Background introduction
This article recovers and represents a collection of texts, images and mobile video clips related to an art and design project entitled 'Aware: Rengo' in which the author initiated and collaborated in with others. It was a workshop that took place during a 3 month-long process in summer 2004, culminating in a guided-tour presentation on 21st August, which contributed to the 'Wireless Experience' Conference, as part of the 12th International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2004) in Helsinki, Finland.[1] Considering this forum, the workshop and presentation arguably took place at a high-point of artistic and research interest in the creative potential of mobile media, before wide-spread adoptation of mobile internet and media-based mobile devices.
The Aware platform, existing and in use from 2003-2005, was a prototype media blog, design tool and a production environment, developed as a multi-disciplinary project in Helsinki. It was initiated as a collaborative project between myself and John Evans, Markus Ort, Aki-Ville Pöykiö and myself at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design Helsinki (now part of Aalto University). At that time I had just began doctoral studies at the Medialab, while the others John Evans and Aki-Ville Pöykiö were MA students in Media Lab at the time, and Markus Ort, an exchange student from Köln International School of Design (KISD). We met and joined up within the context of a course named Interactive Audio-visual Narratives, led by media artist and director, Mika Tuomola. We worked following the course as a group for approximately 6 months, where-after John Evans and myself carried on specifically together in several workshop projects between January 2004 and February 2005 using the Aware platform.
At the point of ISEA2004, the Aware platform was one of the most sophisticated technical platforms of its type at the time, facilitating and allowing for collective publication and syndication of mobile media, focusing upon relations between objective and subjective contextual information, such as proximity, location, temporality, theme and event [Figure 1]. Although in limited use, mostly used by ourselves in personal and project explorations, it attracted the interest of various groups, including computer scientists, such as Mika Raento, developer of the ContextPhone software,[2] who became a collaborator of the collective, as well as media and design researchers based in the same institution as part of their digital ethnography Mobile Probes research.[3] The Aware platform's capability at the time, and exposure during ISEA2004 via our stall and the 'Rengo' contribution to the programme led to our invitation to dLux MediaArts in Sydney in January 2005 as part of their Mobile Journeys programme,[4] and also sparked a new collaborative project entitled 'LOCA' between Evans, Raento and one of the audience members of the guided-tour presentation, Drew Hemment (Evans et al., 2006).[5]
Initiated by this author, and realized with collaborator John Evans, the 'Aware: Rengo' workshop invited 5 additional multi-disciplinary students—Iiris Konttinen, Meri Laitinen, Susanna Neiglick, Renita Niemi, Niko Pyrhönen—to explore together the potential of mobile media at the time. Each participant at that time had different personal and academic interests, including literature, aesthetics, interaction design, communication and media art studies. This combination and hybridity of approaches was desirable in our collective activity.
Rengo as title was inspired by combining the medieval-era Japanese linked-verse practice called renga, as elaborated later, with the practice of making short mobile videos, using contextual meta-data and memory of collaborative activity done together with others to make links and connections between them. The combinations of processes, interests and media practices involved also made 'Aware: Rengo' a challenging project to communicate, both at the time and afterwards. We aimed to present the process, the inter-related ideas and experiences involved. In an interview on the day of the ISEA2004 public performative-presentation, I revealed a sense of the 'rengo puzzle', as I recalled one of our workshop participant's feedback:
Figure 1. 'Aware' platform functionality schematic, August 2014, graphic design by Markus Ort, software engineering by John Evans and Aki-Ville Pöykiö.
Introduction to Renga tradition
As introduced, the initiative conceptually focused upon exploring the practice of renga, in relation to ideas of mobile experience. Renga is a poetry practice originating from medieval Japan, based upon collective activity and linked-verse, where each person contributes in relation to the last person’s, so that the outcome is a linked series of poetic fragments, making a whole poem.
The origins of renga may be traced to 9th Century Japan, in a spirit of innocently competitive entertainment and games, such as 'matching games' using natural objects, which Kenneth Yasuda, in his cultural history of Japanese Haiku, refers to early 20th century historian W. Asano who wrote that: "the participants vied with each other in the length of roots of the grass they plucked and [such games] further developed into chrysanthemum contests, poppy contests" and so on. Other items including man-made utensils gradually became the object of comparison. Hence, as Yasuda suggests, noting the popularity of poetry, and its knowledge and practice an indicator of cultured accomplishment among the 'leisured classes' of the period, that the spirit of 'matching games' would also be incorporated into a practice of reciting poetry so that it "evolved in which two contestants sought to out-cap each other's verse either through greater wit, appropriate-ness, or with further development of beauty and poetic effect".[6] In the early stages of such practice, recorded as katuata, it was mostly used in the 'question-and-answer' form, initiated "simply, directly, spontaneously, in one breath length. And the answer to the question is given in the same manner, in one breath".[7] As further referenced by Yasuda, this katuata form of poetry was not intended for when one has time to think, reflect or elaborate, but for immediate response, an utterance of words.
