b r i e f : The artist group Satellite Bureau has developed a live GPS drawing tool called Landlines to create dynamic installations and performances. Landlines is a multi-user drawing tool for mobile phone and Bluetooth GPS. It is both a programme and a device and it the main piece of equipment Satellite Bureau artists Jen Hamilton, Jen Southern, and Chris St. Amand will use while on residency.
As you walk with a Landlines device, your latitude and longitude is systematically sent via mobile phone to an online database. Coordinates from the database are then redrawn using our Flash animation programme MAPPER. What is significant about the Landlines programme is it allows routes to be portrayed in real time as they are being created. This near one to one correspondence of 'creating' a path and portraying it at a remote location is a dynamic feature that we want to exploit in making installations and performances.
Landlines was developed through "ITEM", a research and development programme aimed at exploring and developing the potential of new media tools for exhibition and exposition. Organized by FACT media centre Liverpool and supported by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, technology and the Arts) and Arts Council England, the programme is supporting a small cluster of research projects that bring together artists and technologists to explore the possible future directions of new media technologies. ITEM funding was awarded to artists Jen Hamilton and Jen Southern, with Jon Wetherall of the games company Onteca LTD. in 2004.
One framework for the residency investigates how data produced by walking is visualized both on screen and in installation. This work will take place in concert with the Creative Electronic Environment facilities and in studio, and by walking outside.
Our Flash application 'Mapper' allows the qualities of the drawn line to be tweaked and modified according to these subjective qualities of the walk as reported by the walker, or by more objective data such as weather conditions, time of day and altitude.
Outcomes for this framework will use the visualization of walks performed on-line, and experiment with translating them into evolving spatial installations. |
