A Brief History of Mapping

A brief history of maps with some great map links!

http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/map/h_map/h_map.htm

An explanation of the Cartesian Co-ordinate system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system

Book: Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and other Spatial Practices

Manifestos

Some examples, far out and not:

Joseph Beuys, German conceptual artist: http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/jbeuys-manifesto.html

Fluxus manifesto: http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/index.html

White Manifesto by Lucio Fontana, "We are continuing the evolution of art."

The Italian Futurists wrote many manifestos. They wrote manifestos on everything from art to clothing. http://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/

The Manifesto Project
http://www.1000manifestos.com/

You'll love this one: The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, Thomas Marinetti 1905 http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html

The Situationist Manifesto http://www.infopool.org.uk/6003.html

And this is the manifesto that will help you with the entire assignment and final project The Manifesto of Possibilities http://wiki.bbk.ac.uk/Buildingcultures/index.php/Manifesto_of_Possibilities

History of all assignments and readings as of 5/16

Class Assignments:


Invisible City 
Junaio/Zooburst test
Writing response to neighborhood walk
Following
Psycho-geographic sound walks on Lancaster Avenue/Powelton using Hipcast, Zooburst or other accessible via mobile phone
Put Something Here


Readings:


Two chapters from Mobile Interface Theory

The Pathways of Locative Media

http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/introduction/

Mapping and Representations of Space

http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/ch-2/

RootShock:  Chapter 3 Urban Renewal…  Chapter 4 Means Negro Removal

Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography

Chapter 3: Perception, Place, Knowing, Memory, Imagination; Chapter 5 Articulating Emplaced Knowledge PDFs

Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity on library website

Critical Vehicles, Krzystof Wodizcko on http://hanaiverson.com/pdf/iversonh_07_081_441_01_wodiczko_critical.pdf

Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krystof Wodiczko by Patricia C. Phillips on libaray web site under Phillips

Meeting 5/16 at Reed's cafe

Moving out of the classroom and into Reed's cafe, located at 38th Street and Lancaster today.  We meet there at 9:00 am.

Moblogging

To record an audio moblog, dial: (512) 827-0431 .

When prompted, enter your PIN: 181-197-551 .

Your options will be: Record and Publish, orRecord and Not Publish.

If you select Record and Publish, you will be prompted for your Blog Number or Podcast Number. Your Numbers are listed for you in the table below: 1,133

Put Something Here

Public/Private: Put Something Here

Site-specific art carries the potential to redefine the intention of public place.

Put Something Here, an exercise which is purposely oblique, teases out a variety

of responses, all related to issues brought forward by the insertion of “something,”

or intrusion into public space. Students are asked to “put something here” to

which they usually respond, “What is the something and where do we put it?”

In reply we present Krzysztof Wodizcko’s “Alien Staff,” a pole with a mini

video screen on the top and a loudspeaker in the middle that plays a video

projection of the person carrying the staff. Wodizcko designed the Alien Staff in

response to the dilemma of the outsider, the immigrant who is invisible (and also

silent) as he moves through public territory. The Alien Staff is meant to make the

bearer (the alien) visible by creating a double presence, one in “media” and one in

“life,” inviting a new perception of a stranger as imagined (on screen) or as

experienced (real life) (Wodizcko 1999, p.104). In examining projects of this

nature, we are attempting to bring forward how engaging new media technologies

offer new conceptions of place as a space of resistance, interference, and

enunciation in opposition to those augmentations of surveillance and control they

also enable (Myers, 2006).

One project, titled Palimpsest FM, consisted of a device that houses a

hidden speaker which plays back the sounds of the same spot from an earlier

time, anywhere from thirty seconds to a day before. The replayed recording serves

as an audio version of a palimpsest, a proof of what had been there before. Using

sound as her medium, the student created a nearly seamless overlapping of past

and present where the sounds of today cannot be discerned from the sounds of

the past. Like a palimpsest, it will be unclear where the past ends and the present

begins.

