http://www.am730.com.hk/article.php?article=87032&d=1655#.Tv0QwWo5GQU.email
祥途旅客 - 李兆祥
對住汽水機上網
(2011年12月29日)
上月分別在內地和日本用了數天「漫遊流動數據day pass」，今天收到手機月費帳單，一看銀碼已令我吐血！無法啦！上少幾天網在公在私都超級不便。但明年到日本多了個戶外免費上網途徑：根據FB上的朋友「日本人の日本旅遊指南」報料，繼早前7-11開設免費wifi設施「7 Spot」後，朝日(Asahi)飲料會在明年初開始設置「wifi汽水機」，只要於機旁半徑50米內用電腦或手機選擇FREEMOBILE(www.freemobile-wifi.com)，就可享受免費上網服務30分鐘，之後再登入網頁就可再次使用。
朝日飲料會先在東京、仙台、中部(名古屋)、近畿(關西)及福岡這「五大都市圈」設置約1,000部「wifi汽水機」，預計5年內全國會有10,000架。明年到日本，見到有人向汽水機篤電話，不要誤會他們搞甚麼鬼主意囉！
旅遊撰稿人，曾任多份刊物的旅遊記者，旅遊經歷豐富。
微博：t.sina.com.cn/angusli0309
Thursday, 29 December 2011
日本計劃通過自動販賣機提供WiFi熱點
http://news.cnyes.com/Content/20111230/KE12KH1SQZEJQ.shtml?c=industry&shr=e
日本計劃通過自動販賣機提供WiFi熱點
鉅亨網新聞中心 (來源：北美新浪) 2011-12-30 08:41 網友評論 0 條 Blog談新聞 下則
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年終會議活動場地限時優惠www.kticc.com.tw
明年1/9-1/14超優惠實施中,全新裝潢設備齊全,交通便利,速洽02-8913-2100
新浪科技訊 北京時間12月29日上午消息，日本朝日飲料公司周三宣布，他們正在開發可提供免費WiFi網絡的朝日自動販賣機，明年初准備在日本1000處地點進行測試。
該自動販賣機可在50米範圍內通過FreeMobile通訊服務提供完全免費WiFi網絡，連接時間限制在30分鐘內，但是連接次數似乎並未限定。每台機器可同時處理數十名用戶的上網需求，也不會限制手機設備和運營商。
該WiFi自動販賣機不但能夠顯示登陸頁面提示用戶所使用的服務，或所購買的飲料，當用戶連接網絡後它還提供新聞、購物和旅遊等本地信息。
朝日飲料計劃在5年內將日本WiFi自動販賣機數量增加至1萬台。(曉明)
日本計劃通過自動販賣機提供WiFi熱點
鉅亨網新聞中心 (來源：北美新浪) 2011-12-30 08:41 網友評論 0 條 Blog談新聞 下則
Ads by Google
年終會議活動場地限時優惠www.kticc.com.tw
明年1/9-1/14超優惠實施中,全新裝潢設備齊全,交通便利,速洽02-8913-2100
新浪科技訊 北京時間12月29日上午消息，日本朝日飲料公司周三宣布，他們正在開發可提供免費WiFi網絡的朝日自動販賣機，明年初准備在日本1000處地點進行測試。
該自動販賣機可在50米範圍內通過FreeMobile通訊服務提供完全免費WiFi網絡，連接時間限制在30分鐘內，但是連接次數似乎並未限定。每台機器可同時處理數十名用戶的上網需求，也不會限制手機設備和運營商。
該WiFi自動販賣機不但能夠顯示登陸頁面提示用戶所使用的服務，或所購買的飲料，當用戶連接網絡後它還提供新聞、購物和旅遊等本地信息。
朝日飲料計劃在5年內將日本WiFi自動販賣機數量增加至1萬台。(曉明)
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
wimax in japan
http://www.arib.or.jp/english/html/wireless/wimax/
HOME > WiMAX
WiMAX
Last updated at September, 2010
Japanese commercial WiMAX services were launched in 2009. Japanese venders have developed WiMAX products for the global market, based on the fruitful experience and leadership in Japan. The latest status of WiMAX services in Japan and Japanese products is shown in this page.
