[wsfii-discuss] "Cyborg in Wi-Fi London" Performance and Exhibition by Jung-Hua Liu

[Junghua Liu]

"Cyborg in Wi-Fi London" Performance and Exhibition by Jung-Hua Liu

My name is Jung-Hua Liu and fine art PhD student in University of Leeds, UK.
My project aims to visualise urban Wi-Fi networks and study the link
between technology and society.

There are some artworks to explore the similar issues.
Yury Gitman and Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena created a Wi-Fi project
“Node Runner” on 2002. They took cities as playground and play Wi-Fi
hunting game. The competitor who can find more open Wi-Fi hotspots and
upload photos by the hotspots was the winner
(http://noderunner.omnistep.com/index.php).

Gordan Savicic’s Wi-Fi jacket in his “Constraint City” project will be
tightening if it detects closed/encrypt Wi-Fi signals, and the tight
jacket will leave the scars on his body to feel the real pain from the
close city (http://www.yugo.at/equilibre/).

“Node runner” emphasizes that the convenience of Wi-Fi bring us to
enjoy Internet anywhere if they are open. Savicic’s jacket presents
that Wi-Fi is not equal to connectability and Wi-Fi maybe the
communication barrier in cities. Their works draw our attention to
notice the pervasive Wi-Fi in cities. Their projects reflect modern
cities are full of Wi-Fi access points and they may locate in home
houses, company buildings, cafés, schools, parks, transport stations.

In my project, I assume Wi-Fi users ascyborg, the combination of human
beings and machine (Wi-Fi access points and mobile devices), and my
hypothesis is that Wi-Fi users will have construct cyborg identity by
particular behaviour in Wi-Fi networks.

I will have an online performance and exhibition on
http://fireant.itaiwan.net/cyborg_exhibition.php from 21 Dec to 25
Dec. I will walk around London and search Wi-Fi hotspots then upload
the data to this webpage to create real-time colourful Wi-Fi
landscapes. This performance will act in real world (streets in
London) and cyberspace (colourful paintings). We will see how Wi-Fi
networks are so popular in the city and become one important part of
daily life and urban landscape. If Impressionists created their
paintings by depicting natural lights on their world, this performance
makes landscape paintings with technology lights from Wi-Fi machines
and web programming on our contemporary cities.

If you are interested in this performance and exhibition, you can go
to http://fireant.itaiwan.net/cyborg_exhibition.php to obtain more
information.



-- 
Wi-Fi art project:http://fireant.itaiwan.net/wireless/en/
Wi-Fi art blog:http://wificolour.blogspot.com/
Wi-Fi artworks in progress:http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/