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Work, Place, wireless project
at the Architectural Association by Pete Gomes,
June 2002
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Saturday 1 February 2003
Online Event Duration: 4.5 hours
Venue: Tate Modern
Click the Play button above to listen
to the whole of this event in narrowband 56k format. Alternatively
see the programme below to listen to individual elements
of this symposium. Follow our Real
Player Guide should you have any player problems.
This half-day seminar explored the use of wireless communication
in artistic and social practices, and included presentations and comments
by: Tetsuo Kogawa - miniFM and radio pioneer (Japan); Micz
Flor - cultural producer and theorist (Germany); Pete Gomes
- wireless artist and filmmaker (UK); Simon Worthington - co-editor
and founder of Mute magazine (UK); Sean Dodson - journalist
for The Guardian (UK) and Nancy Proctor - producer for Antenna
Audio (UK).
| Time |
Session |
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| 14.00 - 14.05 |
Welcome and Introduction
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| 14:05 - 14:30 |
Radio vs Wireless |
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Micz Flor, media producer (Germany)
Micz Flor presented a brief sketch of the history
of radio and radio art, exploring selected creative
and subversive interventions. Starting just a few
years before radio was invented, he lead through some
of the main objectives of radio practice today, to
arrive at the entrance of the afternoon session: wireless
technology. |
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| 14:30 - 15:10 |
The Phenomenology of Wireless Technologies |
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Tetsuo Kogawa, radio pioneer
(Japan)
Tetsuo Kogawa undertook a performance-lecture whereby
he constructed a series of Mini FM transmitters on
stage and performed with them using them as 'radio
theramins'. He also considered the historical context
of the Mini-FM movement in Japan. |
|
| 15:10 - 16:00 |
Panel discussion, with audience intervention |
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Tetsuo Kogawa, and Sean Dodson,
Guardian journalist (UK). Chair: Micz Flor |
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| 16:40 - 16:50 |
Introduction to Session 2
by Micz Flor, media producer (Germany) |
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| 16:50 - 17:30 |
Wireless Intermedia and the birth of Terraportals |
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Pete Gomes, wireless artist (UK)
Pete Gomes gave a presentation which explored his
past work with wireless systems and discussed future
explorations of invisible architectures. |
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| 17:30 - 17:50 |
Sensing Location: Wireless in the Gallery |
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Nancy Proctor, Antenna Audio
(UK)
Nancy Proctor gave an introduction to the location-sensitive
wireless technology used to create Tate Modern's multimedia
gallery tour |
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| 17:50 - 18:30 |
Panel discussion, with audience intervention |
|
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Pete Gomes, Nancy Proctor, Sean Dodson, and Simon
Worthington, Mute Magazine (UK). Chair: Micz Flor |
|
Participants
& Presentations
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Tetsuo Kogawa,
working on an FM transmitter
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Tetsuo Kogawa
[Japan]
Tetsuo Kogawa is a radio practitioner, teacher and artist.
He introduced free radio to Japan through his work with
the Mini-FM movement in Tokyo in the 1980s. He will refer
to this work in his performance-lecture at Wireless
Cultures. Kogawa is widely known for his blend of
criticism, performance and activism. He has written over
30 books on media culture, film, the city and urban space,
and micro politics. Most recently he has combined the
experimental and pirate aesthetics of the Mini-FM movement
with internet streamed media. He studyied philosophy at
Sophia and Waseda Universities,
and taught at Wako University for 17
years. He is currently Professor of Communication Studies
at Tokyo Keizai University's Department
of Communications.
Online data: http://anarchy.k2.tku.ac.jp.
Micz Flor [Germany]
Micz Flor is a cultural producer and media developer based
in Berlin. He produces the political online magazine fluter
for the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung,
and also works as a developer and training consultant
at the Center for Advanced Media in Prague,
where he initialised Campware, a software
system for online publishing. Flor has an active interest
in how radio can be used to network communities, and has
produced two documentaries on this topic: Scattered
Frequencies : Radio Networking in Nepal [2002] and
Reaching Everyone [2001] about an independent radio
network in Indonesia. Flor has worked on cultural events
and symposia all around Europe, including the Hybrid
WorkSpace, a collaboration between documenta
x and the Berlin Biennial, in
Kassel in 1997 and the sound and radio exhibition One
Bit Louder in Video Positive 2000 in Liverpool.
Online data: http://mi.cz/
Sean Dodson [UK]
Sean Dodson is a journalist for The Guardian.
He has written about radio, and now writes about digital
culture and the internet. He was one of the first journalists
to cover wireless technology in the UK, and his article,
Surfing as free as a cloud profiled new cultural
groups working with wireless internet networks in the
East End of London. He also teaches journalism at the
University of Greenwich in London, and
is writing a book about virtual worlds.
Simon Worthington [UK]
Simon Worthington is the co-editor and founder of Mute
magazine and Metamute.com. He has been
active in promoting the use of DIY wireless technologies
in the East End of London. He instigated the You
Are Here wireless porject for Mute, and contributes
to the East-end-net network. He has organised
many events and practical workshops on the technology
required for establishing wireless networks.
He completed his BA Fine Art [Hons] Painting degree at
the Slade School of Art [University College
London] in 1992, where he ran an open contributions magazine
called Mute. In 1991, his interest in the creative applications
of technology led him to attend CalArts
in Los Angeles, where he decided to relaunch Mute as a
critical quarterly. Mute have staged two events exploring
the critical context of technology at Tate Modern.
