Vague Terrain

The projects presented below are examples of media forms documenting the increased interconnectedness of our communication systems. Instead of being "distinct identities" (Terranova 2004:2), new media forms are constructions combining existing technical facilities (servers, antennas for the mobile telephone system, satellites for GPS) and connections (telecommunications, mobile telephony) with terminals, delivering additional functionality. These constructions are made possible by contemporary communication systems.

Important properties of the interconnectedness include:

1. Systems combining platforms for databases (servers with expandable, open and limited open archives) (distributed platforms),
2. Connections between connection systems (between mobile telephony and fixed-line telephony, or WLAN and mobile telephony as mobile access to the internet), a plurality of technical interfaces of fixed and/or portable terminals (computer, laptop, PDA, mobile telephone) offering local access with and without a wireless connection,
3. A plurality of technical interfaces of fixed and/or portable terminals (computer, laptop, PDA, mobile telephone) offering local access with and without a wireless connection,
4. Locative media like GPS or Cell-ID-Positioning technology (GSM localisation) sustaining possibilities to record the geographic datas of somebody's whereabouts.

These properties characterise, for example, networks projects that offer participants functionality to "localize" media and content in various formats (texts, photos, films and audio files) on maps. These projects combine geodata of locative media and aerial views in geographic systems with databases for the input of location-based information. This article features projects offering participants possibilities to illustrate and describe aspects of their urban experience and to tag their documents on maps.

Interactive Urban Experience

In some projects offering mapping procedures for urban experience the technical networks and systems - GPS, mobile telephony and WiFi - with local and global outreach are integrated into internet-based systems. In other projects mobile telephony is utilized as a central medium; characterized by GPS localization and data transfers via the internet.

The possibilities to use computers, PDAs, mobile and camera phones, cameras as well as GPS receivers are nota always explained explicitly through instructions. Mobile phones, cameras and GPS receivers can be combined in one gadget but this is not necessary. Participants need knowledge of the technical possibilities if they want to realize the geographical and annotational options discussed above. Participants with GPS receivers can note their location at the site of a photograph or they can identify the place afterwards using one of several available technical procedures. Furthermore, there are several ways to integrate visual and verbal contributions into databases during an urban walk or afterwards because mobile telephony and internet offer access after the fact.

[Counts Media Inc./ Yellow Arrow, version 2.0 / 2005]

Counts Media's Yellow Arrow offers participants yellow arrows as placemarkers to annotate places of their choosing. A participant can order arrows, each with a custom printed code. (S)He mounts the arrow stickers to selected objects and surfaces and sends an SMS with the arrow code and her/his comment to Yellow Arrow. This number varies from country to country. The public is able to access the comments using this arrow code.

Version 2.0 of the project's website (November 2005-October 2008) presented photos of the arrows and the comments beside a route map from MapQuest with marked places. All arrows in a featured location were marked on images of Google Maps (as far as they are available) which appeared at the top of the web pages. The documentation of selected arrows appeared below. On the website, it was possible to store and recall not only photos but also films and audio documents.

Participants could write comments on published photos and could add their remarks to the project database via mobile devices or computers. Yellow Arrow authors could delete the comments of other participants if they saw fit.

The project was terminated in October 2008. The contributions are stored on flickr.com and geotagged on Yahoo! Local Maps. The project The Secret New York of 2005 is preserved in the state of version 1.0 of the website before Google Maps was integrated. It contains filmed contributions.

These stickers/placemarkers, and their resepective unique identifiers allow precise interaction with online mapping technology via mobile devices and computers. The following projects presented below use locative media but function without marks in physical space.

