The Emergent City: From Complexity to the City of Bits

The artwork captures the changes over time in the environment (city) and represents the changing life and complexity of space as an emergent artwork. The artwork explores new ways of thinking about life, emergence and interaction within public space.The project uses environmental monitoring technologies and security based technologies, to question audiences' experiences of real time events and create visualizations of life as it unfolds. The installation goes beyond simple single user interaction to monitor and survey in real time the whole city and entirely represent the complexities of the real time city as a shifting morphing complex system. 

The data and their interactions � that is, the events occurring in the environment that surrounds and envelops the installation � are translated into the force that brings the electronic city to life by causing movement and change � that is, new events and actions � to occur. In this way the city performs itself in real time through its physical avatar or electronic double: The city performs itself through an-other city. Cause and effect become apparent in a discreet, intuitive manner, when certain events that occur in the real city cause certain other events to occur in its completely different, but seamlessly incorporated, double. The avatar city is not only controlled by the real city in terms of its function and operation, but also utterly dependent upon it for its existence.

Underlying conceptual theme. The mother of big brother .

Imagine walking out the door, and knowing every single action, movement, sound, micro movement, pulse, and thread of information is being tracked, monitored, stored, analyzed, interpreted, and logged. The world we will live in seems to be a much bigger brother than the Orwellian vision, it is the mother of big brother. Can we use new technologies to imagine a world where we are liberated and empowered, where finally all of the technology becomes more than gimmick and starts to actually work for us or are these technologies going to control us, separate us, divide us, create more borders. My wireless sensor network is set up to "visualize" the space all around us as 'worlds' full of data. These new data-spaces can help us understand the fundamentals of our outside environment.

We understand the 20th century in terms of atoms, molecules and gases that move. Our world is now a world of numbers and changing data and information. This art installation manipulates these numbers and the data from the living real world; all of this affects the installation i.e. the artwork in the gallery space and all the changes occur in real time.

The real world is made virtual and the virtual is made real again and exposed in the process. This whole piece is a living and breathing artwork. The project focuses on the micro-incidents of change, the vibrations and sounds of the environment using wireless sensor based technologies.

This is The Mother of big Brother.

• The city exists as a parallel reality.
• The city we live is a scanned, monitoring tracked system.
• The city and its real estate is no longer public domain,
• We are on all assets in this system.
• We need to reclaim the control space.
• The city is organic.
• The urban environment provides a dynamic flickering and clicking sentience to the otherwise inert structure.
  

  In the gallery: 

  The gallery space becomes a live emergent sculpture to wander through. The changing life in the real time city creates all the changes one experiences in the gallery space. The leads, the wires, and cables are incorporated into the artwork to look like a city map. The installation looks "designed" like a piece of urban design, a city surveyed and controlled. The whole gallery space becomes one large artwork made from real time city information and data. The moving objects, fans, changing lights, motors, noises, that you encounter in the gallery are all responding to changes in temperature, light, pressure, noise, and the sound of the city outside. The aesthetic and feel of the space looks like an electronic city. The city is made of units, grids, repetition, building blocks. 

  In the city: 

  The artist's own sensors network is laid out across the city to collect and monitor the data i.e. temperature, light, pressure, noise, and the sound of the city.  The artwork gathers data from the city (environment) via a custom made wireless sensor network. The work becomes a manipulation of data that 憄owers' all the 慹vents' 'actions' and 'processes' in the installation. 

  What you see

  What you see as well as this body are hundreds of parts that come alive as the data changes and evolves. Its a hybrid work powered by live events. Custom made software gathers data from the artists sensors network via a custom made java proxy server and send it to the sculpture. The mote reader software (in visual basic) sends events to the sculpture. This exist in two forms; in real time and as a local archive data set. (This enables the artwork to always function in the space, ie it has a back up)

  This installation consists of: -  

  • The Emergent City: capture of real time environmental data changes  -   (sculpture software and custom electronics)
  • City of Bits: silver city  -   (sculpture(
  • Complexity: urban maps  -  paintings and custom software system
  • Surveillance Space: CCTV feeds of visitors' movement  -   custom electronics
  • Synchronicity: visualisation of live London transport data (app) 
  • Diversity: software systems
    

    The Emergent City. A life from Complexity to the City of Bits .

    This artwork focuses on the real time space and the environment.

    The changes in noise levels, light, temperature, pressure are be turned into a real time system of events using dozens of wireless sensors.

    The artwork is open social sculpture that informs the world and creates new meaningful artistic experiences.

    The sensors interpret the micro-data of the interactive space in this case the city outside

    The artwork is also a highly technical project that gives vast amounts of information about the environment.

    By embedding the sensors like this we can re-engage with the fabric of space itself and enable new artistic metaphors within the environment.

    Available for touring. If you want me to set this up get in touch.