Augmented Reality

Have a look at this video from TED 2010. If we're thinking about how we experience space, I think augmented reality has to come into the equation. With this technology you can hold the world in your hands. It is not a static map, it is live and changing.



How does this affect the way we experience place? What benefits can this technology have? More importantly, what does it not include? If this is the way we record the change and evolution of place, does it perhaps spark a question about what gets left out? It sounds a bit like History with a capital 'H' . Will this technology conform to a particular narrative, or will the personalised content allow the action of mapping space to become a cumulative act: a space where both official and unofficial experiences of the same space get expressed?

This video reminds me of That The Science of Cartography is Limited by Eavan Boland (which you can read about in this earlier post) and Graeme Miller's Linked.

Lit Windows

This poem is from Glyn Maxwell's latest collection Hide Now:


Lit Windows

When I go home again,
when I know so many homes, but I mean the home
with the longest vowel, when I wander the old realm,
I pass them on the lane,
boys turned to men,

so I turn back to a boy
to pass them saying nothing. For it's death
to be where one is not, where every breath
is a heaving of the oars
alone at sea.

I could grow white and old
and I will, I am well aware, grow white and old
looking through lit windows of the world
for people in their rooms;
for the blue, cold

light of a TV on
in an empty room . . . girl at a light so bright
she's silhouette . . . a man who hangs his coat
and stands quite still . . . a mother
agrees with someone

over cake . . . the frosted light
of suppertime, of bathtime, of sex.
I don't have what I have from reading books
but stopping by your homes
to see these sights

and wondering forever
who is someone else? Who on earth
are all these people to have known this with,
this world? Whole skies of stars
are a lesser wonder

than all your lights at evening,
all your lives. When the lights go out I'm there,
moving on. When it's dark the stars are clear,
their immaterial eyes
believing, disbelieving.

A little clarity...

So I was trying to clarify to myself the main thrust of this project. What is it about?
It started off around Christmas time with me trying to comprehend the decade. There were loads of articles about the "Top 10 X's of the Decade". I was trying to think how we experienced this country from 2000-2010.
I think the work that has come from that is a way of finding a microcosm to that idea. How do we experience space temporally? How do we define it, how do we pack it? Why do we need markers like 'a decade' to make sense of ourselves?

A Trip #2

Make a better trip, find better memories.
A soundtrack helps. Pretend you're in a film.

I went to Roath Park Lake. I walked around here as a kid with my parents. I remember:

• A photo of me in a green, black and purple all-in-one
• Feeding the geese
• Kissing Rachael on a park Bench: "Do you know that geese find a mate for life?"
• A steep side leading down to a play park
• A lighthouse
• Boat rides
• Cherie's Dog
• An intersecting bridge, looking over the lake on one side, and the play park on the other.

Prepared. Observant. Waiting for the coup de grace. Waiting for the climactic film shot with a long zoom in and a slow fade out.
Prepare the soundtrack. Make the film momentous. Sigur Ros: Glósóli.

At the roundabout near the north-west most point of the park I see a small green dark path. I press play and head for it immediately (nearly getting run over in the process!) Create a narrative, follow the film.

Things seemed to happen in sync with the music. Feet walked to the drumbeat, birds flew away to the precise timing of a violin interlude. This was a good film.

So where to film my climactic moment? I headed towards the bridge that overlooked the play park, the river and the lighthouse. I decided I would roll a cigarette and sit on a bench there. A great place to ponder the project. to recall ghosts. To reconcile my younger self.

The song was ending. The cigarette was wonky. When I got to the gate, it was closed. I could just about see the bench, but I couldn't reach it. The epiphany moment wasn't to happen. Rather fitting, actually. So my souvenir is my unsmoked cigarette, which sums up nicely the failure in an attempt to connect with a memory of myself. Not so rosy...no slow fade.