November 17, 2007 | CorinneRamey

http://mobileactive.org/artivists-and-mobile-pho

Ricardo Dominguez calls himself an "artivist." Half political activism and half
art, Ricardo's projects blur the boundaries between the aesthetic and the
political. "We always view our activism within the frame of art and the poetic,"
said Ricardo. Ricardo was part of a team that was recently awarded the
Transnational Communities Award for a Transborder Immigrant Tool that uses
GPS-enabled mobile phones to help immigrants crossing the border between Mexico
and the United States.

MobileActive recently had a discussion with Ricardo on art, activism, and mobile
phones. Ricardo, a researcher in the Calit2 lab at the University of California
at San Diego, was given the award along with colleagues Brett Stalbaum, Micha
Cárdenas y Jason Najarro. The project seeks to create a way for immigrants to
orient themselves while crossing the border between the United States and
Mexico, which is traversed by thousands of immigrants each year. The device
seeks to reduce the number of deaths along the border by helping immigrants
locate resources such as water caches and safety beacons.

The idea for the project arose from a program called the Virtual Hiker, a
project of UCSD visual art professor Brett Stalbaum. "Brett gets lost even going
to his house," joked Ricardo, "so he started working on a locative media project
called the Virtual Hiker...He developed an algorithm that took into account a
certain terrain, and created a virtual trial or hike based on those algorithms."
By using GPS, the program created virtual hikes and would orient the user
towards certain landmarks. Brett was able access "the kind of utility cloud that
GPS offers," said Ricardo.

The Virtual Hiker program led the team to question ways that GPS technology
could be used to help immigrants crossing the border. "We asked ourselves, what
were the spaces of necessity or danger on the border, and how could we plug in
this new element of the GPS structured cell phone?" said Ricardo. The answer to
that question was the Transborder Immigrant Tool.

The tool is built on a Motorola i455 phone, which offers several advantages. Not
only is the phone cheap -- about $40, according to Ricardo -- but no service is
required for GPS functionality. "What we needed was a really inexpensive
telephone, one that we could crack the GPS system, and one that would accept new
algorithms."

The team took language into account when designing the application. "We needed
to design the interface in a way that would be somewhat universal in terms of
the community that would be crossing the border," he said. Many of the migrants
are from indigenous communities, and wouldn't necessarily speak Spanish. The end
result was a navigation system that looks like a compass. The phone also
vibrates in response to certain landmarks, like water or a highway. The
vibrations allow the user to concentrate on the surrounding environment instead
of constantly looking at the screen of the phone.

Ricardo sees even the interface of the phone as having artistic value. "We were
trying to think of many layers of communication -- iconic, sound, vibratory," he
said. Additionally, the program helps the user not only avoid getting lost, but
helps him or her find a more aesthetic route. "The algorithm would look at it
not just in terms of a map or a politics but by suggesting the most aesthetic
crossing," he said. Eventually, the people using the tool to cross the border
would form an imaginary "mass desert painting" or "walking art," Ricardo said.
"All the immigrants that would participate would in a sense participate in a
large landscape of aesthetic vision."

The project is still in its preliminary stages, but by the end of next year the
team hopes that it will be a working and usable tool. "In the next stage, the
research team will go to both ends of the border and work with the tools
directly in terms of triangulating the info to the satellites," said Ricardo.
The final step of the project will include workshops and trainings with groups
that work with immigrants who are getting ready to cross the border. Possible
partners include Casa Imigrante and the Centro de Informacion para Trabajadoras
y Trabajadores (CITTAC). "We hope to get them to communities that interface with
people getting ready to cross," said Ricardo.

Ricardo says that the team currently has enough funding to pay for 500 phones,
and hopes to purchase more in the future. He also mentioned the possibility of
adding about $50 of phone time to each tool, although, he said, that team
recommended only using the tools as phones in emergencies for security reasons.
The team is also working with a group of teachers to design a simple pamphlet
with instructions on how to use and upgrade the tool. He hopes the instructions
will be similar to the safety cards available on airplanes -- they'll rely more
on pictures and icons than language.

Ricardo sees the Transborder Immigrant Tool as part of a larger trend of border
disturbance art. "There's a long history of artists at the border creating
gestures that question the very nature of the border," said Ricardo. Because
disturbance art is framed as art, and not as solely political activism, the
"artivists" are given more leeway politically. "The reason they can't stop us is
that we always frame all these gestures within the poetic frame." By framing
politics as art, and art as inextricably linked to politics, projects like the
Transborder Immigrant Tool are able to survive as both a life-saving device and
an "artivist" concept.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!