Modern camouflage x2

I mentioned a couple of recent camouflage projects while we were talking about CCTVs today. I promised to post links, and behold, I deliver:

1) There's something called Pixelhead mask, which provides protection against Google Streetview cameras and the such.

2) The more interesting and ambitious of these two projects is CV Dazzle, Adam Harvey's thesis work at ITP. CV Dazzle shields you from computer vision, which is used more and more by services such as Flickr and Facebook. This is bleeding edge art, I'd say.

Ask something?

We kind of figured the place for the projections. It's quite near the gallery, in the bridge, next to a chinese restaurant. It's quite a dark place so probably it would be possible to make the projections visible there. Probably it would be done to the floor.

Now we need to figure out where to get electrity (there's several possibilities like the restaurant and healthcare center nearby) and how to put the projectors there. We would also need the contact info for somebody who is responsible of this space.

We thought we figured out the question also – "ask anything".

We made this test papers with the question. But our test person thought it's too difficult and goes too deep, so we had to change it to "ask something". Maybe it gives more freedom to people. So right now we're going on with this, if it works with more test persons we will probably keep it.

We thought to make several papers with the questions and several shoeboxes (or something like this) where people can put the papers after answering. We figured we need as many different groups of people as possible, and we would go to local schools, healthcare center, entresse, library, restaurant...etc.. and leave the boxes there for 2 days or so, so that people would have time to fill the papers. Also we would have our table somewhere near the railway station and people could also fill the papers in there.

Personal/public mapping

Hi there. I'm planning to go ahead with the plan to have people (and by people I mostly mean teens and other people spending time in the library) draw their own personal maps of Espoon Keskus.

After gathering a group together for a short session I'll probably have to draw a map of my own as an example (so that others will know just how deep into details I want to drill into). I'll have to keep the example vague, though, so that others won't be too influenced by it. Anyway, those are specifics that I can work out on the spot. My goal is to gather a minimum of ten nice maps and throw them into good old Photoshop, where I can turn them into semi-official tourist map type thingies that I can then print out (double-sided), fold, and stack into a stand for people to pick up.

Espoon Keskus is new to me, so I'm excited about finding where people actually go and spend time. I really can't imagine. And yet... there _are_ people there. All around. Another nice aspect of this project is turning private views of the place into public ones i.e. breaking the boundaries of what's official and what's not. A school-dodging teen's perception of the place is just as real as the city's official one (in my humble opinion). So there's that.

Aaaaand, finally... Another rush of traffic I'm tempted to run into is the one in Espoontori. There's a fantastic set of round(ish) lights hanging from the highest part of the shopping center's ceiling. And you know what? You guessed it: I'd like to project some type of image onto at least one of the lamps. A live video stream from somewhere else was obviously (?) my first idea, but I've come to change my mind. If anything, a nice clear set of still images would be much more powerful. Maybe an animation of a single eye scanning the people below? Or maybe an "I Wish Espoontori had..." type of collection of answers. I have a bunch of index cards from the States where people passing by could fill out their wish for the building's use.

I could ramble on for another two pages, but I think I'll stop now. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Thinking, thinking.

I have been in Espoon Keskus three times. The first one was during the week, in the morning. I was not surprise by how cold and unhuman the area looks like. Leaving in Pasila has made me develop feelings towards concrete that I thought impossible.
However, walking around both shopping centres I realised that there were people there just being there. They didn't buy or consume anything and they didn't look like the kind of people that are supposed to visit this places. Lonely people just walking or sitting. I wonder if its one of the only alternatives to cold temperatures you can find in the area. Having such a great and beautiful library makes it even better, but anyway its strange to see people not buying in a consume temple.
After this, I started to act in the same way. I didn't want to buy anything or to eat anything. I was just hanging around, drawing some perspectives, taking pictures. I noticed how strange it is to change the rhithm in a Shopping Centre. Usually you walk fast, you look for what you want, you buy it and you leave. But you don't stop, you don't look at the details, you don't think about the meaning of a place like that and how it is constructed around you.
The next step was recording sounds. I made some videos of the library, Espoontori, Entresse, the street, the elevators and the stairs. I think sound is something that makes you curious. You follow what sounds attractive, the loudspeakers tell you where to go inside the Shopping centre, what to buy, where to stop. I thought about using this sounds in a different order: putting sound of the street inside the library (this is also a way of breaking the glass and enjoying the outside from the cosy inside), putting the voices of children in the library inside the elevators...
It is a way of reflecting about the space, showing it as a global place and experimenting with the marketing strategies of sound in a poetic way.
About the materials needed, it depends of what we have and what can be used without annoying the people inside the library (fairly)
See you tomorrow!

Lucía

Fake Finn Festival

Just found out about this:
http://www.newartcontact.org/news.htm

For Thursday

Hi - great that many of you are posting your ideas, problems, etc. Please all of you make lists of equipment you need/would like, and also possible permissions that you'll need. So if possible try to decide exact locations you want to use, time of day, etc.
Regarding equipment, as I told you I have some personal stuff that can be used IF it is watched over! I think in general ANY technical equipment needs to be kept guarded or it has a good chance of walking...of course it might be possible to secure projectors, speakers, etc, so that they can't easily be taken off. In any case I think as most projects will last only for one day it would be good to be around to document how people are interacting with them. We can discuss this more on Thursday.

cctv + tag me!