Online data: You Are Here
Pete Gomes [UK]
Pete Gomes is a film maker and artist who works across
all forms of celluloid, digital media and the internet,
ranging from drama to expanded cinema. His work has been
screened extensively in the UK and at International film
and media festivals. His recent projects at the Architectural
Association in London have explored how wireless
intermedia shapes and effects urban space. This work included
a wireless performance called Work, Place., and
early wireless signal mapping on pavements, which came
to be known as 'warchalking'. He held a New Technologies
Research Post at the ICA in London in
1996-98. In 2002 he collaborated with Michael
Nyman, who scored music for his film Mapping,
shown at Gimpel Fils. He has a forthcoming
screening of films as of part Mies Van Der Rohe
exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery,
and his two recent collaborations with Shobana
Jeyasingh Dance Company, which will tour the
UK in March, having premiered at Dance Umbrella
in 2002. He is writing and directing his first feature
length film 4ps, a non linear narrative film,
exploring psychological archetypes, which is conceived
to be delivered across multiple platforms.
His presentation at Wireless Cultures is dedicated
to Miles Treers, musician, artist, coder,
and inhabitant of backspace (1964-2002)
Online data: Mutant
Film
Nancy Proctor
[UK]
Nancy Proctor is the new product development manager at
Antenna
Audio. Her work is focused on wireless interactive
guide systems, technologies to provide disabled access,
and audio-visual solutions for the web. In 2002 she worked
with Tate on the development of the Multimedia
Tour - a pilot project which used a location sensitive
wireless network and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
to deliver an in-gallery guided tour of Tate Modern's
Still Life/Object/Real Life gallery displays. The
project won the award for Technical Innovation at the
2002 BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards.
Proctor's background is in designing digital publishing
solutions for the arts. She was the founder and director
of New Art online gallery and TheGalleryChannel.com.
She has also worked as a curator and critic, and holds
an MA and PhD in art history from Leeds University.
Online data: Antenna
Audio
Wireless Cultures aimed to create a historical context
for examining community artist-run wireless internet networks.
It drew out connections between the kinds of social networks
which are emerging around wireless internet activities, and
social networks which have historically developed around free
radio and micro-radio.
Three key activities have informed the development of this
event:
- Tetsuo Kogawa's work with the Mini-FM
movement in Tokyo in the 1980s
- The growth of wireless internet networks in London, stimulated
by the work of Consume (http://consume.net),
Free2Air
and other groups
- Tate Modern's Multimedia
Tour which used a location sensitive wireless network
and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to deliver educational
content within the galleries
These very different projects provide distinct ways of thinking
about how wireless technology using the radio band, can be
utilised by creative practitioners to create new forms of
interaction and communication.
Artists have experimented with wireless forms of communication
for most of the past century. Since the invention of radio
by Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi,
artists have utilised the radio spectrum as a medium for creative
intervention and experimentation.
In his 1932 essay, The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication,
Bertolt Brecht wrote about the radical potential
of radio to become a system of open communication, a method
to "let the listener speak as well as hear". The free radio
movement and cultural experiments with Mini-FM and pirate
radio attempted to explore the potential of radio as a communicative
medium. In the 1980s a number of small radio stations in Tokyo
used very low-powered FM transmitters to broadcast to FM listeners
over a small geographical area. To expand the broadcast area,
some stations set up receiver / transmitter relays. A transmitter
would broadcast a few hundred metres in any direction. It's
signal would be received by an FM receiver, and then rebroadcast
for an additional few hundred metres via another FM transmitter.
And so on. This nodal / molecular way of broadcasting enables
a relatively large area to be covered using a 'daisy-chained'
relay of small transmitter/receiver modules. In this way community
radio could be created by small groups of artists, musicians,
DJs and activists, who used these transmitter-receiver modules
to create operational radio stations. The upsurge of this
form of radio is often referred to as the Mini-FM
movement.
Despite these and other important cultural experiments, regulations
and licensing laws associated with the radio spectrum have
ensured that the means to transmit radio has remained by and
large in the hands of the few.
Recently a new form of wireless communication utilising the
radio spectrum, has emerged as a possible example of the many-to-many
media that Brecht, John Cage and others imagined
in the 1930s. Wireless internet connectivity, using the radio
band, has catalysed the emergence of mobile social networks
in cities all over Europe and the United States. Driven by
a Brechtian ideal to 'mobilise the user and redraft him/her
as a producer', small grass roots groups are attempting to
sever artists' reliance on large centrally provided telecommunications
structures, and create a new form of communicative mobility.
Wireless internet networks are starting to rapidly blossom
in locations all over London, informed by the work of groups
such as Consume,
Free2Air.
These groups act as hubs for research and data-sharing regarding
methods to distribute wireless connectivity for cultural and
not-for-profit use. The focus of these groups is on 'localising'
the global medium of the internet, connecting neighbourhoods
together in local area networks, using hundreds of radio antenna
and wireless hubs. Many of the resulting neighbourhood networks
operate using similair principals to the mini FM networks
of the 1980s. Wireless internet technology uses the radio
band to send data signals between transmitting units (a wireless
router/antenna) and receiving units (computers equipped with
802.11b cards). Networks are created in small community areas
by utilising clusters of interconnecting 'nodes', which often
have a dual transmitter/receiver role.
The formal similarity between the kind of free radio practiced
by certain Mini-FM stations during the 1980s, and more contemporary
social urban wireless networks, presages further resonances
between the two systems. Wireless Cultures will aim
to draw out these connections.
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