Most web mapping is localized through geotags as exemplified by Google Maps. In Version 2.0 of Yellow Arrow the Google Maps API and geocoder offered the possibility to implement location data - street names with house numbers - as tags on maps.¹

Tour and Map

Old maps have presented nothing beyond itineraries and waypoints for travellers to 'log' their journey (tours) before world maps were developed in the 16th century. The globe is divided in world maps following geodetic criteria and each place can be indexed by degrees of longitude and latitude. The disparately presented elements of route diaries are integrated into the "totalizing stage" of world maps. The development of cartography leads to "a plane projection totalizing observations".²

[Clockwise from top right: Jeremy Woods & Hugh Pryor / GPS Drawing / 2000, Google Maps - hybrid view, Martin Waldseemüller / Cosmographiae - first european map for cuttings to be glued on globe / 1507, Map of Cuauchtinchan NR.II Mexico - detail / 16th century]

Satellite pictures and aerial photographs are arrayed in "grids" within Google Maps, Yahoo! Local Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth/Live Search Maps. These images chart the world again in the photographic medium. Hybrid maps provide the names of towns, villages and streets over the images from a bird's eye perspective. Microsoft Virtual Earth/Live Search Maps embeds a 3D-like perspective from tilted angles providing another example of the aforementioned "totalizing image".

[Left: Tom Carden & Steve Coast / OpenStreetMap GPS traces of London Streets / 2004, Right: Michael Dale & Warren Sack / Street Stories Version 2.0 - San Francisco / 2004]

The demarcated paths of GPS drawings are the counterpart of the world maps' "totalizing stage". Jeremy Wood's and Hugh Pryor's platform GPS Drawing offers participants the opportunity to store files with movement drawings. The tour data are recorded by participants in the data storage of the GPS receiver. In December 2004, Tom Carden and Steve Coast installed the platform OpenStreetMap (OSM). The GPS traces of the tours of many participants are joined together in route maps. The routes' traces constituted until 2006 the elements of a world map which were laid over Google Maps looking unsharp like blurred images in low level flight. Thicker representations of streets were caused by the overlay of routes tracked and stored several times (as seen in the state of September 2006). In the current version one can find free available digital maps with conventional representations of streets.

The use of digital maps of European countries is restricted by copyright and use restrictions while digital maps and aerial views of the American government are (more) freely available because of the Freedom of Information Act bans restrictions (U.S. Census Bureau 1966).

In spring 2002, the project Street Stories was executed by Warren Sack and students in San Francisco. The project was revisited in 2004 and offered the chance to create GPS drawings on aerial photographs with mobile phones equipped with GPS functionality (or with directional keys via web interface) and to annotate these drawings with audible "geonotes".³ The stored tours are receivable on mobile phones together with the audible geonotes.

Actual projects integrate places and tours in mapping systems via GPS localization or alternative locative media (Cookson 2003). The tours' places can be annotated. The annotations are constituted by the participants' contributions with photographs or films and texts or audio files. The contributions are sent in via internet or mobile telephony.

In 2006, Just van den Broecke worked out a vivid tour representation for 'Sense of the City'. Maps and images of Eindhoven in aerial perspective indicate daily tours of ten participants acting as city residents who exemplify different professions. Tour stations are annotated by the participants with comments and photographs. Van den Broecke used the software GeoTracing for this project now closed for further contributions. He developed GeoTracing using the multimedia platform KeyWorx. KeyWorx has been worked out by members of the Waag Society in Amsterdam.

[Clockwise from top right: Waag Society / N8spel, Amsterdam / 2005, Just van den Broecke / GeoTracing / 2005, Just van den Broecke / GeoSkating / 2005, Just van den Broecke / Sense of the City, Eindhoven / 2006]

A server with the GeoTracing software installed is utilized in projects like GeoSailing and GeoSkating: participants can store their paths and annotated waypoints - photographs and short texts - in these websites. Photographs and annotations can be created while in movement via a mobile phone (Bluetooth), a GPS receiver and the MobiTracer application. A web editor for the subsequent processing of personal tracks is available. The editor simplifies the combination of GPS data with texts and digital photographs (or videos). The archived paths can be viewed on maps and photographs from satellites and airplanes.

In November 2005, N8spel of the Waag Society offered participants with GPS receivers and camera phones the opportunity to compete with each other in the construction of an "8" drawn by GPS tracked movement. The GeoTracing server was used for N8spel without modifications. A jury judged the results soon after the end of the game. The members of the jury chose the best eight made by GPS localizations and evaluated the films and photographs which had been sent in during the course of the walks to the game's headquarters in De Waag (former town gate Sint Antoniespoort, Amsterdam). These files were collected with camera phones and were transmitted with localization data via e-mail to the website of the game.

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