The Next Street Art

Say there was a place that had some special meaning to you. It could be the alcove where you had your first kiss, the alley where you were mugged, the square where you participated in an important rally, or the location of an historic uprising. Good or bad, we all infuse places with our memories. This is what makes physical places so powerful, and why peoples' opinions and experiences of the same place can be vastly different. Places are what people make of them. Now, technology could be making it easier for tech-savvy street artists to etch their own experiences and opinions onto physical places, communicating the artists' own sense of a place to others who pass through it.

Barcodes are most commonly used in retail environments, but their size and informational storage capacities make them ripe for adaptation for more inventive uses. In Japan, barcodes are now being applied to gravestones to store and transmit information, when scanned, about the deceased. The idea here is that family members will, through videos, photos, and stories, be able to reconnect with the deceased in a less mournful, more celebratory way. Imagine "a sort of gravestone based, family fueled, wiki of the dead."

This technology could easily be used in public spaces to represent a political viewpoint or a historical event. Imagine walking down a street for the first time and noticing a bright green barcode sticker affixed to the facade of a building. Using a scanner-enabled mobile device, you could access a website loaded with the history of the building site, or a series of short stories about the surrounding blocks, or photos of a lifechanging event that a stranger experienced in the very spot where you are standing. Reading or viewing material like this would give the place a new gravitas, and would change your perception of what might otherwise be a mundane stretch of asphalt and brick.

RFID tags are another method of remote-storing information that, thanks to increased range, provide the opportunity for a bit more mischief. With the technological know-how, a clever street artist could program a chip to send a text message or photo to any wi-fi enabled mobile device passing by. Imagine again: you're walking down a street and you pass a hidden RFID tag; your phone rings. You answer. An audio recording plays, recounting a woman's personal account of a riot that took place across the street a decade earlier. Later, walking through a park, your text alert sounds. You open the message to find a set of coordinates and the time of an upcoming event, perhaps a flash mob or a constructive riot. Or, perhaps, a photo of the view from the very place that you are standing, hyperlinked to a database of stories and photos of places around the city (along the lines of Invincible Cities, linked below).

While they would only be accessible to those with the proper devices to read the information that they stored, RFID tags and barcodes have distinct advantages over more traditional forms of street art like posters, graffiti tags, and murals. For one thing, they are smaller, and less intrusive. While this could be seen as a weakness (especially for barcodes, which require direct interaction), it is also a strength in that RFID tags and barcodes are less likely to prompt their own removal than more readily noticeable artistic interventions. These tiny storage units can also provide more vivid, personalized accounts of events or viewpoints, and have the potential to be more impactful on their viewers.

RFID and barcode street art has the potential to turn the urban environment into a virtual minefield of information. While the potential for abuse by malicious hackers or marketing drones is there, the idea of being able to literally "tag" a place with multimedia information is an exciting one. Perhaps it's already being done. Anyone know of some examples?

(Photo from Flickr user cloverst. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Barcodes on tombs to connect with the dead (The Inquirer)

Invincible Cities (Thanks, Pete!)

It Takes a Video Game to Save a Village

Most cities have a love-hate relationship with tourists -- civic officials love them, and residents hate them. Tourism generates billions of dollars in revenue for cities across the globe each year. The number of traffic accidents caused by tourists not watching where they're walking? So far, no reliable estimates have been made.

Still, tourism is a vital part of any urban economy. Even moreso, it can be a powerful factor for a neighborhood that is trying to lift itself up. Tourism As Economic Strategy is a well-worn path. But with all of the emerging technologies related to the web and wireless communication, it seems like the old urban tourism formula (cleaned up historic buildings + quirky neighborhood attraction + Starbucks and/or Cold Stone Creamery and corresponding independent cafe/gelato bar = success!) is due for an overhaul.

Let's start by thinking small, with the traditional Japanese village. Japan's demographic woes have been well-reported over the past few years; indeed, as young residents of this highly urbanized island nation put off having families and move to the cities in droves to pursue fast-paced careers, the raw population number isn't the only thing being affected. Culturally, Japan is seeing the evaporation of its small villages, and the slow death of ancient rural and cultural traditions.

