ABSTRACT
SITEspecific explores emerging technologies of wireless networks and locative media as platforms for public art practice. The class examines interfaces between technology, site-specific art, and the urban landscape. Borrowing from artistic strategies of urban intervention--including mapping, urban probes, the tour, and performance--students work toward the creation of a site-specific work.

KEYWORDS
locative media, wireless networks, site-specific art, public practice, mapping, urban probes, tour, performance

TEXT
SITEspecific is a class, aimed at graduate and undergraduate students, that explores the emerging technologies of wireless networks and locative media as platforms for public art practice. As the infiltration of portable electronics and the invisible flows of wireless connectivity collapse public and private, local and global, our experience of the urban environment grows increasingly complex. SITEspecific, taught by Alison Sant and Elizabeth Goodman, approaches these changing notions of urban space as opportunities for artistic intervention. Positioned within a long tradition of site-specific work, the class proposes that artists utilize emerging new technologies of wireless networks and locative media to invent new forms of public art.

Through readings, guest lectures, discussions, and hands-on activities, SITEspecific examines the interfaces between technology, site-specific art, and the urban landscape. It focuses on direct engagement with public spaces, moving conceptually from investigation to intervention. First, students are introduced to the Hertzian landscape through a series of readings and artistic projects. Texts include Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects and William Mitchell’s Me++. Students investigate the invisible qualities of the city by experimenting with cell phones, WiFi stumbler programs and GPS devices. The class focuses on methods of urban observation and documentation, referencing the tactics of Situationist dérive and psychogeographic mapping. These, and other artistic strategies, provide a context for students to conceptualize their urban itineraries as well as to creatively describe their experiences of the city.

Drawing upon analog and digital examples, the second part of the class explores a history of public art practice. Projects include the Dadaist and Surrealist excursions of the 1920’s, the Situationist maps of the 1950’s, Robert Smithson’s “non-sites” of the 1960s and the Flux tours of the 1970’s. Parallels are drawn between the strategies of these early urban projects and contemporary work in locative media, including work by Pete Gomes, Ben Hooker, Michelle Kasprzac, Paula Levine, Shawn Micallef, Eric Paulos, and Esther Polak, among others. Collectively, these works emphasize an array of methods for engaging in the urban landscape that emphasize critical approaches to the built environment. Defined generally as “urban interventions,” these include the artistic strategies of mapping, the tour, the urban probe, and performance.

SITEspecific does not define locative media through the technology upon which it relies. Instead, it characterizes locative media as a critical approach to place, movement and identity that owes as much to almost a century of site-specific art practice as it does to “new media.” The class emphasizes continuities between historical and contemporary work to root student’s work not in technological novelty but in their observation and experience of the urban landscape.

SITEspecific: assignments
INSTRUCTORS: Alison Sant + Elizabeth Goodman

SITEspecific class assignments are designed to engage students in a series of quick experiments that lead toward a semester long project in which they develop their own site-specific work. Conceptually, the class is broken down into two thematic areas: investigation and intervention. First, students are introduced to the invisible landscape created by the density of wireless signals through a series of activities that engage them in a variety of methods for investigating the urban landscape. These exercises combine various artistic methods, for example the Situationist strategy of the dérive, with the use of locative media technologies. Students explore the invisible qualities of the urban landscape utilizing the technologies of cell phones, WiFi stumbler programs, and GPS devices. Prompted by their experiments, students craft a series of quick projects including collective wardrives, maps of cell phone dead space, and geocaching projects.

Drawing upon analog and digital examples, the second part of the class explores a history of site-specific artwork. These works emphasize an array of strategies for engaging with the urban landscape, emphasizing critical approaches to the built environment. Defined generally as “urban interventions”, these include the artistic strategies of mapping, the tour, the urban probe, and performance. Based on these initial experiments, students select one or a hybrid of several strategies for the final project. Working collaboratively or alone, they create site-specific works intervening in the urban spaces they have investigated. Depending on the complexity of the technical design, students choose to fully realize their projects or produce proposals rendered with the detail appropriate for submission to public art grants. Students have worked both collaboratively and on their own to produce final projects that range from geocaching-based performances in which strangers reenact personal memories associated with specific places to sound installations on in-flight GPS units that trigger audio scores based on airplane routes. The class culminates in a final critique in which guest reviewers respond to each student’s work.

BIOGRAPHIES
ALISON SANT is a media artist, with a background in digital media and architecture. Her work explores the city as both a site for investigation and intervention and has often focused on the hidden dynamics of the urban landscape. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, VIPER Basel, and ISEA. Sant teaches classes at the San Francisco Art Institute, Mills College, and the California College of the Arts. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Tryon Center for Visual Art. Sant is also a recipient of a Creative Work Fund Grant. She received her BFA from New York University in 1993 in the Departments of Photography and Interactive Telecommunications and received her Masters in Design at the College of Environmental Design, University of California Berkeley in 2004. Sant is currently an Artist in Residence at the San Francisco Exploratorium.

ELIZABETH GOODMAN's design, writing, and research focus on critical thinking and creative exploration at the intersections of new digital technologies, social life and urban spaces. She has a BA in Fine Art from Yale University and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. Her work has been shown at Paris' la Cite des sciences et de l'industrie, as well as at a number of international academic conferences such as CHI, DIS and Ubicomp. Previously a visiting lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute, she is now a design researcher at Intel’s User Centered Design group.

URLs to Institutions
San Francisco Art Institute www.sfai.edu
Mills College www.mills.edu
California College of the Arts www.cca.edu