5. Toward an Architecture of Hertzian Space The Hertzian space of cities, once the territory of governmental agencies, private enterprise, and networks of ham radio operators, has evolved into a dynamic and contested site, where many competing interests are beginning to shape a new information overlay. In addition to and, indeed, beyond the established frequencies of radio waves carrying radio and television programs, police communications, and other wireless signals, today’s urban data clouds are made up of "a new kind of data, collective and individual, aggregated and discrete, open and closed, constantly logging detailed patterns of behavior" (Hill 2008). This is the behavior of the street: constantly enacting new spatial relations and organizational adjacencies that are every bit as architectural as the formal articulations of bricks and mortar that constitute the traditional city. That this urban ballet of people, data, and space is predominantly non-visual should be less a detracting factor than an intellectual challenge to those invested in the design of urban space. Beneath the threshold of public vision, a new city is emerging, one requiring new methods and techniques by which we can productively engage in its design and formation. As with other aspects of the physical world, such as land, water, and air, the electromagnetic spectrum is a limited resource. Under US law, the spectrum is considered neither private property nor that of the federal, state, or local government. Regulating the use of these abstract frequency bands has become essential, however, in order to limit interference between competing uses. Hardin’s "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) illustrates the dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource, even when everyone knows this is in no one’s long-term interest. This has led to the effective privatization of parts of the spectrum, such as when the US government, in 2008, auctioned off to the telecommunications industry the 700 MHz band previously reserved for analog television broadcasting. Yet, if parts of the wireless spectrum have become effectively reserved for private use, a kind of "public" space exists in the form of the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) radio bands. Because communication devices using the ISM bands must tolerate any interference from ISM equipment, these bands are typically given over to uses intended for unlicensed operation, since these devices typically need to be tolerant of interference from other devices anyway. ISM frequencies such as the 2.4 GHz band are set aside for license-free use by systems and devices such as WiFi, Bluetooth, cordless phones, and wireless surveillance cameras, and it is within this frequency range that a number of recent projects have attempted both to probe and to shape this new public terrain.
[Michelle Teran / Life: a user’s manual / 2003] Life: a user’s manual (2003), a project by Michelle Teran, is a series of public performances and online mappings that examine the hidden stories captured by private wireless CCTV streams, and how they intersect with the visible world around us (www.ubermatic.org/life). The project employs a low-cost, consumer-grade wireless video receiver to capture live image feeds from private wireless surveillance cameras, and create a sequence of views into the spaces and lives of the city and its inhabitants while they are walking down the street. As Terran notes, "Private use of wireless internet, cordless phones, bluetooth and wireless surveillance cameras has turned the average consumer into 'micro-broadcasters' who transmit their personal narratives through the airwaves." Here, nominally private territory is rendered in a highly public way by conducting walking tours through Hertzian space, where the intimate details of everyday urban lives are exposed to the tour participants and passers-by alike.
[Jonah Brucker-Cohen / WiFi Hog / 2003] Jonah Brucker-Cohen’s WiFi Hog (2003) is a project that addresses the proliferation of free wireless nodes in public parks, airports, libraries, and schools, and the corresponding encroachment on this space by corporate pay-per-use providers competing for signal dominance (www.mee.tcd.ie/~bruckerj/projects/wifihog.html). Brucker-Cohen describes the project as "a personal tool to enable both private interaction in public space as well as social obstruction and deconstruction of shared resources." The tool consists of a WiFi-enabled laptop connected to a Portable Video Jammer (PVJ), which is able to block network access to open nodes for Internet traffic not originating from the WiFi-Hogger’s IP address. By allowing a means of control to come from anyone, not just corporate or community wireless network operators, WiFi Hog subverts claims of ownership and regulation over free, unlicensed bands of the spectrum.
[ Mark Shepard / Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit / 2006] The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit (2006) is an open source software platform for shaping the sonic topography of urban public space (www.tacticalsoundgarden.net). The Toolkit enables anyone living within dense 802.11 wireless (WiFi) "hot zones" to install a "sound garden" for public use. Using a WiFi enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants "plant" sounds within a positional audio environment. These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3D audio engine common to gaming environments—overlaying a publicly constructed soundscape onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a WiFi enabled device, participants drift through virtual sound gardens as they move throughout the city. The project draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment, where new spatial practices and social interactions within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. There are many other examples one could mention; more are appearing each week on blogs maintained by art and technology enthusiasts, as well as software developers and application distributors worldwide. Few, however, take the larger urban environment and its attendant challenges and opportunities—historically the purview of architecture and urban design—as a context within which to directly intervene, and not simply as another venue for consuming media and information. 6. Conclusion Urban computing, locative media and ambient informatics hold the promise to achieve what architecture and urban design have long aspired to: opening up the design of urban space to more inclusive and participatory processes, resulting in urban architecture that is adaptable to the increasingly ephemeral forces at play in contemporary cities. Realizing this promise involves shaping the ambient qualities of Hertzian space as if they were a weather system, and structuring the techno-social practices that continually re-make the spatial conditions shaping our experience of the city. Such an immaterial urban architecture may find little acceptance within a profession so highly invested in the material practices of the real estate development and construction industries. Yet, if architecture is to remain relevant vis-à-vis urban space, it may have no choice but to grow beyond its current professional and disciplinary boundaries. At the same time, if urban computing and locative media are to be considered in terms of their potential to address urban conditions, their practices need to be re-evaluated in the larger framework of everyday life and urban public space. Only then, can they move beyond the production of novel experiences for consumer cultures or limited (art) audiences, and critically engage the social, cultural, and political realities of contemporary cities. |
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