University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Making art public: mobilizing public art through technology

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Making art public: mobilizing public art through technology

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MAKING ART PUBLIC:
MOBILIZING PUBLIC ART THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

by

Claire Mary Haasl

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC, ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2008

Copyright 2008 Claire Mary Haasl

ii
Epigraph

“Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary
organisation must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to
listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves,
in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.”
Guy Debord, “For Revolutionary Judgement of Art”

iii
Dedication

To my love, David Hoyt, with you everything seems possible.

iv
Acknowledgments

I would like to give thanks to Karen Moss, who offered great advice and
direction throughout the entire process of writing this manuscript. To Holly Willis
and Joshua Decter for pushing me to make my writing the best it could be. I give a
big thank you to Dean Weisberg for taking an interest in my writing and for
believing in the Public Art Studies Program. I would like to thank all the Public Art
Studies faculty for their continued interest in my topic, and especially to Anne Bray
for her encouragement and the importance that she placed on the use of new media in
public art. I would like to thank Caryl Levy and Zipporah Lax-Yamamoto for
believing in me and welcoming me to the program. To Rebecca Ansert and Nicole
Gordillo, I must thank you for permitting me go on and on about everything
imaginable, and cheering me on when the chips were down. I would, of course like
to thank all of the artists I discuss, but especially Fabian Wagmister, Jeff Burke,
Marina Zurkow and Jesse Shapins for taking the time to speak with me about their
own processes and my interest in them. Thank you Carol Stakenas and Steve Dietz
for your time and thoughts. I cannot forget Ryan Lipscomb, without your help all
my thats would be whichs. I take my hat off to all the Poo Pets who have
endeavored in the same process that I have and thank you all for being there to offer
advice, and to listen. Thanks to Sara Ciferalli for being our guide through the last
year. Lastly, I would like to thank my mom and dad, you have always believed in
my ability to do anything and it has allowed me to reach far beyond where I thought
my reach might go.
v
Table of Contents

Epigraph ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
List of Figures vi
Abbreviations viii
Abstract ix
Preface x
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Endnotes 6

Chapter 2: The Situationist International 7
The SI Legacy – Psychogeography and All Its Parts 7
Constant and New Babylon 10
Endnotes 13

Chapter 3: Maps, Place, and Public 14
Why We Map 14
Definitions of Public and Public Sphere 17
Is the Internet a Public Sphere? 18
Endnotes 22

Chapter 4: Case Studies 24
PDPal 24
Yellow Arrow 36
Remapping LA 46
Endnotes 54

Chapter 5: Conclusion 59
Endnotes 66

Bibliography 67

Appendices
Appendix A - Images 70
vi
List of Figures

1. PDPal beaming station in New York, 2003-2004. 3

2. Yellow Arrow participant, 2005. 4

3. PDPal beaming at the Walker Sculpture Garden, 2003. 21

4. PDPal beaming station in New York, 2003-2004. 21

5. PDPal beaming station at the Eyebeam Atelier, 2003. 21

6. PDPal PDA application shapes/symbols/key, 2003. 22

7. PDPal’s UPR on Creative Time’s 59
th
Minute series in Times Square,
2003 – 2004. 23

8. PDPal’s question as part of Creative Time’s 59
th
Minute series,
2003 - 2004. 23

9. PDPal printed map for Times Square, 2003. 23

10. PDPal’s UPR (Urban Park Ranger), 2003-2004. 25

11. Lucci, the Karaoke Ice character and truck, 2004. 29

12. Another Spatial Annotation Project (ASAP) PDA screen shot, 2004. 30

13. Yellow Arrow, participation in action, 2005. 34

14. Compilation of Images from the Colors of Berlin, 2004. 35

15. Ralph Rumney, Pyschogeographic Map of Venice, 1957. 35

16. Palm-sized-pointers, 2006. 38

17. Secret New York yellow arrows, 2005. 40

18. Capitol of Punk – image of bathroom, 2006. 42

19. Not a Cornfield facing toward downtown Los Angeles, 2005. 47

20. Juncture in the Los Angeles State Historic Park, 2007. 52
vii

21. Juncture set up, detail of LED strings in motion, 2007. 53

22. Juncture, 2007. 53

viii
Abbreviations

SI – Situationist International

LI – Lettriste International

UCLA – University of California Los Angeles

GPS – Global Positioning System

GIS – Geographic Information Systems

SMS – Short Message Service (a.k.a. text message)

PDA – Personal Digital Assistant

WIFI - A trademark for the certification of products that meet certain standards for
transmitting data over wireless networks

UPR – Urban Park Ranger

ASAP – Another Spatial Annotation Project

YA – Yellow Arrow

DUMBO – Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass

MAAP – Massively Authored Artistic Production

REMAP – Center for Research in Engineering, Media, and Performance – UCLA

L.A. – Los Angeles

SPRR – South Pacific Railroad

CENS – Center for Embedded Networked Sensing

ix
Abstract

This thesis explores the projects PDPal, Yellow Arrow, and REMAPPING
LA, showing that the artists who produced them have extended and advanced
Situationist International praxis by using mobile Web-based technologies. These
projects show that today’s artists and thinkers are not only recalling and
contemporizing the revolutionary work of the SI, they are redefining public
exploration by interrupting both our usual motivations for using mobile devices, and
the public space through which we move.

x
Preface

Since I can remember there has been a computer in my home, and
consequently, I have always used the technology a computer provided me to learn, to
research, to explore and expand my horizons. I have a very vivid memory of adding
apples at a very young age on DOS program on my father’s computer. In 1996 I was
diagnosed with fibromyalgia and the Internet saved my life. Not in the way the
medicine can save lives, but it provided answers—many, many answers. I tried
everything, and thanks to my father’s diligence and belief that he could use the
World Wide Web to research possible solutions for my pain, I found a solution.
This was the beginning of my love affair with technology. I signed up for
America Online (AOL) and began to explore the “chat-room.” Later I found the
adoration of a device called a digital “cell” phone that could ping short messages
back and forth to friends and family who also used these devices. Then I began to
explore the researching possibilities of the Internet in my studies of art history. It
became easier and easier to sort and find answers using a new search engine called
“Google.” After I completed my B.A. I found an interesting way to explore the
world in “Google Earth,” a Web-based simulation that enables users to jump from
country to country, zooming in and out of points of interest.
In graduate school I began to think more seriously about my intrigue with
technology. The idea of participation and the activation of public space by an active
public became extremely worthwhile and interesting. During my second semester, I
xi
was introduced to public art that utilized Web-based technologies and had the
opportunity to meet Fabian Wagmister, who talked about things that blew my mind.
My intrigue in Wagmister’s work grew and I used that interest to write a seminar
paper about an earlier project he had produced with Lynn Hershman Leeson. When
it came time to think about writing this thesis there was no doubt in my mind that I
wanted to write about public art projects that use Internet based technologies, and I
wanted to explore the idea of the Internet as a public space that is being and should
be creatively activated by artists as well as the public.
I became interested in the three projects that are presented here because they
not only explore the spaces of the Internet through the use of new technologies; they
also investigate places and spaces in the built environment. As I began to investigate
these works, it became clear how important place is to the public, and how important
it is for artists to continue working to connect the public with the places they live.
We really do value our cities and the experiences we have in and through them.
Most importantly these projects show how histories of the places in which we inhabit
intersect with our personal histories and interpretations of those places. They have
provided an avenue for the public to reconnect with those personal and public
histories in both a very public and very private way.

1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

A Brief History of the Situationist International and an Introduction to Each
Case Study

With the advancement of technology and the widespread use of mobile
telephony, contemporary artists have advanced and extended the terms, theories, and
practices developed by members of the European group the Situationist International
(SI). But much of the embedded meaning and surrounding context of the original
understanding of SI praxis has been lost as contemporary artists have developed and
expanded Situationist theories of psychogeography. To begin to understand what
this means, we must first explore the group’s principles and their evolution.
In the 1950s and 60s, the SI, a group of artists and thinkers, began to explore
their urban environment in a new way. They grew out of a group who called
themselves the Lettriste International (LI).
1
The principle member of the SI, Guy
Debord, used the practices and tools he helped develop to lead the group into
redefining exploration. They invented and investigated ideas and theories including
détournement, the dérive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism. Used to help
define the period’s urban situations, these terms emerged out of the belief systems of
the group and the environmental influences on them. From 1957 through 1972,
when the group was formally together, the language and theories established were
specific to a number of political and cultural circumstances of the times, and were
extremely contextualized within those fifteen years of development and practice.
2
It is important to explore how to define these terms in order to understand the
context in which they were cultivated, and how, to a certain degree, they have been
re-appropriated by contemporary artists working within SI discourse. It is somewhat
of a leap to say that the language and theories developed by the SI are still used
today, because the practice of their ideas cannot exist in contemporary situations and
context. However, investigating how these terms have changed will help us to
understand how and why they are put to use in contemporary artistic production.
Détournement, the dérive, psychogeography, and unitary urbanism will be explained
in Chapter One of this manuscript, as will the development of a project called New
Babylon, which was completed by a momentary member of the SI, Constant
Nieuwenhuys. Constant created the project out of a desire for a “future city” that
would incorporate some of the ideas discussed during his time with the SI in addition
to his own ideas of what a city designed through unitary urbanism might look like.
In Chapter Two, the function of maps and the activity of mapping will be
discussed through a close examination of why individuals in today’s society have the
desire to map their environment. Also, the definitions of public and public sphere
will be investigated, along with how projects utilizing locational media can enhance
a sense of place and its history, and how the Internet and technology such as
locational media devices have changed the definitions of place and public and how
they relate to each other. All of these aspects are important to this topic because the
projects discussed in Chapter Three all play with the ideas and functions of mapping
in order to relate a public to a place.
3
Chapter Three will include an in depth look into three public art projects that
utilize locational media such as PDAs and mobile phones to navigate urban spaces in
new ways. Those projects include PDPal, 2003-2004; Yellow Arrow, 2004-2006;
and REMAPPING LA, 2006-2007. All three projects put the theories of the SI to use
in one way or another, but, because of contemporary context and the rapid growth in
technology, the SI’s ideas have gathered new meanings. These projects are also
reminiscent of other groups and theories from art history, but for the purpose of this
thesis, my focus will remain on the Situationist International and Constant’s ideas of
unitary urbanism. Also, it is important to note that these are not the only projects
that are aligned with the theories of the SI, however, it was imperative to keep focus
on a select few in order to show a trajectory or evolution of the use of technology in
public art projects of this nature.
The first project I will investigate is called PDPal (Image 1). This public art
project, sited first at the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis and
then in Times Square in New York City, began in 2003. Artists Marina Zurkow,
Julian Bleecker, and Scott Paterson designed this mobile mapping project to explore
the concept of a city that could be “written” and filtered by individuals living in or
visiting the metropolis. PDPal allowed participants to explore the topography of the
city in ways they could not on Mapquest or GoogleMaps. Instead they created
cartographic representation that included both physical and emotional content.
2

Secondly, I will examine a project that was also sited in New York City, but
eventually expanded internationally. Designated the world’s first global public art
4
project, Yellow Arrow (Image 2) employs mobile technology such as: GPS, SMS
messaging, an online database and Web site, and yellow stickers shaped like arrows
that participants placed in and around the city.
3
This project, like PDPal, was
designed to create a connection with the inhabitants or visitors of a place and the
history and experiences that the city has to offer them.
Lastly, I will examine a recent project completed by University of California
Los Angeles researchers (UCLA), Los Angeles digital media artists, and community
facilitators. Titled REMAPPING LA, the project enlists the technologies of urban
sensing devices and mobile phones equipped with cameras, GPS and GIS systems,
and SMS messaging, to create a layered topography of the area known to history as
the “Cornfield” park. REMAPPING LA is a unique project that incorporates the long
history of the site with its current community and conditions surrounding the area
under investigation. REMAPPING LA sub-projects have included ImageAbility in
September 2006; Monumento872, a cultural urban touring event in June 2007; the
“Engaged Media Workshop,” a two-quarter UCLA course exploring the intersections
between Los Angeles communities, culture, and technology; and a final and
culminating event called Juncture in November 2007.
4

The mobile Web-based technologies used in the projects PDPal, Yellow
Arrow, and REMAPPING LA have redefined and contemporized the notions of
psychogeography. In detailing these projects I will explain how they extend and
advance SI praxis. I will show that today’s artists and thinkers are not only recalling
the revolutionary work of the SI, they are redefining public exploration by
5
interrupting both our usual motivations for using mobile devices, and the public
space through which we move.

