:: divine sights/ sites: rethinking locative media ::

workshop CUBE2 :: 5.28 noon

exploration depart CUBE2 :: 5.28 1-4p

documentation CUBE2 :: 5.29 - 6.4

website http://www.pan-o-matic.com/portfolio/docs/projects_nadams1.html

Locative media is a fairly new term in the domain of geographic information systems that implies the use of portable, networked, location-aware computing devices as social interfaces to place and location. The alternative use of these technologies to explore location as a geographic canvas detournes their conventional functionality and questions the dominant models of geographic representation and their reductive effects. Sarah Lewison and Stephanie Rothenberg from Pan-O-matic Laboratories join forces to propose an experimental field expedition that explores the collaborative process of divine cartography.

Divine cartography merges the ancient art of divination or dowsing with contemporary technological devices as a way to investigate the relationships in/between/beyond/around the terrestrial landscape. The process approaches datamining of both body and place through esoteric and empirical methodologies and forces the user to reevaluate the way one represents, relates to and moves about in their environment.

During Provflux, participants will make their own locative media devices - divining rods - from old wire coat hangers and drinking straws. Participants will then mobilize into two groups and be relocated to an nondisclosed location simulating a feeling of being dislocated or place-less. Using only camera phones and their divining rods, participants will then embark on a journey to locate the other “missing” group. As field expeditioners, participants will be encouraged to conduct research, compiling “data” and collecting specimens as they traverse the un/known landscape.

As an experimental field expedition, the outcome is unknown. Will the two groups ultimately converge? How will their data compare? What new forms of learning and/or sensory fusions will be required in order to utlize new technologies with the divining rod technology? How has our perception of a familiar landscape been altered and what new information has emerged? These are the questions we would like to discuss later that evening over a pitcher or two of beer.

about the artists

Sarah Lewison was born in NYC and raised in the suburbs. She received an MFA in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego in 2001, concentrating in video, media studies. Her situated performances and installation works utilize and comment upon distributed and vernacular forms of research and authorship as forms of social organizing. The ongoing project, "Eccentric Domain" involves the therapeutic collective dreaming of a tangible commons. She has taught at San Francisco State University Information Arts Department and Ithaca College (NY). She is nomadic corresponding editor for the Los Angeles-based Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.
www.carbonfarm.us

Stephanie Rothenberg uses performance, installation and digital media to create solicitous interactions that question the boundaries and social constructs of manufactured desires. Referencing corporate strategy, these situations merge popular forms of advertising and market research with participatory experiences involving role-playing and fantasy. Cultural conventions of time and efficiency, spirituality and tradition are fore-grounded through their juxtaposition with prescribed, streamlined systems. The convergence lends itself to a recoding of current perceptions of commodity culture, infusing the public-ness of both objects and sites with the unpredictable and the idiosyncratic. She is Assistant Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo.
www.pan-o-matic.com/portfolio

about Pan-O-matic (panoramic + automatic)

Pan-O-matic is invested in the public evaluation and potential collectivism of existing and future strategic efficiency systems. Operating out of the industrial shorelines of the Great Lakes Region, Pan-O-matic Laboratories host a diverse team of individuals including highly trained technologists, dowsing practitioners and interdisciplinary artists. As technologically mediated spaces and shrinking devices continue to overload our environment, Pan-O-matic seeks to expose and harness the potential of the idiosyncratic. CEO Jane de la Warr exclaims, “By channeling our autonomous natures, we possess the power to deliver ourselves from irrationally demanding systems. Everyone should have the opportunity to understand and act for the benefit of all life.”