In the following Manyō period of development, there was a subsequent elaboration of poetic structures, such 'matching spirit' formulated a 'duet' like verse, where one person composed a tanka form - a prelude form to the haiku - and another person composed another, into the practice of cooperative composition of one form by two people. During the Heian period (794-1192) the practice which became know as renga (first mentioned in historical document in 1127) became increasingly popular among the courted classes, as a fashionable pastime and diversion during the poetry tournament gatherings, organized by the Royal courts of the period. here are rules and logics to taking part, including a guiding coordinator or ‘master’. Due to the fact that renga forms were included in imperial anthologies of poetry of the time, it is noted that these forms must have gained a degree of importance. Despite subsequent steps towards renga becoming an increasingly complex literary form, it was in the early stages, greatly popular at heart, because of its aim to arouse momentary appreciation and surprise. In addition, it was also an activity in which poetic retort and quick wittedness was valued most highly.[8] Following the Heian period, early-medieval Japan underwent social and cultural upheaval, in which the imperial court nobility lost its cultural pre-eminence, but also created a cultural renaissance period, in which many of the foundational arts were formed and cultivated into art forms.[9]
In it's most literary form renga, like haiku, may share everyday moments of non-human and human existence, relative to time, and located inspiration. Traditionally, renga as a practice created a social and inclusive space by sitting round in a circle speaking with each other. Intimacy, sponteniety, performance, and cross-boundary social participation were important aspects during different historical periods. Modern poets have been inspired by these qualities and have shared linked-verse using contemporary means. For example, in North America, poets are cited as using linked-verse over remote locations via letter-mail, for example "Coast-to-Coast".[10] Back in Japan, in context of digital media, media artists Reiko Nakamura and Toshihiro Anzai promoted the practice of linked-verse renga with their digital imaging project of the same name, facilitating the exchange of digital images over the internet and with different groups of people.[11]
Imagining a mobile culture of response
According to Machito Kusahara, reporting of mobile messaging trends in Japan around 2003, traditions such have renga had naturally moved onto the mobile platform, in the form of SMS haiku clubs, and linked mobile-imaging.[12] The rise in activity of online weblogs at the time in the Western world led to users and commentators of such systems, such as Joi Ito, to elaborate upon it's democratic potential in open content contribution and communication.[13]
For example, the 'Paperikori' project in which Aki-Ville Pöykiö programmed in Helsinki, 2003, was one of the first to utilise the 'Aware' platform, utilizing a SMS-gateway to distribute the 'latest instalments' of story to a multiple group of people, encouraging them to continue to another section via text message. The online presentation page allowed all participants and the online audience to view the full linked-narrative in entirety. The access to participate and appreciate the full outcome is reminiscent of cross-boundary social participation of renga mentioned above.
Furthermore, early research into the practices of sending picture messages between friends, producing emotional enjoyment appears to have a similarity to the linked-correspondence of renga: “the replying message was constructed using both visual and textual references to the first one”; “the meanings, fun and pleasure of communication that leads to our engagement.. is based on a continuous chain of retrospective-prospective comparisons between messages”.[14] Rather than just use of the mobile device as a tool for communication and keeping in touch, the camera-phone especially has been suggested to promote a sense of "co-experience".[15]
In early 2003, this emerging mobile culture of response inspired me propose to my new 'Aware' collaborators a mobile interaction concept under the name of 'rengo', suggesting the combination of renga linked-verse practice with the movement associated with mobile media capturing, sharing and publishing, as well as the development of co-experience. The scenario focused on location-specific placement of media, and asynchronous experience of it, when the person who 'left' the media fragment to elicit an response had already left the location.
A later 'rengo' experiment, using camera-phones and sharing with bluethooth wireless networking, took place between myself, media artist and filmmaker Pete Gomes, and local resident Vladimir Gekov at the Locative Media Workshop in Latvia in July 2003.[16] This occasion, sharing mobile images backwards and forwards in response to anothers', with the limit of network connectivity, offered glimpses of the influence that location-context—including proximity, nearness and remoteness—had in linked media practice. This insight in regards to proximity, in addition with limited speed of mobile data transfer at the time, proved consequential to focusing on physical transfer (literally handing over the mobile device) in future exercises.
Grounded in poetics rather than technology, the basic interaction imagined to generate forms of linked-verse took the fore: that of the practice to (1) link and (2) shift. Referred to by the Haiku poet Basho as “linking by scent”, the first practice moves one link on to the other, with knowledge of some commonality with the previous, however indirect that suggested connection. The rule determines also that each link must in some way move in another thematic direction as well as connect with the previous link. Secondly, ‘shift’ makes reference to connections that ‘shift the focus’ in another direction of the previous link so that it creates excitement, variety, and avoids repetition.[17]
Hence, we went into the 'Aware: Rengo' project to explore, through experimentation with others, the qualities of 'linking' and 'shifting' focus using emerging mobile media. Even if at the beginning, we didnt know how to do this, or what this might actually involve.
As producers myself and John Evans planned that the most appropriate context to communicate contextual media and mobile interaction was to arrange an outdoor site-specific contribution to the conference, untypical to usual protocol, as a guided walk. This article re-presents our original ambition of the guided-tour presentation walk on 21st August 2004 to address the following questions: How does one write about an activity which happened collaboratively and dispersed in space and time? How can one invite a reader/audience into a relationship with a highly contextual, locative event, that happened in the recent contemporary past? How does one make space for the dialogue of experiences from initiators/producers, participants, audience-members who participated in the process?
I argue here that hese questions still echo from past experience, and present themselves as still worth reflecting upon and are consided in reflection. However, before returning to the guided-tour, and those considerations, it is necessary to describe the inspiration that initiated the project.
Producer 1: It was really fun going through this whole process, because each time you were doing something new, and taking a step in the process of doing it, a little of the puzzle was being revealed.. You understood why you were trying to bring together eh renga poetry with mobile media, and context, and then the idea of doing a walk, all these things.. It was such a mixture.. That it wasn't always completely obvious what was going on.. It has always been an emergent understanding of what was going on.. And because we were trying respond to what was the good things in the process as we were going along.. [Exploring] how can we communicate the type of intuitions we had, or the experiences we had in the appropriate context where we were doing things.
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[9] Souyri, P. F. 2001. The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society. New York: Columbia University Press. p.170-173.
[13] Ito, J. 2003. Weblogs and Emergent Democracy. Edited by Jon Lebkowsky. Accessed online: http://joi.ito.com/static/emergentdemocracy.html
[6] Yasuda, K. 2001. Japanese Haiku: its essential nature and history. Boston: Tuttle Publishing. p.162.
[17] Basho, M. [1644-1694] 2000. Narrow Path to the Interior, and other writings. Translated by Humill, S. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
[12] Kusahara, M. 2003, Mobile Communication: view on Japanese Ketai culture, Lecture presentation at 'Media Convergences' Conference, 30th August, LUME theatre, University of Art and Design, Helsinki.
[16] Locative Media Workshop, organised by RIXC, July 16-26, 2003. Karosta-Liepaja, Latvia. More information http://www.locative.x-i.net
[15] Battarbee, K. 2004. Co-experience: Understanding User Experiences in Social Interaction. Doctoral thesis. Helsinki: University of Art and Design.
