Liminal SpaceA place at the threshold

Introduction In my investigation of the Hertzian Landscape I have been closely looking at how people navigate this landscape though GPS receivers. And through those investigations what other city landscapes are revealed or transformed.

The dreams of electronic objects are made from electromagnetic radiation. These dreams radiate outwards from the object, creating a new, invisible, but physical environment that we call Hertzian space. It is here that the secret life of electronic objects is played out, secret not only because we rarely glimpse it, but also because we are only just beginning to understand it.

 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby

GPS• Global Positioning System• Funded by and controlled by the U. S. Department of

Defense (DOD). While there are many thousands of civil users of GPS world-wide, the system was designed for and is operated by the U. S. military

• GPS provides specially coded satellite signals that can be processed in a GPS receiver, enabling the receiver to compute position, velocity and time

GPS• Four GPS satellite signals are used to compute

positions in three dimensions and the time offset in the receiver clock.

GPS• A constellation of 27 Earth-orbiting satellites (24 in

operation and three extras in case one fails).

GPS• The Master Control facility is located at Schriever Air

Force Base (formerly Falcon AFB) in Colorado

Current ArtistsJeremy Wood and Hugh Pryor

GPS DrawingThe Wallingford Fish

Current ArtistsKoichi Mori

Heart Rate GPS images

Current ArtistsJaime Golombek

His daily route

Current ArtistsPaula Levine

Shadows from Another Place• Herb Caen once called San Francisco the “Baghdad by the Bay”. He linked

the two cities by the power of both places to evoke stories about their respective legendary and historical past. Levine builds upon this link, creating Hybrid space between Baghdad and San Francisco composed of the transposition of Baghdad and San Francisco. A mapping of the first US attack on Baghdad is superimposed upon San Francisco. The longitude and latitude of each bombsite is marked in San Francisco using a GPS device.

• In addition to the documentation of each site Levine also places a cache at each site containing project information and the names of US service personnel who have died in Iraq

paulalevine.banff.org

Why is GPS art important?

The technology allows for us to identify new aspects of our journeys.

Jeremy Wood

• GPS changes how the city is now navigated• Through communites such as Geocaching small private niches of the city are no longer word of mouth, secret locations, but are now world accessible.

GeoCaching History• GPS signal degradation called Select Availability (SA)

was removed by the Clinton Administration May 1st, 2000

• May 3rd, a container of goodies was hidden by a someone outside of Portland, Oregon. By May 6th the cache was visited twice, and logged in the logbook once.

• Mike Teague was the first to find the container, and built his personal web page to document these containers and their locations that were posted to the sci.geo.satellite-nav newsgroup.

GeoCaching History• July of 2000, Jeremy Irish found Mike Teague's web site and

found his first cache outside of Seattle, Washington. Recognizing the potential of the game, Jeremy approached Mike Teague with a new site design, used the name Geocaching, and developed a new web site adding virtual logs, maps, and a way to make it easier to maintain caches as the sport grew. The official torch was passed to Jeremy on September 6, 2000

• Since the launch of the web site, the Geocaching sport has grown to caches in all 50 states and over 100 countries. There are now many variations of the game, including virtual caches, offset caches, puzzle caches, and multi-stage caches.

Geocaching: As a method for investigating evolving landscape

• As said earlier Geocaching reveals small private niches of the city. They are no longer word of mouth, secret locations, but are now world accessible.

• Geocaching has become a popular way to see areas of the landscape you might not have otherwise seen

• It has become and engaging way for tourist to engage in a new place

• But how is it changing the landscape?

My investigation• Looking back to Paula Levine’s work I was

interested in using GPS as a way to access one of the layers of the landscape of the city

• Looking at GeoCashing for further information I was struck by the places that the geocachers were pointing to. They were mostly small spaces with in the city landscape, and especially space that was important on an aesthetic level

My investigation• I began by finding three locations where I

wanted to intervene:– Warm Water Cove– The Solstice Crack, Noe Valley– Given a Wall to write upon all Manner of

Monsters are possible, concrete located outside SFAI

• I began to define these places as Liminal Space

Defining Liminal Space• Liminal space is a place on the Threshold• This threshold is the idea of ambiguity and ambivalence.

This in-between space allows active exchanges of ideologies, concepts and methods of working. Liminal indicates a transition from one state or space to another

• The ‘liminal space’ might also be read as a metaphorical realm where ideas and concepts: artistic, political, cultural, social or otherwise, are in constant states of contestation and negotiation.

• These Thresholds and windows are boundaries between inside and outside, public and private; as a in a car, we experience space in motion, constantly adjusting our perspective

Warm Water Cove

Solstice Crack, Noe Valley

Given a wall to write on all manners of monsters are possible, SFAI

Cache ContentsIntroduction:I have been investigating Liminal Spaces throughout San Francisco: A place at the threshold – the threshold of history and future, the real and virtual, a place that is on the edge of transforming, being, or dying. These liminal spaces within San Francisco are places that hold a certain resonance for contemplation and reflection on simple points in life before great change: The small intervention upon the landscape of a line to mark a moment, a quote to indicate importance, or a wasted landscape reclaimed. This simple intervention is a place for pause drawing attention to the fact that these liminal places are not monumental places, but small insignificant spaces, like small insignificant moments that are the catalyst in life for great change. This city is mark by these small interventions, telling not the grand history of building this city, but instead telling the small history of its people, its landscape, its neighborhoods. Histories, from the people who construct, manufacture, and create this city are often lost, but we do leave out marks upon it.

Cache ContentsInstructions:

Solstice Crack, Noe Valley:

To write a message to someone whom you cannot speak to; someone who has died or someone who you have lost contact with, an imaginary friend, a stranger you pass by on the street everyday going to work, someone far away. You do not have to sign your card, but please leave it in the cache when you are done. Feel free to take another postcard with you, maybe send it to someone who would love to hear from you.

Cache ContentsInstructions:

Warm Water Cove:

To write about a dream you have. A dream about your future, something you want to do but it seems just a bit out of reach, but not impossible. Do you want to travel? Do you want to change careers? What is a deep desire that you want to fulfill? You do not have to sign your card, but please leave this postcard in the cache when you are done. Feel free to take a post card with you.

Cache ContentsInstructions:

Given a wall to write on all manners of monsters are possible, SFAI:To write your deepest fear. What do you fear that seems silly or irrational? Is it something you don’t talk about for fear of being judged? Is it something your fear because you were traumatized by it? Or is your fear more of a mystery? You do not have to sign your card, but please leave this postcard in the cache when you are done. Feel free to take a post card with you.

Cache Contents• Postcards• Log book• Mind Map to other

locations• Pens

liminalspacesf.blogspot.com

www.liminalspacessf.com