Spectropolis projects: InterUrban by Jeff Knowlton and Naomi Spellman

About InterUrban (INTERPRETIVE ENGINE FOR VARIOUS PLACES ON EARTH ): The Interpretive Engine creates a mythology of the city, incorporating current, local, and user specific details. For each listener experience, online information is collected and fed into a running narrative. Text, voice, generative audio, and images are composed on the fly and fed back to the listener.

The project takes into account local surrounding and events, and the available telecommunication infrastructure. Wireless access points allow intermittent access to internet based data as well as the determination of listener location and her proximity to other story participants. Internet queries instrumental in the story may include: images from space, overhead satellite views based on location, seismic activity, moon phases and tides, local weather, live news feed or google.

Key to this project is a shift in consciousness of the listener, through an exposure of something that is already always present: the [invisible] wireless network. InterUrban encourage visitors to question how informational databases are accessed and controlled in an era of increasingly pervasive corporate and governmental control.
About Jeff Knowlton and Naomi Spellman : Jeff Knowlton has worked professionally as an artist, musician, lecturer, programmer, and museum preparator. His art has been included in AIM IV, Imagine 2001, and Siggraph 2000. He is a recipient of a New Forms Initiative Grant funded by the NEA and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2000, Jeff designed an interactive text environment for an international conference on aging sponsored by The Centre for Global Dialogue in Reuschlikon Switzerland. He has created interactive solutions for clients such as Mattel and Union Bank of California. avant guard jazz musician He currently teaches Interactive Narrative in the Interdisciplinary Computing Arts Program at the University of California, San Diego.

Naomi Spellman is a transmedia artist and educator. Exhibited work includes networked art, video, interactive computer-based works, and graphic prints. Her worked has been exhibited nationally and abroad. Venues include ASCII Digital 2000, The Harvard Map Collection, and the DART IV symposium on digital arts and culture. She currently teaches a seminar on Mobile Wireless Applications, as well as Senior Thesis Project Development in the Interdisciplinary Computing Arts Program at the University of California, San Diego.

For more information about Spectropolis, please contact dana@nycwireless.net.

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council   NYCwireless   The Alliance for Downtown New York

Spectropolis thanks these organizations for their help: Bway.net, Wiselephant, Justin T. Molloy and jtmdsgn, B Squared Design, Starworks, and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation

© 2004 NYCwireless, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), and The Alliance for Downtown New York (DTA). All rights reserved.