Have you ever wondered about the trajectory of your data stream when you email, browse a website or carry out an other online activity? That’s part of what Canadian-American artist Paula Levine researched over the past year in response to her innovation challenge centered around Internet activity leading to place-making borders and connections. With a focus on the more widely available open public wireless systems, Paula’s project City-to-City places the individual into the global interactive system as an active participant as she visualizes network traffic in the form of a topographic map. The map will illustrate in color and sound the real-time trajectory of an individual’s Internet inquiry from the point of entry to its final destination, from city to city en route. In addition to the peer-to-peer connection we are most familiar with, Paula’s project focuses on the relevance of the city-to-city connections that are most often overlooked. Questions arise around the value and necessity of empathy as a common good in our current interconnected world. At the core, however, are challenges and opportunities to imagine new platforms for community building based on ideas of global citizenship in which the individual recognizes his and her role as an inherent element of the bridge between local and global, and the responsibilities suggested by this notion. For the Fellowship/x exhibition at the ZERO1 Garage, Paula invites visitors to access the ZERO1 wireless system on their mobile device and track their own data streams—in real time—on a large projected map as they interact on the internet. The emerging maps depict a unique local-to-global landscape from the ZERO1 Garage in downtown San Jose to elsewhere.

Fellowship/x exhibition Wednesday, January 22 6:30 to 8:30p.m.

ZERO1 Garage
439 S. First Street
San Jose, CA

RSVP

By Sieglinde Van Damme