Bachelard speaks of centering oneself in stable surroundings, but if your

surroundings are constantly in flux (and also incidentally not just your

surroundings) like they are in New York, it is no wonder a sense of ontological

anxiety can result. New York City has often been described as a place where the

physical environment changes so quickly that rebuilding without being able to

erase what came before it becomes very obvious to anyone who has lived there

long enough to call New York their home. “You’ve become a New Yorker once

you have the urge to point out a place and say, “that used to be . . .” The “that

used to be . . .” that every New Yorker expresses is part of the inerasable past that

is being built over, it is an expression of memory of a piece of their home and

consequently a piece of their identities that is gone but not forgotten. It is

embodied in the senses. The urge to tell others what used to be is an attempt to

reassert one’s identity and the home they had carved out of the city. This project

serves as another means of describing the “that used to be.” But instead of

subjectively telling the narrative of one person’s New York, it objectively captures

what the place witnessed. The audio palimpsest played back in this project serves

as a kind of memorial of what used to be in the immediate past. It stands to

commemorate the same everyday New York that its citizens quietly mourn when it

is torn down and built over. It memorializes the trivial happenings that many may

overlook, but still plays an important role in a place’s narrative and consequently a

person’s identity. By placing Palimpsest FM in Washington Square Park under the

shadow of the statue of Garibaldi and the Washington Arch, a comparison can be

drawn between the monuments that commemorate the selective history of the

victors to one that records and replays all voices of the city equally. The

neighborhood narrative can then become more complete as it plays back

everything it hears.

Arts event on Monday 5/14

You are cordially invited to attend a kick-off reception for the visual and performing arts this coming Monday, May 14^th, 6:00 PM at Redcaps Corner 3517 Lancaster Avenue to discuss 2^nd Friday on Lancaster Ave. East and the JAZPOA (jazz/poetry/arts) Extravaganza on June 30^th.

Drexel University, People’s Emergency Center, Lancaster Avenue 21^st Century, and local arts co-ops are supporting an initiative that is bringing together professionals and hopefuls within the visual and performing arts to make Lancaster Ave. East an exciting, beautiful, and safe place for you to enjoy the best in live music, art shows, restaurants, social networking, outside cafés, pamper events, yoga, boutiques, great nearby living spaces, and so much more!

We will be providing opportunities for visual and performing artists to be a part of making Lancaster Avenue East, a premier up-n-coming hotspot in the city of Philadelphia.  We need you to be a part of the magic to make it all that it can be.

Please RSVP either way at info@TheCadenceCompany.com. Free Admission.

So far, the final project

A random set of signs that lead to each other in a non-linear way creating a variety of pathways

Directions: hidden in the art

Multiple portals of entry into the project including web

Video

Histories written on the landscape

Community can add a story: Person to facilitate

Place where a form of physical activity makes us aware of the external and the internal

Places that are existing

Places that are created

Time of day = safety

Who tells the story creates a condition of stakeholding

Other inventive Mobile Design ideas

http://www.makesweet.com/mixer/my-billboard

http://www.spur.org/events/calendar/yerba-buena%E2%80%99s-mobile-parklets

If you want to use Texting in your projects

http://www.textmarks.com/

Site-Specifics

The philosopher Michel de Certeau, wrote a book called "The Practice of Everyday Life" which is on the Locative Media Bibiligraphy that was published by the Leonardo (MIT) eJournal.

In this book, he says that "space is a practiced place." What he means by that, is that urban planning writes a specific meaning onto place. The direction of roadways, the areas of division in economic strata (where rich people live, where poverty lives etc), the location of the city functions (post office, hospital, train station, etc). So, what de Certeau is saying is that place becomes space when it becomes active, when it becomes inhabited. The daily action of everyday life, in all its detail, shifts the meaning of place from its monolithic, static meanings, to those that are human, social, fluid, always changing. Even our experience of place is determined by how long we are in a location. "Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into space by walkers." "Space as a practiced place, admits of unpredictability." "If space is like the word when it is spoken, then a single place will be realized in successive, multiple and even irreconcilable spaces." Think of Patrick's score..."In comparing 'pedestrian processes to linguistic formations" de Certeau states that.. to walk is to lack a place." Think of Patrick's score done again as a walking score in the city...