Licensed Bands and Services in Japan
Two 2.5GHz bands are assigned for nationwide and regional WiMAX services in Japan. Nationwide service band has 30 MHz bandwidth of 2595-2625 MHz, and regional service band has 10 MHz bandwidth of 2582-2592 MHz.
Nationwide Mobile WiMAX services
Nationwide service band was solely licensed to UQ Communications Inc. for Nationwide Mobile WiMAX service. UQ started its commercial service at three biggest cities in Japan, Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, on July 1st, 2009. Until March 2010, UQ has expanded its service footprint to 450 cities which includes all 47 prefectures' capital cities. Under open device policy, UQ supports a wide range of consumer devices such as WiMAX data card or dongle, WiMAX embedded laptop PC and WiMAX mobile Wi-Fi router. UQ also opens its network to MVNOs. As of September 2010, 46 MVNOs have started WiMAX businesses with unique services to the market. (UQ Communications)
Regional WiMAX services
Regional service band was licensed to 42 licensees (41 CATV operators and 1 telecom carrier) for Regional WiMAX services to enhance the local welfare including elimination of "Broadband Zero" areas through economical broadband access (Regional WiMAX). Some of licensed operators launched the first commercial services in April, 2009.
Solutions and Products
Japanese venders have developed WiMAX products for the global market, based on the fruitful experience and leadership in Japan WMAX. "Japan WiMAX" product is based on 802.16e standard to support both of mobile and fixed services.
The products and solution of Japanese venders are shown in the venders’ websites and product catalogues linked in the following lists.
Fujitsu Limited
Hitachi Ltd.
Japan Radio Co., Ltd.
Kyocera Corporation
NEC Corporation
(in alphabetical order)
to top
HOME > WiMAX
WiMAX
Last updated at September, 2010
Japanese commercial WiMAX services were launched in 2009. Japanese venders have developed WiMAX products for the global market, based on the fruitful experience and leadership in Japan. The latest status of WiMAX services in Japan and Japanese products is shown in this page.
Licensed Bands and Services in Japan
Two 2.5GHz bands are assigned for nationwide and regional WiMAX services in Japan. Nationwide service band has 30 MHz bandwidth of 2595-2625 MHz, and regional service band has 10 MHz bandwidth of 2582-2592 MHz.
Nationwide Mobile WiMAX services
Nationwide service band was solely licensed to UQ Communications Inc. for Nationwide Mobile WiMAX service. UQ started its commercial service at three biggest cities in Japan, Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, on July 1st, 2009. Until March 2010, UQ has expanded its service footprint to 450 cities which includes all 47 prefectures' capital cities. Under open device policy, UQ supports a wide range of consumer devices such as WiMAX data card or dongle, WiMAX embedded laptop PC and WiMAX mobile Wi-Fi router. UQ also opens its network to MVNOs. As of September 2010, 46 MVNOs have started WiMAX businesses with unique services to the market. (UQ Communications)
Regional WiMAX services
Regional service band was licensed to 42 licensees (41 CATV operators and 1 telecom carrier) for Regional WiMAX services to enhance the local welfare including elimination of "Broadband Zero" areas through economical broadband access (Regional WiMAX). Some of licensed operators launched the first commercial services in April, 2009.
Solutions and Products
Japanese venders have developed WiMAX products for the global market, based on the fruitful experience and leadership in Japan WMAX. "Japan WiMAX" product is based on 802.16e standard to support both of mobile and fixed services.
The products and solution of Japanese venders are shown in the venders’ websites and product catalogues linked in the following lists.
Fujitsu Limited
Hitachi Ltd.
Japan Radio Co., Ltd.
