Antoine Morris is a graduate of the Design Art program at Concordia University. He is currently working with MDCN on the Digital Cities Project and as a computer animator for various artistic and commercial design projects. He specializes in 3D graphics and experimental visualizations. He was recently sent to Sainte-Etienne, France to represent Concordia Design at
the “Biennal du Design de Sainte-Etienne.” Other recent projects include creating the special effects for two short films: Exodus and Built Like Light. The first is presently circulating at film festivals across North America, while the second will be completed in the new year. He has worked in animation for such companies as Pascal Blaise, IMAX Sandde animation, Pixel Pushers, Secor 3, and Surface 3.
Paul Ortchanian graduated from Concordia University with a major in mathematics and a minor in Digital Image/Sound & the Fine Arts. He is the creator of “Backwards Navigation” for Reflektions.com, his personal website. Backwards navigation investigates unexplored interface techniques in an attempt to redefine browsing on the net. Ortchanian is an alumnus of the Banff Centre for the Arts, Creative Electronic Environment (CEE), and Interactive Media Team. He recently completed a new media residency in Italy at Fabrica: Benetton’s Research and Development Center in the Arts and Communications. His creative works include such sites as Colorsmagazine.com, Benetton.com and Fabrica.it.
Kajin Goh currently lives and works in Montreal, where he divides his time between design and pursuing an independent art practice. In 1999, he co-founded and art-directed the graffiti art and music magazine Under Pressure, later working as art director for ITF (International Turntablists’ Federation) Canada. Design-related projects include architectural design for The Urban Gallery - a prototype ‘free-zone’ for graffiti writers in Montreal; poster and kit designs for Declarations of [inter]dependence and the im[media]cy of design; plus designs for the Canadian Centre of Architecture, Ellen Lupton, Naomi Klein, and old-school b-boy outfit the Rock Steady Crew (NY). He has participated in the following group shows: Out For Fame 2000, a graffiti art/photography exhibit; and Interstate (2003) with Carrick Dennison and Cody Stephenson at the VAV Gallery in Montreal. A recent video work (Untitled [Four:00]) was purchased in 2004 by Concordia University for inclusion in the Contemporary Art History program. His work can be seen on-line at www.pfood.net.
Dr. Barbara Crow is an associate professor in the Division of Social Science and the master’s co-ordinator for the Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture at York University. Professor Crow has been a visiting scholar at McGill University and Barnard College and was most recently awarded a Telus Distinguished Scholar award. She is also a past president of the Canadian Women’s Studies Association/L’association canadienne des etudes sur les femmes and co-manages their website at www.yorku.ca/cwsaacef. Her most recent publications include two edited collections Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader, NYU Press, 2000 and Open Boundaries: A Canadian Women’s Studies Reader, Prentice-Hall, 2000 with Lise Gotell.
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This type of feedback loop not only expands the site of the “interface” from computer terminal to the city, but also multiplies types of input to encompass both physical and virtual data. Our research asks what would happen if the feedback loop were inverted, such that the city controlled the data, and the data’s performance were always measured against the changing tides of urban life. Such a circular interplay challenges the discrete status of data, and instead requires a process of continual re-situating and adjustment within urban context. In this sense, we are reversing the logic of the feedback loop, which attempts to maintain system equilibrium in the face of disturbance. By privileging urban dynamics as the “command signal” that guides the data, the database becomes doubly urban, both documenting and being shaped by activities in the urban environment to form an expanded feedback loop.
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URBAN DATABASE AS FEEDBACK LOOP
Michael Longford / Jennifer Gabrys
TRANS.ACT OPERATORS AND TRIGGERS
Jennifer Gabrys
These studies demonstrate the transmutations of urban data through image compositing, data mining, and 3-D visualization.
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We are investigating ways of understanding and representing the digital city as a space, repository and network. Our database project, TRANS.ACT 1.3, a preliminary repository of multimedia urban artifacts, raises questions about how to synthesize data in order to generate material that advances our understanding of the city and the media we use to describe it. Included in our investigation is a consideration of how the defining attributes of new media both code the city and change the relations between image, text and sound. As a platform for collaboration and experimentation, and a medium for creative dissemination, the database is an ideal tool for analytic research. The urban database establishes an ecology of communication, a space for incubation, and a staging ground from which to launch interventions.
This project investigates traces of the “digital city” and its networks, from multimedia districts to virtual environments and mobile devices. The role of technology in the city has been an important focus of cultural research. While earlier studies have concentrated on urban infrastructure such as electrification and transportation routes, new communications media have given rise to technological systems and networks that re-order the city. Through the workings of new communications media, the social and technological apparatus of cities is transformed, altering the terms of urban theory and representation.
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