercially, militaristic, or for reformation.

The topics moved beyond city architecture and touched upon urban culture and identity. Moreover, it questioned the interplay of physical and digital urban spheres in an age of mobile media. The conference organizers Martijn de Waal and Michel de Lange put together an outstanding event. The conference was formatted in a clear and well thought through way; after a broad theoretical overview of both architecture and Locative Media (Ole Bouman and Malcolm McCullough) a series of practical projects set the scene in contemporary urban culture, after which a panel discussion analyzed current transitions from differing professional perspectives. The conference was wrapped up by Stephan Graham (who is discussed in more detail in this Masters of Media blogpost). In the end, I left the NAi a little worried and a whole lot wiser.

My first thought is to draw parallels to the old media formats, such as the previously mentioned television shows. Yet again what jumps to mind when picturing a YouTube video is the appalling picture quality. In the 80’s and 90’s user generated video content was often distinguishable from professional film because of its inferior aesthetic value. With the commencement of mass produced cheap digital camera’s and consumer friendly editing software packages one would expect the barrier between amateur and professional to vanish. Yet, YouTube seems to be a homogeneous style that mainly builds on eyewitness TV, candid camera formats and webcam diaries, moreover, the video quality is – just like its predecessor – second-rate. Mass produced lenses and technological advancements have done nothing to increase visual appeal. A logical answer is that whilst recording and editing techniques have highly developed; streaming, rendering and storage capabilities are still at an early stage of progression. YouTube converts uploaded videos into Flash, a low resolution codec, therewith making the pictures look cheap and unattractive. Currently video streaming platforms such Joox.net are experimenting with high resolution codecs such as DivX encoded films, which with their higher frame rate are considerably bigger in file size, making them more difficult to store and buffer (thus stream) with an average connection speed. However with technological improvements in storage capacities hard-drives and flash-disks have become incredibly cheap. Hopefully internet speeds, namely in developing countries, will increase too.

On the other hand video screens are becoming smaller. Physical screens are reduced in size as more and more media devices become portable. Also webplayers are smaller than the screens they are viewed on, mainly to compensate for the low resolution caused by its coding and to maintain a comfortable buffering time for its users. In the time when I was watching the above mentioned television shows, music videos were a branding tool for musicians and video artists were paid extensively for blockbuster like clips. Hard to believe budgets were spend on a 3 minute lasting slick eye-catching visual waterfall. Mark Romanek’s 1995 video for Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream” is considered the most expensive ever, at an estimated $7 million. Nowadays the music industry is, as they proclaim themselves, in crisis from falling sales due to file sharing and loss of brand control. MTV, the once upon a time music channel pioneer with 24 hours around the clock videos, is pretty much only broadcasting real-life soaps, pranks, candid camera shows and video diaries. The stage for musicians and video artists has shifted to YouTube, i-Tunes, and various other networks. Consequently labels have less to spend on elaborate videos like those made by Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Romanek and Fincher, making ambitious videos an exotic species facing extinction. The dinosaur era of videos has made way to videos that will mostly be seen in miniature on computers. The result, as the Associate Press putts it, has been a major shift in the art form, as artists increasingly embrace the YouTube aesthetic with cheap, stripped-down, low-production videos. Directors have to adapt to the smaller-sized medium. “The new aesthetic is that it’s very low-budget, lo-fi, very do-it-yourself, not at all dedicated to the old style of music video which was always bigger and louder and more explosions and more money,” says Saul Austerlitz, author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes. “This is more a punk-rock aesthetic,” he adds. “It’s very exciting.” So now that music videos increasingly resemble video art, can we define how artistic practices influence the look of online footage?

During Video Vortex, organized by the Amsterdam based Institute for Network Cultures, filmmaker Andreas Treske talked about the alteration in viewing conditions and therewith a change in viewing experience caused by the composition, aesthetics, and cinematic rules and practices of film. As screens become smaller artists focus more on close ups to bring the viewer closer; consequently there is an emphasis on gestures and details are blurred out. The language of cinema is applicable in a reduced form. The iPhone offers viewing possibilities of full-scale films that are (still) edited for cinemas, however, engagement is lost as small screened devices are particularly used in transit. Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (coincidently my favorite film) could to some extend work quite well on a portable device. Leone made heavy use of close-ups, the emphasis on gestures, such as eye movement and accent on detail, allowed the audience to be drawn closer, engaging in a tense play of focus, blurring out the background and stressing on the root of what is at stake. However portable devices, such as the iPhone, are used ubiquitously, which is different from cinema, as cinema is framed according to a set place and time, making watching 175 minutes of Once Upon a Time in the West very difficult; engagement with the film is lost as one will also engage with the device, the surrounding, and the physical and social activity one performs (paradoxically this urban – and to a lesser extend domestic – surrounding is increasingly being filled with bigger screens). As the attention span is short, the composition of online videos is undersized and to the point. Hence with the compression of images/screen there is a compression of time and place.

It is therefore inevitable that we study new methods of impact and discover new ways relating it to video, says documentary maker Stefaan Decostere. In fact we should be thinking about an academic field of Impactology. Impact differs from effect and affect in that it is measurable and generates more impact. The OK Go video with four guys on a treadmill that plays millions of times on YouTube had a huge impact on its audience, in the sense that it was refreshingly fresh and inspired audiences to make and share their own videos. Many artists and directors are now creating videos knowing they’ll have to compete for eyeballs on YouTube. OK Go’s famous treadmill-choreographed video for “Here It Goes Again” was perfectly suited for viral distribution, but the power pop band is far from alone in its reconsidered methods. Wouter Hamel’s Don’t Ask video consisted of a compilation of YouTube videos in which his song was lip synced. The Decemberists and Modest Mouse both asked fans to fill in the background to a video shot in front of a green screen. Last year, Death Cab for Cutie sponsored professional videos for each of the 11 songs on their album “Plans.” For his album “The Information,” Beck personally created a video for every track. The silly, lo-fi videos, which ranged from puppet versions of the band to someone dancing in a bear mask and poncho, were posted on YouTube and many copies of the album included a bonus DVD (source: AP). The bombardment of images makes artists constantly busy in finding new methods of impact. Can we delay impact? Route around it? Stop it? Television does not have the impact anymore. Not only have audiences become “too smart” for the tricks played out on them, television is associated with scripted formats and this no longer appeals to audiences who seem more interested in individuals, real life characters, and unscripted spontaneity. This might explain MTV’s shift to around the clock real-life soaps, pranks and diaries. Unscripted videos are about the individuals and less about the author/director, making it suited for the individualistic mentality present in contemporary western society. The “i” in iPhone, and the “You” in YouTube pretty much stand for the take on individuality and diversity. However, one might ask, how come all this focus on diversity produces forth a pool of homogeneity; standard formats of amateur repeats?

Helen Kambouri, researcher at the Kekmokop Institute in Athens, argues there is a tendency for Greek videos to contain a repetition of semantics, where bodily movements are persistently recurring. To exemplify her observation Kambouri turns to a violent video on YouTube that gained celebrity status in Greece. The video shows a local police station in Athens where two (supposedly) illegal Albanian immigrants are being told to repeatedly slap each other, which they do. The Greek police officer giving orders, who later states to have acted out of boredom, is also the director of the video. The violent video is recorded on a mobile phone and circulated via MMS, after which a Turkish blogger posted the clip on YouTube. The film has received, mainly because of its violent premise, much attention and is amongst the top YouTube hits in Greece. Kambouri says there is a difference in the (effortless) repetition on new media channels such as the mobile phone and YouTube from the repetition of television economy, which is based on transcription. There is no linear matter of storytelling but a repetition of semantics, similarly a video of a prostitute shows a woman constantly making the same hip movement over and over again. Complex narrative has made way for simplistic emphasis on the premise; the Greek police video is an individualistic project, where a violent act is distributed publicly for the purpose of confirming the role of its maker as that of a director in charge of what is being recorded.

There are, as mentioned earlier, parallels one could draw between online videos and user generated content (e.g. home videos) via television, but one could even go back further; Charlie Chaplin’s slapstick. Often slapstick segments are short, bad quality, and repetitious. Chaplin’s films are still being aired and repeated through various media (cinema, television, VHS, DVD, online networks). Many of the slapstick films are directed and acted out by Chaplin; an individualistic project. The narrative of slapstick films are a repetition of semantics, instead of a linear story. However, the focus on contemporary videos seems to be on the unscripted nature of the sequence of events. The bigger impact of online videos on its viewers can be related to its close relation with reality; authentic is more shocking than fiction. What YouTube and sites allike demonstrate is that authenticity can be portrayed best when it is aesthetically amateur, gonzo, lo-fi, raw, rock and roll.

Patricia Pisters, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, commented on statements made concerning television’s loss of impact and YouTube’s success, by referring to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s controversial film Submission, which was screened only once on television and caused much commotion because of the huge impact, however, when it was repeated via YouTube there was hardly any fuss, it had no impact at all. Hopefully this will also be the case when Geert Wilders puts his movie about the Koran on YouTube, as he intends to do.

Download essay in PDF here.

We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

- Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media (1964)

Let me start with a story about a joke. In 1996 Dino Igancio, a San Francisco artist, started the ‘Bert is Evil’ website on which he posted photographs confirming that Sesame Street’s Bert is evil.[i] The images showed the muppet next to notorious people and in famous historical scenes. The photographs were meant as a joke; the muppet was inserted into actual photographs using Photoshop. After a while Ignacio stopped producing new pictures, however a community of ‘Bert is Evil’ enthusiast had already emerged which continued posting new material from all over the world on several mirror sites, including an image of Bert interacting with terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. Meanwhile in Bangladesh, Mostafa Kamal – a production manager of Azad Products – picked up an image of Bert from the web after scanning the web for Bin Laden pictures which were to be printed on anti-American signs, posters and T-shirts. The company printed 2000 posters; “we did not give the pictures a second look or realize what they signified until you pointed it out to us,” Kamal would explain to the Associate Press later. CNN reporters recorded the unlikely image of a mob of angry Pakistanis marching through the streets waving signs depicting Bert and Bin Laden. American public television executives spotted the CNN footage and threatened to take legal action, saying the people responsible should be ashamed of themselves; “we are exploring all legal options to stop this abuse and any similar abuses in the future.”[ii]

The story aptly illustrates how de-territorializing technologies assist distribution, mobility, reproduction, and community forming. Moreover the story is a fitting example of conflicting artistic and cultural perspectives, textual interpretation, and institutional authority. Consumer friendly software packages, such as Photoshop and the Internet, allow anyone with basic practical and creative skills to become producers, making their creations available for anyone with access to the Internet. In the last decade cyberspace has been cluttered with recycled images, texts and data; there seems to be few restrictions with regards to filtering, editing and authority – anyone with a two bit opinion, a photograph or a mere rumor can (together with mistakes in grammar, spelling, and sources) share their contents, leading to an overflow of untrustworthy information and a decline in editorial decision-making as hierarchical structures diminish. This new form of participation in media may assist grass-rooted democracies, as it allows users to actively contribute directly in the text; at the same time making it an opponent of traditional institutions, as it negatively affects market control, promotes an overload in diversity, allows for (negative) feedback, and damages a century old copyright system. The harsh remarks by the public television executives regarding legal action against those responsible for the uncontrolled act of doctoring copyrighted material and its after effect, exemplifies how this new media form of participation culture conflicts with the old media form of institutional authority. In the last decade the cultural industry endured many changes at all levels and accordingly, so did society. Let’s start with the city.

Contemporary cities are taking the shape of a spectacle as public spaces are bombarded and overloaded with images, messages, art, signs, texts and ads. Nowadays the street, the public stage of political movements, theater, playing children and social contact, are increasingly becoming virtualized with electronic screens and projections, taking away the public function of open space: “public functions become blurred by the flow of light and images drenching us in a fetish of alienating desires as we follow our necessary route through the city, from A to B.”[iii] Over the last decades our pubic space has gradually more been privatized; streets, squares and parks are more and more covered with brands and logo’s; public domains such as schools, universities, and libraries are ever more dependent on corporate sponsoring and turning in a shopping mall variant; public transport such as busses and trains are equally being privatized and transforming into mobile billboards. Furthermore, the city is converting into a pool of diversities; similar to the Internet the city is storing up an immense variety in cultural expressions and products. The uniform and the traditional costume have made room for an assortment of multiplicity; being different allows one to belong seems to be a fitting fashionable statement. However, the range of cultural expressions goes hand in hand with an overflow of dissimilar opinions, products and meanings. Not only does it become increasingly difficult to find your way, the devaluation of hierarchical control both on the Internet and in the city makes the whole thing superficial and lacking depth; of course there are places and sites that are reliable and insightful, yet they are getting more and more swallowed up by the homogenizing machine of shallowness. Whilst one might argue that diversity and egalitarian contribution lead to collective intelligence and the collapse of the cultural industry monopoly, marketing experts have already discovered that diversity is the defining issue for Generation X and that by incorporating an emphasis on diversity into their brands, they can enhance their market shares.[iv] Diversity marketing makes global expansion less costly; “rather than creating different advertising campaigns for different markets, campaigns could sell diversity itself, to all markets at once.”[v]

With the commencement of affordable portable devices connected to the Internet, such as 3G cell phones, users are able to make use and contribute to the computing and communication capabilities cyberspace offers at any place and at any time. For many developing countries, where desktop and laptop computers are considered too expensive, these portable devices are a first time opportunity to be part of the global network. The rise of and increasing expansion of cell phones, Internet enabled devices, and Wifi connections facilitates an integration of cyberspace in urban areas. Virtual information is converging with the actual city, creating what Lev Manovich calls an ‘augmented space’.[vi] In this augmented reality the bombardment of images on and off the Internet are mixing creating new forms of disinformation and commercial spam. Moreover, the technology makes annotation and mapping of location easier and thus facilitates possibilities for users to contribute on another altitude. Theoretically it is possible that there are as many maps as there are mapmakers, making it practically impossible to find your way. Yet, it also assists new forms of privacy intrusion and an increase of surveillance, allowing authorities to track and trace anything and anyone. Whilst telecom providers store conversations and geographic coordinates, and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips are implanted to track and trace objects and people, and CCTV Cameras keep an eye on everyone, the technology we created is grabbing a hold on us and shaping reality at every level. In due course urban space will be controlling all motion of people, cars, and products everywhere.

