edges
Yesterday was spent making a start on defining the territory for a mscape project I’m working on.
A few hours walking around the campus looking for hazards, natural boundaries and tempting trails to follow away from the main path. Eyes mostly on the landscape, but also having to pay attention to the varying behaviour of the GPS signal in different locations.
Click on the image below for a larger version:
using Google Earth to locate a map for use in mscape
A run through of how I did it today; so I can remember it for another time….
Grab a map
In this case a campus map in the form of a .pdf
This will then need converting into a file format that Google Earth can accept (.jpg, .tiff, .png, .gif etc). Whilst I was in Photoshop I also rotated the image so that North was orientated towards the top:
Locate it
Open up Google Earth (available for free from here: http://earth.google.com/) and navigate to the area your map corresponds to.
Double-check your settings for latitude and longitude values are set to decimal degrees. (Tools > options…. )
Overlay your image. (Add > Image Overlay) You’ll also need to reduce the opacity so you can make out landmarks from the photo below the image.
You can then position your map in the correct place. (More information about image overlays and resizing/moving/rotating are available on this Google help page.)
Once you have positioned your map you need to get the longitude and latitude values for at least three of the map’s corners (this is why it helps not to be using a map with a transparent background!).
Set a placemark at the map corners. You may find this easier if you first change the marker to a cross-hair rather than a pin.
Right click (or equivalent on your operating system) on either the pin on the map or the pin name in the places side-panel to get to the properties window.
You can either repeat this for each of your corner pins and write down the latitude and longitude values given, or you can leave this window open and copy and paste the values over in just a minute…
Import into mscape
Open up your mscape file (or start a new one if you need to) and then click on the import map button at the top.
Create New Map > next > Type them in by hand > next > browse to your file > next > select lat/long and make sure you have WGS_84 as the datum type.
In the following window you can then enter the values you got from Google Earth.
Save you map as a .maplib file and then import it to your project.
Testing it out
Next, if you follow these instructions for how to set your mscape to log your GPS trace, you can then check your map positioning (and the GPS accuracy) to check things are as they should be.
…then you’ve just got to make the rest of your mscape…
binaural
In which three people go to the pool and the gym: one wearing microphones in their ears; the other two wearing headphones and listening to the sound being recorded from the first person’s point of view hearing.
(Best listened to with headphones.)
architecture of the invisible
So, when we last saw our intrepid locative artists they were wondering around the Banff Centre campus looking for invisible architecture (coming from the analogy that sound/media scapes are experienced in a similar way to moving through architecture).
We toured several locations an heard some really great ideas, but rather than detailing them here, what I want to do instead is note down some of the different approaches for describing them.
Our journey to the first fictional spectacle took the form of a parade: following the (real) sound of drumming whilst holding (imaginary) objects in the air. Once we had reached the location our invisible objects provided the material from which the augmented reality sculpture was formed.
I’ve since chatted with this particular invisible architect about the importance of stage-setting and the use of other theatrical/performance techniques and I think we both came to the conclusion that they could be used more in locative media.
Whilst the architects almost exclusively described their creations verbally, one person had prepared a narrative that described the experience of viewing/using their invention. Theatre too, right?
I’d made a few sketches of the location for my invisible architecture, but had deliberately not drawn in more than a hint of the augmented elements. As you can see by the penultimate photo on this page this echoes the prompts that were there in the non-augmented reality. After a quick vote we decided that we didn’t really need the fictional goggles to see the fictional reality!
This invisible architecture addressed the sense of smell – something usually neglected in locative media. Were we prompted to remember a series of smells …or to remember the memory of smelling the smells…?
The session wrapped up with a hike down the Hoodoo Trail. In Silence.
Walk to the centre of your acoustic universe from nikkipugh on Vimeo.
Most of us had been down this section of trail before, so when we were instructed to consider a particular tree as the centre of our acoustic universe and to walk towards it (a 15-minute walk?) in silence, we all knew which one. I like the way this architecture played off memory and anticipation to create a radius of experience that extended far beyond the site of the tree.