6
Chapter One Endnotes

1
The Lettriste International was a group formed in 1952 by Isidore Isou. The
group began much of the thinking that lead to the practices of the Situationist
International. It formally disbanded in 1957 to make room for the SI.

2
Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of
Networks and Territories. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Design
Institute, 2007) 203.

3
Counts Media Inc., Yellow Arrow, http://www.yellowarrow.org. Counts
Media promotes this project as being the world’s first global public art project on a
video on their website.

4
Fabian Wagmister, “Juncture,” http://la.remap.ucla.edu/juncture/.
7
CHAPTER TWO: THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL

The SI Legacy – Psychogeography and All Its Parts
Based on the terms set up by Guy Debord, the Situationist International was
an extremely exclusive group. Debord was just as selective about whom he allowed
into the group as he was easily inclined to excommunicate members from it. In
addition to claiming a stronghold on the group’s membership and evolution of its
ideas and theories, Debord was a primary editor for the journal that the SI began to
produce in June of 1958. One of the most influential texts of its time, the
Internationale situationniste circulated for eleven years. In it, Debord explicated
many of his theories and the terminology formulated by the group. In fact, the
journal often included a useful list of terms and their definitions.
One such term was détournement—when an artist reuses elements of well-
known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to
the original. Not merely an appropriation of a work of art, Debord once wrote of
détournement:
[It] not only leads to the discovery of new aspects of talent; in addition,
clashing head-on with all social and legal conventions, it cannot fail to be a
powerful cultural weapon in the service of a real class struggle …. It is a real
means of proletarian artistic education, the first steps towards a literary
communism.
1

Although Debord believed that détournement had strong roots in the political
atmosphere of the time, many artists today produce works that echo, or hold close
8
associations with the practices of détournement in their work. But it is important to
remember that détournement was not the only SI practice that was based in politics.
Throughout the decade between 1958 and 1968, consumption began to define
the happiness of the European individual, and the Situationist International argued
that this was the cause of alienation in the 20
th
Century and therefore was the reason
for the suppression of the possibilities of freedom and selfhood. This was a cultural
issue as much as it was a political issue and the SI poked at both sides. Because the
idea of equality in ownership is rooted in communism and Marxist thought, the issue
of consumption became contradictory to the most basic value in communism. The
struggle to make men equal and eliminate poverty was supposed to free men from
material cares, but instead the desire to consume more and more infiltrated the
idealistic plan of communism. The SI, unlike its cohorts who only articulated the
shared opinions behind communism’s failure in papers and lectures, was interested
in turning their criticisms into events. This was one reason for the group’s tendency
to avoid “work,” and instead introduce play into the monotony of everyday life.
2

The dérive was one way the group incorporated these ideas into action.
Additionally, it is a practice that is still used in contemporary art projects. In 1956,
Debord defined the dérive as an activity in which “one or more persons during a
certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their
work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the
terrain and encounters they find there.”
3
Although many aspects of the theory of the
dérive are still being put in to practice, it is important to note that for the SI, the
9
dérive was a way of life. Many of the members of SI did not even hold jobs because
they took the elements of the dérive so seriously. Their work, instead, became about
drifting through the city, and creating life out of that.
Psychogeography is one of the main practices in which the theory of the
dérive is used. A term that is actively applied today, Debord described
psychogeography in 1955 as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the
geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and
behavior of individuals.”
4
More simply put, it is an inventive and playful way of
exploring a place. Psychogeography is the study and practice of the dérive, but also
of the détournement and a term that has yet to be explained—unitary urbanism.
According to Debord, unitary urbanism is the “use of the whole of arts and
techniques as means cooperating in an integral composition of the environment.”
5

However, a more elaborate and possibly a more meaningful definition comes from
Constant Nieuwenhuys. In an essay entitled “Unitary Urbanism” that was presented
at a lecture at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in December of 1960, Constant
stated:
I would prefer to define unitary urbanism as a very complex, very
changeable, constant activity, a deliberate intervention in the praxis of
everyday life and in the daily environment; an intervention aimed at bringing
our lives into lasting harmony with our real needs and with the new
possibilities that will arise and that will in turn transform these needs … .
Unitary urbanism is flexible, it respects our freedom to change our way of
life, it adapts to every situation, to every need, to every technical,
geographical, or psychological possibility, it is the objectification of the
creative urge, the collectivization of the art work, the materialization of a
dynamic lifestyle.
6

10
Constant’s definition is perhaps more desirable because he devoted his life’s work to
a project called New Babylon, a set of drawings, plans, images, models, lectures,
sculptures, and papers that express the ideas and possibilities of a “future city” built
upon the principles of unitary urbanism.

Constant and New Babylon
In 1959 the Internationale situationiste no. 3 was the first to publish the
article “Une Autre Ville pour une Autre Vie.”
7
Written by Constant Nieuwenhuys,
the article notes that a crisis in urbanism is worsening. He stated that the
construction of neighborhoods is in “obvious disagreement with the established
forms of behavior,” and “the result is a dismal and sterile ambiance in our
surroundings.”
8
Constant argued here that there were two elements dominating every
aspect of daily life: “driving by car and comfort at home,” both, of which were
rooted within the issues of over consumption of Western cultures.
9
Although most
things have changed since the 1950s, these grievances are still at the center of the
disorder in social relations people experience on a daily basis. Through the advent of
email, the Internet, chat rooms, SMS messaging, and other technological
developments, we have become a society that lives alone and physically interacts
less and less. Because of these new technologies, we are content staying in our
comfortable homes and driving around in our ever increasingly luxurious cars.
In “Une Autre Ville pour une Autre Vie,” Constant writes of the ideal city as
a “newly constructed space that allows for a more congruent movement between and
11
among the architecture of that city.” In a time when man had just journeyed to the
moon, it is sensible that an adventurous urban nexus would have been proposed as a
solution to the social problems of the time. Constant states, “Those who think that
the rapidity of our movements and the possibilities of telecommunications are going
to erode the shared life of the conurbations are ignorant to the real needs of man.”
10

And so he proposes a “future city” that has been envisaged to offer “an original
variety of sensations” and as a place where “unforeseen games will become possible
through the inventive use of material conditions.”
11
This “future city,” as Constant
saw it, does not and may never exist. However, the solutions proposed to help
increase social relations are possible and have to some extent been made possible by
advancements in telecommunications, ironically one of the things that Constant
criticizes
What Constant did not know when he was dreaming up the future city he
named New Babylon was that it was actually something that could exist, but not in
the built space that he had intended. Instead, the concepts of New Babylon exist
within the intangible spaces of the Internet, and unitary urbanism, a concept central
to New Babylon, is being realized through the connection that the Internet offers to
the socially challenged populace referred to by Constant. Projects that utilize mobile
communication devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, and the programs and
tools that are a part of those devices, are the keys to connecting the architected
world—the world that Constant knew needed to change in order to increase social
relations—with the World Wide Web.
12
Although New Babylon was never realized in the way that Constant had
envisioned, it is possible to see many connections to his ideas of unitary urbanism in
the Internet. In close examination of Constant’s definition, we can say that both the
Internet and the way we use it are very complex and very changeable—it is “in
constant activity.” When used, it promotes a “deliberate intervention in the praxis of
everyday life and in the daily environment,” and an intervention aimed at “bringing
our lives into lasting harmony with our real needs and with the new possibilities that
will arise and that will in turn transform these needs.”
12
In turn, the Internet is also
flexible. It “respects our freedom to change our way of life.” It “adapts to every
situation, to every need, to every technical, geographical or psychological
possibility.” It is the “objectification of the creative urge, the collectivization of the
art work, the materialization of a dynamic lifestyle.”
13

Therefore, it can be said that by the standards of Constant’s definitions of
unitary urbanism as the basis for New Babylon, the concepts behind the project do
exist in something not quite tangible, but yet in existence, the Internet. Furthermore,
it can also be said that any art projects that incorporate the use of the Internet are also
playing with the ideas of unitary urbanism according to Constant. As previously
mentioned, Chapter Three will showcase three projects that use hand-held
technologies to create the kind of connections discussed here. However, first it is
important to explore the ideas of mapping, and to review some definitions of public
and public sphere and how the Internet can be viewed as a place where public
spheres can take shape.
13
Chapter Two Endnotes

1
Simon Ford, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide (London:Black
Dog, 2005) 36.

2
Greil Marcus, “The Long Walk of the Situationist International,” in Guy
Debord and the Situationist International, ed. Tom McDonough (Cmbridge: MIT
Press, 2002) 3-4.

3
ibid., 34-35. This action is similar to that of the “flaneur,” one who walks
leisurely through the city, which was described by Charles Baudelaire and Walter
Benjamin.

4
Guy Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” Le Levres
Nues, no. 6 (1955), http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/2.

5
Guy Debord, “Towards a Situationist International//1957,” in Participation,
ed. Claire Bishop (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006) 96.

6
Constant Nieuwenhuys,“Unitary Urbanism,” (paper presented at the
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on 20 December 1960) trans. from Dutch by Robyn
de Jong-Dalziel, in Constant's New Babylon: City for Another Life, exh. cat. ed.
Mark Wigley, 131-135 (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Witte de With, Center for
Contemporary Art, 010 Publishers, 1998) 132.

7
Translation: “Another City for Another Life”

8
Nieuwenhuys, “Unitary Urbanism,” 115.

9
ibid.

10
ibid.

11
ibid.

12
ibid., 132.

13
ibid.
14
CHAPTER THREE: MAPS, PLACE, AND PUBLIC

Why We Map
In the book Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of Networks and
Territories, edited by Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, it is made clear the propensity to
map everything under the sun is a tendency that will not disappear soon. They argue
that mapping has “emerged in the information age as a means to make the complex
accessible, the hidden visible, the unmappable mappable.”
1
Writer and curator
Karen Moss speaks of the same concept in the introduction to the exhibition
catalogue, Topographies:
With the constant permutation of language and its continually shifting
significances, the idea of topography as a singular, fixed entity has expanded
into multivalent meanings. No longer confined to the domain of
cartographers and geographers, the topographic pervades diverse disciplines
ranging from art and architecture to medicine and metallurgy, and to myriad
areas of science and technology.
2

There is much to say about why society has a need to map, and how this
desire has leaked into the art world. As Abrams and Hall state in the introduction to
their book, “Mapping has become a way of making sense of things.”
3
And one of
the things modern and contemporary artists have strived for is to find creative ways
and mediums in which to make sense of the world. Mapping has provided this
outlet. As we begin to look at why we map things, it is also important to look at
what maps provide, how mapping intersects with interpretation of place, and why we
should and do value the referent. Furthermore, it is important to remember that there
15
are different kinds of maps, which means that we will see countless meanings, and
reach limitless answers to all of these topics.
What do maps provide? Karen Moss states that well-known geographer
Denis Wood describes the role of maps as the “intermediaries of the dialectic
between experience and knowledge.”
4
Wood says that maps “make present—they
represent—the accumulated thought and labor of the past.”
5
He goes on, “In doing
so they enable the past to become part of living . . . now . . . here.”
6
Maps represent a
technology that was put into use long ago in order to connect our knowledge and
experiences. But, just as maps were at one time the most technologically advanced
form of recorded topography, GPS in conjunction with hand-held media devices and
interactive Web databases are today’s most advanced way of translating experience
into knowledge. It makes perfect sense that we would combine mapping and
technology in order to grow wiser and more aware of our environment.
Inherently way-finding tools, maps supply people with the visual foundations
to navigate their way to new places. Maps also help us to know what we can expect
to encounter along the way and how to find those things. Additionally, they provide
us with a sense of belonging. As writer and artist Jesse Shapins stated in an essay for
the Columbia University’s journal MUSEO, “In the process of telling us where we
are, maps tell us who we are,” they “demand our engagement to give them
meaning.”
7
This is at the heart of why there is so much interest in mapping, and also
why there are so many different kinds of maps.
16
Of course, it is important to remember that not all maps are produced with the
intention of helping people get from here to there without having to stop for
directions. Some maps are created to help trace diseases and infected populations,
others function as a way to express something creatively, and still others are guides
for more conceptual modes of exploration. As the editors of Else/Where Mapping
have stated, “[Mapping] is the conceptual glue linking the tangible world of
buildings, cities, and landscapes with the intangible world of social networks and
electronic communications.”
8
When we record the tangible in combination with the
intangible, we make apparent many new possibilities of ways to “glue” the public
together.
Many artists and organizations have realized that they can utilize the
technology of electronic communications to introduce or expand upon existing social
networks. It is worth mentioning that devices like mobile phones and PDAs
traditionally are used in a way that isolates the user from their physical environment.
The artists who created the projects mentioned in the Introduction did so to utilize
these technologies in a way that, on the contrary, connect the project’s users to their
built environment and help to continue the development of users’ social networks.
PDPal, Yellow Arrow and REMAPPING LA are the evidence that mapping is no
longer only for cartographers and geographers as Moss indicated. They prove that
technology has expanded the way that we can view and record our environments.

