Forced Migration

With the Imaging Place work, I am attempting to bridge the gap between people’s visceral experiences in their communities with the global public policies that often drive those experiences. Accordingly, the most fundamental public policy shaping the Cape Verdean experience, as I understand it, is forced migration. The reprehensible history of slavery aside, Cape Verde is prone to devastating periodic drought, as well as, catastrophic economic collapse based on its dependence on shifting world strategic and trade routs. 

As Joseph Nevins points out in his book “Dying to Live: A Story of US Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid,” the problem with immigration policy, both in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world, is that it is viewed as an issue of law and order, rather than one of human rights. This view of migration is at the center of the anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the United States in recent years.

Defined under international law by the the 1951 Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person displaced from their country due to a well founded fear of ethno-racial, religious or political persecution. According to the United Nations, by the end of 2007 there were more than 11 million refugees world wide and 26 Million internally displaced. This does not include people displaced for economic or environmental reasons. Nevins makes the case that all other human rights are predicated by the right to migrate.

Throughout its history Cape Verdean’s have far to often had to face the daunting decision to migrate or die. As the effects of global warming become increasingly evident, the world has plenty to learn from how Cape Verdean survived experience of forced migration.

 

Aporia/Saudade

Greg Ulmer on the relationship between aporia saudade. 

Audio m4a

Video Index

Video Reference mov

Video Desktop m4v

Video iPhone m4v

Art and Aporia Revisited

Slatenight, one of Second Life’s the first periodicals which attempted to do serious art criticism, seems to have disappeared altogether. I recently contacted Christy Dena, who wrote about some of my earliest attempts to move Imaging Place into Second Life, to see if I could retrieve the articles. I thought it might be of interest to link the following articles here.

The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part one (2006)

The White Cube of the Virtual World Art Space, part two (2006)

Art and Aporia: Imaging Place (2006)

Border Art (2006)

Blogs of Interest

Here are a few new blogs that might be of interest.

Imaging Fox Point

Imaging Cape Verde

Networked Localities Collective

New Imaging Place SL Interface

I’ve need to create a more dimensional interface for the Imaging Place work in Second Life. The problem was that I need links from Beijing to Sao Paulo. I have had the idea to simply use a globe for some time. I used data from the Visible Earth project.

As in earlier versions of Imaging Place, you can navigate to locations using the ENTER signs. You will need to see it up close, but I even got a thin cloud layer working.

Imaging Beijing Relocation

Imaging Beijing has been relocated. Teleport now.

PanoVid Movie

Okay, Here is a quick movie of what the catatropic video solution looks like.

Virtua Obscura

“Imaging Place” was born of an attempt to apply the history and theory of photography to virtual reality. The project has roots stretching back to Mozi (470 BC to 390 BC), a Chinese philosopher credited with the discovery of the principles behind the pinhole camera which lead to the advent of the camera obscura by Iraqi scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan (965-1039 AD) in Basra. Photography has always relied on the frame and the point of view. “Imaging Place” attempts to breakdown the frame, and the recipient determines the point of view, not the author. “Imaging Place” borrows from the traditions of documentary photography and filmmaking. However, it departs from those traditions by using nonlinear narrative structures and immersive tellepresence made possible by computer technologies and telecommunications networks. The result is still an image or representation, but now audience can enter, explore, have adventure in and ultimately participate in its making.

UNESCO World Heritage

I am proposing expanding the “Imaging Place” project to focus on sites which have been given “In Danger” status by the UNESCO World Heritage program. Since my early work as a public artist, I have aspired to achieve political ends with my work. This might seem like a stretch in the game-like environments of virtual worlds. The same appeared to be the case in the early days of the World Wide Web, but few today would doubt the Web’s political potential. There is a sense of urgency with this project in that many of the sites where I am proposing to work are at risk. An example of that risk is the UNESCO World Heritage site, Buddhas of Bamiyan, which was destroyed by the Taliban 2001.

 

I have identified a handful of sites from the List of World Heritage in Danger, which are good candidates for getting the project started.

• Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah’s Palace and Maiden Tower, Azerbaijan

• Abu Mena, Egypt

• Dresden Elbe Valley, Germany

• Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, Jerusalem (Site proposed by Jordan)

• Fort and Shalamar Gardens in Lahore, Pakistan

• Chan Chan Archaeological Zone, Peru

• Medieval Monuments in Kosovo, Serbia

• Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara, United Republic of Tanzania

• Coro and its Port, Venezuela

• Historic Town of Zabid, Yemen

 

Imaging Place Meteverse

“Imaging Place” was designed to be scalable. When I produce work in a new location, I simply add it to the ever-expanding database and link the new location to the global interface. The project is in a perpetual state of becoming. It is cumulative and modular. Although the larger project will never be complete, individual modules can be added whenever and wherever it is produced. It was also designed to allow for the flexible migration to new forms as technology develops. This scaleable, modular and flexible design is why I have been able to sustain the project for eleven years.

 I am currently running up against the limitations of Second Life as a platform and I aspire to develop my own open source virtual world. The final form will be a robust, stand-alone participatory social metaverse, where individuals from across the internet will gather to view the work, interact with one another and participate in the work through commenting, tagging and other social networking techniques. Ultimately users will be able to contribute to the expansion of the project.