Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Wayfinding re/dicto

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Surveillance, Architecture and Control

  • 1279 Accesses

Abstract

Alvan Lucier’s score, I Am Sitting in a Room (1969), provokes the architectural surround into a Janus-faced prosthesis, de dicto/de re (about the said and the sensed), as well as in locus sin quo (but if there is, where?). In order to arrive at the creative work made possible by the edited collection, this chapter uses Lucier’s score and acts as a locus sin quo to consider three ongoing laboratory projects, each using off-the-shelf hardware to reengineer the poetic imaginaries of surveillance, control, spatial practice, and speculative design. My first case is DIY’s laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) into covertly sensing human signature and event detection by operationalizing the resonant/sonorous surround. My second case directly exploits the same sensorium to instead hunt untapped perceptual modalities for feeling and navigating invisible space. My third case is the “Transborder Immigrant Tool” (TBT), a global positioning satellite (GPS) hack by “artivist” collective Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT)/b.a.n.g. lab for assisting immigrants navigating and crossing the Mexico/US border. Rather than suggesting a solution therein, the chapter appropriates the challenge as a creative bead both on Foucault’s idea of counter-conduct and back to Lucier(’s) sitting in a room.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    A significant number of people have chronicled this historical context. Two out-standing texts I am indebted to are Mara Mills’ “Media and Prosthesis: The Vocoder, the Artificial Larynx, and the History of Signal Processing,” qui parle 21.1 (Fall/Winter 2012): 107–149, and Orit Halpern’s “Cybernetic Sense: Warren McCulloch and Norbert Wiener’s Conception of Perception,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 37.3, pp. 218–236. I do however change the particular focus on many of the same tensions addressed by Mills’ and Halpern’s articles.

Bibliography

  • Arbib, M. A. (2003). Rana Computatrix to Human Language: Towards a Computational Neuroethology of Language Evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 361(1811), 2345–2379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arbib, M. A. (2012a). Brains, Machines and Buildings: Towards a Neuromorphic Architecture. Intelligent Buildings International, 4, 147–168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arbib, M. A. (2012b). Why Should Architects Care About Neuroscience? In P. Tidwell (Ed.), Architecture and Neuroscience: A Tapio Wirkkala – Rut Bryk Design Reader (pp. 42–75). Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala Rut Bryk Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arbib, M. A. (2016). When Brains Design/Experience Buildings: Architectural Patterns for a Good Life: East–West Connections. In Gulyas Balazs, Vasbinder Jan Wouter (Eds.), Cultural Patterns and Neurocognitive Circuits: East-West Connections. Singapore: NTU/World Scientific.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bojinov, H. (2012). Neuroscience Meets Cryptography: Designing Crypto Primitives Secure Against Rubber Hose Attacks. Communications of the ACM, 57(5), 110–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boone, J. V., & Peterson, R. R. (2016). SIGSALY – The Start of the Digital Revolution. https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/wwii/sigsaly-start-digital.shtml. Visited on 2016.

  • Caillois, R., & (translator) Shepley, J. (1984). Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia. October, 31, 16–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carcamo, C. (2009). GPS Tool Will Help Immigrants Cross Border. Orange County Register. Last visited June 2018.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cárdenas, M. (2009). The Transborder Immigrant Tool: Violence, Solidarity and Hope in Post-NAFTA Circuits of Bodies Electr(on)/ic. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. Bonn: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carroll, L. (1998). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (Ed. P. Hunt). London: Wordsworth Collection.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, N. (1990). DRAM: Notes for Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting in a Room.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crossing the Border Illegally? There’s an “App” for That: A Q+A With Ricardo Dominguez (2011) 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, A. I. (2011). In Praise of Counter-Conduct. History of the Human Sciences, 24(4), 25–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dean, M. (2010). Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage. isbn:9781847873842.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dominguez, R. (2014). Threesomes+: Social Practice, Speculative Aesthetics, and Love. Couse Syllabus for UCSD Vis Arts Contemporary Critical Issues.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dominguez, R., & (interviewer) Dunbar, A. (2011). Crossing the Border Illegally? There’s an “App” for That: A Q+A With Ricardo Dominguez. Motherboard, 10. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z44m53/the-transborder-immigrant-tool-helps-mexicans-cross-over-safely. Last visited June 2018.