Enter: mixed-reality gaming. An explanation, c/o Very Spatial: "One of the areas of convergence for location-based applications and gaming is the idea of mixed reality, where places in the game correspond to real-world locations, and actions in one lead to events or consequences in the other." A recent Nintendo DS game, Treasure Quest: Enoshima, follows this very blueprint, using a small island north of -- surprise! -- Tokyo as the setting for a handheld video game. Players have to visit and explore the actual island to play the game. The DS unit acts as the mixer, blending the fictional and real worlds, literally with the push of a button.

The problem with Treasure Quest, though, is that it's over. The software could be downloaded off of the internet, and the game only ran until February 19th. Makes sense, considering that Nintendo doesn't own the island, and thus can't stake any real claim to it. But what if they could? What if, as a way to draw in tourists, a rural village somewhere in Japan agreed to sell off a large number of its abandoned buildings to Nintendo in an agreement to become the permanent setting for a mixed-reality video game?

It sounds crass at first, but with the right amount of finesse, it just might be a win-win economic development strategy. For instance, to prepare the town for guests (players), Nintendo would agree to upgrade local utilities. It would also take on the responsibility for upkeep of public areas. Streetscaping, garbage collection, and parks maintenance would be taken care of by the entertainment giant. Villagers would enjoy a higher quality of life at a lower rate of taxation (though I'm assuming the American system there since I know very little about the governance of rural Japanese villages). In return, residents would agree to coexist peacefully with players. A particularly savvy game designer would craft the game as a cultural experience, creating some sort of mystery or adventure plot that made use of the area's native traditions.

The argument could be made that Nintendo (or whatever company helmed the project) was being given too much power over a municipal entity; it could also be said that cultural traditions were being bastardized and pillaged in the name of commerce and fleeting entertainment. But when the options for the village are Sink or Swim, the picture becomes less black and white. After all, don't most -- if not all -- preservation efforts (architectural or cultural), on some level, tokenize the very things that they aim to preserve?

So assume that Nintendo creates a mixed-reality game around a rural Japanese town, and it becomes a wild success. Players start booking rooms at a nearby hotel months in advance for their chance to play. The villagers find new opportunities to pass along their cultural history and traditions. Nintendo makes a buttload of cash. Everyone's happy. A small town in rural Portugal hears of the success and decides to give it a try. Sony's European headquarters gets a call from the mayor...

Ten years later, mixed-reality gaming has become an economic silver bullet. Hundreds of villages in countries around the world have mixed their realities with fantastical virtual counterparts. The trend goes big-time when the city of Detroit sells a square mile of its infamous "urban prairie" to the Walt Disney Co., which painstakingly re-creates the neighborhood circa 1930 to stage a depression-era mob mixed-reality urban epic. The arts & crafts bungalows are the hotel. Visitors live in the game. A month later, Blizzard Entertainment announces a joint deal with CCTV and the city of Shanghai to buy up hundreds of defunct surveillance cameras and create the world's largest multi-player mixed-reality on-and-offline mega-game. The setting? Pudong.

Of course, it must be asked: when is the reality in question no longer considered to be mixed? When does "mixed" become simply "augmented?"

(Photo from Flickr user Mathias M. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Mixed Reality Gaming In Japan (Very Spatial)

Living in SimCity

SimCity, one of the most popular electronic games of all time, played an undeniable role in the return to the popular consciousness over the past few decades of urban planning. While the original game succeeded by breaking cities down into their most basic elements (residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, infrastructural, recreational), subsequent versions have become more complex, and more nuanced. And with the most recent version of the game, SimCity Societies (the first version not developed by creator Will Wright and his team at Maxis), came and went with barely a whimper, the franchise is ideally poised for a thorough revamp.

I recently read two posts at Very Spatial that got me thinking about SimCity and its potential for revival. The first of these posts was about mixed reality gaming, and it discussed a Nintendo DS game that allows players to visit a real island north of Tokyo and participate in a treasure hunt, with the handheld gaming system acting as an interface between the real island and the electronic version of the same place. This technology literally breaks down the walls between the player and the game, blending reality and fantasy. The second Very Spatial post focused on using online mapping technology to record personal histories or memories. The rise of mapping as a customizable, highly social tool should not be ignored by anyone interested in developing a city simulation game. Collaboration and customization are powerful selling points when trying to grab the interest of today's young people.