Simulacra and routing flow

In Simulacra and Simulation Jean Baudrillard begins with a tale about mapmakers that create a map of a powerful Empire. The level of detail in this map is so high that it integrates perfectly with the represented territory. However, as soon as the map is finished, it starts to perish. Eventually only the desert still contains some remains of the map. Baudrillard suggest we currently live in a reverse situation: not the map – the representation of the physical world, the simulacrum – is decaying, but the represented reality itself. Every corner of the world has been mapped, mediated. The western person lives in a world dominated by simulacra: films, photographs, paintings, novels, newspapers, radio and television programs, and internet. We hardly know the world from our own experience. The world as we know it primarily consists of simulacra, which gradually more and more seem to have no relation to something ‘real’. It becomes increasingly difficult to find pieces of the old, non-signified reality in it. The non-imitated reality is incorporated in a reality of imitations. The map, the model exists before reality and ultimately shapes reality, is reality itself – the precision of simulacra. Baudrillard observed a historically pattern based on the relation between the tendency people have to define and mark reality with signs – simulacra – and technological development, with which these signs can be multiplied. Imperative in this statement is that Baudrillard argues every artifact potentially can be a sign, a carrier of meaning.

Baudrillard asserts each simulacrum contains a life cycle, which can be categorized in four phases. In the first order of simulacra the image is the reflection of a basic reality; in the second order it masks and perverts a basic reality; in the third it masks the absence of a basic reality; and finally in the fourth order it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.^[vii] The story of Bert and Bin Laden is a fitting case of reproductions leading its own life: Bert is a ‘talking’ puppet on a television show, representing a stereotyped grumpy man in the world outside the show. One could say Bert is part of the first order of simulacrum, as it is a reflection of a basic reality. The popularity of the sketches and its cross-border recognition made Bert into a celebrity appearing on T-shirts, mugs, cartoons, and in the hands of fans as a doll. Bert stood for more than just a complaining man: Bert became an icon, one that characterizes the sketches and its comical element, Bert stood for the show. Consequently Bert shifted to a second order of simulacrum, as images of Bert mask and distorts the original veracity. When in 1997 images of Bert were photoshopped for a series of “Bert is Evil” appearing on the Internet (showing the puppet with a mean expression on his face as Jack the Ripper, the assassinator of J.F. Kennedy, with Pamela Anderson, and as mentioned next to Bin Laden), Bert moved to the third order of simulacrum. Bert no longer represents the world-weary man, this original reality is dead; images of Bert mask his dearth. Finally Bert moved to the fourth order of simulacrum when his picture appeared on a series of protest posters, leading to controversy and shock. The image is what it is and nothing more: an image that refers to everything and nothing, but above all relates to itself and many contrasting interpretations. It leads to a direct effect, a sensation, a stimulation dismayed from depth. With digital technology it can be reproduced unlimited and unchanged, allowing it to lead its own life.

But there is more to in the story of the map; the map determines the territory. The assembly of images and signs has constructed its own reality, one that directs and controls all aspects of our life. Not only have the fictional characters of the sit-com Friends become closer to many people than their ‘actual’ friends, urban space is shaped by hyper-real situations and is influencing our everyday practices. Consequently one might argue that maps construct the representation of public space; is our perception of spatial organization and proximity between cities and urban spaces constructed by mapmakers? And are places loosing their relation to reality, turning into meaningless transit spaces? And are people prisoners of an enclosed space whose walls are people’s own routine? Are representations ultimately routing our cities?

In The Space of Flows Manuel Castells creates a dialectical opposition between the spatial organization of our common experience defined by cities – referred to as the ‘space of places’ – and a new logic of space structured on networks and flows of information – referred to as the ‘space of flow’.[viii] Castells proposes that the space of flows in traditional urban spaces transforms the city forms into ‘processes’. The film Koyaanisqatsi[ix] exemplifies how metropolises are representative of circulation spaces, where people generally do not walk on the streets and prefer cars and freeways to move around, whilst being controlled by technology, architecture and corporate sponsoring. Following Castells it is possible to argue that urban public spaces have become increasingly non-places, it is a transit space that neglects social interaction, gazing and context. Although the space of flows should not be interpreted as a placeless space, places have increasingly lost their meaning in comparison to flows.[x] A place can be described as a setting that carries meaning and has a self-contained form within boundaries of physical contiguity.[xi] These places may contribute to bringing people together as places have a capacity to encourage communication and interaction both socially and with the environment. Koyaanisqatsi shows how after the dawn of modern society characterized by advanced transportation technologies and mass production in the 19th century, people started to circulate faster through urban spaces, losing the capacity to communicate and interact with each other while in transit; modern cities are designed to control the flow of people, similar to information networks controlling the flow of processes.

In 1984 the Automatic Traffic Surveillance and Control Center came into existence when the city council and planning board of California decided to link the electronic traffic light sensors in the asphalt to a central computer.[xii] The computer was programmed to respond to Olympic Games timetable, which were held in Los Angeles, making it possible to direct the traffic flow to the stadiums during peak hours. Currently thousands of electronic measure points provide information to the central computer, which controls more then three thousand traffic lights. The computer compares the collected data to public transport schedules; if a bus is delayed, the computer will react by keeping the traffic lights green until the delay has dropped.[xiii] Furthermore operators are able to alter the flow of traffic; in case of an emergency or a terror attack, the system can close off or open up specific streets. Currently improvements in consumer technologies make it possible to connect the traffic center to cell phones or mobile navigation systems. Cell phones facilitate a ubiquitous data space allowing control centers to calculate the position and traveling speed of individuals, making it possible to optimize the stream. In addition commercial navigation systems allow people to choose an alternative path; a child friendly way, an ecological route, or a picturesque road.

Central in this story is the city as a scenario, as suggested by Baudrillard. Every corner, every square meter of city space is in the process of being mapped, curate, narrated, staged and being played with. However, as this map is constructed, the represented world is in decay; not only are effects of postmodernization – namely downsizing and outsourcing – causing massive unemployment and leaving cities to crumble, moreover the map and its representations are loosing their relation with reality. Multinational corporations, together with their stars, blockbusters, bestsellers and billboard charts are prescribing publics to belong to a sensation, an experience or an ideology, each with a universal way of life; ‘The American Dream’. Corporate multinationals have outgrown governmental authority. Western cities have transformed into service centers; the fabrication of products has shifted to one of advertising and sales of bulk obtained from low wage countries. Consequently the migration of labor forces from farm land to factory cities has resulted into unemployment and a festering of urban space. As institutions of confinement – school, barracks, factory, prison, hospital – are gradually disappearing, or turned into shopping malls and luxurious apartments; cities are turning into centers of control: the marketing capitals of the world. Copyrights and advertising form the basis of urban culture; corporate logos cover our streets, clothes, domains of education and healthcare, thus turning life and space in a matching corporate chimera. Advertisements do not longer promote a product, they promote a way of life; and sell an illusion. These illusions mask and distort the basic reality: ghettos, shanty towns, and possibly loss of all meaning.

Moreover these illusions control our life. The backdrop is that our society is confronted with deterritorialization, homogeneity and superficiality; former structures of authority in society were more about the individual and local identity than its dominant contemporary form. Meaningful social public places are lost in the flow of space; city design is reflecting the structure of technological networks, where data is processed through monotone routes. This ongoing transition will take new shape with the commencement of augmented space, and the possibilities it offers its public. There is now a large body of work and practice by new media artists concerning portable and wireless technologies and the cultural shaping and connotation of location. Various new media theorists, such as Drew Hemment, suggest a possible return of place from that ‘placeless place’ of cyberspace; “the exploratory movements of Locative Media lead to a convergence of geographical and data space, reversing the trend towards digital content being viewed as placeless, only encountered in the amorphous and other space of the Internet.”[xiv]

Locative Media distinguishes itself from older forms of media because of its quality to annotate and trace, with the former standing for their emancipatory potential and the latter signifying a perceived ‘Orwellian Society’. Because both annotation and tracing are symbiotic constituents of Locative Media, analyzing affect will have to include both the unfettered and authoritarian function of Locative Media. In order to do this effectively I will discuss shift in power evident in contemporary cities. Cities are conveying publics how they may, can, sometimes how they have to, and sometimes how not to, behave and move. This can be related to the concept protocol – a universal, controlling logic that produces a horizontal network – in the sense that publics are voluntarily participating in the creation, expansion and tweaking of the pronounced norm. This process is assisted by technology, which in turn is managed by internal protocols. As urban territory is increasingly being integrated with virtualized information networks transforming into augmented space, assessing the role of Locative Media is increasingly vital. In the following chapters the paper will touch upon the following questions:

Will Locative Media practices in augmented city space ultimately liberate or confine place?

Following the convergence of media and devices in one wireless, all-encompassing, wearable module, are we not giving privacy and ‘police monopolization’ away to an integral network of citizen and consumer surveillance?

Are Locative Media yet another form of distraction, to mask the third world entering Western society?

Are Locative Media practices the result of the global masses, modeled in order to unite, fight, emancipate and democratize?

Are annotating practices ultimately giving birth to a co-created utopia, or will it result in contradicting interpretation and loss of connotation, as authority and selectivity diminish with peer productions?

In order to answer these questions I will study how the expansive practice of the information network in urban territory and in the hands of individuals will affect society. I will reason Locative Media characterizes the postmodern age — following Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson and Guy Debord — as one of ‘hyperreality’ where the real object has been effaced or superseded, by the signs of its existence. Central are theories of protocol, hyperreality, collective intelligence, and contemporary art. In order to effectively trace the materialization of Locative Media, the paper will be centered on three themes: the effects of postmodernity on urban space and place, counter movement, and reformation. The main research question can be formulated as such:

Can collective and artistic use of Locative Media give voice to silent, repressed and hidden to bring back individuality and local identity, or will they be another form of distraction limiting and confining its users?

cities in postmodernity

Romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece.

- Matt Groening, The Simpsons (1997)

Jean Baudrillard uses the term ‘disneyfication’ to explain what he observes as a shift to homogeneity and hyper-reality evident in cities today: the American amusement park Disneyworld in California is the central model of contemporary American culture. Our western culture seems to slowly transform itself into an amusement park, one that is continuously being reconstructed in order to adjust to cultural alterations, threatening to harm the illusion of its significance. The world outside Disneyworld – the domain of dreams – is in contrast to the amusement park. However, the famous Disney characters (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck) are personifications of the glorified and accomplished American way of life. They embed the ideals which Americans seemingly nurture: ordinary people (embodied by animals) who become heroes. Consequently, Baudrillard argues, Disneyworld does not oppose the outside world as one would imagine at first instance. On the contrary, Baudrillard reasons, Disneyworld is as reasonable as non-Disneyworld; in the world outside the amusement park the American permanently gets bombarded with pictures, signals, road signs, art, popular culture, adverts, television, and media images which maintain the illusion of the American Dream. The American lives in an overload of evidence and verifications that the American Dream really exists.

Baudrillard observed that all large cities are surrounded with amusement parks, which he depicts as ‘imaginary stations’ – similar to power stations that allow the dream to reside. The biggest fear of the American is to awaken from the American Dream. When that happens, one lands in ‘le désert du réel’. This reality is one of terrifying poverty, discrimination, trailer-trash and deceiving politicians. Baudrillard argues that the complete American preoccupation with movie stars, glamour and idolization can be explained as a strong offensive against the awakening from the attractive illusionary world. The attraction of this Hollywood-illusion is so strong that the American landscape has transformed into the way idealized America is portrayed repeatedly in films. Consequently the real America in a sense is more real than real. Reality vanishes in what Baudrillard refers to as hyperreality – a situation where real and unreal are indistinguishable. Although Baudrillard never used the term postmodern in relation to his work, it is applicable when characterizing contemporary society.

Frederic Jameson emphasizes several trends that distinguish postmodernity in contemporary society from modernity. The latter in broad lines dealt with the fostering of progress, thought to be achievable by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into aspects of public and artistic life. Jameson recognizes a shift in hierarchy as authority has become integrated in a surface, and thus lacks depth, becoming superficial and rejecting models that explained people and society in orders (such as hermeneutics, the dialectic, Freudian repression, distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, and the semiotic distinction of signifier and signified). Secondly the modernist ‘Utopian gesture’, which involved the process of articulating misery in its beauty through art, has turned out to be obsolete. According to Jameson in the postmodernism movement the object world has mutated and is now a set of simulacra. Modernist art attempted to redeem the world from its decline in religion and give back its life, which enlightenment and rationality had removed. The postmodernist period however declares this as useless. Thirdly, Jameson observes a diminishing of affect; although not all emotion has waned, society has numbed down, emotion is somewhat obscured: pastiche is becoming a universal practice as personal style is gone. In Postmodernism and the Video-Text Jameson sums up:

We are left with that pure and random play of signifiers which we cal postmodernism, and which no longer produces monumental works of the modernist type, but ceaselessly reshuffles the fragments of preexisting texts, the building blocks of older cultural and social production, in some new and heightened bricolage.[xv]

Furthermore, Jameson argues that distance has disappeared in the new space of postmodernity; a new global space. “We are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial co-ordinates”. The various other features of the postmodern which he identifies “can all now be seen as themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of the same general spatial object”.[xvi] Jameson’s observations are similar to Baudrillard’s critique of postmodern culture. Central in Baudrillard’s observation are the image and mass culture. In the twentieth century society has been overloaded with so many images, that these images are forming their own reality: the difference between representations of a basic reality and the actual basic reality itself is diminishing and in due time will completely disappear. According to Baudrillard we currently live in a world of simulations, creating a hyper-reality, where images mix and reproduce, without a necessity of maintaining reference to a reality: the representing images devour the reality. Both Jameson and Baudrillard define postmodern culture as a play in which images and signs refer to each other. However, Jameson does not draw conclusions regarding veracity, as Baudrillard does. To Jameson and Baudrillard, the postmodern era has seen a change in the social function of culture. They both identify culture in the postmodern age to have been deprived of the autonomous status it once possessed. Rather, the cultural has expanded, to consume the entire social realm, such that it all becomes cultural.

