One of the most discussed consequences of the Digital Revolution is the breakdown of geographical barriers to social interactions. The world is flattened through connectivity and accessibility. While human ability places some constraint on the number of relationships an individual is capable of creating, nurturing, and maintaining, cyberspace exponentially increases the possibilities for people in different places, geographically and otherwise to connect and engage. However, with lower barriers to social connections, comes the expectation for individuals to produce representations of self within cyberspace and a reduced sense of privacy as cyberspace continues to blur the lines of public and private. In this paper, I will explore the concept of technological spaces and highlight the works of a few artists offering answers to the questions of “how, why cyberspace”.
In Part II of The New Media and Cyberculture Anthology, author Stephen Graham presents a number of the various definitions of cyberspace, including professor of design Michael Batty’s definition, which describes cyberspace as, “a new kind of space, invisible to our direct senses, a space which might become more important than physical space itself [and which is] layered on top of, within and between the fabric of traditional geographical space.”[1] While I find a world in which cyberspace is more important than physical space somewhat disconcerting, I believe cyberspace often serves to enrich the physical space. However, understanding the vast enormity of cyberspace can be problematic so many people opt to use spatial metaphors to describe activity within and around the subject of cyberspace. While spatial metaphors help with visualizing the abstractions of cyberspace, Graham raises the contention that arises with tying such abstractions to “’real’, material spaces and places within which daily life is confined, lived and constructed.”
Artist Jill Magid has used performance and art to explore the relationship between technology and material space in a number of her pieces. “I seek intimate relationships with impersonal structures” is how the New York based artist describes her artistic intentions.[2] The spawning of technology in material public spaces lies as the foundation of Magid’s work and echoes Stephen Graham’s description of the concept of the co-evolution of technology, in which he explains, “that both the electronic ‘spaces’ and territorial spaces are necessarily produced together, as part of the ongoing restructuring of the capitalist political-economic system.” Magid’s work dissects the role of technology and authority in political and economic systems and illustrates her intrigue with hidden information, the concept of being public as a condition for existence, and intimacy in relation to power and observation.[3]
With her 2004 project, Evidence Locker, Magid engaged the CCTV surveillance system of Liverpool, Citywatch, which operates the largest surveillance system in the world. She gained access to images and video from the system through a “loophole”. Wearing a bright red trench coat over the course of 31 days, she would call the police on duty with details of where she was and ask them to film her in particular poses, places or even guide her through the city with her eyes closed. In doing so, Magid formed intimate relationships with many of Citywatch’s officers and collected the footage of the incidents by submitting 31 Subject Access Request Forms, which she composed as love letters that expressed what she was thinking, feeling, and experiencing in each individual incident. This exploration of technology and space broke down barriers of authority and allowed Magid to form intimate relationships with the officers she interacted with, bonds so close Magid likened them to love.
Incident_Retrieved. 7:oo loop. | Final Tour. Police CCTV footage,audio track. 2:14 min.
Magid took advantage of the opportunity that reduced privacy and greater connectivity sometimes makes available: increased social interaction. Magid’s pieces, which question authority, seem to have a strong influence from one of the core tenets of Wired magazine’s 1996 editorial, The Wired Manifesto. The piece, written at a peak moment of the digital evolution, commanded readers to adhere to the following:
If someone has information about you, demand to see it. If there are cameras on your street, demand to look through them. No CCTV system of the sort that British politicians dote on so should be in use unless the people it watches have some way to access its imagery, both directly, through nearby screens, and indirectly. That's what public space is all about: a place where one can see - and be seen.[4]
Magid has explored the private as public and public as private in a number of works. Her efforts link back to Graham’s writings, particularly his concept of the recombination perspective in which a fully relational view of the links between technology, time, space and social life is necessary to understand how social and special life are subtly and continuously recombined in complex combinations of new sets of spaces and times, which are always contingent and impossible to generalize. [5]
Design student Michele Chang and Elizabeth Goodman respond to the intersection of cyberspace and material space through the creation of “asphalt games”.[6] An “asphalt game”, or Digital Street Game is a hybrid game of misadventure set on the streets of New York. “It's a battle for turf, a contest of wills - in short - an excuse to explore the city.” The rules are outlined as follows:
Players compete for turf by performing and documenting 'stunts' on the physical streets of New York in order to claim territory on a virtual map. Stunts are comprised of a random combination of 3 elements: 1) an object commonly found in the city (e.g. bodega) 2) a street game (e.g. stickball) and 3) a wildcard/urban situation (e.g. happy hour). Players interpret these elements as they wish, then stage and photograph their stunt in order to claim a spot on the map. The more stunts players perform the more turf they claim. But of course some players may want to compete for the same territory. In order to hold on to territory, players' stunts must score high with the rest of the game community. [7]
Constructing more of an interactive framework than Magid, Chang and Goodman have created an interface for people to engage in the material world through the portal of cyberspace. While less transformative than Magid’s passive aggressive questioning of authority in Evidence Locker, Chang and Goodman tap into the human experience of play. Enabling the location as a communicative medium, Asphalt Games created emergent experiences for members of the games’ community. Their games were able to have more of an experiential effect than Magid’s solitary play with Liverpool’s Citywatch.
Screenshot of online gameboard representing play in New York City’s East Village. Players lizg and pachanga have recently completed stunts, whereas piQued and maverick are about to stage new ones.
Screenshot of a rumble taking place between current champion, Monkey, and his challenger, Parade. After a rumble stunt is completed, voting is open for 72 hours, after which the player with the highest score claims victory.
For those heavily engaged with social media, Chang and Goodman’s games seem like an almost linear parentage to geolocation applications such as, Foursquare and Gowalla. These applications allow participants to take ownership and leave digital trails of their physical presence through checking into places on the app. Individuals often report the experience of greater interpersonal connections through further connecting into the grid. Through weaving identity and activity through cyberspace, leaving cookies and bytes to be stored in clouds and servers, they become the authority that surveys and creates logs of activity in material space.
Screenshot of History screen on Foursquare, indicating the place where an individual “checked-in”. The individual is encouraged the visit the location numerous times to become “Mayor” or leave tips and photos for others interested in the place.
This evolution of technology and space and place is further enhanced through Stephen Graham’s third perspective on technology and space, which describes the concepts of substitution and transcendence, or “the idea that human territoriality, and the space and place-based dynamics of human life, can somehow be replaced using new technologies.” With the grid of cyberspace interconnected with physical place, there is more space than ever to communicate, engage, and play.
[1] Stephen Graham, “The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology.” In The New Media and Cybercultures Anthology, edited by Pramond K. Nayer. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
[2] Jill Magid http://jillmagid.net/writings.php
[3] Neuberger Museum of Art. http://www.neuberger.org/events.php?type=category&yy=2011&cat=3&catname=Lectures%2C+Panels%2C+and+Dialogues
[4] “The Wired Manifesto”. Wired Magazine, Issue 2 (10). 1996.
[5] Stephen Graham, “The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology.” In The New Media and Cybercultures Anthology, edited by Pramond K. Nayer. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
[6] Michele Chang and Elizabeth Goodman, “Asphalt games: enacting place through locative media.” In The New Media and Cybercultures Anthology, edited by Pramond K. Nayer. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
[7] Tisch School of New York. http://itp.tisch.nyu.edu/object/itpnews_asphalt.html. 2003.
