Virtual Street Corners

Here I will be documenting the development of this project - the posts are listed with the earliest at the top, (opposite of normal blog etiquette.)

Project Concept: A street corner in Dudley Sq, Roxbury will be virtually relocated in Coolidge Corner, Brookline, and conversely, a street corner in Coolidge Corner will be transplanted to Dudley Sq. A storefront window in each locale will be transformed to appear like that of the other. Using large video screens, cameras, mics, the project will provide citizens of these neighborhoods with a window into each other’s worlds. People in front of the camera in Brookline will be seen on the screen in Roxbury, and vise versa. The screen images will be life size and a pedestrian in one location will be able to chat in real time with a resident of the other.

a photoshop illustration of the concept-
(the final may look much different)

Project Details

The screens will be mirrored to a site on the Internet, making the installation viewable anywhere with a high speed connection. There will be no hard rules in terms of how people participate, just an invitation to passersby and residents to use the opportunity to communicate their experience and reflections on life in the city.

A brief description of the project will be posted beside the installation, along with information designed to instigate dialogue. Additionally, there will be a map showing the location of the site so that people might actually travel to the other corner and compare their “live “ experience with their virtual one.

The work is part of a growing genre of digital art that explores the city and the various boundaries that its residents navigate – social, physical and psychological. The piece uses technology that was developed to bridge geographic distances and uses it instead to examine boundaries of class and race. The neighborhoods I have chosen to connect are transportation and cultural hubs with rich histories. They are only 2.4 miles apart and the 66 bus runs directly between them, yet very few people from either neighborhood visits the other. Each are areas with many activities and a lot of pedestrian traffic.

Virtual Corners is closely related to a project that I created called Symphony of a City which premiered in Boston Cyberarts Festival 2001. Symphony of a City used headcams, projections and streaming video to paint a portrait of Boston through the eyes of eight different residents.

Both pieces evolve out of earlier work creating participatory community public art projects across Boston. In doing those projects I was struck by the diversity of culture as well as the segregation that still permeates this city. Residents of Boston appear to treat the situation as normal and little dialogue appears to take place around the issue. My work forces people to confront this reality and gives them an opportunity to reflect on it and dialogue about it. It also allows them to experience the city in a new way outside their daily routines.

In recent research, I ran across a quote from Henri LeFebvre, who was associated with the Situationists. He described one of their earlier concepts – “their idea was that in the city, one could create new situations by, for example, linking up parts of the city, neighborhoods that were separated spatially. And that was the first meaning of the word derive. It was done first in Amsterdaam, using walkie talkies.” The Derive and Psychogeography have become somewhat of a buzz-word these days,but I thought it was interesting that they were experimenting with this same concept.

Challenges and Possible Solutions
The primary challenge of any participatory art project is in how one engages the audience. If no one is lured to participate, the dynamism of the project can be lost.

In this particular piece --because of the placement of the sites and transmission of life size figures from one location to the other -- I believe it will be interesting even if nobody stops to converse with each other. Because this is a kind of social experiment it will be interesting just to see how people react.

However I believe it will be much more interesting if people actually have conversations between neighborhoods and end up traveling from one location to the other. My inclination is to not interfere too much in order to achieve this objective. Possible ideas to play with include presenting provocative topics/questions or interesting facts, asking individuals to give a daily report or journal about what is happening in their neighborhood or replaying highlights of previous conversations so people could build on them.

One of my most successful strategies in the past has been to organize support for the project long before it goes up so that the community understands and embraces the intent of the project. I have completed several participatory public art projects in the Dudley area which should help with this endeavor.

I believe my work in community organizing and relationships with community non-profits will enable me to make similar connections in Coolidge Corner.

Another major challenge will be securing funding for the project. Again I will use my past successes to tackle this problem. Symphony of a City received major coverage from the press, appearing on the cover of Boston Globe Magazine, Fox News, Boston Herald, Art News, WBUR (Here and Now), and was the subject of a documentary by WGBH-TV (Greater Boston Arts). It was also presented at Art conferences such as Americans for the Arts in Times Sq. and New England Foundation for the Arts. I hope that the success of the Symphony of a City project will lead the same foundations to support my latest work.