[11] Kusahara, M. 1997. Historical Perspective of Art and Technology: Japanese Culture Revived in Digital Era - On Originality and Japanese Culture. Presented at Invencao: Humanization of Technology Conference, Sao Paulo, 1996. Transcription published online in 1997. Further information about the project can be accessed via Nakamura, R., Anzai, T. 1992-2007. The Renga project. http://www.renga.com
[14] Kurvinen, E. 2002. ‘Emotions in Action: a Case in Mobile Visual Communication’, in Proceedings of the Design + Emotion Conference, Loughborough University UK, 2002.
[10] Ross, B. 2002. How to Haiku: a writers guide to haiku and related forms. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.
[1] M-cult and authors. 2004. ISEA2014 12th Symposium of Electronic Art Catalogue. Helsinki: M-Cult. Aware: Rengo featured on page 61. Accessible online.
[2] Raento M., Oulasvirta, A., Petit R., and Toivonen, R. 2005. 'ContextPhone: A Prototyping Platform for Context-Aware Mobile Applications', IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 2, April-June 2005, pp. 51-59, Los Alamitos CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
[3] Hulkko, S., Keinonen, T., Mattelmäki, T., and Virtanen, K. 2004. 'Mobile Probes'. In Proceedings of NordiCHI2004, Finland 23-27 October 2004.
[4] dLux MediaArts. 2005. 'Aware, shared mobile experience(s)' masterclass. Mobile Journeys programme in January 2005. Accessible online. This master class was documented and reviewed by Anna Davies, and written as a blog-post in November 2007. Accessible online.
[5] Evans, J., Hemment, D., Humphries, T., and Raento M. 2006. 'Loca: Set To Discoverable' Project and practice-led research. Presented at ISEA2006 and ZeroOne Festival, August 7-13. San Jose, USA. Accessible online.
In the lobby getting ready to start
How does one write about an activity which happened collaboratively and dispersed in space and time? How can one invite a reader/audience into a relationship with a highly contextual, locative event, that happened in the recent contemporary past? How does one make space for the dialogue of experiences from initiators/producers, participants, audience-members who participated in the process?
According to typical media arts profession, with the roles of initiator and co-producer, I act as narrator for the 'Aware: rengo' workshop collaborative activity. This singularization of authorship for collective activity is recognized as selection and partial, with aims here in this text to consider the above questions. Multiple voices (in italics) are transcribed and adjusted from an audio recording of the 'Aware: Rengo' guided-tour presentation walk. Jodi Rose, then artist-in-residence at Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC Radio, Sydney, made audio documentation/interviews of our event as potential programme material. On receiving a copy of the files, I made a transcription of the audio in March 2005.
Within the transcription are acknowledged are the different roles (and origins of the audience-members) present, to distinguish the various degrees of experience speaking for/about/towards the activity. Informed by methodological considerations of performance and ethnographic praxis, "the observer and the observed are coperformers in a performance event" [18] This statement applies to the different participants and audiences involved, and can now include the reader. Feel free to speak aloud the different roles, acting each one or more as necessary.
Centre stage, take a breath, begin. Attempt to raise the voice, to attract attention, to rouse..
Guided tour and experience
As already mentioned, our collective guided-tour presentation to a specialist audience under the theme of 'wireless experience', aimed to consider the challenge of engaging with an audience and re-presenting mobile interaction practices. As workshop producers, we had a set of curiosities, which expanded from the experience of developing a mobile media/online platform (i.e. 'Aware'), as well as the process of organizing participatory workshop events which invite people's involvement with it. These curiosities mirrored the questions set out above - how to represent practice, and how one might invite workshop-participants and audience into a dialogical process. In addition, as already mentioned, we wished to combine the historical practice of renga, we were interested in exploring direct, mediated and mobile interactions, including the influence of context and proximity.
With such aims, several production decisions were made in advance of the workshop process, with guidance from ISEA2004 executive producer Amanda McDonald Crowley and Helsinki-focused producer Hanna Harris, determining our planned presentation outcome which was a non-standard symposium presentation. We decided to make an outdoor guided tour of what we had done rather than doing a live renga interaction for the audience. This gave the benefit of pre-planning and scripting a scenographic route and plot, but maintained space for improvisational aspects within the presentation, and incorporating the narrative of the workshop process. This approach also suited the aim to make space for those involved in the process as participants to speak of their own experience. Our 'rengo' method of re-presenting was set and put into the symposium catalogue and programme.
The location of the ISEA2004 'Wireless Experience' -themed Symposium in Helsinki, as already mentioned was University of Art and Design Helsinki, in the emerging Arabianranta neighbourhood, north-east of the city centre. The area is named after the famed ceramics factory in which the University is now based. Furthermore, because of the applied art and design heritage of the area, as well as the contemporary academic associations, and early high-speed broadband access to the area, it had a reputation for combining art and design with new IT communications technologies. A special feature of the neighbourhood development was the requirement by all housing developers to include 1-2% of their budget towards the production of public art works. There was an association to creativity and a newness about the area, with a perceivable sense of a place in transition.[19] Based on this context and assemblage of factors, our plan to take symposium participants outside the conference and seminar rooms seemed rather appropriate. During the summer of 2004, the neighbourhood was in partial construction and development with heavy machinery still around, with semi-finished tram-rail and ground surfaces in certain areas. All these features proved to be inspiration later [See figure 7].
The workshop participants became involved by responding to our call of interest within Helsinki education institutions, to develop into a community of practice—sharing activities, everyday lived and constructed experience. From this situation, as presenters at an international symposium, the group is also identified as a community of expertise (of their own lived experience), presenting in English. John Dewey described 'funded experience' as how each person understands a set of objects or scene, with interests, attitudes, meanings and values drawn from previous experiences.[20] In this case, a strong production emphasis on lived or funded experience as knowledge was defining and important—re-telling a story with spoken word, utilizing mobile-media clips, objects on the walk and so on. Traces or signs related in the context and inspiration of the situation. The strategy aimed to reduce the technological fetish of the device or network, focusing primarily on the group experience of using such things.
