Communications have often been understood as bound up with media devices. Wireless communication, however, presents distinct ways of understanding media as it exceeds the devices, interfaces, and wires through which we typically conceive of the medium of communication. Working initially with Marconi’s transmission of wireless signals between Cornwall, England, and Newfoundland, Canada, this chapter charts […]
Proposals for ubiquitous computing have taken a variety of forms, from “utility fogs” to “pervasive networks.” This chapter considers smart dust as a hypothetical and actual proposal made for pervasive computing in an urban context. Proposals for smart dust have been developed in the form of tiny wireless sensors that could be released en masse, […]
Sinks are a device within environmental studies that describe spaces and processes that capture and channel wastes. This paper first explores sinks both as a cultural figure of environmental understanding, and as an important technoscientific instrument within current attempts to describe the global carbon cycle in relation to climate change. The movement of wastes to […]
Snow globes offer a window into imaginary and speculative landscapes. They present landscapes within submerged and drifting scenes that are intended to be turned upside down and unsettled. This Weather Permitting project explores how the snow globe is an ideal device for projecting and examining the new natures that emerge through the imminent environmental disturbances […]
Bipolar is an interdisciplinary polar archive developed by Kathryn Yusoff in collaboration with Arts Catalyst and the British Library. Created for International Polar Year 2007-08, the collection is published in conjunction with a symposium held at the British Library in November 2007, which brought together leading artists, scholars, scientists and thinkers to explore how […]
This paper discusses the keeping of polar bears in the Singapore Zoo, where they undergo a displacement from the Arctic to the tropics. In the context of this bear life, which is at once contingent upon the status of environments, and is also faced with the threat of extinction, we ask, ‘What is life?’ and […]
This paper discusses the use of environmental sensors, wireless networks and mobile media as technologies of sensation in the city. While these devices enable a “digital city,” in many respects they appear to be immaterial, operating beyond sense. Drawing on two case studies developed by the Digital Cities project in Montreal, the paper considers how […]
“Media in the Dump” examines the phenomenon of electronic waste through five locations, from sites of manufacture (Silicon Valley) to disposal (China). Not only are digital media not “immaterial,” this essay suggests, but the wastes that they generate circulate through complex material global geographies. This 2006 essay is published through Alphabet City’s special collection, […]
In 1970, the artist Robert Smithson proposed a Floating Island to Travel around Manhattan Island. Composed of a tug boat and barge planted with trees and rocks, the small pastoral island would form a displaced geography against the looming skyline of that other urban island. While this project was never realized during Smithson’s lifetime (1938-73), […]
This photo-essay documents fieldwork conducted in Silicon Valley in 2005, which contributed to the book-length study on electronic waste, Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics. Published as “The Quick and the Dirty: Ephemeral Systems in Silicon Valley” in “Ephemera,” Thresholds, Issue No. 31 (Cambridge: MIT Department of Architecture, 2006; ISSN: 1091-711x), 26-31.
Paper, that disposable medium, constitutes the bulk of material found in landfills. This essay investigates the printed matter that turns up in one particular landscape, the Fresh Kills Landfill in New York City. Fieldwork at the landfill was conducted in 2001 while participating in the “Landfill to Landscape” competition with Rios Clementi Hale Studios. […]
Technological failure is often considered to be central to the logic of innovation. Artists working with technology at the inception of widespread post-war automation, including Jean Tinguely and Gustav Metzger, focused particularly on machines geared toward failure. At the same time, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), an organization founded to enable collaboration between artists […]
“The Art of Salvage” consists of a series of postcards written, designed and installed at the USED/Goods exhibition held at the Salvation Army, Montreal (November 2004). An essay was developed from the postcards, and included in the catalog documenting the event. Postcard text excerpts: Scan the crammed interior of any thrift store. There’s a […]
The far distance between sky and ground gives way to a space full of anxiety and conjecture. Supplies and leaflets scattered from the upper altitudes arrive inexplicably, as heavenly debris, meteorites, a threatening hail. Like pennies from heaven, airdrops occur in many guises, from food to fleas, from prosthetic limbs to exploding decoy frogs, […]
This research report, “Residue in the E.A.T. Archives,” documents work undertaken while I was Researcher in Residence with the Daniel Langlois Foundation Centre for Research and Documentation (2004). The project area, “From Outside Art to E-waste: Translating the Research Environment of E.A.T.,” focused both on the relationships between art, technology and materiality within Experiment […]
This essay investigates the use of leaflets as a tactical weapon of war. The paper was first presented at “Casting Doubt,” a conference held at the University of Rochester, New York, in 2003. The full essay is available to read online at Invisible Culture (2004). This research later developed into a short artist’s book, […]
The information city, like an updated version of the garden city, presents an encompassing vision of an ideal metropolis. Instead of harmonious integration with a green landscape, this speculative and actual city fuses with the organic flow of information technology. Yet in the process of wiring our cities toward a new urban connectivities, we discover […]
“Motor Chorus: Spatializing an Automotive City,” investigates the distinct urban spaces that emerge through driving in the city. Focused specifically on Los Angeles, the essay considers cultures of mobility–from prosthetic car to networked roadway–in this most automotive of cities. Originally written in 1999, this essay was later published in Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, […]
“Please Take the Ticket” was a project funded by the Jerome Foundation in association with the Weisman Art Museum for temporary public art on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. The installation addressed the pervasive and mundane parking lots through which thousands of commuters circulate on a daily basis. The intervention consisted of a […]
This project is at once book art and public installation. An intervention is made within the space of the Twin Cities route 21 bus schedule, and the schedule is reinserted into circulation. The new schedule is part visual guidebook, part map and part timetable. Funded through the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota Center for Book […]