User:Ozalp Eroz/Final Project Proposal

Final Project

My ongoing project or my project proposal has three options. First one is my uncompleted “the bastard” project. With this project i would like to add new features and new meanings to the ball .Personal protester is a ball that can move around and play a recorded sound at the same time. To be an activist is very easy from now on. Record a protest with a single record button and personal protester can do the activism for you. To use the ball the owner has to record a protest and put it on a flat surface so it can move around and play the protest at the same time...

The bastard
Media:Ozalp_eroz_theball.pdf

urban individual activism
asocial activism
hacking in to personal space

The second option is my first thematic project. The project was focusing on hacking the environments in the city and creating dead spaces in the network. With this project I build up a big mockup to turn on and off the street lights in the city... Decentralized street light
http://www.cocoaboost.com/sl/ street light

hacking environment
creating dead links
hacking and personal protection
creating outdoor culture
city life
legal breathing space

For the third option i wrote down some words with my tutor Aymeric Mansoux to choose an interest to focus on. Then we tried to join the words and build up a list to choose a subject. The third option for my project is focusing on climate changes and renewable energy resources. I choose this subject not because it is a popular subject. Because climate change is a real science fiction experience for everybody. Climate change is like an on going Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” radio show for people. People are reading, watching, browsing news about climate change and affects appearing all over the world. Climate change creates an absurd alien attack on the people. People are getting in to a short term panic, they are starting create lots of scenarios about how they are going to die and how they can survive.

The list of interests within this subject

connection between network culture and climate change
renewable energy resources
panic reactors
survival plans
corrupt news
consuming the normal
alien attack
mutation of lifestyle
real science fiction
controlling fear
radio theater

After i write down all my interests can see that my motivation very high with the second option. I would like to go on working on my proposal with hacking the city

The bastard
Media:Ozalp_eroz_theball.pdf

Fear (the sticker project)
http://www.cocoaboost.com/fear/ fear(sticker project)

Decentralized street light
http://www.cocoaboost.com/sl/ street light

Public space as a playground

Public space is generally understood as a space accessible to all citizens, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. It is a free space that anybody could use which doesn’t require any reason or mission. It is a social space to live with other people. Public spaces are mostly the streets, town squares, parks, government buildings. Some buildings and spaces like parks and government buildings have restrictions and protocols. Public spaces are shared for the open usage of the community.   This view only includes the spaces accessible to all citizens. But there are also sewers, roofs, train rails and all the other inaccessible locations. These attractive and inaccessible locations are creating their own psychogeographic maps in the cities. As Henri Lefebvre (1) writes, one of the first case of a produce market, transformed into a gathering-place into a scene of permanent festival, is a location creating its own potential.

A good example for this subject is Jem Cohens “Lost Book Found” (2) fictional documentary. The movie is about the people who are trying to survive in New York with different techniques. A scene from the movie is about a dumpster diver, fishing fallen valuable materials in the sewers. The movie is drawing a hidden psychogeographic view of NewYork. The people are living in corrupt habitats and mutating themselves with their needs. This portrait is drawing a claustrophobic view for the citizens living in the city. Apart from socioeconomic levels, there is no location to discover anymore. The real discovery and excitement lies behind the insecure and restricted places in the city. The goal of the participant is changing with different Dérives. Building Climbers, dumpster divers, phreakers, walkie talkie networkers, wireless hackers, fanzine distributers, grafitti painters, network listeners, freerunners, skateboarders, treasure hunters...

The common point is to find hidden locations in the city which are essential to feed the networks of urban planning. They can be electricity, communication , transportation and pipe systems. These networks are helping to disengage the community with different needs to consume and they are building an organic structure between urban illegal participations. Every new network creates an artistic discovery process. They are becoming underground cultures like skateboarding and street art. My focus point is combining them with internet culture. How do internet and street culture interact with each other in real life and how do they simulate each other?