In short postmodernism can to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality. The anti-ideological ideas apparent in postmodernism have had diverse political implications that contributed to the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements, most forms of late 20th century anarchism, and even the peace movement, as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement. None of these institutions, however, entirely embraces all aspects of the postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition, but they reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas.

In this chapter I will clarify how increased mobility, the Internet, and deterritorialization have altered physical space. Globalization, the distributed network and multinationals mark society in postmodernity. Central in this chapter is the idea that locality and individuality are homogenized.

From Disciplinary Society to a Society of Control

Building forth on Foucault’s environments of enclosure located in the disciplinary society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in Postscripts on Control Societies Gilles Deleuze defines a chronological period after modern age that is neither established on the central control of the sovereign nor on the decentralized control of the prison or factory. Deleuze suggests that in the Twentieth century we have moved away from a disciplinary society to a more pervasive society of control. These societies of control are in the process of replacing disciplinary societies, which means that disciplinary institutions are still present, however their authority is no longer confined to particular institutions. Power is becoming assimilating into every aspect of social life by way of increasingly interconnected networks.

Disciplinary practices mold the behaviors of individuals, whereas networks of control modulate their interactions. Discipline operates by segregating and fixing, whereas modulation operates by integrating and organizing differences; “like a self-deforming cast that will continuously change from one moment to the other, or like a sieve whose mesh will transmute from point to point”.[xvii] Furthermore Deleuze notes we no longer find ourselves dealing with the individual and the mass anymore, such as was imperative in disciplinary societies – the signature that designates the individual, and the number or administrative numeration that indicates his or her position in the mass. In order to control the masses bureaucracy – the management form in disciplinary societies – constitutes those over it exercises power into a body and molds the individuality of each member of the body. In the society of control the individuals have become ‘dividuals’, and masses, samples, data, markets, or banks.

Deleuze observes the corporation to be the replacement of the factory – a body that balanced between the highest possible in terms of production and the lowest possible in terms of wages. The corporation extends to all levels of social life, it is a spirit, a gas; “if the most idiotic television game shows are so successful, it’s because they express the corporate situation with great precision” moreover, “perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school to the corporation.”^[xviii] Marketing has become a paradigmatic postmodern process; it is “the center or the ‘soul’ of the corporation.”^[xix] The paradigmatic form of modulation concerns the control of money, specifically when the gold standard was replaced by floating exchange rates. Corporations no longer exercise capitalism for production but for the product, in order to sell or market it; “what it wants to sell is services but what it wants to buy is stock.”^[xx]

The effects of this shift are problematic; on the one hand scientific and economic competition has elevated western society rapidly, however, as noted by Jameson and Baudrillard contemporary society lacks depth, rejecting models that explained people in orders. Contemporary marketing strategies are not longer about the product; marketing promotes a way of life, and ultimately the images do not in any way signify its basic reality: the product.[xxi] Furthermore, the control society produces a horizontal network and thus differences, hierarchy and social order are all becoming integrated in the flat interconnected networks. This also indicates that now the object of policing has become life itself, because historically the police include everything. However, as large corporations are outgrowing governmental institutions, the object of control is increasingly turning into a form of consumer surveillance.

Technological advancement and the convergences of media currently allow virtually all portable devices to become tools of surveillance. Gerard Goggin for instance observes that the growing use of RFID technologies, small wireless devices which can be embedded in all sorts of everyday objects to be communicated with by a network.[xxii] This can then be used in every library book, and then pinged to find out their location. Or product lines in a supermarket could communicate to a central server and database when they were about to run out and needed restocking.[xxiii] But the technology can also be used to track, trace and control human life. Terrorist threats and the conclusive awareness of vulnerability and feelings of insecurity and suspicion, have contributed to the enormous need for identification methods. Tracking and tracing are becoming increasingly important issues. Confirming (identification) or controlling (authenticating) someone’s identity can be done on basis of what someone wears (for instance an ID-card), what someone knows (for instance a password or Pincode), or what someone is (identification on basis of unique body features). The last method is called biometrics. From a particular body part the proportions are measured and converted to a unique template, a pattern or number which distinguishes individuals from one another.[xxiv] Connecting one’s identity to physical traits and measuring and tracking them may lead to and infringement on privacy.

Locative Media technology enables tracking and tracing, but what this biometrics points out is that living human bodies have become quantifiable, recordable and enumerable codes. Quantification of living forms in the near future may allow collaborative filtering techniques (a form of modulating people distinct from modulation in disciplinary societies) to advance to a state where shopping mall or public streets become pools of adverts that can be personalized according to ones profile and according to present location, such as portrait in the film Minority Report.[xxv] GPS enabled wireless devices, such as ones cell phone, currently allow for personalized data to be sent to its user in the form of Location Based Services. When a personal profile – set up by the user via a survey, or based on the user history – is coupled to a pool of other profiles supplied by other users, then statistical algorithms can suggest other likes and dislikes, based on the similarity of ones profile to other user profiles in the pool. Consequently the user may be sent an advert when he or she is in near proximity of the product or service that is in accordance with the user’s taste. However the algorithms determine and modulate the identity of the user; because the filtering technique is based on selecting data from a closed space – the profile pool – rather than from exterior data sets, there is no improvement in the overall data pool, hence it ensures structural homogeneity.[xxvi]

Distributed network

In order to understand issues concerning globalization, mobility, ubiquitous computing, and the role of Locative Media, it is imperative to outline effects of the distributed network, as it lies at the root of postmodern society. Facilitated by technological, economic and political developments, a distributed network is currently establishing in society and pushing aside older forms of centralized and decentralized networks. It is a network diagram with no central hubs and no radial nodes; instead each entity is an autonomous agent. This enduring shift towards distribution is recognized and documented in diverse texts from multiple disciplines such as sociologist Manuel Castells, Deleuzian Hakim Bey, and forms the basis of much contemporary critical literature in politics, media studies and philosophy.

Diagram

In A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari describe the rhizome – a horizontal meshwork derived from botany – as heterogeneous and connective; any point can be connected to anything other.[xxvii] When the distributed network is diagrammed it is pertinent to the rhizome. The rhizome – and with it the distributed network – is exemplar of our postmodern society, as it has complete disregard for depth models, or procedures of derivation; it “is a stranger to any idea of genetic axis or deep structure.”[xxviii] Furthermore rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. It is an acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automation.[xxix] The distributed network structure can be described as that of the rhizome diagram as it links many autonomous nodes together in a manner that is neither linear nor hierarchical. Both the US interstate highway system and the Internet, which began as a project of DARPA (the U.S. Defense Department Advanced Research Projects Agency), are examples of a rhizome structure. The design allows, in both the interstate highway and the Internet, to facilitate mobility and communication in case of war.

The distributed network is part of a larger process of postmodernization that is happening all over the world. The distributed network, which facilitates possibilities for an open society, does not automatically lead to more democracy and independency; it lends itself to surveillance as well as liberty, to new forms of manipulation and covert control as well as new kinds of participation, to skewed, unjust market outcomes as well as greater productivity. Even more so, the controlling authority that is spread throughout the network extends to all aspects of social life, and thereby allows large corporations to impose a common ideology, ultimately creating a universal way of life/consumption. The control society, as outlined above, results from the distributed network.

The distributed network succeeds the decentralized network and, in part, the centralized network. The latter can be described as the simplest network diagram, as it operates from a single authoritative hub. Centralized network diagrams are hierarchical, such as Bentham’s panopticon, as described in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: a guard – “a continuous hierarchical figure” – is at the center of many radial cells, each with one prisoner.[xxx] Another example of a centralized network is the American judicial system – “while there are many levels to the court system, each with its own jurisdiction, each decision of each court can always be escalated to a higher level in the hierarchy. Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court has final say over all matters of law.”[xxxi] A decentralized network is a multiplication of the centralized network; instead of one hub there are many, each with its own array of dependent nodes – such as the airline system. “Decentralized networks are the most common diagram of the modern era.”[xxxii]

Control

One might argue that the distributed network – and with it the globalization of capitalist production and exchange – means that economic relations have become more autonomous from political controls, and consequently that political sovereignty has declined. One might say the distributed network ‘era’ is a liberation from the capitalist economy and the restrictions and distortion political forces have imposed; allowing both citizens and workers to influence and contest power. In Empire Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri assert in step with the process of distribution, the sovereignty of nation-states, while still effective, has progressively declined; even the most dominant nation-states should no longer be thought of as supreme and sovereign authorities, either outside or even inside within their borders.[xxxiii] However, Negri and Hardt argue, the decline in sovereignty of nation-states does not mean that sovereignty as such has declined – whilst the distributed network is integrating in contemporary society, political controls, state functions, and regulatory mechanisms have continued to rule the realm of economic and social production and exchange. The hypothesis Negri and Hardt put forward is that sovereignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule: ‘Empire’. Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the IMF or the WTO), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various NGOs and the United Nations). They define the society of control as that society “in which mechanisms of command become ever more democratic, ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens.”[xxxiv] Empire is a deterritoralizing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command.

In Protocol: how control exists after decentralization Alexander Galloway relates Empire to new media, stating that the computer protocol is in lockstep with Negri and Hardt’s analysis of Empire’s logics, particularly the managerial economy of command.[xxxv] The command protocol Galloway refers to is what Negri and Hardt describe as the third mode of imperial command, which knows from the start that “contingency, mobility and flexibility are Empire’s real power.”[xxxvi] Galloway asserts that the distributed network, whether in technological or social form, is a sign that society is undergoing a change in episteme. Protocol is what guides this change, from the underlying structure of the Internet to Web form, to current developments in biotechnology. Galloway discusses how protocol is a management style for ‘life itself’. The key to this statement is that life has become a matter of information, and can thus be controlled protocologically. Galloway connects protocol to Deleuze’s notion of control and Foucault’s concept of biopower and biopolitics as they deal with the manner in which ‘life itself’ is made analyzable and controllable from a distance. Protocological control, Galloway writes, mirrors the movements of Empire: “one might say that Empire is the social theory and protocol the technical.”[xxxvii]

Protocol should not be understood metaphorically, and thus should not be an object of mere ‘interpretation’. Central is that the materiality of code should be recognized. “The ‘information age’ – a term irreverently tossed to and fro by many critics of contemporary life – is not simply that moment when computers come to dominate, but is instead that moment in history when matter itself is understood in terms of information or code.”[xxxviii] Galloway‘s materialist approach allows him to refer to and build upon Marx and the neo-Marxists (Adorno, Horkheimer, Enzensberger), and like Marx’s vitality of capital, discuss how life itself (DNA) has become encoded and is also a matter of protocol. The importance of this dialectic, for Galloway, is that it makes possible a new form of modulating, ‘protocological’ control, distinct from the institutional and discursive form uncovered by Foucault – the collaborative filtering example is a form of this protocological power. The distributed network (diagram) may appear to less governable than the centralized or the decentralized, but control resides in the code, and more specifically in the cultural forms/protocols of usage as well as in standards set (via RFC’s). Resistance is futile (protocol is akin to gravity), for one must participate or be shut out. Even if one were to think of hacking as a form of resistance, their work strengthens protocol by showing exploits and encouraging fixes. Thus ultimately one must work within the protocological system, sculpting rather than rejecting.

Protocological control is different from the institutional power seen throughout disciplinary societies in the sense that its users are enthused to conform to the suggested organization and are able to fine-tune the system. Participatory contributions and feedback allow protocol to advance. The city relates to protocol in the sense that it presents a protocol in various forms to which its inhabitants may and sometimes have to conform. The example of commercial navigation systems offering alternative routes is protocological; the technological surveillance structure embedded in the city roads that direct the flow of traffic, as in the case of Los Angeles, is not. A good case of protocogical organization can be seen in school districts. In order to keep as many automobiles out of the area, speed bumps are placed throughout the streets. The speed bumps request persons to drive really slowly in the proximity of the school; if they do not do this they will risk material damage to the car. This will make drivers choose not to take routes through school districts. So, instead of telling persons not to enter a particular area, they are requested politely to take a different path. Surveillance systems, on the other hand, are not protocological as they compel the driver to slow down. Similarly wearing a uniform to school is not protocological whereas following fashion is; it is not required to wear branded sport shoes and stop wearing them a season later, however, one may be socially excluded from peers when choosing not to conform to the convention. Likewise, fashion is protocological because consumers are able to influence its form, for instance by means of fashion statements.

Moreover, cities have become very complex; a wide range of cultural diversities, people, buildings, and urban situations, however, its public seems to be treading the same path every day. Films like Koyaanisqatsi illustrate the routine of everyday practices (as it corresponds with industrialization and modernity), more recently Amsterdam Real-time shows the traced movements of people in Amsterdam; people seem to be directed in customary routes. One can reason that most of our cities are so thoroughly unpleasant because they are designed in a way that either ignores the emotional impact on people, or indeed try to control people through their very design.[xxxix] In addition there is communication; currently public space, for instance in the street, is filled with corporate adverts, logos and brand names. This spectacle of signs is a one-way communication flow; citizens cannot have a say, in fact when they do, for instance in the form of graffiti or culture jamming, they risk punishment. There is no room for comments, feedback, and consequently no ‘bottom-up’ improvement. But, because of the annotating quality, Locative Media may allow new protocological forms to emerge that may lead to a more grass-rooted decision making and a two-way communication flow; gazing, social interaction, and collective intelligence. In The Locative Commons Marc Tuters refers to the .walk (dot-walk) project, which combines computer code and ‘psychogeographic’ streetwalking. During the walk, participants carry out an algorithmic series of instructions derived from computer code that calculates the city as a giant ‘periapatetic computer’.[xl] “It may seem amazing that such a simple idea can even be considered software, but the concept behind it is the clever part, based, as it is, on a metaphor for how order emerges from chaos, borrowed from the ant colony, which generates maps through the brute force, random exploration of a territory.”[xli]

Locative Media practices are protocological in various ways, such as the technical code that allows the technology to communicate and be visualized, but also as illustrated in the dot walk project in the sense that the projects transform urban space into a canvas, game field, or a museum, allowing the users to look beyond facades, interact with public space, peers, and non-users. Furthermore the practice offers and creates a hybrid map that directs publics ‘voluntarily’ and offers possibilities for users to contribute. I will elucidate this point in the following chapters, first I wish to sketch out geographic and social consequence of increased mobility and the information economy. This is imperative in understanding motives for Locative Media practices to employ potentials for countervailing, criticizing and reforming politicized, commercialized and privatized public space.