17
Definitions of Public and Public Sphere
Just as it is important to understand why we map, comprehension of the terms
public and public sphere further aid in the understanding of reasons that mapping has
leaked from a geographical action into the arts. We saw in Chapter One that the
Situationist International advocated for the exploration of the urban environment. It
is also true that the SI often created maps in order to illustrate the importance of that
exploration. It is entirely possible, and probable, that the reason for the SI’s focus on
exploring the city was because after World War II the European city became a new
entity, exploding with innovative architecture, modern transportation, and unique
politics. At the time, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and other European cities were
clearly ready for original interpretations by the public.
However, who is the public and what is the public sphere? According to
John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley in After Habermas: New Perspectives on
the Public Sphere, Jurgen Habermas’ early study on the genealogy of the “public
sphere,” “public opinion,” and the “public use of reason,” The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere, traces and reveals “the shifting meanings that
have attached to these concepts.”
9
One of the main points that Habermas makes in
this study is that during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Germany,
France, and Britain, a “variety of social changes … gave rise for a short period to an
effective bourgeois public sphere.”
10
That is to say that the social conditions of the
times enabled middle class men to begin gathering to discuss and develop ideas of
mutual interest and concern. It was during this time that a space was created “in
18
which both new ideas and the practices and discipline of rational public debate were
cultivated.”
11
Just as new urban zones were instrumental in establishing the
importance of place in Europe after WWII, this newly established space was
instrumental in shaping the importance of “publics.”
Habermas’ studies have been integral to the dialogue surrounding public
sphere, but it is important to note what his definition was to further understand how
public sphere is defined by contemporary thinkers and in contemporary contexts. He
defined public sphere in two ways: empirical and normative. On one hand public
sphere was distinct, taking place both in a written and verbal form, and, on the other
hand, as a forum in which people without official power could legitimize a public
authority before public opinion. Because our discussion of the public is focused on
why place is important to it, it is vital to recognize that Habermas’ theories of public
sphere facilitate an understanding of the relations between public and place. In order
to have a public sphere, there has to be a forum for discussion, a place. And that
place can be many things, from written word existing on a page, to a conversation
had by two or more unofficial persons trying to justify an opinion. The most
important aspect is, however, that in a public sphere something of a communal
concern is communicated freely one way or another.

Is the Internet a Public Sphere?
In an essay, “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the Public Sphere, and
Prospects for Transnational Democracy,” James Bohman, writer and professor of
19
philosophy, addresses how the Internet has expanded and changed the meanings of
public sphere put forth by Habermas. He believes that it is software and not
hardware that “constructs how communication occurs over the network, the
Internet’s capacity to support a public sphere cannot be judged in terms of intrinsic
features.”
12
Therefore, Bohman continues, “the Internet is a public sphere only if
agents introduce institutional ‘software’ that constructs the context of
communication.”
13
It is Bohman’s opinion that computer-mediated communication
is extending the forum for discussion that Habermas posited was where the public
sphere took shape by “providing new unbounded space for communicative
interaction.”
14
This new space that Bohman speaks of is transnational in nature and,
as he argues, offers, at the very least:
a potentially new solution to the problem of the extension of communicative
interactions across space and time and thus, perhaps, signals the emergence
of a public sphere that is not subject to the specific linguistic, cultural and
spatial limitations of the bounded national spheres . . . Hence the nature of the
public or publics is changing.
15

Because the technologies of our times have expanded our notions of what place can
be, it too has changed our ideas of what public spheres can be, for they have begun to
exist in these new spaces.
Bohman is cautious, however, in making these claims. He continues his
argument by questioning what would make the Internet a public sphere. He states,
“Social acts are public only if they meet two basic requirements.” First they have to
be directed to an “indefinite audience” but also they must offer some kind of
expectation for a response. The second feature is “dominated by spatial metaphors,”
20
and as stated by Habermas, discloses that publicity in its broadest sense is simply
“the social space that is generated by communicative action.” Thus, could the
Internet itself be considered a public sphere even though its space exists in an
intangible realm? According to Habermas, as long as a communicative action is
happening in that “forum”—or, in the case of the Internet, in intangible space—and
the communicative action solicits a response, a public sphere is present.
16

Later in the essay, Bohman states, “While the mass and electronic media
form the basis for global networks for the production and distribution of information,
they produce a different kind of public space and hence develop a form of publicity
different from a ‘cosmopolitan’ or global public sphere.”
17
Because this different
kind of public space has been created we now have a different type of public and
pubic sphere—and in turn a new form of social activity and interactivity is taking
place. Therefore, it remains apparent that because our notions of public and place
have expanded we are inclined to extend the ways that the public can record place.
Contemporary artists have also begun to focus on this kind of exploration and
in doing so have created new avenues for the public to connect with their
environments in new ways. In order to express this, many of the projects that are
being produced utilize technology in conjunction with the aforementioned method of
creatively investigating cities, psychogeography, and the unitary urbanism Constant
Nieuwenhuys described. The cities they are shown in or examine are not new urban
spaces, but there is a steady swell of interest in exploring them innovatively,
predominantly because there are new technologies available that allow this to
21
happen. Cities and places have become the playground of SMS messaging, mobile
GPS capabilities, and easy access WIFI.
The public art projects that are described in Chapter Three show that artists
have begun to realize this fact and are using mobile telephony and locational media
to interrupt and punctuate the unique public spaces of the Internet with references to
places and spaces in the built environment. In turn they show that the relationship
between public and place has changed with these new technologies, for the reason
that they introduce innovative ways to explore and create connections between the
World Wide Web and the world around us. Projects of this nature will be described
in the next chapter.

22
Chapter Three Endnotes

1
Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of
Networks and Territories. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Design
Institute, 2007) 203.

2
Karen Moss, ed. Topographies. exh. cat., (San Francisco Art Institute,
2004) 2B.

3
Abrams and Hall, 12.

4
Moss, 2B.

5
Denis Wood, The Power of Maps, (New York: Guilford Press, 1992) 1.

6
ibid.

7
Jesse Shapins, Projects – Union Docs. ~jms
http://jesseshapins.net/uniondocs. 4 January 2008.

8
Abrams and Hall, 12.

9
Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts, eds., After Habermas: New
Perspectives on the Public Sphere (Oxford, UK; Malden, Mass: Blackwell
Publishing: Sociological Review, 2004), 1.

10
ibid., 2.

11
ibid.

12
James Bohman, “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and
prospects for transnational democracy,” in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the
Public Sphere, eds. Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts,130-153 (Oxford, UK;
Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing: Sociological Review, 2004) 132.

13
ibid.

14
ibid., 134.

15
ibid.

16
ibid., 135.

23

17
ibid., 137.
24
CHAPTER FOUR: MOBILE TECHNOLOGY/PUBLIC ART

CASE STUDY #1—PDPal
The public art project PDPal was separately, but consecutively
commissioned by both the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN (Image 3), and
Creative Time in New York City (Image 4). At the time of its exhibition in
Minneapolis, the Walker employed curator Steve Dietz, who in 1996 became the
Director of New Media Initiatives at the museum. Dietz was instrumental in
commissioning PDPal, and has said of the work:
[It] pursues the notion of a ”communicity”—a city written by individuals and
filtered through individuals to create alternative cartographies, both physical
and emotional, which would never be found on MapQuest, yet which
collaboratively map the homunculus of a city.
1

After the project was completed in Minnesota, Creative Time in New York began its
commissioning of PDPal. Carol Stakenas, the director of Creative Time during the
commissioning and production of PDPal, had originally spoken to, Marina Zurkow,
one of the artists at a Creative Capital Artists’ Retreat in the summer of 2001 at the
Banff Centre, an arts, cultural, and educational institution and conference facility. At
that time the Zurkow and fellow artist, Scott Paterson, had been thinking about
producing a project that would include PDA beaming pieces that could be installed
into telephone booths in NY.
2
Stakenas was intrigued with the idea having been a
palm user and rising interest in projects that use devices, such as PDAs, creatively.
Having participated in one of the “walkabouts” lead by the PDPal team in 2004, she
25
said of the experience, “[It] heightened the social aspect [of experiencing the city]
and opened an attention to observing things.”
3

However, before The Walker Art Center or Creative Time commissioned a
version of PDPal, the Eyebeam Atelier, an art and technology center for digital
research and experimentation based in New York City, presented a beta version of
PDPal in 2002 (Image 5). This first version of the project involved a double-sided
kiosk that somewhat resembled a subway station ticket kiosk which beamed a PDA
application to a user or participant. “The user would input criteria about their social,
tactile, weather, and speed conditions, and the PDA [application] would return a
pictographic ‘haiku.’”
4
Users then shared the “haikus” amongst each other by
beaming them from PDA to PDA.
After Eyebeam had presented the beta version, the Walker Art Center
commissioned the project under an Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium 3 (EAEM3)
grant in the summer of 2003. This version of the project was extremely specific to
its location at the Walker Arts Center Sculpture Garden. It consisted of an
installation of a kiosk similar to that used in the Eyebeam version and the beaming of
an application that participants could receive and beam to others. However, the
requirements for criteria inputted into the program were lessened, and instead the
artists designed the application with “a complete cartographic system of ‘stickies,’
pictographic symbols, and parameters”
5
(Image 6). The users could participate by
mapping the Walker Sculpture Garden with the key created by the artists. Later they
could hot-synch their PDAs to their computers at home in order to upload the
26
information to the Web site. This degree of participation allowed a larger public to
map Minneapolis and parts of St. Paul.
6

In fall and winter of 2003 and 2004, Creative Time in New York City
commissioned PDPal for Times Square via three components. As part of Creative
Time’s 59
th
Minute series, a one-minute movie of PDPal appeared on the Panasonic
Astrovision screen once every hour inviting viewers to “write your own city”
(Images 7 and 8). In addition, Creative Time stationed two beaming kiosks in and
around Times Square, one that moved from place to place and another that was
static. Just like in Minneapolis, participants could beam an application from the
kiosk onto their PDAs, where they could then use it to map, this time, Times Square.
Also, the application in this version was similar to the one used at the Walker Art
Center, and it included a key, or set characteristics and parameters, to demarcate
certain spaces within the square. Thirdly, the PDPal team and Creative Time led
two “walkabouts,” in which participants convened, broke up into teams, and
traversed the area for an hour. Instead of using the PDA, participants who joined the
walkabouts were given pamphlets containing printed maps of Times Square to record
the emotions and experiences (Image 9). Some examples of the walkabout missions
were: “to be an alien anthropologist, carry out an algorithmic walk, or investigate a
documentary aspect of the area.”
7

On her Web site, www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow has described PDPal as
having “pushed at the notion of mapping, attempting to transform your everyday
activities and urban experiences into a dynamic city that you write.”
8
An engaging
27
project in which the user experiences a visual transformation of the city through a
technologically based cartography, is “meant to highlight the way technologies that
locate and orient are often static and without reference to the lively nature of urban
cultural environments.”
9
Zurkow states, “In response to the plethora of mapping
projects that have utilized GPS and measurable cartography, PDPal has been anti-
geographic and anti-Cartesian, preferring to experiment with the construction of
relative, emotionally based systems that ask: what makes social or personal space?”
10

