SEE THE WORK OF FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS.BEFORE THEY’RE FAMOUS.THE ELEVENTH JURIED SHOW.On exhibit February 25 through May 15, <strong>2005</strong>.Opening Reception, February 24, <strong>2005</strong>, at 6 PM.67 Shore Road, Winchester, MAFor details call 781-729-1158 or visit griffinmuseum.org"Understanding" by Doug Mindell4 5
LAND/MARK:LOCATIVE MEDIA ANDPHOTOGRAPHY <strong>April</strong> 8-May 5, <strong>2005</strong>An exhibition in conjunction with the <strong>Boston</strong> Cyberarts FestivalBy Leslie K. Brown, PRC CuratorAnyone who knows me realizes that I amterrible at directions. I have also been known, via some sort of weirdmagnetic ability, to destroy computers and other technologicaldevices. Perhaps for these reasons, mapping, instruments, and thetheories that surround them have long interested me. Uniting geography,media, and photography actually has a long history and thus abefitting topic for a festival celebrating art and technology. Longitude,draped in tales of sea adventures and socio-political aims, is aproduct of our modern world; standard time, an important factor incalculating where you are, was only instituted in 1883 as system formaintaining railroad timetables. <strong>Photography</strong> famously entered intothese histories through the four "Great Surveys" of the United StatesGeographical Survey of the late 19th century. Landscape photographerssuch as Timothy O’Sullivan accompanied scientists under theauspices of the War Department and the Department of the Interior(under which the same Geological Survey oversees GIS and Landsatphotos today) across parallels and meridians into the West. Even withall of this cultural baggage swirling in my head, or perhaps because ofit, I still manage to get lost.Using the parsed phrase “Land/Mark” and locative media and geographicalsystems as a starting point, this group show features work byMargot Kelley, Brooke Knight, Josh Winer, and the new media, globalpublic art project Yellow Arrow (yellowarrow.org), but also points tovarious other exhibition and events related to mapping all over thecity. Held in conjunction with the <strong>Boston</strong> Cyberarts Festival (<strong>April</strong>22-May 8), this gallery showing represents the third time the PRC hasjoined local organizations since the festival’s founding in 1999.Owing to publication schedules, I am struck by the fact that mostpeople will read this essay before the actual art is even installed. Thisirony—an exhibition that at first glance is about place and specificity—actuallyserves to elucidate a very important point. That is,although you could visit the places pictured in the photographs ondisplay, that meeting and interaction is subjective, changing, andalways new. The artists too use the devices and systems in ways contraryand sometimes at odds with their invention. The big brotherall-seeing modernist “eye” and theories related to the panopticon andsurveillance, represented here by satellites and cell towers, are offeredup for discussion at every angle.Recently, there has been an explosion in the artworld addressing theidea of mapping—expanding, personalizing, obfuscating, and evenundermining cartographic impulses and ideas. Critics have taught usthat maps are social constructions and can be a way of inscribingauthority onto the land. New art forms, with a nod to Fluxus, Situationists,performance art, and the French flâneur, encounter and performurban areas in a blending of psychology and geography dubbedpsychogeography. Simultaneously, regular folks inspired by the democraticand relatively free (in principle) nature of locative media, adaptand use these tools for recreational uses that sometimes verge on theartistic. The Degree Confluence Project (confluence.org) for example,seeks to visit "each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersectionsin the world, and to take pictures at each location." Forthem, the act of getting there is enough, and with all corners of theearth seemingly accounted for, they delight in "discovering" newplaces sometimes literally in a backyard. Another project (geosnapper.com)encourages amateur photographers to capture a beautifulscene and post the coordinates online so others can re-visit (and possiblyre-take and re-experience) their photograph.A map cannot begin to convey the overwhelming sum of its parts.The artists here address the idea of interfacing with technology andlarger networks to determine or showcase location, but they alsoremind us about another important factor in the equation, the individual,and by extension community. Humans constantly alter theirenvironment, and no landscape is neutral. The photograph serves asevidence of "having-been-there" but also serves as a mark, a smalleffort, but almost universal and innate urge, on the part of a humanbeing to capture, command, alter, show, and share. Another themethat also emerges in this exhibition is that of gaming. (A modern-daymerging of art with orienteering, scavenger hunts, and road rallies?)In both geocaching and Yellow Arrow, citizens become modern-dayexplorers ferreting out treasures and new experiences. Most notably,all of the works insert the human element, positively and negatively,back into the landscape and back into the technology. These artistsparticipate in some form of marking the land while showing themarks already on it.Margot Kelley (Cambridge, MA), N 42° 21.459 W 71° 04.225, 2002, C-print mounted on aluminum, 16 x 20 inches. Courtesy of the artist.A Short Dictionary Digression: What are all these letters?Many of these numbers, symbols, signs, devices, etc. function much likehyperlinks, allowing us to key into a larger "system." Consider thisdigression a map for some of the technological terms in this essay.Of all of these, GIS is perhaps the most umbrella of the terms, a geographicinformation system which at its most general level is a computersystem designed to manage location data.GPS, or global positioning system, was originally developed by the USDepartment of Defense. It consists of a constellation of at least 24earth-orbiting satellites (with 3 extras) with atomic clocks. The receiverneeds at least 4 satellites locked in to determine its position and througha fairly simple mathematical calculation know as trilateration. Fromthis, GPS can determine your approximate location, give or take 6-20feet, in terms of latitude, longitude, and altitude. Interestingly, thehandheld GPS device actually uses its own inaccuracy to determinewhere you are. On May 1, 2000, Bill Clinton announced that "SelectiveAvailability" (a sort of scrambling of signals to consumers) would beturned off, allowing GPS to be even more accurate.SMS, or short messaging service, was originally designed for use withGSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). Akin to Wifi(wireless fidelity), cell phones are basically radios. The cellular systemlinks the city through towers by creating "cells," usually about 10 mileswide. When thought of in this way, such technology is territorial(roaming in and out of range) and functions by constantly locatingwhere you are.The Landsat program is the oldest system for acquiring earth imageryfrom space. The current satellite Landsat 7 has been in orbit since1999 and can collect and transmit over 500 images per day. Althoughmanaged by NASA, its data is collected and distributed by the USGeological Survey.M ARGOT K ELLEYKelley’s project (as well as the subject of her forthcoming book fromthe Center for American Places) deals with and is inspired by thegame of Geocaching. A true product of the current era, this 21st centurytreasure hunt began when one man decided to try to test whetherthe government had indeed lifted their denigration of GPS data, byhiding and then posting coordinates of a hidden box to an internetgroup. Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) as stated on the FAQof the website geocaching.com: "cache in computer terms is informationusually stored in memory to make it faster to retrieve, but theterm is also used in hiking/camping as a hiding place for concealingand preserving provisions." Currently, there are close to >>67
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