Playful Mobilities: Ubiquitous Computing in the City.
Anne Galloway
Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University
Alternative Mobility Futures Conference, Lancaster University, 9-11 January 2004
Abstract.
What does it mean to move playfully, or to be playfully mobile? Various emerging wireless and
ubiquitous technologies suggest types of mobility that are decidedly playful – and that bring to
discussions of mobility multiple notions of play. When we ask about the relations between
sociality, technology and mobility, we are often enough asking what is at play, and to be at play is
to be active and operative, to change position, to be mobile. But what kind of movement is this?
What is being moved? Where, when and how do people and objects and ideas move? This
paper asks these and other questions by relating discussions of movement in art and
technological play to several recent explorations in wireless computing. These examples of
ubiquitous computing in the city can be seen to delve into different aspects of playful urban
mobilities, from formalised games and performances to technological subversions. In keeping
with the theme of play, this paper will also experiment with more playful ways of producing
academic work and serve primarily as a contextual guide to my conference presentation.
Beginnings.
Mobility and its relations
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the word ‘mobile’ derives from the Latin
mobilis, from movere ‘to move’. To move is “to change or cause to change position,” and to be
mobile is “to be able to move freely or easily.” To ‘mobilise’ is to organise or make mobile and to
be ‘motive’ is to produce motion. The opposite of mobile is ‘stable’: “not likely to give way or
overturn; firmly fixed; not likely to change or fail,” from the Latin stabilis ‘to stand.’ To stand is to
“place or be situated in a particular position.”
Similarly, the word ‘kinetic’ derives from the Greek kinetikos, ‘moving’: of, relating to or resulting
from motion (the action or process of moving). In physics, kinetic theory explains the “physical
properties of matter in terms of the movement of its constituent parts;” kinetic energy refers to
“energy which a body possesses by virtue of being in motion.”
Mobility is also related to ‘dynamics’ in physics and mechanics. A dynamic process or system is
characterised by constant change or activity, and dynamics refer to causal relations, or the
“motion of bodies under the action of forces.” Dynamics may be contrasted with ‘kinematics’: the
branch of mechanics concerned with the “motion of objects without reference to the forces which
cause the motion.” The opposite of dynamic is ‘static’: lacking movement, action or change. In
physics, statics is concerned with “bodies at rest” or “forces in equilibrium.”
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Of play and games
The OED defines ‘play’ as both verb and noun. To play is “to engage in games or other activities
for enjoyment rather than for serious or practical purpose.” It means to “perform” a musical
instrument or to “produce” a piece of music. Actors can also be referred to as ‘players.’ Play can
also mean to “move lightly and quickly: a smile played about her lips.” As a noun, ‘play’ again
refers to “games or other activities engaged in for enjoyment” as well as the status of a ball within
the rules of a game: “the ball was put into play.” Play also refers to the “state of being active,
operative, or effective: luck comes into play,” and the “ability or freedom of movement in a
mechanism” or “light and constantly changing movement.” The word ‘play’ derives from the Old
English, pleg(i)an ‘to exercise’, plega ‘brisk movement’. To be ‘playful’ is to be “fond of games
and amusement.”
The word ‘game’ also derives from the Old English gamen ‘amusement, fun’, and gamenian ‘play,
amuse oneself’. A game is also “an activity engaged in for amusement,” but more often according
to particular rules, as in a “complete episode or period of play, ending in a final result.”
In The Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith (2001) focuses on play theories rooted in seven
distinct "rhetorics" - the ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the
modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self.
At the Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference (University of Utrecht, November 2003),
octogenarian Sutton-Smith suggested that one of the reasons we play is to cope with the reality
that "life is crap and we're all going to die in the end anyway" (Stern 2003).
I immediately smile at the idea that play gives us hope.
In Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Salen and Zimmerman (2003) discuss various
schemas for understanding games. Formal schemas interpret games as sets of rules, such as
put forth in emergent, information theory or game theory systems. Experiential schemas
understand games as play, including frameworks on play and meaning, narrative play and social
play. Contextual schemas frame games in terms of culture, and focus on how games interact in
and with their social contexts, for example, as cultural texts, ideology or as political resistance.
To greater and lesser extents, I am interested in each of these ways of understanding play and
games – especially as they might apply to mobile, wireless and ubiquitous technologies.
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Calder’s mobiles.
In the arts, mobiles refer to sculpture. In reference to metal sculpture, “it might be easier to
define constructions, stabiles, mobiles and kinetic sculpture by what they are not.” Kinetic art or
sculpture relies on motion for its effect, and a stabile is a “free standing abstract sculpture, in the
style of a mobile but rigid and stationary” (OED).
In 1928, Alexander Archipenko exhibited Archipentura or Peinture Changeante – a motorised
work that produced variable images in sequence - one of the first attempts to introduce ‘real’
movement into a work of art:
Since Archipentura paints movement and since movement does not exist outside of time,
the duration and speed of action intervene inevitably as elements of creation in
Archipentura … Archipentura offers the possibility of executing and representing in even
the same point of space, different objects, movements, transformations, and
displacements (Archipenko as cited in Marter 1991:42).
Moholy-Nagy described kinetic sculpture as “the highest sublimation of volume content, the
creation of virtual volume relationships realized at the point of balance of taut forces” (cited in
Marter 1991:119).
Alexander Calder studied as a mechanical engineer and is attributed with the invention of the
mobile (sculpture) – a word coined by fellow artist Marcel Duchamp and contrasted with his
stabile (sculpture), so coined by Jean Arp. As Marter (1991:123) reminds us, “Calder’s mobiles of
the 1930s were the first sustained exploration of virtual movement in sculpture”
Inspired by prominent artists of the era, Calder (1966:113) tells a story of visiting Piet Mondrian’s
studio: “I suggested to Mondrian that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate
and he, with a very serious countenance, said: ‘No, it is not necessary, my painting is already
very fast’.” Calder also claimed that Marcel Duchamp’s elimination of representative form in
Nude Descending a Staircase avoided the connotation of ideas which would interfere with the
success of the main issue – the sense of movement. He described his mobiles as nothing but
“moving elements, their forms and colors, and their orbits, speeds and accelerations” (cited in
Marter 1991:141).
Calder’s mobiles hang from ceilings and walls. Left: Untitled, 1942. Right: Yellow Whale, 1958.
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His standing mobiles involve fixed and moving parts, where the fixed elements are autonomous forms and
not just support for the mobile elements. Left: Mobile with Stabile Element, 1940. Right: Myxomatose,
1953.
Myxomatosis is a highly infectious viral disease of rabbits that attacks the nervous system and
causes unpredictable and uncontrollable convulsions before death (OED).
Calder’s stabiles suggest mobiles at particular points in space and time. Left: Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, 1947. Right: Teodelapio, 1962.
And Calder (1943) defined a mobile in motion as leaving an
invisible wake behind it, or rather, each element leaves an individual wake behind its
individual self. Sometimes these wakes are contracted within each other, and sometimes
they are deployed. In this latter position the mobile occupies more space, and it is the
diameter of this maximum trajectory that should be considered in measuring a mobile.
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In biology, a tropism is the “turning of all or part of an organism in response to an external
stimulus;” from the Greek trope ‘turn, turning,’ also related to tornos ‘circular movement.’ For
example, phototropism involves plants growing towards the light. Turning also involves a change
in position, although often limited to pivoting on an axis. Similarly, nastic movements refer to the
“movement of plant parts caused by an external stimulus but unaffected in direction by it,” from
the Greek nastos ‘squeezed together’ (OED).
What if we were to imagine socio-technological assemblages as mobiles? What
kind of mobility might that be? What if we instead imagined them as stabiles, as
assemblages that suggest or represent mobiles at particular points in space and
time? And what if we imagined socio-technological assemblages as standing
mobiles, where the fixed elements are autonomous forms and not just support for
the mobile elements?
“All we know are assemblages. And the only assemblages are machinic
assemblages of desire and collective assemblages of enunciation. No
significance, no subjectification...” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:22).
“The name of the game is not to extend subjectivity to things, to treat
humans like objects, to take machines for social actors, but to avoid
using the subject-object distinction at all in order to talk about the
folding of humans and nonhumans. What the new picture seeks to capture
are the moves by which any given collective extends its social fabric to
other entities” (Latour 1999:193-194).
“Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one
thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a
transversal movement that sweeps one and the other away, a stream without
beginning or end that undermines its banks and picks up speed in the
middle” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987:25).
In The Mobiles of Calder, Sartre (1946) writes:
“I was talking with Calder one day in his studio when suddenly a ‘mobile’
beside me, which until then had been quiet, became violently agitated. I
stepped quickly back; thinking to be out of its reach. But then, when the
agitation had ceased and it appeared to have relapsed into quiescence,
its long, majestic tail, which until had not budged, began mournfully to
wave, and, sweeping through the air, brushed across my face. These
hesitations, resumptions, gropings, clumsinesses, the sudden decisions
and above all that swan-like grace make of certain ‘mobiles’ very strange
creatures indeed, something midway between matter and life. At moments
they seem endowed with an intention; a moment later they appear to have
forgotten what they intended to do, and finish by merely swaying inanely.
A mobile is “an object defined by its movement and having no other
existence … Sculpture suggests movement, painting suggests depth or
light. A ‘mobile’ does not ‘suggest’ anything: it captures genuine living
movements and shapes them. ‘Mobiles’ have no meaning, make you think of
nothing but themselves. They are, that is all; they are absolutes.
There is more of the unpredictable about them than in any other human
creation … A general destiny of movement is sketched for them, and then
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they are left to work it out for themselves. What they may do at a given
moment will be determined by the time of day, the sun, the temperature or
the wind. The object is thus always half way between the servility of a
statue and the independence of natural events; each of is evolutions is
the inspiration of a moment. It may be possible to discern the composer's
theme, but the mechanism itself introduces a thousand personal
variations” …
“Mobiles have to draw their mobility from some source … They feed on air,
they breathe, they borrow life from the vague life of the atmosphere.
Thus their mobility is of a particular kind. The ‘mobile’… never [has]
precision and efficiency … [it] weaves uncertainty, hesitates and at
times appears to begin its movement anew, as if it had caught itself in a
mistake. Yet the motions are too artfully composed to be compared to
those of a marble rolling on a rough board, when each change of direction
is determined by the asperities of the surface” (Sartre 1946).
Movement as Play / Play as Movement
“The spirit of play replaces the metaphysical desire to ground things in
principles, to stabilize movement on the basis of laws, to neutralize
ambiguity in the hermeneutic move toward the constitution of meaning, and
to reduce the multiplicity of phenomenon to the One instance that is
common to all. As Hegel put it: ‘Play is the noblest and only true
seriousness’” (Miller 1996).
What are the relations between movement and play?
For Gadamer, the to-and-fro movement characteristic of collective play exemplifies the active
relationship of subject and object in the experience of art. Becoming lost in play affects an
ontological shift, where the player as subject is incorporated into the (object of) play. Play
depends not upon the subject who plays it, but on “the movement as such” (Gadamer 1989:10304). By surrendering to play, the player forgoes the separation from nature that arises from her
status as rational being, and instead becomes part of the “natural” and uncertain movement of the
universe.
According to Gadamer (1986:23), this play of nature exhibits a “phenomenon of excess.” In the
play of art, the phenomenon of excess is manifest in the artistic work. In art, as in play, something
comes into presence that has never been there before; the work is made present, presented,
through play (Gadamer 1986:12).
For Deleuze and Guattari, movement is always associated with production, with becoming, with
flows; conversely, stability is associated with reproduction or the symbolic, with being.
Following Deleuze and Guattari, Lash (2002:173-74) argues for a critique of information that
shifts our focus from representational culture to technological culture, which is an “immanentist
order. It presumes a certain hands-on-ness, a tactility, in contrast to the distanciation… of
representational culture.” Lash (2002:157) puts forth a familiar space of immanence, of play,
which “operates in the register of magic.” In this sense, play is firmly rooted in the real, the
embodied, but is not utilitarian or linear. Lash (2002:158-59) continues to write that:
Representational culture speaks the language of correspondence. Without
representation, metaphor has no sense. Play’s magical language is
metonymic, not metaphoric. There is no symbolic correspondence between
the man and the kangaroo. Instead the man becomes the kangaroo, hence
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the significance of the metonymic mask in play … Play emerges in, indeed
constitutes, the general economy of excess … To partake of excess through
the agon is to partake of honour. Honour surely does not accumulate.
Unlike the risks associated with ‘the risk society,’ which are based on utilitarian and calculated
decision-making, “play is nature before the rationalization of nature via the Enlightenment’s
scientific attitude. It is gift-exchange before rationalization into utility, into exchange-value” (Lash
2002:160).
Lash distinguishes his sense of play by drawing on generic spaces:
Play in the information society takes place in a generic space. Generic
spaces are disembedded spaces that could be anyplace … They are ‘lifted
out’, so to speak, from any particular context and could take place in
any context. This intersubjectivity, become generic, this
intersubjectivity at-a-distance, is what is at stake in interactivity.
The space of such technological play is not a transcendental space in any
sense. It is an empirical space of ‘the there’ … Play entails movement…
The more an activity is empirically temporal in its nature, the more it
is rhythmic, the more it is play-like. The more it needs to be
performed, the more play-like” (Lash 2002:161).
Play then always involves movement, especially in the sense of becoming rather than being.
Spaces of play remain elusive as glimpses and resonances.
Playful technologies
The types of play of interest here are those that are explicitly mobile, those that create spaces in
which relations between the social and the material are in flux, or up-for-grabs.
Augmented reality as radically embodied technology.
Performative technologies.
Subversive use.
In Design Noir, Dunne and Raby (2001) write,
When technology is developing as rapidly as it is now, reflection and
criticism are particularly important.
We need to consider alternative
visions to those put forward by industry … Most designers, especially
industrial designers, view design as somehow neutral, clean and pure.
But all design is ideological, the design process is informed by values
based on a specific world view, or way of seeing and understanding
reality.
Design can be described as falling into two very broad
categories: affirmative design and critical design.
The former
reinforces how things are now, it conforms to cultural, social, technical
and economic expectation.
Most design falls into this category.
The
latter rejects how things are now as being the only possibility, it
provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that
embody alternative social, cultural, technical or economic values.
Critical design, or design that asks carefully crafted questions and
makes us think, is just as difficult and just as important as design that
solves problems or finds answers … Questions must be asked about what we
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actually need, about the way poetic moments can be intertwined with the
everyday and not separated from it …
Developing a critical perspective in design is made difficult by the fact
that the design profession, and product designers in particular, see the
social value of their work as inextricably linked to the marketplace.
Design outside this arena is viewed with suspicion as escapist or unreal
… Maybe we need a new category to replace the avant-garde: (un)popular
design (58-59) …
The challenge is to blur the boundaries between the real and the
fictional, so that the conceptual becomes more real and the real is seen
as just one limited possibility among many (65) …
By referring to the world of product misuse and abuse, where desire
overflows its material limits and subverts the function of everyday
objects, [Design noir] would address the darker, conceptual models of
need that are usually limited to cinema and literature (46).
Playful. Playful technologies.
In my presentation I (will) discuss the following technologies and connect them to playful
mobilities.
SONIC CITY (Lalya Gaye, Margot Jacobs, Ramia Mazé, Daniel Skoglund)
“In the project Sonic City, we have developed a system that enables people to create music in real time by
walking through and interacting with the urban environment. Drawing on wearable and context-aware
computing, our prototype applies perception of place, time, situation, and activity to the real-time sound
processing of urban sounds. In Sonic City, we explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for
creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic
music making.”
http://civ.idc.cs.chalmers.se/projects/soniccity/
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WI-FI HOG (Jonah Brucker-Cohen)
“Wi-Fi Hog is personal system for a laptop or portable computer that enables people to gain complete
control over a public access wireless network. The idea is presented as an alternative to the utopian vision
of wireless networks being open, shared, and utilitarian for everyone. This project is a cautionary one, but
could be used as a tactical media tool for protest situations.
The project attempts to discover if adding constraints on a network and making access to it more
competitive and "territorial" changes the relationships between people who use the network.”
http://www.coin-operated.com/projects
http://www.mle.ie/~jonah/projects/wifihog.html
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NODERUNNER (Yury Gitman and Carlos Gómez de Llarena)
“Race for nodes. Collect points. Play the game. A competitive game, NodeRunner fuses the streets with
wireless networks to convert the city into a playing board. Two teams racing against time must log into as
many nodes as they can and upload photographic proof to the server, documenting their progress.”
http://www.noderunner.com/
http://downlode.org/noderunner/
THE PUBLIC BROADCAST CART (Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga)
“Public Broadcast Cart is a shopping cart outfitted with a dynamic microphone, a mixer, an amplifier, six
speakers, a miniFM transmitter and a laptop with a wireless card. The audio captured by the microphone
on the cart is fed through the mixer to three different broadcast sources. The mixer simultaneously feeds
the audio:
- to the amplifier that powers the six speakers mounted on the cart
- to an FM transmitter transmitting to an FM frequency
- to the laptop that sends the audio to the thing.net's server from which the audio is broadcast on line at
http://radio.thing.net
The Public Broadcast Cart is designed to enable any pedestrian to become an active producer of a radio
broadcast. The cart reverses the usual role of the public from audience to producer of a radio broadcast
and online content.”
http://www.ambriente.com/wifi/
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CAN YOU SEE ME NOW? & UNCLE ROY ALL AROUND YOU (EQUATOR Citywide Project)
“Can You See Me Now? is a chase game. For five days during DEAF2003, online players were invited to
play against members of Blast Theory. Online players were dropped at random locations into a virtual
Rotterdam. Using their arrow keys, they could then move around the city and chat with other players by
typing messages. On the real streets of Rotterdam three runners from Blast Theory - equipped with
handheld computers and satellite receivers - tracked down the online players. If a runner reached within 5
metres of an online player's location that player was 'seen' and knocked out of the game. The time and
location of each sighting was recorded and a photo taken at the location.
Uncle Roy All Around You sets online players alongside players on the streets of the city.
Street Players search for Uncle Roy through the back streets, the tourist traps and the leafy boulevards
with a handheld computer. Online Players cruise through a virtual model of the same area, searching for
the Street Players and looking for leads that will help them find Uncle Roy. Using web cams, audio and
text messages players must work together. They have 60 minutes and the clock is ticking...”
http://machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/Projects/CitywidePerformance/Citywideperformance.htm
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/work_cysmn.html
http://www.canyouseemenow.co.uk/ (Sheffield 2001)
http://www.canyouseemenow.de/ (Oldenburg 2003)
http://www.canyouseemenow.v2.nl/ (Rotterdam 2003)
http://www.uncleroyallaroundyou.co.uk/
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MAGICBIKE (Yury Gitman)
“Magicike is a mobile WiFi hotspot that gives out free internet connectivity to whatever space it is parked
in. Magicbike explores a new delivery strategy for WiFi hotspots and brings Internet connectivity to yet
unserved spaces and communities. But Magicbike is not only a moving hotspot but also an extremely
mobile and discreet hotspot. It is perfect for setting up adhoc Internet connectivity for art and culture
events, emergency access, public demonstrations, and communities on the
struggling end of the digital-divide.”
http://www.magicbike.net/
How might we begin to understand these socio-technological assemblages?
[space for notes]
What are their contexts of interaction? What is at play?
[space for notes]
How may they be understood as playful mobilities?
[space for notes]
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Bibliography.
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-- 1966. Calder: An Autobiography. New York, Patheon Books.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
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Gadamer, Hans-George. 1986. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge:
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-- 1989. Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward.
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Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
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Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1946. The Mobiles of Calder. Available at:
http://www.calder.org/SETS_SUB/life/texts/life_texts_sartre46_con1.html.
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Available at: http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/archives/000119.html
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