Consequence on locality

In Empire Negri & Hardt assert one major consequences of the passage from an industrial to an informational economy to be a dramatic decentralization of production. The processes of modernization and the passage to the industrial paradigm provoked the intense aggregation of productive forces and mass migration of labor power towards centers that became factory cities, such as Liverpool, Eindhoven and Detroit.[xlii] The efficiency of mass industrial production depended on the concentration and proximity of elements in order to create the factory site and facilitate transportation and communication. The informatization of industry and the rising dominance of service production, Negri & Hardt continue, have made such concentration of production no longer necessary. “Advances in telecommunications and information technologies have made possible a deterritorialization of production that has effectively dispersed the mass factories and evacuated the factory cities.”[xliii] Because communication and control can be exercised efficiently at a distance, and immaterial products can be transported across the world with hardly any delay and expense, production services can now be coordinated in such a way that factories can be dispersed to various locations – in countries with a lower wage or a higher expertise level. In some sectors the factory site itself becomes obsolete and withdraws, Saskia Sassen writes in The Global City, as its workers communicate exclusively through new information technologies.[xliv]

Global cities are strategic sites for the combination of resources necessary for the production of these central functions.[xlv] Thus, Sassen argues, much of what is liquefied and circulates in digital networks and is marked by hyper-mobility, actually remains physical in some of its components. At the same time, Sassen continues, that which remains physical has been transformed by the fact that it is represented by highly liquid instruments that can circulate in global markets. Institutional buildings used to symbolize a site specific establishment, however, digital networks have shifted their authority globally, hence the building is not what is represented. As illustrated by Negri and Hardt, institutional powers are integrating in the global network; financial services, the exchange of products, and the controlling authority have become widespread throughout the global network, former centers of control are now segmented accordingly, what remains are meaningless physical representations of former institutions of power: big old buildings. However, there are other more destructive traits to be observed in postmodern cities, which I will touch upon in the next section.

From Fordism to McWorld

The passage to the informational economy has resulted in the assembly line to be replaced by the network as the organizational model of production, “transforming the forms of cooperation and communication within each productive site and among productive sites.”[xlvi] Furthermore, the information networks also allow territorial restrictions to disappear as they tend to put the producer in direct contact with consumer regardless of the distance between them, even facilitating possibilities of consumers to turn into producers. However, these tendencies toward the deterritorialization of production and the increased mobility of capital are not absolute, and there are significant countervailing tendencies, but to the extend that they do proceed; Negri and Hardt write “they place labor in a weakened bargaining position.”[xlvii] The informatization of production and the increasing importance of immaterial production have resulted in perhaps ‘the death’ of the Fordist organization of industrial mass production – where resources and capital were bound to specific territories and consequently with a limited labor force/population. In the current network organization model of production, factory plants, resources and capital can move its site to another point in the global network, thus forcing laboring populations to work for a lower wage or ultimately relocate to such a population. In consequence entire labor populations, which at one time benefited from certain stability and contractual power, are now in an uncertain employment situation and taking such jobs as freelance work, part-time work, home work and piecework.

Various films and literature illustrate the decentralization and global dispersal of processes and sites, which as discussed by Negri & Hardt is characteristic of postmodernization or the informatization of the economy. Roger & Me[xlviii] is one of the first films to document the downsizing of corporations, and outsourcing of jobs to developing world nations. The film depicts the negative economic impact of General Motors CEO Roger Smith’s summary action of closing several auto plants in Flint, Michigan, and opening new plants in Mexico – a prime example of outsourcing – costing 30,000 people their jobs and economically devastating the city. At the film’s climax, Moore confronts Smith at the chairman’s annual Christmas message. Smith is shown espousing about generosity during the holiday season, concurrently as Sheriff Fred Ross evicts more families.[xlix]

Similar concerns regarding employment preservation are discussed in Jihad vs. McWorld Benjamin Barber. Barber discusses the rebellion of embattled peoples and cultures worldwide against the imposition of aggressive Western mercantilism, which he names McWorld.[l] With regards to downsizing and outsourcing – both clear consequences of postmodernization – Barber notes, “Although full employment is a public good, it is not a corporate good. Business efficiency dictates downsizing; capital-intensive production means labor-minimizing job policies. […] Government has a duty to intervene in the economy in the name of justice, ecology, strategic interests, full employment or other public goods in which the market has, and can have, no interest.” [...] But “full employment and environmental preservation are social goods, not private goods. From the constrained short-term perspective of capitalist efficiency, citizenship, ethnicity and job status are at best irrelevant, at worst obstacles to be overcome.” The bottom line is that multinational corporations have outgrown governments, and ostensibly dictate world order. Capitalization and democracy have become noticeably contradiction in terms. Capitalism is a corporate ideology that is sold to the public under tags akin to freedom of speech, liberty and emancipation. However, what corporations in reality are after is dictating thought, enforcing their products and business efficiency.

Barber avows that the information arm of international commerce’s sprawling body “reaches out and touches distinct nations and parochial cultures, and gives them a common face chiseled in Hollywood, on Madison Avenue, and in Silicon Valley.”[li] Benjamin discusses how globalization and the corporate control of the political process – ‘McWorld’ – conflicts with tradition and traditional values, often in the form of extreme nationalism or religious orthodoxy and theocracy – ‘Jihad’. Scientific progress, Benjamin states, embodies and depends on open communication, a common discourse rooted in rationality, collaboration and an easy and regular flow and exchange of information. These ideals “can be hypocritical covers for power-mongering by elites, and they may be shown to be wanting in many other ways, but they are entailed by the very idea of science and they make science and globalization practical allies.”[lii] The domination of American cultural products all over the world exemplifies how information-technology assists homogenization and Americanization; “What is the power of the Pentagon compared to Disneyland? Can the Sixth Fleet keep up with CNN? McDonald’s in Moscow and Coke in China will do more to create a global culture than military colonization ever could. It is less the goods than the brand names that do the work, for they convey life-style images that alter perception and challenge behavior.”[liii]

Benjamin’s critical view with regards to the effect of information technology on culture and the dominating power integrated in the network is interesting as they date from the early nineties, in a period where the Internet was not commercially integrated in society. Now more than a decade later, Benjamin’s study on the face of it is more up to date than ever before; all over the world institutions of confinement are in the process of breaking down, and increased mobility, the global city and the Internet assist new forms of emancipated engagement – which I will further explore in chapter 3 – and Locative Media, as it hold ties with these traits, may increasingly be of importance. On the other hand, as Benjamin points out, the world seems to be in the process of homogenizing and America seems to be a marketer, advertising a dream, and eventually selling rights to consume their outsourced products and Locative Media may facilitate this process equally – in the sense that what we experience as the local because locally-sited, is actually a transformed condition in that it is imbricated with non-local dynamics or is a localization of global processes.[liv] Before explaining this last statement and relating it to hyper-reality, I want to explore homogeneity in the city. Naomi Klein has written extensively on the subject in No Logo, which takes an anti-corporate, anti-globalization stand, arguing that multinational corporations have become so big that they have superseded governments and have become the ruling political bodies of our era.[lv]

Homogeneity

Klein refers to destructive franchise strategies of corporation such as Wal-Mart and Starbucks exploit economy of scale by setting prices sufficiently low so that no small retailer can compete, small communities find that their lively downtown streets die. Klein argues that the emphasis of multinational corporations has shifted over the last 15 years form producing products to producing brands. Large corporations such as Nike and Levi Strauss do not actually focus on manufacturing, rather they focus on marketing. Phil Knight (CEO Nike) has said: “There is no value in making things any more. The value is added by careful research, by innovation and by marketing.”[lvi] Nike has shifted their focus on children, as they represent a large market segment and influence peers – namely their class mates “if you sell to one, you sell to everyone in their class and everyone in their school”.[lvii] Nike promotes ‘coolness’, and being ‘cool’ has become a central paradigm in contemporary youth culture. In order for Nike to maintain cool respectability, the company has employed ‘cool-hunters’ who roam ghetto’s, basketball fields, and poor neighborhoods in order to pick up styles that characterize a cool profile.[lviii] Interestingly the ‘lower-class’ income group have become the voice of urban culture – and this is different in a disciplinary society, where the cultural industry dictates products from a centralized market and leaves no room for diversity and niche markets; from this perspective a few multinationals decide creativity and smaller producers, if they want to survive, need to work according to the leading formula.

In contemporary urban culture the youth are able to influence the industry on multiple levels, because multinationals are continuously searching for new ways to promote their products, new forms of engagement are embraced and diversity is used as a means to promote new meanings and create fetishism; ‘black = cool’. Tommy Hillfiger, Klein states, has turned ghetto-coolness into an exact science, leading to a mass marketing formula that has since been imitated by Polo, Nautica, Muningswear and other fashion companies. Central in adverts of Hillfiger is multi-cultural youth dressed in upper-class outfits with an American flag at the background, articulating the American Dream – ordinary people who have become successful. For Afro-Americans the brand signifies the wealth ‘white America’ embodies, and for white Americans the brand stands for the ‘black style’. Essentially what the phenomena of the cool-hunter imply is that society has become a multi-cultural and the city represents the mishmash of diversity. In order to maintain control over the splintered market corporations have come up with out of the ordinary and creative techniques to reach maximum target group – in this case consumer surveillance.

What Tommy Hillfiger’s marketing strategy aptly demonstrates is how the seductive machinery of multinationals changes variation into a widespread ordinary; poor minorities are promoted as cool to middle class youth, by attaching expensive logo’s to their style. The clothes no longer signify particular meanings, habits or local brands; its only reference is an image that is constructed by multinationals in order to sell bulk. In return both the minority and the mass loose depth; the minorities with their own distinct style, at times representing background and culture, are sold off and homogenized and the upper middle class, who have the ability to elevate society, are essentially downgraded. Following Jameson and Baudrillard the representing images – logos – devour the reality. Moreover, the deterioration of cultural difference by globalization, increased distribution and emphasis on image illustrate a shift in hierarchy, class difference and authority as they become horizontally distributed, and thus lack depth, becoming superficial and rejecting models that explained people and society in orders.

Countervail

The new proletariat will only free itself by uniting, by decategorizing itself, by forming alliances with those whose work is similar to its own, by bringing to the foreground the activities they have been practicing in shadow, by assuming responsibility – globally, centrally, explicitly – for the production of collective intelligence.

- Levy, Collective Intelligence (1997)

As noted by Baudrillard and Jameson the city is bombarded with images that constantly remind us the American Dream to be realizable. Currently the images that cover our public space are corporate messages, marketing an illusion, and keeping the public distracted from a frightening truth – poverty, corruption and decay. Whilst this spectacle is happening and new images emerge that are build forth from previous ones, to which different meanings are assigned, our society is loosing touch with reality; contrasting interpretations and meaningless signs lead to conflict and cultural clashes. Furthermore, mass production, mass reproduction, increased mobility and distribution lead to homogeneity and a shift in control from local to global. “The world has changed in a big way. Over the last decade, there has been a massive redistribution of the world’s resources, with everyone except those in the very highest tier of the corporate elite…getting less.”[lix] Locative Media may be capable to form intelligent collective alliances in order to actively tackle these forms of power and ultimately give some back to the people.

In The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau examines the ways in which people individualize mass culture by altering functional objects to street plans, to rituals, laws, and language in order to make them their own.[lx] De Certeau argues consumers actually act as producers within society using the established vocabulary, and have the power to transform submission into subversion. He makes reference to Indians who appeared to be submissive to their Spanish colonizers as they did not reject or alter the rituals, representations, and laws that the Spanish imposed, however in reality the Indians did resist by subversion; by changing the interpretation of these rituals and silently altering its original meaning. Following de Certeau, in contemporary society elements can be found that can be used by means of tactic to “capitalize on its advantages, prepare its expansion, and secure independency with respect to circumstances.”[lxi] Often de Certeau’s notions of tactics are related to ‘tactical media’, a type of activism that uses media in a creative manner that falls outside its practices, creating resistance through difference; not a frontal assault on an external power, but rather a temporary infiltration from the inside through actions of thievery, take over, hoaxes and pranks.

“Tactical Media are what happens when the cheap ‘do it yourself’ media, made possible by the revolution in consumer electronics and expanded forms of distribution (from public access cable to the internet) are exploited by groups and individuals who feel aggrieved by or excluded from the wider culture. Tactical media are media of crisis, criticism and opposition.”^[lxii] Tactical media can therefore be described as the bottom-up struggle of the networks against power centers; attempting to reverse the one-way-flow of communication and power in order to give some of the control back to the public. The projects are often a mix between art and activism; therefore many of its origins can be traced to various art movements. Although the projects work through many different mediums, tactical media often have a high visual value, adding to its ‘spectacle’ and reinforcing its artistic origin.

There are, however, some differences to be noted concerning the theory of tactical media and that of de Certeau. The latter was about making tactics a silent production by reading and consuming the signs without altering the original source, whereas tactical media has shifted this emphasis to a form of active media production, such as shown in the billboard pirating by Adbusters, RTMark’s mock websites for G.W. Bush and the World Trade Organization, and con-artists on 0100101110101101.org. Tactical media practices are often compared to cultural jamming, in the sense that both use techniques to occupy the public space controlled by mass media. However, cultural jamming differs as it is a response to the dominant practices within the media, whereas tactical media uses this dominant practice in order to infiltrate it and ultimately become part of it. For this reason tactical media will never reach a state of perfection; a successful tactical media project or group will be replaced by a similar cycle that attacks it again, it therefore constantly needs to question the system under which it operates.[lxiii]

Similar to the object of tactical media this chapter will examine those phenomena that are able to exploit flaws in the city and corporate control, not to destroy the city, but to shape space and make it better suited to people’s real needs. I will revisit theorists and practices that opposed the dominant consumer society.

