Ubicomp, everyware, spimes and clipes

[imomus]

Journalism 2.0! It's more interactive, more participatory, more collectivist! Gone are the days when a solitary hack in a trench-coat pursued a story with perhaps just one treacherous deep-throated insider feeding him leads. Today's journalist is closer to "death of the author" theory than death threats! He's probably out there right now, Mr Journalist 2.0, brainstorming his next Wired column with a bunch of cronies on his blog! Hey, a powerful global conversation has begun!

Okay, so I want to write a column about stuff around this techno-dweeby buzz known as everyware, ubicomp or the "internet of things". Basically, it's what Bruce Sterling is talking about here and Adam Greenfield speculated about here.

We all know what a computer is. It's the object sitting in front of you, with a keyboard, a screen, a mouse, a trackpad, whatever. But we're going to be living soon in a different sort of world, a world where computers have been smashed to smithereens and scattered all around us. Computers are about to fade into -- well, everywhere, actually. Those smithereens, at least initially, will take the form of RFID chips. They're intelligent barcodes, little radio stations, radio frequency ID tags transmitting information about location, temperature, price, quantity, status, identity, you name it. As they get more intelligent and verbose, these little clipes -- these spimes -- will create an "internet of things". In other words, the real world of objects will come to resemble the internet world we know now. It will be searchable, able to be quizzed, surfed, interrogated. The privacy issues are terrifying, the military uses staggering, the artistic possibilities astounding. Ubiquitous computing will be -- already is -- a way of enhancing our senses and tying into other people's superior knowledge of any given terrain. As Greenfield puts it, "some of the most interesting ideas current in interaction design are being worked out at the scale of the city".

Ubicomp-everyware is already in operation. Walmart demands chips on all deliveries from its top suppliers. In Japan, IC chips are embedded in escalator hand rails to tell you more about products you're interested in (just swipe the little pattern), or tag the whereabouts of schoolkids. When I first came to Berlin, one place I showed everyone was the Automaten Bar in Mitte, which tracked who was there at any given point by uploading to the internet information about who had swooshed the door open with their membership card. "Hey, Jim's at Automaten (and Joe isn't), I think I'll drop by there myself!" Well, the Automaten Bar is now gone, replaced by a clothes shop. But maybe replacing a computer-laden cyber-bar full of clunky big vending machines with a clothes store is quite appropriate, really. Clothes may well be where computers are headed.

Right now a pilot project is going on in Ginza, the Tokyo Ubiquitous Technology Project, which will see little transmitters planted around key streets, sending local information which can be picked up by normal cell phones. Presumably later on we'll all have wearable computers sewn into our clothes, heads-up displays superimposing RFID information on what we see with our eyes, or brain implants. We'll be able to pass through any environment as we currently pass through the internet, gathering incredibly precise information, leaving a paperless papertrail behind us.

Later today I'm interviewing a Japanese curator who's written and made shows about the artistic uses of ubicomp. But right now I want to interview you. What do you think of this stuff, this soon-come scattering of the computer into billions of tiny radio stations, each one telling you stuff about a specific object -- your pet, your child, the toilet, a sniper, the wheelchair access ramp? Do you welcome "the internet of things"? Do you want to be able to google the world?

There really is no going back. It's already too late to stop this. It all started with language, I guess. We named things, and by naming things we labeled them. Now we're giving the labels electronic voices in the form of tiny transmitters. Is it good, is it bad? Are you happy, are you sad? What will this world be like? No more "computers", just ubiquitous internet-like information, total recall scattered everywhere. Who will hack the system, how will we make art for it? Above all, how will we write Journalism 2.0 articles about it? Your comments please, ubi-journalists!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Most art that utilizes or criticizes ubiquitous computing is pretty dull.

Most art that uses the Internet is dull, period. The Internet has been excellent for disseminating (certain types of) art and information about art, but I think it's interesting that so far its technological possibilities have yet to be used structurally within art in a satisfying manner. Compare it for example to moving image technology at the start of last century, which quickly gave birth to a whole new artistic medium, cinema, structurally distinct from theatre, literature, photography etc. The Internet has yet to do anything like this. There have been attempts to use it to develop new forms (interactive novels using hot links etc.) but they've failed to take flight. YouTube? Again, fantastic for disseminating short films, but has it given birth to any new forms or genres? My suspicion is that the Internet probably will give birth to new art forms, but not for a long while, not for another 15 years or so. Still it's interesting that it hasn't yet done so.

