Marieke Istha on Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:14:03 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime-ann> NIMk presents: Esther Polak NomadicMILk and ElasticMapping


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NomadicMILK
Esther Polak
NIMk Artist in Residence

With the increased possibilities of personalized mapping that come with the emerging presence of locative media in society, the traditional cartographic objectivity of ‘The Map’ is challenged in a daring way. Artists are investigating these new possibilities, and Esther Polak has been working on the subject since 2002. As she has done so, the visualization of GPS tracks has played an important role in her work. For her latest project, NomadicMILK, Esther Polak worked with nomads and truck drivers in Nigeria. For this project she specially developed a new visualization tool: a GPS drawing robot that is able to present GPS tracks in outdoors situations, independent of power supply or in-door shelter. The robot draws GPS tracks directly on the ground by replotting them to a chosen spatio temporal scale. It is equipped with a bottle filled with sand; a hole in the lid makes it function like a drawing hourglass. In this way the robot functions as a performative tool, making the GPS tracks tangible and physically present. This approach brought about new needs for representation. Both time and space had to be compressed, scaled and deformed in order to have the robot draw a recognizable map in sand. The process of manipulating and editing GPS data raises new questions: it turns out to be something in between drawn routes from memory and hardcore GPS route registration.

http://www.estherpolak.nl
http://www.nomadicmilk.net
http://www.elasticmapping.net ­
http://realtime.waag.org/

ElasticMapping
A lecture-performance by Esther Polak
October 6, 2009
Start 20.30 hours
Entrance free
Please make reservations: info@nimk.nl
At this evening session Esther Polak will do a public performance with the GPS drawing robot, based on the herders’ and truck drivers’ tracks collected in Nigeria. The performance will be followed by a talk on ElasticMapping: the possibilities of manipulating and editing GPS tracks, and how this opens up the cinematographic qualities of location data ‘as such’ to meaningful artistic investigation, resulting in more and more subjective and personalized mappings that will have a big impact on the future use of digital location aware media.

The Artist in Residence (AiR) programme at the Netherlands Media Art Institute supports the exploration and development of new work in digital/interactive/network media and technology based arts practice. The residency provides time and resources to artists in a supportive environment to facilitate the creation of new work that is produced from an open source perspective. We encourage a cross disciplinary and experimental approach.

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdam
http://www.nimk.nl
http://www.facebook.com/NetherlandsMediaArtInstitute
http://twitter.com/NIMk_nl
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nimk
http://www.mediaartplatform.nl

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