Producer 1: Ok everybody, we have a gathering now of people, so maybe we can start to walk towards the outside. We are gonna.. This is a walk around the block essentially.. Eh we are gonna go across the road and to a little park area.. We will introduce the project and then we will walk around it [a route around Arabianranta] .. Eh we did imagine 40 mins but it could take a little longer.. Eh we hope that is not going to be a problem for anyone.. Eh so if we can just walk outside we will introduce the project outside..
Audience 1 (US): Could you do a quick summary of the project actually?
Producer 1: We will do that outside
Audience 1 (US): Oh, ok
Audience 2 (our inside 'plant'): Get some fresh air for your brain
Interviewer: So this is the lobby at the LUME Media Centre, University of Art and Design and the beginning of the Rengo walk
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[18] Denzin, N. K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. London: Sage Publishing. p.12.
Figure 5. Main entrance and exit of LUME and University of Art and Design Helsinki / Starting point of Aware: Rengo performative-presentation walk.
Figure 7. At the time of summer 2004, the number 6 tramline was being extended into the newly emerging Arabianranta neighbourhood. Exposed, written on the side of one of the tracks was 'Arabianlenkki', which if translated from Finnish means 'Arabia links'.
Figure 6. Audience gathered outside on 21st August 2004 for introduction presentation about Aware: Rengo.
[19] Isohanni, T. 2010. Art in Arabiaranta: Art collaboration 2000-2010. Helsingin kaupungin talous- ja suunnittelukeskuksen julkaisuja 4/2010. Helsinki: Helsinki City.
Walking the route again
To recall, for the audience-members who attended, the ISEA2004 presentation was a guided tour of the previous process. That is, of the collaborative engagement by ourselves as workshop participants, with the site of Arabianranta, mobility, and a mediated renga exercise, referred to here as the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk.
Micro-interactions, and environmental awareness
In/coherence and shifting attention between directed and ambient listening, in reflection, had parallels to the interaction model engaged in with the mobile (capture) devices.
The pace for details
The pace of the guided-tour presentation route [Figure 22] around the conference venue of University of Art and Design, and the Arabianranta area, changed between essentially two modes:
1. Standing still as a group. One or two persons (producer or workshop participant) took the responsibility to tell. The rest of persons present were mostly listening. These highlighted 'situations' in the presentation inform the audience of certain situated interactions and processes at that particular site, or appropriate to the narrative presented. Sequenced video-clips from the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk of 11/08/04 were handed round on mobile devices according to the location of the highlight.
2. Walking as a group inbetween 'situations'. Persons (producers, workshop-participants, audience-members) were talking or listening to whomever is nearby and that they wished to speak to. Some people were listening to various conversations. These were ad-hoc situated 'drifts' in the presentation, sharing various comments, experiences, interests related or unrelated to earlier processes.
Overheard conversations
When walking, pausing, speaking, or listening, proximity was an influencing factor in understanding.
Different iterations of the walk were explained: choosing the route, documenting details, learning knowledge about the local history and activities in the Arabianranta area (currently undergoing a large-scale urban development). Due to the realities of gathering busy people each week, not all workshop-participants were present on each iteration. Hence, we each had different layers of lived experience, and various 'accumulations' of memory on the route. The accumulation continued as workshop-participants paused the walk, gathering the audience to highlight the linked-verse interaction between each other, the location, object of interest or attention, and the mediated experience of the previous link.
Outdoor locations, if I am crtical in reflection to how the audience members understood what they heard, are unlike conference venues typically, full of distractions. Feedback was that it was difficult keeping track of multiple surrounding conversations. In contrast, the documented record of the conversation between co-performers during the walk all depended upon how the microphone was positioned, either in directed or environmental attention.
Experience
The emphasis on experience as knowledge was introduced at the beginning of the guided-tour walk.
Miwon Kwon, in her critical analysis of community-specific art projects notes that often there are "specific invisible processes" within community collaborations: "in their enactment of the necessary institutional and individual exchanges and compromises (as opposed to their rhetorical descriptions of them), many of which are carried out in improvisational ways."[21] To understand these processes and exchanges, Kwon poses questions which intend to reveal them, addressing in actual practice: How is the group identified as a community, and who identifies them as such? Who decides the issues addressed, and how they are represented? What is the nature of the collaborative relationship? And how does the community coincide with the audience?
Production process
Throughout, the workshop followed processual, social-engaged practices, informed by various artistic, design and devised performance approaches. We also experimented with rapid-prototyping, exploring rules, logic and wireless media engagement. During this time, we got to know the mobile devices we had available at the time to use, one of the latest models for mobile media [Figure 9].
During the residency stage of the workshop at the summer cottage in Kemiö, In the process, we invited Australian sonic media artist Sophea Lerner, who was then based in Helsinki, to join us in the residential summer-cottage part of the workshop as a co-facillitator or 'renga mistress' for the group, leading listening and poetic awareness walks [Figure 10]. Lerner's significant contribution at that time was emphasizing to us the non-mediated and non-technological exchange involved in our process, helping us to focus on embodied practice.
Producer 1: Lets focus back on the interaction that was actually happening on this walk last week.. What was happening was that people were passing round two of these phones round each other
Workshop-participant 1: As you can see in the last clips, we got from one thing to something very different.. But often it also happens that when you are without the phone.. You dont really concentrate on what the others are doing.. But instead you are looking for objects of interest with which you can create various responses to the other clips, and it sometimes happens that you get.. One theme, always repeating, twice maybe three times
Producer 1: Did you mention about the narrowing down of your interaction and opening up afterwards.. Can you speak of that?