  • Dominguez, R., & (Interviewer) Nadir, L. (2012). Poetry, Immigration and the FBI: The Transborder Immigrant Tool, Hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/54678. Visited on 15 Apr 2012.

  • Dougherty, B. O., & Arbib, M. A. (2013). The Evolution of Neuroscience for Architecture: Introducing the Special Issue. Intelligent Buildings International, 5(sup1, 4–9). https://doi.org/10.1080/17508975.2013.818763

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dreyfus, H. L., & Rabinow, P. (1983). Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (5th ed.). New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Duncombe, S. (2016). Does It Work? The Æffect of Activist Art. Social Research: An International Quarterly, 83(1), 115–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Emory, M. (2018). From Building Brains to Brained Buildings: An Interview with Michael A. Arbib. http://brainworldmagazine.com/from-building-brains-to-brained-buildings-an-interview-with-michael-a-arbib/

  • Eng, K., et al. (2003). Ada – Intelligent Space: An Artificial Creature for the Swiss Expo.02. In Proceedings of the 2003 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2003). Taipei: IEEE/RSJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eng, K., Douglas, R. J., & Verschure, P. F. M. J. (2005). An Interactive Space That Learns to Influence Human Behaviour. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics—Part A: Systems and Humans, 35(1), 66–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Findlay-White, E., & Logan, R. K. (2016). Acoustic Space, Marshall McLuhan and Links to Medieval Philosophers and Beyond: Center Everywhere and Margin Nowhere. Philosophies, 1, 162–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Föllmer, G. (2018). Lucier’s Classic: I Am Sitting in a Room. http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/i-am-sitting-in-a-room/

  • Foucault, M. (1982). The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1988). The Concern for Truth. In Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture (Interviews and Other Writings, 1977–1984). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1992). The History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure: V. 2: The Use of Pleasure (Ed. & Trans. R. Hurley). London: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1998). Polemics, Politics and Problematizations (Interview with P. Rainbow). In Essential Works of Foucault (Vol. 1, 1st ed.). New York: The New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1999). Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology (Eds. J. D. Faubion & P. Rainbow). New York: The New Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2001). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Routledge Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 (Trans. Graham Burchell). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (Ed. A. I. Davidson, 1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2013). Lectures on the Will to Know (Ed. A. I. Davidson, 1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • GPS tool will help immigrants cross border (2009, November 20).

    Google Scholar 

  • Guillaume, X., & Huysmans, J. (2013). Chapter 2: Citizenship and Securitizing: Interstitial Politics. In X. Guillaume & J. Huysmans (Eds.), Citizenship and Security: The Constitution of Political Being, PRIO New Security Studies (pp. 18–30). Oxfordshire/New York: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Günther, G. (1955). The Thought Translator. Startling Stories, 33(1), 62–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haggerty, K. D., & Ericson, R. V. (2003). The Surveillant Assemblage. The British Journal of Sociology, 51, 605–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halpern, O. (2015). Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason Since 1945. Durham: Duke Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Heaviside, O. (2013). Electromagnetic Theory (Vol. 1). New York: Cosimo Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khoo, W. L., et al. (2013). Designing and Testing Wearable Range Vibrotactile Devices. Journal of Assistive Technologies, 7(2), 102–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koopman, C. (2011). Foucault Across the Disciplines: Introductory Notes on Contingency in Critical Inquiry. History of the Human Sciences, 24(4), 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koopman, C., & Matza, T. (2013). Putting Foucault to Work: Analytic and Concept in Foucauldian Inquiry. Critical Inquiry, 39(4), 817–840.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lab, EDT2.0/b.a.n.g. (2014). Electronic Disturbance Theatre Transborder Immigrant Tool. C-Theory.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lepecki, A. (2005). Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement (1st ed.). New York: Taylor & Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lettvin, J. Y., Maturana, H. R., McCulloch, W. S., & Pitts, W. H. (1959). What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain. Proceedings of the IRE, 47(11), 1940–1951.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Li, W., Molina, E., Wolberg, G., & Zhu, Z. (2007). LDV Sensing and Processing for Remote Hearing in a Multimodal Surveillance System. IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ’07. IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyon, D. (2009). Surveillance, Power and Everyday Life. In C. Avgerou et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford: Oxford Handbooks/Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maruyama, M. (1963). The Second Cybernetics. American Scientists, 5(2), 164–179.

