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Cycling through the dataspace

Readers will remember another artistic exploration of time and space in Issue 13, when we showed some of the work of the Swiss Holstein brothers: "The ... trace of form". This new artwork is a very different approach. If you're not into graphic design you might miss one nuance not explained in the press release below: once you enter the artwork proper the 'dataspace' is presented in the form of a familiar dialogue from Adobe Photoshop, the industry-standard image manipulation tool. The 'Variations' dialogue normally lets you adjust the colour balance of an image by varying the amounts of red, green and blue, or lightening and darkening. As you'll see, in "Variations/Variantes' there's a very different set of elements to adjust. Just click on the link half-way down the press release to go to the art itself.

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Toronto (April 28, 2004) -- An avid cyclist for 25 years, Don Sinclair's love of wheels and wind has him clocking up more than 10,000 km annually. An assistant professor of multimedia in York University's Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program, Sinclair commutes daily to his teaching job and rides with his bicycle club on weekends. Additionally, he has toured all over North America and internationally. Many of those trips were family affairs with his partner and children, often on a tandem bike and towing a toddler in a trailer.

With every pedal stroke, Sinclair enjoys blending his personal and professional interests. He recently conceived and created Variations/Variantes, a Net art project which was featured in the cutting-edge New Media category at the annual Images Festival in Toronto (April 15-24). The project is an interactive visual interface that prompts the user to explore ideas of place from the seat of a bicycle.

Here's what it is: Variations/Variantes draws on a database containing about 25,000 images, 80,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) data points, and hourly weather data from three local stations. Sinclair collected this data while cycling in and around Toronto from January 2002 to March 2003. He carried a GPS receiver and a digital camera set in time-lapse mode to capture images at one-minute intervals while he rode.

Taking its cue from Sinclair's experiences as a year-round, all-weather cyclist, the interface provides ways of navigating through different dimensions that together define the experience of place. As Sinclair explains, for a cyclist - and in the Variations "dataspace" - place is a holistic concept, referring not only to location, but also factors such as wind, temperature and bicycle speed.

"While riding, you're in a certain 'place' when you're travelling at 50 km/hr or riding in to a 30 km/hr headwind or when the temperature is -10°C," he said.

Here's how it works: Go to

http://dataspace.finearts.yorku.ca/variations

Choose your preferred language (English or French) and resolution, and click on the image. Then select any of the images presented on the new screen to explore the multi-dimensional "dataspace" created by the interaction of all the variations of the captured data. Travelling through the dataspace, you'll encounter melded experiences crossing through day and night, road and off-road, solo and group riding, a variety of weather conditions, and all four seasons.

When you click OK, the journey through the dataspace ends with a final enlarged image. Parallel to the cycling experience, the end is an anticlimax. As seasoned cyclists will attest, it's all about the trip, not the destination. "It's the ecstasy of the journey you long for," Sinclair said.

What's next for this digital inventor and athelete? Taking the concept of Variations/Variantes a step further, Sinclair wants to construct a wearable computer that will coordinate and integrate the data from the camera and the GPS. This summer he'll be at the Banff Centre in Alberta, where he's been awarded a Creative Residency. There, in collaboration with choreographer/dancer Karen Duplisea, he will develop an interactive work exploring the interface between movement and sound and the additional layers of meaning evolving through their interaction.

Will he be taking his bicycle to Banff? You bet.

VARIATIONS/VARIANTES TECH SPECS
· The images were captured with an Epson 3100Z digital camera in time-lapse mode.
· The GPS was a Garmin 12 unit.
· Data is served through a MySQL database using PHP and JavaScript
· The work runs in any current browser supporting Javascript and CSS.

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Posted on 20 July 2004
 

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