UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOAFACULDADE DE BELAS-ARTES

TWEETING ANTENNAS: EXPLORING PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL LAYERS OF

INFORMATION IN URBAN SPACE

Ivan Vuksanov

Trabalho de projetoMestrado em Design de Comunicação e Novos Media

Trabalho de projeto orientado pela Prof. Doutora Luísa Ribas e pelo Prof. Doutor Miguel Cardoso

2016

DECLARAÇÃO DE AUTORIA

Eu Ivan Vuksanov, declaro que a presente trabalho de projeto de mestrado intitulado “Tweeting Antennas: Exploring Physical and Digital Layers of Information in Urban Space”, é o resultado da minha investigação pessoal e independente. O conteúdo é original e todas as fontes consultadas estão devidamente mencionadas na bibliografia ou outras listagens de fontes documentais, tal como todas as citações diretas ou indiretas têm devida indicação ao longo do trabalho segundo as normas académicas.

O Candidato

Lisboa, 31 de Dezembro de 2016

ResumoEsta investigação aborda a forma como as cidades contemporâneas são vistas como espaços híbridos, onde a corrente de informação digital influencia as experiências e interações que nelas ocorrem. O propósito deste estudo é investigar as várias formas em que a arte e o design podem ser usados neste contexto, a fim de explorar, visualizar e alterar estes espaços híbridos emergentes, potencialmente resultando numa transformação da cidade num local mais inesperado e heterogéneo.

O estudo inicia-se com a contextualização de fenómenos tecnológicos contemporâneos, tais como as smart cities e a Internet of Things, bem como das questões por eles levantadas, relacionadas com a privacidade, o anonimato, a espontaneidade, a transformação dos cidadãos em consumidores e aspectos de participação no espaço público. De seguida, proporcionamos uma visão geral do papel da arte no contexto urbano e identificamos tácticas usadas por artistas contemporâneos em resposta aos desenvolvimentos tecnológicos mencionados. Subsequentemente, analisamos intervenções artísticas e projetos de design que usam estas tácticas.

Por fim, apresentamos o projeto prático Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape, que consiste em duas antenas modificadas que traduzem os caracteres de tweets geo-localizados nas redondezas em sinais visuais do sistema Flag Semaphore através de movimento sintético. A instalação pretende explorar e tornar visível fragmentos de comunicação digital num espaço público através de uma, algo inesperada, intervenção urbana.

Os resultados deste estudo revelam o potencial da arte, tecnologia e design no contexto urbano como meios para explorar, visualizar e/ou transformar os processos de comunicação existentes, potenciar novas formas de comunicação ou subverter sistemas existentes. Esta investigação proporciona um visão geral da relação entre as tecnologias de comunicação digital e as cidades, ao mesmo tempo que identifica algumas das questões que as smart cities e a Internet of Things levantam. Para além disso, a nossa pesquisa aponta para a forma como estas questões podem ser abordadas pela prática, nomeadamente através de projetos de arte e intervenções urbanas.

Palavras-Chave: espaço híbrido, dead media, intervenção urbana, dados geo-localizados, visualização

AbstractThis research addresses how contemporary cities are seen as hybrid spaces, where the flow of digital information influences the experiences and interactions that occur within them. The purpose of the study is to investigate the various ways in which art and design can be used in this context, in order to explore, visualize, and alter these emerging hybrid spaces, potentially resulting in rendering the city a more unexpected and heterogeneous place.

The study begins by contextualizing contemporary technological phenomena, such as smart cities and the Internet of Things, as well as the issues they raise, relating to privacy, anonymity, spontaneity, the transformation of citizens into consumers, and aspects of participation in public space. Following this, we provide an overview of the role of art in the urban context and identify tactics used by contemporary artists in response to the mentioned technological developments. Subsequently, we analyze artistic interventions and design projects that are using these tactics.

Finally, we present the practical project Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape, which consists of two modified rooftop antennas that translate the characters of nearby geo-located tweets into visual signs of the Flag semaphore system through kinetic motion. The installation seeks to explore and render visible, fragments of digital communications in a public space through a, somewhat unexpected, urban intervention.

The results of this study reveal the potential of art, technology, and design in the urban context as means to explore, visualize and/or transform existing communication processes, enable new forms of communication, or subvert existing systems. The research provides an overview of the relation between digital communication technologies and cities, while identifying some of the issues that smart cities and the Internet of Things might bring up. In addition, our research points out the way in which these issues can be approached practically, namely through art projects and urban interventions.

Keywords: hybrid space, dead media, urban intervention, geo-located data, visualization

Resumo detalhadoAs cidades contemporâneas estão a ser moldadas pela crescente onda tecnológica, que influencia a forma como experienciamos e interagimos com elas (Greenfield 2006; De Lange & De Waal 2012; Townsend 2013). O desenvolvimento das cidades está a ser influenciado pelas grandes empresas de tecnologia e os governos que propõem a incorporação de sistemas de tecnologia de informação, como resposta à crescente complexidade urbana (Haque 2012; Townsend 2013; Powell 2014).

Como ponto de partida para a análise desta temática, este estudo destaca dois fenómenos tecnológicos contemporâneos, smart cities e a Internet of Things, abordando as questões que ambos levantam. Enquanto estes avanços tecnológicos prometem tornar as cidades mais seguras, eficientes e organizadas, ressalvamos como podem também contribuir para o declínio da privacidade, heterogeneidade e espontaneidade num contexto urbano. Um outro aspecto relacionado com as smart cities prende-se com o facto de, nos cenários previstos pelos agentes da indústria, as pessoas serem tidas como consumidores ou utilizadores de determinados serviços prestados por empresas privadas, em vez de cidadãos comuns a usufruírem de espaços públicos.

Este trabalho analisa como as cidades contemporâneas se transformam gradualmente em espaços híbridos, onde o crescente fluxo de comunicação digital influencia as experiências e interações que ocorrem nas mesmas. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo passa por investigar as várias formas de usar a arte e o design para explorar, visualizar e alterar estes espaços híbridos emergentes, potencialmente transformando as cidades em espaços mais inesperados e heterogêneos.

Para este fim, o estudo procura entender os fenómenos tecnológicos contemporâneos, tais como smart cities e a Internet of Things, e discutir as questões que levantam. A partir desta pesquisa fornecemos uma visão geral do papel da arte e do design no contexto urbano, com a finalidade de identificar tácticas usadas por artistas contemporâneos, como resposta aos avanços tecnológicos mencionados. O estudo é então dedicado a analisar intervenções artísticas e projetos de design que fazem uso dessas tácticas, a fim de definir linhas orientadores para a componente prática deste trabalho. O seu principal objetivo é desenvolver um projeto que visa transformar a cidade num lugar mais inesperado e heterogêneo, por meio de uma intervenção irónica e lúdica.

De acordo com estes objetivos, este estudo é estruturado em três partes principais. Começa por proporcionar uma contextualização teórica dos tópicos principais e subtópicos do contexto abordado. De seguida procede-se a uma análise de vinte e oito projetos artísticos e de design, que se configuram como reações aos tópicos anteriormente abordados. Por fim, descreve-se o conceito, desenvolvimento e resultados do projeto intitulado Tweeting Antennas:(Un)Dead Media in the Urban Landscape.

Iniciamos este estudo com a discussão das smart cities, a Internet of Things, espaços físicos, digitais, privados e públicos nas cidades contemporâneas. Neste contexto, focamo-nos no papel da arte dos novos media no espaço urbano, discutindo o seu potencial para criar novas formas de comunicação, interação e participação, originando assim cidades mais diversificadas, heterogêneas e imprevisíveis onde as pessoas podem ter uma participação ativa no espaço público.

Acompanhando a visão geral do papel da arte dos novos media nas cidades contemporâneas, focamo-nos em algumas das tácticas usadas por artistas que trabalham neste contexto. Neste sentido, identificamos o hacking como um meio de ultrapassar de forma criativa as limitações de um sistema. Abordamos a criação de situações lúdicas e humorísticas que simultaneamente enfatizam questões sérias, relevantes ou políticas, como promovem a espontaneidade e aleatoriedade em oposição ao previsível e eficiente. Focamos então a nossa atenção em intervenções locais e de menor escala, em detrimento de espetáculos genéricos de larga escala comuns nos contextos urbanos contemporâneos.

Considerando estas tácticas como critério de seleção, e de acordo com o objetivo desta dissertação, este estudo analisa vinte e oito projetos artísticos e de design, de acordo com o seu conceito, implementação e experiência. Esta análise procura proporcionar um entendimento do potencial das intervenções artísticas no contexto urbano, identificando aspectos chave, tais como, a visualização de processos invisíveis, as formas de proporcionar meios de comunicação e de navegação alternativos, e formas de promover o ativismo e participação. Neste contexto, reconhecemos duas possibilidades principais inerentes às intervenções artísticas: o potencial para promover uma consciencialização da ubiquidade das tecnologias digitais, e a possibilidade de criação de ferramentas e protótipos que promovam a heterogeneidade, privacidade e serendipidade. Esta analise revelou ainda diferentes estratégias para equacionar o papel dos cidadãos, promovendo a sua participação e interação, de forma a ilustrar a heterogeneidade dos discursos que caracterizam os espaços urbanos contemporâneos.

Informado por estas componentes teórica e analítica, e com o objetivo de explorar através da prática os tópicos da nossa pesquisa, criámos o projeto Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape. Este projeto propõe tornar visíveis os processos digitais invisíveis que ocorrem no espaço público através da apropriação de infraestruturas existentes. Para este fim são usadas duas antenas de telhado modificadas que traduzem caracteres de tweets geo-localizados num movimento em tempo-real. Para cada caractere alfabético as antenas movem-se para a posição correspondente do sistema do alfabeto semáforo.

O conceito subjacente a este projeto está relacionado com as palavras-chave dos projetos pesquisados, como é o caso da visualização, participação, hacking, comunicação alternativa e humor. O seu mote conceptual está também ligado à relação entre os “antigos” e os “novos media” no espaço urbano. Consequentemente o projeto procura explorar as seguintes dualidades:

Processos de comunicação visíveis vs. invisíveis: A comunicação nos espaços públicos das cidades dos dias de hoje que estão a tornar-se cada vez mais mediados por dispositivos digitais e que, na maioria dos casos, é apenas parcialmente visível.

Contemporâneos vs. “dead media”: À medida que a tecnologia se vai desenvolvendo, tanto a aparência da cidade como a comunicação que nela ocorre muda de acordo com esta evolução.

Digitais vs. espaços físicos: Os espaços físicos das cidades contemporâneas estão interligados com redes digitais; juntos formam espaços urbanos híbridos.

Os resultados do projeto Tweeting Antennas são descritos em relação às motivações que orientaram o seu desenvolvimento. O projeto propõe a exploração dos espaços híbridos emergentes, bem como a visualização dos processos de comunicação invisíveis que ocorrem dentro destes, através da experimentação com software e hardware modificado.

Ao visualizar fragmentos de comunicação de social media em espaços públicos, procura-se enfatizar a omnipresença da comunicação mediada pelas tecnologias digitais no contexto urbano, bem como as infraestruturas que a suportam. Como resultado, através da criação desta intervenção urbana, lúdica e inesperada, o projeto explora o potencial da arte e do design para contribuir para a heterogeneidade e espontaneidade dentro das cidades.

No desenrolar desta pesquisa foram desenvolvidos três protótipos do projeto Tweeting Antennas que foram apresentados e expostos em três momentos e eventos diferentes. Primeiro, em Lisboa (Portugal) na Fábrica Features Lisboa, no contexto da exposição de estudantes do mestrado. Subsequentemente, em Almada (Portugal) integrado no festival PLUNC e finalmente em Bergamo (Itália) onde foi apresentado e exibido na xCoAx (4ª Conferência Internacional em Computação, Comunicação, Estética e X).

As motivações iniciais das componentes teóricas e práticas da nossa pesquisa ligam-se a preocupações com as mudanças que as cidades estão a sofrer, procurando identificar intervenções urbanas com o potencial de mudar os papéis das pessoas, de consumidores e utilizadores de serviços para participantes nos espaços públicos. No entanto, à medida que aprofundamos o assunto, a nossa atenção voltou-se para a exploração e visualização das camadas invisíveis de informação que permeiam as cidades e que emergem com a omnipresença das tecnologias digitais.

Este processo resultou no alargamento do âmbito da nossa pesquisa à medida que fomos investigando intervenções de arte urbana e alargando o campo de ação ao tópico das camadas de informação invisíveis no espaço urbano. De forma semelhante, o projeto Tweeting Antennas foi iniciado como uma inesperada e lúdica intervenção urbana, concebida para os telhados da parte histórica da cidade de Lisboa. No entanto, após a exposição do projeto em espaços interiores e exteriores, concluímos que ele tinha potencial para ser implementado tanto em contexto urbano como de galeria.

Por outro lado, a peça exige participação, mesmo quando falamos de participantes involuntários, que não estão cientes do seu papel ativo, ou do potencial impacto da corrente de informação que eles ajudaram a criar. Desta forma, a instalação surge como uma metáfora dos processos de recolha de dados que atualmente vigoram nas cidades, longe da vista do comum cidadão. Apropriando-se de infraestruturas que podem ser consideradas dead media, o projeto procura igualmente criar um jogo de contrastes entre processos de comunicação visíveis e invisíveis, media contemporâneo e media obsoletos, indo dos espaços digitais aos físicos.

AcknowledgmentsThis work would not be possible without the great support from my amazing professors, family and friends.

The biggest thank you, Luísa Ribas, for all your knowledge, support and patience.Thank you, Miguel Cardoso, for the support, and the skills that I learned with your guidance.

A big and special thanks to my mother Marija Vasiljev and to my brothers Igor Vasiljev and Dimitar Vuksanov for all the spiritual, technical and material support.

Thank you, Francisco Salgado for helping make Tweeting Antennas happen.Thank you, João Costa and João Rocha for the outstanding technical support. Thank you, Max Dade, for the revision, and all the fancy words.Thank you Gonçalo Miller, Adriana Louro, and Sofia Minetto for the help with translation. Thank you Sven Stephan for helping me pack the antennas in the critical moment.

Thank you Marty Busch, Sarah Le Brun, Andrea Mainardi, and Ashank Sinha for hearing “I have to write” a million times and still talking to me.

Thanks to my colleagues Catarina Lee, Susana Sanches and Sara Orsi for helping me with the presentation, and for a great time in Bergamo.

Thanks to Carlos Ramos and the rest of PLUNC Festival team, and to Mario Verdicchio, Miguel Carvalhais and the rest of xCoAx Conference team, for displaying Tweeting Antennas, and organizing tasty dinners and fun parties.

Table of ContentsIntroduction 19

Research Aim and Objectives 19Context: Key Topics and Subtopics 20

Research Design 23Analysis of projects 23Project outline 24

Significance 25Outline of the Research 26

1. Context: Key Topics and Sub-topics 271.1 Smart Cities 27

1.1.1 What is a smart city? 271.1.2 Urban ideals, technology, and ideology 291.1.3 Surveillance and privacy 321.1.4 Bugs and errors 331.1.5 Alternative future city visions 34

1.2 The Internet of Things 361.3 Physical, Digital, Private, and Public Spaces in the Contemporary City 40

1.3.1 IoT and Network infrastructure 411.3.2 Social networks and algorithms 411.3.3 Mobile phones 411.3.4 Pseudo-public spaces 42

1.4 Role of New Media Art in the Context of a Contemporary City 421.4.1 Hacking 461.4.2 Humor and Play 481.4.3 Spontaneity and Randomness 491.4.4 Small-scale Interventions 49

1.5 Conclusion 50

2. Analyzing Projects 532.1 List of selected projects: 542.2 Model for the Analysis 62

2.2.1 Concept: 622.2.2 Implementation 632.2.3 Experience 64

2.3 Results 642.3.1 Concept 64

2.3.1.1 Exploration and visualization of the invisible city 642.3.1.2 Tools for alternative communication and navigation 672.3.1.3 Activism 692.3.1.4 Participation 70

2.3.2 Implementation 732.3.2.1 Which data is used and how 732.3.2.2 Which hardware is used: physical components of the project 74

2.3.3 Experience 752.3.3.1 Participate 762.3.3.2 Configure/Change 772.3.3.3 Communicate 782.3.3.4 Play 78

2.4 Conclusion 79

3. Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape 833.1 Objectives 833.2 Design methodology 85

3.2.1 Introduction 853.2.1.1 Collaboration 863.2.1.2 Experimentation 863.2.1.3 Exhibitions and presentations 87

3.2.2 Main stages of the project development 873.2.2.1 Input 873.2.2.2 Translation 883.2.2.3 Output 89

3.2.3 Results 903.2.3.1 Prototype 1 903.2.3.2 Prototype 2 913.2.3.3 Prototype 3 92

3.3 Conclusion 94

Conclusion 97Discussion of results 97Limitations and directions for future research 99

References 101

Descriptions of the Projects Analyzed 105

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Introduction“Massive and unstoppable changes are under way, but we are not passive subjects powerless

to shape our fates. If we understand what is happening, and if we can conceive and explore

alternative futures, we can find opportunities to intervene, sometimes to resist, to organize, to

legislate, to plan, and to design” (Mitchell 1996).

Contemporary cities are being shaped by the growing ubiquity of technology, which influences the way we experience and interact with the city (Greenfield 2006; De Lange & De Waal 2012; Townsend 2013). The development of cities is being largely influenced by visions of big tech companies and governments that propose systems of embedded digital and network technologies as an answer to the growing urban complexity (Haque 2012; Townsend 2013; Powell 2014). Those visions are focusing mainly on the positive effects of technology, such as safety and efficiency. On the other hand, the same technology can produce all sorts of side effects, for example, in relation to privacy, anonymity, and spontaneity, among others (Townsend 2013; Brynskov et al. 2014; Nissenbaum and Varnelis 2012). In addition, citizens in those future city scenarios are usually considered as users or consumers of services provided by private companies (Mitchell 1995; Aurigi & Graham 1997; Greenfield & Shepard 2007; de Lange & de Waal 2013).

