WORKSHOP LEADERS: KATHERINE MORIWAKI, JONAH BRUCKER-COHEN
For more information please see: www.scrapyardchallenge.com

ABOUT SCRAPYARD CHALLENGE WORKSHOPS
The Scrapyard Challenge Workshops are intensive workshops where participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded “junk” (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..). So far the workshops have been held 39 times in 14 countries, on 5 continents with 3 different themes including the MIDI Scrapyard Challenge where participants build simple musical controllers from discarded objects and “junk”, DIY Wearable Challenge where they create wearable tech projects from used clothing, and the DIY Urban Challenge where they work on public space interventions and other projects. The MIDI Scrapyard version includes a mini workshop where participants build simple drawing robots or “DrawBots” with small, inexpensive motors, batteries, and drawing markers that can also be connected to Serial or MIDI interface. At the end of the day or evening, the workshop participants have a small performance, concert, or fashion show (depending on the workshop theme) where they demonstrate and present their creations together as a group. No electronics skills or any experience with technology is necessary to participate in the workshops.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED, AFTER ALL ISN”T IT

Commissioned by the Futuresonic Festival in 2007 as part of “Art for Shopping Centres”

Everything really is connected, after all is an emergent narrative based on movement and proximity. Project participants wander with one of five characters as part of a flock of mobile devices whose coincidental intersection triggers awareness and contemplation about the bigger picture.

Shopping centers are sites of consumption which despite their varied locations across the globe tend to share the same anonymous and homogenous features. As a backdrop for desire, projection, and the acquisition of material objects, the Arndale and the experience of shopping is explored in order to locate and find experiences and concerns that bind us together in small and large ways.

The project utilizes a wireless network infrastructure delivered through mobile body-mounted units. The unfolding narrative is intended to structurally resonate with the relative physical positioning and actions of those experiencing the work. Ambiguity and elision are emphasized in the piece, highlighting a culture of connectivity which often hints at a greater whole, but often eludes full apprehension.

Deploying a piece in a site like the Arndale is a rare opportunity, and ideally the technology employed recedes into the background. But in some way, should awareness of the network and its operational characteristics become a consideration in a participant’s experience, the title of the project would certainly then find its true embodiment.

2002

“Keeping Time” is an ambient media installation, which uses real-time weather data to evoke a sense of global interconnectedness. Five flickering lights hang suspended over small LCD (liquid crystal display) panels. The flicker rate of each light corresponds to the temperature report for one city, which changes periodically as planes land at Dublin Airport. “Keeping Time” retrieves the first five planes scheduled to land at Dublin Airport, determines which city they are arriving from, and logs the weather data for that city. The LCD panels indicate which city is represented for each light. “Keeping Time” allows visitors of the Digital Hub to tune into the relationships between the global and the local, experiencing a sense of unity as external processes are harnessed into an intimate reflection of increasing interdependencies.

Inspired by the global movement of people and large scale networks of transportation and travel Keeping Time is a personal welcome to the city of Dublin from one of its newest inhabitants. From the global (the broad network of airplane routes and hubs) to the local (the node at dublin airport) Keeping Time provides a sweetly optimistic remimder of the physical processes which increasingly bring people closer together.

Keeping Time was installed as part of Exhibit 1 @ The Digital Hub in Dublin, Ireland.

January 6th – March 3rd 2003

RECOIL was inspired by dense urban environments and the micro-spaces people occupy during daily travel. Small, powerful magnets are embedded into everyday clothing, causing unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable physical connections between people and objects in the city.

Accelerated living within urban environments cause many people to close themselves off to unexpected encounters and minute details in the environment. So much emphasis is placed on easier seamless integration of schedules and personal movement. (In New York City subways people stand shoulder-to-shoulder during rush hour, faces buried in the newspaper, or staring blankly unfocused at adverts.) Recoil introduces an element of unpredictability and challenges the wearer’s personal body space by making unsolicited connections in unexpected, uncomfortable, and possibly inappropriate ways.

Powerful magnets have the ability to erase data contained in many memory devices (example: credit cards) With Recoil; the wearer creates a data-free zone, which also acts as a form of data terrorism. (Imagine emerging from a throng of people to find that your office swipe-card no longer works? – would you be able to find the perpetrator if they were wearing RECOIL?) These garments can also serve to heighten awareness in the wearer and others as to the high penetration of digital technologies into our everyday lives and reasserts awareness of bodily presence in the environment.

Inside/Outside, 2003

Inside/Outside is part of a body of research that focuses on the behavior of people in urban public space. Inside/Outside integrates pollution sensors with an ordinary fashion accessory to provide an aesthetically and functionally integrated object. Personally invested technology and community networks combine to monitor environmental factors creating alternative city mappings based on co-location in physical space.