Steps
--Identify community organizations to work with and develop relationships.

--Identify funders and funding scheme.

--Develop video prototype to use to approach collaborators, community groups and funders

Berwick Research Istitute and other ideas

HEY!HEY! I have been selected to develop this project in a residency at the Berwick Research Institute- The Public Art Incubator program. It should be a great way to get things off the ground!

In the process of leading up to the berwick selection, Andi, one of the panelists, presented me with some questions. I list them below with some responses. The one that stuck with me was whether or not this could end up being a form of cultural tourism, and that people of color have to deal with that struggle of aestheticism all the time, why should it be imported into their neighborhood. I think its an important question. I think it also points to the degree of anger and conflict that already exists. a degree of the project's success could hinge on how I frame this question.

I have been thinking a lot lately about academia and the difference between creating inside and for that world vs creating within the "real world" or for people who don't have the same exposure, language and perspective as the "art world". I feel myself clashing against the academic world, and its funny because initially i didn't feel it. But now it feels like part of the crisis i'm experiencing. there feels like a lot of pressure to come up with an "original piece" "a clever piece" . something the gallery world will consume, but without a concern for how it is perceived by others. i am very happy for Erkki Huhtamo and his assertion that artists continue to recreate the same ideas and that this is a good thing. I like the idea of being unoriginal, of copying, of deriving, of re-creating, of referencing. I should gather up here all the references to that, Sherry Levine, etc.

Here are the questions presented to me by the Berwick:

What is your thinking about the site specificity for the project? Why Dudley?
Why Brookline? Do you forsee any potential conflicts initiating your project
in these two sites? What do you think about this? How would you overcome these
conflicts?

I chose two sites that are close together, which are easily accessible, one to the other, and which have a large pedestrian population. They are both hubs, of sorts and even have a bus running between them. Yet people don’t seem to traverse between the two neighborhoods.

Some of the basic premises of the project are that it is interesting and useful to put yourself in a new place, one where you wouldn’t normally go, and that dialogue is useful and creates new understandings. Other media and means of communication have dramatically changed our lives –newspapers, letters , radio, TV, and now the internet. It allows us insight and ways of experiencing the world that dramatically shift our perceptions and create new relationships. Video conferencing has been used primarily at the corporate level to replace face to face contact. I am interested to see how this new technology can be used at a street level, a grassroots level to instigate dialogue and new relationships.

Conflict
Every community public art project involves conflicts of some sort as everyone has a different opinion about how public space should be used and what good art is. The important thing is setting up a good process to facilitate negotiation.

I believe that an artist, particularly from outside the community, needs to negotiate the use of public space with the people who use it.
Some of the approaches I would use:

--Work with community groups who I trust and which have credibility in the community.
--Use an inclusive process and be willing to listen to concerns and compromise.
--Avoid confusion in the first place by clearly defining roles.
--Set up models of the project in public space and engage passersby in what they think of the idea.

Perhaps the most important thing is to see the entire process of bringing the community on board , including the conflicts, as an integral part of the piece, rather than imposing your brilliant idea on everyone else.

The project is inherently about conflict. Segregation and race and class are conflicts that we negotiate everyday, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of discussion about it at the city level. It may be that a third portal needs to be created at City Hall.

I should stress that the idea is very much in development and that is why I am so excited by the Incubator. My approach could change in response to what I learn. In addition to gentrification, an issue that seems to be important right now is the location of the BU bio lab. Another is the Silver Bus Line and why that was substituted for a subway. Education I’m sure is another. neighborhood resources, another.

Have you ever had to deal with communication difficulties or conflict with
community collaborators in other projects you have been a part of (art or
otherwise)? What were these conflicts and how were they solved?

Many many times. I worked in El Salvador for two years for a Human Rights Organization, creating public art and documentary videos. Human Rights were a tremendously polarizing topic, and I always had to deal with language and cultural understanding/misunderstanding. So conflicts have been as direct and intense as having a collaborator on a project kidnapped and myself receiving death threats to disagreeing about which images to use in a mural, or timelines and permits at city hall.

