Re: <nettime> Locative Games: Police use GPS coordinates as Evidence

[Paul Miller <anansi1@earthlink.net>]

I agree - yes, this has been going on a while. In fact, there are  
various reasonably confirmed rumors of what the U.S. and Israel have  
been doing - using cell phones as homing devices for missile strikes  
etc as well to assassinate Palestinian resistance leaders, Hamas and  
Hizbalallah operatives etc etc


Anyway - there's lots and lots going on with GPS, cell phone art, and  
mobile art projects.

Some of the more creative stuff is around - of course - play. Two of  
my favorites are

The Yellow Arrow Project by Brian House and crew with their concept of  
"Massively Authored Artistic Publication" - 6864 arrows, placed in 467  
cities in 38 countries

http://yellowarrow.net/index2.php


Yellow Arrow is a global public art project that subverts the  
hierarchy of media power by creating an open forum for communication.  
The project invites the questions "When does an object become art?  
What makes a landmark? Who says what counts?" By collecting and  
sharing places of personal significance, this public collaboration  
creates a subjective atlas called dynamic MAAP (Massively Authored  
Artistic Project) that expresses the unique characteristics, personal  
histories, and hidden secrets that live within our everyday spaces.

Participants place uniquely-coded Yellow Arrow stickers to draw  
attention to different locations and objects — a favorite view of the  
city, an odd fire hydrant, the local bar. By sending an SMS from a  
mobile phone to the Yellow Arrow number beginning with the arrow’s  
unique code, Yellow Arrow authors essentially save a thought on the  
spot where they place their sticker. Messages range from short poetic  
fragments to personal stories to game-like prompts to action. When  
another person encounters the Yellow Arrow, he or she sends its code  
to the Yellow Arrow number and immediately receives the message on  
their mobile phone. The website yellowarrow.net extends this location- 
based exchange, by allowing participants to annotate their arrows with  
photos and maps in the online gallery of Yellow Arrows placed  
throughout the world.

With mobile technology we are now able to integrate the social  
potential of networked experience with the immediacy and relevance of  
the physical world. As Jean Baudrillard writes in response to student  
strikes in France of May 1968:

The real revolutionary media were the walls and their speech, the silk- 
screen posters and the handpainted notices, the street where speech  
began and was exchanged - everything that was an immediate  
inscription, given and turned, spoken and answered, mobile in the same  
space and time, reciprocal and antagonistic. The street is, in this  
sense, the alternative and subversive form of the mass media, since it  
isn’t, like the latter, an objectified support for answerless  
messages, a transmission system at a distance. It is the frayed space  
of the symbolic exchange of speech - ephemeral, mortal.

In a networked age, different communities across the globe have very  
different access to technology, but mobile phones have become widely  
available across all social classes. By perceiving a network as  
something that is inherently a combination of physical, social, and  
technological components, the project hopes to bring these elements  
together under a paradigm that honors the type of vibrant exchange  
Baudrillard found so inspiring.


and

Capitol of Punk
http://yellowarrow.net/capitolofpunk/

a history of D.C.'s punk rock scene using text messages for story  
telling based on your position in the city's landscape.

One of my favorite recent novels, William Gibson's "Spook Country"  
uses this kind of stuff as a main plot device as well.


Paul



#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org