Katherine Moriwaki & Fionnuala Conway, 2003

Urban Chameleon looks at the ability of reactive garments to influence and change perceptions of one’s surroundings. The Urban Chameleon is comprised of three skirts which are based along the themes of social interconnection.

“Touch” changes visual properties upon contact. “Speak” reacts to urban noise, and “Breathe” visualizes pollution and urban exhaust as it travels through the garment.

Urban Chameleon is part of an ongoing body of research which looks at how environmental stimuli displayed on the body can affect urban behavior and communication.

Press:
Women’s Wear Daily, July 12, 2005 (print)
Bits and Bytes (features Urban Chameleon) by Denise Power

Exhibitions:
Exhibit 3 @ The Digital Hub, July 10 – September 30, 2003, Dubin, Ireland
Wired Nextfest @ Navy Pier, June 24-26, 2005, Chicago, USA

UMBRELLA.net is a project exploring transitory or ad-hoc networks and their potential for causing sudden, striking, and unexpected connections between people in public and urban space. The project focuses on the theme of “networks of coincidence”, or how shared, yet disconnected activities can be harnessed into collective experiences. UMBRELLA.net examines how the haphazard and unpredictable patterns of weather and crowd formation can act as an impetus to examine coincidence of need networks. In particular, when umbrellas are opened and closed in public space. The project will attempt to highlight these informal relationships by creating a system of ad-hoc network nodes that can spontaneously form and dissipate based on weather conditions.

// Background //
UMBRELLA.net uses ad-hoc networking as a means to connect people who share the same physical space and who might engage in similar, yet individual activities. Since ad-hoc systems exist as networks that can spontaneously form and dissipate based on the amount of clients present, they are a perfect testing bed for examining how new relationships can form based on proximity and chance conditions. “Coincidence of need” can be defined as seemingly individual activities that are also common experiences based on factors beyond the individual’s immediate control. In the case of UMBRELLA.net, this is the act of opening one’s umbrella when rain begins to fall: an individual action spurned by an environmental effect that is part of a collective social network. Therefore UMBRELLA.net attempts to discover how coincidence of need provides the context for looking at co-location of individuals and how this need could lead to new types of connections amongst strangers or friends in public space.

// Scenario //
In Dublin, Ireland, rainfall is frequent and unpredictable. Often individuals carry umbrellas with them in case they are caught in a downpour. It is common to witness during a sudden and unexpected flash of rain, a sea of umbrellas in the crowded streets sweeping open as raindrops first hit the ground. This collective, yet isolated act of opening an umbrella creates a network of individuals who are connected through similarity of action, and intent. The manifestation of open umbrellas on the street could be tied to a temporary network which is activated through routers and nodes attached to the umbrella, which operate only while it rains. While the coincidence of need exists, the network operates. When the necessity of action and intent ceases, it disappears. We believe these transitory networks can add surprise and beauty to our currently fixed communication channels.

// Bibliography //

1. Canetti, Elias Crowds and Power, Trans. Carol Stewart. New York: Seabury Press, 1978.
2. Hall, E. T., The Hidden Dimension. New York: Doubleday. 1966.
3. Hall, E. T., The Silent Language. New York: Doubleday. 1959.
4. Lefebvre, H., Writing on Cities. Trans. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
5. Lefebvre, H., The Production of Space. Trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
6. Certeau, M., The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press,c1984.
7. Doyle, L., O’Mahony, D., “Ad hoc Networks – A Welcome Disruption”, IST 2002 Event, Copenhagen, Novemeber 4th – 6th, 2002 [Invited Paper]. [PDF]

UMBRELLA.NET featured in:
Tribe, Mark, Jana, Reena., Art in the Age of Digital Communication, New Media Art,
Taschen, USA, 2006.

in collaboration with Cati Vaucelle

Passing Glances enables users to create these ambient urban interludes through the use of SMS text messages. The Passing Glances system contains a wealth of keyword-associated imagery that is stored ‘in the city’. Images are revealed to the transient audiences when SMS message keywords trigger the system. The mobile phone therefore acts as an expressive device revealing hidden layers of the city to construct short-lived stories.

Passing Glances was created by Cati Vaucelle, Katherine Moriwaki, Sven Anderson under the supervision of Glorianna Davenport and Linda Doyle. It started as a collaborative effort between Cati Vaucelle, Glorianna Davenport, Alison Wood, Sven Anderson, Linda Doyle, Jennica Falk, and Katherine Moriwaki.

Publications:

Ambient Urban Interludes: Passing Glances by Vaucelle, C., Moriwaki, K., Doyle, L., Anderson, S., and Davenport, G. In Proceedings of Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ‘04 Vienna, Austia, 24-29 April 2004. ACM Press.