Do you plan on seeking input from residents from both sites? How will you do
this and what kind of collaboration do you hope to achieve? Have you already
started develping these connections? Where and with whom?

I haven’t officially begun this step yet, but have done many community projects in Boston, and in the Dudley area. I have less experience in Coolidge Corner.

alfredo Jaar

"Jaar refuses to make a choice between politics or ethics and aesthetics, believing, with Godard, that "whichever one you choose, you will always find the other one at the end of the road""

Another artist I'm fond of -Paul Chan -- also known for making "political" art --takes a different approach -- he strives to keep the two roles and identities separate. But back to Jaar....

I was looking at and reading through Jaar's Rawanda project this morning. I read the essay that went with it by David Levi Strauss. I am interested in the comments about photo-journalism and their failure to move us to action. the article asserts that the media presents the images in such a way that they make us feel relieved that such horrors are not happening to us or that we are simply voyeurs-- seeing the photos is so totally separated from the reality, that it pacifies and numbs us, rather than motivates us.

"But the camera never manages to record what your eyes see, or what you feel at the moment. The camera always creates a new reality. I have always been concerned with the disjunction between experience and what can be recorded photographically.” --jaar

This idea of whether art can move us to action is a complicated one, and I think very relevent to my work. I keep going back and forth on whether its enough for the project and the images to just convey an idea (how much social distance exists between the neighborhoods which are geographically close) or is it essential that people interact using the video conferencing.

Also, I am comparing the virtual experience with the real one-- a virtual route with the route of the bus. The experience of talking via video versus going and talking with people in the neighborhood.

Dinner with Berwickians

Dinner with the Board. A nice way to kick-off the Residency. We talked about how I got to this point -- Nicaragua -- Dana had spent some time with the Sandinistas as well and we got into an extended conversation about the sandinista revolution, contras etc.-- hadn't talked about that in a long while. It was nice to remember those ideals. It reminded me of a conversation i had recently with people from the Red Clover (Commune in vermont) who felt there were no utopian models today, or alternate visions for a different social structure/government. That through the eighties, there were different leftist movements and governments, that held up an alternative to capitalism, but now the alternative is a right wing religeous (muslim) movement.
---anyway, back to central America and the early influences in my work. How what I valued most in the mural work was the conversations I had -- both standing on the corner as the piece evolved, getting people's reactions and the stories that people told me through making drawings. Using art as a catalyst to elicit personal histories and conversations. It's really been a key into other worlds that I would never be able to access otherwise. And I think digital media seems to be better suited than painting as a medium to accomplish those goals.

It was pointed out that there was two distinct methods I had talked about in approaching virtual street corners. One was to put the piece up and see what happens. The other was to do a lot of community organizing first and then to ask people how they would use this technology as a tool to help accomplish their own goals. I have been excited about both approaches at different times. I guess there's no reason to choose one over the other -- they both can happen, and will probably influence each other. Maybe the best result will be a hybrid of the two.

Hole in Space also came up as a similar project, which I had thought was a dance performance that two groups had done together, but it turned out to be a very similar project to Virtual street Corners! I actually don't see that so much as a problem , but others might, I'll have to figure out how to deal with that. (see next posting, same same)

same same

Susan and I had an interesting discussion about Hole In Space and the idea of "original" and "new" artworks and how I would approach the fact that a similar work to mine had already been produced 25 years ago.

I thought about this a lot in the spring at RISD and found one of our lecturers, Erkki Huhtamo to be insightful and have a refreshing perspective on the matter. What I took away from his discussion is that it is not so important that we come up with new and "groundbreaking" ideas. Ideas or works of art are not better because they are "new", and that many times what we perceive as new is often a restatement of an old idea. (which he labels as "Topoi" ) But capitalism and consumerism is driven by this idea of coming up with the latest hottest thing.

Just the fact that a completely different group of people will be seeing it and that it is executed in a different context, and at a different time makes it worthwhile. Errki did a personal crit with me and urged me to do Symphony of a City again in a different City.