Kyocera Corporation
NEC Corporation
(in alphabetical order)
to top
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
wimax->wi-fi
http://www.ithome.com.tw/itadm/article.php?c=70141
臺北市政府自7月啟用特定場所的無線上網服務以來，現在又開通全臺北地區室外公共場所總共約540個無線存取點（AP），以及約500輛公車上的無線AP，提供免費的Wi-Fi上網服務
臺北地區免費無線上網服務全面開通，使用人數達180萬人。臺北市政府自7月啟用特定場所的無線上網服務以來，現在又開通全臺北地區室外公共場所總共約540個無線存取點（AP），以及約500輛公車上的無線AP，提供免費的Wi-Fi上網服務，傳輸頻寬為512Kbps。臺北市政府資訊處表示，現在全臺北共有2千多臺AP，整體建置費用為3千萬元。
這次全臺北無線網路同時採用WiMax與Wi-Fi兩種傳輸技術，布建架構分為3部分，包括資料中心、高樓上的無線基地臺與各地的無線AP。負責推動這次計畫的全球一動公共業務部協理黃國峰表示，無線基地臺架設於建築物樓頂，透過50Mbps～100Mbps光纖網路連結到資料中心，每座基地臺的訊號範圍涵蓋半徑500～1,000公尺內，傳送4Mbps～8Mbps頻寬的WiMax訊號給各角落的AP，透過AP將WiMax轉換為Wi-Fi訊號，提供Wi-Fi服務。
目前已有企業布建全球一動WiMax網路服務。全球一動董事長何薇玲表示，導入的用途為語音、視訊、監控系統、無線上網等。文⊙鄭逸寧
臺北市政府自7月啟用特定場所的無線上網服務以來，現在又開通全臺北地區室外公共場所總共約540個無線存取點（AP），以及約500輛公車上的無線AP，提供免費的Wi-Fi上網服務
臺北地區免費無線上網服務全面開通，使用人數達180萬人。臺北市政府自7月啟用特定場所的無線上網服務以來，現在又開通全臺北地區室外公共場所總共約540個無線存取點（AP），以及約500輛公車上的無線AP，提供免費的Wi-Fi上網服務，傳輸頻寬為512Kbps。臺北市政府資訊處表示，現在全臺北共有2千多臺AP，整體建置費用為3千萬元。
這次全臺北無線網路同時採用WiMax與Wi-Fi兩種傳輸技術，布建架構分為3部分，包括資料中心、高樓上的無線基地臺與各地的無線AP。負責推動這次計畫的全球一動公共業務部協理黃國峰表示，無線基地臺架設於建築物樓頂，透過50Mbps～100Mbps光纖網路連結到資料中心，每座基地臺的訊號範圍涵蓋半徑500～1,000公尺內，傳送4Mbps～8Mbps頻寬的WiMax訊號給各角落的AP，透過AP將WiMax轉換為Wi-Fi訊號，提供Wi-Fi服務。
目前已有企業布建全球一動WiMax網路服務。全球一動董事長何薇玲表示，導入的用途為語音、視訊、監控系統、無線上網等。文⊙鄭逸寧
Saturday, 1 October 2011
reply to ruth
Hi,
Thanks for your comments.
My artworks were displayed/shared by different ways, and I will introduct it step by step in the below:
1. The project website: the users can connect to the site to see the real-time and dyanmica images produced from the databased.
2. The metro station: I have displayed 41 prints on the wall in one of Taipei metro station as the ordinary exhibition. The main difference is the visitors can bring the prints they want to home. This was sharing in physical world and you also can call it "fresh" P2P protocol.
3. The performance website: I had a live performance displayed in one sites. The users could see what I saw (eyes and my laptop's collecting wi-fi data application) via the image I taken, google map and Wi-Fi colour grids.