It was a project that targeted individuals and made them aware of their own
individual cities, the cities that they had experienced and in which they lived and
worked. It heightened the awareness of each individual’s experience in the city and
helped attribute meaning to those experiences. It told stories of people’s lives
through a key on a digital map, and those stories were in turn transformed into
histories through PDPal.
In an email interview with the artists in the summer of 2003, Steve Dietz
asked the artist what it meant for the project to be deemed a “public art” project.
Julian Bleecker responded:
PDPal is public in many senses. The more obvious aspects of its public
nature are that there are channels of participation that invite active
engagement by a large audience. The Web is one channel, PDAs another.
PDPal is also public in that its “subject”— those things with which its
audience engages—are, generally speaking, places in publicly accessible
physical locations that can be experienced in some fashion by visiting that
place. A more interesting way in which PDPal is public is the way it allows
one to share the experiences of these places. One can filter the maps PDPal
creates by looking at those of particular users—everyone’s maps are
available for anyone to view. This is perhaps the most evocative aspect of
PDPal’s “public” qualities.
11

28
According to the definitions of public and public sphere that were discussed in
Chapter Two along with Bleecker’s account of the project, PDPal aligns itself with
the notions of the expanding public and by doing so also supports the idea of the
Internet as a place that public spheres can appear.
But it is imperative to ask some other questions. How does PDPal fit into the
discourse of the Situationist International? Does it express any of the theories and
definitions developed by the SI, and how? These are important questions to ask,
because the different versions of PDPal fit into this discussion in different ways.
The beta version of PDPal was more of a social and group experiment than anything
else and consequently does not align itself with the discourse of the SI; however, as
the project evolved it began to incorporate certain aspects that can be associated with
détournement, the dérive, psychogeography, and to some extent unitary urbanism.
With the creation of the Urban Park Ranger (UPR) (Image 10), a character
devised by the artists that served as a guide for the application used on the PDAs and
an instigator for participants to map the emotions they had in physical space, PDPal
appropriated the image of a park ranger to the urban setting of both Minneapolis and
New York. The park ranger has certain attributes, like a ranger hat and uniform that
was included in the design of the UPR. The apparel the UPR wore is reminiscent of
Smokey the Bear, a character widely known by Americans.
12
By incorporating an
image that carried a context which could not be separated from its visual attributes, a
simultaneous meaning was given to the character of the UPR as a guide, and one
could even say a proto-avatar, that could apply itself to the city, and to the city as a
29
place that could be explored in much the same way that a natural or park setting can
be. Though not fully aligned with the definition of détournement, creators of PDPal
appropriated a well-known media image and applied a new context for it to exist in.
Also, when PDPal was sited in Times Square, the associations with concepts
of the dérive became stronger. The incorporation of the walkabout forced
participants to explore the city in a playful way in which “they dropped their usual
motives for travel, even taking on unusual missions or roles”

in order to examine
aspects of the city they ordinarily would not.
13
On her Web site, Zurkow states that
“PDPal responds to the Situationists’ algorithmic dérives”
14
and other art historical
precedents, as well as “contemporary work in psychogeography—all deliberate
projects of ‘getting lost’ in the city, restoring it to a great dense space of wonder, not
just a locus of labors.”
15

Clearly, PDPal utilized practices of psychogeography, but it infused the term
with new meaning as it pushed people to explore the city in a new and different way
with an innovative technological device, the PDA. Additionally, its connection to
the Internet through the PDPal Web site, a place where people can also roam and
explore the maps of other participants, provided further technological innovation.
Because PDPal did not imitate an original psychogeographic experience, it
expressed the advancement and evolution of the SI’s practice. In some way the PDA
is even a détournement to psychogeography. Maps presented digitally that have an
interactive aspect to them provide a fresh and different message compared to the
30
original way we think of the guides. Writing one’s own map of the city or place of
residence creates new meaning.
PDPal also extends and advances the concept of unitary urbanism set forth
by Constant Nieuwenhuys.
16
Because it uses of the Internet as an integral part of the
project, PDPal incorporates unitary urbanism as a tool for the users of its
applications and interested parties who navigate the Web page to explore it in a
unique way. In other words, through the avenue of its Web page, PDPal allows its
participants and viewers to experience the flexible and adaptable nature of unitary
urbanism first hand.
The next question might be: what did the experience of PDPal involve for
the participant? A report from Glowlab, an organization that “produces and presents
experimental art and technology exploring the nature of cities,”
17
includes an account
of one participant’s experience on a walkabout:
I walked with PDPal developer Scott Paterson, Glowlab partner Dave Mandl,
and a friend . . . Our group was interested in the idea of routes—the etching
of personal pathways through the city and the encounters that result from the
ebb and flow of human traffic. We decided that the best way to study this
idea would be to follow someone in the midst of their own route, be it a daily
commute or a leisurely stroll. Without pausing to consider the implications of
this somewhat stalker-like approach, we quickly found our first subject and
proceeded to follow him until he entered the subway. Our journey continued
in this manner as we trailed one person after another, none of whom ever
knew what we were up to or even realized we were there. Our subjects
included commuters, tourists, local inhabitants, and a few others.
18

Definitely not a usual way to encounter the city, the experience recounted here
addresses just one of the ways in which a participant could “write [their] own city.”
As this group traversed Times Square, they took pictures and notes, and created a
31
map utilizing the pamphlet that was given out at the beginning of the “tour.” They
traced their steps through the trails of unknowing participants in a playful way.
In an interview, former Deputy Director of Creative Time Carol Stakenas
clarified that although Creative Time had high hopes for the beaming stations, the
applications for the PDA, and the use of the device, PDPal was just a little bit out of
synch with the technology of the time during its installation in Times Square. Many
people, by the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004, were more interested in SMS
messaging as a form of mobile communication, and although a select few still
operated PDAs, the application was difficult to navigate while attempting to respond
to a moment.
19
Perhaps the most successful interactive part of PDPal in Times
Square was the walkabout, which echoed the theory of the dérive put forth by the SI
and made use of a printed map and a group of participants instead of a solitary
occurrence with a mechanized device. Scott Paterson addressed this issue in the
previously mentioned email interview with Dietz:
It’s difficult to even overcome the perception of the PDA as a productivity
device and second to transform it into a creative tool. We had to spend a good
deal of time simply explaining how to use the PDA interface let alone the
PDPal interface. In the face of tabul[et]a rasa, most users froze up creatively.
When given a very specific assignment, however, they more quickly
generated a framework for remembering the basic functions, and when
challenged by a specific point of view (e.g., the UPR), users had immediate
entry into their own imaginative voice. For Times Square we have three
directives to begin the experience. The directives grew out of research about
Times Square’s past, present, and future. We plan to have mapping
workshops with the various populations that inhabit Times Square during the
run of the installation as well as invite a series of guest map makers as a
catalyst for discussion. Lastly, we added a feature to allow users to comment
on each other’s recordings, thus increasing dialog and community.
20

32
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about this project is its evolution.
It is noteworthy that challenges occurred in every location and with each “type” of
participant. This required many adaptations to seamlessly move the project from its
original location through to completion. For instance, a sound track incorporated into
the design of the Walker Sculpture Garden version of PDPal was not carried out in
Times Square because of the cacophony of sounds in that area. In the email
interview with Dietz, the artists commented on what they learned from the initial
demonstration of the project at the Walker and what they would be attempting to
change for Times Square. Bleecker had this to say:
I learned that there is a profound deficit that arises when attempting to
simultaneously strive for technical and creative sophistication when one’s
resources are constrained. Conceptually the project is rather sophisticated and
I am afraid that way we caught [ourselves] in a bit of a language sinkhole.
21

It is apparent that the artists realized the technology they had used was difficult to
keep up with during the years they worked on the project.
Perhaps to ensure a greater amount of public participation, enjoyment and
comprehension in the project, they included the printed maps and the participatory
walkabouts in Times Square. In a personal email interview with Zurkow, she stated:
The reason we went this route is because we had wanted to make maps… but
the maps didn’t really work, either – [they had too] little framing. It's like
saying to someone, ‘OK tell me something funny…Uh...’ right: that doesn't
ever work. So we got into this issue of framing - how to be narrower with
our context, but open enough to get a wide variety of personal responses. …
We decided we wanted to focus our framing questions. Version 3 took place
using mobile phones. This happened for several reasons. We hated coding for
the PDA, and the tool was not ubiquitous enough. We also felt we wanted to
keep the platform/tool mobile, so you could use it in situ and not when you
got home (like the web). So we made Mobile Scout, and the web component
functioned as just the archive, and had no input format.
22

33

In 2004, the Banff Centre presented, an extension of PDPal, Mobile Scout, in
the exhibition "Database Imaginary" curated by Steve Dietz, Sarah Cook and
Anthony Kiendl. The Mobile Scout Ranger is an audio field guide much like the
UPR used in PDPal. When participants phoned Mobile Scout, the Mobile Scout
Ranger asked for the caller to be watchful for rare occurrences in the landscape that
might reveal “moments that would otherwise remain invisible or disappear.”
23
After
this prompt the caller could leave a voice message with the Ranger about the
experience or observations they had made. By participating in this project, users
were made even more aware that the space they live is their own personal space –
defined by the way each individual sees it. According to Zurkow’s website, Mobile
Scout “defines place as being made of social habitats, not geography.”
24

Finally of interest are the projects that have evolved out of PDPal for each of
the artists. In 2006 in San Jose, CA, and again in 2007 in Los Angeles, CA, Marina
Zurkow, along with two other artists, Katie Salen and Nancy Nowacek, created and
developed another public art project, Karaoke Ice (Image 11). Drawing more on the
spectacle than anything else, the project included two characters devised by the
artists: an ice cream truck named Lucci, which turned into a karaoke stage, and
Remedios, a human-sized squirrel, who beckoned the audience to perform karaoke
renditions of songs like “Respect,” by Aretha Franklin and “Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds,” by the Beatles. The willing participants jumped into the back of Lucci
to belt out “oldies” and “goodies” and were accompanied by tunes transformed into
the twinkling tones of an ice cream truck jingle. After their performance, Remedios
34
rewarded singers with flavored ice pops. On the Karaoke Ice Web site the artists
state:
In the end it comes down to ideas—ideas about play as a transformative act
for culture and community, about ways to harness and reimagine the flows of
people, objects, technology; and ideas about the importance of shared
experiences, through whimsy, magic, virtual drag races, and the spirit of a
truck with no place to call home.
25

Their explanation definitely shows a trajectory from the concepts that were
instrumental to PDPal.
Artist Julian Bleecker has also followed in the path of PDPal through
involvement in New Future Laboratory, a design, development, and research
consultancy that combines strategy and analysis with design and rapid prototyping.
However, before becoming involved in New Future Laboratory, Bleecker produced a
project called Another Spatial Annotation Project (ASAP) (Image 12). In ASAP, an
application similar to that used in PDPal was developed for the PocketPC, described
by Bleecker on his Web site as a “GPS-enabled experience mapping application.”
26

The program allows users to visualize their location on a map through a Bluetooth-
based GPS device, mark their coordinates, and annotate their precise location by
naming it or giving it a description. Participants may also add an icon to their
position or use an attached digital camera to snap a picture. The connections to
PDPal are obvious, and Bleecker also states on his Web site that the reasons behind
why he developed ASAP was because he:
still [felt] challenged when it comes to understanding why it is at all
interesting to author one’s experiences spatially. … but there still [felt] like
there [was] more work to be done on my part to understand with some
35
precision and lucidness why it [seemed] “right” to cobble together visual
maps, a GPS rig, photography, the Web, and so forth.
27

In 2005, Scott Paterson, exhibited an installation, Follow Through, at the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in collaboration with Jennifer
Crowe. Follow Through is “a mobile, audio-visual artwork”
28
that juxtaposed the
passive experience of most viewers in the museum setting with the interactivity and
energy of typical artworks previously shown. “Referencing the structure of the
existing audio tour, the project invites visitors to engage in a set of exercises
designed to bring well-established behavioral codes of museum attendance into
relief.”
29
Although the work does not address a typical public or public space it is
aligned with the interactivity of PDPal and its ability to engage an otherwise
oblivious urban public. In addition, Follow Through comments on “well established
behavioral codes” in order to bring them to attention, just as PDPal invited
participants to emotionally “tag” the city, simultaneously making apparent the
differences of our experiences.
By explaining the trajectory of these artists’ work, we can see that they are
still concerned with opening up the possibilities the public has of viewing the built
environment. In addition, Zurkow, Paterson, and Bleecker are all experimenting
with ways to involve the viewer or participant, and sometimes the public, in their
work. In the next section, the project Yellow Arrow will show how more artists are
also dealing with the same issues.