It does seem very useful to be in contact with the artists and try to learn from their experience. So thinking of it as a cooperation rather than a competition. I should probably go back and read some more.

Artist's Talk

I gave an artist's talk for Berwick, one of the important points I took away from the discussion was that there are a lot of similarities between the neighborhoods, in addition to the differences, and that can also be a focus.

other points were:

-ride the bus, use the bus for postering , ads etc. (This was brought up in Tad's class and something i agree is very important resource i think GPS and mapping the location of bus and when it will arrive could be useful)

-- this is a similar situation as RISD/JWU (from Ghana Think Tank)

-- Does virtual let people off the hook? (didn't quite understand this but maybe like watching TV about a topic is not the same as doing it)

--people thought it was important that the project gets people to actually physically travel to the other spaces

Claire Bishop

Claire Bishop has become known as an art critic who addresses socially engaged art and Andi suggested I read her essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. It looks at the art of the 90’s and open-ended , in process, interactive work and critiques the writings of Bourriaud, as well as two artists who she feels are representative of his perspective – Tiravanija and Gillick. Bishop Feels that they don’t go deep enough and that they don’t deal with discomfort or conflict and this limits their effectiveness. Bishop posits two other artists as being more successful –Thomas Hirschhorn and Santiago Sierra.

In another article in Art Forum Bishop complains that aesthetics in socially engaged art are frequently lost to an overemphasis on social change. She feels that much of the work has become rote and didactic and that artists have lost “the oppositional and anti-authoritarian punch they had in the late 1960s and 1970s when radical theatre, community arts and critical pedagogy emerged in opposition to dominant modes of social control.”
She argues that critique of the work has lapsed into evaluations of the process, the ethics of an artist’s method of collaboration and the social benefits that it achieves. Bishop then takes the position that as a recourse it is crucial to discuss and analyze this work critically “as art” with an emphasis on aesthetics. While Bishop makes a good point about how critique of socially engaged art has become lazy, her solution is a rather paradoxical one. The artists of the 1960s and 1970s that Bishop holds up as models proposed just the opposite – the necessity of removing themselves from the confines of art discourse. Furthermore when she gives examples of such a critique, evaluating the work of Oda Projesi, Jeremy Deller, and Phil Collins she predictably judges them using traditional art world criteria—good art is art that which is obtuse and complex, art that confronts us and makes us uncomfortable.

To me, Bishop is emblematic of the academic in the clash between the academic and the community-based or socially engaged art world. There has been a long and succesful struggle to create an art movement outside of the "art institution" and Bishop is urging us to return to those confines. While I like her call to include conflict and to adopt a more critical and a more rigorous approach, concentrating on aesthetics is exactly the wrong direction to pursue. In this I share the opinion of LeisureArts. Their Blog is worth looking at.

HELP!

Here is my request for technical advice - see next post for answers..

I’m working on a project (Virtual Streeet Corners) that requires a “life size screen” meaning about 5’ or 6 ‘ high screen or monitor, and since the cost is prohibitive I’m wondering if anyone knows a cheaper way to do it, such as joining or stacking monitors. I want it to be viewed in a window during the day, so a projector won’t work.

What software do you use so that you can make multiple screens show one image, that will work in portrait fashion as opposed to landscape.

How do you eliminate the casing so you can butt the screens right next to each other , eliminating the space between the screens?

Alternatively -- if all else fails -- does anyone have a screen for rear projection?
thanks -thanks -thanks

solutions

I got a bunch of really helpful feedback, from my HELP! post and here it is, in case it is of use to anyone else:
From Cefn:

I've been using GEM with PD to lay realtime video across multiple monitors.

As described in the first few lines of this intro to building PD, http://cefn.com/curiosity/?page_id=147 a guy called Vade helpfully provided me with PD patches for video to multiple monitors, so I feel honour bound to helpfully pass them on to you.

http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2006-01/034396.html is a direct link to the archived discussion with Vade on the PD list, but I don't think you can get the attachment from there, so I've reattached it here.