The anthropological understanding of place, is "formed by the individual identities, through complicities of language. local references, the unformulated rules of living know-how" (Auge/reading p.9), where one's location or position is known. Non-place is produced by passing-over place. Non-place designates two complementary but distinct realities formed in relation to certain, say, mobile or transitory ends (transport, transit, commerce, leisure) and relations that individuals have with these places. For example, the train station: all the people who pass through it, sometimes regularly, as in commuters, and those people who work there - selling tickets, working at the coffee shop, cleaning up, etc.

On page 11 of the reading is an important point:

Place and non-place re rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsets on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten. But non-places are the real measure of our time. (Auge 1995)

A palimpset is a paper that has been written on twice, the original having been wiped out.

One Neighborhood Narratives project by a student at NYU addressed the Palimpset:

The project, titled Palimpsest FM, consisted of a device that houses a hidden speaker which plays back the sounds of the same spot from an earlier time, anywhere from thirty seconds to a day before. The replayed recording serves as an audio version of a palimpsest, a proof of what had been there before. Using sound as her medium, the student created a nearly seamless overlapping of past and present where the sounds of today cannot be discerned from the sounds of the past. Like a palimpsest, it will be unclear where the past ends and the present begins.

Gaston Bachelard (in his book, Poetics of Space) speaks of centering oneself in stable surroundings, but if your surroundings are constantly in flux (and also incidentally not just your surroundings) like they are in New York, it is no wonder a sense of ontological anxiety can result. New York City has often been described as a place where the physical environment changes so quickly that rebuilding without being able to erase what came before it becomes very obvious to anyone who has lived there
long enough to call New York their home. “You’ve become a New Yorker once you have the urge to point out a place and say, “that used to be . . .” The “that used to be . . .” that every New Yorker expresses is part of the inerasable past that is being built over, it is an expression of memory of a piece of their home and consequently a piece of their identities that is gone but not forgotten. It is embodied in the senses. The urge to tell others what used to be is an attempt to reassert one’s identity and the home they had carved out of the city. This project serves as another means of describing the “that used to be.” But instead of
subjectively telling the narrative of one person’s New York, it objectively captures what the place witnessed. The audio palimpsest played back in this project serves as a kind of memorial of what used to be in the immediate past. It stands to
commemorate the same everyday New York that its citizens quietly mourn when it is torn down and built over. It memorializes the trivial happenings that many may overlook, but still plays an important role in a place’s narrative and consequently a
person’s identity. By placing Palimpsest FM in Washington Square Park under the shadow of the statue of Garibaldi and the Washington Arch, a comparison can be drawn between the monuments that commemorate the selective history of the
victors to one that records and replays all voices of the city equally. The neighborhood narrative can then become more complete as it plays back everything it hears.

The original prototype for this project was made with a recording device in one of those "record your own message" talking greeting cards.

The last mention from the Site-Specific reading is the last paragraph where it says, "It is in such contexts that site-specific art frequently works to "touble" the opposition between the site and the work.  Trouble is meant as critique, question, or to even create a problem, but all with the aim of heightening the exchange between the site and the work.

Critical Vehicles

Krzyysztof Wodiczko, in his book Critical Vehicles, discusses his art work over the span of his career, all of it highly political in nature. What Wodiczko focuses on is designing for human interaction, and human relationship. What he higlights is the binary of power: victor/vanquished. This type of binary analysis of social space can easily be understood in relation to race and gender. What is interesting about his Prophet's Prothesis, is the idea of a doubling - the real person and the media double, both simultaneously walking through the city. Here we have the Derive or Drift retranslated through the integration of media. Inside/outside, real/virtual. These types of binaries fuse together so that the doubled experience creates a whole. Conceptually very interesting. One could even conceive of the doubled self - the real and virtual as a ying/yang.

On p. 13, his design summary could be considered a manifesto. He has articulated a social problem that he is trying to solve through design.

What we have said in this class, is that design solves problems. One must first identify the problem and then create the design to solve it.

