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Spot the SPOTs
It's a Game; It's a Serious Work of Art; It's Insightful Commentary about Technology; and It's Soon to Be On Display in Downtown San JoseJuly 28, 2006 - Where do art and science intersect? This subject of intense philosophical debate will soon have a concrete answer: between Cesar Chavez Plaza and the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Jose, California. From August 7-13, Sun Labs' artist-in-residence, Ashok Sukumaran, will display his latest work, Park View Hotel. He has created a "line-of-sight network" distributed across almost an entire city block and parts of the Fairmont Hotel—a work that incorporates "Sun SPOT" (Small Programmable Object Technology) wireless sensor and transducer technology developed at Sun Labs. The display will be featured as part of ZeroOne San Jose, a "global festival of art on the edge" and the 13th Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) Symposium.
The work is accessed via two telescope-like interface devices situated at ground level in the park. As viewers aim the devices toward the architecture, an infra-red beam illuminates or "turns on" embedded elements along the viewer's line of sight. For example, lights turn on in rooms at the Fairmont, over 200 feet away. You can then activate these newly revealed "SPOTs," an action that leaks into other parts of the network. In all more than 40 Sun SPOT elements will be embedded into the finished artwork. Park View Hotel is fundamentally interactive--the viewer and a network of hidden devices actually discover each other. As you detect their presence, they detects yours. And the characteristics of the network change in response to your looking at it, something we learn in both physics (Heisenberg) and in cinema's active "gaze." "Things tend to disappear as they become pervasive," said Ashok. "This is true of familiar physical objects such as streetlights or a hotel; and in a broader sense it's true of technology. Electricity, for example, is so familiar it has disappeared. It is used so routinely that it is no longer noticed, and I look at this condition in other artworks. Today, network technology has become pervasive, and many networks all around us are similarly hidden." So in the same way that Park View Hotel will help people look at a familiar hotel with new eyes, it will also reveal the network and explore its properties. "I'm particularly interested in exploring the topology or modality of communication between public and private spaces," said Ashok. "In this case the viewer's actions are affecting the interior of a large building from the street. You are entering it and impacting it optically and electronically, and its properties are leaking back to you, coming to find you and affecting you. It's almost like a gaming environment in some ways: it creates a certain sense of excitement as you point a device at something, target something very precisely. But there's also a sense of transgression—a feeling that you're invading a private space. It questions the boundaries of ownership, permissions, and at one level property itself." Mr. Sukumaran became the first Sun Microsystems - ZeroOne San Jose artist-in-residence in September, 2005. He is both an architect and media artist, with strong interests in the built environment, technology, and digital art. Based in India, Ashok earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in media art at UCLA in 2003. That year he was project director for NANO, an exhibition that blended multiple scientific disciplines to explore the intersection of digital art and nanoscale science at LACMALab, Los Angeles. In general, Mr. Sukumaran's art deals with the complex interrelationships between embedded technology and human habitat, and explores new ways to provide insight into the evolution of technology and the way people interact with it. His projects have received many art and design honors, including the UNESCO Digital Arts first award for 2005, a first prize in the Samsung Art and Design Institute's competition 2002, a David Bermant Foundation award for media art in 2003, AMONG others (see some examples of his previous work at http://users.dma.ucla.edu/~suku/). From the perspective of Sun Labs, Ashok's art provides a unique and powerful new means of exploring the potential—and the potential impact—of the technologies its researchers are creating. "I have been very fortunate to work closely with the people at Sun Labs," said Ashok. "There is often a perception that corporate culture is the antithesis of the practice of art, and in this case nothing could be further from the truth. The depth of technical and other knowledge I have found here and the broad expertise and perspective of Sun researchers has amazed me and will influence my work for a long time to come. I've enjoyed my experience here and learned a great deal." Related Links:
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