While in my case each monitor shows the same subsection of the video, I think it would just be as easy to take different parts of the frame. GEM is essentially rendering the whole video, and then taking a defined window on this which could have any coordinates I think. Depends what the source is which needs to be splurged across the monitors whether this approach would help, but PD will manage most sources.

Hope this helps. I'll know more in two weeks when I finish off this PD Bootcamp...
http://goto10.org/-/pdsummerschool2006

Cefn

another reply from Sean offered this help:

http://curiositycollective.org

think your two options are:
1: rear projection using a 2000+lumen projector
Depending on how the light hits, which is to say if sunlight doesn't fall directly on it (or if it's cloudy) you may get a decently viewable result. The smaller you project the brighter it will be. I have some rear projection screen material I could probably give you a piece of, which is 3 feet by however long (and you could probably join a few with scotch tape and it would look pretty good.
Turn the projector on it's side for portrait...

2. Multiple screens.

You aren't going to get less than about 1/2" gap (and that's with LCDs)...but you can be tricky and use the fake window pane divider moulding to make it look like it's supposed to be separate.
2 big plasmas with door frames could work too...but LCDs and plasmas are both quite expensive, and unless you take the LCDs out of their enclosures, you are going to have an even bigger gap.

CRTs will have at least a 2" gap, generally, between the active picture areas, and also can interfere if they are very close together.

Driving:

Driving the projector is simple.
Driving multiple monitors requires either multiple computers or 1 computer with many video outputs, or potentially several DVD players...
If you are doing stills the 1 computer multiple video output (there are both dual head video cards ($100 each or so) as well as the Matrox tripple-head video splitter ($200 I think) can work decently...

For video I've done a 3 screen setup with 3 separate DV files on 3 computers and synchronized them using 3 copies of arkaos, but I think there are much simpler ways to do it.

Hope that helps some-unfortunately what you are trying to do doesn't come cheap (unless you can find someone with a matrix-video wall divider to borrow)

let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

-sean

and from Paul:

What you'd like to do is both technologically difficult, and more
importantly, expensive. You can't just run a graphics card in every PCI
slot on a desktop PC. You need a way to distribute the information, so a
cluster of PCs and graphics cards is needed, along with a distribution
balancer/manager thingie, like MPI. Once you can do that, it's easy to
display images in either portrait or landscape view. I THINK that there
are virtual cluster packages available, so that you can run many monitors
from a single PC, with a corresponding major hit in speed. If you only
need to update every few seconds, that will probably work.

I'm by no means an expert...I'm a rock mechanics guy, but I'm part of the
EarthScope project funded by congress, and the visualization team is at
Scripps...here's a website referencing what I think you're looking for.
Scripps is SIO...

http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/glvf/gallery.html

You'll note that all of the montors have the bezels (front edges) on. If
you don't like that, and want a more integrated look, you can just remove
the bezels...they usually just pop off the front. You need to take care
when stacking the montors, as having the bezels off makes it easier for
them to fall apart (completely out of the housing).

Honestly, if you're interest in doing this is just to have enough
brightness so that people can see the image during the day, I would
recommend installing an awning on the outside of the building, and just
going with a projector. Or, maybe you could build a booth/tent/private
viewing area? And webcam the response of the person in the booth? I think
that you might be doing that anyway. My friend Mary Fuller sent me your
proposal...

Sorry that I couldn't be more help. I love Boston in the summer...it would
have been nice to have an excuse to fly over there.

best,
Paul

paths we travel

In a discussion with Susan and Andi (from the Berwick) we talked of different ways of engaging the dudley neighborhood (one of the goals Berwick has for my residency). One of the ideas I had that they liked was for Minotte and I to interview people in Dudley at the Bus station (and In Coolidge Corner) about where they traveled that day. and make a map to see the path of Dudley residents and if they intersect with Coolidge Corner residents. My assumption is that they will be distinct.

projections

After another brainstorm with Minotte and Susan and Andi and Meg from the Berwick, I have decided to do a trial run, connecting the Smith House with 10 Williams St.

