Tracing Mobility: Symposium Live Blog

 

Symposium
Tracing Mobility: Cartograhpy and Migration in Networked Space

Hello, and welcome to the live blog for today’s Tracing Mobility Symposium at Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Ahead of us is a fantastic line-up of talks and panel discussions debating the ongoing changes to our perceptions of time, space and distance through the new architecture of electronic networked space. Representatives from all over the world, from fields such as art, media theory, curating, social science, and computer science, eagerly await a day which will question how connectivity to this ‘new world’ impacts on our relationship with geographical space, as well as our personal and shared experiences of place.

Many questions will be posed throughout the event, with the ultimate inquisition being this;

In this new world built of mass-less architecture have we not become trapped by the Net just when we thought we were escaping the ground?

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Anette Schäfer, co-founder of Trampoline and co-curator of the Tracing Mobility, introduces the symposium by talking about the project’s history and the bringing together of international artists for this final event series at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, including the free exhibition. Jennifer Davy then talks through the day’s schedule, introducing the moderator of the event Hubertus von Amelunxen. The sun is shining outside, but not yet on the Net, he jests…

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11am -12.20pm
Panel 1 – Keep on Bloggin’  in the Free World

Sadie Plant 20min
Stefan Heidenreich 20min
Christian Hänggi 20min
Moderated by Hubertus von Amelunxen
(Theatersaal)

First up are Sadie Plant (writer and lecturer in philosophy based in Birmingham, UK), Stefan Heidenreich (writer and teacher of art/architecture based in Berlin) and Christian Hanggi (Zurich-based media ecologist) making up our first panel. The topic is about the potential capability of a website and/or social networking site, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc, in shaping a political landscape.

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Sadie Plant is interested in the interplay between electronic communication systems and analogue social reality into which political movements and events become intertwined. The more and more tangible friction between the two requires relentless controlling and ‘untangling’. She has been moved and impressed with the work of Michelle Teran, having just seen it in the Tracing Mobility exhibition and so opens with a quote from her piece Folgen.

Plant begins by looking at the idea of ‘cyberspace’ as it was twenty years ago- imagined, separate, removed, free-floating are all words she describes this with. It was a space celebrated to be above that of geography, and of the ground, with a clear boundary between the two. This world was connected to the ‘real’ world through anchored wires. Terminals were fixed and a tangible network of cables maintained certain confinements which prevented this ‚new world’ from affecting everyday life like it does now, two decades on.

Plant states that the immense pragmatic difference made to geography has been the introduction of ‘wirelessness’ and as a result, portability.

The ‘cyber-zone’ is no longer self-sufficient and facilitates a re-invigoration of geography and and adjustment of focus. Things are now operating on different scales. Boundaries between places, cities, countries can now be reimagined. Plant effectively uses the example of reimagining the gap between Africa and Europe… describing how one can view it not only geographically, but geologically, and of course, politically. The new imaginings brought about through this new electronic infrastructure can establish new links, building bridges between places.

With regard to the demonstrations of Arab Spring- Plant states that all talk of a Facebook revolution and Twitter uprising seems ‚quite ridiculous’. Media is now an inescapable element in events that happen.

Showing her own mapping of Rome, a visual imagining of a city, Plant describes how geographical awareness varies depending on circumstances.

In her opinion, with cities becoming so empty of life- so controlled, so clean, so policed, so sterile and barran even, it is floods of protestors that bring it to life- that reinvigorate the public space.

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Second to speak is Stefan Heidenreich…

Heidenreich refers to the ideas of Harold Innis’ ‘Empire and Communication‘ and explores the struggle between closed official networks of data flow set up for institutional control and open data distribution via the web, particularly in times of rebellion or political upheaval…

He first refers to Plant’s depiction of Rome through the tracking of mobile communications, and uses the nature of this system as an example for his point that this kind of data collection could be used in a completely different way- perhaps suggesting something much more sinister.

He states that “Places of control and places of reward are one and the same”, going on to say that the idea that the Arab Spring demonstrations were triggered by Facebook and Twitter is complete myth. In fact there were much more lo-tech communication systems enabling this, including the passing of information from football club to football club… Web-based platforms just played their own role at a later point.

Heidenreich states that he wants to take a more distant viewpoint and talks about the idea of directedness- advancements in technology with always lead to an increase in speed. Yet “directedness does not equal determinism”. He also clarifies that within this technical infrastructure it is one network and not many.