4. My youtube channel: the users can see Wi-Fi images and music in Wi-Fi video.
5. My music channel: I uploaded my music to gwrxuk.official.fm and the audience can listen to my music online.
6. The text: I am keeping writing the blogs and papers to intoduce my project and artworks.
From the list, you could notice the audience/participants can interact with my works in different ways, including online/offline approaches. My works considered Wi-Fi users as cyborgs/posthumans, and I wanted to transform the viewers/listeners to cyborgs/posthumans. Because the audience interact with my works in online/offline ways, they can reconfigure themselves to be in the cyborg/posthuman state. I will keep to try different possibilities to expand my works to the unpredictable fields.
Thanks for your comments.
My artworks were displayed/shared by different ways, and I will introduct it step by step in the below:
1. The project website: the users can connect to the site to see the real-time and dyanmica images produced from the databased.
2. The metro station: I have displayed 41 prints on the wall in one of Taipei metro station as the ordinary exhibition. The main difference is the visitors can bring the prints they want to home. This was sharing in physical world and you also can call it "fresh" P2P protocol.
3. The performance website: I had a live performance displayed in one sites. The users could see what I saw (eyes and my laptop's collecting wi-fi data application) via the image I taken, google map and Wi-Fi colour grids.
4. My youtube channel: the users can see Wi-Fi images and music in Wi-Fi video.
5. My music channel: I uploaded my music to gwrxuk.official.fm and the audience can listen to my music online.
6. The text: I am keeping writing the blogs and papers to intoduce my project and artworks.
From the list, you could notice the audience/participants can interact with my works in different ways, including online/offline approaches. My works considered Wi-Fi users as cyborgs/posthumans, and I wanted to transform the viewers/listeners to cyborgs/posthumans. Because the audience interact with my works in online/offline ways, they can reconfigure themselves to be in the cyborg/posthuman state. I will keep to try different possibilities to expand my works to the unpredictable fields.
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
免費無線上網啟動！ 學者關心頻寬
http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/110927/115/2zhll.html
【台灣醒報記者陳昭妤台北報導】隨時隨地收發電子郵件將不再是夢。總統馬英九今天宣布，10月7日起，台灣全省將新增2520個熱點供WiFi免費無線上網，範圍擴及外島地區，民眾只要以TPE-Free的帳號即可申請使用全省的i Taiwan無線網路。然而，許多民眾受訪時表示，TPE-Free512Kbps的速率已夠慢，不會特別期待相同速率的i Taiwan。東華大學副校長張瑞雄受訪時也說，政府既有心，則擴大頻寬會更有價值。
一張密密麻麻散布著i Taiwan無線網路熱點的全省示意圖擺在現場，引來記者圍觀討論，總統馬英九、行政院長吳敦義等人今天聯手宣布10月7日起將提供全省民眾免費試用i Taiwan無線上網，11月10日起將正式上路。
研考會副主委宋餘俠受訪時說，台灣是繼新加坡、巴拿馬後，第3個建置全國無線網路的國家，大部分國家目前僅推行城市無線上網，他說，i Taiwan上路後，除了台灣本島，外島如金門、澎湖，甚至小琉球等地都可享受無線上網的服務。
宋俠軍也強調，為了完整建構i Taiwan系統，政府每年約需投入9千多萬元，其中包括4485萬元的建置費，加上4千多萬元的網路費，由各部會分攤、負擔，期望給民眾最好的上網品質。他也強調，對於各地方縣市政府，將會提供必要的經費協助。
由於這次的i Taiwan無線網路頻寬仍維持在512Kbps，因此許多受訪民眾都表示不會特別期待。住在台北的林先生和孫小姐受訪時一致認為，政府想在全省推動無線網路讓民眾便利上網是好事，但若速度和TPE-Free一樣慢，則便利的效果有限。家住彰化的張先生也說，先前使用TPE-Free時，只要圖案多一點的網頁就會打不開，且速度也不夠快，因此對於將推行的i Taiwan，他不會特別期待。
對此，負責i Taiwan主要事務的行政院政務委員張進福表示，政府的無線上網本就僅提供民眾瀏覽網頁與收發Email，因此若民眾要看影片或下載遊戲可能就不適合。
然而，東華大學副校長張瑞雄受訪時表示，目前無線上網最高頻寬已可達54MB，只提供512Kbps這樣的頻寬的確不夠，試想，若有10個人同時使用，則每人只剩約51Kbps可用，速度必然變慢，因此若要認真推展無線上網，應擴大頻寬，最好是將無線網路當作一個基礎建設來做，從建置10 MB的前導無線寬頻開始，讓民眾真正享有快速便利的上網服務。
即將於10月7日上路試用的i Taiwan無線網路，將提供全省包括捷運、碼頭、各大旅遊景點等熱點，試用期間民眾若遇到問題可撥打客服專線0800-081-051，政府會依民眾建議繼續改善系統。
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
The story
The interdisciplinary collaboration was taken for granted today, but we may resist with the outcome that we are not familiar with.