The Smith House is a housing complex for seniors and contains many people who have lived a long time in the Dudley area. 10 Williams is a newly converted Condo building and is part of a movement towards gentrification of Dudley. It includes people who are relatively new to Dudley Sq.

The buildings are less than a block away and we figure it was a good way to see if we can get people to talk to each other, people who are neighbors ,but perhaps don't realize it. Another idea was to arrange it with the Haley House Coffee shop ( which is right between them), that if the residents from both places wanted to meet in person, after talking virtually, we would provide free coffee and bagels.

So if we set this up in the lobbies of each space we will be able to use projections instead of the screens and it will be a lot cheaper, so i have abandoned for the moment, the screen ideas and have been concentrating just on projections, and trying to get permission from 10 Williams and Smith House.

Sketches

Here are illustrations of how the set-up will appear in the two locations -Smith House and Williams st. condos. Click to see larger:

Getting permission has proved more difficult than I anticipated, but also reminded me what a critical part of the process this community organizing bit is and figuring out how to get folks behind the project and thinking about it, participating with it.

I think its a little more difficult in this case because we're dealing with people's homes. I sent out the proposal to both places, along with sketches of what i think it might look like. (above)

Screens

Here is an image of the screens I set up. I wanted to make them as unobtrusive as possible. They are 6' high and built by simply stretching the special paper over 1x2 pine frames, and then hanging them with fish line from the ceiling.

trial run

We did a Trial run at CAVS (center for advanced visual studies) at MIT. I built projection screens from a special paper and used rear projection. The most important lesson was I need to do a lot of re-tooling of the technology. The projections were hard to decipher, you couldn't see facial expressions, and the audio wasn't working well either. When the technology isn't working smoothly, it makes it hard to learn anything else.

Nevertheless Andi came up with some helpful observations on the aesthetics and interactive elements etc. :

Form:
I really responded to the 'floating doorway' form that the screen took. Taking the size and shape of a literal 'portal' helped me release into the communication experience. I appreciated also that there weren't divisions/partitions which will inevitably be a part of a multi-screen projection. The floating screen also had a warm, sensual feel to it. It wasn't at all invasive - - rather kind of elegant and crisp. Appropriate for an indoor domestic space. But certainly think about whether you want that kind of sleek subtlety. How do you want the intervention into that space to feel. Techy? Not?
I think it's important to try out the computer/tv set up and see how it feels to you and others. Based on pure site specificity, the rear projection seems to work best for the lobbies you have lined up, but not as much in a store window. (Thoughts of reclaiming the 'tech store front' and such come to mind.)

The challenge is the image quality, though. Perhaps the same kind of suspension of disbelief would occur if you could see facial expressions and hear the sound more clearly? There is something intriguing about the human interaction with the tv/computer screen. More contemporary now that so much communication is mediated by these screens.

Talked about but worth noting:

-- an 'x' marks the spot for where to sit or stand. It was hard to tell whether or not you were on screen
-- Definitely continue to block off the vid. conferencing window where you can see yourself. it's distracting and encourages self-consciousness or narcissism that limits the human connection with the person on the other side.
-- Interesting that people weren't motivated to walk on all sides of the projection. people seemed to be able to tell which was the activated side - - interesting.

Interactions:
Since that experience was mostly about testing technology, it was hard to get a sense for how people will really use it. I appreciated the way the kids were playing with it. It was great to see how much they got into performing for the camera - - the story that they created about kidnapping, etc. I think being able to see facial expressions more will help people know to actually communicate. One thing I notices was how little people actually spoke to the screen. I think three people just hung out or danced in front of it but didn't do much more than laugh or smile. I don't know if it was embarassment about being known that they were also being seen, or the auto-pilot reaction that you don't/can't really talk to a screen and have it talk back. I wonder what would happen say, if smith street residents were to sit
in front of the portal and tell personal narratives to the lobby/void of 10 williams? Would people crowd around? Would they know to respond. The same if the narrative came from the other side. It will be interesting to see how people respond. Was it a function of the screen/form itself or just poor audio? (a possibility)