The speaker then compares the a time before this kind of new mobility to the way in which Egyptian Gods were depicted with bodies inwardly turned and closed off from outside forces. This is then contrasted to depictions of Greek Gods- who conversely have wide open stances and limbs reaching outwards- a metaphor for the way we live now- “opening out into action and reaction”.

Heidenreich now comments that materials durable in character such as parchment and stone can emphasize time, whilst materials less durable and more temporal, such as paper, are those which accentuate space, and those which can be representational of ’media’.

Using the material notions of Innes, Heidenreich makes clear the significance of media theory not transferring to the theory of networks. He then poses the question of what kind of empires our networks will now create… decentralized and hierarchical, or centralized non-hierarchical? A state can be seen as a spatially limited organisation- one sender and one uniform public. But now we are faces with a new situation- where many senders can reach many listeners. Here is where the democratic system starts to fail, and we see how an empire is threatened by a conceptual new one.

Time-destruction is Heidenreich’s next topic to tackle, and he uses Google as a good example of how this is occurring and will continue to occur. Inevitably, the ’new world’ of communications and mobility will be driven by credit and technology trade. ’The future is already sold’ he states. This is where the two empires clash- the state and the banks. Banks make more use of this overwhelmingly powerful system of networks and therefore, will win. So does this mean the abolishment of democracy?

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The third and final speaker, Christian Hänggi has some very good points which allude to the very thin line between mass-mediated celebration and participation in online public spheres, and the eventual deprivation of political private lives, and potential abuse of these kinds of information systems.

He too begins with reference to revolts of Arab Spring, stating that with protests dying down due to exhaustion, the mass media speculation is really put into perspective. Emancipation through technology and self-proclaimed democracies project a powerful message- that the techno-optimists were right after all.

If the world comes together to shrink tothe size of a village, benefits come in the prevention of alienation. But is a collective identity always so beneficial? Throughout the 20th Century the notion ‘what is good for the economy is good for the people’ was dominant. These days, what makes these current poliitcal stories so attractive is that they are based on seemingly intangible forces- an invisible force, much like that of God, which provides comfort, hope even.

The same goes for the discipline of branding. What gains the most success is establishing effective resonance between the consumer and the brand by building on intangible aspects of their identity. The priorities lie not with the consumers themselves. Similarly, with the surveillance of public spaces we see that threats to the state are much more a priority than the liberty of its people.

When demonstrations are documented by a large number of different devices and distributed over the world wide web, huge amounts of information becomes widely accessible. Authorities no longer need to take photographs when the internet provides them so freely. The speed at which we have come to this point is accentuated when Hänggi says in jest; “Sounds very futuristic but this is not so”.

Of course, the problem is control. If everyone posts everything all of the time, surely it will be impossible for human operators to control? Communication channels now function within an architecture without walls and roof… just doors, wide open.

Hänggi draws on observations made by Heidegger about modern technology. Real-time is nothing but the speed of light. Information and communication are essentially means of transportation requiring massive amounts of infrastructure. This infrastructure is not possible without carving out natural resources at grat detriment to other human beings. Hänggi points out that electronic gadgets which are superseded and become outdated rapidly are predominantly produced by people who cannot afford them. Whilst natural resources are exploited as our standard reserve, perhaps for corporations and for the future of these ongoing technological advances, we, society, will become the victims of such exploitation.

After a bleak talk Hänggi offers an upbeat message, quoting Heidegger in saying that “the closer we come to danger the more brightly the ways of saving power begin the shine.” The prospects my in fact be good, but what is it that will lead us there?

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Following this panel discussion our moderator Hubertus von Amelunxen feels it a necessary point to voice that the idea of cartography, in its original form, related primarily to discovery. The production of cartographical data was about striving to reveal or uncover something unknown- there had to be some sort of mystery about it.

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12.30h – 13.15h

Wolfgang Ernst (keynote)

Tracing Tempor(e)alities  (40min)

(Theatersaal)

Introduced by Hubertus von Amelunxen

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For this next part of the symposium the Professor for Media Theories at the Institute for Musicology and Media Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin, Wolfgang Ernst, talks about the use of the word ‘mobility’ in the context of the subjects raised in this exhibition and symposium. Is this a term soon to be out-dated in this sense and become implausible when discussing the notions of media-based communications?

