Beyond Mapping...

Conceptual Locative Video solution.....

Having drawn buildings on the Open Street Map of the neighborhood I lived in while in Los Angeles, I struggled with other ways to use mapping and passage through public space for art. or "art"? what is locative 'art'? Tracing the outlines of buildings on top of a satellite image started to feel tedious and unnecessary. When I looked at Google Earth, I saw that the buildings I was tracing were already built with Sketchup and they are modeled in 3D, even with images pasted onto the 3D building models. Google Earth is already moving toward a virtual 3D environment of the space I was trying to remember and build. In other words, the system is way ahead of my current thinking. How do I get beyond that?

I want to build a conceptual video piece that follows the psychogeography of the landscape, while presenting images not necessarily associated with the currently available media. The idea is to wander through the space, choosing direction based purely on impulse, rather than predetermined destination. The inspiration for this wandering is based on Guy Debord's Theory of the Derive.

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/314

As I move through the space, and encounter intersections, a choice will be made as to which direction to go. As I document each intersection with video images, I will compile a set of significant images based on a predetermined criteria for each image. These images can then be assembled into a rhythmic presentation of the criteria that is predetermined (through video editing). The result will hopefully convey a movement through the public space, based on the predetermined criteria, emphasizing the mood of the geography. The 'mood' will be set by the images shown in the edited video.

The mood I intend to emphasize is walking versus driving. Our experience of a space is completely different depending upon how we pass through the space. Driving in a car is a totally different experience than walking, even though we move through the same space.

My video experiment will be based on walking, exploring the intersections on foot, then later assembling the footpaths into a rhythmic assembly of the spaces experienced.

Stay tuned for this video walking experiment....