Reacting to this context, all around the world, various organizations, collectives, individual artists, designers, and researchers are exploring the potential of digital technologies and new media art as tools to visualize digital layers of the city, and enable new ways of communication and participation in public spaces. Those projects are meant to ignite discussions and question the future of cities based on dominant corporate visions (Andersen & Pold 2013; Greenfield & Shepard 2007; Bleecker & Nova 2009). While some projects use existing infrastructures, attributing them new functions and meanings, other projects create their own autonomous networks and off-the-grid systems for communication.

Research Aim and Objectives

Contemporary cities are not only physical places but also hybrid spaces, where the flow of digital information influences the experiences and interactions that occur within the physical space. Our aim is to investigate the various ways in which art and design can be

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used in this context, in order to explore, visualize, and alter these emerging hybrid spaces, potentially resulting in rendering the city a more unexpected and heterogeneous place.

According to this, the research is guided by the following objectives:

• Understand contemporary technological phenomena, such as smart cities and the Internet of Things, as well as the issues they raise.

• Provide an overview of the role of art in the urban context. • Identify tactics used by contemporary artists in response to the mentioned

technological developments.• Survey artistic interventions and design projects that are using these tactics.• Develop a practical project that proposes to render the city a more unexpected

and heterogeneous place, through a humorous/playful intervention.

Context: Key Topics and Subtopics

Smart cities

Contemporary cities are being simultaneously created through top-down (institutions, large companies, governments, etc.) and bottom-up (citizen-led initiatives, small companies, research projects etc.) processes. We will provide an overview of the most important aspects in devising smart cities, such as technology and ideology that influence its development, and pass on to discussing some of the issues that this context entails. For example, one of the concerns pertaining to this topic is that if future cities are created on the basis of visions of large multinational tech companies, the role of citizens will usually be that of passive consumers of various services, instead of active participants in urban life (Mitchell 1995; Aurigi & Graham 1997; de Lange & de Waal 2013). Another concern is that when the complexity of information processing systems is added to already complex structures as cities, bugs and errors will be inevitable (Townsend 2013). How future cities will look and function depends on many factors that we intend to explore in this thesis.

Internet of Things

An important element in devising smart cities is the Internet of Things, or IoT, which is the network of physical objects equipped with sensors, electronics and software that enables connection to the internet and, in that way, communication with other objects, servers, as well

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as human users. It then becomes relevant to discuss the way IoT systems are designed and how data from those systems is handled in any future city scenario (Antoniadis & Apostol 2014).

Physical, digital, private and public spaces in the contemporary city

Adding to the ubiquitous digital networks and the IoT infrastructure, nowadays, the urban landscape has an invisible layer of digital information, which is increasingly influencing the way we interact with the city and with each other. As Mitchell asserts, the invisible architecture of digital networks is equally important as the physical architecture in the contemporary city; “Computer networks become as fundamental to urban life as street systems” (Mitchell 1996).

Within this flow of information, the boundaries between public and private spaces are less clear. Our notions of public and private are not the same in virtual and physical contexts. In addition, confusion between private and public spaces can easily take place in environments that seem public, but are indeed private, such as shopping malls, gated communities or private business parks (Klein, 1999; Nissenbaum & Varnelis, 2012).

Another shift in the relation between public and private space occurs when people, by using mobile phones, withdraw into private virtual spaces while being in a physical public space (Hampton & Gupta 2008; de Lange & de Waal 2012).

Role of new media art in the context of a contemporary city

One aspect that deserves attention regarding the contemporary city is the role of new media art in the urban environment. New media art has the potential to empower the citizens and shift their role back from passive users to active participants in urban life, at least for a limited period of time in a limited space (de Lange & de Waal 2013; Andersen & Pold 2013). We will examine the relation between art and the city throughout history by looking at movements such as Situationist International and their concepts of psychogeography and dérive, in order to provide an overview of different types of contemporary public art as proposed by Paul (2006).

Hacking

Neither technological systems nor urban environments are fixed constructions; their purpose can always go beyond the intended one. As our dependence on information

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processing systems is increasing, the need to understand how they work and how they can be adapted to better suit our needs is increasing as well (Rokeby 1998; Townsend 2013; Oliver et al. 2011). Hacking can be a way of acting within this context according to the idea of creatively overcoming the limitations and expanding the possibilities of any system (Hoffman et al. 2012; Gehring 2004).

Humor and play

“Jokes are an active, living and mobile form of disobedience” (Metahaven 2013). Play can be used as a tactic to engage people with topics that are important and might be serious. We will address how humor and play are increasingly present in diverse fields, ranging from public spaces to business strategies to new media art. The focus will be on art and design projects that create playful situations while, at the same time, reflect on some relevant topics.

Spontaneity and randomness

Diversity and unpredictability are important characteristics of big cities. What differentiates cities from towns and villages is the fact that we are surrounded by strangers (de Wall 2014; Jacobs 1961:40). If our every move is pre-planned and aided by technology, the possibilities for surprise encounters and random discoveries are minimized. If the whole city is under surveillance, we might lose the anonymity of citizens.

Small-scale interventions

In reaction to the dominance of large-scale media spectacles, artists and designers often devise small-scale, situated (contextual) interventions. The aim is to create a possibility for participation and self-expression in opposition to passive consumption.

In sum, how does it all relate?

City = people + private and public spacesIoT = hardware, software, data, processesNew media in the city = surveillance, entertainment, control, and advertisingCity + IoT + new media = smart city

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Ubiquitous digital and network technologies are blurring the borders between physical and digital as well as public and private spaces. New media and digital technologies in the urban context are used mostly for surveillance, control, and advertising purposes. However, smart cities open up new possibilities for action through bottom-up, small-scale, citizen-oriented approaches.

Research Design

Analysis of projects

Following the discussion on the role of design and technology in smart cities, and the opposition between dominant top-down structures and bottom-up initiatives addressed in the literature review, we will survey art and design projects that configure themselves as reactions to the phenomenon of the smart city. The criteria for their selection include the following aspects:

• All selected projects use some sort of digital technology. • All selected projects are connected to the city in some way — projects are

implemented in public spaces or address some of the issues that are present in contemporary public spaces.

• All selected projects use humor to comment on a certain topic, we could say that they are at the same time playful and serious.

• Non-commercial projects — not commissioned by local government or private companies.

In addition, projects to be analyzed will comprise at least one of the following aspects:

• Explore, visualize and/or transform existing communication processes.• Enable new forms of communication.• Subvert existing systems.

The projects that will be analyzed correspond to keywords such as visualization; participation; hacking; alternative communication, and humor. These projects will be examined through a comparative analysis aimed at the identification and extraction of certain tactics, which can inform the practical component of this research.

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Project outline

The project was outlined according to the following aspects addressing, respectively, the concept (or subject matter the projects address), the implementation (or how the concepts are put into practice) and, finally, the motivations that lead to specific results.

Concept

The concept behind the project is related to the keywords of the projects that will be surveyed, namely: visualization; participation; hacking; alternative communication, and humor. In addition, the conceptual motto for the project is the relationship between “old” and “new media” in urban space. In that manner, the project seeks to explore following dualities:

• Visible vs. invisible communication processes — communication in the public spaces of today’s cities is becoming increasingly mediated by digital devices, and in addition, it is often only partially visible.

• Contemporary vs. dead media — as media technologies constantly evolve, both the appearance of cities and the communication that occurs within them change accordingly.

• Digital vs. physical spaces — physical terrains of contemporary cities are intertwined with digital networks, together forming hybrid urban spaces.

Implementation

The project will consist of physical components (hardware) and digital components (software), and it will be implemented accordingly to the following logic:

• Capturing site-specific data — using GPS technology, Twitter API (Application Programming Interface), and custom software enables the fetching of geo-located tweets from specific places in real-time. Other than Twitter, we could use the APIs of other social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, or websites, such as Airbnb, in order to gather diverse types of geo-located data.

• Adding layers of digital information to physical places and objects — altering certain objects so that they react to digital processes surrounding them, or broadcasting digital information in a selected and limited physical space.

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• Using the existing elements of urban surroundings — the projects seeks to explore the possibilities of combining existing physical elements of the city (e.g. walls, roofs, antennas, lights) with existing digital processes (e.g. tweets, Facebook posts) in order to emphasize hybridity in urban space.

Expected outcomes

• Exploring hybrid spaces and invisible processes that occur within them — the work intents to explore emerging hybrid spaces, and visualize the invisible flows of information that occur within tem, through software and modified (hacked) hardware.

• Displaying fragments of social media communication in a public space — the project seeks to emphasize the ubiquity of communication mediated by digital technologies in the urban context, as well as the infrastructure that supports it.

• Creation of a playful and unexpected urban intervention in order to explore how art projects can contribute to heterogeneity and spontaneity within cities.

Project stages and prototypes

In addition to the explanation of the concept and details of the implementation of the project we will present three prototypes, which were developed in the course of this Masters and exhibited in three different events and cities. First, in Lisbon (Portugal) at Fabrica features Lisboa in the context of the Master students exhibition. Subsequently in Almada (Portugal) in the scope of Festival PLUNC. Finally, in Bergamo (Italy) the work was presented and exhibited at xCoAx, the 4th International Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X.

Significance

By examining the relationship between people and technology in the urban environment, this study provides an overview of the role of new media in the construction of urban experience, highlighting specific tactics that are employed by artists and designers as a response to the phenomenon of smart cities. In this manner, this study seeks to contribute to an understanding of the ways in which design and technology can be used to promote heterogeneity, unexpectedness, and participation in public space. The practical part of the research seeks to explore relations between digital communication and public space, while raising awareness on the ubiquity of information processing systems. Therefore, we hope that the results of this study will be beneficial to students and researchers in the field

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of new media and urban interaction design, namely by identifying particular urban issues and trends, and the ways these can be approached practically.

Outline of the Research

The first chapter introduces the context of this research, comprising the general context of smart cities and related topics, such as the Internet of Things, physical, digital, private and public spaces in the contemporary city. It then addresses reactions to this context according to the role of new media art in the contemporary city, namely by discussing action tactics, such as hacking, humor and play, spontaneity and randomness, and small-scale interventions.

Chapter two is dedicated to an analysis of twenty-eight art and design projects, which were selected according to their correspondence to the topics and sub-topics discussed in the first chapter. They correspond to keywords such as, activism, urban intervention, visualization, participation, alternative communication, and are analyzed according to their concept, implementation and experience.

Subsequently, chapter three presents the practical part of this research, the project titled Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape. It discusses the details of the concept and implementation of the project, describing the methodology for its development and the three prototypes developed so far, as well as are the role of collaboration, experimentation and exhibitions in this process.

This dissertation concludes with a summary and discussion of the results obtained through the theoretical and practical components of the research, and directions for future work.

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1. Context: Key Topics and Sub-topics1.1 Smart Cities

1.1.1 What is a smart city?

The term smart city refers to a city where information technologies are intertwined with urban spaces in order to provide better functioning of the city, and enrich the experience of its inhabitants.

Greenfield (2013) points out the two distinct concepts for which the term smart city is commonly used. On the one hand, a smart city can signify the new kind of a city, which is built from scratch, where information technologies are implemented on all scales, from interior private spaces to the city as a whole. Greenfield describes them as “putatively urban-scale environments designed from the ground up with information-processing capabilities embedded in the objects, surfaces, spaces and interactions that between them comprise everyday life” (Greenfield 2013).

As examples, Greenfield presents and analyzes the New Songdo City in South Korea; Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates; and PlanIT Valley, which is to be built in Portugal1. On the other hand, the term smart city can also be applied to various efforts for the enhancement of urban experience through new information and communication technologies. Townsend (2013) defines smart cities as “places where information technology is wielded to address problems old and new” (Townsend 2013:7).

Top-down vs. bottom-up

The first type of a smart city, as mentioned above, is usually developed and managed by governments in collaboration with private companies2 as a closed and centralized system, top-down in its structure and governance. The second type of a smart city, where digital technologies are an addition to already existing urban elements, is simultaneously

1 Greenfield, in his book Against the Smart City (2013) thoroughly analyzes the concept of smart cities through the

material provided by companies that are responsible for the development and promotion of some of the world’s

biggest smart city projects.

2 Townsend and Greenfield identify IBM, Siemens, and Cisco as some of the most active companies in the promo-

tion and development of smart cities (2013).

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created through top-down (institutions, large companies, governments etc.) and bottom-up (citizen-led initiatives, small companies, research projects, etc.) processes.

However, it is often difficult to make clear distinctions between the top-down and bottom-up initiatives in smart city solutions, mainly because of issues related to infrastructure and governance, such as:

a) Both the top-down and bottom-up processes rely on the same “commercial infrastructure and processing power” in order to function, as explained by Powel (2014).

b) Alternative and open systems also need some kind of governance, as de Lange and de Waal argue: “commons also require their own sets of rules, ones that are often based on alternative forms of supervision and sanctions enforced not by top-down institutions, but by distributed means organized by the users themselves” (de Lange & de Waal 2013:17).

c) Large institutions sometimes support and enable bottom-up initiatives, and those institutions are “also made up of ‘ordinary citizens’” (de Lange & de Waal 2013:19).

Another way to distinguish two dominant types of visions for future cities is by using terms mainstream and alternative. By mainstream visions, we will consider the ideas and proposals of large tech companies and governments; alternative visions will relate to citizen initiatives, start-ups, research projects, and art interventions, which are smaller scale, and usually of local character.

We will continue this chapter by introducing de Waal’s concept of urban ideals, look at an example how the industry was influencing the development of the cities in the past, and briefly discuss the network ideology. Following this, we will identify some of the issues related to mainstream, predominantly top-down smart city scenarios, such as privacy issues and the potential errors that may occur within information technology systems. Finally, we will conclude the chapter with a brief overview of alternative future city visions.

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1.1.2 Urban ideals, technology, and ideology

Ideas and Ideals

Forty (1986) explains how, through their design, industrially produced objects are able to materialize certain ideas and myths which are invented by the society3, stating that “design has the capacity to cast myths into an enduring, solid and tangible form, so they seem to be reality itself” (Forty 1986:9).

Similarly, according to urban theorist de Waal (2011), the development of cities is influenced by different ideas and ideals of what a city is, or what a city should be (de Waal 2011). De Waal (2014) identifies three main urban ideals — the libertarian city, the republican city, and the communitarian city.

The Libertarian City functions as a market where supply and demand meet. The citizens are “consumers of various services”; there is no collective identity of citizenship. Cultural and political activities are not matters of public interest (de Waal 2014).

The Republican City (latin res publica, meaning public interest) is a place where citizens are free to choose their own way of life, though there is a common responsibility and shared identity. Public spaces and participation in public life are important. Republican ideals balance between freedom and mutual involvement (de Waal 2014).

The Communitarian City is seen as a community where everybody shares a similar way of life. Collective identity prevails over individual identity. Communitarian urban ideals are mostly linked to “nostalgic retrospectives filled with a village-like sense of community” (de Waal 2014).

In the author’s view, most mainstream smart city scenarios support the libertarian ideals, emphasizing efficiency and personalization, treating city dwellers as consumers with increased freedom to customize their experience of the city according to their own needs.At the same time, those scenarios reduce citizens’ involvement in public issues.

3 In his book Objects of Desire (1986), Forty refers to the Structuralist theory, which states that “in all societies the

troublesome contradictions between people’s beliefs and their everyday experiences are resolved by the invention

of myths” (Forty 1986).

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Technology and Ideology

According to Townsend (2013), important factors in city development include industries and contemporary technology.

As an example, we can take a look at the automobile industry and city development during the first half of the twentieth century — the cities were created and reconstructed to fit the needs of the new technology, which at that time was automobile technology4. Automobile industry largely influenced how cities would look and function, “by appealing to two broad new ideals — efficiency and modernization” (Townsend 2013:92).

As it turned out, the automobile brought a lot of negative effects to the city and its inhabitants. Issues such as air pollution, traffic congestion, and traffic accidents are all linked to an overpopulation of cities because of automobiles. Today, many ideas are being proposed to reduce the number of cars in cities and promote alternative means of transportation, and it is known that walkability (i.e., how friendly a city is to pedestrians) is an important factor that contributes to overall quality of the city life (Litman 2004:11)including safety, comfort, and convenience.

Townsend (2013) points out that the industry that is currently the most influential in “shaping our visions for future cities” is the digital technology industry (Townsend 2013:86). In addition, according to Varnelis (2012), the dominant ideology today is the network ideology.

“Network ideologies, like all ideologies up to a point, become a self-fulfilling prophecy; it

serves to make networks seem natural, reifies them, as Roland Barthes might have said, into

a mythology”5 (Varnelis and Nissenbaum 2012:11).

Galloway and Thacker (2007) describe networks as both political and technological constructs and point out the “general willingness to ignore politics by masking them inside the so-called black box of technology” (Galloway & Thacker 2007:28).

4 “Ford invented the mass produced car, but it was General Motors that introduced the vision of an entire society

organized around the automobile. However, it was car enthusiasts who dictated the future shape of American cit-

ies by enlisting the growing cadre of professional traffic engineers who advanced a new science of street design”

(Townsend 2013).

5 Varnelis is referring to the book Mythologies by Roland Barthes, published in 1972.

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Haque (2012) argues that the idea of the network is one of the main motivations for the promotion of smart cities. He emphasizes the existence of a belief that the more connected we are the better, because, in our contemporary society, the network is seen as something invariably positive (Haque 2012).

In addition, Zer-Aviv (2016) links the story of the invention of the internet with the popularity of a network model.

“Though most of our online interactions today take place over proprietary centralised

networks and infrastructure, the myth of the internet’s birth and the popularity of social

networking platforms have captured our imagination and informed our conception of society

and power relations in terms of a distributed network” (Zer-Aviv 2016).

What these authors point out is that the network is an attractive and powerful model that can be used to represent nearly anything. However, they identify several issues:

• Galloway and Thacker (2007) explain that, although the network model is often seen as an opposition to the hierarchical model of the tree, it is also subject to governance, meaning that it is not necessarily more open or democratic than other models. According to the authors, what governs networks are protocols6 (Galloway & Thacker 2007:29).

• Connecting more nodes to a network doesn’t necessarily lead to the network’s better functioning, and this supports the previous point — it is important to be aware of protocols that govern the flows through networks (Zer-Aviv 2016).