Workshop-participant 1: Yeh.. When you take the phone, you often close yourself to anything that is around you, and you are only taking the information from what people before you have done.. And then after you open up
Producer 2: It is a bit like tunnel vision.. The way that you relate to everyone in the group completely changes.. You go from being part of the group like this, to being very much like 'about the [object of attention]', then you go back to exactly how you were before.. This of course mirrors exactly how you normally interact with the phone.. You have similar instances.. You receive a call and you will turn away [and remove yourself from the group for that time]
Producer 1: If you look around already there are a couple of people who are.. On these devices.. And they are not being part of the group at all.. They are having a short conversation, but as we start walking and pass on, I take them back.. They will start being part of the group again, They look around and eh their sense of environmental awareness is changing and switching from being a very focused one, to one which is more ambient
Workshop-participant 1: For me, it was sometimes quite the opposite, what happens to you when you get the phone.. When you get the phone in normal life, you close yourself to the other people in the group, but here the time you have the phone in your hand is the only time you are interacting with the people in the group, as in the other times you are looking around you and trying to find these objects of interest
Producer 2: So we are going to walk now for a bit
Producer 1: Last week, On the 11th August, last wednesday, eh we decided to do the renga session which we now present fragments of. Today! As a result of the exercises we did in the summer cottage we decided upon certain rules.. The renga activity is already set in rules. A set amount of time. It was 40 minutes.. [Figure 11]
We walked as a group. We tried to stay together.. We decided already a fixed order of links so each person knew who would respond to, one after each other. We decided to use only mobile movies.. When people have captured movies, they would type in a context word, upload this to Aware – the archive – and speak this word of context to the other person they were passing on [the mobile device] to. So there was a chain of activity.
The other idea is that they were narrating over the video. So there was always spoken word added on top, so actually it was quite a complex mix of things.. There was 5 participants, and 2 phones passed around.. A fast order that happened every couple of minutes [Figure 12].
These were rules we set up in advance, and the walk started and we will now walk follow the route that we took last week.
Workshop-participant 3 showing video-clip [8351]: Here you can see a piece of eh history.. We decided that these are moulds for the moulds.. doing those [Arabia] plates.. And as we were passing those different places here we were taking those clips.. And for instance the person before me she was taking a clip where we just were, and she said to me the context word was ‘business’.. And then I said.. I was just coming and passing by this place and I just.. yeh that is the old business.. and it was somehow related to her clip.. And I think later on you see the clip down there.
Producer 1: You passed it on to who next?
Producer 2: As we walk to the next place please feel free to ask us some questions.. Talk to the participants if you wish.. Once we get to the place we will pause again.. Try and generate a conversation or dialogue as we go through.. So can we move on
Interviewer: So how did you find the experience?
Workshop-participant 2: It has been really enlightening you know.. You notice little things around me.. Because the renga thing and then rengo we did really make.. Eh forces people to perceive what is the immediate surroundings..
Interviewer: So things you wouldnt normally notice or pay attention to?
Workshop-participant 2: The really small things and how they connect to wider things and associations, links.. Relatedness
Interviewer: Hello, Hei, how are you?.. Can you tell me something about how the experience has been for you.. What you have enjoyed, not enjoyed.. What it has given you?
Workshop-participant 1: As I have been studying aesthetics, I have really enjoyed actually doing stuff, instead of commenting on what other people do. And this was kind of mixture of those two in a way.. You get to create your own, but still you have to create your own only in relation to what other people have done. So that is the part I really much enjoyed.. There are various ways to study aesthetics but the thing I am really interested in personally is art criticism.. And I try to.. Broaden the area of art criticism.. In criticizing things which are not usually considered art in the terms of art criticism
Interviewer: So what kind of things? I like this idea.. It is kind of a Duchampian, Dada approach
Workshop-participant 1: Yeh, partly that. And part of that is this project.. This is not really.. This really hasn't anything to do with art.. In terms of what we do.. The only thing that is vaguely related to art is the way we try to document it all and have something to present, but handling these everyday experiences in presentable ways is one of those things.. Treating normal experiences as art
Audience 3 (UK/AU): The technology was more constraining than you thought it was going to be?..
Workshop-participant 3: Yeh yeh thats right
Producer 2: We structured the workshop into 3 sections.
The first section took about 4 weeks.. One session a week in the evening. It was a space to get our group of people with fairly diverse backgrounds and get them to have a common discourse, get them familiar with the devices, familiar with the practice of renga, and also as a social space, so they would get to know each other.. Some interaction between them [and us].
So when we moved onto the intensive part, which was at a summer cottage in Kemiö [South West Finland] so we went there for 4 days once we got there we knew each other, we could start working.. And during that time we did rapid prototyping, bodystorming, basically coming up with an exercise, going out doing the exercise, coming back seeing what worked, what didnt work, discussing it, then going out and doing something again. And doing this over and over and over until we filtered out things that were thought were good. Start to see things that were bad, and started to evaluate what was going on.
The 3rd part of this workshop after the summer cottage was to return to Helsinki, reflect upon the results of that part of the workshop, and then to negotiate how we would do this walk
Audience 3 (UK/AU): And then the person.. Passes on.. Watches the clip before they start walking
Workshop-participant 1: Eh no. We were walking at the same time as we were watching the clip, otherwise it would have taken totally long
Audience 4 (UK): But the idea the idea is that one person does.. Sends it to another person in the group or to.. The database?
Workshop-participant 1: Yeh in a fixed order
Audience 4 (UK): So it is kind of like passing the baton..?
Audience 3 (UK/AU): Like chinese whispers! [actually more like exsquistite corpse]
Audience 4 (UK): A kind of narrative.. [Workshop-participant 1: Yeh exactly] Or at least a..
Audience 2 (our 'inside plant'): Thats for sure ahhhh [group laughs] now I refuse to.. I even have one.. [Audience 5 (FI): Now you have two hehehehe] I wait for the third one
Audience 5 (FI): Unless you pass it on to someone else and then you would just have one
Audience 2 (our 'inside plant'): I’ll wait a while, and give these to everybody
Producer 2: Eh.. If you want to stop here
Audience 4 (UK/AU): And thats the thing with walking isnt it? That the pace..
