This video is to demonstrate the technical details of an experiment I am doing with flash media server.

The video shows how it all works but i didnt explain very well what everything is doing exactly so I will add some extra notes here.

When a user connects, flash media server grabs any information it can about the user, operating system version, flash player version, ping time, ip address etc. The colour you are represented by on screen is determined by the milliseconds in time on your computer clock as you arrive on the page. The value is converted to a colour value on the fly.

It sends your ip address to a separate website which sends the server information about your ip, location, longitude , latitude, partial post code and similar location data. (i dont keep this data )

Connections are automatically drawn between users who get close to each other. You can also click other users to force a connection.

When you are connected to another user you begin sharing data with each other as i mentioned above. When you receive data it generates the particle effects based on the data, and also the amount of particles generated is based on how much data you are receiving.

The black object that moves randomly is a black hole. At irregular intervals latches itself onto random users and sucks in the data(particles) and destroys them.

While walking down the road I passed what seemed to be an empty shop with hundreds of blank yellow post-it notes in the window. I peered inside to find a strange mix of arts and crafts of various forms and a couple of people looking around. After talking to the people inside it appeared I had stumbled on a project by a group called Anonymous Artists. I was told that this group had gotten hold of this empty shop right next to the famous Harrods department store for free. And then gave the space to 8 different artists and craftsmen to use however they wished for a whole week. I had pretty much walked into my own project except based around arists only.

http://www.anonymousartists.co.uk/

“A public space refers to an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. One of the earliest examples of public spaces are commons. For example, no fees or paid tickets are required for entry, nor are the entrants discriminated based on background. Non-government-owned malls are examples of ‘private space’ with the appearance of being ‘public space’.”

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space

The Wikipedia reference is of particular importance with regard to the last line. A lot of people I speak to regard private spaces such as malls as public spaces. I don’t subscribe to this idea and I’d rather call them pseudo-public spaces, or some kind of prefix that distinguishes it from public space that is government owned and not privately run. An example of a perceived digital public space(more about digital public space in another post) would be facebook. It is a place where the public congregate in large numbers and has many characteristics of a public space. But at the end of the day it is privately owned, if they decided you could no longer share certain information, or limited your use of it for some reason, you have no rights that protect your use of the space as it is privately owned and governed.

“…’public space’ is used to designate a location which is (i) designed, however minimally, such that (ii) everyone has the rights of access, (iii) encounters in it between individual users are unplanned and unexceptional, and (iv) their behaviors towards each other is subjective to rules none other than those of common norms of social activity.”

Public space: design, use, and management By Beng Huat Chua

This definition uses a more liberal approach in defining public space, in that it does not specify who the owner of the space is, be it private or government etc. This is the kind of definition I am using when testing and experimenting Expression Space and its application. This definition lends itself well to Expression Space as it doesn’t define what you should do in the space, it only defines loosely what you shouldn’t do as described in the final sentence.

This next definition does not define public space, it defines public sphere’s. I only learned recently of the two distict differences between a public space and a public sphere. The latter having the distinct intention to promote debate and political discussion in a space that is also public.

“The public sphere is an area in social life where people can get together and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. It is “a discursive space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgment.” The public sphere can be seen as “a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk” and “a realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed^“”

After reflecting on the differences of a public space and a public sphere, the latter seems to describe the intentions of Expression Space far better than a simple definition of public space. It has always been the intention for Expression Space to be an extension of public space with added meaning and definitions, and I think public sphere does a good job of describing more clearly what I mean.

]]> http://adamgoes3rd.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/research-what-is-public-spaceor-public-sphere/feed/ 0 kaotix http://adamgoes3rd.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/expression-space-facebook-group/ http://adamgoes3rd.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/expression-space-facebook-group/#comments Sat, 27 Mar 2010 02:01:33 +0000 kaotix http://adamgoes3rd.wordpress.com/?p=177 ]]>

A Facebook group for Expression Space has existed since the beginning of the project, but I thought it deserves at least a mention and an explanation as to why I chose it. First of all join the group if you haven’t already! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=256189489229&ref=ts.

The group at the moment has just under a hundred members. Slightly less that I would of liked but I’m happy with the level of participation from the members I do have. One of the first things I did at the beginning of the project was too make this group and for a couple of reasons. Mainly because I knew if I could gather many people together at the beginning, it would be much easier to notify people when events are happening later on. Rather than finding out someone has given me some space to use next week and I have to scurry around trying to advertise it, I can just send out a message to everyone already a member and I have an instant base in which to spread news and updates. The other main reason for starting a group is because I envisaged the project more like a grass roots movement. I was hoping that people who joined would actively participate in the direction and development of the project. Having everyone part of a group and not just becoming a fan of the project, which is another of facebooks page types, was important so that it felt like a group effort in pushing the project forward. The other delivery method on facebook called Pages lets people become ‘fans’ of the page giving them less options of participation, and more of a sidelines position than that of joining a group.