• According to Haque (2012), interactions from the web can’t be directly translated to those in physical space. There are significant differences between the nature of online and offline interaction. As an example, Haque points out the tendency to surround ourselves with people similar to us in online spaces, while the physical public spaces of cities should be places where diverse publics meet and interact7 (Haque 2012).

6 “Protocol abounds in techno-culture. It is a totalizing control apparatus that guides both the technical and political

formation of computer networks, biological systems and other media. Put simply, protocols are all the convention-

al rules and standards that govern relationships within networks” (Galloway & Thacker 2004).

7 As the author explains, “We cannot merely export the relatively young and naive interaction protocols of the web

to our urban lives, since the increased participation may simply be more segmented and therefore neither sustain-

able nor desirable in the physical world” (Haque 2012).

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1.1.3 Surveillance and privacy

“Life in cyberspace generates electronic trails as inevitably as soft ground retains footprints;

that, in itself, is not the worrisome thing. But where will digital information about your

contacts and activities reside? Who will have access to it and under what circumstances?”

(Mitchell 1996)

Nowadays, it is common knowledge that our online activities are tracked and analyzed by both private companies and state security agencies. We are, in addition, willingly sharing our personal data with private companies, as Varnelis states:

“Our reading, listening, and viewing habits and even sexual interests are in the hands of

corporations to whom we’ve offered them up willingly” (2012:19).

However, it is important to be aware of the distinction between “giving up information” and “giving up privacy”, as Nissenbaum explains, adding that, if we agree to share certain information with certain friends through digital platforms, this doesn’t imply that we agree to share the same information with the “corporate entity” of the platform in question (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012:21).

Mitchell (1996) points out that our actions in cyberspace or digital space leave trails, and de Lange and de Waal, like many other authors in this field, describe contemporary cities as hybrid cities where physical and digital places are intertwined (2012:7).

This hybrid space occurs, among other factors, because most city dwellers now have mobile phones, which are always connected8 to the internet via 3G and 4G networks (de Souza e Silva 2006), and because of a broad range of other devices that are connected to the internet, forming what we know as the Internet of Things9 (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012).

Once cyberspace is blended with physical environments, actions in public space will leave the same electronic trails that Mitchell is talking about, which commonly occur in cyberspace. Similarly, Andersen and Pold (2011) explain that surveillance in the city is

8 “The emergence of portable communication technologies has contributed to the possibility of being always con-

nected to digital spaces, literally “carrying” the Internet wherever we go” (de Souza e Silva 2006:6).

9 In the next chapter, we will discuss the Internet of Things and its relation to public spaces.

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“not only visual but also structural”, meaning that beyond the obvious video surveillance many of our interactions10 in public spaces leave traces.

Systems for surveillance might lead to removing the anonymity of citizens and decreasing chances for any kind of behavior that is not considered as desired by those in power (Greenfield & Shepard 2007; Powell 2014).

In the analyses of artistic responses to smart cities, we will see how art can be used to both raise awareness of ubiquitous surveillance systems and provide tools to protect privacy in urban spaces. 1.1.4 Bugs and errors

“For most of us, design is invisible. Until it fails” (Mau 2004).

Here, Mau is referring to the fact that design is ubiquitous, hence, we are so used to dealing with designed objects and systems that we need not think of how they were designed, or how they function the way they do. This is the case for streets, buildings, cars, public transport, street signs, and in fact, most of the things surrounding us in the city. When designed objects and systems work as they should, they become invisible to most people. It is only when those systems stop functioning, usually due to an error of sorts, that we become aware of their existence (Mau 2004).

Cities are one of the most complex structures humankind has ever built. When we add up the complexity of information processing systems to already complex structures such as cities, we are thus multiplying the opportunities for bugs and errors (Townsend 2013).ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), the same technologies that are making cities more complex are, at the same time and in many smart city scenarios, presented as the only solution to deal with the growing complexity of cities (Haque 2012; Powell 2014). There is an additional risk that when people get used to computational aid when performing everyday tasks, they might lose the ability to perform those tasks without the aid. This leads us to the question of how people will manage in situations where urban computational systems fail. GPS navigation is one example; people are often

10 As examples, Andersen and Pold (2011) mention “logging on to a network, transferring money, using personal

identification numbers to keep records, etc.”

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so used to follow the directions from GPS devices that they are not able to navigate through the city without it (Greenfield & Shepard 2007).

Other than the obvious negative effects, Townsend believes that bugs and errors in smart cities may actually have a positive impact, because they might motivate people to be more aware of the underlying workings of computational systems on which they are dependent, leading them to design systems that are more open, transparent, and democratic — thus more accessible to modify and fix when needed (Townsend 2013).

Similarly, the Critical Engineering Manifesto (Oliver et al. 2011), in its first point, states that with greater dependency comes the increased need of understanding and exposing the “inner workings” of the technologies that we are dependent on, “regardless of ownership or legal provision” (Oliver et al. 2011).

1.1.5 Alternative future city visions

Fifty years ago, in an article titled A City is Not a Tree, Alexander (1965) described two kinds of cities: a natural city, created spontaneously through a long period of time; and an artificial city, created by city planners. As he explains, the artificial cities with single purpose areas that don’t overlap (i.e., residential area, industrial area, area for cultural activities, etc.) has the hierarchical top-down structure of a tree11, whereas natural cities form a more complex structure of overlapping areas, that is, a semilattice12, which is organic and non-hierarchical. Moreover, the author argues that natural cities are capable of providing richer and more desirable experiences for their inhabitants (1965).

“When we think in terms of trees we are trading the humanity and richness of the living

city for a conceptual simplicity which benefits only designers, planners, administrators and

developers” (Alexander 1965).

11 “The tree axiom states: A collection of sets forms a tree if and only if, for any two sets that belong to the collection

either one is wholly contained in the other, or else they are wholly disjoint” (Alexander 1965).

12 “The semilattice axiom goes like this: A collection of sets forms a semilattice if and only if, when two overlapping

sets belong to the collection, the set of elements common to both also belongs to the collection” (Alexander 1965).

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Similarly, critics of mainstream smart city visions often argue that the focus is put mainly on technology instead of people, often underestimating the specific characteristics and complexity of cities13 (Townsend 2013:107).

De Waal and de Lange point out that “smart city developments take the technology lab as the starting point”, and that citizens are treated as end-users or consumers, instead of active participants in the city making (de Lange & de Waal 2013). Greenfield adds that large companies working on smart cities consider cities as generic places, not taking into account the individual characteristics of a single city as if they exist in “any-space-whatever”14. While Greenfield is referring to smart cities, which are created from scratch, he also points out that those cities are intended as laboratories for testing the solutions that could be applied in any existing city (Greenfield 2013). On the other hand, as Haque (2012) argues, bottom-up smart city initiatives deal with “actual urban reality”15.

In his book Smart Cities: Big data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, Townsend emphasizes the potential and supremacy of open systems in the creation of smart cities, suggesting that “open government data, open-source hardware, and free networks are powering designs for cities of the future that are far smarter than any industry mainframe” (Townsend 2013:8). Similarly, Haque (2012) argues that bottom-up initiatives can have a big impact on the future of the cities, stating that “the most interesting and creative urban technology developments are taking place in the hands of citizens, citizen-groups, and small agile businesses” (Haque 2012:142).

13 “The technology giants building smart cities are mostly paying attention to technology, not people, mostly focused

on cost effectiveness and efficiency, and mostly ignoring the creative process of harnessing technology at the grass

roots” (Townsend 2013:107).

14 Greenfield borrowed the following term from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze: “any-space-whatever: un-

conditioned, at degree zero, offering infinite potential for interconnection. Any-space-whatever is uninflected,

unmarked by history” ( 2013).

15 “What is common among these initiatives is that individuals, organizations, and hardware and software companies

deal with actual urban reality, and the real innovation –the reinvention of what city-making can be – is found in the

entrepreneurial and creative actions of citizens, no big businesses, real estate companies or the omniscience of city

planning” (Haque 2012:142).

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1.2 The Internet of Things

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the

fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Weiser 1991).

An important element in devising smart cities is the Internet of Things, a concept related to terms such as ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, or as Greenfield defines, the everyware16. In order to understand the Internet of Things, we will begin by briefly explaining the broader notion of ubiquitous computing, which was coined by computer scientist Mark Weiser, in 1988, and discusses some of the issues this notion raises, as proposed by Araya (1995).

By ubiquitous computing, Weiser meant the point when computers blend with our surroundings, “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it” (Weiser 1991). In this context, and according to Weiser’s view, interaction with computers, which are embedded in many familiar objects that surround us, and in places that we occupy, would not demand any additional skill or specific language.

“Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will

make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods” (Weiser 1991).

Ubiquitous computing would aid people in completing everyday tasks, without the awareness that they are using any computers. Ubiquity and ease of use would render computers accessible to wider publics and adequate to “the tasks for which people actually use computers”. Ubiquitous computing could also be used for animating static objects and help find them if they are lost17, as Weiser explains.

In a text titled Questioning Ubiquitous Computing, Araya (1995) raises many questions that are still relevant today, and for which we would like to emphasize here, according

16 Greenfield provides a detailed description of ubiquitous computing and its’ importance in his book Everyware: The

Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (2006). He defined everyware as: “Ever more pervasive, ever harder to

perceive, computing has leapt off the desktop and insinuated itself into everyday life. Such ubiquitous information

technology ‘everyware’ – will appear in many different contexts and take a wide variety of forms, but it will affect

almost every one of us, whether we’re aware of it or not” (2006:9).

17 For example, “They can beep to help locate mislaid papers, books or other items” (Weiser 1991).

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to two main points: “obliteration” of surroundings18 and “transformation of things into

surveillable objects” (Araya 1995). As the author argues, the blending of computers with our surroundings will change both us and the world we live in. By intertwining our surroundings with computers through “the immersion of technology in the background,” our surroundings become “extensions of our bodies” and ubiquitous computing becomes an extension of our “nervous system”. These technological extensions of ourselves bring the surrounding world closer to us, obliterating its “otherness”, making it almost disappear.

“This artifact, which the world immediately surrounding us becomes, is almost entirely “us”

rather than “other.” In this sense, the surrounding world has almost disappeared” (Araya

1995).

In addition, the ubiquity of computers also leads to the ubiquity of surveillance:

“By its pervasive penetration of everyday life, Ubiquitous Computing carries with it the

possibility of physically penetrating everything, with absolute independence of its nature

and uniqueness. Thus, each and every thing is susceptible of becoming a surveillable object”

(Araya 1995:235).

Twenty years later, we can see how issues raised by Araya remain valid and are equally relevant today. In the context of Internet of Things, the current realization of ubiquitous computing, data security, surveillance, and privacy are reoccurring subjects in both media and academic discourse.

From Ubiquitous computing to the Internet of Things

In order to achieve ubiquitous computing three things were needed, as Weiser explains: “cheap computers with displays, a network connection, and software systems which support the implementation of ubiquitous applications” (Weiser 1991).

Today, Weiser’s vision is still not yet completely fulfilled, computers are not yet in every space and in every object, but it seems that the development of computing is moving in that direction. Computers got sufficiently cheap and small, mobile and wireless networks

18 “We propose a first characterization of Ubiquitous Computing, […] as an attempt at obliterating the otherness

of certain aspects of the world by the pervasive penetration of everyday life with computing technology” (Araya

1995:235).

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became ubiquitous in the majority of urban areas, and developments in hardware and software are facilitating the development of a variety of mobile and web applications. The technological developments mentioned above enabled an emerging trend of embedding everyday objects with sensors and internet connectivity, which is today best known as the Internet of Things, or IoT. The term Internet of Things basically refers to physical objects that are autonomously collecting data through sensors and sending it over the internet to other devices or to the server. In addition, some IoT devices serve to enable remote control of objects and systems, such as lighting or heating systems, and this is usually done through mobile phone applications. In 2008, the number of things connected to the internet surpassed the number of people that are connected to the network (Townsend 2013). The range of objects connected to IoT is very wide and diverse, and they can be found anywhere, in interior and exterior spaces, as well as private and public spaces, or on human bodies19. In accordance with the purpose of our investigation, we will focus mainly on the IoT in the urban context and its influence on the appearance of future cities and on the experience of its inhabitants. As Mitchell (1996) states, architecture and computers are becoming increasingly intertwined:

“Increasingly, computers will meld seamlessly into the fabric of buildings and buildings

themselves will become computers-the outcome of a long evolution” (Mitchell 1996).

The development of the Internet of Things and of smart cities has many similarities, but their scale and range are the main differences. The Internet of Things comprises “smart” objects that are building blocks for the smart city. In a similar manner to that in which smart cities are constructed, the Internet of Things is being developed simultaneously by entities working in different areas and focused on diverse goals. We can name efficiency, safety, environmental, and health issues as some of the fields where the IoT is being currently developed. When looking at its potential impact on society, similarly to what happens with smart cities, the Internet of Things can evolve in different directions, some of which might help create a more controlled and surveilled society or, in turn, a more democratic and collaborative one. Townsend (2013) argues that the Internet of Things, when created through collaborative bottom-up processes, might empower citizens to create what they feel is needed in their local environments.

19 This trend is best known as Wearables, technological devices that are embedded in objects such as clothes, glasses,

or watches.

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“Instead of being merely a system for remote monitoring and management, as industry

visionaries see it today, the Internet of Things could become a platform for local, citizen

microcontrol of the physical world” (Townsend 2013).

The author also describes some alternatives to the Internet of Things, where the focus is more on people than on technology. One example is an app called PhoundIt, which serves as a digital lost and found portal, where people can report a lost thing in a certain area and others can help find it. In contrast with Weiser’s ideas, of finding objects through the tracking devices embedded in them, the example given by Townsend is not necessarily turning an object into a “surveillable object” as Araya pointed out. Unlike the PhoundIt app, which functions through the cooperation of people using the app, searching for things through tracking relies purely on technology, and implies surveillance issues.

As an example of the bottom-up approach to IoT, we can take Pachube, an online platform made by Usman Haque and his team. Pachube enabled people to “store, manage, discover and share open data from all sorts of networked devices and sensors, including electricity meters, weather stations, building management systems, air quality monitors, biosensors, Geiger counters, and even water-level sensors in sewers.”20

The idea of using the Internet of Things as a means of empowering citizens through bottom-up collaboration and sharing of open data can be seen as an alternative to the top-down structures, where data created by IoT is not publically available. However, regardless of the way the IoT systems are designed, they will always generate tremendous amounts of data.21 This fact leads us to the discussion of how the data flowing through the Internet of Things infrastructure will add invisible layers to the city and potentially alter the borders between physical and digital, as well as public and private spaces.

20 Pachube was launched in 2008. In 2011 it was acquired by LogMeIn Inc. Retrieved from http://umbrellium.co.uk/

initiatives/pachube/

21 “By 2016, the torrent of readings generated by this Internet of Things could exceed 6 petabytes a year on our mo-

bile networks alone” (Townsend 2013:11).

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1.3 Physical, Digital, Private, and Public Spaces in the Contemporary City

“It’s the invisible city that we are shaping through ubiquitous computing and mobile

telecommunications devices that matters” (Varnelis 2012).

Adding to the ubiquitous digital networks and the IoT infrastructure, nowadays, the urban landscape has an invisible layer of digital information, which is increasingly influencing the way we interact with the city and with each other. As Mitchell states, the invisible architecture of digital networks is as important as the physical architecture in the contemporary city. “Computer networks become as fundamental to urban life as street systems” (Mitchell 1996).

For example, each time we use a Google map via our mobile phone (which is connected to mobile networks and GPS satellites) to look for a certain location, we trigger various communication processes that are invisible to us. Those processes are linking the device to cell towers; servers, which can be anywhere in the world; and even satellites orbiting in space. We only see the result of the whole process as the information is displayed on a mobile phone screen. Most of the hardware and communication processes that support it are invisible to us, yet they determine the way we are going to navigate through the physical space.

Many artists are exploring these emerging digital landscapes and their influences on physical space and interactions that occur within them. Some examples of artworks that emphasize and visualize these invisible processes will be presented in chapter two.

Drawing on the ideas of Nissenbaum and Varnelis (2012), Powell (2014), de Lange and de Waal (2013), and Graham and Aurigi (1997), we identified four key points that influence the shift of boundaries between public and private spaces in contemporary cities:

1) IoT and Network infrastructure2) Social networks and algorithms 3) Mobile phones4) Pseudo Public spaces

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1.3.1 IoT and Network infrastructure

Nissenbaum (2012) stresses that having devices capable of receiving and sending data in public spaces will inevitably alter the boundaries between public and private spaces.

“Although there is potentially great variability in how the systems operating these devices

function, the possibility of network-enabled controls on flows of information challenges the

construct of a public-private divide” (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012:12).

Powell (2014) also argues that most of the infrastructure that supports ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is commercial, which means that the data that is flowing through those infrastructures often belongs to private companies.

1.3.2 Social networks and algorithms

According to Nissenbaum (2012), our notions of public and private are not the same in digital and physical contexts. People in social networks tend to behave “‘in public’ as they might previously only have behaved ‘in private’” (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012:13). In that manner, people are often willingly sharing information with private companies that own the social networks in question.

In addition, Varnelis and Nussenbaum argue that people are less concerned with whether their privacy is violated by machines or humans: “Is it that we’ve come to trust that just because the eyes that are watching us are (largely) algorithmic, it’s not a matter of concern?” (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012).

1.3.3 Mobile phones

Another shift in the relationship between public and private space occurs when people, by using mobile phones, withdraw into a private, virtual space while physically being in a public space (Hampton & Gupta 2008; de Lange & de Waal 2012). Greenfield, like many authors, argues that mobile phones enable the formation of private digital spaces and that personal communication technology “enriches the personal environment at the expense of the shared public and civic realms” (Greenfield & Shepard 2007:40).

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1.3.4 Pseudo-public spaces

In addition, confusion between private and public spaces can easily take place in environments that seem public but are indeed private, such as shopping malls, gated communities, or private business parks (Mitchell 1995; Graham & Aurigi 1997; Klein 1999; Nissenbaum & Varnelis 2012).

“The gradual replacement of (relatively) open squares with heavily-controlled places also

damages the potential of the city to retain its potential for communication and exchange”

(Graham & Aurigi 1997).