Reevaluating the Society of the spectacle

In No Logo Klein refers to Rodriguez de Gerada a widely recognized, skilled and creative founder of culture jamming – the practice of parodying advertisements and hijacking billboards in order to drastically alter their messages.[lxiv] Klein explains his motives:

Streets are public spaces, ad-busters argue, and since most residents can’t afford to counter corporate messages by purchasing their own ads, they should have the right to talk back to images they never asked to see. In recent years, this argument has been bolstered by advertising’s mounting aggressiveness in the public domain – painted and projected onto sidewalks; reaching around entire buildings and buses; into schools; onto basketball courts and on the Internet. At the same time, the proliferation of the quasi-public ‘town squares’ of malls and superstores has created more and more spaces where commercial messages are the only ones permitted. Adding even greater urgency to their cause is the belief among many jammers that concentration of media ownership has successfully devalued the right to free speech by severing it from the right to be heard.[lxv]

Rodriguez de Gerada wants the dialogue he has with the city’s billboards to be interpreted as a normal mode of discourse in a democratic society, not as some edgy vanguard act.[lxvi] His work is based on lifting an image, message or artifact out of its context to create a new meaning. De Gerada’s culture jamming practice has its roots in Guy Debord and the Situationists. Culture jammers make substantial use of the avant-garde art movements of the past; from Dada and Surrealism to Conceptualism and Situationism. These movements were attacking the art world and its passive culture of spectatorship, as well as the anti-pleasure ethos of mainstream capitalist society.

In Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord outlines in 220 theses consumer society; “In this society, the individuals consume a world fabricated by others rather than producing one of their own.” Debord argues that to the extent that one is consuming the prepackaged culture others produce, one can not produce its own. Choice and thought are done by corporate elite, who in the end are making everyone passive, uncritical, dull and uncreative.

Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.[lxvii]

Debord’s analysis of the stage of social organization is a mutation of capitalist organization, however, still applicable to a Marxist interpretation.[lxviii] The society of the spectacle is still a commodity society, with production at the basis of its organization, though it is reorganized to a higher and abstract level. On the surface ‘spectacle’ relates to a media and consumer society, one which is centered on the consumption of images, commodities and spectacles. Related to Baudrillard, on a deeper level ‘spectacle’ refers to the complex institutional and technical apparatus – the means and methods power, force and manipulation are used to delegate passive subjects in contemporary capitalism. Consequently all democratic institutions, cultural artifacts, urban architecture, media and art are an integral component of the ‘society of the spectacle’.

Following Gramsci, the Situationists saw the current form of social control as based on consensus rather than force, as a cultural hegemony attained through the metamorphoses of the consumer and media society into the ‘society of the spectacle’. The emergence of Guy Debord and the Situationist International can be interpreted as an attempt to update and emancipate the Marxian theory and practice to historically specific conditions in the French post-World War Two conjuncture, which in itself was influenced by French modernist avant garde movements.[lxix] Next to Dada, surrealism, lettrism Debord and the Situationist International initially shaped the French avant garde milieu in an attempt to merge art and politics.[lxx] In contrast to traditional Marxian ideology, which focused on production and the factory, the Situationists concentrated on social reproduction and the transformation of the city and everyday life. Furthermore they highlighted the importance of new modes of the consumer and media society that had developed since the death of Marx. Central in their observation was the production of space and constitution of society.

Whilst disciplinary institutions are disappearing and consumers are enthused to actively engage in the cultural and political movement, the society of the spectacle remains evident in contemporary society. The university, for instance, involves around a variety of public assemblies, sports, dorms, fraternity and rituals that indoctrinate individuals into representatives of the dominant ideology. Classical education standards involve learning and being examined on memorized facts that are selected and controlled by teachers – hierarchical authority in command – thus affecting creativity and elation. Furthermore corporate brands have moved into university. Naomi Klein names several examples, such as Barnes & Noble replacing campus-owned bookstores, Taco Bells and Pizza Huts replacing university cafeterias, and Coke or Pepsi being campus exclusive rights.[lxxi] Moreover Nike pays college coaches as much as $1.5 million in sponsorship fees and university research has become heavily dependent on corporate funding.[lxxii] Universities have become corporate research centers and students are enslaved by corporate multi-nationals, essentially making universities simulation for both students and products. University in particular – with their dorms, libraries, green rooms and the open mind set for respectable dialogue – is what Klein views as a space that should remain uninfected from marketing and spectacles, as they are proof of an authentic public place – just as national parks are being conserved.[lxxiii]

Debord argues capitalist production has unified space and homogenized place. The spectacle has entered and infected urban space. Capitalist production and city streets are amalgamated; busses have become driving billboards, corporate logo’s fill facades and even ‘the eye in the sky’ – a zeppelin used by the NYPD during demonstrations – is sponsored.[lxxiv]

Capitalist production has unified space, breaking down the boundaries between one society and the next. This unification is at the same time an extensive and intensive process of banalization. Just as the accumulation of commodities mass-produced for the abstract space of the market shattered all regional and legal barriers and all the Medieval guild restrictions that maintained the quality of craft production, it also undermined the autonomy and quality of places. This homogenizing power is the heavy artillery that has battered down all the walls of China.[lxxv]

The free space of commodities is constantly being altered and redesigned in order to become ever more identical to itself, to get as close as possible to motionless monotony.[lxxvi]

While eliminating geographical distance, this society produces a new internal distance in the form of spectacular separation.[lxxvii]

The society that reshapes its entire surroundings has evolved its own special technique for molding its own territory, which constitutes the material underpinning for all the facets of this project. Urbanism — “city planning” — is capitalism’s method for taking over the natural and human environment. Following its logical development toward total domination, capitalism now can and must refashion the totality of space into its own particular decor.[lxxviii]

Debord argues that urbanism as a spectacle is a political tool which is used to pacify, depoliticize and stupefy social subjects, distracting them from revolving. Debord sees urbanism to be the most effective field of operation in preventing struggle. “The efforts of all the established powers since the French Revolution to increase the means of maintaining law and order in the streets have finally culminated in the suppression of the street itself. Describing what he terms ‘a one-way system’, Lewis Mumford points out that ‘with the present means of long-distance mass communication, sprawling isolation has proved an even more effective method of keeping a population under control’ (The City in History)”.^[lxxix] The society of the spectacle are ruled by the dictating commercialized media industry and spread through the cultural mechanisms of leisure and consumption, services and entertainment. The Situationist project countervails the spectacular society by means of involving individuals to produce their own activities, collective practices and ultimately self-organization.

Society in ad-hoc

The Situationist project confronts the current representative form of democracy by calling for more grass-rooted structure of self-organization. Cornelius Castoriadis explored the notion of self-organization by opposing autonomy to heteronomy, concluding that there is a relation between the degree of outside control and self-determinism; the more an organization depends on outside control, the more likely participation and involvement are limited. Castoriadis argues democracy constantly has to be reborn, filled with new content. According to Castoriadis this process in history has been the result of revolutionary movements opposing and tackling power, tearing down structure in time of crisis and demand renewal. In Society in ad-hoc mode: decentralized, self-organizing, mobile Armin Medosch builds forth on Castoriadis’ conclusion and notes that social progress begins with developments at the individual level and takes place not according to criteria imposed from outside, but based on each person’s abilities and possibilities in a process of active ethical self-reflection.[lxxx] Akin to Debord and the Situationists, Medosch asserts only a collaborative grass-rooted initiative can counter the media and technology powerful control mechanisms which keep individuals passive and serialized, watching and consuming, rather than acting and doing. Medosch explores if mobile and wireless media can be used for a project to renew grass-rooted democracy and overcome paradigms of consumerism and broadcast media. The Internet has the potential to promote social progress, seeing that it provides access to information and cultural content, and more importantly its capacity for promoting the creation of social communities – and this differs in a disciplinary society. Now that the Internet is coupled with wireless technology – the unwiring of the network – it creates a ubiquitous network. Consequently protocological opportunities arise in the streets, parks, and squares offering new possibilities for activities, political confrontation and artistic expression.

Medosch exemplified this capacity by noting the ad-hoc mode with which the democratic globalization movement approaches spontaneous organization and mobilization. Medosch asserts we find ourselves at the beginning of a development towards an ad-hoc society in terms of communication technologies. The possibility of bandwidth to be ‘in the air’ everywhere and computational power to become ‘even’ cheaper allows for society to be less reliant on centralized planning in the near future because accordingly most things can be resolved locally. “Mobile telematics facilitates participatory citizenship and ad-hoc organization at local level. Between this local self-organizing level and the national level, conference lines could be employed for democratic voting. Instead of amounting to and election every few years, politics could become a process integrated into the life of communities.”[lxxxi] Medosch refers to ubiquitous, unwired networks such as the free wireless network groups Consume.net in London, Freifunk.net in Berlin and Funkfeuer.at in Vienna, that demonstrate the potential of a decentralized, self-organizing network model.[lxxxii]

Mobile networks and affordable wireless devices allow for a base from which to act. The mass immigration from agricultural land to large cities in the industrial age, and the transformation of these same cities into cities of control, make urban space sort of new frontier zone where an enormous mix of people converge. Those who lack power, are repressed, or discriminated upon can gain influence and become present. This may imply there is a possibility of a new type of politics centered in new types of political actors. Digital networks are contributing to the production of new kinds of interconnections, which political activists can use for global or non-local transactions. [lxxxiii] Similarly new media artist have used computer-centered network technologies to enact political as well as in artistic projects, and bypassing corporate media or consumer firms, constituting an alternative and countervailing society. Consequently it is imaginable local initiatives to reshape the dysnified cities; on the one hand provocation for diversity may positively affect the homogenizing corporate machine, moreover, space can be reshaped when local initiatives and projects are able to be part of the distributed network without losing the specific character of locality. The streets by tradition are the stage for political and artistic statements, it is a space where individuality and local identity subsist, and thereby bear the true character of society. As mobile networks become part of daily life, the utilization can be an effective medium for counter movements gain a worldwide reach, to articulate a local issue. When employed intelligently mobile networks, through SMS or via other practices, will not remain limited to the confined neighborhood; local user networks are able to interlink with international networks.

The effects of globalization, as outlined in chapter 2, are reason for people to demonstrate, organize rallies, marshal troops, and vote. With the wide-spread availability of cell-phones and the common SMS practice, these coordinated and collective practices become dependent on mobile technology. Forms of self-structuring social organization through technology-mediated, intelligent emergence can be identified in the notion of the Smart Mob – coined by Howard Rheingold in Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution the Smart Mob is an indication communication technologies will empower the people.[lxxxiv] The smart mob is a group of people that are in connection to each other and information through a network, allowing them to behave intelligently and efficiently, opposed to other forms of mob – which usually behave chaotically and unorganized. Smart mobs are characterized by social coordination.

Much has been written about the organizing role of cell phones in the demonstrations in the Philippines[lxxxv] that helped aid to overthrow the anti-democratic Estrada regime, or the ways in which SMS texting was instrumental in changing the fortunes of a presidential contender in South Korea.[lxxxvi] Similarly during Indonesia’s 1998 student protests smart mobs helped bring down Suharto’s dictatorship. Interesting is that six years after the initial euphoria about reformation and ‘freedom’ had lessened, Indonesian students were reported to still use SMS messages, reminding the people of the reformation targets that were set when Suharto was overthrown.[lxxxvii] However, the technology should not only be celebrated as a demonstrating of collective intelligence. Rheingold already noted issues of privacy, spam and criminal activity. Moreover there are numerous accounts of hoaxes and pranks that led to disturbances and conflict. For instance in the aftermaths of the tsunami disaster in Indonesia, numerous SMS rumors have sparkled panics in different parts of the country, causing thousands to flee their homes for higher grounds.[lxxxviii] In addition there are various accounts of SMS being used to harass other people by sending them unsolicited messages. In Indonesia newspapers regularly tell of people receiving uncalled for messages, urging them to contact a ghost, a werewolf or a deceased relative.[lxxxix]

Locative Media

In Protocol Galloway discusses the shaping role of hackers and tactical media. For Galloway, hackers personify the logic of protocol, always looking to better technology and opposing the anti-openness of proprietary software. The distributed network diagram of the Internet allows autonomous hackers to form specific task-oriented networks. This can be related to the accounts of collective intelligence and opposition through mobile technologies, as outlined in this chapter. The negative, almost terrorist, connotation associated with hackers is incorrect: Galloway claims they are pushing technological capabilities to and beyond its limits; hackers are always seeking out the possibilities of technology and are an influential group for affecting change. Galloway discusses tactical media similarly and sees the phenomenon as indicative that trying to affect change from the sidelines is ineffective, it is better to engage directly with the power centers to deploy a positive desire. Locative media is currently in an investigational phase, however, when it has become established the deployment of hackers and tactical media to subvert or even break down power structures via augmented space can be expected.

Augmented space creates new meanings of old notions of space and place, artists can experiment with its possibilities and consequently push the technology further. Arts traditionally are considered a discipline that is acquired through obedience and effort. Because an artist puts his or her reputation on the line, the role of particular artists can be considered dependable reflections of society. Possibly they can formulate new forms of collective intelligence, one that countervails decay; performances that let particular meanings to enact local specifics in a global context. In the next chapter I will assess artistic practices that attempt to reform and improve the city.

Reformation

The great power of the project is that it’s absolutely irrational. And that disturbs, angers the sound human perception of a capitalist society. That is also a part of the project, this is the idea of the project, to put in doubt all the values.

- Christo

When we together with Baudrillard accept that sign systems have no relation to any type of reality outside that of the sign itself, art – a sign system par excellence – should distance itself from any claims of disclosure. In history many established certainties have been ascribed to art; for instance that art represents the progress of the human psyche; it improves and mirrors humanities collective mind; art is authentic and original; art is a useful tool to enhance social interactions. Furthermore, art can be grouped according to gradation (low art vs. high art), style, genre and quality. If these claims are considered to be false, than we live in a simulacrum of the third order; it is a sign system that mostly is busy with keeping up appearances, and consequently constantly produces new proofs – new art works – in order to mask the fact that there is no such thing as ‘art’. Following Baudrillard one can argue that there is no decisive certainty about good and bad art, and all criteria distinguishing ‘low’ from ‘high’ art are obsolete, as well as the criterion determining what is art and what is not. Furthermore, there is no difference between something produced by an amateur or that by a professional. Authenticity in this sense is a fictive concept- all art essentially is an imitation of previous works. Thus, everything can be considered art.