Mix quasi-reality and personalized cartography together and what have you got? Enormous potential. Consider the possibilities: a game could be created that allows people to create an alternate reality version of their neighborhood or their whole city and then upload that alternate reality onto a central server. Using a handheld device, they could then venture out into the city to interact with alternate realities created by other users. Games could cross paths and interact, teams could be built, and stories could intertwine. Social media and a wiki format could allow users to modify games created by other users, and whole alternate mythologies could be built, each one intrinsically tied to the place where it was developed. Gamers could travel to other cities to take part in other games. It's virtual reality without the stupid headgear.

The truly ingenious part of SimCity is that the game is disguised as a simple simulator that allows one to play God by building (and/or destroying) a city. Entire regions become customizable, and whole worlds and cultures imagined. Meanwhile, the game is also teaching players valuable lessons about how and why cities work: houses and factories don't do well next to each other; large buildings create more traffic, but well-planned transit alleviates that pressure; parks and recreational facilities are vital to morale (or "aura" as it was called in SimCity 3000) and public health. These lessons are still important today, but with advanced technology this type of simulator has the ability to teach an entirely new set of lessons.

In truth, the most basic building block of urban civilization -- more basic than residential, commercial, or industrial -- is social interaction. And by looking at cities at this most basic (and, at the same time, complex) level, we see an entirely new set of problems. Gentrification, segregation, resource distribution, community -- all of these issues could be explored through a SimCity game that mixed reality and personal fantasy.

An example: there is a triangular plaza in my neighborhood in Chicago. While it has a fountain and some trees, this scrappy public space has long been a source of frustration for some of my neighbors, who wish that the "Polish Triangle" would be better cared for, and that it could serve as a beautiful public gathering place. In an existing version of SimCity, a player could cover an empty triangular plot with parks and watch the land value of surrounding blocks rise. Imagine a SimCity that allowed users to completely re-design the Polish Triangle so that any player walking through the area could access this visionary public space and interact with it. The lessons learned would not only be more resonant -- they would be more personal, more real, and might actually affect public sentiment and, eventually, political will.

Another recent phenomenon suggests that this kind of gaming technology could be extremely successful if implemented: the Japanese cellphone novel. These novels, written by teens and young adults on their mobiles, have become a major literary movement in Japan, with half of the Top Ten bestseller list from the last year being made up of cellphone novels that were turned into actual print novels. A striking fact about the genre: most cellphone novels eschew details about the setting of the story. “If you limit it to a certain place," an author explained in a recent NY Times article on the subject, "readers won’t be able to feel a sense of familiarity.” Thus, while a core group is creating personalized content -- for free, unless and until their novels are printed -- massive demand is coming from outside of that core. It is a community that anyone can be involved in, and one where you can very easily make the switch between producer and consumer at your leisure.

The same could be done with a hyperlocal, mixed reality version of SimCity. You could import buildings to your neighborhood from around the world. Stick the Eiffel Tower in the middle of Central Park. Walk through Shibuya in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. Ultimately, the most compelling and useful alternate realities would rise to the top, whatever the reason for their popularity. In the future, you might be able to walk up and down your block several times and see it in a completely different way on each lap.

And, if you didn't like any of what you saw, you could change it in an afternoon.

(Photo from the Centre for Education in the Built Environment. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Mixed Reality Gaming In Japan (Very Spatial)

Creating Memories Using Maps (Very Spatial)

Wicker Park's Dirty Doorstep (Chicago Reader)

Thumbs Race as Japan’s Best Sellers Go Cellular (NY Times) (via Smart Mobs)

Magic of America Image Database Goes Live

The digitization of Marion Mahony Griffin's The Magic of America made a small splash several months ago, but the extensive image library, which contains all 650+ illustrations from the original book, has just gone live this week.

(Click map for kickass large version)

If you like what you see here, don't miss the electronic archive, which is full of drawings, maps, and photographs of buildings from the US, Australia, Japan, and India. It is most definitely worth some perusal.






