Art can take the temperature of a culture and allow us to gauge our selves through our sensual and perceptual experiences. "Biomapping: Mobile Experiments in Self-computation and Spatial Aesthetics" develops process-based and map and sculptural art creations that question our sense of self through mobile and biometric technologies.
Participants will create artworks based on their own biometric and perception data, collected in both laboratory and urban environments. Working with artists, participants will develop software that will process their personal data to reflect their own image of "self." The data will then be translated into physical form via a computer-controlled printer or rapid-prototyping facility, creating a "biomap of self."
"Biomapping" employs user-focused art, to develop novel manners for individuals to document themselves and their spaces. Research outcomes will be distributed via mobile networks, gallery exhibitions, process documentation, and an on-line, interactive Biomapping website.
Biomapping's objectives are to:
- Create three art experiments, including self-documentation, biometric logic-crafting and map/sculpture creation that "compute" an individual's sense of self;
- Create an artist-friendly mobile technology network and a user-friendly coding interface for artists wishing to take up mobile/network art creation;
- Create a "Metaphor Blog" that continually feeds theory into art practice and produces data, allowing users to interpret research methods as art practice;
- Exhibit these art experiments in a gallery transformed into a mobile lab. The exhibit will represent (and conflate) participants' experience and creations. It will also invite participants to become viewers, crafting their own biomap and participating in focus groups as performance art;
- Gather experiment and the exhibitition data, and analyze and represent it in exhibitions, workshops and conferences;
- Employ relevant results in the creation and publication of a "Mood Architectures" website, an on-line space interpreting participants' moods into maps;
- Publish a collection of articles analyzing relevant findings of Biomapping.
