Locating spaces
Floating Points: Locative Media, Perspective, Flight and the International Space Station by Jeremy Hight with Alexander van Dijk
“Floating Points is a locative media experiment for the International Space Station [ISS] in three sections:
1. It aims to investigate the locative narrative of the ISS in relation to the ground and astronauts’ relationships to a temporary place and its created community.
2. The astronauts will write about their thoughts at certain points in the mission and at other times of tasks carried out.
3. Located onboard the ISS, a graphic generating program will develop an architectural form based on when each astronaut blogs and the variations in their language and subject matter.
The Floating Points experiment and other projects like it will open up a new area of possibility in terms of art as well as a re-contextualization of what is location and how it is to be interpreted. GPS can not only plot points on a flat plane as is the current perceived norm, but can also do so with a sense of depth akin to perspective. Shifts in altitude and distance are to be a component in shifts of not only seeing, but of interpretation…
We now can ‘read’ the different faces of cities as one pulls farther away or closer in as well as of the landscape. Most importantly, we can do this from above. There are the ghosts of air flights past and their history to cross in the air and cities in shifting forms below to pass at various altitudes as much as there are layers of history in cities and the landscape. A location is malleable as it is seen and experienced as many versions of itself. All plotted points are essentially locations regardless of if they are still or in motion or at sea level, 500 feet or 22,000 feet above. By utilizing these ‘floating points’ informational narrative can become a fluid, ever-shifting entity free from the confines of rigid and fixed location on a surface.”
Thanks Jeremy!