The Mobile Audience: Media Art and Mobile Technologies

478 Pages·2011·4.997 MB·English

by  Martin Rieser

The Mobile Audience
Architecture Technology Culture 5
Series Editors
Klaus Benesch
(University of Munich, Germany)
Jeffrey L. Meikle
(University of Texas at Austin, USA)
David E. Nye
(University of Southern Denmark, Denmark)
Miles Orvell
(Temple University, Philadelphia, USA)
Editorial Address:
Prof. Dr. Klaus Benesch
Department of English/American Studies
University of Munich
Schellingstrasse 3/VG
80799 Munich
The Mobile Audience
Media Art and Mobile Technologies
Edited by Martin Rieser
With an Introduction by Howard Rheingold
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Cover illustration: ©Umbrella.net by Katherine Moriwaki 2004.
Cover design: Inge Baeten
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence.”
ISBN: 978-90-420-3127-2
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3128-9
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2011
Printed in The Netherlands
AAcknowledgements

The editor would like to thank the following institutors and individuals for their help
and collaboration in researching this book:

Mobile Bristol: Dr Jo Reid/ Dr Constance Fleuriot / Dr Richard Hull
Bristol University: Jon Dovey
Dunne and Raby: Fiona Raby
Watershed Media Centre/Clark’’s Digital Bursary: Stanza and SquidSoup
Blast Theory: Matt Adams/Nick Tandavanitj
The Mixed Reality Lab Nottingham University: Professor Steve Benford
MIT Media Lab Europe, Human Connectedness group: Cati Vaucelle,
Arianna Bassoli, Valentina Nisi
Trinity College Dublin: Dr Linda Doyle, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Katherine Moriwaki
Urban Tapestries/Proboscis: Giles Lane
Land Design: Peter Higgins
UIAH Helsinki: Andrew Patterson
The ARKI Group: Arena/Heidi Tikka
Interactive Institute Gotenberg: Margot Jacob
Future Physical: Debbi Lander
University of the Arts/Central St Martins:
Trisha Austin, Sharon Baurley and Lisa Stead
PPreface

When I started researching this book at the end of 2004, Mobile artworks utilising
new technologies such as GPS were a recent innovation. Since then Web 2.0
phenomena including mobile gaming applications and mobile entertainment have
blossomed with enormous rapidity and new language has evolved to describe them:
““Pervasive Media,”” ““Locative Media,”” ““Mobile art,”” ““Wearable Computing,”” ““Peer-
to-peer”” and so on are now commonplace terms. Together with these words, have
emerged those to describe human behaviour in this mobile ecology, words as exotic
as ““Flashmobs”” or ““Human Swarms,”” ““Swarm Intelligence”” etc. This is a field
developing too rapidly to adequately capture in a medium as traditional as a book.
What this necessarily represents then is an attempt to chart the underlying
debates and document the early experiments in the field. I have been blogging new
examples, since the inception of the project, anticipating the rapidity of change in
mobile artworks, and readers can find ample updated references on
http://www.mobileaudience.blogspot.com. Further detailed online references are well
documented on excellent weblog sites such as http://www.we-make-money-not-
art.com and also on Turbulence’’s now discontinued research site of
Networked_Performance, to be found at http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/. As a
measure of this rapidity of change, until midway through my researches the very
best source of documentation was Dr. Reinhold Grether’’s network research site
http://www.netzwissenschaft.de/, to which at the time of writing was attached the
following sad postscript: ““Abandoning the Internet in 2003 and the cell phone
network in 2006, my netzwissenschaft link page is completely out of date. It’’s time
to bid farewell.”” So while the book cannot be a definitive survey, it represents the
first comprehensive attempt to map the field and lay down a number of markers for
the serious understanding of how, as art, this pervasive medium relates to its
audience.
CContents:

Introduction: Howard Rheingold .................................................................................... 1
Overview: Martin Rieser .................................................................................................. 3
Section 1: Towards Hybridity
A History of Audience Mobility

Pockets of Plenty: An Archaeology of Mobile Media .................................................... 23
Erkki Huhtamo

The Temporal and Spatial Design of Video and Film-based
Installation Art in the 60s and 70s: Their Inherent Perception
Processes and Effects on the Perceivers’’ Actions ....................................................... 39
Susanne Jaschko

Forgotten Histories of Interactive Space ...................................................................... 55
Martin Rieser

Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces ..................................................... 67
Adriana de Souza e Silva

Section 2: Critical Issues in Mobile Art
2.1 Critical Contexts and Definitions

Mobile/Audience: Thinking the Contradictions ............................................................. 81
Mary Griffiths and Sean Cubitt

Towards a Language of Mobile Media .......................................................................... 97
Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot

Snapshots from Curating Mobility ............................................................................... 109
Beryl Graham
22.2 Understanding Public Spatialisation

Beyond Mapping: New Strategies for Meaning in Locative Artworks ....................... 127
Martin Rieser

Digital Media and Architecture——An Observation ...................................................... 141
Anke Jacob

Urban Screens as the Visualization Zone of the City’’s
Invisible Communication Sphere ................................................................................. 155
Mirjam Struppek

2.3 The Creative User

Future Physical: The Creative User and theme of response-ABILITY ....................... 163
Debbi Lander

‘‘A Fracture in Reality’’: Networked Narratives as Imaginary
Fields of Action and Dislocation .................................................................................. 181
Andrea Zapp

Section 3: Case Studies
3.1 Locative Art

What Makes Mediascapes Compelling? ...................................................................... 193
Josephine Reid and Richard Hull

Hopstory(cid:18)Media Tales of the Liberties ...............................................................(cid:17) 205(cid:18)(cid:21)(cid:20)(cid:26)
Valentina Nisi, Glorianna Davenport(cid:18)(cid:57)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:87)(cid:76)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:49)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:76)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:48)(cid:68)(cid:71)(cid:86)(cid:3)(cid:43)(cid:68)(cid:68)(cid:75)(cid:85)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:42)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:81)(cid:68)(cid:3)(cid:39)(cid:68)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:81)(cid:83)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)L(cid:3)oca: ‘‘Location Oriented Critical Arts’’ ........................................................................ 235
Drew Hemment, John Evans, Mika Raento, Theo Humphries

Invisible Topographies ................................................................................................. 245
Usman Haque

Wifi-Hog: The Battle for Ownership in Public Wireless Space .................................... 253
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
33.2 The Creative User: The User as Co-creator

Puppeteers, Performers or Avatars:
A Perceptual Difference in Telematic Space ............................................................... 259
Paul Sermon

Mobile Feelings: Wireless Communication of
Heartbeat and Breath for Mobile Art .......................................................................... 269
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

The Living Room .......................................................................................................... 277
Victoria Fang

tunA and the Power of Proximity ................................................................................ 283
Arianna Bassoli

Engagement with the Everyday ................................................................................... 291
Margot Jacobs

Between Improvisation and Publication:
Supporting the Creative Metamorphosis with Technology ........................................ 305
Cati Vaucelle

Developing Creative Audience Interaction: Four Projects by Squidsoup. ................. 329
Anthony Rowe

3.3 Wearable Computing

The Emotional Wardrobe ............................................................................................. 341
Lisa Stead, Petar Goulev, Caroline Evans, Ebrahim Mamdani

Social Fashioning and Active Conduits ....................................................................... 355
Katherine Moriwaki

Wunderkammer: Wearables as an Artistic Strategy ................................................... 365
Laura Beloff