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal with the pseudonym R. Mutt and shocked the art world. The sculpture was an attempt to point out that people look at the urinal as if it were a work of art, because Duchamp said it was a work of art. He referred to his work as ‘Ready-mades’; by choosing an object, giving it a title and signing it, the object became the work of the artist. The Fountain and Duchamp’s other works are generally labeled as Dada. Dadaism can be viewed as part of the modernist propensity to challenge established styles and forms, along with Surrealism, Futurism and Abstract Expressionism.[xc] From a chronological point of view Dada is located solidly within modernism, however a number of critics have held that it anticipates postmodernism, while others, such as Ihab Hassan and Steven Connor, consider it a possible changeover point between modernism and postmodernism.[xci] For example, according to McEvilly, postmodernism begins with the realization that one no longer believes in the myth of progress, and that Duchamp sensed this in 1914 when he changed his modernist practice to a postmodernist one, “abjuring aesthetic delectation, transcendent ambition, and tour de force demonstrations of formal agility in favor of aesthetic indifference, acknowledgement of the ordinary world, and the found object or readymade.”[xcii]

Following that anything can be considered art, during the late 1950s and 1960s artists such as Yves Klein in France, Charlotte Moorman, and Yoko Ono in New York City began experimenting with performance based works and moving art out of the galleries; changing the relationship between audience and performer especially. These performances were often designed to be the creation of a new art form, combining sculpture, dance, and music or sound, often with audience participation. The works were characterized by the reductive philosophies of minimalism, and the spontaneous improvisation, and expressivity of Abstract expressionism. During the same period – the late 1950s through the mid 1960s various avant-garde artists created Happenings. Happenings were mysterious and often spontaneous and unscripted gatherings of artists and their friends and relatives in varied specified locations. Often incorporating exercises in absurdity, physical exercise, costumes, spontaneous nudity, and various random and seemingly disconnected acts. Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Red Grooms, and Robert Whitman among others were notable creators of Happenings. In the Netherlands Provo organized happenings around the little statue ‘Het Lieverdje’ on the Spui in Amsterdam from 1966 till 1968.[xciii] Happenings are hyper-real situations; they reform and co-construct the appearance and context of the world for both participants and the outsider. Similar to a game happening on the street (i.e. children playing hide and seek, or police vs. robber) makes the game ground and rules blend in with all objects and non-participants; moreover, the hyper-real situation becomes part of non-participants and (temporarily) alters their behavior.

Throughout the beginning of the 21^st century all over the world (mostly western wealthy countries) began experimenting with digital media, GPS, databases, portable devices and the Internet within the environment. There is a large body of projects and a variety of themes. Blast Theory and the Computer Chaos Club are commonly noted as pioneers in the field. Their experiments with art and games focuses on digital authoring within the environment, on a dynamic relationship between database and the world, and similar to experiments in contemporary art in the 1960s, offers the chance to take art out of the galleries and off the screen. Artistic practices in the field of Locative Media are about acquiring new ways of looking at everyday practices, places and people, and above all to engage not only in location but also in context. Locative Media creates hyper-real situations and is a way of escaping the daily routine, route and plot. Building forth from suppositions attained in the prior chapters I will assess the role of artists that make use of the technology, culture, and protocols to formulate collective reformation practices. The chapter will deal with artistic forms that can make the local, hidden and repressed present in the global network.

Reforming reality

According to Baudrillard technology has affected all signs that at one time carried meaning: reproduction of signs – the endless repetition – makes each original, implied meaning hollow, until there is a maze of contrasting meanings – after which the sign looses all meaning with the world outside the sign, and becomes part of a game of signs, which has no content except that it brings forward a certain sensation – like one day fly, a sound-bite, a blockbuster, or a match that is lit and goes out, till the next match is lit. This is evident in contemporary cities, a space in which signs, that encircle us and communicate to us, have no context. Misleading advertisements selling a sensation opposed to products, distorted news coverage, fake and pretentious facades; a tendency arises to think the truth does not lie somewhere in the middle, but that there is no truth expect the fact of unreliable signs. One of the reactions with concern to signs becoming meaningless, according to Baudrillard, is an omnipresent form of nostalgia. He observes in the western world a gigantic desire to the past, when one understood the world, and facts were undisputed.

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence.[xciv]

This nostalgia amongst others has led to people recreating the past, for example the renovation of medieval cities and facades. Some inner city renovations in the Netherlands are done so picturesque that they seem to belong in a fairy tail; the precision of simulacra. The National Monument in Amsterdam dates from 1956. The monument is located on Dam Square which, together with most of its buildings, dates from the middle ages. In 1998 the monument had largely perished, and was completely rebuild. The current monument is an exact copy of its state half a century ago, the ornaments, figurines and victorious sculpted lions are resurrected in order to fit the medieval gothic tone. The monument was designed to suit the Dam Square sensation; the square is merely a space surrounded dated building facades – inside these buildings are new, even constantly up-dated, in order to meet the latest legal and fashion standards. Similarly the Burcht in Leiden, a medieval fort on an artificial hill, has constantly been renovated – not to enable its defensive and militaristic purpose, but to conserve its cultural historic value – however, the Burcht and its hill currently do not look anything like the initial design, it looks more like they were stylized by Anton Pieck (designer of Dutch amusement park the Efteling).

In addition, Leiden is the birth place of painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Frequently Gilde Leiden and Storytrail organize walks that pass by places familiar to Rembrandt. Such walks can be done at any particular time, however, what distinguishes these events is that they take place in a medieval setting; actors, musicians, artists and tour guides dress up in medieval customs, furthermore, the participants are required to partake in the hyper-real experience. To enhance the sensation participants of the Rembrandtwandeling (which took place July 18^th and 19^th 2007) set-up by Gilde Leiden, were inquired to paint in front the house Rembrandt was born in, located on the Rembrandtplaats. This historical location nowadays contains many references to the painter; a sculpture (in color) of Rembrandt in front of an easel, a headstone mounted on a wall, a gable stone with details of the painter, and a street sign. When participants engage with the historic location by painting themselves whilst being surrounded with people dressed up in medieval customs, it becomes more real than real; hyper-real. The simulacrum integrates with the historic location; real and unreal are not significant.

Image 4.1 On the right and on the left: Gilde Leiden organized a route that passed through famous places from Rembrandt van Rijn’s life. The pictures are taken (by author) at the Rembrandtplaats, the birth place of Rembrandt. Children and adults are painting while being surrounded by artifacts and people dating from the middle-ages.

Similarly the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam has been kept intact with artifacts to create a sense for visitors of the time period. The building is not an office anymore as it was in World War II, it is a museum. The secret hiding place, where Anne Frank spent three years, has been conserved as how it was at the time she got arrested. In order to properly conserve the room, it has had to undergo treatment. In the case of the Anne Frank House, hyperreality has another function: ultimately to create awareness amongst visitors of the injustice that occurred at the given location. However, in most cases of hyperreal situations the only objective is a pleasurable experience. Since it does not matter how the sensation is caused, as long as it is created, legitimacy is not a relevant issue in the disneyfied world: a fake ski slope is just as valuable as one that is real; it is all about the skiing sensation. The indoor and outdoor ski slopes are decorated with entourage one would expect in Tirol or Salsberg am See; wooden chalés and ‘fallen’ tree logs to increase the sensation. The sensation might even be higher in an artificial environment, which would explain the popularity of these resorts. Similarly fake beaches are immensely popular, such as Blijburg in Amsterdam, or the artificial tropical Palm Islands off the coast of The United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf.

Whilst cities are changing into museums, traditional museums seem to change into play gardens. Persons visiting a museum these days may run into groups of playing children and adults busy with a quest, while others are painting. Central is the experience. Significance in museums nowadays seems to have shifted from viewing rare objects or works of art in an academic context, to one of sensation. It is not the product of the sensation – the museum object – which is important, but the production, the sensation itself. The Royal Museum of Antiquity in Leiden, for instance, has changed into a funfair like circuit with its use of cardboard reconstructions of the past, temporarily giving the visitor a sense of ancient Egypt, Athens or Rome. The antiquities themselves have been reduced to mere properties of the ancient-experience.

In 2001 the Extra Faculteit (X-fac) from the Royal Institute of Arts (KABK) created a somewhat original bike tour through The Hague: a route which passed through various works of art which were not crafted by artists, but were identified and labeled as works of art by a group of students from the academy. The passage passed by places which for contemporary art enthusiasts would seem to contain elements of artistic treatment. For instance a location where the bricks in the road lay loose, making a rattling sound when biked over. This may just as well have been the cause of an artistic intervention, such as done in ‘site specific art’. These projects implicate how at the beginning of the 21st century art and reality have come together and seem indistinguishable. In the case of X-fac the border between arts – a discipline which traditionally opposed reality in order to reflect upon it – and reality has vanished. The art became more realistic then real, and reality became poetic. The X-fac project attests the border between art and non-art is fading away, turning the city and everyday space into a museum. Labor towns, factories, hospitals, and even sewage systems have become objects for expositions, catalogs, and tour guides. At the same time artists are exploring possibilities outside the classical museum: theater performances taking place on specific locations, living rooms turning into exposition space, everyday sounds are integrated in music.

Artistic practices in the city space, where the creations are released from a fixed place, transforms the city into a collective social place, where new meanings are given to familiar spaces. Mobile and pervasive technologies can bring these projects to a new level and ultimately help us to gain greater understanding of the physical space we reside in. With the accessibility of the Internet in the 1990s artist began creating sociability in a virtual space that was disconnected from our reality, placing users in a simulated and ‘unreal’ world. Now with the widespread availability of mobile technologies artists may bring these multi-user and playful experiences to physical spaces, encouraging users to go out on the streets and bringing new meanings to familiar spaces.^[xcv] Consequently making both users and non-users of cell phones and other Internet enabled devices real-time avatars.

Learning to gaze

Dérive is a notion used by Guy Debord in an attempt to convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. The concept means to aimlessly walk, or drift, through the city streets being guided by the momentum and space itself. The basic premise in Debord’s theory of Dérive is that people are trapped in the practices of everyday life, by looking at the city by following their emotions they can break with their daily route, routine and enclosed space. Cities in fact are designed in ways to direct and control its publics. Cities are complex structures in which movement and mobility is managed by its plan, for instance road signs tell one where to go at what speed and where to not go between what times, when to stop and when to continue. But also the architecture controls the flow of people by means of the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires. Debord argues that people should explore their environment without preconceptions, in order to create a better understanding of one’s nature; as one becomes aware of its location, one can value and comprehend his or her existence. The idea is that people built forth from their insights and seek out reasons for movement other than those for which an environment was designed. Bringing an inverted angle to the world can make people assign new meanings to familiar places, produce new forms of social interaction and make public space a place where one stops to look.

Modern maps

A modern practice of Dérive is roaming the streets of your city through the satellite photographs in Google Maps and more recently Google Street View; a new feature of Google Maps that allows one to view and navigate high-resolution, 360 degree street level images of various cities in the US. Street View. Google’s maps distinguish themselves from traditional printed maps in the sense that the user is able to interact. Besides zooming on location, the user is able to demand additional information with concern to a particular spot. This information is offered by parties collaborating with Google, as well as information from databases which Google has power over. Google Maps became vastly popular when it integrated satellite photographs (and photographs taken with airplanes) in its online maps; beside a map in conventional design containing information on demand, the map now presents a realistic bird eye view allowing the user to rediscover familiar places (such as his/her own house) from an unfamiliar perspective. This idea of (re)discovering familiar places can be compared to taking a boat tour through ones own city. The roads beside the eight canals in the center of Amsterdam are passageways I personally frequently travel through; however, when passing through them by boat, the well-known monumental facades in the vicinity of the canals seemed foreign to me from a different angle. Similarly the satellite photographs in Google Maps changes meaning and memories attached to common places; it gives the user an experience of re-familiarity. Street View on the other hand draws on the recognizable element; the photographs are taken from street level and thereby rediscovering is substituted for virtual sightseeing. The user can now wander through New York while staying at home; moreover, the user can zoom and alter the view at any time. Instead of looking up the fastest route or determining ones location, the function seems to have shifted in the direction of roaming and aimless wandering.

In addition modern maps are coupled to databases consisting of location bound information; possibly delivering the user knowledge and ultimately awareness. A wide variety of peer-created extensions are freely available augmenting the information and increasing the amount of knowledge, such as the Wikipedia extension – which provides a sense of temporal accuracy in Google Earth because information is provided about history and coming into being of a particular place, complete with specific dates, adding to the hyper-real situation. The practice of contributing to the medium opposes with traditional one-way media institutions. Google Earth allows users to act upon their creative skills and knowledge by offering possibilities to co-create the product and make it available to anyone, also outside the community. Google Maps API[xcvi] is a tool which users of Google Earth can use to include whichever information to existing maps offered by Google. In addition Google offers users SketchUp[xcvii], similar to Google Maps API SketchUp is a free application with which users can add content to maps presented by Google, however with SketchUp the user can do this in 3D (for example a model of ones own house). Via Google 3D Warehouse[xcviii] the models can be uploaded and made available for all users of Google Earth. Currently maps are circulating in 3D or data tips containing personal information or photographs taken by users from a street level (which consequently changes the perspective of the original design)[xcix]. Information visualization tools such as maps enable greater understanding of reality, our society, life, and in short our existence. The accessibility and popularity of dynamic digital maps should make academics and interaction designers wonder how new ways of wandering can educate, emancipate, and enlighten the masses.

