LEAD Chat Transcript: Wild Nature and Digital Life
with Jeremy Hight
Click here to download pdf version.
Also available in Portuguese.

View Dene Grigar’s essay: "The Emergent and Generative in Nature, the Digital and Art"
(LEA Vol 14 No 07 - 08 2006)

and Tara Rodger’s essay: “Butterfly Effects: Synthesis, Emergence and Transduction”
(LEA Vol 14 No 07 - 08 2006)

The "Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion" (LEAD) accompanies selected LEA Special Issues. LEAD has two components a live chat session with LEA authors and artists and a moderated discussion list for readers to engage with the special issue authors.

The following is the unedited transcript from Wednesday's (7 February 2007) chat session with new and locative media artist and writer Jeremy Hight, part of the on-line discussion around the Wild Nature and Digital Life special issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac. <Marcus Bastos & Ryan Griffis>

<begin transcript>
Ryan_Griffis: Thanks Jeremy for joining us in the last chat of this series, and welcome. I have an initial question to start things off ... You talk about (in your contribution to the LEA issue) about the potential relationships between locative media and narrative...specifically through the concept of narrative archeology, and the "revealing" of otherwise "invisible" artifacts...in relation to the questions that have come up in this issue and the other chats(and the list), what do you think about the problematics of "truth claims" as they relate to technology and the potential of narrative to re-frame our experience and even relationships to space and those occupying it? Perhaps a bit vague... but maybe this makes sense?

Jeremy Hight: Makes sense. In my essays and work I make sure to delineate "data" from "narrative" and speak of the shading in between.  There is always the Wikipedia paradigm even in traditional history, depending on which academic you refer to in more theoretical history (of what must be inferred from incomplete information).  There is on one end of the spectrum the pure information (as pure as that can ever be semiotically, of course),  and on the other end there is interpretive narrativization.  The hope for me is that in time there can be spaces with many different projects existing in them as well as many different forms of locative media work and "narrative"...from narrativization to the more Barthean sense of change and analysis as equaling narrative stained glass etc...)

RG: I'm reminded of the "dark matter" question that came up in the list discussion (from Roger I think)... it becomes hard for me to differentiate between "dark matter" as narrative construction versus observable data... and why Latour's positioning of "data" as aged in relation to its linguistic discovery is interesting to me (as well as your notion of "narrative archeology).

Marcus_Bastos: what do you mean by that? (w/ "equaling narrative stained glass")...not so familiar w Barthes here

JH: The space is there for history, for science, for mathematics...in fact that is a book chapter I have been asked to write regarding the applications in education.

JH: Barthes wrote of the larger, broader construct of narrative as roughly
information that leads to a change in perspective by the observer after interaction...

MB: I see.

JH: That is not what I work with directly but it is another related area of what can be "narrative" in a more structural, functionality/process-sense.  Narrative archeology basically is unearthing the unseen layers within a space in many forms of information and "reading" a space.

MB: This topic always lead me to the idea that digital media gives visibility to this process, whereas in print this was more mental. I'm not sure if this is positive or not, though. what do you think?

RG: Steven Johnson (in Interface Culture) makes a really quick reference to Wittgenstein, paraphrasing a statement that language is the material of world views (what world views are literally constructed out of) - the printing press didn't just change information distribution but also an entire value system... Johnson goes on to discuss the same impact in terms of graphic user interfaces (like the desktop)...

JH: Right...it  depends on usage...to me  it is like VR but integrated in real world experience as a fused entity...augmentation ...as opposed to a secondary data set that is passively experienced (reading a book...VR goggles while standing still).  I would agree with Johnson on that.  The post I made on the list talked about how scientists found that the recently sighted blind had to see the linguistic interface of objects to see depth and concepts...so we are wired that way already in a sense.  The near future I am most interested is in how it is already possible to wear simple glasses with a small wearable computer (like a reporters pack or eventually a hearing aid) with GPS capability and navigate as naturally as walking with augmentation in the field of vision and audio when desired.

Ryan_Griffith: GIS/GPS tech, or rather its growing ubiquity seems to be something with a similar potential - of taking the implications of cartography to a whole other level.