My works are the uncategorized for anthropology, archaeology, fine art and digital art.
I try to depict the development of my works step by step.
The focus of my research is the interaction between material culture and human activity.
I had several opportunities to participate in archaeological fieldwork when I was an undergraduate student. I was fascinated by the archaeologists who created a study subject based on a hybrid of time and space by digging at various sites, and locating and categorizing the remains using horizontal grids and vertical layers via a soil color chart. Although the archaeologists focused on the analysis of the remains found, without regard to the visual aspect of the archaeological discovery progress, their grids and layers system made a great impression on me.
Based on the kinship courses I have taken, I learned about the house society theory proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss led us to rethink how a house as a material culture helps anthropologists to explore the visible and invisible relationships and activities in societies. For my B.A. thesis, I attempted to analyze the phenomena of multiple figures of one Mazu goddess in Taiwanese Mazu folk religions utilizing the house concept. I replaced temples for houses and used incense burners as the medium for figures sharing body substances. This attempt aimed to present the connection between identity and objects via “temples as houses” to understand how believers perceived the relations between Mazu figures. At the same time, for my NSC project, I continued to develop a house study via the study of international spouses living in rural villages. In that project, I noticed that sharing food and kinship duties were the main keys to converting foreign spouses to members in the family and house. During this period, I was training myself to think broader, beyond the kinship aspect of the house society theory.
To expand my knowledge and abilities for my postgraduate study with interdisciplinary collaboration, I enrolled in psychological linguistics courses in a graduate institute of linguistics to explore the connection between external presentation and internal logic. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, is a key concept that I learned from the courses in that it links objects under different categories via breaking the boundaries using the mapping principle. The mapping principle is a rule which connects the Target Domain (the idea or concept that is described) to the Source Domain (the object applied to describe the Target Domain). The Target Domain and the Source Domain are separated into different categories, so linguistics looks for attributes that are shared by both to understand the mapping principle. In anthropology, categorization is an important system in which the natives distinguish themselves from others, such as in Huang Ying-Kuei’s study concerning the Bunun’s food categorization system. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory aids in analyzing categorization and understanding how conceptual metaphors help natives configure information about the boundary between themselves and others. The house theory is similar to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, since people construct their identities based on food sharing and living in the same house. In my subsequent studies, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory was a fundamental method in discovering the connection between houses and other objects in societies.
My M.A. thesis focused on the construction of identities via house-related material cultures. I integrated my previous studies with the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and created an archaeology project investigating a Paiwanese village and their abandoned settlement. I applied cultural layers to describe the migration of the tribes and the grids to locate their objects (i.e., house, tomb, and settlement), which were connected by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Although the building sources had changed and the duration of the settlement was short because of multiple forced migrations, houses became the Source Domain for the identity metaphor. The reason houses became an abstract concept is the accumulation of migration stories about houses and their eventual separation from their tombs, where ancestors ceased living with the living physically and hence conceptually.
