About This Project
The border between the U.S. and Mexico has moved between the virtual and the all too real since before the birth of the two nation-states. This has allowed a deep archive of suspect movement across this border to be traced and tagged – specifically anchoredto immigrants bodies moving north, while immigrant bodies moving south much less so. The danger of moving north across this border is not a question of politics, but vertiginous geography. Hundreds of people have died crossing the U.S./Mexico border due to not being able to tell where they are in relation to where they have been and which direction they need to go to reach their destination safely. Now with the rise of multiple distributed geospatial information systems (such as the Goggle Earth Project for example), GPS (Global Positioning System) and the developing Virtual Hiker Algorithm by artist Brett Stalbaum it is now possible to develop useful Transborder Tools for Immigrants – and allow virtual geography to mark new trails and potentially safer routes across this desert of the real.
The technologies of Spatial Data Systems and GPS (Global Positioning System) have enabled an entirely new relationship with the landscape that takes form in applications for simulation, surveillance, resource allocation, management of cooperative networks and pre-movement pattern modeling (such as the Virtual Hiker Algorithm) an algorithm that maps out a potential or suggested trail for real a hiker/or hikers to follow. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would add a new layer of agency to this emerging virtual geography that would allow segments of global society that are usually outside of this emerging grid of hyper-geo-mapping-power to gain quick and simple access with to GPS system. The Transborder Immigrant Tool would not only offer access to this emerging total map economy – but, would add an intelligent agent algorithm that would parse out the best routes and trails on that day and hour for immigrants to cross this vertiginous landscape as safely as possible.
7 responses so far
This looks like a candidate for globalizing so you can get it to people like the Karen of Burma so they can get away from oppression.
[...] The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) is a small group of artivists engaged in developing the theory and practice of Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD). Here a link to a very interesting blog and art project [...]
Hey guys. Wanted to let you know we just published an interview with Ricardo Dominguez. He speaks about the TIT, the Critical Art Ensemble, and Calit2, among other things. You can read it here:
http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n11/htdocs/follow-the-gps-225.php
Author : The Eagle (IP: 214.13.141.100 , host141-100.iraq.centcom.mil)
E-mail : pcomey@gmail.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=214.13.141.100
It’s disgusting that a group such as this exists to circumvent U.S. law. Perhaps an investigation should be initiated to determine if they can be charged with Conspiracy/Aiding and Abetting the Illegal Entry of Aliens (18 USC 2/8 USC 1325).
How do you people sleep? You are criminals, circumventing the laws of the United States to promote your own power grabbing agendas. I pray that soon the people of Mexico and South America will wake up and see that they are pawns in a game that will lose ,for them, the last vestiges of hope to take their homelands back from druglords and despots.
Instead of coming to America illegally, to bus tables and mow grass (as a virtual slave class), while being used as pollitical cannon fodder,(by LULAC, LaRaza,Answer, etc.) to help leftwing globalist-socialists overthrow a constitutional republic, they should be amassing arms and returning home to fight the drug cartels, and innept politicians, that are pushing them from their rightful property. Perhaps, though, I am taking a stand for them out of ignorrance. I am “assuming” that they are “MEN”, who would fight against evil forces to the death, to protect their homes, families, property, sovereignty, and culture, as I intend to do, rather than “COWARDS”, who would abbandon their own grandparents, children, wives, nation, and cultural legacy, for the easy way out – to sneek over in the dead of night and steal it from us. I sincerely hope ,for their sake and mine, that they are Brave, Decent, Honorable, Intelligent, Men. But, time will tell.
[...] US-Mexico border crossers for the simple purpose of helping crossers not die. It’s called the Transborder Immigration Tool and it is out of CalIT2 in San [...]
I am glad to see this technology available to us all. We may need it ourselves to escape south of the border to freedom from this sham government sacrificing the masses to ever feed the worthless wealthy. Good work!