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Location, location, location...

Final Assignment

PLEASE VOTE, COMMENT OR SUGGEST SOMETHING ELSE

Possible areas:

on the bus
deserted
park
highly trafficed
landmark building
ethnic neighborhood
market

Possible Locations:

Unversity City
Rittenhouse Square
Art Museum
Love Park
Chinatown
Oil Refinery ?
Fishtown
Old City
Antique Row (s. 11 and Pine)
Blue Horizon - Broad and Girard
Freedom Theater
Hotel Divine Lorraine
JOe Frazier's Boxing Gym

Points I am thinking about as I consider Locative Media

Media and technology as it overlays the city
Reveals the invisible
Creates community
Augments or amplifies space
Creates site-specificity for communication delivery/authoring
How can it improve the city?
How does it create more problems?
How is “the city” a generic reference and how is it specific? Philadelphia is different from New York, London, Tokyo, Rome…
What happens to the body in this space? Are we cyborgs? What is our human, physical, kinesthetic experience?
How is our body amplified?

Summary of the Class as Best as I can Remember

Map your week on a T-shirt
Reading: Baudelaire poem, “Garden of Forking Paths” by Borges.

Form teams, find 4 locations within a bounded geographic area, decide on one identity of imaginary person who would live 12 hours of their day within that area. Write fictional narrative of that person, dealing with their day, include way points in narrative.
Reading: Metaphor: or, the Map, the Writer is an Explorer.

Each team gathers pictures, artifacts, etc. of that person and creates giant collage
Reading: Krystzof Wodizcko, Crictical Vehichles

Rickie Sanders comments that the work reflects the thinking of Foucault’s “The Archeology of Knowledge”.
Collages are glued together, pairing one identity to another. In this class:

White male business man – African-American shop girl
Egytian vendor – Chineese male restauranteur
African American female police woman - Male homeless person

Each team then has to go out and find that person and interview them. Or document the process of failure to find them.
Reading: Carto-city by Denis Cosgrove and Mapping the Homunculus by Steve Deitz, from Else/where: Mapping, Janet Hall + Peter Abrams, eds. University of Minnesota press.


Rickie Sanders presentation – Geographic terms, Geography student work
Put something here. Each person has to figure out an “intervention” into the city and document it. Based on smart missile technology. In the first assignment – map your week on a T-shirt, we were concerned with “Where are we?” GPS technology now augments our ability to determine where we are. But it was
designed to be able to send “smart” missiles. This project is to put something into the city that will disrupt/interrupt/augment the flow of city life.

Reading: Connected Creatures from William J. Mitchell, Me + +: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City ,MIT Press, 2003

This assignment took 2 weeks to look at and review.
David Gordon joined the class.

Reading: Body, community and Space (or something) from Architecture book

Put something here – mobile. Same assignment, done again, with the addition that the disrupt/interrupt/augment include mobility – either vehicular/physical/aerial.

No reading

The Final Assignment

The final project is an exploration of the relationship between yourself and the city. What you carry with you (thoughts, dreams, memories) and what you find in the city (what you research, see, discover etc.)

We will pick 6 locations where the projects will be located. Different people can approach the same location different ways. We will pick one square block and the assignment can be:

around the whole block.
part of the block.
A building on the block.
Across the street.
As long as the bus does not have to take us there.

The bus can also be a location of the assignment.

while moving.
partly on, partly off.
Inside or outside.
Nothing that risks injury or that jeopardizes Temple University. i.e - No performances on the roof of the bus while moving. Or under the bus. No holding onto the bus and riding a skateboard behind. etc.


The final project is not independent of any of the other projects of the semester. It is culmulative. It can be an extention, or a reinterpretation and elaboration of any of the projects you did this semester. It should not use conventional methods to achieve its goals. If you did something you want to elaborate, do it again, more thoroughly or richly - and DIFFERENTLY.

Some sample locations:

any of the parks
South Philly (i.e The Italian Market, Fabric Row, South Street)
Under a bridge

There are some geographic limits because of time.

We will discuss in class and can answer questions.

Second Half of Semester

October 24:

1. Explanation of final assignment

2. Presentation of any unseen "Put something here/there" exercises. Presentation of all "Put something here/there - mobile version" exercise.

3. Push/Pull (outdoors)

WED. OCT 25 JAMES YOUNG TALK (SEE FLYER) 5:40 - 8:30 ANNENBERG 3

October 31 – Field trip to Eastern State Penitentiary


MEET AT ENTRANCE 10:40. ENTRANCE FEE: $7.50

View Janet Cardiff and Geirges Buerre Miller installation


November 7:

Planning Document (score, storyboard, research diagram etc) for final projects due.
International Exercise Due
Touch Tone Tours interface demo

--Any final issues or work review, this is the last class to get it covered.

November 14:
Final Presentations - Bus ride through the city

November 21:

NO CLASS


November 28:

Summary Assignment Due:
Creative term paper which uses visual illustration + text/sound/whatever to summarize the readings

International Assignment will be delivered via iPods

Critique/discussion of final projects begins that will include a redefinition of Locative Media

December 5:

Final class discussion - about work, about the class, about it all. Mandatory attendance.