Ernst is primarily concerned with how we can escape talking metaphorically about mobility. He first delves into the Brownian theories of molecular motion- particles moving around, always leaving a trace…with referecne to McLuhan, he describes how electricity creates routes without walls and consequently forms a media field. The notion of the migration of electrons running through cables as a temporal field has replaced the idea of linear time.

Technologies develop new ways of moving within time. The first recordings of simply existing within time began with photography- fixing a moment in an image. Phonography was next, then cinematography. Finally, what we now have is something electronical which is open to total manipulation.

The dynamic field in which all this happens is a digital matrix- a mathematical space. Waves are replaced by impulses and thus, can be pre-calculated. Here, interpolation replaces ‘mobility’ and the current shift into digital coding and temporal acts of calculation, Ernst argues, renders the use of the word ‘mobility’ no longer valid.

Douglas Engelbert’s idea of the central computer, with remote shared access is turned completely upside down by ‘cloud computing’, which allows for uninterrupted connection to this spatial and temporal dimension. Ernst goes on to discuss the changes made to archiving and the process of updating them in terms of permanence and indeterminacy.

Using Aristotle’s classical definition of time along with drawing on the ideas of various other philosophers Ernst proceeds to describe the complex mathematical system and how the idea of mobility has been altered. If we talk about mobility as a practice and a concept within a modernist language, the idea of ‘mobility’ certainly does belong, but, Ernst enforces, we are now moving into a different sphere. This sphere pertains to precise mathematics and would instead prefer to call it ‘computational mobility’. Ernst is persistent in his claims here that the notion of ‘mobility’, belongs only to the discourse of Modernity, was merely the essence of a 20th Century paradigm and is now, in current times, antiquated, and nostalgic even.

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15h – 16.20h
Panel 2 – A View from the Bridge
Hito Steyerl – In Free Fall, on vertical perspective (20min)
Heath Bunting – Status Project (20min)
Hendrik Speck – About Presence and Timely Being (20min)
Moderated by Stephen Kovats
(Theatersaal)

Our second panel of the day, comprises of Hito Steyerl (Writer, filmmaker, and Professor for New Media at University of Arts in Berlin), Heath Bunting (Founder of the Irational.org collective) and Hendrik Speck (Professor of Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern / Department of Computer Sciences/ Interactive Media and head of the Information Architecture/ Search Engine Laboratory). They are here to touch upon the inevitability of normalization as a consequence to our ever-multiplying network activity- not only are the amount of perspectives reduced, the nature of these perspectives lose all sense of locality and become culturally dominant on a wider scale. Do we really want to live in a world of such vast homogenization?

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Before passing onto the panel, moderator Stephen Kovats announces his personal interest in one partiuclar point made in the abstract about this part of the symposium. He reads aloud; ‘Massively multiplied network activity has vastly increased the spectrum by which we can observe a moment, an event or an individual.’ then links back to the discussions had throughout the morning. The idea of multiplicity in conjunction with mobility, and the amount of simultaneous activity going on can perhaps become problematic. Is it really possible to have a single, individual point of view anymore? Kovats proposes that perhaps we lose sense of having our own point of you when we are continuously bombarded with so much media and information from all sides. Kovats describes the view behind us is as equally important as the view ahead of us, but who has real ownership over such views.? This bombardment, along with the instability of media, of course, gives way to creativity, and so is in this sense highly beneficial. In the case of this exhibition- it is creativity which is extremely varied.

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The first to speak of our second panel is Hito Steyerl. Steyerl is interested here in the view at a distance, and more specifically, from above, we now have access to when it come to perceieving the world, and the consequential impact of this on the way in which we live. Steyerl describes the ignorance, or simply, innocence of a life without these viewpoints as ‘being in free fall’ and argues that it is a far less complicated and far more enjoyable way to experience the ground below.

In the beginning Steyerl poses the question ‘What do all of these aerial perspectives mean?’ and then with even stronger intent; ‘Why have they come to be so popular?‘ Steyerl strives to understand how this once ‘God’s eye view’ has become such a dominant paradigm. She pushes further with her probing… ‘How does this effect what used to be prevalent- the visual perspective, the view from the ground?‘ and furthermore ‘How can this be related to the condition of groundlessness? What now constructs the foundations for contemporary societies?’

Steyerl takes a very chronological approach to her talk, with great attention to history, taking us through tools of orientation and how they have been constructed and altered over time. First we see stability and a sense of place as stemming from the idea of the horizon. The horizon- a seemingly stable line in the distance which provides a sense of direction and from which you could supposedly detect your location.