36
CASE STUDY #2—Yellow Arrow
Begun by a group of Columbia University graduates; Jesse Shapins, Brian
House, and Christopher Allen; and Michael Counts of Counts Media Inc., Yellow
Arrow addresses the issue of engaging the public with cities by inviting them to
place easy-to-remove stickers in the public sphere (Image 13). The stickers mark a
personally or historically important place in the built environment, but by sending a
text message to a local phone number containing the unique ID code printed on the
sticker, they also mark their place in an online database of places, images of those
places, and comments.
There were a few ways to obtain the palm-sized yellow arrow stickers.
Sometimes Counts Media handed out arrows in locations such as their installation at
Art Basel Miami Beach.
30
Other times art galleries distributed them or they were
passed out at concerts. Also 300,000 arrows were bound into Lonely Planet’s Guide
to Experimental Travel sometime between July and November of 2005. In addition,
anyone could purchase them in bundles from the Web site for fifty cents an arrow.
The premise behind Yellow Arrow was fairly simple. A participant simply
peeled the backing off of the arrow and stuck it on a public surface. Then they typed
the unique code from the arrow into an SMS message on their mobile phone and
dialed the country code and yellow arrow phone number to send their message.
There were options of snapping a photo of the place the sticker was stuck with a
camera attached or embedded into the phone and sending it along with the message,
or the participant could later download an image to the Web site. Yellow Arrow was
37
simple, easy, and fun. For the most part it did not follow any rules besides
respecting the property of others, and participants were actively invited to a become
part of the Massively Authored Artistic Publication (M.A.A.P) project.
31

Before the formation of Counts Media Inc. and the production of Yellow
Arrow, Michael Counts founded a theater company, GAle GAtes et al., in 1995.
Situated in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), an area of
Brooklyn between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the company became apart
of one of the newest art communities in the country. The venue was a 40,000-
square-foot warehouse that showed large-scale performances that typically evolved
through the space.
32
In an article from 2003, Michelle Stern, a GAle GAtes
performer and producer observed: “Some pieces are structured … but for the most
part, [their] theatrical signature is more fluid, with audience members either choosing
what they want to see (not unlike viewers in a gallery) or being guided through the
space.”
33

In the spring of 2002, Christopher Allen wrote about the space and
productions of GAle GAtes in MUSEO 5, a Columbia University publication, stating
that, “for decades artists [have been] looking for a theatre of new directions to
explore alternative framings for performance. The borders, or lack thereof, at GAle
GAtes paradoxically attempt to locate the spectator—to give a feeling of
consequence, of ‘being there’—by making them move.”
34
Not long after, Allen
graduated from Columbia University and began working with Counts on productions
at the space in 2002, and that eventually lead to his involvement with Yellow Arrow.
38
In the same year, Jesse Shapins moved to Berlin where he collaborated with
two other urban planners and architects to form the group Stadtblind, that was
primarily interested in developing new modes of representing and analyzing Berlin.
Stadtblind created a project called The Colors of Berlin (Image 14) that united
multiple forms of visualizing the city of Berlin from text, to photos, to maps, and
input them into a “poetic categorization system”
35
that was exhibited in both their
storefront gallery and on the Web. Although the project did not include any kind of
digitally interactive systems, The Colors of Berlin shows the beginning evolution of
Yellow Arrow. It also recalls a former Situationist International project: Ralph
Rumney’s Psychogeographic Map of Venice, which plotted the city through
photographs and texts of a dérive he had taken in 1957 (Image 15).
36

While Shapins was in Berlin, House had also moved from New York and was
living in Sweden where he began working toward a Master’s degree in Innovative
Design from Chalmers University in Göteborg. While at school, House became
increasingly interested in mobile phones and the possibilities for their use in urban
spaces, and his philosophy became: that because mobile phones are always with you
they are extremely context specific. After visiting Shapins in Berlin in 2003, a
conversation about combining both of their interests into a project that would
connect mobile phone use with text, imagery, and maps ensued. Around the same
time, Shapins spoke with Allen in New York about going to work for Michael
Counts on a new large-scale theater project that would take place on the streets of the
city. Shortly thereafter, Shapins moved back to New York City and began working
39
with Counts and Allen, together with House via chat and email, on the project Yellow
Arrow.
37

Counts and Allen first explored the concept of the yellow arrow as a symbol
during a theatrical performance in which it was used to direct certain things to the
viewer’s attention. Shapins and House then took the symbol one step further by
adding the code that would connect the sticker back to a master database. They also
made it a public project when they applied its value as a demarcation tool to point
out zones of public interest. Yellow Arrow was initially presented as an experiment
in an art context at a gallery as part of Conflux in 2004—an annual festival produced
by Glowlab.
38
Because of WIRED magazine’s interest in writing a piece on the first
application of the project, it soon became more than just an experiment and steadily
moved from the streets of New York City to other urban areas across the country and
the globe.
It is already apparent that psychogeography, a practice formalized by the
Situationist International, had an influence on the creators of Yellow Arrow, but as
one may see from the backgrounds of the creators and their previous projects, many
other factors came into play in the culmination of their experiences. However
influential these facets of their lives and educations were, one cannot help but see
how the SI theories of the dérive, détournement, psychogeography, and unitary
urbanism are present in some form and fashion in Yellow Arrow. In an article from
the Washington Post dated July 2, 2005, a Stanford graduate and an active YA
participant, Molly Aeck, was referenced saying:
40
The arrow project is reminiscent of the place-based artistic expressions of the
situationist movement . . . these situationists would walk around and fall into
these “observational drifts”—to find new perspectives in urban life. . . . It’s
an appreciation for observing things around you.
39

She goes on, “I think these arrows can engage a passerby who doesn’t have time but
to just pass by,” which is exactly the point (pun intended) (Image 16). The way we
experience life in the city, so fast and so bogged down with the business of life, as
well as the tools we use to do that business—like mobile phones and PDAs—pull us
away from really taking a close look at our environment and the stories that surround
us. As Aeck suggests, it is projects like Yellow Arrow that reconnect us with our
environment through the same tools that draw us away.
Although it began locally, Yellow Arrow raised even more consciousness at
the annual art show Art Basel Miami Beach, and then began to drift across the
oceans infiltrating Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and the Middle East.
Soon yellow arrow stickers could be seen in cities such as Istanbul, Copenhagen,
London, Brazil, and Sydney, and via the Web site www.yellowarrow.org, anyone
from anywhere could view and leave comments for any of the arrows that had been
placed and logged. In an article from 2006 in the Baltimore Sun, Allen stated, “We
recently logged our first arrow in China.”
40
According to the article, at the time it
was the only arrow logged in a country that has 11 registered participants and
pointed to an artist factory named 798 in Beijing. The global possibilities of Yellow
Arrow resulted from the extension of the public sphere that was referenced in
Chapter Two, by James Bohman: new social spaces that have been created by the
Internet have “produced a different kind of public sphere and hence a different kind
41
of publicity.”
41
The creators of Yellow Arrow were fortunately able to tap into this,
making it the world’s first global public art project.
42

One of the reasons that Yellow Arrow was successful as a global project is
because it used a technology that was available to anyone that owned or had access
to a mobile phone. In a New York Times article from January 25, 2006, about the
project, the author references Allen as having said he “chose text messages and
stickers, ‘the lowest common denominator’ approach, to make the project as
accessible as possible,” even though “higher-tech options exist, like automatically
sending content associated with a spot to anybody who carries a cellphone past it.”
43

Instead of opting for high tech beaming stations that transmitted software
applications and a somewhat exclusive mobile device, Yellow Arrow utilized the
lowest common denominator of mobile technology, SMS messaging, to transmit
personal, historical, comical, or entertaining stories about urban locations.
In addition to being a project with roots in psychogeography and a way to
practice a contemporary dérive, traits participant Molly Aeck had recognized, Yellow
Arrow shows connections to détournement and unitary urbanism. The symbol of the
yellow arrow was modified and codified through the utilization of it as an object that
could demarcate important sights. However, in a way it also served to give graffiti a
unique purpose and meaning. No longer did individuals only have the option of
saying “I was here” by tagging a location. Now, through a simple sticker and a text
message, participants were given the ability to tell others who may never have the
opportunity to physically stand in the place they had marked, “something happened
42
here.” This re-appropriation of the yellow arrow symbol has most likely infected all
who had participated in the project in one way or another with the ability to see
beyond a simple symbol colored yellow and into the history it may or may not
suggest.
Unitary urbanism also comes into play within the context of Yellow Arrow,
perhaps even more so than the PDPal project, because there is a greater opportunity
for interaction with Yellow Arrow than with PDPal. In other words, because the
creators of YA were able to connect a wider range of the public to the Internet via the
SMS messages they were sending, the project’s connection to unitary urbanism is
stronger. As previously stated, the tools that are used in devices like PDAs and
mobile phones are the keys to connecting the built environment, which Constant
knew needed change in order to increase social relations within it, to the World Wide
Web.
In 2004, Yellow Arrow spurred two other Counts Media projects that
contained the same elements of placing yellow arrows in places of importance. The
first happened in New York City and was called Secret New York (Image 17). Less
participatory in nature and more like a curated scavenger hunt, Secret New York led
New Yorkers and tourists on a journey to important or interesting sites in the city by
illuminating them with large light boxes in the shape of yellow arrows. Each arrow
displayed a code similar to those on the stickers used in Yellow Arrow and once
participants reached a new designated spot on the tour, they could call a local
number, punch in the code on the light box with their mobile phones, and listen to a
43
“personal narrative about that location from an artist, historian … or someone just
like you.”
44
Some arrows were positioned in nearly twenty Manhattan locations for
a week at a time, and around 100 more directed attention to places throughout New
York’s five main boroughs for a day, or just an afternoon. A New York Newsday
article from August 2005, explains, “It’s a kick to listen to other people’s musings,
but you can also go to the Web site and contribute your own story…. Maybe next
week, a big yellow arrow will show up to mark the spot.”
45

Even though this project had fewer interactive opportunities, the participant
experienced something that was very much like a guided dérive, and a lesson in
psychogeography. In this way, Secret New York also assumes many of the principles
set forth by the Situationists and advances them with the technologies made available
by mobile phones and SMS messaging. In June of 2005, TimeOut New York quoted
Allen as having said, “It’s about creating a subjective map of the city. It’s a map
based on lived experiences.”
46
And those lived experiences are exactly what Debord
had himself mapped when he created the “Useless” maps—Guide
psychogéographique de Paris: discours sur les passions de l’amour
(Psychogeographic Guide to Paris: discourses on the passions of love), 1956, and
The Naked City: illustrations de l’hypothèse des plaques tournantes en
psychogéographique (The Naked City: Illustrations of the hypothesis of geographic
turntables), 1957—“both of which split maps of Paris into free floating sectors
connected by red arrows indicating “psychogeographic” flows.”
47
The map also
included a text that described the arrows as “the spontaneous turns of direction taken
44
by a subject moving through these surroundings in disregard of the useful
connections that ordinarily govern his conduct.”
48
Just as Debord’s arrows
expressed the spontaneous turns one might take in the city, the yellow arrows invited
participants to disregard the usual ways of travel through the city and enjoy an
unexpected tour of New York.
Another project done in conjunction with Yellow Arrow that continued its
tradition was Capitol of Punk, an experiment in touring Washington, D.C., in an
unlikely way—through the history of punk rock in the nation’s capitol. Capital of
Punk (Image 18) began as a project in which arrows pointed to important landmarks
that sightseers could check out, but eventually developed into a podcast tour of the
city and an interactive online map that took participants through the historic spaces
in D.C. and explained the “hardcore” scene that developed out of the punk
movement of the 1970s in Washington. The whole of the project exists in ten
documentary videos available online and via podcast, and 10 text messages tours on
the streets of D.C. The podcasts and a downloadable PDF map are available on the
Yellow Arrow Web site, www.yellowarrow.org.
Although it has not happened yet, the artists hoped to compile all of the
stories that had been uploaded to YA’s Web site. In the same Baltimore Sun article
mentioned above, Allen stated:
As the map gets richer and richer, we’re interested in what we can do to
allow people to access that information in an easier way, to create a guide to
the city written by locals. We have the ability to put together the best in the
city and publish them. It doesn’t contain big highlights but more of the
minutiae and the things that affect people and their day-to-day lives.”
49

45
Shapins, like Allen and House, is no longer with Counts Media, but for the last year
he has been working on the process of wrapping up the project’s Web site, which
documents the project, allowing viewers to navigate through existing logs in the
main gallery. The Web site, however, no longer allows new users to sign up. In a
personal interview, Shapins discussed the possibility of turning the project into a
book using the rich content that was created over the life of the project.
50

Like the artists who created PDPal, Counts, Shapins, House, and Allen have
gone on to explore other things, but the trajectory of the social nature of Yellow
Arrow still exists in their work.
51
These artists still concern themselves with a
collaborative, participatory process, and the possibilities that exist in the built
environment for expanding the notions of public, place, and public sphere with
technology. In the next section, REMAPPING LA will be discussed in the same
contexts.

