Feedback Loops
Architects have long found design inspiration in new technology. Now they confront the addition of digital systems to the built environment. This shifts some emphasis from individual buildings to their interconnections… This expanded scope of architecture sets the stage not only for coterminous, synchronous activities, but also for the distributed, asynchronous flow of goods, services, organizations, and identities...
Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground
Systems of sampling and projection interactions can generate feedback loops
Projecting into space and sampling from that same space can form a feedback loop. A place may be sampled with GPS, photos, or other media and the information uploaded to the Internet. Online, users may share the information, use it to fill in a framework for user-generated-content, and modify it before re-projecting it back into the original space. The new, digitally transformed space is then re-sampled, and the process continues. Such feedback loops may cycle slowly over days or weeks when communication is asynchronous, or cycle instantaneously when communication is simultaneous.
Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground
Systems of sampling and projection interactions can generate feedback loops
Projecting into space and sampling from that same space can form a feedback loop. A place may be sampled with GPS, photos, or other media and the information uploaded to the Internet. Online, users may share the information, use it to fill in a framework for user-generated-content, and modify it before re-projecting it back into the original space. The new, digitally transformed space is then re-sampled, and the process continues. Such feedback loops may cycle slowly over days or weeks when communication is asynchronous, or cycle instantaneously when communication is simultaneous.
The power of network-landscape feedback loops can be seen in artist Marie Sester’s Access project, installed at the ZKM Center for Art and Media
Karlsruhe, Germany. (The project will be visiting San Francisco Moma in October 2011.) Access creates a feedback loop by linking cameras that sample the environment and upload the image to a website with a spotlight that online users can project into the same space. The spatial impact of Access is varied and unpredictable—as Sester explains on the project’s website: “Beware. Some individuals may not like being monitored. Beware. Some individuals may love the attention.”
Access locates and shines a spotlight on individuals at the site of the installation. Online users may direct the computer to follow specific on-site users, watching their response.
In Access, the feedback loop created is ephemeral, as soon a person in the public space moves beyond the reach of the spotlight, the loop is broken. Likewise, there is no incentive for an online user to continue operating the spotlight. In fact, Sester set up on automated tracking system so that the installation could operate in the absence of an online user.
Karlsruhe, Germany. (The project will be visiting San Francisco Moma in October 2011.) Access creates a feedback loop by linking cameras that sample the environment and upload the image to a website with a spotlight that online users can project into the same space. The spatial impact of Access is varied and unpredictable—as Sester explains on the project’s website: “Beware. Some individuals may not like being monitored. Beware. Some individuals may love the attention.”
Access locates and shines a spotlight on individuals at the site of the installation. Online users may direct the computer to follow specific on-site users, watching their response.
In Access, the feedback loop created is ephemeral, as soon a person in the public space moves beyond the reach of the spotlight, the loop is broken. Likewise, there is no incentive for an online user to continue operating the spotlight. In fact, Sester set up on automated tracking system so that the installation could operate in the absence of an online user.
The UK is home to another project that uses some similar technologies to generate a feedback loop linking in three different cities. The KMA Great Street Games organized by digital artists Kit Monkman and Tom Wexler used thermal sensors to detect the location of game participants in each city and lights to project the locations of those participants to players in other cities. Unlike Access, which links individuals in public space to users online, KMA uses the Internet to link people in geographically disparate public spaces to each other. Using the structure of the game as a participation framework, KMA created a feedback loop across three cities that transformed urban plazas in each city nightly for several months in 2009.
The KMA Great Street Games used thermal sensors and dynamic lighting to create a playing field in three cities.
The KMA Great Street Games used thermal sensors and dynamic lighting to create a playing field in three cities.
PARK(ing) Day, mentioned in chapter three as an example of emergent urbanism, also generates a feedback loop in a very different manner. As described on Rebar’s website, “PARK(ing) Day is an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultaneously temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks.”[1] Although PARK(ing) day is fundamentally about urban public space, the project depends on the Internet and online social networking to connect numerous disparate participants. Each site, only the size of a parking spot, becomes part of a substantial network of urban public space installations when linked with digital media.
The 2009 incarnation of the project, organized via a website and supported extensively through online social networking, featured more than 700 independent groups creating temporary mini-parks in urban streets. PARK(ing) Day’s organizers induced this exploration by projecting an idea: people should feed parking meters but occupy the spots with do-it-yourself parks.
PARK(ing) Day’s projection of a concept into space, facilitated by an online guidebook, exemplifies emergent urbanism, and the use of online networks to share information and coordinate social action. At the same time, the sampling of individual PARK(ing) Day installations allows the representations of PARK(ing) to inform the next year’s designs.
Samples of PARK(ing) Day installations include photographs uploaded to social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr, as well as to Rebar’s own website. They also include the marking of installations on a map. On a national and international scale, the geotagging of PARK(ing) Day installations create a sense of participation in a broad movement. At a local scale, they allow people to visit temporary parks and experience car-free public space.
Rebar manages the feedback between uploaded representations of built installations and the projection of concepts from those representations back into space on an annual cycle. The time-frame of the feedback loop as well as the temporary nature of each installation compared to more enduring photos, descriptions, or geotags mean that asynchronous frameworks like blogs and social networking sites are the most effective means of communication.
[1] Rebar. “PARK(ing) Day”. Accessed via http://www.parkingday.org/ on 5-4-2010.
The 2009 incarnation of the project, organized via a website and supported extensively through online social networking, featured more than 700 independent groups creating temporary mini-parks in urban streets. PARK(ing) Day’s organizers induced this exploration by projecting an idea: people should feed parking meters but occupy the spots with do-it-yourself parks.
PARK(ing) Day’s projection of a concept into space, facilitated by an online guidebook, exemplifies emergent urbanism, and the use of online networks to share information and coordinate social action. At the same time, the sampling of individual PARK(ing) Day installations allows the representations of PARK(ing) to inform the next year’s designs.
Samples of PARK(ing) Day installations include photographs uploaded to social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr, as well as to Rebar’s own website. They also include the marking of installations on a map. On a national and international scale, the geotagging of PARK(ing) Day installations create a sense of participation in a broad movement. At a local scale, they allow people to visit temporary parks and experience car-free public space.
Rebar manages the feedback between uploaded representations of built installations and the projection of concepts from those representations back into space on an annual cycle. The time-frame of the feedback loop as well as the temporary nature of each installation compared to more enduring photos, descriptions, or geotags mean that asynchronous frameworks like blogs and social networking sites are the most effective means of communication.
[1] Rebar. “PARK(ing) Day”. Accessed via http://www.parkingday.org/ on 5-4-2010.
