This slide introduces my Wi-Fi art project and my solo exhibition. Wi-Fi technology grows and it really affects us deeply. I will continue this project in the near future.

1. Urban Wi-Fi Landscape
Art Project
劉榮樺

2. Background
1. Duration: 2006 ~ 2011
2. Municipal Wi-Fi plans were proposed in many cities, such as Chicago,
Philadelphia, London, and Taipei.
3. Most plans failed because of the lack of financial support.
4. Some installed access points were run by private companies.
5. Community Wi-Fi projects also were promoted by individuals around the
same time.
6. Popular Wi-Fi access points shape new urban landscapes.

3. Goal
1. Visualizing urban Wi-Fi landscape via metaphor of house societies proposed
by anthropology and linguistics.
2. Adopting colours as the main material to depict invisible Wi-Fi landscapes
and the metaphor.
3. Wi-Fi users were considered as cyborgs and colours should contain human
and machine aspects.

4. Literature Review - Modernism
Artists adopted brand new methods to create their artwork to distinguish them
from traditional artists.

5. Literature Review - Postmodernism
Artists adopted forms developed by modernism artists to develop their works.

6. The difference
Modernism: 你回火星吧，地球是很危險的。（少林足球）
Postmodernism:

7. Literature Review - House Societies
Claude Levi-Strauss: “a moral person holding an estate made up of material and
immaterial wealth which perpetuates itself through the transmission of its name
down a real or imaginary line, considered legitimate as long as this continuity can
express itself in the language of kinship or of affinity, and, most often, of both.”
Wi-Fi is also similar to house in house societies, because members connect to
named Wi-Fi access points to share the resources(material and immaterial wealth
which perpetuates itself through the transmission of its name down a real or
imaginary line).

8. Literature Review - Cyborg
Definition: a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of
social reality as well as a creature of fiction.
Wi-Fi users’ Wi-Fi-equipped devices as their biological extensions and they can
connect to different worlds via the devices’ help.

9. Literature Review - Technoscape
Arjun Appadurai: “the global configuration, also ever fluid, of technology, and of
the fact that technology, both high and low, both mechanical and informational,
now moves at high speeds across various kinds of previously impervious
boundaries” driven by “increasingly complex relationships between money flows,
political possibilities, and the availability of both un- and highly skilled labor”
Urban Wi-Fi landscapes reflect globalized technology flow.

10. Literature Review - Non-place
Marc Augé: “Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is
never completely erased, the second never totally completed”
More Wi-Fi access points created more places for Wi-Fi users.

11. Related Works

12. Related Works - Visualizing Wi-Fi by LED

13. Related Works
“The images are fascinating from a visual point of view, but the most shocking thing about Hernan’s shots is
how different signals can be in almost the exact same spot. You see blue (representing the weakest signal)
blending into red (strongest signal) with a variety of colors in between. Our wireless signals are fickle; they
reacting to our bodies and the various materials around us, which maybe doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone
who’s battled with Time Warner’s spotty wireless.”

14. Related Works - Mark Lombardi

15. Related Works - Colours

16. Visualizing Wi-Fi Networks
1. Translating 12-digit Wi-Fi BSSID(MAC address) to HTML hexadecimal code:
both human and machine colours.
2. Organizing Wi-Fi access points as houses with walls, windows and roofs as a
metaphor.
3. Arranging Wi-Fi access points according to my travel path not their
coordinates to create personal artistic work rathern than maps.
4. This work never completed as non-place, because new data of Wi-Fi access
points will expand this work.
5. Beyond aesthetics, beyond data visualization.

21. Wi-Fi Characteristics

27. Hong Kong

28. Hong Kong

29. Hong Kong

30. London

31. London

32. London

33. Chicago

34. Chicago

35. Chicago

36. New York

37. New York

38. New York

39. Taipei

40. Taipei

41. Taipei

42. One more thing…...

43. Exhibition

44. Exhibition

45. Exhibition

46. Exhibition

47. Exhibition

48. Exhibition

49. Exhibition

50. Exhibition

51. Thanks a lot.
http://ppt.cc/wCFui