class description

"Space is a practiced place"  - Michel de Certeau

This class will explore the emerging technologies of wireless networks and locative media as potential platforms for art practice. Digital networks and wireless technologies are shifting the contemporary notion of urban place. As public and private, local and global are collapsed by the infiltration of portable electronics and the invisible boundaries of wireless connectivity, the urban environment grows increasingly complex. The class will examine the changing notions of urban space as an opportunity for artistic intervention.

Through a series of readings, guest lectures, discussions, and experiments we will examine the interface between technology, site-specific art, and the urban landscape. We will also draw upon analog and digital examples exploring the ways in which artists have investigated and mapped notions of site ranging from the Situationists, Robert Smithson, and Gordon Matta Clark to contemporary new media projects including Ben Hooker and Fiona Raby's FLIRT, Eric Paulos' Familiar Stranger, and Paula Levine's  Bagdad < > San Francisco. In addition, we will investigate ways in which the strategies of the Happening or the Situationist Dérive can inform projects utilizing portable technologies including the camera phone, GPS, and WiFi networks.

Throughout the semester we will engage in a series of in-class experiments with wireless networks and forms of locative media using cell phones, PDA's (IPAQ Pocket PC), and GPS devices. We will also be making field trips to the San Francisco Exploratorium and the Prelinger Archive. Invited guests will include Peter Richards + Susan Schwartzenberg, Rick Prelinger, Eric Paulos, Kate Pocrass and others. Students will work collaboratively, or on their own, toward a final project in which they either create or propose a site-specific work. Final projects may be in any media and may include performance, installation, visual media, etc. Students of all backgrounds are encouraged to join the class and there are no technical prerequisites.