Modern play

In March 2004 Blast Theory[c] premiered the world’s first 3G mixed reality game, I Like Frank in Adelaide, Australia, at the Adelaide Fringe.[ci] People all around the world were able to play via the internet or on the streets in Adelaide using 3G phones. The goal of the game was to find Frank. People online had to make contact with someone playing the game on the streets, and give them directions as where to go. On the internet online players moved through a virtual model of the city, opening specific photo’s of the city, which revealed hidden objects. These objects were then picked up by street players. Ultimately the collaboration of both people online and in the streets would solve the puzzle and locate Frank. Extending the game field to the ‘real’ world allows participants to look and interact in new ways with people and environment. Being in a different state of mind allows participants to discover new places in a space that it is familiar to them, allowing them to break free from their daily routines. Due to media arts, the circulatory space of flows becomes again a space of places, since installation pieces that intervene in public spaces invite citizens to stop and perceive urban spaces in a different way. Therefore people no longer use urban spaces mostly to circulate and to go from place to place; rather, they start enjoying going to public places as their ultimate goal. One of I like Frank’s participants underlines this statement; I didn’t find Frank in any kind of embodied sense, but his trace encouraged me to be a tourist in my own city and to keep seeking out those individual and uncommon details that struggle for recognition within the everyday experience of public life.^[cii]

In 2002, the Chaos Computer Club transformed an eight-story building in Alexanderplatz in Berlin into the world’s biggest interactive computer display named Blinkenlights.[ciii] One hundred forty-four lamps were arranged behind the building’s front windows, which were independently controlled to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 x 8 pixels.[civ] Users could “control the building’s façade” either via their cell phones or Internet, creating animations, playing Pong, or sending love letters.[cv] In a way Blinkenlights shows us a marketplace hemmed in by an interactive screen, as if ready to be exposed. This image is very close to a drawing by Henry Moore, Crowd Looking at a Tied-up Object (1942). The drawing shows us a sculpture wrapped in cloth, as if ready to be unveiled. This was one of Moore’s thoughts about the way to meet Picasso’s challenge to represent nature without copying it, by wrapping a natural form so that it only hints at the contents of the package.[cvi] That idea has been the basis of Christo’s long series of wrapped objects and veiled landscapes, which contemplate wonderingly, very much like the audience in Moore’s drawing.

Image 4.2 On the left a picture of Tied-up Object (Moore, 1942);

On the right a picture of Wrapped Trees (Christo, 1998)

Christo and Jean-Claude are described as ‘environmental artists’ because they place their projects in the middle of everyday urban areas – a bridge (de Pont Neuf 1985), a building (Wrapped Reichstag 1995), a coast (Surrounded Island 1980), a valley (Valley Curtain 1970), Central Park (The Gates 2005) – and combine these with elements of city planning, architecture, sculpture and engineering.[cvii] In the past forty years Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude have realized 18 international art projects that have cost millions, accumulated millions, and drawn millions of people to the exposing cities.^[cviii] 300, 000 people came to see (178) Wrapped Trees in the park of the Beyeler museum in Riehen, Switzerland.^[cix] Which took 32 years to accomplish; it had to go through various governmental boards (from the prefect of police to the mayor), fundraising (done by Christo and Jeanne-Claude themselves by selling drawings and materials of older and future projects), putting a team of voluntary workers together, producing the materials, and finding a museum park. Its popularity is the primary reason why Micheal R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York, approved The Gates in Central Park.[cx]

Perhaps in the same sense the Chaos Computer Club and Blast Theory can be seen as ‘environmental artists’. Conversely they also incorporate a virtual environment in real life space. With the use of 3G cell phones and the internet the artists are applying recent technological developments, that form an integrate part of contemporary urban space, to an aged artistic form/concept. What these projects have in common is the ability to transform circulation spaces, through which people pass by but no longer stop, into public places where people gather. The space is not used for transit only, but becomes a place where communication occurs and pleasurable experiences happen. Also the projects have a temporal character; after its exhibition (varying from a few months to a few years) the projects live on through photographs, drawings, websites and personal memories. In a way both Christo and locative artists are able to convert a region momentarily in a multi-user experience. Locative Media offer new possibilities for artists to experiment with urban space. It takes art from the galleries and the computer screen into the streets. It makes urban areas a place for people with similar interests to stop and meet. Locative Media artworks have a strong resemblance with environmental sculptures and environmental art in particular. The premise in this art form is that the city is a canvas; people walking through are an integral part of the object. Consequently as more and more people make use of mobile technologies connected to the internet, the city and its public – both users of mobile technologies and those that are not –become integrated in augmented space. Furthermore these projects demonstrate the level of organization required, contrasting notions of art being spontaneous or the contemporary spur-of-the-moment creed. Also, these practices are immensely expensive, accordingly it takes a large body of collaborating parties to fulfill the needs. As a result the media art scene, and with it the locative arts centre, is concentrated in metropolitan areas: Amsterdam, New York, London, Berlin. Making the art scene largely confined to the wealthy urban elite.[cxi]

Artistic Locative Media practices, like hackers and tactical media discussed in the last chapter, are concerned with the possibility of the medium as well as how it is shaped by commercial interests. Locative Media projects can be interpreted as a way of commenting and influencing network protocol, city protocol, gazing protocol and social protocol. Artists/designers are making consumers, the industry, and the government aware of the potential power Locative Media have to change the way in which we perceive and interact with the world around us. Artist make people aware, in same way looking at Google Maps can possibly make one conscious how the accuracy of the images are utilizing locative technologies to usher in a new era of discreet and ubiquitous surveillance. The technology is slowly implanting itself in our daily life; activities seem more and more dependent on it. The medium enables databases with seemingly unlimited amounts of personal data to be recorded. Locative Media attests protocol has a hold on us, resisting is futile, for one will not be able to participate when rejecting the technology. Locative Media artists/designers are not discarding protocol, they are literarily sculpting it.

Breaking the frequencies

The Internet, the city, and recently augmented space are flooded with disinformation, meaningless images, contrasting interpretations, unreliable sources and corporate spam. Public space is filled with images that consequently construct, direct and control our reality. Attempts to countervail, reform and improve should start at roots of our society; our children. Knowing how to acquire the appropriate information lays at the basis of survival. Society has changed in fundamental ways, the world’s wealth has been drastically redistributed, and individuality and locality are drowning in a pool of homogeneity. Finding your way around is the essential; knowing how is the key.

In 2005 the Locative Media department of Waag Society developed a mobile learning game, in which “students are transported to the medieval Amsterdam of 1550 via a medium that’s familiar to this age group: the mobile phone”.[cxii] Frequency 1550 took place again in June 2007.[cxiii] The game uses 3G cell phones and network to allow students to compete in finding answers to questions about the old city of Amsterdam, for history class excursion and assignment. Frequency 1550 explores the social potential of location-aware devices, inspired by the use of tracking technology and wireless media, human relationships, movement and identity; the project seeks to extend and re-appropriate the functions of locative technologies by exploring ways in which they can be socially constructive and facilitate new dynamics to occur within everyday school life. Children are taught to look beyond city facades, interact socially and technically, and move through the city in new ways.

Frequency 1550 is an annotation of the current transition of social and traveling space, moreover, it is concerned with the medium and plays with its possibilities, ultimately shaping and advancing it. Frequency 1550 is, like Internet art, formed by commercial interests. Corporate minded sponsors, such as phone providers and cell phone producers, are constantly seeking how to control the market. Projects such Frequency 1550 are an ideal way of testing commercial applications and practices. Furthermore, introducing cell phones in the domain of education, as Frequency 1550 intends, offers a new market, one which is able to acquire governmental sponsoring as well as annex potential customers at an early age.[cxiv] Likewise, the city is used as testing ground for creative, commercial and governmental institutions to assess flaws and threats.

However, there are many problems regarding usability, expense, network stability and game design. Frequency 1550 is most certainly not the first Locative Media project that is constrained by the limitations of the available technology. Central in the game play is the challenge of roaming the environment while deciphering the presented information on a miniature screen and interacting with the device through a bad designed cell phone keyboard (in ten years it probably will be considered ridiculous to use your thumb to text messages on a 10 button keyboard). Furthermore, at this commencing stage the mobile network, the Bluetooth and GPS connection, and communication to a central server are simply not advanced enough to separate the world and the presented scenario. These barriers make it almost impossible to engage with the plot and temporarily escape from reality. Frequency 1550 does not go beyond positioning; engagement is limited to location, not its context. Of course the project is not only about concentrating context in a coordinate point, nor is the project merely about gaining greater understanding of place through the cell phone screen. Frequency 1550 is not a museum or digital touring guide; the focus is on opening up spaces of play through in which context may be discovered.

Frequency 1550 is protocological in many ways; besides the technical protocols enabling communication and information visualization, the users are presented a scenario that directs and narrates the city. The project differs from an ordinary excursion or contemporary artistic practices because the users are voluntarily engaged in the situation whilst following a set of rules. These rules instruct historical facts, social interaction, coordination and navigation. The children are stimulated to actively participate in the ‘lesson’ – and this is generally different in a disciplinary form of education. Currently the University of Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam are collaborating with Waag Society to research the learning effects of learning games. [cxv] Furthermore Frequency 1550 aptly demonstrates the dominant presence of the control society. Disciplinary institutions, such as schools, are crumbling down and turned over to a more pervasive form of training that uses both the privacy intrusive technology and also the corporate means.

IN Conclusion, Locative Media is another distraction; a product of a society ‘living on’ experience and sensation. The intensifying augmentation of space, facilitated by wireless portable devices that are in continuous contact with the Internet, creates an augmented space where boundaries between virtual and actual diminish. However public space is increasingly a result of consumers annotating, narrating and mapping urban territory, contributing to the city’s spectacle, adding and giving new meaning to familiar places. Yet, the participatory process of hybridizing the city also makes connotation, veracity and trust assigned to places unreliable, as it is a mix of subjective and sometimes contrasting perspectives. Furthermore, Locative Media assists a shift in power and control, both from a grass-root and a repressive level; Locative Media allows public participating, mobilizing and initiating action, on the other hand the technology gives way to new forms of corporate and governmental control. Essentially locative media allows us to look beyond the façade….. and into your room.

Because the technology is still relatively new, it is difficult to assess in what way the problems Locative Media projects faces, concerning engagement and creating contextual awareness beyond place, can be solved. In addition, the network, the practices and the organization are too expensive to be appealing to people or places in immediate need. One way to overcome some of the barriers is to open up the network and allow for Creative Common licensing and Mobile Web 2.0 contributions. The direction should focus on materializing an open society in which less centralized planning is required because most things can be solved locally. Mobile technologies assists participatory and collective action, this can exploit new forms of engaged citizenship and ad-hoc organization at local level. Locative Media artists can push the technology further, and formulate new ways for local self-organizing communities to counter homogeneity.

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Pagliasotti, J. “Interview with Christo and Jeanne-Claude.” Eye Level, a Quaterly Journal of Contemporary Visual Culture. Denver, Colorado, (spring 2002): 15-22.

Pegrum, M. Challenging Modernity: Dada Between Modern and Postmodern, Berghahn Books, 2000.

Rheingold, Howard. “Smart mobs”. The next social revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 2002.

Sassen, S. Public Interventions. 2006 available online: http://www.skor.nl/article-2888-en.html Last visited 31-08-2007

Sassen, S. The Global City. 2^nd edition. Princeton: University Press, 2001.

Tuters, M. and Varnelis, K. Beyond locative media. http://netpublics.annenberg.edu/locative_media/beyond_locative_media. 2005.

Vrijsen, E. “Los Angeles: doorstromen en carpoolen”. Elsevier. 21-07-2007.

FILM LIST

Koyaanisqatsi: life out of balance (USA: Reggio, 1982)

Minority Report (USA: Spielberg, 2002)

Roger & Me (USA: Moore, 1989)

WEBSITE LIST

Bert is Evil Website www.spacecat.com/bert/

“We have reason to believe that Bert of Sesame Street is evil and you should keep your children away from him. Here in these pages are collected incriminating images and documents that prove that Bert is not the lovable harmless geek he so successfully makes us think he is.”

CNN Website http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/11/muppets.binladen/

News site by broadcaster CNN containing the article: ‘Muppet’ producers miffed over Bert-bin Laden image, October 11, 2001. Posted: 2:16 PM EDT (1816 GMT)

Wikipedia Happenings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happenings

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia entry concerning Happenings.

GoogleMaps API http://www.google.com/apis/maps

Site from Google containing Maps API “a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers.”

SketchUp http://sketchup.google.com

Google site containing information regarding Sketch Up a tool to design houses in Google Earth.

Google 3D Warehouse http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse

Google site containing tools to use for designing houses in Google Earth.

Blast Theory http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_ilikefrank.html

Official site of Blast Theory a locative media group composed of several London-based avant-garde theatre artists. They have gained renown for projects such as Can You See Me Now (2001), Uncle Roy All Around You (2003), and I Like Frank (2004), in which they used location-aware mobile mapping devices to coordinate interactions of audience and performers in both real and virtual space.

Blinkenlights http://www.blinkenlights.de/

Official Blinkenlights website containing tools, information and images of the project.

Frequency 1550 at Waag Society website http://freq1550.waag.org/

Website of Waag Society containing background information regarding Frequency 1550

Frequency 1550 website www.frequentie1550.nl

Official Frequency 1550 site containing information of the second release of the game in 2007 and research publications.

Ministerie Economische Zaken http://www.twanetwerk.nl/default.ashx?DocumentID=8045

Article containing information about biometrics in the United Kingdom. Article is written for the ministry of economic affairs and is in Dutch.

Social Fiction’s dot.walk developers page http://socialfiction.org/dotwalk/

Official website for developers concerning dot.walk

Christo and Jeanne-Claude http://christojeanneclaude.net/index.html.en.

Website containing photographs and background information regarding Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude

Christo en Jeanne-Claude. “Wrapped Trees” http://users.pandora.be/juliensart/wrappedtrees.html

Website containing background information regarding the Wrapped Trees project that took place in 1998

Debord, G. Society of the Spectacle. http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4

Online available translation of La société du spectacle from 1967

[i] Bert is Evil Website: www.spacecat.com/bert/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[ii] CNN Website: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/10/11/muppets.binladen/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[iii] Kluitenberg, E. “The Network of Waves”. Open 2006. No.11: Hybrid Space. 2006

[iv] Klein, N. No Logo. Tr.M. Stoltenkamp. Rotterdam: Lemniscaat, 2001. pg. 146 (Originally published in English by Westwood Creative Artists, 2000).