Following

The Following exercise was inspired by both Janet Cardiff’s audio walks (Two of which are Walk Münster by Janet Cardiff with Georges Bures Miller, 1997. Skulpture Project Münster 97, curated by Kasper König, Münster, Germany and The Missing Voice (Case Study B) byJanet Cardiff with Georges Bures Miller, 1999. Whitechapel Library organized by Artangel, London, England, June 17 – Nov. 27, 1999.) an example of the expressive, generative version of ambulant geo-notative locative art practice; and Sophie Calle’s Suite Vénitienne, where she used a conceptual strategy to create a document with photos providing evidence of her search to Venice to look for a stranger she met at a party. One student chose to follow five different people at his usual stop on the subway. Three of these people were “intimate strangers”, people he had observed frequently on his route, but
whom he did not know. Two people he followed, as a first encounter. He documented the experience of each trajectory, the time and distance traveled the fantasies and assumptions of each life, housing them all in a web-based map project.

Jean Baudrillard writes,
“To follow the other is to take charge of his itinerary; it is to watch over his life without him knowing it. It is to play the mythical role of the shadow, which, traditionally follows you and protects you from the sun – the man without a shadow is exposed to the violence of life without mediation – it is to relieve him of that existential burden, the responsibility of his own life. Simultaneously, she who follows is herself relieved of responsibility for her own life as she follows blindly in the footsteps of another. Again, a wonderful reciprocity exists in the cancellation of each existence, in the cancellation of each subject’s tenuous position as a subject” (1983 p.82).

Somewhat similarly, the responses of past students to the assignment ranged from one student’s realization that in her heart she loved to follow people – in fact, she realized that she had quite an “affinity for following people.” A city where walking is the main mode of transportation constantly puts people face to face, often the same people over and over. Since she moved to New York, it had frustrated her to find herself constantly surrounded by people she recognized but had never met. This assignment was her chance to figure out who these people really are. Yet, once she was asked to turn her curiosity into an exercise, the idea of following turned sour. She said, “I felt like I was invading not only their physical space, but their mental space too.”

A different reaction was elicited from another student, who was extremely threatened by the idea of following someone and allowing someone else’s physical itinerary to determine her movement in the city. Her sense of territory had distinct
racial and economic boundaries that determined her awareness of safety. Following another route was deeply disturbing. Her solution was to solicit the help of a friend to go with her. However, throughout the experience of following someone on an unfamiliar route, she commented that she had to “watch her back,” which became the next exercise for the class.

The Following exercise is similar to the Loca (Location Oriented Critical Arts) project. According to Evans et.al. Loca was initiated out of an interest in how surveillance and social control emerge as a residue or unforeseen effect of virtuous information systems and network technologies. Loca observes people's movements by tracking the position of the Bluetooth enabled devices that they carry. Over seven days more than two thousand five hundred people were detected enabling the team to build up a detailed picture of their movements. People were sent messages from a stranger with intimate knowledge of their motion. Over the course of the week the messages became gradually more sinister, the would-be friend mutating into stalker, "coffee later?" changing to "r u ignoring me?" For participants the experience of Loca is intangible, it unearths
what is not seen. The aim is subtle affect. As the developers note, “Loca is like a picture glanced at sideways, a message caught in the corner of the eye, or a mosquito swatted on the arm (http://www.loca-lab.org/).” It makes apparent the
kind of peer to peer observations that become possible as a result of the discomforts and dislocations associated with everyday surveillance.

Mobile Audience

Great blog by Martin Rieser, Artist, Theorist and Educator

http://mobileaudience.blogspot.com/

Janet Cardiff

Here is the link for Janet Cardiff and her husband Georges Bures Miller. If you look at the site and listen to some of the audio, I think you will find it interesting. It may give you some ideas for your own projects.

http://www.cardiffmiller.com/

Mo-blogging from Hipcast

To record an audio moblog, dial: (512) 827-0431 .

When prompted, enter your PIN: 181-197-551 .

Your options will be: Record and Publish, orRecord and Not Publish.