46
CASE STUDY #3—REMAPPING LA

Like PDPal and Yellow Arrow, the third project under investigation,
REMAPPING LA, makes use of a Web site in addition to mobile phones in order to
create cartographic representations of a specific location. What makes REMAPPING
LA different, however, is its close examination of the history of the site, known by
most as “The Cornfield,” and now known by some as the “Not a Cornfield Park”
(Image 39). Sited on an area of land in downtown Los Angeles that was recently
reclaimed as a Los Angeles State Historic Park, REMAPPING LA works with local
communities to explore their own histories and identities with digital systems that
they help to design. Created in collaboration with REMAP, UCLA’s Center for
Research in Engineering, Media, and Performance; California State Parks; and local
community organizations, the “first living laboratory” project was one of five
“Opportunity Sites” of the city’s Revitalization Plan for the Los Angeles River. This
area of Los Angeles has been integral to each major period of social and
technological developments in the city’s history, from the engineering of railroads
and water systems to the construction of freeways.
52

In the 1780s, when the Spanish first founded the town that became Los
Angeles, the original settlement was situated in a fertile area of land that sat just
below a waterway that, with the aid of gravity, was easily irrigated. This site, or
portions of it, eventually became the location of artist Lauren Bon’s project, Not a
Cornfield. It was a rural host to a bountiful cornfield, and in the 1850s when the
Gold Rush was well under way and Los Angeles became the top wine-producing
47
county in the United States, the city began to grow ever increasingly in the direction
of the cornfield. Through the 1860s, the cornfield remained an agricultural site, but
there are reports of privatized water distribution taking place adjacent to and on the
plot of land that was farmed. In the beginning of the 1870s, the cornfield seemed to
be able to hold its own even though areas close by and next to it had been settled by
homes and businesses. However, in the later half of the decade, when the railways
had become a part of the Los Angeles landscape, the cornfield was transformed into
L.A.’s primary freight and passenger depot. Not until the 1990s did the city
dismantle the railways, allowing the area to become a vacant plot of land. Many
conversations ensued over what to do with the land the South Pacific Railroad
(SPRR) wanted to sell, and finally, in the wake of the Millennium, the Cornfield was
slated for development as Los Angeles’ State Historic Park.
53

Shortly thereafter, Lauren Bon and the Annenberg Foundation proposed the
project, Not a Cornfield. In the collected essays documenting Bon’s work at the site,
Not a Cornfield: History/Site/Document, editor Janet Owen Driggs states:
Quite literally, the Not a Cornfield project was a cornfield. At the same time
though, it was also decidedly Not a Cornfield. For in addition to producing
an agricultural site and a tangible crop, the project highlighted the rural
history and riparian geography of the place, while actualizing the legends of
the Cornfield name. Further, as it grew a visual metaphor for fresh life, so
the project also put an all-but-invisible and previously hazardous space firmly
onto the map of public destinations by generating the site as a community
resource, a dynamic social space and arena for discussion, an environmental
intervention, a metabolic sculpture and among many other things, an
experiment in project-based philanthropy.
54

The project put forth by Bon became the first to reactivate the site that had
been for so many years, a cornfield. However, in an attempt to continue the dialogue
48
that was begun by Not a Cornfield, REMAPPING LA also seeks to create a “dynamic
social space” at the site. In fact, Jeff Burke, a primary artist in the project, is quoted
in an article from UCLA Today Online as having said, “The purpose of
REMAPPING LA is to understand what is going on socially and culturally in this
location. We want to provide a resource for local communities and other L.A.
citizens to explore the history of the site, the communities surrounding it, and the
geography of L.A., in every sense of the word.”
55

Even though REMAPPING LA was a collaboration by many, Burke and
colleague Fabian Wagmister are primarily responsible for the project. Wagmister, a
native Argentinean, explores the intersection of performance and technology in his
work. He maintains close connections within his native country through frequent
lectures and presentations of his work, and by actively collaborating with artists and
theorists in Latin America. Although today Wagmister is a professor of audio visual
creativity in the department of Theater, Film, and Television at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and is the creator of the Hypermedia Studio and Lab for
New Media, a curricular environment for the exploration of digital aesthetics, he
began his career as a filmmaker.
56

As his career progressed, Wagmister moved away from filmmaking and
towards digital media art-making in order to distance himself from the notion of the
singular artist, or creator, as an auteur, and began an effort to collaborate through the
creation of systems in which anyone could participate and express themselves as
joint artists and authors. The artist believes that the conditions of his youth, living in
49
a country ruled by a dictatorship, caused this new trajectory in his work. He has no
affinity for exploiting his own power as an artist, and so believes that he should
spread creative power around as much as possible.
57

Like his colleague, Jeff Burke is also a researcher and lecturer in the UCLA
School of Theater, Film, and Television. In addition, he directs the technological
research of its HyperMedia Studio. Before getting involved with REMAPPING LA,
Burke spent a great deal of his time and efforts on connecting theater performance
with the technology that was available at the time. Many of the systems he began
using had a great deal to do with sensing the movements of actors and performers on
the stage. At UCLA, his interactive authoring course incorporates sensors, media
control, programming, and critical theory and has attracted students from a diverse
group of academic concentrations, including education, engineering, computer
science, architecture, theater, and film. He is also the Director of Technological
Development for the Centro Hipermediatico Experimental Latinoamericano (Buenos
Aires) and is currently a principal investigator of the department of Film, Television,
and Digital Media’s Advanced Technology for Cinematography project, which
supports research into authoring tools for media-rich, ever-present computing
environments.
58

In order to produce such a project, the team behind REMAPPING LA began
by first exploring and documenting the city with digital media including mobile
phones, global positioning system (GPS) devices, digital cameras, and geographic
information systems (GIS). This team made up of students representing
50
communities surrounding the Park mapped the “real Los Angeles” with these tools
and their “discoveries, expressed in photography, maps, video and audio recordings,
and written records,” were added to a “media repository,” or online database
established by Wagmister and Burke and then combined with historical content of
the rich site in order to create “a comprehensive profile of the legendary Los Angeles
State Historic Park.”
59
In an article from the UC Newsroom Wagmister insists,
“Because anyone who uses the site can post there, you might expect it to get clogged
up with misinformation. But what happens is that wrong or one-sided stuff gets
corrected or deleted, and the good stuff gets tagged and rises to the top.”
60

Out of the findings, unique works were created and shown in the Park and at
the Chiparaki Cultural Civic Computing Center and at nearby L.A. River locations.
One of the presentations held at the Chiparaki Cultural Civic Computing Center was
called IMAGEABILITY, a digital media installation. It allowed visitors to draw maps
of their Los Angeles on interactive screens and tablets, similar to how PDPal
allowed participants to write their own city using a PDA application. The
compositions of the participants of IMAGEABILITY were then interlaced with
contemporary sounds and historical images of the city. Through “analyzing each
participant’s expressions about personal urban networks,” IMAGEABILITY became
engaged with the surrounding communities in “designing technological systems that
explore their own histories and identities.”
61

Another sub-project and somewhat of a test for the later project Juncture,
Monumento872 was held on the 15
th
of June 2007 at the original ice warehouse for
51
the SPRR that is located adjacent to the Park. Monumento872 was deemed an
“opportunity to discover Los Angeles in the night using mobile devices and the
Internet to contribute to a live media collage of the community.”
62
More of a social
gathering, this portion of REMAPPING LA was an investigation into the possibilities
available to the artists to actively engage their audiences. It became clear that further
projects that included the use of mobile phones and the Internet to explore the real
space of the Park could happen.
This second presentation, referred to above, of how the community could
engage with the actual place of the Park was called Juncture and took place about
five months later with the aid of Walt Disney Imagineering Research &
Development and UCLA’s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS).
Juncture was a “participatory, public space, media environment” project concerning
“historical memory, cultural identity, and collective recognition in Los Angeles.”
63

In effect it was the culmination of all the investigation that REMAPPING LA had
previously completed (Image 20).
By utilizing the interpretive media database that had been created in the first
stages of REMAPPING LA, the core content of the presentation contained thousands
of historical images, videos, and sounds enriched by layers of metadata including
temporal and geographical information, descriptive texts, and extensive tagging. As
in Monumento872, visitors interacted with the presentations through the use of
mobile phones. Combining SMS messaging and sensing technology that measured
real time movement of the nearby L.A. River, Metro Gold Line trains, and nearby
52
traffic, the project dynamically demonstrated the “explorations of the forces that
shaped the evolution of the city” (Image 21).
64
The participants sent messages to a
database that reflected a collective interactive audio-visual timeline of complex and
layered history of the development of Los Angeles and its cultural identity (Image
22).
REMAPPING LA uses mobile technologies to map a layered history and
includes individual interpretations of the area. The collective maps created during
IMAGEABILITY and presented during Juncture are evidence that the project
explores the ideas of psychogeography. By using mobile phones to explore the city
and collect data in new and innovative ways, REMAPPING LA is an example of how
participants in mobile technology/public art projects can practice psychogeography.
In addition, REMAPPING LA is also an example of unitary urbanism because it
utilized the Internet to create the database that was used to construct and present the
collective portrait of Los Angeles. Although the focus of REMAPPING LA
examines the site more than anything else, it does make its findings public. The
intangible spaces of the Internet had a huge impact on the amount of people the
project informed. Without the inclusion of technological advances that have
occurred in the last 2 years, the creators of REMAPPING LA would not have had the
necessary tools to explore the city or to record the layers of history that are present at
the “Cornfield Park” in the unique manner that they did.
Even though the artists of REMAPPING LA have completed their work at the
“Cornfield Park” they will continue to produce projects in the Los Angeles area.
53
Next on the list of projects for REMAP, is the exploration of creating a collective
portrait of Hollywood, CA, as part of Freewaves’ HollyWould... festival in the fall of
2008.
65
The festival will explore what Hollywood could be and what the residents
and businesses of Hollywood wish the community to be. The planning for
REMAP’s involvement in the festival is still being worked out, however, the
Freewaves founder and executive director, Anne Bray is excited that they will be
involved and anxious to see what they will do. In the next section, conclusions about
REMAPPING LA will be made, as well as the other projects that have been discussed
in this chapter.

54
Chapter Four Endnotes

1
Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of
Networks and Territories. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Design
Institute, 2007) 203.

2
Marina Zurkow, personal email interview with the author, 25 January 2008.

3
Carol Stakenas, personal interview with the author, 27 November 2007.

4
Marina Zurkow, PDPal, http://www.o-matic.com/play/pdpal, 2 January
2008.

4
ibid.

5
In 2003, PDPal was part of the "Twin Cities Knowledge Maps"
commissioned by the University of Minnesota Design Institute. Nine large
interpretive maps were printed, offering views of Minneapolis/St. Paul on the themes
of MOVING, WEARING, TELLING, RESTING, PLAYING, DWELLING,
EATING, SHOPPING and MEETING. PDPal functioned as experimental
documentary, using symbols and short anecdotes to reflect diverse daily paths
through the metropolis. On the reverse side, a user could write their own city, using
PDPal's recording system and a set of pictographic stickers.

