Why I choose Wi-Fi as my study subject?
In this project, Wi-Fi is the represented object and Wi-Fi is also a way which can display our ideas and theory. In its first role, this project visualizes Wi-Fi to colour house image, and the other role means that I walk in cyborg world by popular Wi-Fi networks.
How do this project depict Wi-Fi to emphasize its importance to our life? There are many good Wi-Fi maps to provide our where Wi-Fi service is available but they focuses on geographical location not social location/position. To understand Wi-Fi in our society, we had better place it in the context from social and individual perspectives. What is the elementary unit to study Wi-Fi? House is my hypothesistical unit because Wi-Fi machines exist in different houses and home house is my major analytical subjects. Wi-Fi is popular in residential area and there is higher Wi-Fi density in residential area than other places. So I take home house images to describe and depict Wi-Fi.
In Crunchtime2010
(http://www.crunchtime2010.org/)
, I will display my four pictures. This event is exploring globalization and my works focuses how Wi-Fi has its impact on global urban landscapes.
Visualisation is composed of aesthetics and data representation.
Art provides us a special way to present the idea and concepts in an abstract and representational method. It creates an object or a field to present the contrast, ambiguity and hypothesis. Artworks are metaphor which can break the boundary between different objects and ideas to expand our view and deepen our points.
This project applies metaphor to break the boundary between real world/cyberspace, human/machine and society/technology. The project outcome webpages are metaphor of Wi-Fi access points in real world and the colours produce a link between human and machine. The webpages are not only aesthetical in form and they are also the power tool to reveal our invisible urban landscapes and cyborg’s behaviours. By querying data from this project database, the signified colours present our views and theory to explain how and what Wi-Fi reshapes our life and makes us become cyborg.
The second day continued. It is interesting to find Wifinity around Buckingham Palace. This company has its business on residential apartment blocks and military barracks both in the UK and Europe. http://www.wifinity.co.uk/
Military… so interesting.
BTopenzone disappears around Buckingham Palace and near residential areas. Today, i seldom uploaded my files because I can’t find accessible wii-fi access points. Wi-Fi doesn’t mean convenient internet access, it should mean territorial representations and spatial imagination. To visualize Wi-Fi, we can obtain the images and representation and it is the contemporary cosmology and epistemology.
The first day of my exhibition. It is painful to walk around London in rainy and snowy day. I have paid 5 pounds to subscribe BTopenzone for my project and it is really helpful to upload my data immediately. This performance and exhibition aim to trace and show out wi-fi footprint and urban invisible wi-fi landscape. Most wi-fi maps show wi-if distribution and related information according to physical geography. I want to show what we see when we are using or walking in real world. I assume we will have special affection and membership for wi-fi aps which we can go online by them and cyborg identity may be produced by the behaviour and concepts which are for wi-fi access points. Although wi-fi access points are popular in london, they don’t have equal value and meaning, symbols for the users. I adopt abstract colour charts on webpage to emphasize the symbol traits of wi-fi networks. The real-time performance may help me to explain how I do wi-fi translation for the public.
