University of Leeds

main motivation:

Raymond Williams points out television is a social form which presents social and cultural difference in societies. Wi-Fi is also a similar social form and its construction materialize the form. Wi-Fi access points exists in our daily life but we are not easy to notice them with our naked eyes if we have no Wi-Fi-equiped devices. Wi-Fi seems the invisible landscape in our city. Actually, Wi-Fi is materialized media in civic life. With Wi-Fi equipments, we can see invisible Wi-Fi landscape, and we become cyborg at the mean time under the open system -Wi-Fi which we orchestrate with its distribution and functions. This paper aims to understand how we materialized wi-fi in our daily life and embody the concept of cyborg.

background: Wi-Fi is becoming the standard landscape in urban life. Because it cost less and more convenient than traditional wire connection, lots of cities tried and try to build their city-wide wi-fi environments. Most of them failed to afford the expense then stop their plan. But the private wi-fi access points in houses or commercial Wi-Fi hotpspots in cafe. More and more people connect to internet by wifi no matter at home, in companies, on the streets or cafe. The users become particular groups which restricted to technology, politics, economy etc. classes-exclusive membership. The body experience of these classes share the same or similar cyborg physical and psychological state. It is interesting and important to depict how Wi-Fi as a matrerialized media to embody the interwoven urban landscapes and cyborg in this ubiquitous wireless era.

essentials of the method: This is a four-year project from 2006/07-2010/07. In the previous three year, the author went to different cities to observe and collect wi-fi distribution and information and hardware data. The fieldworks proceeded mainly in London, New York, Chicago, Hong Kong and Taipei. I walk around cities three to four hours every day and recorded Wi-Fi hardware information by laptop automatically and made notes about Wi-Fi-related urban features by myself. After daily collection, I reorganized and analyze the data then made new record in databases. At the same time, my project site display the record synchronously. This is the first part of this project – visualizing Wi-Fi as finding the pieces of puzzle to complete urban wi-fi landscapes.

The fieldwork is necessary because no matter commercial telecom companies (BT in UK, WiFly in Taipei) or open source wi-fi project (wigle) don’t provide their data or allowed me to use their data even if the data come from other upload for share. At the same time, the fieldwork in real world is important to understand how Wi-Fi access points/hotspots interact with our daily life. After finishing data collection, this project has three steps to analyze and visualize the data.

1) anthropology house theory: this project concentrate on the relationship between Wi-Fi access points and its member in three layers: individual access point, personal wi-fi routes and Wi-Fi in city. To posit Wi-Fi in our societies, this project look Wi-Fi access points/hotspots as house in anthropology. French anthropologist Levi-Strauss Claude proposed house as a elementary kinship unit in different societies, from north american natives, medieval Japan and medieval French nobles. House which is composed of tangible wealth, such as buildings and special objects; and intangible property, title and fame. In the mean time, house has bilateral feature and it means political status and economic substance can be displayed and operated in single house. House materialize lots of potential possibilities to implement our concept and ideas in our cultures. Wi-Fi has the similar traits like house. Wi-Fi as house has the invisible and visible wealth and substances. If you are a member of one Wi-Fi network, you can access Internet or intranet resource. This distinguish the members from other non-members in spatial and virtual environments. The resources are the representation of political status and economical property. Unlike wireless network of mobile phones, Wi-Fi only allowed short-range connection so members can see and talk each other face to face. The body distance is short and create an intimate affection than long-range of mobile phone wireless networks. The intimate affection involved with the physical sharing space to reproduce spaces in real world and cyberspace. Wi-Fi can provide multiple connection than wire.

According to “house societies” theory, I represented Wi-Fi as abstract shape of house to create a visual image to highlight and mark “Wi-Fi access point is House” metaphor.

2)Conceptual metaphor

, main results and main conclusions.

bsa

Media is a complex of information, tool and approach. The three aspects weave political, social, cultural and economic issue in a material/non-material web. This paper aims to present how Wi-Fi access acts as a media representation in tangible/intangible objects and spectacle.

Wi-Fi networks penetrate deeply and spread widely in Europe and North America, such as Wi-Fi community Freifunk in German and commercial BTOpenzone in UK. Popular Wi-Fi hotspots provide easy and location-flexible access to Internet. Unlikely mobile phone, Wi-Fi can create a space to gather users to share the connection and offer low-cost and multi-user facilities than traditional network cables. The ownership and membership of Wi-Fi networks are heterogeneous, such as commercial, personal, institutional, community or public use and the distinctions make Wi-Fi networks create social boundaries among Wi-Fi users. People obtain information through different media, Internet and TV, and the access relates closely to person. Wi-Fi access points integrate users into a bigger and complicated group level, like family member or company employees. Commercial providers try to occupy particular locations to monopolize Wi-Fi access and grassroots organizations want to make Wi-Fi free and liberal. Popular Wi-Fi facilities materialize Internet resource in our daily life and they also produce media spectacle in physical installations and social movement.

Colour, house and Wi-Fi are the three important factors in this project. Visualisation contributes to describe and depict meaning behind the surface. Anthropologists also explore the logic and concept after the face.

Wi-Fi is the most visible and most invisible landscapes in modern metropolitans. It is popular in city-wide areas but you can see them with naked eyes.

Open systems, ideology institution

We live in a multiple-layer world. The layers interweave each other. We are not living in a horizontal/vertical space. We are living in a meaningful place which we name and signify it. We organize the universe in our cultural and social mind via our universal sensation. The position is the cruel issue while we arrange the different layers in our life.

In my previous exhibition, the audience were impressed with colours not forms. I was aware of colour is worth of being more important in my works.

Traditionally, artists applied colours to paint their works. Compared to form and shape, colour is widely discussed and studied in different disciplines.

Colour could transmit the meanings in a ambiguous but strong way.

Taiwan on cia site ( https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world…)

Wi-Fi in Taipei

Taipei has high density of Wi-Fi access points, private or public, in most areas. WiFly is the most popular commercial Wi-Fi hotspot in Taipei and users can access them in cafes, fast food restaurants, metro station and part metro carts. The most noticeable landscape is the Wi-Fi boxes in the middle of or along the roads. The roads’ Wi-Fi transform Wi-Fi from small area application to city-wide devices and infrastructure.

Because users can access Wi-Fi through whole city if they pay the fee for WiFly, it produces an imagination: Wi-Fi always accompanies with “Taipei city”