I am still going on with two projects
cctv - project
I've been first contacting the city guys. Due to privacy issues,  they don't want to give me any video material. But the Finnish Personal Data Act gives me a right to access data of myself. So I am holding on that and have contacted the
Protection Ombudsman and Amnesty International Finland to ask how I can get the information.
But there are 2 other ways I see as well:
a) making people view the scenes the cameras see - I was actually thinking if I could put something like a curtain inside the railway bridge and then there would be little lots people can start observing the scene on the other side.
b) would be more work but same fun: what if you projected the people watching at the video back to the space? wouldn't be possible but I could fake the idea by producing a maybe 5 min video of a fat sleeping guy in such a video room…?

tag me! - project
The idea is now to put different furniture in the city space. The furniture should then be tagged. The purpose might simply be to show people how much fun tagging is. To ordinary people.
Arising questions:
where? - not decided (but am thinking of different places)
what kind of furniture? - no idea… maybe just what I can get for free?
How to make sure that people understand this is made to be tagged? - instead of spraying them in one color I started thinking about a papier mache technique(http://tigress.com/nifelan/s/pappmache_s.jpg ; in my opinion it might inspire people and doesn't look so clean). But then I'll need to ask the question what are the newspapers about?

AmbientTV

I have mentioned these artists before and sent the url to Suse today, but I post it here as I think it maybe useful for many of you - Manu and Mukul have done some great projects working with both city space, surveillance, sound, etc, so extremely relevant...AmbientTV

Ideas & plans

Hi all!

We are doing the project together with Maija.

Our theme is "this is our space" or "for us by us". We were discussing that maybe this project is about bringing alive and visible peoples voices and bringing them into the space which they use everyday. It could also be seen empowering..

Tags, graffiti and other writings in public space are abled for a small group only and a part of certain subcultures, and it's also illegal. The need to express feelings and raise questions is in everyone but as spaces become more commercial there's not so much freedom or possibilities to do this.

Firstly we were thinking about asking question from people using spaces in Espoo keskus but after the talks in last weeks class we decided go for a different approach- to look for questions. Instead of finding questions we want to raise questions. It could be something like:

"What would you ask? Or what do you want to know? "

We still haven't come up with a right question to ask from people, so if you have any suggestions please tell us.

Our question should be to be short and easy.. and lead people to think one them selves. One possibility could be that we would pick one of these questions and ask it in our next project which is going to take place in China and Russia in may-june.

There are some problems we were talking about / are thinking now:

Where to get the electricity? Which are the spaces we could use for this? Would be very nice to have this on for a day, but who is watching over the equipment?

Also we were thinking can anyone see the video if it's shown daytime- the evenings and night are not that exciting as the place is used mostly during the mornigs and daytime.

Are there some other formats that we could use to project video or photos or images?

We liked the train station most, also the bridge between shopping center is very nice as it is quite empty and there aren't too many advertisements.

Feel free to comment,

Sanna

logistics of hearing it right

Now that I think I know I want to develop the sound piece I'm trying to think of the technical and logistical aspects. I spoke with Ranjit at Medialab about my project. He's into ambient music so I wanted to get some feedback and talking with him was really helpful. I don't have sound mixing equipment so if anybody knows of a musician who'd like to experiment with me then please pass on my information.

Some things I'm preparing now:
- the questions I want to ask people
- how to ask them
- how to record their answers
- where the responses/music will be aired at Espoonkeskus
- how does the responses/music reflect the space in which it is heard and at what time of day

As far as technical equipement goes some of my answers to those previous questions will help decide what I need:
- speakers
- mp3 players
- sound recording devices
- where and how do I securely put the speakers and mp3 players? for example, in the corridor would be nice, but this would need a very tall ladder

Ok, that's what I've been thinking about recently.

My best,
Arlene

Sorry for responding so late.

I have also some impresions, which I want to share.

Last Thursday I said, that Espoo Keskus reminds me Bratislava, I feel that there are some differencies, but I did not know, what it was. When I was in Espoo for second time, I found out, what it is. In Bratislava we have also a similar kind of architecture from 70s and 80s and I mind I love it.. its regularity of shape, angularity, materials and even the colors :D But in Finland I also love its purity and I dont mean only the tidiness. More infrecuent for me is , that there isnt so much advertisment covering the architecture. I had much more space to enjoy every detail. And about this is my first idea... I think about a making invisible to become visible. Some detail, which everyone pass without unnoticed. I contemplate to use for this the phenomenon of mirror (something similar like these pictures of spots used in psychiatrist)


Other interesting thing for me is proximity of a medieval church and cemetery, and also typically Finnish wooden houses situted close to the nature. For me it seems like one side of this place is devoted to spiritual contemplation and the on the other people can ensure all of their temporalities. And if people want to switch between these (and I hope they want), they necessery have to use the bridge. Throughout Finland, not only in Espoo, I feel that there is like more space for every individual, but it can also mean that people are moving away from each other, overcrowding is more an exception. Maybe it would be funny observations of people's reactions when their normally tranfer through this area would become a little more complicated. I mean, what if the space for go through the bridge will be more thinner - closer?

Ou.. and I have also some tips for photo of the blog:




























And if others agree also this one :)