From my experience in anthropology studies, I have found shortcomings and restrictions in this methodology. Anthropologists obtain abundant information by staying at particular spots for long periods to investigate and study the daily life of natives as living biographies. Under those conditions, anthropologists are passive receivers and interpreters. The text is full of native terms creating an exotic atmosphere, and every culture seems different from other cultures. The result is that every culture is seen as independent, with a difficult-to-compare existence, and hence cross-cultural studies become a battlefield of vocabulary without holistic viewpoints. In contrast, I wanted to reverse this method of study to create a specific way to conduct cross-cultural researches. This shift is different from traditional anthropology, so I needed support from different disciplines to achieve my goal. At the same time, I found that contemporary art offered me a possible way to develop my experiment.
Grids and layers were applied by Josef Albers and Richard Paul Lohse to study the interaction between colours and to transform 3-D to 2-D, similar to the way archaeologists and anthropologists position objects in the field and convert their fields to text. After the work of these pioneers, grids and layers were widely adopted in the minimal and conceptual art movements. I referred to the works of different artists and adopted colours (layers) and grids as my tools to create a hybrid of time and space as my study subject.
My doctoral project involved visualizing Wi-Fi networks in London, Taipei, New York, Chicago, and Hong Kong to explore how individual networks construct urban landscapes and their identities. According to Le Corbusier, houses are machines in which we live. I reversed his idea, assigning Wi-Fi users as cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) living in Wi-Fi houses. Then I applied the house society theory to visualise Wi-Fi access points as houses with colours and grids to construct 3-D-based 2-D landscapes. Colours were translated from unique Wi-Fi machine codes that represented individual Wi-Fi machines. The codes could also be tracked to the manufacturer, so the colours also offered a connection between individuals and capitalism. This work presents the different aspects of Wi-Fi machines as a house metaphor in their respective societies and extended anthropology to study material culture and human activity via multiple ways to reveal the connection between them.
For the future
In the future, I will continue to my research on the methodology of anthropology in urban landscapes, identity, technology and cyborgs. My study will focus on the application of metaphor in creating the connection between the material cultures and the representation medium.
。
The motives:
When it was born, anthropology is a visual, acoustic and sense-based discipline. Anthropologists studied the craftwork, food, architectures, languages and music to realize the social and cultural connections behind them. That approach was criticized for their lack of the context. With the emphasis of “the native point of view”, contemporary anthropologists obtain the information from the mouth of the informants and the data becomes the main “object” that anthropologist analyzed and the other objects are auxiliary. For example, anthropologists talked about house in the text but physical houses have the different appearances. The former is signifier and the latter is signified as Ferdinand de Saussure proposed. The information was transcribed with text but it results in the differences of material cultures that were ignored with the universal appearance of the text. The physical houses cannot be described/represented completely in the text. To deal with this issue, I chose to abstract the elements from the material cultures to become conceptual metaphor. Material cultures are the solid and visible metaphors of human life and they are another kind of informants. My study plans to create/produce a new methodology to organize the connections between different objects to grasp their information of “native point of view.”
Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that contains two parts, the personal devices and access points. The users utilize their Wi-Fi-equipped electronic devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, to connect to Wi-Fi access points and go on-line. This is the popular landscape in metropolitans and the landscape becomes the metaphor of the interpersonal interactions in daily life. With the municipal Wi-Fi plans and rapid-growing commercial Wi-Fi distribution, more mobile device vendors added Wi-Fi chips to their machines and the spectacle attracted me to analyze and present them in visual and acoustic way to obtain the unspoken and invisible information of “native’s point of view and action.”
The plan:
Granada Centre of Manchester University produced a series of films to overcome the restriction of discourse to challenge the previous anthropological studies “from a different epistemological position.”(Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz 2005: 2) They also acknowledge their result maybe not accepted by the academic world but it is important to extend anthropology to study the human on various of perception, such as hearing and seeing.
Their idea is similar to me and I want to begin my project with a series of combination of fieldwork data and the elements of visual/sound art, including shapes/colours and notes. As Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz pointed out that contemporary art break the conventional understanding for the objects and concepts, my works also aim to inquiry anthropology knowledge and present the fieldwork data to a new view.
