To those interested in education,

I am interested in ideas on mobile media in education. Some thoughts:

I am leading a seminar class on mobile wireless media, and yesterday we
read interview with Hakim Bey on the liberating/repressive aspects of
successive mass medias. Mobile platform seems to embody these two poles in
a significant way. Inexpensive, pervasive, undetectable. It has been
interesting to compare development of mobile in asian countries and its
development in the west, or to compare between any locations where this is
going on. Technical, political, social, cultural issues all differ, and
great inventiveness in providing the infrastructure as well as in its
application.

It seem that many of the ideas that were being used on limited scale very
recently– for example experiments in location sensing and proximity,
social networks by artists or research groups – are being built and
promoted on a larger scale as commercial applications. In asia with
governmental/corp support on a mass level, versus experimental often
limited scale in the west. Many of my students come from asian countries,
and I hope to gain some insight into development in asian countries from
their news sources.

We have good discussions, as everyone is involved in this medium. I try to
gain perspective and creative thinking about mobile. So many possibilities
in using mobile wireless in tandem with other technologies – rfid, radio,
radar, gps, etc. And some amazing interpretation/misuses of these
technologies for example using human body as antenna/conduit for data
signal. Links both practical and odd on  my class website:
http://34n118w.net/130

Last year together with my collaborator, I lead a studio class with mobile
media, tablet pc’s and gps. The students really stretched themselves in
locating a site, researching its history, and interfacing with the local
community to produce original, inspired work. They worked with a local
storyteller to weave a story based on the early history of Olympia
Washington,with sound, video, effects, images. Documentation of project,
problems, etc. online at
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/cameratocomp/NWACC

I share examples from literature, film, etc with students, some of which
go way back. George Melies “Long Distance Wireless Photography” short
special effects film made over 100 yrs ago; Borges “On the Exactitude of
Science”, wherein the Cartographers of the Empire in their zeal map their
land one-to-one, so that people confuse map with physical topography;  Lev
Manovich “On the Poetics of Augmented Space”, which challenges artists to
become invested in shaping the mobile space– probably impossible in the
US, except in incidental way. Hopefully possible elsewhere…

Your suggestions, insights, links, projects, very welcome, as this is all
pretty new to me.

Naomi
-- 
34n118w.net
mining the urban landscape