If you select Record and Publish, you will be prompted for your Blog Number or Podcast Number. Your The class blog is: 1133

What is due this week 5/2

Reading Miwon Kwon and commenting on your blog
Preliminary design ideas for Lancaster Project
"Following" assignment - documented.

Brainstorm

The Neighborhood Roundtable

The Neighborhood Roundtable

photo © Andrew Leiser 2011 Neighborhood Narratives, Drexel, summer 2011

Friday, April 20th, 11am to 2pm

Macalister Hall, Rm. 2019-2020 (Corner of 33rd & Chestnut St.), Drexel University

Working in partnership with a range of West Philadelphia community organizations, Drexel University recently initiated a set of community revitalization strategies along historic Lancaster Avenue. On April 20th (11am - 2pm), Drexel's Center for Mobilities Research and Policy will sponsor a community conversation about the role artists might play in these Powelton, Mantua and Belmont neighborhood enrichment efforts. Can artists be catalysts for change? How and under what conditions? What does ideal collaboration between artists, institutions and the Lancaster community look like?

Co-hosted by Mimi Sheller (Director, mCenter: The Center for Mobilities Research and Policy) and Hana Iverson (Director, the Neighborhood Narratives Project) with support from the Center for Creative Research at NYU, The Neighborhood Roundtable will provide an opportunity for neighborhood and community representatives to engage in creative conversation about these issues with renowned artist/activists, Drexel students and faculty.

The Roundtable takes place in Macalister Hall, Rm. 2019-2020, at the corner of 33rd & Chestnut.  There is some construction in the area, so please cross part way down the block, and enter to the right. There is an elevator behind the Barnes & Noble book store.

Please RSVP to mimi.sheller@drexel.edu 

Confirmed participants include:

Co-Moderators:

Mimi Sheller (Drexel faculty; Director, mCenter)

Hana Iverson (Drexel faculty; Director, Neighborhood Narratives; CCR Fellow)

Participants:

Lucy Kerman (Vice Provost for Community and Education)

Liz Lerman (Artist, Founding Artistic Director Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, CCR Founding Fellow)

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Artist, Founder and Artistic Director Urban Bushwomen, CCR Founding Fellow)

Mark Christman (Representative from University City District: 38th Street/South)

George Stevens (President of the new 21st Century Business Community org

James Wright (Representative Peoples’ Emergency Center: 38th Street/North)

Center for Mobilities Research and Policy

Drexel’s Center for Mobilities Research and Policy aims to be a national leader in shaping future healthy and sustainable mobilities, and promoting mobility justice at both global and local scales. We convene students, faculty, communities and interdisciplinary research networks around:

1) Advancing new mobility systems and integrated visions for sustainable cities and mobility justice.

2) Harnessing the potentials of new mobile communication technologies for smart growth, community health, public art, and civic participation.

3) Training Drexel students to understand and solve “real world” mobility challenges, working with community partners.

4) Engaging Drexel University with local communities, national partners, and global networks.

The term “mobilities” applies to both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public and private space, and mobile communications. The mCenter promotes new theoretical approaches, new methods, and the academic leadership to research, envision, and foster alternative mobility futures based on innovative collaborations between the arts and social sciences, engineering, business, law, media and design, and public health. This is an area of growing academic interest, policy debate, and research investment. The mCenter is becoming a nexus for generating innovative collaborations within Drexel, across the Greater Philadelphia region, and internationally.

Center for Creative Research and the Neighborhood Narratives Project

Artists and universities in the United States have long enjoyed the benefits of proximity to one another and are participants in a powerful, historically embedded and endlessly re-invented relationship with one another.  As major non-profit actors in American life, both are builders, makers and shapers of society’s values. In 2005, a group of mature choreographers came together to form the Center for Creative Research, in order to investigate and redefine how independent artists and institutions of higher learning could engage with one another. Key questions included, how can reciprocal relationships evolve between artists, institutions and communities, and how might these relationships facilitate mutually-beneficial exchanges between participants while increasing the depth of students’ experiential learning? As a nexus of this investigation, a collaboration was developed with the Neighborhood Narratives Project, a mobile locative media curriculum that engages students in a practice of situated story-telling incorporating aspects of cultural and visual anthropology, ethnography, geography and, with the recent addition of CCR artists, the role of embodied practice in interdisciplinary investigation.  The Neighborhood Narratives Project is a vehicle to engage interactively and interconnect community, requiring students and artists to invite public participation, enabling organic growth of a community’s collective narrative and empowering citizens to embed social knowledge in the wired/wireless landscape of the urban environment. 