The emergence of pseudo-public spaces is not directly linked to information and communication technologies, but they play an important role in their functioning (e.g., video surveillance systems, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies etc.). Having that in mind, we found it important to include these particular spaces as additional examples of hybrid spaces in the urban context.

1.4 Role of New Media Art in the Context of a Contemporary City

“Art carries out an analysis (to gain a better awareness), subverting the status quo within the

stereotypes of language, codes, and habits of a community. If an artist experiments in the

public space – as indeed in private or institutional spaces – with a creative use of technological

devices, meanings and cultural objects available to society, in order to open an alternative and

innovative perspective on reality, this could be enough for his research to be recognized as

being of artistic value and not as a spectacular event…” (Guida 2015)

We have seen how the development of cities was always influenced by contemporary technologies and ideologies. The focus was on observing how network technologies converge with physical spaces and objects; an idea best known today as the Internet of Things. We addressed its implications in the urban context according to the concept of smart cities, as the creation of new, hybrid spaces where digital information and physical spaces are intertwined.

In order to better understand the ways art projects can fit into this context of hybrid public spaces, first, we will provide a brief overview of the history of public spaces and the role

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art within them. Following the overview, we will focus on the more specific role of urban new media art, as the art that employs digital technology in the urban context.

The word public has many definitions, often depending on the context where it is used. De Waal (2014) defines the word public as:

a) A group of people brought together on purpose or by chance in order to “share a common experience or a common interest”, the experience could be live or mediated (for example, live opera or a television broadcast of a football match);

b) The act of “making public”, as disclosing to others.

To better understand some of the transformations that have occurred in public spaces in recent history, we will take a look at modern public culture, which takes us from English coffeehouses in the 18th century and French boulevards of the 19th century, to the American suburbia of the 20th century, and finally, to any contemporary city.

In order to define contemporary public spaces, de Waal, as many other authors in the field, uses some well-known examples of documentation of modern public spaces, such as 18th century coffeehouses in England as described by Jürgen Habermas (1962) and Richard Senett (1977), and 19th century Parisian boulevards as analyzed by Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. In the example that Habermas and Senett provide, citizens would meet to “discuss matters of general interest”, being at the same time observers and participants in public culture. In this context, the word public was acted in both senses since people were both the audience and the performers of public acts. Baudelaire and Benjamin were interested in the “physical confrontation between different worlds” that occurs in public spaces, meaning, the way people from different backgrounds confront each other and live together in a shared space. What was common in both English coffeehouses and French boulevards was that those were the places where strangers would meet and form urban publics, in the sense that they were “united around a common goal or practice” (de Waal 2014).

Drawing on the ideas of Sennett and Habermas, McQuire (2006) describes the decline of public culture, which started to happen in the late 19th century, and is linked to the emergence of the culture of commodity:

“The new conditions of commodity capitalism and secular belief militated against the forms

of social interaction, which were vital to sustaining cosmopolitan public culture. The rise

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of the commodity creates a countervailing demand for personal intimacy and psychological

authenticity” (McQuire 2006).

In addition, the massive migration from city centers to the suburbs, and the popularity of mass media such as television and radio shifted the roles of public and private spaces, most notably in the United States after World War II. In order to explain this, the author quotes Virilio’s description of the transformation of public space into a public image:

“This public image has today replaced the former public spaces in which social communication took

place. Avenues and public venues are from now on eclipsed by the screen, by electronic displays,

in preview of the ‘vision machines’ just around the corner” (Virilio 1994, qtd. in McQuire 2006).

The combination of these events led to a “pervasive withdrawal into private sphere” as people were receiving information/consuming media in private spaces instead of public ones (McQuire 2006).

However, if we fast forward to contemporary cities, where technological developments from the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century enabled portable and urban media such as mobile phones and urban screens, we encounter an opposite shift — this time we move from private to public spaces, as citizens are going back to consume media in the public spaces of cities:

“With the emergence of mobile devices, media consumption is increasingly occurring in

public. It could be argued that the ‘media event’ is in the process of returning to the public

domain” (McQuire 2006).

When addressing the topic of urban screens and their alternative uses, McQuire (2006) believes that urban screens, as opposed to advertising platforms (which is their most common use), can be used for “collective forms of engagement”, i.e., a revival of the interaction with strangers which was lost in the era of broadcast television; this is the possibility he explores through his work as an artist.22

22 Scott McQuire uses urban screens to enable interaction between people and to link public spaces of different cities.

The author describes some of his work at the TEDx Talk titled Urban Screens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piO-

kuROjMWo

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These kinds of efforts to engage citizens, as active participants in urban life instead of passive observers or consumers of services, are not without precedent. Examples can be found throughout history, with Guy Debord and the Situationist International movement as one of the best known examples. Guy Debord was one of the most active and influential members of Situationist International or the Situationists23, a collective of artists, activists, and political theorists which existed from 1957 until 1972. The group is well known for its influence in the student uprisings in Paris in May 1968, and it is still an inspiration and a reference to many contemporary artists and activist movements (Bounegru 2009; Klein 2000; Matthews 2005). In his book, Society of the Spectacle24 (1967), Guy Debord describes our reality as a fake reality, a spectacle in which people are passive spectators.

The mission of the Situationists was to fight against that society, to create situations that can lead to the transformation of people back from passive observers to active participants, not as actors, but as directors, or as Debord calls them, “livers” of the everyday experience. Two ideas that came from the Situationists are common references in the contemporary realm of urban new media art — psychogeography and dérive. Psychogeography is described by the situationists as a relation between physical surroundings and emotions:

“Psychogeography sets for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the

geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and

behavior of individuals” (Debord 1955).

The concept of the Dérive, as an unplanned journey, was one of the Situationists tactics to fight the “society of the spectacle”; a playful way of discovering and experiencing the city by wandering and getting deliberately lost in it (Duncombe 2007). The Situationists’ theories and tactics as still mentioned as an inspiration to numerous contemporary public art projects.

Public art is a common term to describe any kind of art which happens in a public space. Paul (2006) describes three kinds of public art: legal public art, guerilla public art, and digital public art. Legal public art is supported by governments and it is a kind of art that is most common in cities, while it is also often used by totalitarian regimes as propaganda. In turn, guerilla public art refers to works done in public spaces without the permission

23 For more information about Situationist International, there is a short article titled, “An Introduction to the Situa-

tionists” by Jan D. Matthews (2005).

24 La société du spectacle, Guy Debord 1967

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of public authorities, and the most common kinds of guerilla public arts are graffiti and street art. Finally, Paul also mentions digital public art in order to distinguish art that is happening in the digital public space of the internet25 ( 2006).

Urban new media art can then be considered a form of public art happening in urban space while employing the same digital and network technologies pertaining to digital public art. In this manner, urban new media art opens up possibilities for new kinds of experiences of the city and interactions between people. In continuity with these ideas, this study will present and analyze projects that are considered legal public art, as well as projects that can belong to the category of guerilla public art, in order to address the potential of new media art in the urban context. The focus will be on the ways in which new media art can enable people to express themselves in public spaces that are usually dominated by commercial messages (Bounegru 2009; McQuire 2006); to raise awareness of invisible digital layers of networks (Bleecker & Nova 2009); and finally, to create tools to protect privacy, increase diversity, and achieve serendipity in the city (Greenfield & Shepard 2007).

In order to narrow down the selection of art projects to be analyzed, we identified several tactics that are often used by artists and designers working in the urban context, namely: hacking, humor, and play; spontaneity and randomness; and small-scale interventions. These tactics are the criteria that guided the selection of art projects, which will be presented in the next chapter, but they are also crucial for the practical part of this research since our project will try to employ these tactics.

1.4.1 Hacking

The first tactic that we identified as important within this context is the idea of hacking as a way of creatively modifying both computational systems, and physical, urban environments. As neither technological systems nor urban environments are fixed constructions; by modification, they can potentially be re-purposed in order to be used in other ways than what was initially imagined. In addition, as our dependence on information processing systems is increasing, the need for understanding how the systems in question

25 “The idea of the digital or networked commons obviously requires a reconsideration of traditional definitions: the

public space here is not a shared territory but a non–locality consisting of global communication systems that,

while subject to protocols and regulations, largely exist outside of a single nation’s or state’s jurisdiction” (Paul

2006).

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work and how they can be adapted to better suit our needs is increasing as well (Rokeby 1998; Townsend 2013; Oliver et al. 2011).

Hacking can be a way of acting within this context, according to the idea of creatively overcoming the limitations and expanding the possibilities of any system (Hofmann et al. 2012; Gehring 2004). The concept of hacking comes from computer programming jargon, meaning changing the system, deliberately, and without the permission of the system’s authority:

“Hacking is about investigating the unknown system and introducing a conscious

disorientation or new orientation into it” (Hofmann et al. 2012).

The term can have a negative connotation since this strategy it is often used for the personal gain of individuals, sometimes called black hat hackers or crackers (Fitch 2004), and is also often considered a crime.

“Hacking produces experimental test arrangements for a calculated and precise intervention

into the system, even though – from the system’s point of view – they might seem irregular

or unprofessional” (Hofmann et al. 2012).

However, the word hacking is also used to describe a form of creative problem solving, which can go beyond technological systems. For example, in recent years, events called hackathons26 are becoming increasingly popular. The word hacking is often used in the context of urban hacking or hacking the city, meaning altering certain parts of the city through, often playful, interventions in public spaces.

“Urban hackers are agents in the city who – via strategies of alienation – translate invisible

structures into visible ones. Ordinary situations, objects, rules, or routines become changed

by appropriation, recoding, manipulation and revaluation in order to stress taboos, open up

views behind the surface, gain new possible spaces of action and re-conquering formally lost

territories” (Hofmann et al. 2012).

26 Hackathon (combination of words hacking and marathon) is an event which usually lasts a couple of days, where

programmers gather and work on collaborative projects, usually on a given topic. Hackathons often include pro-

fessionals from other fields such as design or project management.

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Those interventions often improve specific aspects of the city, namely, through re-appropriation of abandoned spaces for cultural or sports activities, the creation of urban gardens, the promotion of local entrepreneurship through pop-up shops or fairs and similar.

Hacking, in both meanings (as hacking of hardware and software of technological systems, and as urban hacking) is often used as a tactic by artists in order to go beyond the intended uses of technologies and to engage citizens in an active participation in public spaces.

1.4.2 Humor and Play

Humor is another tactic that can be used to engage people with topics that are important and might be serious. As Duncombe states:

“Jokes are active, social things. More than any other form of communication they demand

participation from their audience” ( 2007).

Similarly, Dutch graphic design collective Metahaven in their book Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics, refer to jokes as an “active, living, and mobile form of disobedience” (Metahaven 2013). In that manner, humor, in combination with design, becomes a potentially powerful tool for the creation of politically engaged projects.

In addition, a greater focus has recently been placed on the importance of play and playfulness, in many areas other than the obvious industries such as entertainment and gaming (Frissen et al. 2015). As an example, we can take a look at the focus of playfulness in public spaces through the project Playable City, an initiative which “puts people and play at the heart of the future city, re-using city infrastructure and re-appropriating smart city technologies to create connections — person to person, person to city”27.

As an example of playfulness in business, we can take a look at gamification strategies28, or the way the working spaces of popular tech companies are designed as playful

27 Quote from the Playable City official website: https://www.playablecity.com/vision/

28 Gamification is a strategy of applying elements of games, such as competition, points, and levels, to other areas

which are not games. Gamification is often used as a business and marketing strategy to engage users with brands

(Glas 2015). As Glas states (2015), “in many cases, the goal of gamification is to make applications and online

services more like games and therefore more engaging for the user, i.e., the consumer.”

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environments in order to boost the creativity of their employees. When it comes to the relationship between play and new media arts, although we find the elements of play as potentially powerful assets to new media art projects, we are aware that the creation of playful projects might also raise certain issues. As an example, we can take a look at a text written by the artist Kanarinka (Catherine D’Ignazio) as a reaction to ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Art) 2006 under the theme Interactive City. This text initiated an interesting debate via the IDC (Institute for Distributed Creativity) mailing list.29

“The festival’s imagination of the “Interactive City” seemed to be characterized by a spirit

of play which feels increasingly oriented towards middle-class consumer spectacle and the

experience economy” (Kanarinka 2006).

In continuation, the artist asks some relevant questions to participants of the festival, such as:

“..is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D for a new generation of entertainment

spectacle? Or, what are we actually trying to do with these ideas of “play” in urban space?

Who gets to play?” (2006)

As the author points out, playful art projects in the urban context, as contemporary manifestations of psychogeography, might create the opposite than the original intentions of Guy Debord (discussed in chapter 1.4), and actually emphasize, and strengthen the society of the spectacle, rather than fight it. Some of the participants in the conversation expressed beliefs in the potential of the combination of art and play as a tactic for protest and empowerment, while emphasizing the importance of questioning and analyzing their relation and context.30

1.4.3 Spontaneity and Randomness

While most of the urban media developments focus on “efficiency, predictability, and security” (Haque 2012), these efforts might raise a number of issues, namely in relation to anonymity, diversity, and unpredictability, which are identified as important characteristics of big cities (Townsend 2013:21). What differentiates cities from towns and villages is the

29 The whole discussion can be accessed at https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2006-August/001755.html

30 In one of the responses, Hamilton points out an important factor in the relation between play and art, stating: “I’m

still confident in the potential for protest or effective empowerment through play, but not as a rule, and not without

a great deal of positioning and fore-thought and analyses on-the-go” (Hamilton 2006).

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fact that we are surrounded by strangers (de Wall 2014; Jacobs 1961:40). As Townsend points out:

“Smart cities need to be efficient but also preserve opportunities for spontaneity, serendipity,

and sociability. If we program all of the randomness out, we’ll have turned them from rich,

living organisms into dull mechanical automatons.” (2013:21)

If our every move is pre-planned and aided by technology, the possibilities for surprise encounters and random discoveries are minimized. If the whole city is under surveillance, we might lose the anonymity of citizens. In this manner, politically engaged art projects that are employing digital technologies become relevant, namely because they have a potential to enhance the possibility of random events and spontaneity, as well as to protect privacy and anonymity in the urban context.

1.4.4 Small-scale Interventions

In reaction to the dominance of large-scale media spectacles, artists and designers often devise small-scale, situated (contextual) interventions. The aim is usually to create a possibility for participation and self-expression in opposition to the passive consumption of media (de Lange & de Waal 2013; Duncombe 2007; McQuire 2006). De Waal and de Lange (2013) identify the potential of art in the urban context, but also point out that urban art interventions are often short in duration; they believe that longer duration interventions are needed.31

In our analysis of art projects, as well as in our own project, we focus on smaller scale interventions. This is because we believe that having small-scale, context-specific projects can provide more possibilities for unique expression. Moreover, these types of projects contribute to the overall diversity of the city. We also believe that smaller scale projects can be more viable to be implemented as long-term interventions. As such, this also implies that, in spite of their small-scale, these projects might reach more people in the city, potentially creating a greater impact.

31 “While we believe such criticisms are valuable, many remain highly temporary and stick to an oppositional poli-

tics. How can we use the potential strengths of urban technologies to help forge more durable ‘project identities’?”

(de Lange & de Waal 2013)

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1.5 Conclusion

Throughout this chapter, we have seen how the development of cities has always been influenced by the combination of technological possibilities and contemporary ideologies. Cities are being developed and constantly transformed by both top-down centralized structures, such as governments and large tech companies, and a multitude of smaller bottom-up structures, such as citizen groups, start-ups, researchers, artists, and activists, who are driven by different ideals and ideas of how the future city should look like and function.

We highlighted how the emergence of ubiquitous connected devices, known as the Internet of Things, which, together with social networks, ubiquitous mobile phones, and network infrastructure, become key elements for the transformation of cities into “smart cities”. One of the important characteristics of smart cities is that they are not only physical places but hybrid spaces where flows of digital information are influencing the experiences and interactions that occur within them.

Artists often explore those hybrid spaces by using the same technologies that are vital for the functioning of smart cities, in order to question these technologies and our relationship with them, as well as to visualize the invisible flows of information through small-scale interventions. We focused on some specific tactics used by artists; namely, hacking as a way of appropriation of technology and public spaces, placing an emphasis on spontaneity and randomness, and the creation of humorous and playful interventions.

In the following chapter, we will analyze a selection of art projects that present diverse responses to the contexts of smart cities and the Internet of Things. Also, we will discuss how art and technology can be used to visualize invisible digital processes, subvert existing communication systems, or enable new forms of expression and participation in public space.

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2. Analyzing ProjectsThis research gives continuity to an ongoing interest in the intersection of art, design, and technology in the urban context. Accordingly, the projects we have selected to be analyzed in this chapter are presenting various relationships between city, technology, art, and design. They were collected from diverse sources and personal references, such as research papers, print and online media, all of which are dedicated to discussing new media art and design; namely, blogs, websites and books, new media art festivals, and exhibitions. The analysis of these projects aims to establish a connection between the theoretical foundations presented in the previous chapter, and our practical project, which will be discussed in the following chapter. Naturally, many other projects could be included, however, we chose those that more explicitly connect to the main topics of our current research.

The selected projects employ tactics such as hacking, humor, and play. They are often small-scale, site-specific urban interventions that invite people to be active participants in public spaces, instead of passive observers of media spectacles or consumers of services provided by private companies. In addition, most of these projects have a critical point of view, in the sense that they raise questions, rather than give affirmative answers.

Accordingly, we can define keywords that characterize these projects: Activism, Urban Intervention, Visualization, Participation, Alternative Communication.

All projects correspond to the following criteria:

• Use some sort of digital technology — new technologies bring new possibilities for innovative actions and subversion of existing power relations, while they are also used to stop actions and strengthen existing power structures. Most of the selected projects express the intention to explore the effects and possibilities of digital technology that are not obvious and have the potential to empower their users or participants in various ways.

• Are connected to the city in some way — projects are implemented in public spaces, or address some of the issues that are present in contemporary public spaces.

• Use humor to comment on certain topics — we could say that they are at the same time playful and serious, by using humor as a tactic to achieve involvement and participation.

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• Non-commercial projects — not commissioned by local government or private companies. Some of these projects may be supported by an institution, as in the case of the Playable City32 projects; however, they need not serve as a direct promotion of a brand.