It's a fun tool for certain, but I'm interested to see how it can be used. I wonder if people are more inspired to play with something like that than use it for actual communication and correspondence. I know I felt more playful than anything (but I think that may change if I didn't know the people on the other side.) For this reason, I think it's still critical to try different ways of utilizing the tool when you set it up in Dudley. A free day - - how do people use it unprompted? A directed conversation day? Question prompts - - like a box labled 'don't know what to say? look here!' or even a call and response board. Something like 'Have something to say or Want to talk about _____? What is it?' And definitely a response notebook. Or
even seeing what people do when prompted to use it for personal narrative (as stated above.) There's something interesting happening with the 'confessional box' as used in reality tv programming. Or even Story Core... Is this coming from a human tendency toward exhibitionism? a particular cultural moment? Is it a way for people to 'be heard' when there's so much frustration/malaise/throwing-up-of-hands regarding our institutions and the ability to impact their actions and policies? Your portal taps into this in an interesting way becuase it draws on the culture of human/technology interaction as confession (camera...booth...screen...) but brings them out in real time and with a real, reacting, audience. What do you think about that?

Last thought before I sign off for the moment -- - I loved the time-delay! It's so wild to be taken in by an image of 'real time' that's actually a few seconds behind. To feel compassion, intrigue, etc. with an image of a past event being billed as the present. I did a project a few years back where I played a search and find game with folks in Times Square in NY - - I was in BOston viewing them on the web cams - - we communicated by phone mic'ed into the installation space and per visual cues they saw and I saw we "found" each other. For the climax, we tried to dance together accross the web cam and across the space. Interesting moments of time-delay, connection with the images and the failure of really connecting accross space.
How easy it is to connect by voice when the body is still (the illusion that you're really communicating in real time) but when the bodies try to move in sync you discover that you're responding to a delay. What does that do to communication in the end? I noticed that when people were speaking to each other in your piece. One
would ask a question and be already on to the next one when the other finally hears it and is ready to respond. There's an exciting tension in the waiting for the answer- - get's us out of insta-response mode and into a slower, more patient communication sensibility.

--Andi

A Problem

Well, after a number of back and forths, and initial encouragement from the events organizer and one of the residents at Smith House, I talked to a the head manager and it turned out that he was the manager for both properties. He was a little more hesitant. Although he didn't say it, it was my impression that he felt somewhat uncomfortable, having the dialogue take place and the comparison between the two properties. Although, the housing is a block apart, one is higher income condos, and the other is low income housing for elders.

At Williams street, Tad sent it around to the residents and said he got positive feedback, particularly from one resident who was an engineer.

In any case, after several weeks of back and forth, Smith House declined to participate and I don't really have time this fall to find a new place. I will try to do another trial run at Berwick, but it is a disappointment!

location

Going back to using the LCD screens in storefronts,
I have been trying to figure out exactly which stores to use. I would like to do something close to the bus stops, and local business owners as opposed to chains. I am focusing at this point on brookline booksmith and nubian notion. It would be nice to do something outside of the storefront, like in one of those bus stops or advertising places, but I imagine it would be complicated and expensive and the equipment could get stolen.

pictured are the storefronts of Booksmith and Nubian Notion

More tech trials

I did some more experiments with the technology at the Berwick studios. This time with a little more success. One of the things I tried this time was using a little more of a close-up on the figure. Before I had been set on using a lifesize or full body shot, but there was problems with the resolution and maybe people are just much more interested in seeing someone's face and expressions, the bigger, the better. In the end , though, the projections won't be bright enough for a store window. I'll have to wait until I get some funds to experiment with large LCD screens.

FUNDING!

Just got a big boost! Tomfohrde Foundation has given a challenge grant of $10.000, with the condition that I can bring in another $5,000

More Funding!!

Sent out more grants , and have been able to enough to match the Tomfohrde, including from an arts donor in NYC, Prudential Foundation and MIT community Fund!

Black/jew dialogues

Had lunch with Ron Jones. I contacted him after seeing a performance he did with larry Tish, called Black Jew Dialogues. In that piece they interview people in both Dudley Sq. and in Coolidge Corner

I wanted to see if they would be willing to perform, either on the 66 Bus or via the video. He was excited about doing it but said he thought it would be fairly expensive. We'll see how the fundraising goes. I would love to collaborate with a number of artists in addition to community activists if possible.