[(Anonymous)]

Games?

[(Anonymous)]

But are games artforms? They may turn out to be, but they aren't at the moment. The real world analogy to computer games is maybe board games like Monopoly or sports like football. Not really novels or movies or stuff you find hanging in art galleries.

[(Anonymous)]

How are they not? I mean, if art's only defining characteristic is "it hangs in art galleries" I don't see how it's fair to expect the internet to give us art at all!

Playing computer games may not be an art form, but the creation of the game itself certainly is. It even leaves behind a cultural artifact, how traditional is *that*?

[(Anonymous)]

Do you think football is an artform? If so, then your definition is going to end up encompassing all forms of human activity and be too broad for meaningful discussion. If not, then why not, if computer games are?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think art is a good term for discussion in the first place. It's loaded, primed to create conflict and not even remotely precise.

To me, there is no clear line between a novel and a computer game like, say, the newest Zelda game. There's just so much in between (choose-your-own-adventure books, text adventure games, early graphic adventure games etc. etc.) and without a clear place to set a line between the two, I can't see how one can be art and the other not. Unless there are degrees of art, in which case I'd like to have some way of measuring the "artiness" of something.

[(Anonymous)]

The fact that people talk about art and write about art means that the term has utility in our social discourse and therefore it 'means' something. There may be no clear line between a novel and a computer game but that's merely a function of the innate fuzziness of semantic categories in our language, rather than proof that the category 'art' doesn't exist. Sure, there exists a continuum on which both computer games and art could be placed, so what? That's the case with just about any two concepts.

[(Anonymous)]

If you're right you should be able to tell me a little bit about what it means.

[(Anonymous)]

As if I could be bothered... have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Subjective concepts such as art only mean what most people in a common culture think they mean. And I would hazard a guess that although most people would accept that the creation of computer games involves a fair amount of artistry, the games themselves are not an artform like cinema, sculpture, music etc. Off the top of my head I'd say art is something to do with aesthetics and games are something to do with winning and losing.

[(Anonymous)]

If you don't think modern computer games are concerned about aesthetics, you're way off. This is like saying art has something to do with aesthetics and novels are all about getting to the last page.

In any case, even if I were to accept that games are not art (going along with your appeal to majority), my original point still stands – I don't think it's very fair to expect computing to bring about a new kind of art if we're excluding 90% of what computers *have* given us.

I also wonder what you think about stuff like Second Life and other virtual worlds. They have a lot in common with computer games, but there's not winning or losing to speak of at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Aesthetics permeates everything, certainly including games, whether they be played on a computer or a football field. I dunno, it seems reasonable to me to categorise the experience of playing a game differently from the experience of seeing a movie/reading a novel/doing the galleries, even though there are overlaps. And I think it would seem reasonable to most people. And since language is nothing other than how people use it, that seems a fair starting point for discussion. I'm not arguing for some fundamental ontological difference between games and the arts, simply pointing out what seems to be the usage in our culture, and using that as a starting point.

[(Anonymous)]

As for Second Life, yes this virtual worlds stuff seems different, not quite a game, not quite an artform, I think the originality that the Internet will ultimately bring to the arts might eventually stem from something like this.

[(Anonymous)]

To me the difference between the experiences of reading a novel and going to a gallery is greater than the difference between watching a movie and playing an adventure game from the 90s.

(Some game experiences are closer to a gallery experience :p)

It seems like the umbrella of art encompasses a lot these days, and I think that's the reason I don't see why games aren't included more often as well. If a traditionalist (?) view of art as sculpture, painting and drawing had been more common, I'd probably gladly accept a border between games and art.

[(Anonymous)]

(This thread is getting rather hard to read)

[(Anonymous)]

(but I'm kind of intrigued as to how narrow Livejournal will let it get...)

[(Anonymous)]

(narrower still, it seems)

[(Anonymous)]

(and yet narrower)

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Football, like all sports, are considered art when performed at the highest (ie most beautiful) level. They become a sort of performance art.

Video games are certainly art as an evolution of cinema with new technology. They borrow from a lot of things, such as novels and board games, but so does cinema (borrowing from theater, performance art, etc). If they -largely- haven't been what I'd deem "good art", it doesn't take away that they are, indeed, art.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

This argument fails for ignorance of the current state of videogames.

[(Anonymous)]

and....
please dont keep us waiting for your 'insider' knowledge, to shine some further clarity on the subject.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

Clearly, Halo 2 rulez!!