6
Zurkow, www.o-matic.com/play/pdpal.

7
ibid.

8
ibid.

9
ibid.

10
Steve Dietz, State of the Art: Maps, Stories, Games and Algorithms from
Minnesota, mnartists.org,
http://www.mnartists.org/tourItemDetail.do?action=detail&tourItemId=29021rid=28
921, 2 January 2008.

12
The character also may have influenced the Urban Park Rangers, a group
of urban guides that take the public on tours of urban environments using the
language of the Park Ranger.

11
Simon Ford, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide (London:Black
Dog, 2005) 34.
55

12
Zurkow, PDPal.

13
ibid.

14
For more information regarding unitary urbanism refer to Chapter One.

15
Christina Ray, About Glowlab, Glowlab, http://www.glowlab.com/about, 4
January 2008.

16
ibid.

17
Stakenas, interview.

18
Dieitz, State of the Art.

19
ibid.

22
Zurkow, interview.

23
Zurkow, PDPal.

24
ibid.

20
Marina Zurkow, Karaoke Ice,
http://karaokeice.com_pages/information.html, 2 January 2008.

21
Julian Bleecker, Another Spatial Annotation Project, TechKwonDo
http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/a_s_a_p/, 2 January 2008.

22
ibid.

23
Scott Paterson, sgp, http://sgp-7.net/index2007.shtm?ID=41&k=works, 4
January 2008.

24
ibid.

30
Art Basel Miami Beach is a significant art fair/festival that occurs annually
and produces a lot of economic activity for American and international artists.

31
ibid. The Yellow Arrow Website promotes this acronym on their “home”
page.
56

32
GAle GAtes was named for Counts’ grandmother Gale Gates, or GAGA—
hence the unusual spelling of the company name. Counts acquired the space in 1997
from a developer that had purchased a large chunk of land in the area.

33
Simi Horwitz, GAle GAtes Closing, But with pride and Ever Hope,
BackStage, 6 June 2003, http://www.allbusiness.com/services/amusement-
recreation-services/4573744-1.html, 4 January 2008.

34
Christopher Allen, Dimensions of Liveness: Spectating Space at GAle
GAtes et all, MUSEO 5,
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/museo/5/5/galegates/index.htm. 4 January 2008.

35
Jesse Shapins, recorded telephone conversation with author, 5 January
2008.

36
Simon Ford, The Situationist International: A User’s Guide (London:
Black Dog, 2005) 36. The images of the project were printed in an issue of the
Situationiste International, but only after Debord had excommunicated Rumney for
being late with the submission of the project.

37
Shapins, interview.

38
Glowlab is an east coast base organization whose mission it is to

39
Counts Media Inc., Yellow Arrow, http://www.yellowarrow.org/, 4 January
2008.

40
ibid.

41
James Bohman, “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and
prospects for transnational democracy,” in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the
Public Sphere, eds. Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts,130-153 (Oxford, UK;
Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing: Sociological Review, 2004), 132.

42
Counts Media Inc, yelloarrow.org. Counts Media promotes this project as
being the world’s first global public art project on a video on their website. There is
no “real” evidence to say that it is true.

43
ibid.

44
ibid.

45
ibid.
57

46
ibid.

47
Ford, The Situationist International, 59.

48
ibid.

49
Counts Media Inc., yellowarrow.org.

50
Shapins, interview.

51
In addition to bringing Yellow Arrow to a close, Shapins is currently a
Doctoral candidate in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning at
the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He also is a co-chair and co-
founder of a Brooklyn-based non-profit documentary arts collaborative called
UnionDocs that Allen founded and directs, who’s mission it is to investigate socially
relevant subjects through screenings, exhibitions, talks, and other events. House has
expanded his work with mobile technology and is currently working with a group
called KnifeandFork, a collaborative investigation founded in Sweden and currently
operating out of New York and Los Angeles that uses video, mobiles, databases,
animation, and artificial intelligence to create nonlinear narratives in physical space.
Michael Counts has also continued to work with technology. Counts Media Inc.
recently launched a media project called Bill the Billboard which projects a live
video image of “Bill,” a man who watches the area around the billboard from a
secret vantage point. This process allows consumer participants to ask questions of
and deliver answers to “Bill.” An interesting leap from Yellow Arrow, Bill the
Billboard, takes mass media advertising to the public in a way that has not been done
before.

52
Chase Knowles, Remapping LA Detailed Project Description, REMAP,
http://bigriver.remap.ucla.edu/remap/index.php/Remapping_LA_Detailed_Project_D
escription, 6 January 2008.

53
Janet Owen Driggs, ed. “Not a Cornfield: History/Site/Document,” (Los
Angeles, CA: Not a Cornfield, LLC., 2007) 158-77.

54
ibid., 19-20.

55
Karen Lefkowitz, Remapping: from cell phones to collective
consciousness, UCLA Today Online,
http://www.today.ucla.edu/news/070206_remap/, 6 January 2008.

56
AI & Society, “Fabian Wagmister Biography,” University of California,
Los Angeles, http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/wagmister_bio_html.
58

57
Fabian Wagmister, personal interview by the author, 2006.

58
Hypermedia, hypermedia.ucla.edu/team,
http://hypermedia.ucla.edu.team/jeff.php, 6 January 2008.

59
Melissa Abraham, “UCLA's Virtual Pioneers: Remapping Los Angeles”
UC Newsroom Online, http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/9189.

60
ibid.

61
Imageability, REMAP,
http://bigriver.remap.ucla.edu/remap/index.php/Imageability.

62
Fabian Wagmister, Flier Image of Monumento872.
http://la.remap.ucle.edu/engage/visual/main.php?g2_itemid=30287&g2_imageViews
Index=1. 6 January 2008.

63
Knowles, REMAPPING LA,
http://bigriver.remap.ucla.edu/remap/index.php/Remapping_LA_Detailed_Project_D
escription.

64
ibid.

65
Freewaves is an online multimedia magnet that produces a free festival
biannually in the Los Angeles area.
59
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION

This thesis set out to investigate a particular aspect of combining public art
with technology. In the epigraph, Guy Debord was quoted saying, “A revolutionary
organisation must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to
listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves,
in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” In
recent years the field of public art has moved closer to the elements included in
Debord’s statement. Although Debord was speaking specifically of political
revolution, contemporary artists, particularly the creators of PDPal, Yellow Arrow
and REMAPPING LA, have discovered that direct participation is a crucial part of
revolutionizing the ways that artists are able to activate the public and the public
sphere.
These projects have mobilized an entirely new public. This public is
interested in social networking, and systems that help to connect them with family,
friends, colleagues, and that one person they want to meet. They are a public who
spends much of their time in connection with some form of technology, whether it is
a laptop, mobile phone, or GPS device. They have become accustom to living their
lives through wireless signals, keypads, and screens. Because of these facts, it can
be said that this new public is taking part in a state of accelerated obsolescence. To
address this, the creators of the public art projects discussed in Chapter Three
produced projects that included mobile communication devices that push the public
60
closer to the built environment instead of promoting the solitary experiences that
most Web-based technologies deliver.
It should not seem coincidental that artists are implementing public art
projects that address these issues. It is concerning that there are places on the Web
that one could spend hours, even days, navigating and a portion of the public spends
their time in simulated spaces instead of exploring a life that is physical. This is a
major reason that there has been a surge of artists attempting to rediscover the built
environment. Contemporary artists are interested in exposing the privatization of
technologies that are predominately conducted indoors and are isolating in nature,
compared to those that are in the public sphere, an open, more dispersed and urban
domain.
Also, it is possible that because the technology is being made to
accommodate the most illiterate of users, these kinds of projects are becoming more
accessible to a greater public. Therefore, public art projects that utilize easy to use
technology have gained a greater amount of participation from the public. For
example, PDPal, which used a somewhat difficult application to navigate, was not
accessible to the wide range of people that Yellow Arrow was able to reach. It is
quite possible that the more adaptable and flexible these technologies become, the
more familiar the public will become with them and they will begin to expect
projects of this nature to replace the “usual” static public art that exists in most cities.
It is important for me to express that there has not been a serious critique
inserted into the body of this thesis because I felt it necessary for my readers to form
61
their own conclusions about each project. I see these projects as expanding a certain
dialogue, and for me their successes and failures fall second to the actuality of the
projects. Also, it is crucial to this discussion to remember that because technology is
changing at a rapid pace our critiques of projects that use somewhat dated
technologies can be skewed because they have already, or are becoming obsolete.
We can often find ourselves saying that the more recent the project the more
successful because it used a more accessible, or easy-to-use technology. This should
not make one project more successful than the next. Instead, it only makes them
more advanced. One can only dream of what the next project will do to surpass
those discussed here.
With that said, it is worth mentioning a few additional projects that use the
same kind of means to explore or play in public spaces to reiterate the tendency
toward this kind of exploration of public art and technology. A recent project, GET
LOST, was completed in the summer of 2007 when the New Museum of
Contemporary Art invited 21 internationally renowned artists to each create a
personal view of the New York by drawing a map of downtown, in hopes that they
might uncover both “real and imaginary”
1
territories. Although the project did not
involve the use of technology in the creation of the collective portrait by these artists,
it does display the results of their work on the Web site for the New Museum.
Similar to PDPal, GET LOST asked participants to create a representation of their
own personal narrative of the city, but unlike its predecessor, the New Museum did
not ask the public to participate in creating a map of the city, they were only invited
62
to view the results once it was complete. The project brought “together fictional
landscapes, utopian visions, private memories, and obsessive instructions to explore
Manhattan, its past, present, and future.”
2
Touted an “exercise in emotional
geography,” GET LOST was made public when a collection of the maps were
distributed without cost at galleries, not-for-profit institutions and other sites that
animate the life of downtown New York.
3

Sweet Spot (2004), was an intervention of experience in public space and
follows principles quite similar to those used in Yellow Arrow. Instead of yellow
arrows Sweet Spot participants placed blank white flags in spots in within San
Francisco that had significance in their lives. After the flags had been placed, Sweet
Spot participants could email the locations of their flags, or stop by the office of the
San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets (SFBUS) to fill out a form documenting
where and why their flag had been placed.
4
Additionally, participants were
encouraged to make written annotations on the flag itself with permanent pen. The
locations of “sweet spots” were uploaded to a digital map courtesy of the SFBUS.
Although it is a less technologically complex version of YA, Sweet Spot intervenes
within public space to demarcate personal experiences in much the same way.
In contrast to how Sweet Spot was a less technologically advanced project
than Yellow Arrow, Can You See Me Now? is a project that is even more technically
sophisticated than REMAPPING LA. Instead of using the lowest common
denominator of technology these newer projects have reached a sector of the public
that has become increasingly knowledgeable of the expansion of mobile telephony.
63
An ongoing project by the collective Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now? engages a
technically savvy public through inviting them to participate in a game that happens
simultaneously online and on the streets. It allows global participants to interact
with the members of Blast Theory by playing against them in an online, virtual city.
Blast Theory’s “runners” are tracked by satellites and appear online next to the
virtual participants player on a map of the city. The runners use handheld computers
showing the positions of online players to guide them in tracking down the virtual
players. “With up to 20 people playing online at a time, players can exchange tactics
and send messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie-
talkies allow participants to eavesdrop on their pursuers: getting lost, cold and out of
breath on the streets of the city.”
5
Although the project is more game-like than
anything else, the motivation for the “game” comes out of the members of Blast
Theory being “fascinated by the penetration of the mobile phone into the hands of
poorer users, rural users, teenagers and other demographics usually excluded from
new technologies.”
6

