scape the hood

In collaboration with: KQED Digital Storytelling Initiative and Hewlett Packard’s The Mobile Bristol Project

2005

Locative Media (HP IPAQs and GPS receivers)

Three blocks in the South of Market, San Francisco reveals its secrets to walkers equipped with HP IPAQ’s and GPS devices as they roam the neighborhood, hearing histories, stories and sounds of the places as it is…and as it was.

Project Artaud, a 30-year old non-profit live-work studio space for artists was, in the mid-1920’s, the tooling factory for the American Can Company, can factory.

Land and History restored the sounds of the environment that existed prior to the overlay of the city — rich wetlands, marshes and shorelines, reminded of the rich cultural presence of the Native American Ohlone-Constanoan people, and brought to the surface the underground water that still flows beneath the streets today.

The Mission Flea Market’s Saturday-only lively crowds and music were heard in the empty weekday lot. Since then, The Mission Flea Market segment has became an historic document as plans for building on the site has led to the discontinuation of this popular local weekend gathering.

Public Event

• Featured at the 8th Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, SF, CA

Publications

Scape the Hood : A design case study of a location based digital story mediascape  This paper describes the design process and evaluation of a located mediascape called “Scape the Hood”. It is a written as a design case study and describes in detail the process by which artists gathered content, created regions and rapidly iterated through several designs using a location based software platform. The paper highlights the nuances of designing for GPS and the lessons learned. It includes an evaluation of the experience with feedback gathered from questionnaire and interviews.

[Download PDF ]

Thanks

Project Artaud: Concept/Design – Abbe Don, David Laurence

Land & History: Concept/Design – Paula Levine, Carolina Lucero Funes, Romero Alves

Mission Flea Market: Concept/Design – Leslie Rule, Stan Heller.

HP Labs Bristol: Tom Rule, Ben Clayton, Richard Hull, Paul Marsh, Tom Melamed, Jo Reid and Phil Stenton.

Sound Mastering: Max Rosenblum. Intro/Outro Segments: Sean Horton, Antenna Theater, Mark Petrakis.

Additional thanks for Land & History: Leslie Rule (KQED Digital Storytelling Initiative), Anne Marie Sayers (Director & Founder of the Costanoan Indian Research, Inc. Indian Canyon and Tribal Chairperson of the Indian Canyon Nation), Judy West (Project Director, The Madrina Group SF), Paul Matzner (Curator, The California Library of Natural Sounds, Oakland Museum of California), Victor Cartagena, Antigone Trimis, Carolina Stankiewich, Larry Reed.

SpeakingHere

Produced at the IntraNation Residency, The Banff Centre, Banff, Alberta

2004

Computer, GPS, Applications (c++ & Flash)

LANDSCAPE GIVES RISE TO LANGUAGE – Words and phrases used to describe a place and one’s subjectivity within it, create the particular vernacular of a region. You are never fully in a place unless you know the language of the place.

WORDS CALL PLACES INTO EXISTENCE – Although the capacity to experience a place often lies outside of the bounds of language, the compulsion to describe the relationship between the body and the world remains.

LANGUAGE AND PLACE ARE INDIVISIBLE

SpeakingHere is a GPS controlled narrative walk in Banff, Alberta.  Eleven people, each speaking a different language, describe the landscape as seen through a small studio window as though trying to speak what they see into view.   Their descriptions, along with repetitive video pans of the same area shot daily for a week, are “embedded” into the same landscape. 

Walkers, equipped with laptops, headphones and GPS receivers, walk through the landscape, listening and seeing the place around them. The images and sounds slip between the  experiences of the walkers themselves as they moved through the extraordinary landscape surrounding them.

The work engaged with the idea suggested by Wallace Stevens that, more often than not, we live in the description of a place, rather than the place itself.

Presentation

• IntraNation Residency, Banff Art Centre, Banff, Alberta, May, 2004

Programmer

Ryan Johnson

Thanks

Thanks to: Lida Abdulla [farsi], Shirley Bear [wabanaki], Maya Ersan [turkish], El Flanders [hebrew], Sharon Hayes [english], Sara Jordeno [swedish], Samina Mansuri [urdo], Cindy Mochizuki [japanese], Nhan Nguyen [vietnamese], Jim Oliver [english], Byong Chan Seo [korean] and Henry Tsang [cantonese]. Also thanks to Ryan Johnson, Ashok Mathur, Paul Wong, and all the good folks at the Banff Art Centre and extraordinary compatriots in the IntraNation Residency.