Reading for Wednesday

The Reading for Wednesday is from a book called Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It  by Mindy Fullilove, pp. 52-107.  It is available on the library e-reserves and this is how to access it:

 

1. From the library website (http://library.drexel.edu), click on the Course Reserves tab. Or go to http://innoserv.library.drexel.edu/search/r 

2. Type in your course code or course name (CIVC 299). You may also search by the last name of your instructor (IVERSON) by clicking on the dropdown box. 

3. Some courses have multiple instructors. After clicking on your instructor, you will be taken to the course record that lists all library materials associated with your course (textbooks, e-reserves and streaming videos where available). 

4. Click on the title of the E-reserve you want to view. 

5. Log in with your DrexelOne account. All students, faculty, and staff can have a DrexelOne account. If you don't have a DrexelOne account, click here to pick up your account. 

6. Enter the course password which is SP12IVER299

7. Depending on your browser settings, the file will either open within your browser or download automatically to your computer. 

Bring your laptops to class 4/11

Hi Everyone,

Bring your laptops to class on Wednesday as we will be doing some online work...

See you then!

Syllabus Information

Spring 2012, Drexel University

WEST 465-001 34585/CIVC 299-001 34606

Wednesday 9:00-11:50 am

Room: University Crossings 027

Instructor: Hana Iverson

Email: hbi23@drexel.edu

Phone: 646-207-0759

Office Hours:  By appointment.

Neighborhood Narratives is a public mobile art and design curriculum whose mission is to create locative art works and design projects that incorporate responsive public screens and spaces, performances and events that envision the future and reach for social equity through participatory engagement. Neighborhood Narratives creates a platform for participants to produce works that reflect conflicts, collaborations and boundaries in the varying social, economic and ethnic make-up of the local community using mobile technologies such as Augmented Reality, basic mobile recording devices, on-line open-source tools such as blogging, folksonomies and Google Maps along with analog resources. It explores the real and metaphorical potentialities of mapping, walking, and wayfinding as methods of developing attachments, connecting, and constructing narratives in a virtual and spatial locality. Neighborhood Narratives offers a unique situation from which to critically consider locative media art in relation to the context of West Philadelphia and to explore and design methods of effective communication, community and exchange. The project invites public participation, engages interactively, and encourages participants to consider their vocabulary of movement in space. Neighborhood Narratives asks students to conceptually understand some of the processes of the mediated city such as negotiating geographic, political, ideological spaces and reconsidering the issues that they deal with in everyday life – the things they carry with them, the cell phones they use, the soft city they walk in, etc. To reconstruct their everyday assumptions in order to use them as a vocabulary and set of tools for looking at themselves and responding to the world creatively. Students in this class will participate as a team in the creation and production of a Powelton/Mantua/Belmont Neighborhood Narrative project. By participating in all aspects of this project, they will get a hands-on approach to addressing and solving the design and content questions of a transmedia art project. No prior technological expertise is required.

Bibliography: http://hanaiverson.com/publications.html PDF

Format

The class is 3 hours long once a week. The class will introduce methods of collecting data and artifacts, internet and field observation, mapping and scoring, "show and tell" and the examination of project presentations with rigorous discussion. Mobile city-wide exploration (public transportation, on foot) will include the presentation of the final project on location in the city. The class will also engage in peer dialogue and interdisciplinary teamwork, to extend the breadth of a project through collaboration. Students will keep semester long blogs including observations, photos, video and audio recordings (where equipment and resources allow) - a personal diary of the Neighborhood Narrative experience.

Internet Access

All students are expected to have frequent, dependable access to the internet.  It is essential that you have an active email account that you ACCESS FREQUENTLY, for email with faculty and with each other. IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU CREATE AND ACTIVELY MAINTAIN A BLOG. If you have any difficulties with either Internet access, your email account or your blog, please see the instructor after the first class.

Technology Requirements

You will need some form of memory stick to save and transport your work.  Access to a mobile phone and digital camera is recommended.

Readings

Readings will be PDF’s or web sites, available on line as listed.

Course Costs

As expected with production courses, you may need to purchase supplies to produce your final project. Also, while it is not required, I would like to encourage you to use the communications features of your mobile phone: costs for voice calls and text messaging will depend on your phone plan.

Instructor Contact

The best way to reach me is by email. I am on campus once a week and am available to set up individual appointments, if requested. 

Attendance and Lateness Policy

Attending the sessions outlined in the schedule is a requirement of this course.  More than two unexcused absences will decrease the overall grade by one unit for each additional missed class. Five absences will result in a failing grade for the course.  If you are going to be absent, please inform me by email at least 24 hours in advance. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to make up any work in a timely fashion. Three times arriving late will be considered as one unexcused absence. Being more than 10 minutes late will be counted as an absence.  

Evaluation and Assessment

Research, attendance and participation    35%

In class assignments                               30%

Final project                                            35%

Deadlines

All assignments are due on time. In the case of unforeseen delays, please confer with the instructor.

Research, Attendance and Participation

Group work, communicating and sharing knowledge through discussions, posting to the class blog, in-class presentations, and overall student participation are an essential part of the process of understanding course material.

Readings and blog postings are mandatory.

Readings

Prior to each class you will be required to complete a short reading and make notes of relevant points to bring up in class discussion.

Blog postings

Each week you will be required to a) make one post to your NEIGHBORHOOD NARRATIVES blog and b) to comment on at least one other student’s blog. Your post can be on: 1) a new media technology and how it relates to locative/mobile platforms or 2) if applicable, one of the required assignments.

Solving frustrations is integral to the creative process!

Assignments and Final Projects

The remit for the final project is to create an urban, on-site, locative (cell phone, GPS, mapping, sensory altering) media art project that engages visual as well as embodied (spatial + body) ideas.

The assignments will provide you with the skills and knowledge required to realize your final project.

Academic Integrity

http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/academic_dishonesty.asp

Plagarism and Cheating

http://www.drexel.edu/studentlife/judicial/honesty.html

Students with Disabilities

http://www.drexel.edu/oed/disabilityResources/disabilityResources/student_reg.html

Course Drop/Add Policy

http://www.drexel.edu/provost/policies/course_drop.asp

Schedule of Classes

Schedule of Classes

April 4: Introduction: What is Neighborhood Narratives? 

The history of the class, case studies http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net/

Meet and greet/assessment of technology skills of class – expectations and outcomes will be discussed

Outline of special project: Powelton/Mantua/Belmont neighborhood portrait.

Review of Augmented Avenue: Memories of Lancaster http://lancasterave.tumblr.com/ + Cross/Walks: Weaving Fabric Row http://www.cross-walks.org/

Introduction to Blurb mobile, Augmented Reality, Hipcast and other tech resources, everyone creates a blog.

Core concerns: Interaction design starts with understanding people holistically from a place of empathy: what are people’s emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social needs as they interact with the people, places, and things around them?

Assigned Reading (due 4/11): Mobile Interface Theory

The Pathways of Locative Media

http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/introduction/

Mapping and Representations of Space

http://mobileinterfacetheory.com/ch-2/

Assignment:  Photo assignment: UrbanPoem/Invisible City http://hanaiverson.com/dvl.html: Powelton/Mantua/Belmont.  Load photo sequences into Blurb mobile


April 11: Introduction to programming and media production for Augmented Reality:  Junaio, Aurasma, Zooburst platforms

Zooburst and Junaio tutorial; tech specs for sound capture, photo, video; what is image recognition technology and how is it embedded in virtural environments (games, VR, AR etc)

Review and critique of assignments.  What do the photos tell us and what do we learn about the neighborhood

Assigned reading (due 4/18): RootShock:  Chapter 3 Urban Renewal…  Chapter 4 Means Negro Removal

Assignment:  Junaio tutorial for those who can; insert photos into Zooburst for those who choose not to program in Junaio

April 18: Outside: We will meet in the classroom at 9 and go to 42nd Street together!