Links:
The Magic of America Image Database (SAIC Archives)

The Magic of America Main Page

National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure @ the Museum of Science and Industry

If you typed the word "maps" into Google and then visited the first ten sites on the results page, you might get a good idea of what it feels like to walk through the Museum of Science and Industry's exhibit National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure, which is part of the citywide Festival of Maps. That is to say: a nuanced overview of mapping technology, this is not. While the exhibit is kid-friendly, it tries a bit too hard to go after the attention deficit demographic. Thematically, the "tools for adventure" theme is the loose string that sort of ties things somewhat together, almost. In fact, between this, the City of the Future exhibit earlier this year, and the Christmas Around the World disaster that we'll discuss in a minute, I'm beginning to wonder if, perhaps, this legendary museum is just coasting on its historical reputation these days.

But, before a tangent begins, let's get back to NGM. The exhibit is, in plain terms, an awkward hybrid of a video arcade, a preschool classroom, and a museum installation. There are kiosks set up throughout several rooms, as well as a block table (a kid-friendly trick MS&I tried with City of the Future that still feels misplaced) and a large foam-block pyramid puzzle. Add to that a moon rover used for mapping Mars, a fake stargazing setup, and an airplane cockpit with plenty of buttons and levers, and you have an intellectual seizure that can even make the grown-ups a bit dizzy.

If the organization of the content is less than stellar, it should be noted that there are some interesting items on display. A portion of an old scroll map of the Mississippi River makes an early appearance, as does an early map of Disneyland (which is cooler than it sounds). But the overall effect of the topical schizophrenia is that, unfortunately, individual pieces get lost in the muddle. Even for someone used to clicking through a few hundred articles and websites a day, the wide variety of topics covered here was so overwhelming that it got downright boring halfway through. When the brain is presented with too much information, it shuts down. I shudder to think that this is the way the curators at one of the nation's most prestigious museums think that children should be taught (to be fair, the exhibit was organized by the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and the National Geographic Society, but MS&I agreed to host it).

But the real jaw-dropper of the day was not the FoM exhibit, but something tangentially related. Apparently, it is customary for the MS&I to put together a Christmas Around the World exhibit. I haven't been to the museum to see past iterations, but this year the exhibit involves Christmas trees decorated to represent "customs" from countries around the world. This provides the museum with a fabulous opportunity to combat Americans' infamously low geographic knowledge, which it squanders on an embarrassingly simplified version of global cultures.

To wit: Mexico's tree is decorated with dozens of felt-cutout Mexicans complete with sombreros and ponchos, Ireland's is dripping with kitschy shamrocks and jigging leprechauns, and there is a very purple Native American Christmas tree that's decked out in a gazillion of those hexagonal things you make out of yarn in kindergarten. Japan's and China's trees, meanwhile, are both covered in oragami (but the China tree uses fluorescent paper, so it's totally different), and (tellingly) the United States' tree is wrapped in red, white, and blue crepe paper and cardboard cutouts of the 50 states and the US outlying territories. It's as strange as it sounds. In fact, it's worse in person. The entire exhibit has the icky, sticky feeling that comes from seeing or hearing something that you don't quite want to call racist, but can't help admitting is kind of leaning in a generally gross direction. The museum's website claims that the trees are decorated by Chicago's ethnic groups to represent their cultures. And to that I say: whaaaa? If that's the case with most of these, it makes me kind of sad.

So if you are looking to learn about the world and how it was and is shaped and explored, skip the MS&I and check out the Field Museum instead. Or the Newberry Library. Or, you know...Google Maps.

But, just in case you want to see this stuff for yourself...

IF YOU GO
National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry until January 6, 2008. The museum is open Monday – Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m, and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; the admission fee is $11 for adults, $9.50 for seniors, and $7 for children under 11. There is no student discount. Christmas Around the World also runs through January 6. While you're in the Hyde Park area, check out The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, the University of Chicago's contribution to the Festival of Maps.


Links:
National Geographic's Maps: Tools for Adventure (MS&I)

Christmas Around the World (MS&I)

The Virtual Tourist in Renaissance Rome: The Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae (U of C)

Festival of Maps