I think this might bring me back to a comment I made whilst talking about my architecture: the pictures are better on radio”.
So, how to use these elements in our present-day work?
Slow time with one’s head in the clouds
With the arrival of the snow yesterday also came the arrival of the cloud(s): creeping along the Bow Valley towards us at breakfast; dark and broody overhead; and ephemeral lines hugging the lower slopes of the mountains.
I spent the morning researching bluejacking and proximity marketing whilst doing my best to try not to be distracted by the stunning views outside the window that spans one end of the studio.
In the end a compromise was reached by way of setting up (i.e. resting it on a convenient frog) my camera on the window frame and leaving it to take photos at intervals. Wow. I’m glad I did – the resulting video highlights so much that you’re completely oblivious to when it unfolds in real time. (incidentally, as good an opportunity as any to link to the great animation Das Rad.)
Cascade Clouds from nikkipugh on Vimeo.
Cascade Clouds 2 from nikkipugh on Vimeo.
The second of those videos is a sequence of stills taken at 30 second intervals over a time period of about 2 hours.
Looking back at them now, these remind me of recent conversations about how one might use technology to achieve slowness (as opposed to being a way to get stuff sooner, quicker and more efficiently).
The afternoon session was led by Angus Leech on the topic of Invisible Architecture. After an introductory talk we were once more donning coats and tuques and heading outside to put stuff into practice.
Taking William Gibson’s Spook Country as a starting point, we explored the Banff Centre campus looking for locations and inspiration for impossible augmented reality sculptures. More on that tomorrow I expect: after we have toured around everyone’s ideas.
Next we took over the Tunnel Mountain Lounge for a shared meal in an attempt to save our wallets and waistlines from the indulgences of the campus dining room. This had to be carefully timed to fit in a small window of opportunity between at least three different other events that people variously wanted to attend. I was originally going to a gig in a hut, but at the last minute (or 10) decided to go and see Sid Marty, John Vaillant and Wayne Sawchuk speaking/singing as part of the Banff Mountain Book Festival. Sid Marty was superbly entertaining and Michael Christopher Brown‘s photos accompanying the later presentations were jaw-droppingly beautiful. Again, themes of going slow; particularly the notion of going at ‘migration pace’.
the nature of stuff
Yesterday was a day of presentations with artists and peer advisors giving short introductions to their practice and Almost Perfect projects. Today were the technical interviews and some sessions on GPS led by Daniel Belasco Rogers.
After talking the talk we headed out into the snow with some GPS units to map the Banff Centre campus.
This included experimenting with some of the quirks and short-comings of the technology and then comparing tracks by superimposing the data onto Google Earth.
I’ve just got back from the canteen and a wide-ranging conversation from which I have distilled this diagram as a memento:
And now to the pub and the election results…
Sample
The weather’s been really nice for the last couple of days so today we were able to try out a couple of different GPS/walking projects.
In the morning we were sent off in the general direction of town with iPAQs loaded with Eryn Foster‘s Infrastructure Map and Duncan Speakman‘s Always Something Somewhere Else.
After lunch we had a go at Tracklines. This took us along the valley at the foot of where we hiked up to yesterday. Cue more photos:
All in all some great walks with respect to exploring the local area, but also good for getting a feel for different approaches to using locative media.
Almost Perfect
Late last night I arrived at the Banff Centre for the Almost Perfect residency I’ll be doing throughout November.
It was dark when I arrived (and, admittedly, I had my eyes shut for most of the drive over from Calgary airport) so I had no idea of what sort of terrain I was coming into other than being aware that I could see many, many more stars than I was used to and there were some quite pointy silhouettes at the side of the road.
It was still dark when I drew my curtains this morning so that wasn’t much more informative.
A hike up Tunnel Mountain this afternoon put things into perspective though:
In the photo above you can see the Banff Centre campus in the near left-hand corner, with Banff town to the right. Here’s the view to the other side:
The rest of today was taken up with meeting and greeting and orientation stuff, but my first impressions are that it’s an amazing place and I’m very excited to be here. For the time being though, I sleep.