Guided Lancaster Walk:  Joe McNulty and James Wright (1.5 hours)

Classroom: Response to guided walk

Inside: Review of AR, more technical walk-throughs.

Assignment:  Creative Response to neighborhood through some form of media + written response on blog (500 words), include research on Powelton, Mantua, Belmont neighborhood

Assigned Reading (due 4/25): Sarah Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography

Chapter 3: Perception, Place, Knowing, Memory, Imagination; Chapter 5 Articulating Emplaced Knowledge PDFs

Friday, April 20: Special Event for Extra Credit

Lancaster and Public Art - The Neighborhood Roundtable Location MacAlistair 2019/2020: 11:00 am – 2:00 pm (sandwiches and drinks )

Lucy Kerman, Vice-provost of Community and Education, George Stevens of the Lancaster Avenue 21st Century Business Association, Mark Christman of University City Org, James Wright of PEC-Cares, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and founder of Urban Bush Women, Liz Lerman, choreographer, performer, writer and educator. Her dance/theater works have been seen throughout the United States and abroad, and students from the NN class summer 2011/Augmented Avenue project.  Sponsored by Drexel University’s Center for Mobilities Reseach and Policy and the Center for Creative Research

April 25: Review of readings

Response to neighborhood and to panel

Sophie Calle, surveillance, public/private, counter-publics

Assignment: Following (particularly in context of Lancaster)

Assigned Reading (due 4/25):

Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Designing for Small Screens: several chapters will be Xeroxed (its big print… several chapters = one reading)

May 2: Review of readings

What makes work locational and is that site-specific?

The Sonic Environment

Presentation of sound projects, sound maps.  Hipcast and other mobile sound authoring systems.  Janet Cardiff, [murmur]Toronto + others

The Physical Environment

Richard Long.  Sculpture in the landscape, tagging.

Sculpture, space and site specific

Review of Readings
Assignment: Create psycho-geographic sound walks on Lancaster Avenue/Powelton – load into mobile interface of choice:  Hipcast, Zooburst, other accessible via mobile phone

Assigned Reading (due 5/9):  Critical Vehicles, Krzystof Wodizcko

May 9: Public Art. Kystof Wodizcko and “Public Address”.  Public memorials, counter-memorials.

Review of Sound walks, discussion of walking and wayfinding, review of readings, full discussion of readings and ideas so far… what do we make of all this?  Talking about final assignment, manifestos, design for the neighborhood – digital divide

Assigned Reading (due 5/16): Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krystof Wodiczko

Assignment: Put Something Here v 1.0

May 16: Public Art: Electronic Disturbance Theater/b.a.n.g lab

Assigned Reading (due 5/16): Creating Democracy: A Dialogue with Krystof Wodiczko available on library website

Review Put Something Here

Assignment: Put Something Here v 1.2

May 23: Mapping

History of mapping, looking at Infinite City by Rebecca Solnit

Review: Put Something Here 1,2
Assigned Reading (due 5/23):

One Place After Another, Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity" by Miwon Kwon, MIT press 2002, Chapter 4: "From Site to Community in New Genre Public Art: The Case of 'Culture in Action'" available on library reserves.

Topics Covered in Class:

Designing for the Community, Counter-publics, getting community feedback

Design schema for mobile and transmedia: multi-platforms, multi-modal; map as interface

Talking about final assignment, statements (Manifestos), bios, reflections on the neighborhood

Assigment:  Zooburst, Junaio or Aurasma platforms – transfer one or all projects into this format

May 30: Workshop/Production

AR reviews; design reviews

June 6 Testing Project on-site/Trouble-shooting

All media due and reflections posted to your blogs.

Assignment: Fixing trouble/Re-test; read each other’s blogs

June 13: Final Evaluation/Critique Roundtable: invited guests