Chuck Turner

Met with City Councilor for Roxbury , Chuck Turner and he was very supportive of the project and he gave me a great letter of recommendation!

Designer

I'm excited that Ebe Odonkor has agreed to work on the project as a designer -- his work is great! I have been overwhelmed being one person trying to handle all the different aspects of the project. One of the areas that I think will be really critical is designing the interface - both in the storefront but also on the website.

LAWYERS!!

Another big boost came as I have gotten lawyers, through Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts!!
Samantha Gerlovin of Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels LLP, will be representing me and they are specialists in media law. very nice. Each new institution that signs on makes the project more real and gives it weight! I hope it will continue to snowball from here. I think the stores will also feel more assured knowing that they won’t have to face any legal issues.

Just had my first and very interesting meeting with Samantha. It raised some new questions, particularly about the documentary aspects of the project -- if I want to make a documentary, later , that seems to be different legally, than simply transmitting people live, and also if i am cataloging images that anyone can access on the internet. Also its different if someone is expressly interviewed, versus having a casual or spontaneous conversation.
What constitutes an interview and when would i have to get permission from people, or at least make them aware that they are being recorded?

Happily, I don’t need permits.

Video Conferencing

Through the research I had done previously and from the advice that I had received from people in the field, I had settled on using ichat and isight cameras. But after trying to use them over extended periods of time I found them to be unreliable, and also lacking in terms of being able to customize it. Investigating the corporate world I discovered that a company had come out with a much more affordable ($12,000 as opposed to $20, 000 and higher) HD video conferencing set up. While this is still out of my budget, I decided to check it out, hoping that I might be able to get it at least partially donated in exchange for the publicity. I got referred to local distributors -Videre Conferencing  and saw demos of HD video conferencing, which were stunning! No lags , operating on 1Mb/s high speed connections and really clear images and great sound. I also went to view some of the competition which had better features, but similar image and transmission qualities. The biggest issue is which will donate the equipment!

One of the issues that I will have to resolve is how to get the feeds onto the internet, as they don't use a common codec, but I think I have this figured out.

still need to address back lighting and getting sound through the window, or placing it above.

ACT Roxbury

Great meeting today with Bridgit Brown of ACT Roxbury. We spent an hour and a half talking about the project and walking around the neighborhood. Act has a huge mailing list and a lot of connections with businesses, and they also run Hibernian Hall. Right now there are no tenants on the stores facing the street on the bottom floor and they said I could use that space. Its a great space but I would like to stay closer to Dudley Station, if possible. Bridgit was very supportive of the project and I'm looking forward to working with ACT on this.

here are some images of storefronts we looked at as options to Nubian Notion:

Interface

I've been struggling for awhile about conceptually how to engage people.

BIG SCREENS IN THE UK

I happened across this link to the Big Screens in the UK which is sponsored by the BBC . While most of the time, it is one way broadcasts of entertainment, at other times it sounds like they have been two-way.

transmitting audio through glass

I've been trying to tackle the speaker and microphone issue. It seems like there is a multitude of ways to work out the speakers, but the mic will be harder, because it should be more localized and i need to deal with all the street noise. Here are a few higher tech products that turn the window into a speaker. It appears that the glass needs to be single pane if it will transmit it and not merely reflect it. Solid Drive I believe retails in the $500 range and seems to be a higher end version of $40 soundbug. Another product is CLARK SYNTHESIS TACTILE SOUND (tst) which claims " CNN engineers mounted TST’s to the glass panels of the building to allow the audio from the studio to be heard through the glass and protective bullet proof barriers. Using Clark TSTs to transmit the audio energy to the eight 12 foot by 10 foot plate glass windows, made an excellent sounding, invisible speaker. This process can be applied to plate glass, boat hulls, wood decks etc." they start at $135

Matey came up with a design proposal for Brookline Booksmith-- please comment below with your opinions...

ORIGINAL (left)
Design proposal