Detail

Time Machine

TIME MACHINE transposes a very personal piece of ubiquitous computing (GPS tracking, data mining, predictive algorithms)and personal interface-based data visualization to the world of the media art.
Ubiquitous computing, or ubicomp, is a complex problem, with lots of issues that need to be addressed, namely peoples’
expectations, centred on the acceptance of automation. This proposal works from the position that, so far social and cultural
theories of everyday life have been relatively quiet in the discussions on the design of ubicomp, and that the studies of
everyday life will increasingly need to account for ubiquitous technologies. Most research to date, especially in mobile
computing, has focused on enabling the seamless use of computers, tending to assume a passive role for the user.
TIME MACHINE aims to encourage people to reflect on the age of ubiquitous computing we are entering fast. It is rooted in a
deep interest in unveiling the hidden patterns of everyday life and suggests the best way to reflect upon an issue is through
experience.
Our goal is to build a time machine. A piece of speculative software, and reeware, which will run on an individual’s mobile
phone, presenting them with a glimpse of their future.
A speculative pocket watch which tracks users’ movements in space using GPS technology and, through a pattern recognition algorithm, predicts their future movements. The output, a data visualization interface, displayed on their phone in the form of an affect image, is designed to allow for individual input and subjective readings, so as to produce a highly personal cartography of their future movements.
Elaborating a ‘caricature’ scenario, TIME MACHINE aims to research ubiquitous computing’s limits and potential when applied in a personal context which sits at the cross roads of spatialisation, temporalisation, AI and perception.
Firstly, how can such a system be sensitive to human idiosyncrasies? How can it deal with the unpredictability of human
movements? What happens when I go the other way? What are the limits or potentialities of this type of Artificial Intelligence?
Does the past always define the future?
Secondly, how can a data visualization interface allow for the subjectivities of its users? How can data visualization techniques be improved to make readable, useful, interactive and playful images, while allowing for user input and engagement, and therefore reflection?
Thirdly, how will it work locally on the mobile phone? Our goal is to explore the phone itself as worthwhile object for
investigation: to exploit the computing and affective potential of a device held by 3,2 billion people.
As with the beginning of any transformative technology, like the Internet, opinions are polarized between negativism, seeing it
as a big surveillance threat, and an over enthusiasm for the ‘perfect’ world, technological utopia, envisioned by Weiser (1991).
Our position is to research what the balance might be between these two poles and stimulate users to reflect upon ubicomp by placing them in an active rather than passive position.
Though interested in patterns of everyday life, this project does not aim to generate space-behaviour profiles of mobile users.
The focus is on the individual, and patterns are seen as something which might be interesting, perhaps useful, for them to
reflect upon.
Placing this piece of software in a personal context and relating it to your personal future raises the stakes, therefore hopefully increasing the chance to engage users through agency and action: first, you have to choose to download the software, and second you choose whether to interact with it.
Taking the experience of the final user as the key problem to be addressed, researchers from different fields, including
computer science, design, art, will engage in a continual process of reflection about the technology while building it. Artistic
consultants are well placed to advise on the project’s development and promote it within media art, and related discursive
events.