The discussion of additional projects, such as GET LOST, Sweet Spot and
Can You See Me Now?, is instrumental to the topic of technology merging with
public art because it shows that there are many possibilities for artists to creatively
apply the tools that have been discussed here. Options are endless because of the
rate at which mobile technology is growing, but as one can see some of these
projects, like Yellow Arrow, have been more successful at reaching a wider audience,
because that was their goal. Still other projects, like PDPal and REMAPPING LA
64
did not reach a global or even continental public because their goals were different.
For the creators of PDPal it was important for them to experiment with ways to use
hand-held devices to involve the public in exploring their space. The REMAPPING
LA artists remained focused on combing technology with the history of the site and
its current community.
Also, the implementation of Web 2.0, a concept that refers to a new platform
for communication on the World Wide Web, is influencing artists to take advantage
of the capabilities the Internet provides. Perceived as a second generation of web-
based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, and
blogs –which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users,
Web 2.0 does not reference any technical updates, but instead, is an indication of
changes in the ways software developers and end-users navigate the Web. Most of
the technology-based public art projects that are being created have a basis in the
increased communicative capabilities of Web 2.0 because it allows for instantaneous
connections and responses, as well as increased users and bandwidths. The
capabilities that are being approached with Web 2.0 are expanding the possibilities
for projects like the ones discussed here to begin to play with audio and video instead
of just text and static images.
Obviously, there are many possibilities for future projects and it is hard to
anticipate what levels of advancement artists who practice in this arena of public art
will be able to undertake, but for now, the artists who use these technologies
encourage their users to “play” with them to explore their physical environment and
65
not just the intangible world they present. This recalls the way the SI investigated
the new urban zones of the 1960s. Just as Debord and other members of the SI
focused their attentions and placed importance on avoiding the usual routines of life
to stand up for their distaste in consumption, contemporary artists have begun
placing an emphasis on avoiding the usual ways the public uses mobile telephony to
show their aversion to the solitary aspects of most devices.
It is now apparent that understanding the context surrounding the Situationist
International praxis was necessary in order to have a full grasp on the terms applied
to the projects presented here. Additionally, that knowledge was imperative in
recognizing that PDPal, Yellow Arrow, and REMAPPING LA have revolutionized
the way the SI terms are applied in a contemporary context. And, in a similar way
that James Bohman has adapted the Habermasian definitions for public and public
sphere to encompass the notion of the Internet as a place for public forum, today’s
artists have tailored the SI terms to fit into contemporary contexts. In a related way,
today’s artists are redefining the way we explore and move through both physical,
and software constructed public spaces, and in doing so they have created ways to
make public private tools and actions.

66
Chapter Five Endnotes

1
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York,
http://www.newmuseum.org/assets/general/getlost/index.html, 18 February 2008.

2
ibid.

3
ibid. Beginning Wednesday, June 6, 2007, free copies of GET LOST were
made available to the public at the following markers of the downtown scene and
cultural organizations around the city: Opening Ceremony (35 Howard Street),
Babeland (43 Mercer Street), Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery), The Bowery Hotel
(340 Bowery), Congee Village (100 Allen Street), Lost City Arts (18 Cooper
Square), Freemans Restaurant (Freeman Alley at Rivington Street), Two Boots (155
East 3rd Street), Patricia Field (302 Bowery), Screaming Mimi's (382 Lafayette
Street), Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette Street), Artist's Space (38 Greene Street, 3rd Floor),
The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street), Sculpture Center (44-19 Purves Street, Long
Island City), The Rotunda Gallery (33 Clinton Street, Brooklyn), Bronx Museum
(1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street, Bronx), and the Bedford Cheese Shop (229
Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn). GET LOST was also distributed at the galleries of
participating artists.

4
Michael Zheng, The B.U.S.,
http://www.michaelzheng.org/portfolio/whiteflags/bus.html, 4 February 2008.
The San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets is a visual arts and urbanism think tank
dedicated to developing and promoting art about the city of San Francisco, its public
and private histories, and the layers of lived experience embedded within the built
environment. The Department of Vernacular Drawing is a loose affiliation of visual
artists, architects and urban planners convened by the Bureau to explore a shared
passion for urban place-making. Three members of the DVD lead the Sweet Spots
Project. Larry Shao, Michael Zheng and Joshua Switzky.

5
Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now?,
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html, 4 February 2008.

6
ibid.
67
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abraham, Melissa. UCLA's Virtual Pioneers: Remapping Los Angeles. UC
Newsroom Online. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/9189.
6 January 2008.

Abrams, Janet and Peter Hall, eds. Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of
Networks and Territories. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Design
Institute, 2007.

Allen, Christopher. Dimensions of Liveness: Spectating Space at GAle GAtes et all.
MUSEO 5. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/museo/5/5/galegates/index.htm. 4
January 2008.

Bishop, Claire, ed. Participation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Blast Theory. Can You See Me Now?.
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_cysmn.html. 4 February 2008.

Bleecker, Julian. Another Spatial Annotation Project. TechKwonDo.
http://www.techkwondo.com/projects/a_s_a_p/. 2 January 2008.

Bohman, James. “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and prospects
for transnational democracy” in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the
Public Sphere. eds. Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts.130-153.
Oxford, UK; Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing: Sociological Review,
2004.

Constant Nieuwenhuys. “Extracts from Letters to the Situationist International.”
October. 79 (1997): 96-97.

. “A Different City for a Different Life.” October. 79, (1997): 109-112.

. “Unitary Urbanism.” Paper presented at the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam on 20 December1960. trans. from Dutch by Robyn de Jong-
Dalziel, in Constant's New Babylon: City for Another Life. exh. cat. ed. Mark
Wigley. 131-135. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Witte de With, Center for
Contemporary Art, 010 Publishers, 1998.

Counts Media Inc. Yellow Arrow. http://www.yellowarrow.org/. 4 January 2008.

Crossley, Nick and John Michael Roberts, eds. After Habermas: New Perspectives
on the Public Sphere. Oxford, UK; Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing:
Sociological Review, 2004.
68

Debord, Guy. “Introduction to a critique of Urban Geography.” Les Levres Nues,
no.6 (1955),

. “Towards a Situationist International//1957,” in Participation, ed. Claire
Bishop, 96-101. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

Dietz, Steve. State of the Art: Maps, Stories, Games and Algorithms from Minnesota.
mnartists.org.
http://www.mnartists.org/tourItemDetail.do?action=detail&tourItemId=2902
1rid=28921. 2 January 2008.

. “Mapping the Homunculus.” in Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies
of Networks and Territories. eds. Janet Abrams and Peter Hall. 200-205.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2007.

Driggs, Janet Owen. ed. Not a Cornfield: History/Site/Document. Los Angeles,
CA: Not a Cornfield, LLC., 2007.

Grau, Oliver, ed. MediaArtHistories. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

Habermas, Jürgen. The structural transformation of the public sphere : an inquiry
into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.

Horowitz, Simi. GAle GAtes Closing, But with pride and Ever Hope. BackStage. 6
June 2003. http://www.allbusiness.com/services/amusement-recreation-
services/4573744-1.html. 4 January 2008.

House, Brian. KnifeandFork. http://knifeandfork.org/. 4 January 2008.

Hypermedia. hypermedia.ucla.edu/team. http://hypermedia.ucla.edu.team/jeff.php. 6
January 2008.

Knowles, Chase. Remapping LA Detailed Project Description. REMAP.
http://bigriver.remap.ucla.edu/remap/index.php/Remapping_LA_Detailed_Pr
oject_Description. 6 January 2008.

Lefkowitz, Karen. Remapping: from cell phones to collective consciousness. UCLA
Today Online. http://www.today.ucla.edu/news/070206_remap/. 6 January
2008.

McDonough, Tom, ed. Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2002.

69
Moss, Karen, ed. Topographies, exh. cat. San Francisco: San Francisco Art Institute,
2004.

New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
http://www.newmuseum.org/assets/general/getlost/index.html. 18 February 2008.

Paterson, Scott. sgp http://sgp-7.net/index2007.shtm?ID=41&k=works. 4 January
2008.

Ray, Christina. About Glowlab. Glowlab. http://www.glowlab.com/about. 4 January
2008.

Rhizome/General Information, http://www.rhizome.org/info. 4 January 2008.

Ross, Kristen and Henri Lefebvre. “Lefebvre on the Situationists: An Interview.”
October. 79 (1997): 69-83.

Shapins, Jesse. Projects – Union Docs. ~jms http://jesseshapins.net/uniondocs. 4
January 2008.

University of California Los Angeles. Fabian Wagmister Biography. AI & Society.
http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/wagmister_bio_html. 6 January 2008.

Wagmister, Fabian. “Juncture,” http://la.remap.ucla.edu/juncture/. 6 January 2008.

. Flier Image of Monumento872.
http://la.remap.ucle.edu/engage/visual/main.php?g2_itemid=30287&g2_imag
eViewsIndex=1. 6 January 2008.

Wigley, Mark. Constant's New Babylon: City for Another Life, exh. cat. Rotterdam,
Netherlands: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 010 Publishers,
1998.

Zheng, Michael. The B.U.S.
http://www.michaelzheng.org/portfolio/whiteflags/bus.html. 4 February 2008.

Zurkow, Marina. PDPal. http://www.o-matic.com/play/pdpal. 2 January 2008

. Karaoke Ice. http://karaokeice.com_pages/information.html. 2 January
2008.
70
APPENDIX A – Images

Image 1.
PDPal beaming station in New York.
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow

71

Image 2.
Yellow Arrow participant
Image courtesy of Politiken, Copenhagen - February 4, 2005

72

Image 3.
PDA beaming at the Walker Sculpture Garden
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow

73

Image 4.
PDA Beaming Station in New York.
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow

74

Image 5.
PDA Beaming Station at the Eyebeam Atelier.
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow

75

Image 6.
PDPal PDA application Shapes/Symbols/Key.
Image courtesy of techkwondo.com/projects/pdpal_ts/shapes.html, Julian Bleecker

76

Image 7.
PDPal’s UPR on Creative Time’s 59
th
Minute series in Times Square
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow

77

Image 8.
PDPal’s question as part of Creative Time’s 59
th
Minute series in Times Square.
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow
78

Image 9.
PDPal printed map for Times Square
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow.

79

Image 10.
PDPal’s UPR (Urban Park Ranger)
Image courtesy of techkwondo.com/projects/pdpal_ts/shapes.html, Julian Bleecker

80

Image 11.
Lucci, the Karaoke Ice character and truck
Image courtesy of www.o-matic.com, Marina Zurkow.

81

Image 12.
Another Spatial Annotation Project (ASAP) PDA Screen Shot
Image courtesy of techkwondo.com/projects/pdpal_ts/shapes.html, Julian Bleecker

82

Image 13
Yellow Arrow, participation in action.
Courtesy of Yellow Arrow Press Pack – Washington Post Style Section – July 2,
2005.

83

Image 14.
Compilation of Images from the Colors of Berlin, 2004.
Courtesy of www.stadtblind.org/articles/urban-mythologies-and-stadtblind/ -
Jesse Shapins

84

Image 15
Ralph Pumney, Pyschogeographic Map of Venice – 1957
Courtesy of Simon Ford, Situationist International: A User Guide, 54-55.

85

Image 16
Palm-sized-pointers
Courtesy of Yellow Arrow Press pack – KBH Magazine, February 2006

86

Image 17
Secret New York yellow arrows
Courtesy of Yellow Arrow Press pack Time Out New York – June 23, 2005

87

Image 18
Capitol of Punk – Image of Bathroom
Courtesy of Yellow Arrow Press pack – Spin magazine – May 2006

88

Image 19
Not a Cornfield facing toward downtown Los Angeles
Courtesy of Flickr, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/49369754_15cb44837c_m.jpg

89

Image 20.
Juncture in the Los Angeles State Historic Park
Author’s Image

90

Image 21.
Juncture set up, detail of LED strings in motion
Author’s Image

91

Image 22
Juncture
Author’s Image

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis explores the projects PDPal, Yellow Arrow, and REMAPPING LA, showing that the artists who produced them have extended and advanced Situationist International praxis by using mobile Web-based technologies. These projects show that today's artists and thinkers are not only recalling and contemporizing the revolutionary work of the SI, they are redefining public exploration by interrupting both our usual motivations for using mobile devices, and the public space through which we move.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Haasl, Claire Mary (author)

Core Title Making art public: mobilizing public art through technology

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 04/18/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Habermas,mobile technology,New Babylon,OAI-PMH Harvest,PDPal,public art,REMAP,Situationist International,Yellow Arrow

Language English

Advisor Moss, Karen (committee chair), Decter, Joshua (committee member), Willis, Holly (committee member)

Creator Email cmhaas1@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1159

Unique identifier UC1132530

Identifier etd-Haasl-20080418 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-62584 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1159 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Haasl-20080418.pdf

Dmrecord 62584

Document Type Thesis

Rights Haasl, Claire Mary

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu