If all goes well technically, starting on August 31 satellite-assisted monitoring systems on all German highways will see to it that trucks pay their tolls. And if certain politicians get their way this system might someday be extended to all citizens. Every automotive movement could then be recorded and monitored centrally. The same degree of control would be attained that the »VOPOS« project by 0100101110101101.ORG ¹ alludes to. However, GPS (Global Positioning System) is not always viewed simply as yet another surveillance methodology on its way to perfection. There are also an increasing number of artistic approaches and activist media projects currently pondering alternative forms of use for GPS receivers.

»Imagining my life as a drawing that actively grows with each of my movements is an idea I find very enticing«, admits performance artist Dan Belasco Rogers ², who uses GPS as a tool for recording traces of his personal movements through Berlin. While GPS receivers are marketed by the industry as an orientation aid, Rogers is primarily interested in how they can be used as painting tools. Using data transmitted by the satellite, the display on his handheld reflects his movements almost in real time. He can use it to effortlessly record his position as he moves from place to place and can then later transfer the data to his computer. »Basically, the whole thing is a performance. I am constantly using the city as my canvas, across which my body leaves traces as if it were a paintbrush«. There is even a website ³ that displays numerous GPS paintings, but Rogers finds the creation of personal maps more exciting than, for example, drawing a picture of a dog in global space.

The GPS maps thus generated, with their subjective gesturing, belong to the tradition of artistic cartographies. The graphics show computer-generated lines that look almost hand-drawn. For the observer, however, these lines of movement present themselves above all as an aesthetic entity, unless he happens to have an exact knowledge of the relevant location and can recognize the patterns of the streets on which the trails were made. What seems to be cryptic information is of a high narrative value for the one leaving his tracks behind: he then has a history of where he's been. By linking the imaginary view from the satellite's orbit and the earth-bound experience of the user, GPS maps combine the omniscient objective cartography discourse with a subjective corporeal discourse.

»AmsterdamREALTIME«, a project undertaken at the end of 2002 by Esther Polak in cooperation with the Waag Society in Amsterdam also explores the recording of movements in the city space using GPS. A wireless connection makes it possible for gallery visitors to trace the locations of participating city residents in real time. For some, this brings up obvious surveillance issues. But according to Esther Polak's own understanding of the project, the people whose movements were traced were in an enviable position, because they could decide when to switch on or off their GPS receivers, while their spectators had to wait, sometimes quite eagerly, for the visualizations to materialize.

The question of control is similarly blurred in the multimedia project »Can You See Me Now?« ⁵, for which the British artists' group Blast Theory received the Golden Nica for interactive art at this year's Ars Electronica. While the locations of the three artists in the city are pinpointed with the help of GPS technology and their coordinates forwarded to online players, those on the street use the same technology to search for players sitting comfortably at their computer screens who have entered a merely virtual city space. Those that wind up captured are not the ones running through the city, but instead the avatars of the online gamers. Whenever a player gets too close to a runner, the runner sees him on his handheld computer and eliminates him from the game. The city space is the game field both in actuality and virtually, with the changing position coordinates established using GPS technology as the connecting component of the game. Admittedly, one cannot help thinking of to what extent one is being prepared here on a hypothetical plane for an application that might later come into commercial use.

Localization in real and virtual space is also the theme of »GPSter/ Geograffiti« ⁶, an open-source database being developed by Marc Tuters and Karlis Kalnins in Canada. With the help of the internet, GPS and handheld computers, location-dependent messages from all over the world are left behind for others, generating a collaborative counter-cartography. These personal markings and trails are designed as a reaction against advertising placed via locally-based technologies. The problem here is that the virtual graffiti is only accessible for those in possession of the requisite technical equipment. But it is interesting to note that the focus of the project seems to be shifting: while initially Tuters primarily wanted to create an open information space in which he overlays the virtual on top of the real space, regardless of content, he is now more interested in stories that are tied to very specific places. He thus organized a »Locative Media Workshop« ⁷ at the K@2 Culture and Information Center in Karosta, Lettland this summer to explore the paradoxical history of this abandoned military base on the Baltic coast with the help of localized technologies originally designed solely for military use. In future an interface should come about that furnishes this location with personalized »geograffiti«.

»Milk«, a continuation of »AmsterdamREALTIME«, represents a further attempt by Esther Polak and Ieva Auzina to explore the possibility of personal narratives recounted via GPS. The focus here is still on visualization of movements. »We don't conduct interviews, but instead use GPS as a recorder. We pursue the question of space with an open mind. We use these technologies and see what kinds of situations arise«. But they have very precisely defined the scope of use. They want to visualize the agricultural production of milk in eastern Lettland as well as the product's progress all the way to consumers in Holland. »When people in Amsterdam began to observe the personal evidence they left behind, they began to tell us about their daily lives«, reports Polak. »These people suddenly became much more aware of their everyday routines«. »Milk« is designed to take advantage of this component. The aim is to deconstruct our romantic image of country life and thereby create an unofficial representation of the complex changes occurring in rural Lettland.

As the projects described here demonstrate, it is possible to use GPS as something other than a precision military instrument or a tool for surveillance technology. Rather unexpectedly, its function as a personal recording and marking instrument even manifests a certain emancipatory potential.

 

Translated by Jenny Taylor-Gaida

 

---