Cyborg awareness and cyborg identity.
Besides depicting colourful urban wifi landscapes, the other part of this project is “collecting and walking in Wi-Fi networks” performance. We can’t see Wi-Fi signals, but we can be aware or conscious of walking in Wi-Fi networks. Stumbling and collecting Wi-Fi, we know how density of Wi-Fi in cities and know where Wi-Fi can be accessed, such as McDonald’s. Even if we don’t use any Wi-Fi-equipped devices, we still know we are in Wi-Fi networks. The performance show how we shape cyborg awareness and consciousness. We remember and know Wi-Fi location by Wi-Fi devices or Wi-Fi noticeboard. The knowing break the boundary of human and machine and create a cyborg awareness. We know where we can access Wi-Fi and we become a member of accessible networks which is the medium to construct the identity which is involved with real world/cyberspace and human/machine.
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.
Wi-Fi networks are popular in many cities around the world and many cities have or had the plan to run city-wide Wi-Fi networks plan. Most plans had financial problem so they need to halt the plan.
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.
