Report on the Cartographic Command Center
&
Urban Map Hack Workshop
at the Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2004
entering on red carpet, through the
metal-glass door into a setting feeling like that's the place where hyper
reality gets constructed.
corresponding to the color theme you find a silver control panel consisting
of three lcd displays and some controls which let you configure the projection
onto the three big screens in the front. on them visualizations of different
projects, all with aspects of space and its mappings, come together. two
screens can be splitted into four each while the centered one remains
dominated by 3d animations of meta-data gathered in collaboration.
gaining an insight into the panel box reveals that it is filled with a
lot of computers and a huge amount of cables connecting them to each other
and to more equipment like the projectors and the computers in the backup
control room.
# ccc
at deaf concept wiki
# photos by Mirjam
Struppek, Jaanis
Garancs
# open brunch report,
stream,
photos
# urban map hack workshop concept,
stream
presentation
{ Marc Tuters (CA), Jaanis Garancs (LV) }
fig. I: jaanis garancs
fig. II: jan sprij
fig. III: jaanis garancs
fig. IV: ewen chardronnet
fig. V: ewen chardronnet
fig. VI: jan sprij
fig. VII: jaanis garancs
fig. VIII: mirjam struppek
fig. IX: jan sprij
fig. X: sasson kung
different modes of perception?
have you every watched onto a radar scanning the close-by river you can
see better from eye while listening to radio communication between unseeable
taxi drivers? well, that was one of the unusual, but possible things to
do when you visited the radar installation at the cocktail control tower
on the roof of the van nelle factory. through its impressive panorama
and architecture definitive the best spot of all DEAF locations. and that's
also what made you almost feel the character of control towers which were
one of the topics during the introduction on radar's history.
while videos of earlier works done with similar equipment gave you some
impression on what might be possible to do with these technologies the
atmosphere to get working on such approaches didn't emerge. but still
this radar and radio project was an important part of the cartographic
command center as – unlike the gps devices with their connection
to far away satellites – the radar and radio scanners don't rely
on technological objects controlled by others. and to free from such dependencies
also might be one of the motives to explore non-hegemonic uses of technology
like proposed by this project.
# evening
of marko peljhan
# urban
map hack workshop segment, stream
presentation
{ Aljosa Abrahamsberg (SI), Ewen Chardronnet (FR) }
local = subjective?
breaking down DEAF's co-motto "Feelings are always local" to a concrete
experience was enabled by the biomapping project. by letting a small computeristic
device measure your body's galvanic skin response, indicating stress or
excitement, and combining this data with gps position records created
individual maps on how you may feel the city's spots.
as a try of creating a more objective map, what probably is one aspect
of currently hegemonic mapping ideology, the individual records were merged
onto one single rotterdam street map: red dots representing stress or excitement
overlaying green dots indicating relaxed times might give a rudiment impression
on how feelings are connected to specific sites. so, feelings aren't always
subjective?
# biomapping.net
# urban
map hack workshop segment, stream
presentation
{ Christian Nold (GB) }
to free reconnaissance.
every command center needs its reconnaissance unit. instead of an aircraft
the ccc used a more urban vehicle: the frida v. bike. equipped with a
small computer containing a wireless network card connected to the characterizing
antenna, a gps device, web-camera, 10 kilos of batteries and the ergonomic
control panel to record media-files.
during the urban
map hack workshop people could take rides with the frida v. bike to
explore the city's wireless networks. the control panel mounted in front
of the bike gave acoustic and visual feedback on found access points and
allowed the driver to become a co-director by taking pictures, videos
and sounds assigned to adequate keywords.
within a few days more than 1000 different wireless access points were
found even if only a part of the city was covered. after synchronizing
the recorded data about these access points and their gps position to the
server at the ccc, a map visualized with red (for encrypted) and green
(for non-encrypted and potentially open) rectangles the found network
access points layered over the city's streets, rivers, buildings , bridges
and parks. due to a technical problem with the gps this map sadly couldn't
be updated often, but the very nice pursuit
videos compensated that easily.
# frida v. video selection
# urban
map hack workshop segment, stream
presentation
{ Luka Frelih (SI) }
accessing and defining data.
showing a globe with the possibility to enable and disable volcanic eruptions
and earthquakes from within the latest 24 hours can leave a touch of the
impression having watched into a kind of mirror; on your own huge environment.
by gathering data from different, publicly available sources (like gps
and other satellites) and putting them together in a visualization of a
globe, planet x hits the problem of who has access to what terrestrial
and spherical data - a question answered very different in the usa and
the eu for example. further the question of who defines the framework
of data-collection by around whirring satellites might come into focus
as well.
{ Karlis Kalnins (LV) }
meta diving.
the different projects were coming together by the centered projection
as its software collected their meta-data to visualize them in 3d. without
the map of rotterdam appearing between other sequences wouldn't have been
easy to figure out such a connection, but together with the huge pillows
situated in front of the screens this visualization created a perfect
chill out environment. according to reliable sources some felt asleep
while diving into dances of (dis)appearing 3d objects.
{ Jaanis Garancs (LV) }
global commander.
the existence of a fascination for products of satellite technology also
became visible by the sometimes available projection of keyhole.com's
commercial earth viewer trial version: checking out something like a burning
pipeline in iraq arises the feeling of being a controller or at least
an observer with a good overview.