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

But are games artforms?

I would say yes. Much like cinema, there's a spectrum from the "mere money-makers" to the ones which are truly artistic, but the art is there. You make analogy to sports and to board games, but both of these are false analogies.

Certainly earlier videogames were very reminiscent of boardgames and there are a few still today, there are also robust genres in, say, roleplaying games. Good RPGs typically have a deep plot and character development (cf. novels, movies), great artwork from cutscenes (cf. movies) to sweeping stills (cf. painting), great soundtracks (cf. movies, music), as well as the typical gaming issues of good systems, mechanisms, interface, and the like (cf. graphic design, interface design). While not every RPG will measure up on all of these examples, there are certainly those which do. RPGs are typified by having these elements, but they show up in the best of many other genres from first-person shooters (e.g. Halo) to real-time strategy games (e.g. Myth, Myth II) and beyond.

Some RPGs push their medium as closely as they can in the direction of cinema (e.g. Final Fantasy VII), others in focusing so much on story push it in the direction of novels or theatre (e.g. Xenogears), but still others take different approaches. The artwork for the cities in Digital Devil Saga amount to three-dimensional artistic masterpieces— something which more conventional artforms like painting and sculpture have also tried, though in a very different manner. Some of the Fatal Frame games (and other horror gaming like Silent Hill) pull you in with an engagement that rivals that of the best methods of storytelling. For an example of videogame as a 'pure' art not trying to emulate another artform check out Shadow of the Colossus— a breathtakingly beautiful game which is designed to give a fully immersive and realistic world which could not be realized in any other medium.

As for sports, like someone mentioned already, saying that videogames are only about winning is like saying that books are only about the last page or movies are only about watching the credits. While the endings are the obvious point for climax, the point isn't the conclusion it's the path it takes to get there (also true of a good sports game, but all the same). Also the arcs through a videogame can be both more specified and more freeform than you could ever get in a sports game.

And as for the discursive purpose of "art", most of the games I've cited above are not only about entertainment and making people feel good but they also involve strong strains of social critique and personal reflection. Myth questions issues of good and evil and how they might be interdependent and how societies largely don't mobilize to eradicate evil with good; Xenogears has a lot to say about people's rich internal lives and how that can bleed over into reality as well as the abuses incurred on everyone by the perversions of society; Digital Devil Saga also questions the extent to which good and evil are actual vs merely situated viewpoints and religious topics of reincarnation, guilt, sin, and redemption; Shadow of the Colossus questions the nobility of heroes and the role they play in destroying the mysterious and divine.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

... cinema, structurally distinct from theatre, literature, photography etc.

Cinema was then and still is subserviant to theatre, literature and even music.

Movies today are still little more that filmed theatre.

As Bazin said back in the fifties - "...cinema has not yet been invented"

I can't wait.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Cinema was then and still is subserviant to theatre, literature and even music.

Yes and no.

I don't know how unique cinema would need to be to count as no longer subservient for you, but cinema as a medium is very different from theatre, literature, and music.

Older cinema tended to more closely resemble theatre, but as evidenced by recent attempts to cinematize plays, the two are entirely different animals. Certainly they're both visual media for telling stories, but the methods which can be employed to do so (camera angles, scene changes, various video effects like side-by-side viewing, intimate use of scenery and props...) are very different, things which work in the one tend not to work in the other.

Also, it's important to consider which "cinema" you're referring to. Hollywood as a whole — while not without some merit for exploring the medium in specified ways — doesn't typically rank highly on the "art" spectrum, whereas many movies from other areas do (e.g. french expressionist dramas, japanese horror films). Certainly the average movie isn't particularly high art, but then neither was the average painting when everyone made them before the invention of the camera.

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Yes and no.

Indeed.

It's an argument that can go on and on and on. I fall into the Yes camp. Film still uses scripts and actors and directors. They are staged etc. We could go back and forth for a long time.

It it is an interesting discussion to have. I don't mean to sound dismissive. Here is more of what Andre Bazin said in What is Cinema? - Volume One:

"The nostalgia that some still feel for the silent screen does not go far enough back into the childhood of the seventh art. The real primitives of the cinema, existing only in the imaginations of a few men of the nineteenth century, are in complete imitation of nature. Every new developement added to the cinema must, paradoxically, take it nearer and nearer to it's origins. In short, cinema has not yet been invented!"

See now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!