The horizon was an artificial tool used to create the fundamental illusion of stability. Later on, it became an important tool for the production of linear perpspective and placement of vanishing points. Steyerl uses images of the work of Uccello in 1469 to explore this visual apparatus.

But even with these tools in place, Steyerl states, there will always be seeds of doubt. There will always be something to question.

Steyerl continues her ‘art history in fast-forward’ leading up to the point where the ‘ground’ begins to take over from this horizon line. Her choice of Tullio Cralli’s ‘Nose Dive on the City’ from 1939, a fantastic example of the output of Futurism, illustrates this perfectly.  Around this time Italy had carried out the first aerial bombing of Libya, and suddenly the notion of aviation- of leaving the ground- of having a view directed downwards- warranted pure fascination.

Through examples of recent 3D movies (we certainly didn’t see this coming), Steyerl proves that this fascination is still the case. She argues that the ability of 3D film to take you on the path of a bird, or to throw you off a cliff and send you free-falling down into an abyss is what really sells these movies. There is something thrilling about the anxiety of coming so close to death that means the vertical movement towards the ground takes on a much more prominant dimension in 3D cinema.

Steyerl calls for more focus and asks how this relates to her original questions. Her position is that Googlemaps  and surveillance panoramas perform a similar ideological operation to that orginal horoizon line in creating the illusion of a stabilised foundation. They of course, do not represent stable ground and floating observer, but they establish them at least- masking the uncertainty.

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Heath Bunting, having come from a artist-activist background, is concerned with privacy infringement and restriction of individual freedom. Introducing himself as both a user and mis-user of systems, here we get an insight into his Status Project, which explores how an individual’s identity can be constructed from a variety of sources pertaining to everyday life, from a person’s medical record and bank account details, to their affiliation with a shopping centre (in Bunting’s case, Tesco). Heath seeks to discover how this ‘virtual identity’ in the form of data affects our ‘mobility’.

To begin his talk Bunting offers up three potential ways of looking at where we are at the moment- you could choose to focus on the ecological disaster we’re facing, the economical disaster thats currently occuring, or you could pick out the energy crisis looming around the corner. Bunting, it seems, is not the most optimistic of guys.’Yes, we’re living in very interesting lives right now’.

Bunting talks us through his ‘Travel Jogs’ where he uses the simple act of drawing a straight line as a method of recording the train systems of different countries, then through his journal in which he calculated the profitability of every task he achieved over the course of a month. Finally, he describes his attempt to map a small section of the metasystem of the United Kingdom on the floor of the exhibition space. Its the dissection of systems that captivates him, and has done his whole life, he explains. The piece for Tracing Mobility explores a consumers relationship with the largest supermarket chain in the UK- Tesco. Bunting claims that it is affiliations with corporations such as this, and with the whole idea of the ‘high street’ within Western societies that bring about a sense of ‘normality’ and therefore, in mapping such connections you are ultimately discovering what it means to be ‘normal’. Of course to the artist this kind of ‘normality’ through connections with supermarkets, banks, travel agencies etc, represents mass conformality. Bunting asks the audience if there are any normal people here and the laughter begins…

‘These (referring to his data structure maps) are all online…y’know…if you want to become normal.”

The short Q&A following this speech reveals audience members to be perplexed by why Bunting does what he does.

“As an artist, its my profession to create good questions.” Simple as that.

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Similarly to Bunting, Hendrik Speck also delves into the notion that each and every person leaves behind a trail of data allowing identities to be traced along with mobility. The tags, links, keywords, themes and profiles supposedly used to express individualisation are conversely just ways in which society is being standardised.

His discussion begins with the ‘Social Media Trinity’; entertainment, information and communication. He argues that concepts of identity as a fixed set of data are outdated and questions the use of the passport in personal identification; “Our passports do not answer the question ‘Who am I?’ when we wake up every morning.” Just like naming systems differ from culture to culture  (he gives example of Nordic and Arabic systems) so do navigation and mapping systems- some show respect towards the past, and some are more forward looking. What is seen as correct in one place is disputed in another. Speck uses the story of the selling of Kafka’s works to illustrate this further.

The idea of social networking is nothing new, he says. What is new, is the way in which data is accessed.  His own research has led him to produce an application, which can be attached to cell phones, documenting where you have been going, how you have been navigating, how long you have been staying in certain places, and is supplemented with details of your SMS contact, Twitter posts, internet searches you make etc… the process is named ‘Sousveillance’. A map and timeline of your activity is the outcome. Of course, what can be drawn from this data, even if it comes in minimal amounts, is knowledge such as with whom you are connected, how you communicate with them, your interests,your habits… Your routines can be established, and therefore predictions made.

Speck continues by offering up theories of his which connect the digital sphere with the way in which religion has been constructed, has transgressed and the impact it has had throughout history; the idea that “Mac is Catholic and DOS is Protestant.” really gets the attention of the audience as this idea of various network corporations enforcing their own systems and battling for power just like in a Holy War, is perhaps something vastly original in their thinking about the digital world and our mobility within it. Speck predicts a separation between technology and the state, in the same way we separated the church and the state in the past.

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16.30h – 17h
Round up Panel: Exhibition meets Symposium
Moderated by Sadie Plant & Stephen Kovats
With Frank Abbott, Neal Beggs, Miles Chalcraft, Simon Faithfull, plan b (Sophia New/Daniel Belasco Rogers), Mark Selby
(Theatersaal)

To conclude the day’s proceedings we have the Round-up Panel moderated by Sadie Plant and Stephan Kovats. Let’s see where these seven artists participating in the show stand on all that has been discussed and debated throughout the Tracing Mobility symposium…

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Kicking off the Round-up, Stephen Kovats congratulates the curators Anette Schäfer, Miles Chalcroft and Jennifer Davy for the organisation of the ambitious project, commenting on how exceptionally executed the exhibition is, especially considering the wide-ranging contexts from which each of the art works have come from or out of. An ‘omnipresent fetish with traceability‘ is what we are faced with, but the mode in which that traceability is discussed is often fairly banal and simplistic. Not in this case. Kovats is also surprised and pleased with how unlike other related projects, Tracing Mobility is just as concerned with the ‘where we are going’ as it is with the question of ‘where we have been’. The gap is bridged between thinking in terms of the past and the projection of thoughts into the future. Something that is extremely refreshing to see.

Sadie Plant is also struck with how varied the stances the artists have taken in tackling the subject of mobility and enjoys the fact that within the same exhibition space, these stances are not always compatible. She describes the speech of Wolfgang Ernst as a great transitional point of the symposium where we begin asking whether we truly are looking through a McLuhan-esque rear view mirror, and whether we are being too naive about what’s to come.

Each of the artists now give a brief summary of their practise in general and the work that appears in the Tracing Mobility exhibition.

Miles Chalcroft, artist, cultural producer, co-founder of Trampoline, then describes his original use of the term ‘digital migrants‘ in order to spur on further debate surrounding the feelings of being migrant in this new digital sphere. It is this feeling of not belonging which allows you to see the environment at distance, in a slightly different light to those absorbed by it, and ultimately encourages individual expression within it. Neal Beggs, creator of the film piece From Our House to the Summit of Europe joins the conversation and suggests that its about making a statement of autonomy. Its to do with trying to discover and establish your own position- a position neither prescribed by technology or geography. It is an exploration of the extent to which you can use these new tools, without just fitting neatly into the system that they dictate. At this point Frank Abbott, whose visual and sculptural installation documents his video correspondence with fellow artist Duncan Higgins, begins to describe his discoveries whilst carrying out this piece of work. He supposes that your own perception of the world is immediately changed as soon as you’ve sent it out there…and shared it with someone else. Pulling in Simon Faithful’s  living drawing installation and associated iPhone App as an example, he argues that our own senses are heightened through sharing with an audience. And what is it that offers up the opportunity to do this on an ongoing, seemingly never-ending basis? The digital realm, of course.

Abbott turns his attention to the idea of surveillance and control, which has been a key discussion point throughout the day. In a sense, this system gives an edge to the way in which the work within this area must operate. Artists must work out how to do it responsibly so that they do not find themselves conducting exploitative processes which governments and corporations could take hold of. Chalcroft continues by highlighting the importance of artists engaging with such a topic in the first place- ‘get their hands dirty‘- in order to truly understand the potentials for abuse that exist. It is exhibits and events such as this that allow for expanded knowledge about what is going on. Without them, the questions raised today would never be put out there, and our eyes would remain closed to the greater truths.

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Thanks to everyone that joined us at today’s symposium, we hope you enjoyed the conversation.