select student work

exercise: mapping cell phone space

Alyssa Contreras + Karen Preffer, "Naturewalk"
Our project attempts to show the presence of an invisible, technological presence in an urban community through something that's organic such the mills creek. By using bars of numbers and colors we wanted to take something that was quite mathematical and recreate our expreience of a nature walk."Nature Walk" is based on cell phone ratings gathered while walking along the creek at Mills College. Starting from the Lake Aliso on campus, we noted the number of bars (0-4) displayed on our Verion and Sprint cell phones. Our piece is intended to be viewed as a web page. Scroll down the page and follow the links down the creek. The lines signify the distance along the path.

Marielle Jakobsons + Barry Threw
The following soundbyte illustrates various levels of connectivity in cellular communication: the audible and subaudio, analog and digital, realtime and delayed dualities which are often overlooked. Barry and Marielle read the "bars" of network receptivity of our cell phones as a mysteriously encoded phone conversation while sitting near each other at the apex of the Greek Theatre at Mills College. The microphones are placed one on each cell phone receiver to pick up our voices in realtime in addition to delayed feedback of our digitized counterpart. While ambient freeway noise may be heard in the first section, our voices gradually grow quieter as we are enveloped by a whirl of beeps; the digitization of our conversation in the sub-audio radio realm. A piece for cellphone, binaural headphones, and two performers. Explores fluxuations of the cellular space.

Luis Maurett, "Lost Distance"
In Lost Distance I monitored the calling patterns of two individuals in order to understand the spatial relationship between there physical location and the physical location of the people they call. By mapping out a month's worth of calls in chronological order I was able to find out a few interesting behavioral patterns. To get further insight into the subject more individuals should be monitored in order to have a larger number of graphs available for comparison.

The pie charts graph in clockwise motion the outgoing calls. They are both color and length coded, distances that are further away represented as longer lines reaching outside the circle. All lines that stop at the intersection with the circle represent the subject calling their own voice mail. All line inside the circle represent the subject calling to people within their geographical sphere, in this case the Bay Area. We can easily see the differences in the number of calls made locally to those that are long distance. The empty part of the graph maps out incoming calls (whose physical source are not listed on telephone bills), thus also adding a another dimension in understanding calling patterns, which is, a comparison of outgoing calls to incoming calls.Much more work could be done with this type of anaylsis and representation, allowing the possibility for future work.

exercise: geostash
Inspired by YearO1's project Geostash, the students broke into collaborative teams, each selecting a site on the Mills campus for their projects. The collaborative teams then concieved of and hid a "stash" which they marked with a GPS device. Each group was then assigned to find their classmates "stash" and enact it the kit in reference to the chosen site.

project 1: duck feeding kit
(hide) hidden by Marielle Jakobsons + Lauren White
(find) found by Alyssa Contreras + Luis Maurette

project 2: hieroglyphics
(hide) hidden by Alyssa Contreras + Luis Maurette
(find) found by Gregg Kowalsky + KarenPfeffer

project 3: plant life
(hide) hidden by Gregg Kowalsky + KarenPfeffer
(find) found by Marielle Jakobsons + Lauren White

final projects

Jessica Hobbs, "Liminal Place" (www.straighton-til-morning.com/liminal)
(view power point presentation)
This is a project about Liminal Spaces in San Francisco. I have found places throughout San Francisco that are: A place at the threshold – the threshold of history and future, the real and virtual, a place that is on the edge of transforming, being, or of dying. These liminal places within San Francisco are places that hold a certain resonance for contemplation and reflection on simple points in life before great change: The small intervention upon the landscape of a reclaimed space.  This simple intervention is a place for pause drawing attention to the fact that these liminal places are not monumental places, but small insignificant spaces, like small insignificant moments that are the catalyst for great change.  This city is mark by these small interventions, telling not the grand history of building this city, but instead telling the small history of its people, its landscape, its neighborhoods.  Our histories, the people who construct, manufacture, and create this city are often lost, but we do leave out marks upon it.

Hikaru Furuhashi, "Friend Tree" (www.nemu-noki.net)
Friend tree is fun + happy environmental action in the form of web site, a playful communicating tool. this is a user interactive site that people can plant their 'friend trees' on virtual, yet real place on a web site. this provide a chance for people to familierize to care about trees, and grow a community of friend tree by interaction between tree/people and people/people. Through friend tree's "threads", friend tree would like to rise the tree conservancy awearness and collect it in the tree roots, then hopefully make the visible fruits of "change" so people can harvest it. But this friend tree web site is still a tiny sprout... making effort to grow big forest of friend trees.