class description

"Space is a practiced place"  - Michel de Certeau

Taught by Alison Sant and Elizabeth Goodman at the San Francisco Art Institute in fall 2004, and by Sant at Mills College in spring 2005 and at the California College of Art in spring 2006, SITEspecific explores emerging technologies of wireless networks and locative media as platforms for urban art practice. As public and private, local and global are collapsed by the infiltration of portable electronics and the invisible flows of wireless connectivity, our experience of the urban environment grows increasingly complex. SITEspecific approaches these changing notions of urban space as opportunities for artistic intervention. It proposes that artists use the emerging technologies of wireless networks and locative media to invent new forms of public practice.

Through a series of readings, guest lectures, discussions, and experiments, the class examines interfaces between technology, site-specific art, and the urban landscape. Conceptually, the class is broken into two thematic areas, investigation and intervention. First, students are introduced through a series of projects, experiments, and readings to the Hertzian landscape created through the density of wireless signals. Readings include Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s Design Noir and William Mitchell’s Me++. Students investigate the invisible qualities of the city through the technologies of cell phones, WiFi stumbler programs, and GPS devices. Prompted by their investigations, they craft a series of quick projects. Some examples of student work include collective wardrives, maps of cell phone dead space, and geocaching projects.

Drawing upon analog and digital examples, the second part of the class explores a history of site-specific artwork. These works emphasize an array of strategies for engaging with the urban landscape, emphasizing critical approaches to the built environment. Defined generally as urban interventions, these include the artistic strategies of mapping, the tour, the urban probe, and performance.

First, the strategy of mapping is informed by the tactics of the Situationist derive and their theories of psychogeography. Mapping is examined as a method for redefining urban space, and for promoting new orientations to the city. Contemporary maps that experiment with these strategies, including Paula Levine's Bagdad < > San Francisco as well as Esther Polak’s Amsterdam Real Time are examined as examples. Probes are discussed as conversational artifacts that both document their surroundings and begin a dialogue between artist and audience. They are not neutral interventions; as in Eric Paulos and Tom Jenkin’s Jetsam project, they often expose ignored, hidden, or disreputable dimensions of their surroundings to public view. In addition, the class examines the tour as a device for promoting alternate orientations to the city. Early examples include the 1921 Dadaist excursions in Paris, the Surrealist experiments with “deambulation” in 1924, and later the Flux tours of the 1970’s in New York. Viewing the cell phone and GPS as methods for expanding on the strategies of the tour, the class examines contemporary projects such as Murmur, Area Code, and Teletaxi. Finally, the class considers performance as an artistic strategy for intervening in the city. We begin by looking at a sequence of 1960’s Happenings in public space, and continue to Pete Gomes’ large-scale chalk drawings. Gomes’ ‘invisible signage’ trace relationships between GPS signals and the physical environment, revealing connections between the corporeal experience of the city and the Cartesian logic that bounds it.

Past guest speakers to the class have included David Pinder, Rick Prelinger, Jonathan Foerster, Jane McGonigal, and Eric Paulos, In addition, the San Francisco Exploratorium has generously donated equipment for the students to use and collaborated with the students through their Bay Area mapping project, designed by Peter Richards and Susan Schwartzenburg. Working toward their final projects, students select one of these strategies, or a hybrid of several approaches, to create their own site-specific work. Students of all backgrounds are encouraged to join the class, and there are no technical prerequisites. The class culminates in a final critique in which we solicit outside or dissenting perspectives from guest reviewers