JH: The concepts of cartography,history, narrative or non-narrative, the reading of space, layers in time, layers of data ...all can be interacted in a physical interface.

RG: The potential to "narrativize" space is something really interesting... both in a utopian sense (for myself) but also in a very dystopian sense, when I remember that the military is all about narrativizing space as well, but it's not a narrative I want to be a part of!

JH: Right.  We were interviewed early on about 34 north 118 west when the war had begun, and we were asked if we were intentionally subverting the military tool for political art.

RG: What was your response?\

JH: We had to answer “no”.  We were using their tools...like cell phones, VCRs, beepers, the internet, Photoshop...all initially for military use. We were taking what was available (the signal, the system, the grid if you will) and using it for what we wanted.

MB: I read something interesting about this not too long ago...Drew Hemment arguing that, one aspect of the problem is how we subvert technology, but the other is how this technology is used and becomes more and more embedded in culture, despite the fact that some of its usages are meant to be critical.

JH: I have published a paper (www.sarai.net/journal/06_pdf/03/03_jeremy.pdf) and interview (re.cont3xt.net/pdf/Re_001.pdf) called "locative dissent" about how to use it and more directly as a new paradigm of dissent and protest (along with im,RSS and cell phone images and video and you tube and flickr...)

MB: what's the URL for the article you mentioned? Is it the one on sarai reader?

JH: Right.  I was supposed to lecture in a conference that I will leave unnamed.  I couldn't go but saw to my horror (but not surprise) that some phd's had written a locative paper that was pure surveillance.  This aspect of locative media is an odd loop.  A troubling loop.  Yes, it is in sarai reader and the interview is at cont3xt.net.

RG: Do you mean the paper was looking at LM as inherently surveillance - i.e. it reduced it to simply surveillance?

JH: Yup...in crowds...

RG: LM does often get over simplified, and the discussion rhetorical.

JH: All the locative wearables ideas...gps button to track your friends...the use of mapping...aerial imaging...but for surveillance...essentially crowd control.  There always seems to be semiotics in things and then a sort of short hand "semiotics for dummies" version of things.  LM is no different.

MB: Could you give some examples of locative projects that go beyond and defy surveillance? (projects that reflect this complexity you and Ryan were just exposing before).

RG: While I like a lot of what the Surveillance Camera Players (Brown) write/perform, the simplification of using info tech as identifying as the "detective" (i.e. the "Man") is a bit too easy for me.

JH: Brett's (Stalbaum) work with c5 is about alternate mapping, measurement, situationist tropes like with the great wall being measured.

RG: Your collaborative works fit well there too, Jeremy (the ones discussed in your essay in this LEA issue).

JH: I have to say Christian Nold's bio-mapping is very different also but plays on personal and mapping...and plays on old biofeedback concepts in a new way...and he wrote a book about surveillance years ago...attacking it.
LM= geo-caching, geo-tagging...that is the short hand.  It began that way...sure...but...That is why I am so jazzed about floating points.(floatingpointsspace.blogspot.com).  It isn't just shortlisted by the European Apace Agency to be locative media in the air but it opens up a whole paradigm shift.

MB: Could you elaborate a bit?

JH: Perspective,scope, elevation while interacting...all that those things entail...and a sort of artificial intelligence (in the sense of intuitive processing patterns) engine to crunch lots of information, so the longer you are at a spot...the angle you turn...the height you are at ...all can adjust what information as pure data and the interpretive art/narrative work comes to you...possibilities in art end and for science are huge.  You can truly "read" a space as it sort of speaks to you in a more full way...interactive...deeply layered.  Think of stage lighting on a face...looking up from below...straight on...or from above...isn't it the same but different?  Isn't this interpretation spatialized?

RG: Sounds a bit like something explored in the Tactical Sound Garden: tacticalsoundgarden.net?

JH: Apply that to places in city and landscape...

MB: Sorry to interrupt, but I'll have to go.

JH: A litte bit...the key is that it would be thousands of times more information than what currently runs...and would be a tool for other projects to work with as well...scientists, architects, historians, and other artists...that is my secondary goal...the key is the AI engine...able to crunch shifts in place and tell more\

JH: ok, good to “see” you.

RG: Thanks Marcus. Take care.