I’ve had many members of the group offer help with trying to acquire empty spaces, and a few of them have also participated in discussions on public space and its use by using the discussion board on the group page. I’m currently using the group to ask for ideas and suggestions with regards to the experiments, to see if anyone comes up with an ingenious idea for setting up a mobile expression space, I’ll let you know how it goes.

this is an initial test in flash for an installation for LumenOrtis, it translates the amount of motion in a camera feed to the brightness of the background. I’l do a test soon of it being reversed projected onto glass so you can see the actual effect im going for.

I’m going to split up the observations into different sub headings so I can focus on each one individually. Just to recap, I erected some blank boards in the courtyard of AUCB for an experiment. They where up for a whole week and anybody could use the boards creatively, this was indicated by a sign present at the boards the whole week and also an email was sent out to the whole university explaining what they are for and where they can be found etc.

The experiment was a way for me to observe how people would use a free space to express themselves, in this case particularly the more artistic/creative side of the community seeing that it is an art school. I wanted to see if it is the sort of thing people actually wanted and would use if I managed to get the project off the ground properly in the public domain. Of course being an art school observations made in this experiment will vary with observations made in a space occupied mainly by the general public. Other experiments are in the pipeline to address different groups of the public to get better overall picture of peoples approaches to such a space.

Content and Materials

On the first day I provided some materials myself to get the ball rolling. Nothing fancy just some marker pens that I scattered on the floor and around the boards. For the first day this was the main medium applied to the boards. It was pretty much filled by the end of the day in scrawlings, words, phrases and small doodles. The content itself was very trivial, the odd doodle of a sort of fairy-tale monsters, lots of random words and names, even a few phone numbers. It was quite evident half way through the day that people where treating it like a public bathroom wall, which in a weird way I am quite happy with. It was mainly filled with phrases and small sentences concerning things that came to their heads at the time, spontaneous expressions of events of the day.

Some people just writ random swear words and some drawn illustrations of penis’, which was definitely predicted from the beginning. It’s weird that given a space to express anything they could possibly think of, people still resort back to playground tactics of expression. From sitting back and watching people use the boards, the profanity usually came from someone who was with a group of friends at the time, the more serious contributions and artistic expressions came from people using the space on their own. Social pressures seem to influence people even in a space of expressed freedom.

Towards the end of the week heavier art materials started to show up as well as other media. Some stencil, some collage and other art materials. I think once people had gotten used to the boards being there they where happier to do bigger things on them. By the end of the week they felt a bit like a permanent fixture in the courtyard and people would sit around them on the benches casually adding to them as and when they felt like. I spoke to quite a few of the individuals who where applying the bigger stuff while they where applying therir contributions. A lot of them expressed interest in applying large scale work to the boards if they would of been given more time to prepare materials. I know quite a few people personally who expressed similar notions that if they had more time to collect spray paints and build stencils etc they would of covered the boards completely many times over.

Space Distribution

The content on the boards for the first 3 days very rarely overlapped with other peoples contributions. Even on the fourth day when it was very fully covered people where still hunting for tiny blank spaces in-between other peoples work. Even though the sign that was up asked that people go over each others contributions as many times as they like people still hesitated. When it came to applying heavier materials like spray paint and collage, people didn’t mind going over any of it, they would just go strait over the top of whatever was in front of them at the time. This is interesting in respect to how I might set up the final space I’m working towards as maybe people would prefer to be given boundaries in which to express themselves individually. I’ll have to observe the other experiments to be sure but I think splitting up the final space in a sort of hybrid fashion might work best. For example having half the room for collaborative expression and the other half divided into sections for personal expression.

Opinions

As I spoke to a lot of the people that contributed to the boards I managed to get a good picture of what people liked about it and disliked. All the students and most of the staff that I spoke too seemed to like the idea. I told most people about my idea for petitioning to get a permanent space in the university ground for free expression and a lot of people offered their support. I’m writing an article about the project at the moment for the Dingsdabumsda magazine to cover the experiment, I think I will ask in that article for people to come forward to show support for a permannt fixture.

The only negative feedback I received was from a member of staff complaining about some of the profanity written on the boards. I was asked that the words be taken off the boards and not knowing who the person was I obliged at the time as I wanted the boards to stay up. Afterwards I was told by many members of staff that the person didn’t have the right to ask me to remove them. I can understand where they where coming from in their protest but I can imagine in a real public space I will have to get used to such opposition. It also made me think that if I am keeping the rules of expression to a minimum if their should be an age limit or not on entering such a space, or at least a disclaimer maybe. This is something that I need to look into.