All projects do at least one of the following:

• Explore, visualize, and/or transform existing communication processes.• Enable new forms of communication.• Subvert existing systems.

2.1 List of selected projects:

32 Playable City is an initiative that supports the implementation of projects which can make cities more playful

through temporary urban art interventions. For more information go to https://www.playablecity.com/

01 False Positive

Mark Shepard and Moritz Stefaner, 2015

http://panstudio.co.uk/project/hello-lamp-post/

02 GraffitiWriter

IAA — Institute for Applied Autonomy, 2000

http://hosting.zkm.de/mediaarts2003/IAA

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03 Hello Lamp Post

Pan Studios and FutureEverything, 2013

http://panstudio.co.uk/project/hello-lamp-post/

04 L.A.S.E.R Tag System

G.R.L. (Graffiti Research Lab), 2006

http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/blog/

projects/laser-tag/

05 Dead Drops

Aram Bartholl, 2010

https://deaddrops.com/

06 Opera Calling

!Mediengruppe Bitnik, 2007

https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

bitnik.org/o/

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08 iSee

IAA — Institute for Applied Autonomy,

2001–2003

http://hosting.zkm.de/ctrlspace/e/

texts/24?print-friendly=true

07 The Architecture of Radio

Richard Vijgen, 2015

http://www.architectureofradio.com/

09 Immaterials: Light painting WiFi

Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve

Martinussen, 2011

http://www.yourban.no/2011/02/22/

immaterials-light-painting-wifi/

10 Surveillance Chess

!Mediengruppe Bitnik, 2012

https://chess.bitnik.org/about.html

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11 The Rhythm of City

Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2011

http://www.varvarag.info/the-rhythm-of-city/

12 Nearest Costco, Monument or Satellite

Daniel Jollife, 2013-14

http://www.danieljolliffe.ca/ncms/ncms.htm

13 The Sentient City Survival Kit

Mark Shepard, 2008

http://survival.sentientcity.net/info.html

14 The Artvertiser

Julian Oliver, Damian Stewart and Arturo

Castro, 2008

http://theartvertiser.com/

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16 SMSlingshot

VR/URBAN, 2010

http://www.vrurban.org/smslingshot.html

15 Newstweek

Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, 2011

http://newstweek.com/overview

17 Binoculars to... Binoculars from...

Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2013

http://www.varvarag.info/binoculars/

18 PoliceState

Jonah Brucker-Cohen, 2003

http://www.coin-operated.com/2010/05/03/

policestate-2003/

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19 One Free Minute

Daniel Jolliffe, 2005-2009

http://www.onefreeminute.net/

20 Attachment

David Colombini, 2014

http://www.davidcolombini.com/attachment.

html

21 Take a Bullet for this City

Luke DuBois, 2014

http://lukedubois.com/

22 Foxes Like Beacons

Jochen Maria Weber, 2015

http://stupidmessy.net/

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24 L.S.D Light to Sound Device

Benjamin Gaulon, 2011

http://www.recyclism.com/lsd.php

23 Default to Public

Jens Wunderling, 2008

http://jenswunderling.com/works/default-to-

public/

25 Föhnseher (Seer of Warm Winds)

Julian Oliver, 2011

https://julianoliver.com/foehnseher/

26 WiFipedia

Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2015

http://www.varvarag.info/wifipedia/

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27 Immaterials: Satelite Lamps

Timo Arnall, Einar Sneve Martinussen and

Jørn Knutsen, 2014

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.1/inventio/

martinussen-et-al/

28 UTV

Rob Duarte, 2009

http://robduarte.com/portfolio/utv/

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2.2 Model for the Analysis

The analysis is structured according to three key stages of project development: Concept, Implementation, Experience, which correspond to the three main categories for analysis that we now describe.

2.2.1 Concept:

Exploration and visualization of the invisible city

“Today’s “smart city” is not a public infrastructure but a “partnership” driven by large

companies, aimed at monetizing citizen data. For them the city is rather a sphere inhabited

by autonomous agents who seem unaware of the invisible technologies that surround them.

How can art intervene in such a situation?” (Guida 2015)

The way we communicate in the city, the way we navigate through, and experience it, is increasingly influenced by invisible systems such as wireless and mobile networks, GPS satellites, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies, IoT devices, etc. (de Lange & de Waal 2013:2). Those systems rely on design and technology in order to function; however, rather than focusing on the specific design of those systems, we will focus on the various methods of visualization of the data that flows through them. By visualizing those invisible layers of the city, these projects enable new perspectives of the city and create a space in which to discuss the broader effects of the technological systems in question, and our relationship with them.

Tools for alternative communication and navigation

“What seems to be lacking is a pattern for agency, for writing and supporting people’s ability

to express, develop and negotiate values and aspirations for their lives and their environment”

(Andersen & Pold 2011).

In addition to visualizing the invisible systems and layers of information, some of these projects can be considered as tools, providing alternative ways for people to communicate and navigate in the city. Accordingly, this section addresses the interaction between people and the city, and the ways in which interaction can be expanded with design, technology, and art interventions.

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Activism

“Networked activism and tactical response as well as artistic practice that merges physical

and virtual space and augments physical sites and existing architectures are among the

practices that are important to the impact of digital public art on governance” (Paul 2006).

This topic pertains to projects that create an explicit involvement between the audience and issues such as surveillance and participation in public spaces. The selected projects raise awareness or provide tools that can be used by activists and other citizens to react to these issues. We will examine different ways in which technology can be used to inform or empower citizens through the visualization of information, or through the creation of tools for alternative communication and navigation. Participation

“I think we need to consider the meaning, the existence and the opportunity of participation

each time, in relation to the subjects involved (artist, curator, public), to the context of

reference and to the medium used, because there are different types and levels of participation:

e.g. from taking part in something or taking something from it to expressing an opinion, to

carrying out an action, to performing a public function” (Guida 2015).

Participation is an important component of all projects, both as a concept addressed by the author (which will be analyzed through levels of participation) and as an experience provided to the audience (which relates to types of participation). Participation of the audience can be achieved in two ways — either the artwork reacts to people’s actions, or the artwork is created as a tool that people can use to achieve certain goals.

Accordingly, participation will be discussed in terms of both concept and experience. So, the first way of considering participation relates to the concept of the work, as it entails discussing different levels of participation. The second way relates to different types of participation as part of the experience of the work.

2.2.2 Implementation

The implementation of the work describes its actual components and workings, by trying to answer to the following questions: Which kind of data is used and how? Which hardware is used, and what physical components do projects consist of?

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2.2.3 Experience

When describing the experience of the work, we focus on the elements that the users actually deal with and access; namely, emphasizing their roles when experiencing the work such as: Participate; Configure/change; Communicate; Play.

2.3 Results

2.3.1 Concept

2.3.1.1 Exploration and visualization of the invisible city

Given that our communication and navigation activities are increasingly mediated by digital devices and networks, artists explore and visualize both the supporting infrastructure and the various processes that occur between the infrastructure, the interface devices, and their users.

According to the type of subjects that are explored and visualized, the projects analyzed can be divided into the following categories:

a) Infrastructure (The Architecture of Radio, iSee, Sentient City Survival Kit)b) Data streams (The Rhythm of City, Take a Bullet for This City)c) Invisible signals (The Architecture of Radio , Light painting WiFi, Satelite Lamps)d) Site-specific communication (Default to Public, Föhnseher, WiFipedia, UTV)

a) Infrastructure

Projects put an emphasis on infrastructures using diverse approaches —Richard Vijgen’s The Architecture of Radio (2015 is a site-specific iPad app that deals with two categories from the subjects listed above, namely network infrastructures (such as cell towers, WiFi routers, satellites) and the invisible signals that are produced by it. In turn, iSee (2003), a project created by Institute for Applied Autonomy, is a “web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments.” While The Architecture of Radio lets the user explore the invisible landscape of signals, the project iSee enables its users to change their navigation through the city by choosing the “paths of least surveillance” (Institute for Applied Autonomy 2003).

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Mark Shepard’s project entitled Under(a)ware (2008) is one of four speculative artifacts from the project The Sentient City Survival Kit, and is devised as a special kind of underwear designed to warn the person who is wearing it about the presence of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) readers through the activation of small vibrators sewn into it.

These three projects reveal how invisible or discreet infrastructures can be visualized, using both conventional methods (such as mobile or web applications) or more alternative and experimental methods, as in the project Under(a)ware. The projects gathered in this section reveal hidden infrastructures, emphasizing their ubiquity and importance in our everyday interactions, but they also provide possibilities for their avoidance — an aspect that is probably most notable in the project iSee.

b) Data streams

Projects like The Rhythm of City (2011), by Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet Sola, and Take a Bullet for this City (2014) by Luke DuBois, deal with very different topics and types of data. The Rhythm of City has a global and broad scope, since it represents the amount of real-time social media data that is generated in 10 different cities through the rhythm of 10 metronomes. As the artists state, the project “points out an innovative and artistic way for applying geo-located social data as a score” (Guljajeva & Sola 2011). It shows how vast amounts of data can be used to present and compare different cities when transformed into something as simple as a rhythm of the metronome.

Take a Bullet for this City deals with very specific and local data taken from reports of gun shootings in the city of New Orleans. For each reported shooting, the gun fires a blank. Empty bullet cartridges pile up around the installation representing the number of shootings. Although the installation can be considered site-specific, as it reacts to data from a specific area, the artist imagined it as “a proof-of-concept for a piece that could serve New Orleans, or any community plagued by gun violence” (DuBois 2014).

c) Invisible signals

The Architecture of Radio visualizes various signals that surround us in our daily life. It reverses “the ambient nature of the infosphere; hiding the visible while revealing the invisible technological landscape we interact with through our devices” (Vijgen 2015). One advantage of this project, when compared to other two projects in this category, is

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that it allows anybody to use it by downloading the iPad app. The other two projects that belong to the series titled Immaterials: Light painting WiFi (2011) and Satellite Lamps (2014), created by Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen, and Einar Sneve Martinussen, explore and visualize the signals of two technologies that are essential for both communication and navigation in contemporary cities (wireless networks and GPS satellites). Light painting WiFi is a film that visualizes the levels of WiFi signals in urban landscapes through a custom built WiFi measuring rod and long exposition photography. Following a similar concept, the authors made Satellite Lamps, a film that visualizes the strength of GPS satellites through the light of lamps with embedded GPS receivers.

In the examples above, the existence of a network infrastructure is emphasized through the visualization of the invisible signals emitted by it. All of these projects are showing us how physical public spaces and invisible layers of signals and information are intertwined, and are together forming the hybrid spaces that we described earlier.

d) Site-specific communication

The projects Default to Public (2008) and UTV (2009), by Jens Wunderling and Rob Duarte, respectively transfer tweet messages, which usually belong to the digital world of the web, to the physical space. Both projects display tweet messages posted in physical proximity to the output stations, making the communication site-specific and linking the offline and online worlds. Julian Oliver’s Föhnseher (2011) captures images downloaded by people in open wireless networks surrounding the exhibition space, then displaying them on an old television set, thus transforming the role of people from users of public networks into media broadcasters.

In turn, Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet Sola’s WiFipedia (2015) shows us how people use the 32 character space for naming personal WiFi networks as a communication channel by expressing their opinions through the names they give to their WiFi networks. The names and locations of private WiFi networks are revealed in order to “make sense of novel communication and create a big picture of citizens’ voices and reveal digital landscape of city” (Guljajeva & Canet Sola 2015).

Although day-to-day communication is increasingly made through global channels that are accessible from everywhere in the world, these projects reveal how digital technologies are also enabling novel, and often unexpected, forms of local and site-specific communication.

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2.3.1.2 Tools for alternative communication and navigation

According to the type of interaction that they enable, projects that explore and provide alternative ways of communication and navigation can be divided into the following sub-categories:

a) Enabling people to express themselves in public spaces (GraffitiWriter, L.A.S.E.R Tag System, SMSlingshot, One Free Minute, Attachment)

b) Creating communication systems that can protect privacy (Dead Drops, Ad-hoc Network Travel Mug)

c) Exploring the communication between people and objects (Hello Lamp Post)

d) Providing alternative navigation possibilities (Serendipitor, Foxes Like Beacons)

a) Enabling people to express themselves in public spaces

Public spaces are usually dominated by messages from governments and advertisers; or what art and activist collective Graffiti Research Lab describes as “cultural tyrants” (Graffiti Research Lab 2006). Projects GraffitiWriter (2000), L.A.S.E.R Tag System (2006), and SMSlingshot (2010), enable people to leave their traces on buildings and other urban surfaces. L.A.S.E.R Tag System is a tool for leaving messages on buildings using a laser, a camera, and a large scale projector. SMSlingshot follows a similar concept, though it is aimed at media facades (facades of buildings with embedded screens). It consists of a wooden slingshot and a keypad in which participants can type their message and then shoot it at a building where it will appear as a colored splash with the text.

GraffitiWriter leaves more permanent traces in the city, as it uses spray cans and a robot to leave the messages on the ground. One Free Minute (2009), a project by Daniel Jolliffe, uses audio as a means of expression. The project “seeks to return the public soundscape to the voices of its callers” (Jolliffe 2009). The project consists of a large speaker mounted on a bike and placed in a public space. By calling a mobile phone, which is connected to the speaker, people can anonymously express themselves in public spaces.

David Colombini’s Attachment (2014) uses a very different approach — it enables people to send messages, images, or videos via balloon to unknown receivers. The machine, built by the artist and his collaborators, takes a message sent to the projects website, engraves

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it in a piece of wood, attaches that piece to a balloon and sends it into the air. The project is “using current technology to allow us to communicate differently and rediscover the unexpected, the random, and the serendipitous” (Colombini 2014).

b) Creating communication systems that can protect privacy

Ubiquitous network technologies open up possibilities for ubiquitous surveillance, which in turn lead to the need for encrypted and offline day-to-day communication. Exploring this issue, the project Dead Drops (2010) by Aram Bartholl, uses USB flash drives that are embedded into walls as “an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space” (Bartholl 2010). Additionally, Ad-hoc Network Travel Mug (2008) by Mark Shepard is a prototype for a coffee mug that creates an ad-hoc network in order to enable wireless communication protected from surveillance.

c) Exploring the communication between people and objects

As the Internet of Things grows, an increasing amount of objects acquire the ability to communicate with other objects and with people in both public and private spaces. Project Hello Lamp Post devises a playful way to address the topic of communication between people and objects in future cities. It uses SMS technology and unique identifying numbers of street furniture (such as lamp posts) in order to enable a communication between those objects and city dwellers. It addresses an important topic, as it reflects on the relation between connected objects and people in the future cities by gathering people’s opinions about the city where the project takes place.

d) Providing alternative navigation possibilities

Serendipitor (2008), another project by Mark Shepard, is “an alternative navigation software application for mobile phones that helps you find something by looking for something else” (Shepard 2008). Instead of showing the fastest way from A to B, it introduces deliberate detours. It works with the same technologies that are usually used to make our navigation more efficient (maps and GPS navigation) but with the goal of emphasizing serendipity.

Foxes Like Beacons (Jochen Maria Weber) goes further in providing an alternative navigation possibility; it creates a navigation system by using “open data of public radio stations with inexpensive, low-power signal detection in order to create an open

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positioning system” (Weber 2015). The project shows the potential of open data for the creation of systems that don’t depend on military and commercial entities, as is the case with GPS.

2.3.1.3 Activism

Many of the included projects can be considered as forms of activism since they aim to create space for the discussion of topics that are related to politics and communication in public spaces and, sometimes, to enable concrete action in the urban context. In that sense, all of the projects included in this category are approaching the observers and participants according to two main objectives: raising awareness and creating tools that can be used to deal with the issues in question. The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) states that their work is dedicated to creating “pedagogical devices that provoke public discussion of critical issues, as well as in creating ”functional tools that dissidents can actually use” (Schienke 2002). This can be also applied to the rest of the projects that belong to this category.

In addition to these two general approaches to project implementation, we identified three main topics that are common to the projects in this section:

a) Surveillance and Privacy (PoliceState, OperaCalling, iSee, CCD-me-not Umbrella)

b) Re-appropriation of existing objects and systems (The Artvertiser, Newstweek, Surveillance Chess, Take a Bullet for this City)

c) Expression in public space (GraffitiWriter, L.A.S.E.R Tag System, SMSlingshot, One Free Minute, Attachment)

a) Surveillance and Privacy

Surveillance techniques are sometimes used for creation of politically engaged art projects, as is the case with Jonah Brucker-Cohen’s PoliceState (2003), and OperaCalling (2007), created by !Mediengruppe Bitnik. PoliceState “attempts to reverse the surveillance role of law enforcement into a subservient one for the data being gathered” (Brucker-Cohen 2003). The project consists of 20 police toy cars, controlled by software that reacts to information related to domestic U.S. terrorism. Every time one of the keywords is found on a network, the toy cars move; in that manner, “police become puppets of their own surveillance” (Brucker-Cohen 2003). In turn, OperaCalling uses hidden audio bugs in

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an opera hall in order to transmit the performances to random people via telephone. Conversely, projects iSee and CCD-me-not Umbrella (Shepard 2008), do not use surveillance technologies, but rather create tools that can be used to avoid and sabotage CCTV cameras, thus protecting the privacy of city dwellers.

b) Re-appropriation of existing systems

The Artvertiser (2008), created by Julian Oliver, Damian Stewart and Arturo Castro, uses virtual reality headsets to replace advertising, which is ubiquitous in the city, with custom content in the form of images or videos; an intervention the authors name “Improved Reality” as a reference to Augmented Reality. Similarly, Newstweek (2011), a project by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiljev, allows people to change the news that read by other people when on public WiFi networks. Even more subversive is Surveillance Chess (!Mediengruppe Bitnik, 2012), which transforms CCTV images into a functional on-screen chess board, and invites the observer from the control room to play a game. In turn, Take a Bullet for this City transforms a gun into an art piece that shows how many reported shootings had happened in the city. What these projects reveal is the potential of appropriating existing systems for their own questioning.

c) Expression in public space

While people express themselves in the digital public space of the internet, through platforms like social networks and blogs, at the same time, today’s public spaces are still saturated by messages from advertisers and media companies. Responding to this issue, certain projects use digital technologies to enable new forms of expression in urban surroundings.

