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A Proposal for a Mobile Project in the Urban Landscape

:: My ::
hactivists, corporations, the man, tourists, flickr’ers

:: The Intervention ::
I will be placing stickers underneath corporate logos

People will be encouraged to “Shoot the Corporation,” using their camera phones as a weapon against consumerism. When people shoot the logos and send them to the appropriate address, they will get a message in return. The message might contain facts about the corporation, and perhaps even a coupon as provocation.:: The Reason ::
Corporations have polluted our cities, lives, and urban landscapes. “This used to be a small mom&pop shop,” is a common lamentation heard in the streets. On a world level, corporations have polluted our culture. Ford and GM’s combined revenue was greater than the entire GDP (gross domestic product) of Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a crime what they’re doing. So, is it really a crime to shoot a corporation (or its logo)?

Like the situationists, commuters, and critical masser’s before us, we must not be discouraged by this logo polluting. Instead, I propose using the ubiquitous nature of these logos to discern a higher level of discussion.

The urban landscape can divided into several layers or levels:

The material level of a city is difficult to deny – it is a hard fact. The usage and interpretation of a city, however, is more malleable.

Shoot the corporation.

This is a window into the multiple array of doors in brooklyn, NYC. With multiple doors, and multiple users, you must wonder – who is using all these doors ? i particularly like the steps leading up to the doors.

In Ubik by Philip K Dick, doors require fees in order to let tenants outside their homes.

Kind of like a metrocard for your house

The McCarren Pool in Williamsburg had been in disuse for many decades. In 2005, it was used by artist Noemie LaFrance as a performance space. The pool/site is currently undergoing a transformation and is seeking submissions/proposals for reinterpretation.

Seems to me that the whole process should be an open-source kind of process. The community should vote, the community should submit, the community should participate. The space should be dictated by the community, and there should be openings built throughout the decision process.

THE PROPOSAL
From http://sensproduction.org/current/pool2.php

Our intention is to reopen the McCarren Park Pool site permanently to the public by summer of 2007 with ongoing festivities through out the year. The McCarren Park Pool would become a facility to present and promote local and international, emerging and established artists, combined with an exciting range of recreational activities and educational programs for all.

DIGITAL AND ANALOG SEPARATORS
A door is like an analog window – it has degrees of openness – While a wall is a binary separator (with us or against us), a door is an analog separator and has degrees of openness (kind of with us, but mostly against us). Doors implicate trespassers and introduce the idea of access in a different way than a wall. A door is inviting – a performance of availability.

INTERFACE

Green Doors
Originally uploaded by DewCon.

Which way do I go? The closed window implies closed doors.
The interface for the door (lock, key, handle) dictates the permeability of said door. Consider the Friendster profile that can be read by everyone (open handle) or a profile that is not publicly open (in need of the “friendster” key). If someone decides NOT to have their profile public, they are performing their “right to privacy” – or they might be performing exclusivity. This “private” profile has put a wall that has the door of possible friendship. If you are cool, friendly, attractive, or just simply not crazy psycho weird, then you have access, the correct key.

LIMINAL STATES

In Between
Originally uploaded by Big Fat Rat.

A door also is the point of liminality – the direct point of in-between. A liminal state is a state of neither here nor there. It is the site of transformation. When you choose to move through the door, you are not where you were, but where you are. You transform your being from out to in or vice versa.

Rarely do people stand in doorways (or sites of transformation) – they move through them. People are rarely secure enough to remain in a continual liminal state – who can conceivably live moving through doors of doors of doors in hallways of doors? This is like a hall of mirrors. Or possibly an invitation to live in continual transformation.

VIDEO:
Here is a VIDEO I made regarding LIMINAL STATES – the state of Waiting.

In response to:
DOORS by ADAM GREENFIELD

From the site: Interactive Architecture.org

Friday 7pm Jan. 26
EyeBeam, 540 W 21st Street, New York.
Organised by Ruairi Glynn of www.interactivearchitecture.org , Eyebeam is pleased to co-host, with the Bartlett School of Architecture, an evening of presentations on Interactive Architecture. Presenters will include Phil Ayres of Sixteen Makers, Eyebeam residents Carmen Trudell and Jennifer Broutin, Marek Walczak of MW2MW and David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of the NYC architecture firm, The Living. Presenters will discuss their work for 15 minutes followed by a panel discussion moderated by Professor Stephen Gage of the Bartlett with a reception from 9-10pm. This event is open to the public free of charge with a suggested donation. This evening symposium will be the culmination of a two day “work in progress” International Jury held at Eyebeam between final year students of the Bartlett’s Interactive Architecture Workshop, and Parsons The New School of Design. The Interactive Architecture Workshop would like to thank the Stuart Murphy Travel Award Trustees for their generous sponsorship

———-
In the growing field of ubiquitous computing, and interactive screens comes interactive architecture.

A growing field in which architecture, theory, and technology come together to build new buildings. Yet, i am still working in the old paradigm of buildings.

What if buildings were invisible? Ubiquitous, but invisible.
I know I will be there with a great amount of hopefulness that interactive architecture can move Deleuze into the realm of a world-wide real-world practice.

Ah- one can dream.

when things begin to interact, we begin to see more people. i think they call it animism – when things take on spiritual qualities. a traffic light feels sorry for holding everyone up. personally, i think NYC is already too crowded. do we need more things that are people? if those people are nice, then why not?

For more info, see ::
Lev Manovich’s Augmented Spaces
Tom Igoe’s Networked Objects
Julian Bleecker’s Internet of Things