    Google Scholar 

  • Masani, P. R. (1989). Norbert Wiener 1894–1964, Vita Mathematica. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag AG.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCulloch, W. S., & Pitts, W. (1947). How We Know Universals the Perception of Auditory and Visual Forms. The Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 9(3), 127–147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McKenzie, J. (2001). Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance (1st ed.). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills, M. (2012). Media and Prosthesis: The Vocoder, the Artificial Larynx, and the History of Signal Processing. Qui Parle, 21(1), 107–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Molina, E., Diallo, A., & Zhu, Z. (2013). Visual Noun Navigation Framework for the Blind. Journal of Assistive Technologies, 7(2), 118–130.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pallasmaa, J., Mallgrave, H. F., & Arbib, M. (2013). Architecture and Neuroscience: Volume 1, Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Design Reader. Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonami, L. (2006). On My Work. Contemporary Music Review, 25(5/6), 614.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonami, L. (2014). And Now We Leave Gloves and Other Wearables to (Small) Dictators. London: NIME, Goldsmith. http://sonami.net/writing-goldsmith/

  • Trippett, D. (2018). Music and the Transhuman Ear: Ultrasonics, Material Bodies, and the Limits of Sensation. Musical Quarterly, 100(2), 199–261.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, T., Zhu, Z., Kraczek, R. S., & Rhody, H. E. (2011). A System Approach to Adaptive Multimodal Sensor Designs. In R. W. McMillan, R. Hammoud, G. Fan, & K. Ikeuchi (Eds.), Machine Vision beyond Visible Spectrum, Volume 1 of Augmented Vision and Reality (pp. 159–176). Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wiener, N. (1949). Sound Communication with the Deaf. Philosophy of Science, 16(3), 27–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiener, N. (1951). Problems of Sensory Prosthesis. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 57(1), 26–36.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zbikowski, D. (2004). Media Art Net (2004): Nauman, Bruce: Video Surveillance Piece: Public Room, Private Room.http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/video-surveillance-piece/. Visited on 2004.

  • Zhu, Z., & Huang, T. S. (2007). Multimodal Surveillance: Sensors, Algorithms, and Systems (Eds. Z. Zhu & T. S. Huang). Boston: Artech House Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, Z., Li, W., & Wolberg, G. (2005). Integrating LDV Audio and IR Video for Remote Multimodal Surveillance. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition – Workshops, 2005. CVPR Workshops. IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, Z., Molina, E., Wolberg, G., & Li, W. (2007). LDV Sensing and Processing for Remote Hearing in a Multimodal Surveillance System. In 2007 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Minneapolis, MN, pp. 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zielinski, S. (2006). Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Graydon Wetzler

Authors
  1. Graydon Wetzler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Graydon Wetzler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Media, London College of Communication University of the Arts London, London, UK

    Susan Flynn

  2. Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Antonia Mackay

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Wetzler, G. (2019). Wayfinding re/dicto. In: Flynn, S., Mackay, A. (eds) Surveillance, Architecture and Control. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00371-5_15

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation