TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

viernes, abril 02, 2004

9:45 AM
Posted by jodi rose

The trip over from the island was so beautiful, a thin layer of green ice breaking up as the ferry went past. I want to stay there forever.

Now it's almost time to walk over to Kiasma and get ready for the presentation. Moving very slowly today, ...... my pixels are aching!

Party on the island last night ended with a disco in the laundry at 3am, and the 10 bed hostel room I have been sleeping in alone for 2 nights was filled haphazardly with the comatose bodies of media artists.

Here is the website for the island, so you can visualise the surroundings http://www.suomenlinna.fi

Talking with Juha and Sanna at one point during the night, they told me 'you are now part of the pixelache family... what are you doing in 2005?' Yes, I think I am free. According to Tuomo at dinner on thursday night - the Sea Horse, very delicious traditional finnish food, although someone else I spoke to said it used to be a 'snot house' and something of a health hazard, but it has new owners now (has been there since the 1950's) - we cän support ourselves to stay in helsinki by writing poetry and selling it on the streets. Hell, I guess it's as good an option as making media art!

Speaking of which, I am embracing new technology, and having been very sceptical about the whole phone with video and camera thing - why would you need that, it's a stupid idea! - I am now completely hooked. The locative media workshop has 6 nokia 6600 phones with all kinds of gadgets inside them, you can take video, record sound, take pictures, send email, and use bluetooth (although I still haven't worked out what that is exactly). So I have been roaming around with one of them all day yesterday, and creating my work using fragments of text sent as sms poems with images taken at the railway station. The images and text are sent via sms to a database thing called 'aware' and they can be viewed as storylines on the web. Many people in the workshop have been talking about movement through space and making interventions to engage the public, and I decided that I would inhabit the space poetically in a solitary manner. The work I am making is based on an emotional state at a particular time and place - Helsinki Railway, Platform 9 1:31pm Wednesday 31st March 2004 - and then collecting images in response to that experience that illustrate themes of isolation, desire, connection, technology........

Andrew, who is facilitating the workshop has used this 'aware' technology in various forms. they are very intriguing and poetic explorations of place and mythology and..... here are some websites because I can't explain it.

http://mlab.uiah.fi/~apaterso/projects/mm/o/mapmyths.html

http://www.karosta.lv/
http://www.inari.fi/