As we have seen in the previous section, artists are capable of finding new ways to use digital technologies in order to empower people to express themselves and leave their mark in urban environments. These actions are motivated by the idea that enabling novel forms of expression in public spaces creates more diverse and heterogeneous cities.

2.3.1.4 Participation

When analyzing the different levels of audience participation that the selected projects present and promote, we distinguished the following categories:

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a) Unaware participation — art projects as data outputs (False Positive, The Rhythm of City, Default to Public and Föhnseher)

b) Aware participation — art projects as tools (The Architecture of Radio, iSee, L.S.D Light to Sound Device, GraffitiWriter, SMSlingshot, L.A.S.E.R. Tag System, The Artvertiser, Newstweek)

c) Extended participation — tools to make tools (Dead Drops, L.A.S.E.R. Tag System, Sentient City Survival Kit)

a) Unaware participation — art projects as data outputs

In the context of smart cities and ubiquitous technology, people are usually unaware of the fact that they are active participants in the processes that are running in various systems — their actions are potentially tracked and monitored, and the data collected (Varnelis & Nissenbaum 2012:10).

Projects like False Positive, The Rhythm of City, Default to Public, and Föhnseher all work with unaware participation in different ways. False Positive “engages the subtle processes by which personal data can be exploited, and generates ‘data-portraits’ based on social and spatial associations inferred from this data” (Shepard & Stefaner 2015), thereby directly confronting the people with the information that is available about them online. False Positive “promotes public literacy surrounding the sensitivity of our data transactions, and what they can–and cannot–reveal about us” through a staged interaction with a fake corporation (Shepard & Stefaner 2015). The Rhythm of City presents the cities through the data which was generated by its inhabitants, making them essential, albeit unaware, participants in the installation. In a similar manner, but on a local scale, Föhnseher captures and displays images that are downloaded by people on surrounding wireless networks, making them unaware broadcasters of content. What these projects show us is the potential of data, as a raw material, which can be subjected to new ways of exploration and visualization in order to reveal invisible layers of the city.

Projects that work with data obtained by unaware participation help to highlight what Mitchell (1996) calls the “electronic trails” that we leave in cyberspace. As cyberspace intertwined with “meatspace33”, electronic trails are not limited to cyberspace, but also exist in “meatspace”.

33 Meatspace is an informal term used to describe the physical world, as opposition to cyberspace. https://en.oxford-

dictionaries.com/definition/meatspace

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b) Aware participation — art projects as tools

Some projects are created with the aim of serving as tools for people, who are naturally aware of their roles as users. Examples of this are The Architecture of Radio, devised as a tool for visualizing invisible radio waves; iSee, a tool for getting from point A to point B by the least surveilled path; The Attachment, a tool for sending messages to unknown recipients in unknown locations) and L.S.D: Light to Sound Device (2011), configured as a tool for transforming light from screens into sound, which can be used as an urban intervention.

Additonally, GraffitiWriter, SMSlingshot, and L.A.S.E.R. Tag System are tools for leaving messages in public spaces. Further, while The Artvertiser is a tool for replacing advertising with art using the augmented reality technique, Newstweek, in turn, is a tool for changing the news which are read by people on public wireless networks.

c) Extended participation — tools to make tools

Extended participation refers to art projects that can serve as tools that enable the making of tools. This is promoted by open source projects that provide instructions on how to make and adapt them. In this manner, they can extend the role of the participant from being a mere user to being an actual producer of a tool or system.

These projects involve ideas that can range from the Situationists’ fight against the society of the spectacle to the idea of participatory spectacle by Stephen Duncombe, considering that the artist is still a creator, though what he creates is not limited, closed, or finished. The thing he is creating is a range of possibilities which should be open for modification and be always in motion. Participatory spectacle, as Duncombe describes it, enables a situation where organizers and participants can switch places, and everybody can be both (Duncombe 2007).

A good example of this kind of work is the project Dead Drops, where the artist created a small intervention that quickly evolved into a kind of global movement, constantly growing with the help of hundreds of participants worldwide.

Another example is the project L.A.S.E.R. Tag, being that the authors provided the source code and the instructions on how to build physical components of the project, which extends the possibilities for participation. Potential participants, rather than mere users of

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the tool, are enabled to make their own versions of the project, based on the existing source code and instructions. Similarly, the project Sentient City Survival Kit consists of four working prototypes that city dwellers might need in order to achieve privacy, serendipity, and autonomy in the near future city, which is over surveilled and over efficient, and thus predictable. As is the case with L.A.S.E.R. Tag, the codes and instructions of how to build all parts of the project are shared online.

2.3.2 Implementation

2.3.2.1 Which data is used and how

In terms of implementation, we can observe that the data being used as an input comes from various sources, ranging from social networks, wireless networks, live opera performance, and light from screens, to direct user input, or even gun violence reports, the strength of signals of GPS satellites and wireless networks, among other phenomena that the projects seek to explore and comment on. According to the type of data used, the projects can be divided into the following categories:

a) User generated data

(False Positive, Hello Lamp Post, The Rhythm of City, Default to Public, Föhnseher, WiFipedia, UTV, Police State, Dead Drops). This category includes data that was generated by people through aware or unaware participation (as discussed in the previous section.

b) Wave data

(The Architecture of Radio, Light painting WiFi, Satelite Lamps). By wave data, we consider what Anthony Dunne calls the Hertzian space — the invisible space created by electromagnetic waves. “It is a space that is neither relational nor virtual, but an actual phenomenon and refers to the invisible electromagnetic waves that all electronic devices (such as mobile phones and PDAs emit) creating a sort of electrical aura that extends around the object’s physical space” (Miranda 2007). Projects from this category are exploring and visualizing Hertzian space through two different approaches — first one is an iPad app (The Architecture of Radio), the second two are light installations (Light painting WiFi and Satelite Lamps).

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c) Institutional data

(Take a Bullet for this City, Opera Calling, Nearest Costco, Monument or a Satellite). What characterizes this type of data is that it is not created by people (as users), nor by machines (as electromagnetic waves), but includes data that is produced by institutions. For example, Take a Bullet for this City uses data from police reports; Opera Calling transmits the data from the opera performances; and finally, Nearest Costco, Monument, or a Satellite uses the positions of satellites, monuments, and supermarkets.

In addition, and regardless of the kind of data, we can distinguish how it is used in the projects as follows:

a) Data visualization in physical space

(The Architecture of Radio, The Rhythm of City, Take a Bullet for this City, Light painting WiFi, Satelite Lamps). These are projects bridging the digital and physical worlds by visualizing invisible, digital data through physical objects.

b) Communication devices

(Hello Lamp Post, WiFipedia, Nearest Costco, Monument or a Satellite, Default to Public, UTV, Föhnseher). Refers to projects that use the data to explore and create alternative communication systems.

c) Data Transformers

(L.S.D Light to Sound Device, The Artvertiser, Newstweek). Includes projects that transform data from one type to another. For example, L.S.D Light to Sound Device transforms light into sound, while The Artvertiser transforms advertising into art.

2.3.2.2 Which hardware is used: physical components of the project

Most of the projects presented here consist of both software and hardware. Hardware is often made out of modified (hacked) existing devices and objects, such as television sets, metronomes, binoculars, usb pens, police car toys, wireless routers, or balloons. This is an important aspect relating to the potential of reusing and adapting technology that is quickly becoming obsolete. Because of rapid technological advancements, older technologies are

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being replaced by new ones at ever increasing rates. As a result, the artists and designers represented in this analysis are repurposing the obsolete technologies as the materials for creation of artworks.

There are two aspects we find especially relevant when working with existing objects, modifying them, or finding new ways in which they can be used; specifically, the possibility to go beyond the intended uses and the possibility to expand the understanding of certain technologies.

The industry often dictates how a certain technology will be used. One example is the radio, which was transformed from a one-to-one communication device into mass media, with “only a few parties preparing the broadcasts and the rest of us, as the public, being permitted to listen” (de Waal 2014). A more recent and contrasting example is a special kind of infrared camera called Kinect. Released by Microsoft in 2011 as an addition to popular game console Xbox, the device was made to be a controller for video games, but artists and hackers started writing custom software and using it for interactive installations. In doing this, they showed the great potential the device had for creating interactive art, and Microsoft released a second version intended for broader use, rather than just for playing video games.

In addition, playing and experimenting with new and old technologies can lead to a better understanding of their functioning and of our relationship with them. As a group of artists/engineers called Critical Engineers state, in the first point of their manifesto:

“The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a

threat. The greater the dependence on a technology, the greater the need to study and expose

its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision” (Oliver et al. 2011).

The work of Critical Engineers consists in producing artworks that are questioning contemporary ubiquitous technology and organizing workshops that teach people how to use certain technologies. In this manner, Critical Engineers propose the usage of technology and hacking for the creation of politically engaged art projects and interventions.

2.3.3 Experience

This section focuses on the roles of the audience/participants in relation to the work, and the specific experiences that the analyzed works potentially enable. Concerning the

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types of experience provided to the audience, we identified four main categories: the possibilities to participate, configure or change, communicate, and play.

2.3.3.1 Participate

The same project can often provide multiple types of participation, related to different audiences or participants. When analyzing the roles that the audience or participants might assume in the work, we distinguished three ways in which they can contribute to the work or interact with it:

a) Spectator

In this case, the audience participates as a spectator when projects do not allow the audience to customize or influence any part of the artwork. This type of participation usually goes together with the next type, which is the data source type. For example, False Positive presents the personal data that is available online, in the form of “data-portraits”, to a selected audience. The audience cannot interact directly with the data, but the data was obtained through their unaware participation. The audience is simultaneously a (unaware) participant and the (aware) spectator. Another example is The Rhythm of City, where by seeing and hearing the metronomes, the audience can experience the different amounts of data produced by other citizens, who are unaware of their participatory role.

b) Data source

Participation as a data provider is the type of participation that we refer to as ‘unaware participation’. As an example, we can take The Rhythm of City or WiFipedia, where the audience cannot interact with the final outcome of the work, even though its output is based on data provided by participants, albeit unaware of their role as such. The Rhythm of the City provides two distinct types of participation simultaneously: it reacts in real-time to data created by unaware participants (as sources of data) and presents it to the audience (as spectators). Similarly, WiFipedia creates distinct types of participation, but in different stages of the project: it first collects the data and then presents it to the audience.

c) User

Most of the analyzed works belong to this category, where the audience is also the participant in the artwork, and is aware of its role, namely as a user. This can involve

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both aware participation (art projects as tools), and extended participation (tools to make tools). Unlike the previous two types, where the focus is mainly on the data gathered and presented to the audience, in this category, the focus is on enabling the audience to use the artwork as a tool for various actions, ranging from communication and navigation, to exploration and subversion.

Cases where users are enabled to communicate in new ways subverting the traditional communication channels can be exemplified with projects such as GraffitiWriter, SMSlingshot, L.A.S.E.R. Tag System, and One Free Minute. Furthermore, the projects Serendipitor and Foxes Like Beacons enable new forms of navigation in the city. The Architecture of Radio lets its users explore the ubiquitous network infrastructure and invisible radio waves. We can go into more detail, discussing the different ways in which these artworks can be used, according to three following subcategories since they all enable user participation.

2.3.3.2 Configure/Change

Many of the projects analyzed have the potential to allow their users to change their surroundings in various ways. Some projects help achieve anonymity and anonymous communication (Dead Drops, iSee, CCD-me-not Umbrella, Ad-hoc Travel Mug), some inform about intrusive devices (Under(a)ware), and some help achieve serendipity in the city (Serendipitor) or enable expression in public spaces. Also, some projects enable people to express themselves in urban surroundings through audio (One Free Minute), visual (GraffitiWriter, L.A.S.E.R Tag System, SMSlingshot, The Attachment), and digital interventions (Hello Lamp Post).

In addition, other projects let their users subvert existing systems by giving them a different use or purpose. For example, Newstweek lets people change the news read by other people while on public WiFi networks; Surveillance Chess transforms surveillance system into a gaming console; The Artvertiser replaces advertising with art using virtual reality equipment; and L.S.D Light to Sound Device “invites its users to engage in a new perception of their daily environment” (Gaulon 2011) by transforming lights from urban screens into sounds.

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2.3.3.3 Communicate

When it comes to communication experiences, we identified two types; the first is concerned with allowing people to share their opinion through the creation of experimental broadcast systems, while the second deals with systems that enable local and offline communication.

a) Broadcast/Share

Digital technologies bring new opportunities for public broadcast in a wide variety of forms, from robots that do graffiti (GraffitiWriter) to large-scale projections (L.A.S.E.R Tag System), or even to mobile phones and loud speakers (One Free Minute).

In the online public spaces of the internet, people are accustomed to receive information from many different sources, as well as to share and broadcast their own opinions and information. However, in physical public spaces, people are mostly mere receivers of information. The projects from this section explore this issue, often offering new possibilities of expression in physical public spaces, thus adding diversity to communication and empowering citizens to influence their physical surroundings.

b) Local/Offline Communication

Artists such as Aram Bartholl and Mark Shepard create artworks and prototypes that can be used for offline and encrypted sharing of files and information. Two examples are Dead Drops, by sharing data through a USB “dead drop”, and Ad-hoc Travel Mug, a coffee mug embedded with a screen and radio transmitter that creates an ad-hoc network for communication.

These types of works create an overlapping of physical and digital spaces as a way to propose alternative visions for future cities, where, in contrast to predictability, safety and efficiency, the focus is on promoting unpredictability, privacy, and autonomy.

2.3.3.4 Play

Elements of humor and play are, more explicitly or implicitly, present in every selected projects; thus sense of humor was an important criteria for selection. However, the projects were selected only when humor and play were used as an addition to other topics that the

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project addressed. As with participation, the definitions of humor and play are broad, and often depend on context. Accepting that ambiguity, rather than discussing these terms, we focused on the way they are present and used as discursive strategies in these artistic projects and interventions in urban space.

Given that the selected projects deal with diverse topics, the playful component varies. For example, all of the projects that deal with alternative communication in public spaces engage the users in a playful interaction, while at the same time create a space for a critical reflection on the topics they are addressing. Projects like GraffitiWriter and L.A.S.E.R Tag System provide a playful experience of writing on walls and, by doing this, promote a reflection on the controversial topic of graffiti as well as on topics such as activism, freedom of speech, and participation in public space.

Another example is Newstweek, which lets people alter and interfere with news, thereby tackling the topics of media manipulation, privacy, and security of networks. In turn, Dead Drops creates a curious urban intervention (USB drives sticking out of walls) and, simultaneously, a local and offline file sharing platform. Furthermore, it invites people not just to share their files, but also to expand the platform (creating their own “dead drops” and sharing their location on the projects website).

What these projects have in common is the creation of playful situations, which have the potential to engage participants and raise awareness on “serious” topics such as surveillance and privacy, freedom of speech, and participation in public spaces.

2.4 Conclusion

The starting point for this selection of projects were reoccurring topics, such as: proposing the visualization of invisible processes, providing alternative communication and navigation, and promoting activism and participation.

In relation to visualization, we were able to distinguish four different strategies that relate to a focus on infrastructure, data streams, invisible signals, and fragments of site-specific communication. In relation to the ways in which these projects provide alternative forms of communication and navigation, we noticed that they are concerned with enabling people to express themselves in public spaces, and with creating communication and navigation systems that emphasize privacy and serendipity.

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We observed that most of the projects can be considered as forms of activism, and, in that sense, two general approaches were identified: the aspiration to ignite discussions and provide alternative perspectives on the city (e.g., visualizing invisible layers of information), and to provide tools that can extend the levels of participation and interaction within the city. These projects predominantly deal with the following sub-topics and strategies: surveillance and privacy, re-appropriation of existing objects and systems, and enabling of new forms of expression in public spaces.

When describing the level of involvement promoted by the projects in question, we identified three distinct levels of audience participation: from unaware, to aware and, finally, extended. In this manner, projects that enable extended levels of participation can reach wider audiences and also engage them in diverse ways, thus potentially creating a greater impact.

When it comes to implementation, the analysis has been divided in software and hardware components in order to understand their respective role in the meaning or subject matter of the work. The projects deal with various types of data, so we focused on the source or origin of the input data, rather than the form of the output, distinguishing between user generated data, wave data, and institutional data. As we are surrounded by vast amounts of data that is constantly generated, visualizing and presenting it in innovative ways helps us to make sense of it, and potentially provides alternative views of ubiquitous, albeit invisible data landscapes, and our roles within them.

In relation to the outputs, we focused mainly on the kinds of elements that the audience actually deals with, in order to understand and experience the work, namely: data visualization in physical space, communication devices, and data transformers. Besides data, hardware can also be a relevant component to the meaning of the work, since many projects are often made out of existing objects, which are modified (hacked) and used, both as a tactic to go beyond the intended uses of existing objects and technologies and as a way to promote an understanding of the various technologies that we are dependent on. The last part of this chapter concerns the different roles the participants can have in the work, as observers, data providers, and users. In addition, we described the selected works in terms of the experiences that they promote; for example, allowing the audience to participate, taking various roles, configure or change certain aspects of cities, communicate in new ways, and provide more possibilities for expression in public space.

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In sum, the projects considered in this section show us diverse ways in which design and art can be used to visualize the many physical infrastructures and invisible processes that influence our behavior. They emphasize their ubiquity and impact in our everyday activities. This analysis of projects also revealed different strategies for empowering citizens by promoting participation and interaction, in order to potentially portray the heterogeneity of discourses that should characterize contemporary urban spaces.

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3. Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape

The practical part of our research was developed as an ongoing project, under the title Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape, which complements the theoretical part of the research presented so far.

The starting point was the aim to explore the main interests that motivated our research, namely the relations between art, technology, and design in the urban context. The project thus focuses on the key topics of this dissertation: smart cities; the Internet of Things, and the relation between physical and digital, as well as public and private, spaces in contemporary cities. In terms of implementation, we relied on the potential of the action tactics described in the second chapter, such as: hacking as a way to creatively overcome the limitations of any system; creation of playful interventions in order to engage participants; emphasizing spontaneity and randomness instead of safety and efficiency; and lastly, the creation of small scale urban interventions in opposition to large scale media spectacles.

3.1 Objectives

The concept behind Tweeting Antennas can be described on the basis of the keywords of the projects that we have previously analyzed: visualization; participation; hacking; alternative communication, and humor. Relating to these keywords, and as a way of exploring the topics of our research through practice, we were guided by three main objectives:

a) Visualization of invisible digital processes through appropriation of existing infrastructures.

b) Transformation of unaware participation into an experimental communication system.34

c) Creation of a playful and unexpected urban intervention.

34 In the second chapter we identified projects that react to various data such as social media activity, images down-

loaded using public WiFi networks, names of private WiFi networks etc. These types of data are produced by

actions of people, who are not aware that they contribute to the artwork, thus making them unaware participants.

In this practical stage of the research, we were particularly interested in the potentials of transforming this unaware

participation into new forms of communication in public space.

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Accordingly, the aim of our research project is to reveal fragments of the invisible digital communication processes that occur within the city and, to this end, appropriate existing elements from the urban surroundings, so as to render the city a more heterogeneous and spontaneous place, through a humorous/playful intervention.

The conceptual motto to the project was the relationship between of “old” and “new media” in urban space, as a subject the project Tweeting Antennas seeks to explore, according to the following dualities.

a) Visible vs. invisible communication processes

Communication in the public spaces of today’s cities is becoming increasingly mediated by digital devices and, in addition, it is often only partially visible. For example, if a person is posting something on social networks while in a public space, the content is visible only to people who are already part of that person’s network, and are online through an according device. Tweeting Antennas thus explores the alternative ways in which invisible communication processes that occur in public spaces can be re-interpreted and visualized through the appropriation of already existing elements from our urban surroundings.

b) Contemporary vs. dead media

As media technologies constantly evolve, both the appearance of cities and the communication that occurs within them change accordingly. We were interested in the effects of those alterations and updates to the physical appearance of cities and to the personal experiences of citizens that inhabit them. The idea was to combine contemporary with obsolete communication systems in order to emphasize those constant transitions that are happening in today’s cities.

c) Digital vs. physical spaces

This project is in continuity with the research on hybrid spaces presented in the first chapter. As previously discussed, physical terrains of contemporary cities are intertwined with digital networks, together forming hybrid urban spaces. By combining physical objects and digital processes, Tweeting Antennas reveals those hybrid spaces on a local scale, and in real time.

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In order to accomplish the objectives presented above, two key factors were taken into account in terms of the project’s concept development:

a) Approaching the current trend of embedding vast arrays of physical objects with sensors and actuators, which are connected to the Internet through wired and wireless networks — a concept best known as the Internet of Things. In particular, we are interested in investigating how ubiquitous connected devices can influence the functioning and the appearance of future cities, as well as the personal experiences of its inhabitants.

b) Exploring specific sites and landscapes, and in this particular case, the historical part of the city of Lisbon — a city built on many hills. In this characteristic cityscape, the buildings are usually not very high, hence the rooftops are easily accessible and very visible, as well as the obsolete antennas that pervade them.

According to this idea, the project seeks to take advantage of the existing objects and structures that are characteristic of the cityscape of Lisbon, namely, its emblematic rooftop antennas. The majority of these are broadcast television receivers, which became obsolete with the emergence of cable and digital television. They can now be seen as monuments to broadcast television, which in this age and particular location could be considered a dead media.

Tweeting Antennas thus appropriates rooftop antennas, as obsolete communication structures in the context of contemporary cities and the Internet of Things. It repurposes them by enabling them to receive and send information again in a new and unexpected way. In this manner, it then renders visible fragments of digital media communication in physical space and in real time, through the kinetic motion of the antennas.

3.2 Design methodology

3.2.1 Introduction

Three essential aspects were taken into account throughout the implementation and gradual optimization of the project: collaboration, experimentation, and exhibition. We will begin by discussing their importance and their contribution to our project.

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3.2.1.1 Collaboration

We value collaboration since we believe it can render the project development process more productive, not only in terms of ideation but also in terms of testing the practical implementation of ideas and evaluating their feasibility. Since the first drafts of the project’s concept, it was clear to us that transforming this idea into a working prototype in a given timeframe would require collaboration, namely with students or professionals with a background in electrical engineering or computer programming. To this end, we contacted student associations, from the Technical University of Lisbon (Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa), providing the description of the project and an explanation of the skills needed. This is how we got in contact with Francisco Salgado, a student of Electrical and Computer Engineering35, who became a collaborator. This collaboration was meaningful and productive for both sides. While we were able to implement a functional prototype, which would not be possible without his expertise, our collaborator benefited from the experience of working in a new way, in terms of the project’s concept and development, and in a new environment outside the common context of engineering projects. The collaboration continued throughout all the iterations36 of the project, and in our ongoing work.

3.2.1.2 Experimentation

Appropriate tools and space for prototyping and experimentation are crucial for the realization of these types of projects, and selecting them requires experimentation. In order to obtain satisfying results, we had to do a number of experiments with both hardware and software. In order to do this we relied on the support of Fab Lab37 at the Faculty of Fine Arts, where we were able to use the space and find the tools needed for prototyping and implementation, such as a 3d Printer, a CNC mill, and soldering equipment, etc. Other than space and equipment, the value of project development in the Fab Lab environment lies in the access to the expertise of the staff, whose insights proved to be of great importance for this project.

35 Francisco comes from Instituto Superior Técnico and is a member of NEEC IST (Núcleo de Estudantes de Eletro-

tecnia e Computadores do Instituto Superior Técnico).

36 We have developed three working prototypes that will be discussed in detail in part 3 of this chapter.

37 Fab Lab (Fabrication Laboratory) is a workshop for digital fabrication and prototyping at the Faculty of Fine-Arts,

University of Lisbon (Belas-Artes, ULisboa).

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3.2.1.3 Exhibitions and presentations

When it comes to the development of a collaborative and experimental project such as Tweeting Antennas, one aspect deserving our attention was the exhibition and presentation of the results in order to observe how people deal with it, the meaning they attribute to it, and how the presentation and implementation of the project can be optimized. This process allowed us test and obtained feedback that contributed to improve the next iterations of the project.

Tweeting Antennas is a work in progress and, thus far, three prototypes have been developed and exhibited. The first prototype was exhibited as part of the exhibition of students from the Masters in Communication Design and New Media, in Lisbon. The second prototype was built for the 1st edition of Digital Art and New Media festival PLUNC in Almada, Portugal. The third prototype was presented and exhibited in Bergamo, Italy, as part of xCoAx, 4th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X.

Each of the mentioned events was of a different type (student exhibition, art festival, and conference with an associated exhibition), which implied a different selection process as well as different kinds of audiences — from specific communities of students, artists, academics and researchers, to a wider public attending these events. Also, each time the project was presented to the public it had to be adapted to the given context, considering the specific constraints and possibilities of the space where it was presented as a site-specific installation.

Participation in these events gave us the possibility of getting valuable feedback from organizers, members of scientific committees and other participants, as well as to observe the reactions of different audiences. The feedback obtained, and the adaptation to different contexts, positively influenced the further developments and optimizations of the project.

3.2.2 Main stages of the project development

3.2.2.1 Input

We decided to use Twitter as a data source; or more specifically, geo-located tweets that are fetched in real time in a physical proximity to the installation site. Twitter was chosen for several reasons: it is one of the most common channels for the immediate distribution of information today, and it is widely used from mobile devices. This meant that we

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could visualize tweets from people who are in public spaces surrounding the installation, taking into account that Twitter is used by citizens, governments, businesses, and media, presenting one of the most popular contemporary communication platforms. Finally, the limitation to 140 characters of a single tweet made their translation into motion feasible and faster.

3.2.2.2 Translation

In order to translate tweets into movements that would make sense (considering different possibilities of encoding the information), we had to find a way to represent each character in a tweet as a unique sign that would be translated into another code. So we opted for the position of the antennas, resorting to the flag semaphore system — a telegraphy system for visually conveying messages over distance, which normally includes a person holding two flags, one in each hand (Fig 1). Therefore, when the flags are in fixed positions they represent a single character in the tweet message. TV antennas, in combination with an even older communication system, such as flag semaphore dating from the 19th century, and contemporary communication platforms such as Twitter, aim to establish connections between contemporary and obsolete communication technologies, emphasizing their constant evolution and transformation.

Fig. 1 Flag semaphore signals chart for the letters of the English alphabet 38

38 Image based on the diagrams retrieved from http://www.anbg.gov.au/flags/semaphore.html and modified into a

chart from the individual drawings by Denelson83 – image downloaded from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

File:Semaphore_Alpha.svg

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3.2.2.3 Output

The final output is a system of two antennas connected to stepper motors and an Arduino controller that translates each character of the geo-located tweets from the radius of 200 meters into the corresponding position of the flag semaphore code. With the aid of a program written in Processing, each tweet is broken into a string of characters that are then translated into positions, according to which the Arduino controls the motors (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Technical realization

Software

Tweets were fetched using a Twitter API and OAuthp5 library39 for Processing. For communication between Processing and Arduino, we used Firmata firmware and Arduino library for Processing.

Hardware

In different versions we used PC laptops or Mac mini computers. The basic hardware components used in each of developed prototypes were an Arduino controller with two Pololu A4988 stepper motor driver carriers, which were controlling two Nema 17 stepper motors. In addition, for power and cooling of stepper drivers we used a power supply and a processor cooler from an old computer. As the other components differ between versions, they will be discussed in the next section, including the details of how each prototype was built.

39 Oauthp5 library was developed by New York Times R&D Lab, and can be downloaded at https://github.com/

nytlabs/oauthp5

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3.2.3 Results

The installation was initially imagined as a site-specific urban intervention. However, due to constraints in finding a site and corresponding permissions, the developed prototypes have been exhibited and presented in an exhibition format and gallery setting. We also wanted to make the project available for a wider community, to be explored and reshaped at will. Accordingly, the source code for Tweeting Antennas is available on Github40, which enables anyone to reuse and adapt it, meaning that the project enables extended participation.41

3.2.3.1 Prototype 1

The first prototype was developed during the first year of the Master’s course42 and exhibited at Fabrica Features in Lisbon, in June 201543 (Fig. 3 and 4).

Fig. 3 Prototype 1 Fig. 4 Prototype 1

In this first version, the antennas were directly attached to the motors and supported by a metal tripod stand. Antennas were connected to the motor with a special pulley, which is usually used for 3d printers and CNC machines. The motors were attached to tripod

40 Github is an online version control and collaboration platform. Source code for the project can be downloaded at

https://github.com/d3rezz/TweetingAntennas-Plunc2015

41 In chapter three, we defined extended participation as the invitation to recreate and adapt any project by sharing its

code and building instructions, thereby potentially transforming the role of a user into the one of a producer.

42 The project was developed in the Project and Laboratory subjects of the Masters, under the supervision of profes-

sors Luísa Ribas, Sofia Gonçalves, and Miguel Cardoso.

43 Exhibition No Longer a Digital Revolution, by first year students of the Masters in Communication Design and

New Media of the Faculty of Fine-Arts, University of Lisbon (Belas-Artes, ULisboa). For more information on the

exhibition visit http://fbaul-dcnm.pt/wp/?p =711

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stands using a custom 3d printed piece. Because of the limitations in the strength of the motor, we had to cut the antennas until they had about 50 cm of length. For visibility in the dark, and as a reference to the colors of the flag semaphore, which are usually red and yellow, we embedded LED lights with appropriate colors into the ends of shorter poles of the antennas. In addition to this prototype, we included a screen that was displaying the letters which were translated by the antennas. When there were no tweets, antennas were in starting positions, and animation resembling TV static noise was displayed on the screen.

3.2.3.2 Prototype 2

The second prototype was produced for the New Media and Digital Art Festival PLUNC in Lisbon, in September 201544. While the first prototype was intended to be a site-specific installation by fetching and broadcasting geo-located tweets posted within a parameter of 200 meters, in the second prototype, we also took advantage of the name of the festival, and modified the code so that the piece reacted to any tweet containing the keyword “plunc”, in addition to the geo-located tweets. As this prototype was displayed outdoors, the screen was not included in the installation. In order to provide a possibility for decoding the messages, we placed a poster with flag semaphore and corresponding letters next to the installation.

For the second version, a mechanism was also built out of two pairs of cogs cut out of MDF boards using a CNC Router. A small cog was connected to the motor, while a larger cog was fixed to the antenna. In order to achieve rotation, a skateboard bearing and truck were placed in the middle of the large cog (Fig 5). With this additional mechanism we were able to overcome the previous limitations of the motor strength, and use the antennas in their full size. In addition, a wooden construction was put together in order to support the piece and to enable the use of larger antennas (Fig 6).

The piece was installed on the terrace of Casa da Cerca (Contemporary Art Center of Almada) during the three days of the festival (Fig. 7). In the context of the PLUNC festival, the piece was visible from two opposite points of the Tagus River. Other than viewing the piece directly in Casa da Cerca in Almada (south bank of the Tagus River), the observers had the opportunity to view the piece remotely from the Cais do Sodré

44 PLUNC is an international festival organized in the scope of the Digital Media of the UT Austin | Portugal partner-

ship. For more information about the second prototype visit http://plunc.pt/2015/artistas/ivan-vuksanov/

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terminal (north bank of the Tagus River) in Lisbon, through a standing telescope, thus reinforcing the idea of surveillance through obsolete media (Fig. 8). In addition to the exhibition, the project was presented in the second edition of PLUNC Transtalks.45

Fig. 5 Mechanism for rotation Fig. 6 Rendering of the supporting structure

Fig. 7 Prototype 2 — Terrace of Casa da Cerca Fig. 8 Telescope in Cais do Sodré terminal

3.2.3.3 Prototype 3

The third prototype was exhibited at xCoAx, 4th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X, which took place in July 2016 at Gamec, Bergamo, Italy.46 It was an adaptation of the second prototype for the exhibition in the gallery space. In order to better fit the given context, we disposed of the heavy wooden structure that was supporting the outdoor version (the second prototype), and instead opted for a more clean and simple solution. In this version, the antennas were attached directly to the

45 Transtalks are events where artists present their work inside the boat while it is crossing the river. http://plunc.

pt/2015/en/talks/transtalks-2/

46 For more information about the conference, and the third prototype visit http://2016.xcoax.org/#exhibits; Confer-

ence proceedings can be downloaded at http://2016.xcoax.org/xcoax2016.pdf

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wall using aluminum shelf holders, with the electronics placed farther away from the antennas. By making all of the supporting elements more discrete47, we emphasized the main components of the installation (i.e., the antennas and the messages they deliver).

Fig. 9 Prototype 3 – GAMeC - Galleria D’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo

We continued with the same concept of displaying nearby tweets, fetched through geo-location filter and tweets using a keyword, which in this case was “xcoax” – the name of the conference. In this version, the radius was increased from 200 meters to 2 kilometers, because after the initial tests, 200 meters did not provide us with enough data, meaning the installation was predominantly static. As an extension to this third prototype, we created a PHP script which ran in the browser on the same computer and used the same Twitter API in order to fetch tweets from the given location with a selected keyword; a database would then store the tweets.

In that manner, other than just displaying tweets through the movement of the antennas, we were able to store the tweets that were fetched during the exhibition for further analyses and future projects. In addition, a research paper describing the theoretical foundation and details of implementation of the project was presented at the conference.

47 The supporting beam was painted white to better blend with the wall where it was attached, and all the electronics

were hidden in a box built out of MDF boards and painted white.

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3.3 Conclusion

The initial motivation for Tweeting Antennas was the creation of a site-specific urban intervention. However, as we developed the first prototype, we came to the conclusion that the piece could work both as an urban installation (a more unexpected and visible event) as well as a site-specific installation that, even if confined to a gallery setting, due to its proximity, the audience felt more compelled to influence by tweeting.

The creation of the first prototype was significant in proving its potential to be displayed in an exhibition context, leading us to participate in the PLUNC festival48 for which the second prototype was developed. In this context, the installation was exhibited on the terrace of the museum, thus bringing us closer to the initial ideas for the creation of an outdoor urban intervention with more visibility, but also benefitting from the contextual proximity of the audience. The development of each prototype was enabled by the previous, being that each version explored a slightly different direction and context. For example, the transition from first to second prototype meant scaling it up, and adapting it for outdoor conditions (i.e. protecting the wooden parts with waterproof varnish and building the more stable supporting structure). The transition from second to third prototype required the piece to be indoors, which meant that we had to find the way to make the overall installation coherent with the exhibition setting.

In that respect, the creation of these three prototypes helped us better understand the different contexts in which the project can be implemented. In terms of contextual information and presentation setting, we realized that there was no need for presenting the tweets on screen (as in the 1st version), but rather invested in optimizing the movement of the antennas, giving more autonomy to the piece and bringing its scale closer to that of common rooftop antennas. In this manner, the physical presence of the piece contrasts with the ephemeral and encrypted nature of the message it transmits, thus questioning flows of information and their potential reach.

Tweeting Antennas was conceived as an urban, site-specific installation that seeks to emphasize the ubiquity of digital technology in an urban environment. It aims to reveal and incite reflection on the ways in which invisible layers of digital information change both our personal experience and the physical appearance of today’s cities.

48 The documentation of the first prototype was sent to the organizers of PLUNC festival, which led to the develop-

ment of the second prototype specifically for the context of that festival.

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The project transforms messages one sends using social media (e.g., global messages that remain in the delocalized cloud), into local and ephemeral events. It encodes this information, rendering it visible yet encrypted49, thereby anticipating the necessity of alternative means of communication in future cities where surveillance is omnipresent. At the same time, the piece requires participation even if the participants are usually unaware of their active role, or of the potential impact of the flows of information they help create.

In this manner, the installation was intended as a metaphor for the data gathering processes that currently occur within the city, out of sight from the average citizen. By appropriating dead media, the project also tries to create a play of contrasts from visible to invisible communication processes, from contemporary to dead or forgotten media, and from digital to physical environments.

49 We assume that the semaphore code is not immediately legible to the common citizen, although it can be perceived

as a code (a codified message).

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Conclusion This dissertation was motivated by an interest to explore the relationship between art, technology, and design in the urban context. We recognized how contemporary cities are not only physical places but also hybrid spaces, where the flow of digital information influences the experiences and interactions that occur within them. Our aim was to investigate the various ways in which art and design can be used in this context, that is, to explore, visualize, and alter these emerging hybrid spaces. In order to gain a more complete understanding of the topics of interest, we approached the subjects both theoretically and through practical exploration, including the creation of three working prototypes.

Discussion of results

The study began by addressing two two contemporary technological phenomena; namely, smart cities and the Internet of Things, focusing on the potential issues they raise. We observed how, while these particular technological advancements promise to make cities safer, more efficient, and organized, they may contribute to a decline in privacy, heterogeneity, and spontaneity in the urban environment. Another issue relating to smart cities is that, in the mainstream future scenarios presented by key players in the industry, people are usually treated as consumers or users of services provided by private businesses, rather than citizens sharing common public spaces.

In this context, art and design were identified as factors that have the potential to enable new forms of communication, interaction, and participation, thus enabling more diverse, heterogeneous, and unpredictable cities, where people can become active participants in public spaces. Following the overview of the role of new media art in the contemporary city, we discussed tactics used by artists working in this context, namely, hacking as a means to creatively overcome limitations of any system; the creation of humorous and playful situations that simultaneously emphasize important, often political issues; emphasizing spontaneity and randomness in opposition to predictability and efficiency; and finally, a focus on local and small-scale interventions, in contrast with generic, large scale media spectacles that are often present in contemporary urban surroundings.

Based on these tactics as criteria for selection, we analyzed twenty eight art projects, according to their concepts, specific implementation, and resulting experience. The analysis helped us understand the potential of art projects in the urban context, as they propose the visualization of invisible processes, provide alternative communication and

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navigation possibilities, and promote activism and participation. Within this context, we recognize two main possibilities of art projects: raising awareness of ubiquitous digital and network technologies, and the creation of tools and prototypes that emphasize heterogeneity, privacy, and serendipity.

In addition to the theoretical contextualization and analysis of art projects, and with the aim of exploring the topics of our research through practice, we created a project titled Tweeting Antennas: (Un)dead Media in the Urban Landscape. This project proposes to visualize the invisible digital processes that occur in public spaces through the appropriation of existing infrastructures. It comprises two modified rooftop antennas that translate the characters of nearby geo-located tweets into signs of a flag semaphore system through kinetic motion. In chapter three, we present the details of the concept, as well as the implementation of the three prototypes developed thus far, including the role of collaboration, experimentation, and exhibition throughout this process.

In both the theoretical and practical parts of our research, the initial motivations were concerned with alterations of cities through site specific urban interventions, with the potential for shifting the roles of people from mere consumers of services into participants in public spaces. However, as we went deeper into the subject, the focus shifted towards the exploration and visualization of the invisible layers of cities that emerge with the ubiquity of digital and network technologies. This process resulted in a broader scope of research, as we continued to investigate urban art interventions while expanding the scope of our study to the topic of invisible urban layers. In this manner, some of the art projects that are presented in the second chapter are implemented in the urban environment, while other projects explore and visualize the emerging layers of ubiquitous digital information and present it in the contexts of exhibitions, conferences, and art festivals. Similarly, the project, Tweeting Antennas, was initiated as an unexpected and playful urban intervention conceived for the rooftops of the historical part of the city of Lisbon. However, after displaying the project in exhibitions and festivals in both indoor and outdoor environments, we concluded that it has the potential to be implemented in both an urban and gallery context.

This study sought to contribute to an understanding of the potential of art, technology, and design in the urban context, primarily, by providing an overview of the relation between digital communication technologies and cities, while identifying some of the issues that smart cities and the Internet of Things might bring up. In addition, our research seeks to point out the way in which these issues can be approached practically, namely through

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art projects and urban interventions. Lastly, we hope that the details of the methodology and implementation of the practical part of this research can potentially aid students and professionals exploring similar topics through practice.

Limitations and directions for future research

In order to understand the ways in which art and design projects can positively alter cities, we had to cover many topics, such as networks, participation, public and private spaces, and ubiquitous computing, etc. We acknowledge that cities, technology, and art are complex topics, making the scope of this study very broad. As such, it runs the risk of limiting a more in depth discussion of the contextual aspect of the projects analyzed. In order to limit the length of this dissertation, we chose to circumscribe the discussion and analysis of projects to the aspects that more immediately relate to the aims of our project.

The practical part of the research was initiated as a project of an urban intervention. However, to implement it in a roof, as initially planned, proved to be quite difficult, mainly because of safety issues and weather conditions. Technical and financial limitations were also considered, since implementing the project in a public space would require additional equipment, safety measures and additional costs.

Another aspect that deserved our attention was the fact that each functional prototype was presented for a relatively short time, ranging from three days to one week. In order to test and fix all the technical issues, and create an improved version, we would need more time to experiment with the prototypes.

Consequently, in terms of future developments, we intend to continue this research through practice, by creating a new prototype that can be implemented in a public space as an urban intervention with a longer duration.

Another direction we seek to explore in greater detail is that of the invisible landscapes created by social media. In addition to the third prototype of Tweeting Antennas, we implemented a PHP script that stores tweets from Lisbon into a database; the next step consists in analyzing and visualizing the content of the tweets. Depending on the results of these analyses, we could create different broadcast units using the same data, but displaying it in a different manner with various levels of abstraction of the output.

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Future research also aims at implementing decoders that would allow people to extract meaning from the codified messages that the antennas are displaying. We believe that this would emphasize the communicative potential of the work, rather than the abstract and poetic aspects of the movement, as is currently the case.

This study responds to the idea that, as cities are constantly changing and are influenced by technological advancements, the importance of studying the relationship between people and digital technologies in urban surroundings is increasing. We believe that approaching these topics through practice, experimentation, prototyping, and collaboration, can contribute to the creation of future cities that are more heterogeneous, participatory, and unpredictable.

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Descriptions of the Projects AnalyzedAs retrieved from their websites.

01 False PositiveMark Shepard and Moritz Stefaner, 2015 http://false-positive.net/

False Positive deploys text messaging, stealth infrastructure, street intervention, and data visualization to enact a surveillance conspiracy engaging the public in an intimate, techno-political conversation with the mobile technologies on which they depend. Engaging the subtle processes by which personal data can be exploited, and generating “data-portraits” based on social and spatial associations inferred from this data, the project probes the gray areas of both personal consent and statistical probability where a speculative association is established when there is in fact none.

02 GraffitiWriterIAA — Institute for Applied Autonomy, 2000 http://hosting.zkm.de/mediaarts2003/IAA

GraffitiWriter is a tele-operated field programable robot which employs a custom built array of spray cans to write linear text messages on the ground at a rate of 15 kilometers per hour. The printing process is similar to that of a dot matrix printer. GraffitiWriter can be deployed in any highly controlled space or public event from a remote location.

03 Hello Lamp Post Pan Studios and FutureEverything, 2013 http://panstudio.co.uk/project/hello-lamp-post/

Interactive urban experiment, Hello Lamp Post, saw street furniture, objects and landmarks across Singapore come to life and chat to passersby. There were 15,000 conversations with almost 700 objects over the festival week. This playful intervention gave passers by the opportunity to interact with the city in new ways, rediscover their local environment, share memories of their city, and uncover the stories that other people leave behind.

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04 L.A.S.E.R Tag SystemG.R.L. (Graffiti Research Lab), 2006 http://www.graffitiresearchlab.com/blog/projects/laser-tag/

The Mobile Broadcast Unit with L.A.S.E.R Tag System (LTS) is the latest Open Source, Weapon of Mass Defacement developed by the Graffiti Research Lab in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab. NYC! This tactical tool allows any citizen, graff writer, artist or protester to use a projector, camera and laser to write, in real-time, on large-scale surfaces and structures from a distance of 100’s of meters away. Citizens can post their art, messages and propaganda on a scale previously monopolized by advertisers, governments, major media, and other cultural tyrants.

05 Dead DropsAram Bartholl, 2010 https://deaddrops.com/

‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. Everyone is invited to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is open to participation.

6 Opera Calling!Mediengruppe Bitnik, 2007 https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/o/

Opera Calling was an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of audio bugs placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person individually.

07 The Architecture of RadioRichard Vijgen, 2015 http://www.architectureofradio.com/

The Architecture of Radio is a site-specific iPad application that visualizes this network of networks (cell towers, wifi routers, communication, navigation and observation

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satellites and their signals) by reversing the ambient nature of the infosphere; hiding the visible while revealing the invisible technological landscape we interact with through our devices.

08 iSeeIAA — Institute for Applied Autonomy, 2001 – 2003http://hosting.zkm.de/ctrlspace/e/texts/24?print-friendly=true

iSee is a web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments. With iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras (“paths of least surveillance”) allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being “caught on tape” by unregulated security monitors.

09 Immaterials: Light painting WiFiTimo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen, 2011http://www.yourban.no/2011/02/22/immaterials-light-painting-wifi/

The city is filled with an invisible landscape of networks that is becoming an interwoven part of daily life. WiFi networks and increasingly sophisticated mobile phones are starting to influence how urban environments are experienced and understood. We want to explore and reveal what the immaterial terrain of WiFi looks like and how it relates to the city.

10 Surveillance Chess!Mediengruppe Bitnik, 2012https://chess.bitnik.org/about.html

Surveillance Chess is an art performance for a single recipient: the CCTV operator in his control room. Before the performance begins he has total power over his system: he is the allseeing observer of the public space in front of his camera. Until !Mediengruppe Bitnik obtains access to his system takes over. But the invitation the play chess makes it clear that the unfriendly takeover is intended to be friendly: The game establishes equality between observer and observed. And the otherwise one-directional surveillance system suddenly becomes a communication channel.

11 The Rhythm of CityVarvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2011 http://www.varvarag.info/the-rhythm-of-city/

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The Rhythm of City is an art piece that points out an innovative and artistic way for applying geo-located social data as a score. At the same time, the data represents a city’s pace of life. The goal is to metaphorically describe locations by extracting geo-tagged content of Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and translating it into the rhythm of a physical metronome in real time. In short, a metronome represents a city. The installation consists of 10 modified metronomes whose rhythms correspond to the selected cities’ digital pace of life. The audience is given a chance to discover and experience an alternative way of perceiving different locations through a continuous performance of 10 metronomes.

12 Nearest Costco, Monument or SatelliteDaniel Jollife, 2013-14http://www.danieljolliffe.ca/ncms/ncms.htm

Nearest Costco, Monument or Satellite is a networked sculpture that accurately points to the nearest Costco, monument or orbiting GPS satellite(s). As an artwork it explores how we form our sense of of place in the contemporary environment. In practice, fourteen networked pointer sculptures are directed by a central control unit to accurately point out the nearest Costco, local monument, or individual orbiting GPS satellites.

13 The Sentient City Survival KitMark Shepard, 2008 http://survival.sentientcity.net/info.html

The Sentient City Survival Kit probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments. The project consists of a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city. The project includes four artifacts: Serendipitor, CCD-me-not Umbrella, Under(a)ware, and Ad-hoc Travel Mug.

14 The ArtvertiserJulian Oliver, Damian Stewart and Arturo Castro, 2008 http://theartvertiser.com/

The Artvertiser is a software platform for replacing billboard advertisements with art in real-time. It works by teaching computers to ‘recognise’ individual advertisements so they can be easily replaced with alternative content, like images and video. Rather than refering to this as a form of Augmented Reality technology, we consider The Artvertiser an example of Improved Reality.

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15 NewstweekJulian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, 2011 http://newstweek.com/overview

Newstweek is a device for manipulating news read by other people on wireless hotspots. Built into a small and innocuous wall plug, the Newstweek device appears part of the local infrastructure, allowing writers to remotely edit news read on wireless devices without the awareness of their users.

16 SMSlingshotVR/URBAN, 2010http://www.vrurban.org/smslingshot.html

The SMSlingshot is an autonom working device, equipped with an ultra-high frequency radio, hacked arduino board, laser and batteries. Text messages can be typed on a phone-sized wooden keypad which is integrated in the also wooden slingshot. After the message is finished, the user can aim on a media facade and send/shoot the message straight to the targeted point. It will then appear as a colored splash with the message written within. The text message will also be real-time twittered - just in case.

17 Binoculars to... Binoculars from...Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2013http://www.varvarag.info/binoculars/

Binoculars to… Binoculars from… is an installation which is able to connect to a number of cities in an extraordinary way. When you look through the binoculars, instead of seeing the scene physically in front of them, you are transported to a different site. This opening of a real-time window into another location is not unidirectional: when looking into the binoculars, your eye is captured and shown on an urban screen at the observed place. Hence, the inhabitants of the other, connected city will see the huge-scale, searching eye looking at them.

18 PoliceState Jonah Brucker-Cohen, 2003 http://www.coin-operated.com/2010/05/03/policestate-2003/

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PoliceState is a Carnivore client that attempts to reverse the surveillance role of law enforcement into a subservient one for the data being gathered. The client consists of a fleet of 20 radio controlled police vehicles that are all simultaneously controlled by data coming into the main client. The client looks for packet information relating to domestic US terrorism. Once found, the text is then assigned to an active police radio code, translated to its binary equivalent, and sent to the array of police cars as a movement sequence. In effect, the data being “snooped” by the authorities is the same data used to control the police vehicles. Thus the police become puppets of their own surveillance. This signifies a reversal of the control of information appropriated by police by using the same information to control them.

19 One Free MinuteDaniel Jolliffe, 2005-2009http://www.danieljolliffe.ca/ofm/ofm.htm

The principal intent of One Free Minute is to investigate how communication in public space has been, and can be, altered by technology. Whereas cellular phone technology has increasingly created mobile private spaces in the public realm, metering human interaction in billed by the minute increments, One Free Minute seeks to return the public soundscape to the voices of its callers.

20 Attachment David Colombini, 2014 http://www.davidcolombini.com/attachment.html

Attachment is a poetic machine that allows you to send messages, images, or videos into the air using a biodegradable balloon with intention to rediscover expectation, random and the unexpected, uncommon in the current forms of communication.

21 Take a Bullet for this CityLuke DuBois, 2014http://lukedubois.com/

Take a Bullet for This City is a proof-of-concept for a piece that could serve New Orleans, or any community plagued by gun violence. A simple computer-driven mechanism pulls the trigger of a gun loaded with blanks in response to a shooting in the city, ejecting a spent cartridge into a vitrine that accumulates empty bullets. The noise and flash of the

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gun provides an alarm that is itself meant to alarm; the vitrine resembles a wishing well, only it represents wishes taken away, not granted. This piece is hard data in both senses of the word: it is based on facts; facts that are, by their very nature, intended to hurt us.

22 Foxes Like Beacons Jochen Maria Weber, 2015http://stupidmessy.net/

Foxes Like Beacons is an exploratory project using open data of public radio stations with inexpensive, low-power signal detection in order to create an open positioning system. Today satellite based GPS enable and augment uncountable everyday processes, ranging from logistics to fitness trackers and even intimate dating applications. These proprietary systems are mostly invisibly controlled and curated by governments, military and economic actors. Since GPS ubiquitously affect our interactions and experiences with our environment, economy and privacy, Foxes Like Beacons questions this present model, thus opening up space for speculations about alternative navigation systems and new models for interaction.

23 Default to Public Jens Wunderling, 2008 http://jenswunderling.com/works/default-to-public/

Default to Public is a project dealing with the discrepancy between peopleʼs feeling of privacy on the web and the physical world. It consists of an ongoing series of objects and interventions linking the physical world to the online world in unexpected and narrative ways to create awareness for self-exposure. All works follow a simple, yet powerful principle: Information from the twitter network (standing for information on the web) are displayed in another public environment, the documentation of this process is fed back into the digital public sphere and the authors of the information are notified of that abduction.

24 L.S.D. Light to Sound DeviceBenjamin Gaulon, 2011 http://www.recyclism.com/lsd.php

L.S.D invites its users to engage in a new perception of their daily environment. L.S.D feeds on light via two LDR (light depending resistor) mounted on a suction cup, allowing

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the sensors to be mounted on any screen surface. An analogue synthesizer converts the light input to sound waves. This device can be used in many different configurations and feeds from any light sources. Even if L.S.D can be controlled by any light source, its design is aimed at screen reading/listening.

25 Föhnseher (Seer of Warm Winds)Julian Oliver, 2011 https://julianoliver.com/foehnseher/

Modified Sanyo television, software, hardware.Föhnseher rises from the scrap heap of analog TV. Unlike other televisions, Föhnseher captures and displays images downloaded by people on surrounding local wireless networks. Other people’s phones, laptops and tablet computers all become broadcast stations for this device, replacing the forgotten television towers of old.

26 WiFipediaVarvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, 2015http://www.varvarag.info/wifipedia/

The most interesting is the undesigned use of technology. People tend to personalise their WiFis, they try to be creative, communicate with the neighbours, or express their opinion (usually politically). Hence, the 32-character-space for naming a WiFi network, has become in away a location-specific mini Twitter. In other words, we are talking about the age of bite-sized self-expression. Our aim is to relate to this phenomenon artistically by revealing the names of networks and memorizing their location. The idea is to make sense of novel communication and create a big picture of citizens’ voices and reveal digital landscape of city.

27 Immaterials: Satelite LampsTimo Arnall, Einar Sneve Martinussen and Jørn Knutsen, 2014http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.1/inventio/martinussen-et-al/Satellite Lamps is a project about using design to investigate and reveal one of the fundamental constructs of the networked city—the Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS is made up of a network of satellites that provide real-time location information to the devices in our pockets. As GPS has moved from specialized navigation devices to smartphones over the last 10 years, it has become an essential yet invisible part of everyday urban life.

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28 UTVRob Duarte, 2009 http://robduarte.com/portfolio/utv/

UTV is the transposition of our Internet identities from Twitter feeds to an over-the-air TV broadcast. The UTV installation begins with an open presentation of the technology behind the television broadcast. A laptop computer connects to a display, which shows the real-time workings of the scripts and patches that gather Twitter feeds from people in the Chicago area. A camcorder then converts the image into a ready-for-TV signal and finally leads to a UHF transmitter that broadcasts the content to any television sets in the area. The corkboard above this makeshift TV station contains my notes, sketches and observations about the technical process, comparisons between the sociopolitical histories of Internet and broadcast TV media, and the re-appropriation of the obsolete medium of analog TV for the purposes of broadcasting local community-produced content.