Workshop-participant 2: The pace really comes you know I have noticed when doing these exercises especially at the summer cottage when sometimes there was always someone setting the pace for the walk and he or she would sometimes eh.. Walk sometimes run.. Walk slow.. Run fast go.. And it really ehmm.. Had impact on how we.. Eh and what we perceive around us
[noise of feet walking blends in with other voices]
Workshop-participant 1: I am starting my 2nd year studying Aesthetics at Helsinki University
Workshop-participant 2: I am an English major at the University of Helsinki also studying communications and computer studies. And I am a light jockey
Workshop-participant 3: I am a graduating MA student in industrial design at this University
Producer 1: Two other participants. [Workshop-participant 4] is having a lovely holiday in Turkey, and [Workshop-participant 5] also who was present but had to leave early. Eh there was 5 in total
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Figure 18. Workshop participants during the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk pass the mobile device from one to another, after giving spoken 'context' word, encouraging the other to respond.
Figure 13. ISEA2004 audience members follow us re-walking the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk route on the 21st August.
Figure 14. Audience members responding in similar ways to workshop participates at special features on the walk, in this case, making sounds from the discarded and broken ceramics.
Figure 12. Compilation of images from 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk showing the acts of recording and walking as a group.
Figure 15. Replaying 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk media back to ISEA2004 audience member at same site of recording.
Figure 11. 'Arabianlenkki' Renga rules given before 11th August walk around Arabianranta district of Helsinki.
[21] Kwon, M. 2002. One Place After Another: site-specific art and locational identity. Massachussetts: MIT Press. p.116.
Figure 9. The mobile devices we used in our workshop and guided tour presentation were 6 Nokia 6600 media-phones. Launched in 2003, at the time of our workshop they were one of the most advanced Nokia products available, with VGA camera, mobile-video (9-27secs) and external memory card .
Figure 8. Producer's introduction presentation by the author (in yellow) and co-producer John Evans (on right).
Figure 10. The second section of the 'Aware: Rengo' workshop was an intensive 4-day workshop at Kemiö, experimenting with body-storming and 'linked' mobile media exercises.
Figure 23.
8339.8351.8352.8353 "from broken Arabia ceramic dumpster, to mushroom-like moulds installation to running track"
http://aware.uiah.fi/packet/?pkt=8339.8351.8352.8353
[NB: URL not accessible since 2006]
Figure 22. From the media produced and archived on the 'Arabianlenkki' renga session on August 11th 2004, selected highlights were extracted and presented to the audience on the ISEA2004 guided-tour walk on August 21st. A map of the devised route was sketched out, with note of highlighted media files that we had agreed to share with the audience members. Within the sketch, meta-data helped to identify, including unique ID, time in minutes and seconds, shared typed context keyword, and the sender. These video-clips and meta-data can be viewed further below.
Typed context: "Kasvu" ("Growth")
Spoken context: "Kaikki kasvaa ajallaan. Tähänkin tulee kohta tuollainen talo" ("Everything grows up in its time. A house like that, for instance, soon to be built here")
Typed context: "Sementtielementti" ("Cement elements")
Spoken context: "Massojen liikutteluun tehty laite" ("A device creted to move masses around")
Typed context: "Kasvu" ("Growth")
Spoken context: "Muutos on tavoiteltavaa luonnossakin. Pienistä palasista isoiksi massoiksi" ("Change is desirable in nature as well. From small pieces to great masses")
Figure 23.
8336.8337.8338.8340 "from 'new housing' to 'cement mixer"
http://aware.uiah.fi/packet/?pkt=8336.8337.8338.8340
[NB: URL not accessible since 2006]
Typed context: "Muutos" ("Change")
Spoken context: "Tähänkin nousee varmaan joku uusi asuintalo. Vai sittenkin ehkä joku - parkkipaikka" ("Even here some new house will be built. Or perhaps rather some ... parking lot")
Typed context: "Liiketoiminta" ("Business")
Spoken context: "Tavaraa liikkeessä" ("Things on the move")
Typed context: "Järjestys" ("Order")
Spoken context: "Pensaita riveissä, niinkuin sotilaita" ("Bushes in rows, like soldiers")
Typed context: "Run run run"
Spoken context: "Run run run.. Who comes in first? I guess I am not going to come in first"
The reason I pause..
The highlighted video-clips that we presented to our ISEA2004 audience, and reproduced here, was an edited selection to those shared between the workshop participants during the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk. Afterwards, together with the workshop participants, we viewed all the clips and tried to make sense of what we had. As recovered from a previously unextracted section of the audio transcription from 21st August, it was a complex process of sorting and identifying connections:
Producer 1: The reason I pause you here, is just to make an emphasis on the archival process that happened after the walk, because as I was already talking with yourself, there was quite a complex thing that was happening being recorded on the phone.. I emphasise again.. There was 3 phones, 2 were being passed around in the actual practice, 1 was crashing every so often.. There was 5 people, so each phone was being used of course by 5 people.. But there was no great order anymore in these phones, right? [laughs in audience]..
Producer 1: We came back up to the lab afterwards to try and put it in order. We realised that out of 44 clips only 20 of them or 25 of them, I cant remember.. Actually went into the database which recorded the timestamp, and which phone it came from [Recorded as 'path-1' or 'path-2' in filename], and things like this, of course other contextual information.. But the important point was the time.. Which meant that we had another set on the phone.. Which were not put in order and were still mixed up in this mix up of phones being moved around.. And we had to decide, actually.. Had to find out the word that was spoken between people because some of them wasnt recorded.. We had to decide then what were the links.. We were doing it in practice, one person to the other.. But what was the archive that was left over.. We actually spent a longer time sitting together upstairs putting together the order, than we did the walk..
Audience 2 (our inside 'plant'): But as you can see to his face, he enjoyed it quite a lot doing it [laughs in audience]
Producer 1: I got enjoyment from it as I am interested in archaeology, and how this applies.. Bringing together all these pieces out from the archive, and inferring relationships eh.. Our rengo folk who were doing the practice enjoyed it too.. So maybe they can say something about that.. [someone mentions the notebook].. I actually have my notes here.. [Figure 24] Hang on a second.. Which maybe gives some idea of the complexity that we are speaking about here.. [audience member: Wow].. These ones are archived.. [sound of clips playing in the background, conversation].. This is a filename on the phone.. This was an ID in the database.. This is what we inferred by looking at it.. Like by looking at the video and saying ok that person was speaking, they did that.. Right.. This was the eh.. We got the times of course.. This one was easy.. Right.. But all these ones didnt go in.. And all we had was the filenames and we knew of course who did it.. And we could also reconstruct what they said and its meaning..
Audience 4: Was that the fault with the technology or was it because people forgetting to upload or both?
Producer 1: It was a technology problem.. I wont go into the details.. But doing it, the practice was flowing in too fast, the network couldn't cope.. But the point was that some information was gathered and some was not and we had to actually reconstruct it afterwards..
Workshop-participant 1: And having two narratives running simultaneously did not do much to help!
Exchange between Audience 4 & 5: Heehe! Are you sure you got the right order? - Heehee.. Does it matter in the end? - If they say it is right it is right yeh
Producer 1: That is the point, yeh, does it matter in the end? [Audience member: Yeh, yeh, you have some kind of order] What sort of documentation..
Interviewer: So, hee, tell me kind of conclusions did you infer from this archaeological process?
Producer 1: Hahaha [shared laughs'] actually I have been interested in archaeology for a while as you know.. [22]
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[22] See Paterson, A. G., 2002. 'Stratigraphical Sound in 4D Space'. In Proceedings of 22nd International Audio Engineering Society (AES) Conference, 15-17 June. Espoo, Finland. New York: AES Conference Papers; Paterson, A. G., 2011. 'Stratigraphical recall: An auto-archaeological interpretation of artistic fieldwork', Journal of Visual Art Practice 10:1, pp. 51-69.
Closing words written in 2005
The 'Aware: Rengo' themes were context, experience, and process, in relation to linked-verse and teller-listener interactions, mobile media and site-specific engagement. The ISEA2004 guided-tour presentation of the 21st of August 2004 aimed to communicate in an appropriate and respectful manner these subjects, and the critical challenges they pose towards their presentation. Likewise this text, reflects upon the resultant interaction with the audience as a co-performed event. Enough is translated in these fragments and accompanying images to convey the essence. Acknowledging the temporal and poly-vocal gaps in this narrative, it will always only be a selected, edited and partial version of happened.
The permanent gaps that are missing here are simple/complex, but unmediated things: The embodied presence of passing mobile device on to another, from one hand to an others, with the context word spoken in their ear; And importantly, what this triggers in the imagination, according to the listener's own funded experience in situated, environmental context. Further, the audience moves on after the event, with their own impressions, mis/understandings, criticisms and experiences, to reflect upon, focus, or just as often, letting it all float by undocumented.
In full, the 'Aware: Rengo' process was (and continues) as an elaborate conversation, mirroring the interaction model of renga, which starts from the first verse (called the hokku), and sets the context of gathering and collaboration. Onwards, it was/is a linked-chain of perceptual and lived experiences passed between people, growing in form, and further, inviting others to take part in the activity.
This processual energy and labour was/is hard to grasp. And with this text, the passing-on of knowledge and experience continues. What I do not know, is who is reading or listening now, as another audience and, indeed, if and how you might respond.
Basho, M. [1644-1694] 2000. Narrow Path to the Interior, and other writings. Translated by Humill, S. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
Battarbee, K. 2004. Co-experience: Understanding User Experiences in Social Interaction. Doctoral thesis. Helsinki: University of Art and Design.
Denzin, N. K. 2003. Performance Ethnography: critical pedagogy and the politics of culture. London: Sage Publishing. p.12
Dewey, J. [1934] 2003. Art as Experience, New York: Perigee Press. p.86
Evans, J., Hemment, D., Humphries, T., and Raento M. 2006. 'Loca: Set To Discoverable' Project and practice-led research. Presented at ISEA2006 and ZeroOne Festival, August 7-13. San Jose, USA. Accessible online.
Hulkko, S.; Keinonen, T.; Mattelmäki, T.; Virtanen, K., 2004. 'Mobile Probes'. In Proceedings of NordiCHI2004, Finland 23-27 October 2004.
Isohanni, T. 2010. Art in Arabiaranta: Art collaboration 2000-2010. Helsingin kaupungin talous- ja suunnittelukeskuksen julkaisuja 4/2010. Helsinki: Helsinki City.
Ito, J. 2003. Weblogs and Emergent Democracy. Edited by Jon Lebkowsky. Accessible online.
Kurvinen, E. 2002. ‘Emotions in Action: a Case in Mobile Visual Communication’, in Proceedings of the Design + Emotion Conference, Loughborough University UK, 2002.
Kusahara, M. 1997. Historical Perspective of Art and Technology: Japanese Culture Revived in Digital Era - On Originality and Japanese Culture. Presented at Invencao: Humanization of Technology Conference, Sao Paulo, 1996. Transcription published in 1997. Accessible online.
Kusahara, M. 2003, Mobile Communication: view on Japanese Ketai culture, Lecture presentation at 'Media Convergences' Conference, 30th August, LUME theatre, University of Art and Design, Helsinki.
Kwon, M. 2002. One Place After Another: site-specific art and locational identity. Massachussetts: MIT Press. p.116.
M-cult and authors. 2004. ISEA2014 12th Symposium of Electronic Art Catalogue. Helsinki: M-Cult. Aware: Rengo featured on page 61. Accessible online.
Paterson, A. G., 2002. 'Stratigraphical Sound in 4D Space'. In Proceedings of 22nd International Audio Engineering Society (AES) Conference, 15-17 June. Espoo, Finland. New York: AES Conference Papers.
Paterson, A. G., 2011. 'Stratigraphical recall: An auto-archaeological interpretation of artistic fieldwork', Journal of Visual Art Practice 10:1, pp. 51-69. London: Intellect.
Raento M., Oulasvirta, A., Petit R., and Toivonen, R. 2005. 'ContextPhone: A Prototyping Platform for Context-Aware Mobile Applications', IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 2, April-June 2005, pp. 51-59, Los Alamitos CA: IEEE Computer Society Press.
Ross, B. 2002. How to Haiku: a writers guide to haiku and related forms. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.
Souyri, P. F. 2001. The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society. New York: Columbia University Press.
Yasuda, K. 2001. Japanese Haiku: its essential nature and history. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.
This article is compiled together for publication in 2014, almost 10 years after the events depicted above.
The 'Aware: Rengo' production process was, at the time 2004-2005, one of the most 'media-rich' projects I had been involved with up until that point, producing several gigabytes of media files, images and video documentation. We produced digital photographs, mobile audio and video-clips produced during the workshop sessions by ourselves as a workshop group. We also created digital photographs documenting our experimental exercises, social contexts of gathering, as well as digital photo and video documentation of what we called the 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk by Markus Ort and Kebede Mergia respectively. We were also using 'Aware' platform to archive our mobile media online, and gather the related meta-data about it on a server. During the ISEA2004 guided-tour presentation itself, more media documentations were made by both our production team, as well as several audience members.
As indicated in the headers, sections of this article were written in 2005 with the aim to re-present what had happened the year before. When writing those reflections I was an employed artist-researcher in Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, as part of a media art and design research programme, based on practice, i.e. that is artistic productions. My collaborators, and co-producer of the project did not have at the time neither the same context of research and writing, nor time and financial support that I had at the time to do so. I was originally motivated by an invitation to submit a text as a chapter-article in a book about mobile audiences. I aimed to share with the reader the complexities in communicating mobile interaction that took place in an ephemeral mediated performance in several different related past events: the initial interaction, and it's re-presentation to a new audience.
Hence, I embarked onwards with writing singularly about the project. In doing so, I had the ambition to share the voices of collaborators, participants and audience member comments from the final guided-tour presentation event, based on documentations and archives that remained afterwards. To assist in recovering the performance and conversation around the topic, I selected samples from the transcribed audio recording of the presentation at ISEA2004. It was not my aim to analyze the spoken interactions, but to present the story of our production process from more than one perspective, and include responding conversations that took place in response to that story. Furthermore, I highlighted some sections of the conversations which relate to renga practice, such as 'micro-interactions', responding to the 'environment', or 'experience'. Like the guided-tour presentation re-presenting mobile media, I wrote to tell about an activity which happened collaboratively, and dispersed in space and time. Admittedly this was a complex weave of situations to explain in writing: To include inspirations, different phases of the production, and different times of reflection, as well as trying to convey the experience of presenting a process which itself was also dispersed in space and time.
However, the surrounding circumstances and context of the work changed, as well as how it was accessible. 'Aware' project collaborators all went on to be involved in other processes and collaborations by Spring 2006. With this development, in April 2007 the 'Aware' platform went offline, going with it dynamic access to the contained media and it's related meta-data, and the 'Aware: Rengo' web-page. Coincidently, the ISEA2004 website went offline eventually around the same time. Reference to past events and related media in the project shifted significantly: Other than anecdote, traces in personal resumes or CVs, or Internet Archive's 'Waybackmachine' search, the project no longer had a public presence or record of taking place. What remained was a relatively large offline archive of production files and notes, email correspondence, media documentation from the workshop, 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk, ISEA2004 guided-tour presentation event, production files, in folders on personal laptop folders, and on server database backup disks. Ironically for all the effort involved in sending them to an online database, the only 'Arabianlenkki' renga walk video-clips which were recognisable as being 'linked-verse', or associated in relation to each other, were those listed in my notebook [Figure 24], or those highlighted to be presented in the ISEA2004 guided-tour, and shared here.
The 'Aware: Rengo' project, and the writing created in 2005 aimed to question can one invite a reader or audience into a relationship with a highly contextual, mobile media performance event, which happened in the recent contemporary past. The new re-presentation of 2014 involved returning and searching through the archive folder, seeking digital photographs to align and augment the text. It fulfills a stored potential to illustrate the project, placing the video-clip media again in association to the images of their origin. To reconnect and link together experience again. I reveal the narrative 'Aware: Rengo' ten years later, as an experimental media archaeology of the early mobile media age. I learned in the process that mobile interaction and experience, as well as the artefacts that it creates—in our case mobile video-clips and accompanying meta-data—is difficult to share later, and increasing more difficult to share as time goes on. I share this insight now with a new remote online audience, one which is very likely familiar with linking and sharing media in their everyday mobile and internet practice. Early mobile media interactions such as ours were experiments, but also recognisable steps in personal understandings and professional development. Will the interactions or the contents still be valuable to oneself or others? How much will remain as accessible in 1 year, 10 years or more? I can answer certainly to the first question, but am uneasy about how to answer for the later question.
As written in 2005
Special thanks to the workshop participants - Iiris Konttinen, Meri Laitinen, Susanna Neiglick, Renita Niemi, Niko Pyrhönen – whom without their presence, supporting faith and trust, the process could not have existed. To John Evans in co-production, and for his continuous valuable feedback throughout the production and workshop process. To Sophea Lerner and Pete Gomes for support and spark at different early and middle stages. Also much gratitude to Tony Hewitt, Kebede Mergia, Markus Ort, Jodi Rose, and Andreas Schwankl for making and sharing their audio-visual documentations of the rengo walks. The workshop process was supported financially and with resources by the Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki, and as part of the Leverhulme Trust (UK) Study abroad Studentship awarded to this author from 2003-2005.
Returning to close the circular walk in reflection
Let's return to the beginning point, and the end of the walk: To initiate a gathering for linked-verse collaborative practices, inviting others into the process, and acknowledging the paradox.
<-- Return to Beginning
Producer 1: I have enjoyed this walk now too.. Part of the aim as we said at the start, was to give the participants in the workshop the chance to speak about their experiences of it, as it is so common that the organisers of the workshop come and present their workshop at the end, without allowing any of the voices which were involved in the work to speak for themselves
Interviewer: Yeh, and there is a certain kind of power hierarchy and academic authorial thing that takes place
Audience 3 (UK/AU): Thats where you make it out to be the ideal project that you wanted
[Sound of cacophony of voices speaking about Aware in the LUME foyer]
Interviewer: And now we are back where we started