Centralised Networks, Internet and Public spaces

G. Deleuze (Postscript on the Societies of Control) (3) hypotheses “the key thing may be to create vacuoles of non-communication, circuit breakers, so we can elude control.”.

These networks are feeding our lives and we are creating our lifestyles on their existence. So we are the people who consume networks.

The problem why we need to elude the control is lying behind the structure of different types of networks.  As A. R Galloway’s explains at his‘Protocol’ (4)

“A centralized network consists of a single central power point (a host), from which are attached radial nodes. The central point is connected to all of the satellite nodes, which are themselves connected only to the central host. A decentralized network, on the other hand, has multiple central hosts, each with its own set of satellite nodes. A satellite node may have connectivity with one or more hosts, but not with other nodes. Communication generally travels unidirectionally within both centralized and decentralized networks: from the central trunks to the radial leaves.

The distributed network is an entirely different matter. Distributed networks are native to Deleuze’s control societies. Each point in a distributed network is neither a central hub nor a satellite node― there are neither trunks nor leaves. The network contains nothing but “intelligent end-point systems that are self-deterministic, allowing each end-point system to communicate with any host it chooses.” Like the rhizome, each node in a distributed network may establish direct communication with another node, without having to appeal to a hierarchical intermediary. Yet in order to initiate communication, the two nodes must speak the same language. This is why protocol is important. Shared protocols are what defines the landscape of the network―who is connected to whom.”

The danger of using a network lies behind giving all the control of a social structure to one control point. If the control unit turns off a network, the network can detach from rest of the network or die. As Paul Garrin (5) writes: “With the stroke of a delete key, whole countries can be blacked out from the rest of the net. With the “.” [root file] centralized, this is easily done. . . . Control the “.” and you control access.”.

What we can do to avoid these problems is described as vacules by Deleuze. The vacuoles are individual networks or units that can live with or without being connected to the network. There are two essential points with these structures. They can’t be monitored by the main control system and they can block the water flow to the other networks.

My previous project “Decentralized Street Light” I tried to create a circuit breaker on the electricity system. The goal was to give the control of a street light to the people so they can turn on or off the street light whenever they want. I build up a mock up with two ropes on it and put it on a street light in Rotterdam Mauristraat. The mock up wasn’t tied up to the street light and it was open for participation to improve it. The mock up was a protest against the centralised public furniture’s. Decentralized Street Light project was an example of creating a physical vacuole inside the network but is it possible to create a fake street art to create a vacuole inside the networks? A fake street art means a work of art which has never existed.

As Alan Kay (6) highlights the design dynabook (one of the first laptop gui plan released in 1972) “in every real sense, simulation is the central notion of the Dynabook. Each of the previous examples has shown a simulation of visual or auditory media.” With this aspect, we can consider the computer as a private house with all the personal materials and tools inside to simulate the real life. We can also consider internet and all the networks inside as a simulation of public space. It has its shops, playgrounds, social spaces. There are a lot of examples how do internet simulate public spaces but how do public spaces simulate internet and how do street artists use internet?

Simulation between two different dimensions and using one reflection to create a visual consideration inside the other world is my focus point. With this subject i would be researching the ethics of the street artists, the reactions of them and the reactions of the audience to create a circuit breaker. The project would be constructed on using blogs, individual websites, pressed materials and any media that can give information about the project. The simulation concept would be a sculpture, a painting, a machine which is open for speculation. It can also include the traces of the speculated artwork. If it is a painting there can be marks on the wall which can boost the imagination of the audience.

Referrances

1 The production of space By Henri Lefèbvre p.167

2 Jem Cohens “Lost Book Found” documentary film

3 On Control Societies: A Deleuzian Postscript, Jia-Lu Cheng (2008), London, p22.

4 Alexander R. Galloway (2004): Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization: p. 4-5.

5 Alexander R. Galloway (2004): Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization: p. 11.

6 The NewMediaReader, Volume 1 p.26a