drving-as-art-practice

Driving seems to be a practice with which art has only minimally engaged. And yet our perception of location and mobility over the last fifty years has, to some extent, been mediated through vehicles. More recently, the growing proliferation of in-car navigation devices indicates that the driving culture of navigation and orientation is changing; being further automated and digitally mediated.

In comparison to the active experience of walking (ambulant), the in-car experience of location is passive and remote and is marked by a lack of sensorial input. There generally exists one goal in driving activity; that of reaching the destination, which overrides any opportunity for serendipitous discovery. It is also distinguished by the experience of speed; a factor that by its nature makes diverse use of human navigational strategies and reconfigures concepts of location.
Kevin Lynch et al. (Appleyard, D, Lynch, K , Myer, JR (1964): The View From the Road, Cambridge, MA:MIT Press) did some work back in the 60's trying to understand the perception of place as effected by the driving experience. This highlighted the heightened sense of sequencing in the environment, and the time-place spatialisation of landmarks along a route. One of the observations in his publication was that 'the highway is - or at least might be- a work of art.' I understand that this viewpoint is very much based in urban design, but as this growing area of location based media, it seems entirely relevant to engage with the driving experience and vehicles in terms of their impact on concepts of location and mobility.

Spatial Archive

In terms of creating some sort of GPS activated waypoint database along a route, I imagine one of the restrictions of using a cheap and therefore practical GPS device is the interface, which is pretty low-res . But using PDA's there could be much more potential with a wireless setup. It's a shame that the geo-caching people (www.geocaching.com) haven't really played with making the treasure (or cache) in a data format. It's a plastic tupperware container, which is tactile and very everyday, but somehow defeats the point of using the GPS to find it.


This discussion also brings to mind a project by Dunne and Raby . I have copied the blurb from their website (www.dunneandraby.co.uk)
An interesting outcome of the tuneable cities project was the way the electromagnetic landscape altered as they drove through different areas of the city. The cultural and social climate reflected the data they received. For instance, they had tuned their receiver to baby intercom frequencies, and some areas of the city became dense with these sounds, whereas others were quiet.

www.dunneandraby.co.uk : hertzian tales
"Tuneable Cities explores new experiences of overlapping electromagnetic and urban environments.
In this proposal, the design is not for an object but for interactions through the car as an interface with existing and new systems. The most effective design intervention here is not at the level of the object itself but its programme. And it is through the medium of electronic products that new urban experiences are provided.
We took the car as a very sophisticated found object that already provides a link between both of these environments.
Car Radio

The final proposal is not for an object but a new relationship between person and city expressed through the re-labelling of a car radio.
Usually the car cuts us off from the environment, here it is intended to emphasis our connection. The car radio could reveal existing zones created by babycoms and bugs, or it could connect to new specially designed radio spaces created by radio tagged bires for instance.
The car’s role as an interface between hertzian and geographical space is emphasised. The driver can decide the desired amount of intrusiveness and the legality of the sources he listens to."