MB: Thank you, Jeremy.  Hope to keep this going in parallel. I'm really interested in hearing more of your ideas.

JH: Great...me too...let's talk more soon.

Marcus Bastos has left the room.

JH: Locative media must keep evolving.  It honestly as a whole has not changed as much as I had hoped since 5 years ago...but that seems to be changing.

RG: What kind of changes had you hoped for - if you can summarize?

JH: Sure...a larger variety of forms continuing to splinter off...more usage of scientific data and/or work with historians and architects...more work in eliminating what I call the "bowling alley connundrum": you bowl your frame...things move...then it resets...

RG: Sounds similar to the wheel reinvention syndrome...

JH: The way to solve that bowling alley connundrum is to have your trigger points change info...not always be static...change with length of time in a place...direction...elevation at point...when we were developing a project
for Manzanar Naomi Spellman had an idea about it being more "alive" by changing info with time of day as kids would be playing in the camps in the early hours and later in the day adults would be doing certain things...more of a living sense of time to give respect to the people that had to be forced into such conditions to live.  It also was to change with seasons...the cold dusty winds...sounds...at other times of the year to not be heard in the space.

RG: Interesting! I think the tension for me comes in the seemingly unresolvable difference between the concepts of "data" and "respect" (to use that example) - maybe you have some thoughts about that?

JH: Right.....data is cold...machine...code...led...lcd...hal...stat sheet...the thing about Manzanar is that the place is aside from a small (nice but small) museum, an insulting symbol of the way Japanese Americans were treated in WW2 and that era...marginalized...dislocated..."other" and things taken away...a lot of the wood was taken to build a small town nearby...it is cracked earth as further insult while there is still a yearly pilgrimage to remember ...but wouldn't the memories be given more respect if given a greater respect, care.  There are photos, videos. documents ...all in museum holds of artifacts and data across the US...this could bring it back to give respect to who lived there and their memory...there can be indignity in the soil sometimes...if it is a physical manifestation of wound. Spaces are to be "read" and locative media has only tapped a tiny increment of its positive potential and many usages both as an art form and as a tool for information and appreciation of the spaces of the earth, be they cities or open lands.  The field is young...growing...it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  I come to it with a background in narrative, but also of mathematics, of science, and of a love of history...others can bring their fascinations in many facets.

RG: Thanks Jeremy, again, for chatting (sorry if i'm cutting you off - so hard to know what's going on when you can't see people!) and sorry for the initial problems getting us together for this.

JH: Thanks...sure...glad we did it...enjoyed it!
<end transcript>

Author Biographies
Jeremy Hight is a locative media and new media artist/writer/theorist. He collaborated on the early locative narrative project "34 north 118 west". His essay “Narrative Archaeology” http://www.xcp.bfn.org/hight.html is studied in several universities as a resource on locative narrative and space. He collaborated most recently on the landscape data edited project Carrizo Parkfield Diaries. The diaries are archived in the Whitney Museum Artport. He recently co-curated the online new media exhibition Binary Katwalk (binarykatwalk.net). He is working on two large-scale locative media projects that look to push into new areas both in physical space and in functionality. He currently has a project shortlisted for possible development with the European Space Agency and as a form of locative narrative utilizing the European Space Station and points above the earth. Hight is currently editing a book of essays on locative media. Hight holds Masters in Fine Arts (writing, theory, art) from the Critical Studies/Writing program at Cal Arts, and a B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He teaches Visual Communication and English at Los Angeles Mission College.

Citation reference for this Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion Chat Transcript

MLA Style
Hight, Jeremy. “Jeremy Hight: LEAD - Wild Nature and Digital Life Chat Transcripts” “Unyazi” Special Issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol. 15, No. 1 - 2 (2007). 1 Jan. 2007 <http://leoalmanac.org/resources/lead/digiwild/jhight.asp>.

APA Style
Hight, J. (Jan. 2007) “Jeremy Hight: LEAD - Wild Nature and Digital Life Chat Transcripts,” “Unyazi” Special Issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol 15, No. 1 - 2 (2007). Retrieved 1 Jan. 2007 from <http://leoalmanac.org/resources/lead/digiwild/jhight.asp>.