[v] idem

[vi] Manovich, L. The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada. 2002. www.manovich.net/DOCS/augmented_space.doc Last visited 31-08-2007

[vii] Baudrillard, J. Simulation and Simulacra. Tr. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1994. (Originally published in French by Editions Galilee, 1981).

[viii] Castells, Manuel. “The space of flows”. The rise of the network society. Oxford: Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. Pg. 409

[ix] Koyaanisqatsi: life out of balance (USA: Reggio, 1982)

[x] Castells, 2000: pg. 417

[xi] Castells, 2000: pg. 453

[xii] Vrijsen, E. “Los Angeles: doorstromen en carpoolen”. Elsevier. 21-07-2007: pg. 20

[xiii] idem

[xiv] Hemment, D. Locative arts 2004. http://www.drewhemment.com/2004/locative_arts.html. Last visited on 31-08-2007

[xv] Jameson, Frederic. “Reading without Interpretation: Postmodernism and the Video-Text” in Derek Attridge e.a. (red). The Linguistics of Writing: Arguments Between Language and Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987: p. 222

[xvi] idem

[xvii] Gilles Deleuze, “Postscripts on the Societies of Control”, Winter 1992, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 3-7. (This essay first appeared in L’Autre journal, no. 1, May 1990).

[xviii] idem

[xix] idem

[xx] idem

[xxi] This is evident in the case of a Dutch based company that produces and sells television commercial formats that do not feature the name of the product or the actual product itself; the commercials are universal casts applicable to any item and therefore able to be sold to multiple parties. Shown on De wereld draait door (VARA) 2007.

[xxii] Goggin, G. Cell phone cultures. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. pg. 203

[xxiii] idem

[xxiv] The biometric industry is vastly expanding its market. The International Biometric Group estimates that in 2010 the global market for biometrics has an extent of $ 5.7 billion. Ministerie Economische Zaken: http://www.twanetwerk.nl/default.ashx?DocumentID=8045 Last visited 31-08-2007

[xxv] Minority Report (USA: Spielberg, 2002)

[xxvi] For more on collaborative filtering and protocological organization of human people see: Galloway. Protocol, 2004.

[xxvii] Deleuze and Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus, tr. B. Massumi, Mineapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. pg. 9

[xxviii] Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: pg. 12

[xxix] Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: pg. 21

[xxx] Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish.Tr. A. Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1997. pg.197

[xxxi] Galloway, 2004: pg. 31

[xxxii] idem

[xxxiii] Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

[xxxiv] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 23

[xxxv] Galloway, 2004: pg. 26

[xxxvi] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 199

[xxxvii] Galloway, 2004: pg. 26

[xxxviii] Galloway, 2004: pg. 111

[xxxix] In chapter 4 this point will be clarified in relation to Guy Debord’s theory of Dérive.

[xl] Website for Social Fiction’s dot.walk developers page: “http://socialfiction.org/dotwalk/” Last visited 31-08-2007. Sited from: Tuters, M. Locative Commons. 2004

[xli] Tuters, M. and Varnelis, K. Beyond locative media. http://netpublics.annenberg.edu/locative_media/beyond_locative_media. 2005.

[xlii] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 294

[xliii] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 295

[xliv] Sassen, S. The Global City. 2^nd edition. Princeton: University Press, 2001.

[xlv] idem

[xlvi] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 295

[xlvii] Negri & Hardt, 2000: pg. 296

[xlviii] Roger & Me (USA: Moore, 1989)

[xlix]At the climax scene Moore calls smith via telephone, the conversation is recorded;

Moore: Mr. Smith, we came from Flint, where we filmed a family being evicted from their home the day before Christmas Eve. A family that worked in your factory. Would you be willing to come with us to see the situation in Flint? Smith: I’ve been to Flint, and I’m sorry for them, but I don’t know anything about it.

Moore: Families being evicted on Christmas Eve are not able to live their lives…

Smith: General Motors didn’t evict them. Talk to the landlord…

Moore: They used to work for GM. Now they don’t work there anymore.

Smith: I’m sorry, but…

Moore: Could you come to Flint?

Smith: No, I cannot. I’m sorry.

[l] Barber, B. Jihad vs. McWorld, New York New York: Crown, 1995.

[li] Barber, B. “Jihad vs. McWorld”. The Atlantic Monthly, March 1992.

[lii] idem

[liii] idem

[liv] Saskia Sassen discusses this point in Public Interventions 2006. http://www.skor.nl/article-2888-en.html Last visited 31-08-2007

[lv] Klein, 2001.

[lvi] Klein, 2001: pg. 229

[lvii] Klein, 2001: pg. 98

[lviii] Klein, 2001: pg. 100

[lix] Klein, 2001: pg.

[lx] De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. Tr. S. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984. (original in French 1974)

[lxi] Certreau, 1984

[lxii] Garcia and Lovink. The ABC of Tactical Media. 1997. http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors2/garcia-lovinktext.html Last visited 31-08-2007

[lxiii] Lovink, G. Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture. Cambride: The MIT Press, p.258.

[lxiv] Klein, 2001: pg. 317

[lxv] idem

[lxvi] idem

[lxvii] Debord, G. Society of the Spectacle. http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4 Last visited 31-08-2007. Theses # 6

[lxviii] Best & Kellner. “Preface. The Postmodern Turn: Paradigm Shifts in Theory, Culture, and Science”. Illuminations. http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/best8.htm Last visited 31-08-2007

[lxix] idem

[lxx] Plant, S.The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. New York: Routledge, 1992.

[lxxi] Klein, 2001: pg. 119

[lxxii] Klein, 2001: pg. 126

[lxxiii] Klein, 2001: pg. 133

[lxxiv] See cover

[lxxv] Debord, 1967: theses # 166

[lxxvi] Debord, 1967: theses # 167

[lxxvii] Debord, 1967: theses # 169

[lxxviii] Debord, 1967: theses # 170

[lxxix] Debord, 1967: theses # 173

[lxxx] Medosch, A. “Society in ad-hoc mode”. Economising Culture: on the (digital) cultural industry. Eds. Cox et al. Plymouth and New York: Autonomedia, 2004. Available online from: http://www.ejhae.elia-artschools.org/Issue2/2a-medosch.htm Last visited 31-08-2007.

[lxxxi] Medosch, 2004.

[lxxxii] In a similar search of new modes of cultural production The Institute for Applied Autonomy and The Bureau for Inverse Technology both infiltrate and critique the culture of engineering from the inside.

[lxxxiii] For more about counter-globality see: Sassen, S. Public Interventions. 2006 available online: http://www.skor.nl/article-2888-en.html Last visited 31-08-2007

[lxxxiv] Rheingold, H. Smartmob. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2002. pg. 20

[lxxxv] idem

[lxxxvi] Castells 2004 206-211 as cited from Barendregt 2006 pg. 328

[lxxxvii] Kompas 21-5-2004 as cited from Barendregt 2006 pg. 328

[lxxxviii] Barendregt. “Mobile modernity”. Indonesian Transitions. Ed. Schulte Nordholt, H. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar, 2006 pg. 332

[lxxxix] Barendregt, 2006: pg. 333

[xc] Malpas, S. The Postmodern, Routledge, 2005. p17.

[xci] Pegrum, M. Challenging Modernity: Dada Between Modern and Postmodern. York: Berghahn Books, 2000, pp2-3.

[xcii] McEvilly, T. in Roth, Dubuffet, King, Beauty Is Nowhere: Ethical Issues in Art and Design, Routledge, 1998. p27.

[xciii] Wikipedia Happenings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happenings Last visited 31-08-2007

[xciv] Baudrillard, 1994

[xcv] De Souza e Silva. From Cyber to Hybrid: Relocating our Imaginary Spaces through Mobile Interfaces. Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 2004.

[xcvi] GoogleMaps API: http://www.google.com/apis/maps Last visited 31-08-2007

[xcvii] SketchUp: http://sketchup.google.com Last visited 31-08-2007

[xcviii] Google 3D Warehouse: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse Last visited 31-08-2007

[xcix] This concerns photographs uploaded by peer users. Google Street View also makes use of photographs taken from street level, however, the user is able to interact – by means of zooming and changing the angle.

[c] Blast Theory is a locative media group composed of several London-based avant-garde theatre artists. They have gained renown for projects such as Can You See Me Now (2001), Uncle Roy All Around You (2003), and I Like Frank (2004), in which they used location-aware mobile mapping devices to coordinate interactions of audience and performers in both real and virtual space.

[ci] Blast Theory http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_ilikefrank.html Last visited 31-08-2007

[cii] RealTime magazine, No.60, April/May 2004

[ciii] Blinkenlights http://www.blinkenlights.de/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[civ] Blinkenlights http://www.blinkenlights.de/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[cv] Blinkenlights http://www.blinkenlights.de/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[cvi] Grieder, Terence. Artist and Audience. Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. 1990.

[cvii] idem

[cviii] They have failed 22 times to realize a project. Source: Christo and Jeanne-Claude. http://christojeanneclaude.net/index.html.en Last visited 28-12-2006

[cix] Christo Wrapped Trees. http://users.pandora.be/juliensart/wrappedtrees.html Last visited 28-12-2006

[cx] Pagliasotti, J. “Interview with Christo and Jeanne-Claude.” Eye Level, a Quaterly Journal of Contemporary Visual Culture. Denver, Colorado, (spring 2002): 15-22.

[cxi] Byrne, C. “Space, place, interface: location in new media art” 2005.

http://www.art-research-communication.net/weblog/?p=35. Last visited 31/08/2007

[cxii] Frequency 1550 at Waag Society website: http://freq1550.waag.org/ Last visited 31-08-2007

[cxiii] Between May 25^th and June 15^th 2007 different classes played the game. I was present as an observer during 10 of these game sessions. Results with regard to usability and social engagement are included in the appendix of this thesis. These are notes (in Dutch) of group meetings with other observers, researchers and designers.

[cxiv] In 2005 KPN sponsored Frequency 1550 in order to test the UMTS network. There are no cell-phone manufacturers collaborating with the project.

[cxv] Research concerning the learning effects are (soon) published on www.frequentie1550.nl Last visited 31-08-2007

On October 1st Geert Lovink posted a previous blogpost about the spinplant on the Nettime mailinglist. This was the beginning of what turned out to become a sprawling discussion. This is a summary of the original post, the discussion and the remaining questions.

Wikipedia’s ‘alertness’ was tested by posting an article about a fantasy-plant, the spinplant. The article was removed in less than two hours, which means that the system is working pretty well when it comes to removing fake articles. But the article was removed because the Wikipedia editor in question couldn’t find anything about the spinplant using Google. The question posed was whether Google was being given too much authority. Jos Horikx corrected the question: it should be whether a research of hits via Google is enough to judge the truth of an article on Wikipedia. He argued that an article on Wikipedia should, as a rule, be supported by its own resources in the first place. Patrice Riemens agreed with him, encouraging the use of Wikipedia and Google as useful instruments, but not to see them as solid fundaments for knowledge.

More reactions inspired Hendrik-Jan Grievink to write down his take on knowledge and its increasing fragmentation through the use of Wikipedia and Google. He also mentions the distinction between a literary culture and a culture of images. Grievink says that in a culture shaped by images, we have to search for knowledge whereas in a culture dominated by the written word one must ask for knowledge. Andreas Jabobs reacted to this statement, saying that knowledge and images are not comparable. He argued that knowledge no longer gets ’stored’ in human memory. Active knowledge is lost due to the increased use of images as a collection of knowledge. But Grievink responds that he does not equate knowledge and image, he only points at the fact that images are taken more and more as bearers of knowledge.

Theo Ploeg wonders whether Jacobs sees a difference between contact with reality via language on the one hand and image on the other. After this he continues with the connection between the existence of things and persons and their presence on the www.

As a reaction to this whole discussion the first real spinplant is born on the web. Elout made a spinplant in Sculptypaint, an opensource 3Dmodel creation tool. These models can be imported to for example Secondlife.

And Grievink reacts with a dictionary-discription of the spinplant [in Dutch]:

spin·plant (de ~)
1 fictieve plantensoort, ontdekt door Laura van der Vlies
2 neologisme dat nog wacht op indexering door GoogleNu maar water geven en wachten tot het woord “spinplant” uitgroeit tot een volwaardige internet meme, wellicht dat zij dan over enige tijd tot het Google-lexicon behoort. En dan komt het met de spinplant in Wikipedia ook wel goed! Heeft Laura via een omweg toch nog een bevredigend resultaat van haar experiment. Kan ze haar volgende onderzoek mee starten. Dat vereist wel wat medewerking van ons: een blogje hier, een onderzoekje daar, lezinkje zo, filmpje zus. Zo doen we dat: kennisproductie in de mediasfeer. Overigens, wanneer we deze status bereiken met dit virtuele stukje flora dan is de spinplant uiteraard geen spinplant meer, maar een officieel erkend woord der Nederlandse Taal. Wie was Van Dale ook alweer? Dat zal nog wel even duren, tot die tijd blijft de spinplant gewoon een spinplant!

De Spinplant is dood, leve de spinplant!

The discussion continued when one of the Masters of Media contributers, Michael Stevenson, reacted with a blogpost titled ‘Making the spinplant relevant: more from Friedrich Nietzsche‘. With this post he tried, with some help from Nietzsche, to change the terms of the debate, (jokingly?) asking whether truth is really ‘prior’ to relevance at all. He has asked readers to help make the spinplant more relevant by linking to the non-existing article on Wikipedia [http://nl.wikipedia.org/Spinplant] and two pages that were made to make the spinplant visible on the World Wide Web.
[http://www.lauravdv.nl/spinplant.html]
[http://home.student.uva.nl/laurina.vandervlies/spinplant.html]

This post brought up more discussion, but also some confusion. Readers of the blogpost thought the aim was to put the spinplant back on Wikipedia again. But that isn’t the case. It is only to show the relationship between web-truth and relevance.

In any case, the story about the spinplant is not over yet.

On September the 28th and 29th Amsterdam will be transformed into a huge playground.

A wide variety of big urban games will take place in the city……You may choose to take virtual penalties with your cell phone, play Snake live in the Westerpark or guard a VIP against snipers using a water pistol….

FOR FREE!!!