A report by Yvette van Nierop, about the "The City is You and Me" event, which took place during the IFFR 2003.
There are many different ways to view the city. First of all it is a place with houses and other buildings, with buses and cars, with commercial enterprises and endless shopping possibilities. But the city also provides the background against which thousands of lives are being lived and a place where numerous people interact with each other. With the presentation of The City Is You and Me, V2_ chose to stress the part individuals play in the way they perceive their city.
During this event, organized in collaboration with the International Film Festival Rotterdam, three artists were asked to give presentations on recent projects. All three projects were based on interactive processes, mimicking the complex processes of multiple influences that define the city. The three projects approached the city in very different ways. The first, Can You See Me Now?, transformed the city in a multi layered game board. The second, Stadtwirklichkeit, had as its starting point the subjectivity of the personal experience of the city. Face Your World, the last project, offered a vision of the city as a place to build onto and improve instead of a fixed reality simply to take for granted. Besides the differences between them, all three presented the city as something to actively take part in.
The first project, Can You See Me Now? is developed by Blast Theory (GB) with the support
of the University of Nottingham Mixed Reality Lab. With the aid of
technological devices, Blast Theory has constructed a theatre / game
that combines virtual space with real space, creating an interactive
multi-leveled game reality. The game was first executed in Sheffield.
The game works as follows; the members of Blast Theory are running the
streets with devices like mobile phones, Global Positioning Systems and
portable computers. With this equipment they are capable of detecting
the comparative position of the online players. The players meanwhile,
are playing from behind their computers with a maximum of twenty
participants at one given time. All the visual information they receive
comes from their computer screen. What they see is a two dimensional
city-plan of the game area, with moving around it three icons
representing the positions of the runners. The players themselves are
represented as icons in the game as well. The idea is that the players
have to evade the runners while the runners try to catch the players.
When the runners manage to 'catch' a player, they make a photograph of
the part of the street that corresponds with the place the player would
have been in real space.
Of all three projects, Can You See Me Now?
engages the daily reality of the city most directly. The 'hard facts'
of the city like architectonic structures and traffic movements become
inextricable parts of the game. What Blast Theory offers is a different
way of experiencing the same old city. Normally, the street is a public
space that connects one part of the city with every other part. Most
citizens only use the street to move themselves from A to B. In this
game, the streets do not play their usual role as part of the urban
infrastructure. The players cannot cross the artificial boundaries of
the game, which causes a large part of the city to be excluded. On the
other hand, players can log in from all over the world, making the game
area the focus point of an international network. And while the players
cannot see what is happening on the streets, they can listen in on the
conversations between the runners. This means they have access to audio
information about conditions like traffic and even weather conditions.
Players have an advantage if they are acquainted with the area were the
game is performed because then they know what the situation in that area
is really like. This allows the development of tactics like forcing the
runners to go up and down hills and cross busy roads thus forcing the
runners to slow down. Non-local players can get access to inside
information about the game area by using text messages to communicate
with other players. The result is that the formal aspects of the city
become part of the tactics of both runners and players.
Of the
three projects, Stadtwirklichkeit maintains the biggest distance from
the buzz of everyday city life. This also is the only one of the three
projects that does not overlap with part of a real existing city.
Instead it is a highly conceptual project with an accent on the human
imagination in the process of experiencing the city. The creators Sascha
Kempe and Michael Wolf (D) based their conceptual approach on a book by
Italo Calvino called Invisible Cities. In this book, the young Venetian
Marco Polo describes to the emperor of the Tartars, Kublai Khan,
different cities that can be found in his empire. The different
descriptions generate different visions of cities, but it is by no means
clear that Marco Polo is actually describing different places. He may
as well be describing one and the same city from different perspectives.
From
this vantage point, Kempe and Wolf created an interactive computer
program that is meant to give a representation of the complex
interactions within the city. Participants are invited to be part of the
'building program'. Everybody can download pictures of buildings and
other formal representations of urban areas and fit those into the
larger structure of the program. As part of the attempt to create a
lively view of the city, sounds can be downloaded as well. Also part of
the program is the possibility to react on the contributions of other
participants. By means of a voting system, visitors can influence which
contributions are worth saving and which might as well disappear.
Unfortunately the visual material that was part of this presentation did
not really support the lecture Michael Wolf gave. The website he showed
did not resemble a living city with intercrossing processes and the
busy movements and multiple sound bites that are part of the real city.
Instead it offered a rather clinical view of a formal architectural
landscape in which nothing happens without the use of control keys. In a
real city, movement does not stop when somebody stands still. In all,
the idea behind this project sounded much more attractive than the
footage that came with the lecture.
The last project was Face
Your World. This project is designed especially for children between
five and twelve years old. Like "Can You See Me Now?" this art project
has a game-like form but with a more serious undertone. It gives kids the
opportunity to think about their own environments in ways that differ
from their daily reality. Jeanne van Heeswijk (NL) developed the Face
Your World project in collaboration with the Greater Columbus Arts
Council's Children of the Future program. The project was executed in
three different neighborhoods in Columbus Ohio. The children living in
these neighborhoods grow up in very poor conditions. They hardly ever
leave their own neighborhoods and therefore do not know anything but
their daily circumstances. They are so used to their own environment
they simply take it for granted. The Face your world project provides
those children with the opportunity to interact with the cityscape they
live in and recreate their own environment in virtual space according to
their own ideas.
The project contains different elements. First of
all there is the multi-user computer game. In Columbus Ohio a bus with a
remodeled interior provided six computers to work on, since most
children in those neighborhoods do not have access to most technological
devices. In every participating neighborhood, a 'bus stop' was placed
on the street. Part of these bus stops is a screen on which the results
of the creative processes are made visible for the whole neighborhood.
Finally, participating children are provided with a digital camera to
make pictures of their own environment. Those pictures can be downloaded
in the bus and then be used in the digital recreation. A digital
library of usable images is included in the program. The pictures the
children shoot themselves also become part of this expanding library of
visual material.
Because all the children are working in the same
program, they have to take into account each other's creations. Every
child gets some 'personal building space' and there are 'public building
spaces' as well where all the children can add images. Just like in the
'real city' the digital version of Columbus Ohio is a mix of personal
ideas and interactions between the participants. The end result is a
digital view of Columbus Ohio, according to the children's ideals.
At the time of presentation during the International Film Festival Rotterdam, none of the projects were running anymore. Stadtwirklichkeit was already finished and the designers have moved on to different projects. The Face Your World project in Columbus Ohio is finished as well, but the program is currently rewritten for educational purposes. Blast Theory first performed Can You See Me Now? on the streets of Sheffield but the project will be restaged during the Dutch Electronic Art Festival 03.