I had visualised urban Wi-Fi landscapes and translated them into music to explore how Claude Levi-Strauss’s “house society theory” was transformed an artistic approach to provide us the broader and deeper way to analyze the relations between technology and identity. The steps are listed in the below:
1. Codes of Wi-Fi Access Points -> Colour Codes ->Colour Squares->Colour Brick->Colour House->Colour Landscapes->Wi-Fi Networks
a) Codes of Wi-Fi Access Points => Colour Codes : Dividing the serial number of Wi-Fi access points to web colour codes , but both of them have the same format - numbers and alphabets.
b) Colour Codes => Colour Squares: The web colour codes are embodied in shape. The squares are not the combination of numbers and alphabets, but the visual difference are more obvious than codes.
c) Colour Squares => Colour brick: the shape is the same but the role and the concept of the colour object are changed from the square shape to building material - brick. Brick has the different "function" and the brick implied the possibility of "construction" that is similar to the concept of "constructing a network."
d) Colour Brick => Colour House : Embodied the function of the "construction" and create an object to be analyzed.
e). Colour House => Colour Landscapes: Expanding individual conceptual object (house) to the cultural and social objects (urban landscape that was composed of houses). This change highlighted the conceptual and material aspects of Wi-Fi codes rather than a combination of numbers and alphabets.
f). Colour Landscapes => Wi-Fi Networks: The sudden change from the metaphor (house and landscapes) to the original context (electronic devices) offer an distinguishable spatial representation to emphasize the multiple aspects of Wi-Fi, especially social, political and economical distribution.
。
The conclusion: Wi-Fi codes are the identifiers of users, owners and manufacturers but their connection between the distribution and the social factors are easily ignored. The obvious bias is considering the codes are random in the cities, but the final change marked the distribution is the result of social behaviour and cultural products.
2. Wi-F Codes ->Decimal Number-> MIDI Notes->MIDI Music->Sheet Music.
a). Wi-Fi Codes => Decimal Number: the change and division from the hexadecimal to decimal was to create the MIDI notes. Hexadecimal is positional numeral system with a base of 16. From 0 to 9 represents zero to nine, and abcdef (case-insensitive) means ten to fifteen. Hexadecimal is widely applied in digital equipments. The transformation of positional number system changes the appearance of "numbers and alphabets" to "number" for fitting human’s conventional numeral system.
b). Decimal Number => MIDI Notes: MIDI is the abbreviation of “Music Instrument Digital Interface” and it is a protocol for communication between different electronic music instruments and digital devices. The communication is transmitting electronic signal and digital information not audio signal. MIDI notes can be notated by decimal or hexadecimal. The format of decimal number and MIDI notes is the same but the quality (mathematical to music) and the function (number to notes) changed. The notes also implied the composing songs.
c). MIDI Notes => MIDI Music: Embodied the notes and make it acoustic (quality).
d). MIDI Music => Sheet Music: The transformation of "digital to analogous" and "acoustic to visual". In MIDI music, sound will be affected by the neighbouring notes and our ears can not distinguish too high or too low sound. We may ignore the detail in the music but sheet music make it clear and the contour of the notes highlighted Wi-Fi codes in an analogous way.
Above all, the change in every step leads us to rethink how the fieldwork data are expressed and analyzed. In the future, I will collect more data and produce a series of textual, visual and acoustic works to explore the new methodology and new information of “the native’s point of view.”
Music
2011 London Wi-Fi Landscape, http://www.amazon.com/London-Wi-Fi-Landscape/dp/B004YXQI1E, Cuyahoga Falls: SongCast Distribution.
2011 Tube and Wi-Fi Sound in Music, http://official.fm/tracks/266727
2011 Wi-Fi London - ver. 4, http://official.fm/tracks/280240
2011 Beats in The Grid, http://official.fm/tracks/280674
Video
2010 London Urban Wi-Fi Landscape Music, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziXJy_hO9k
2010 London Wi-Fi walking, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAOINa5VjZk
2010 The sound of step, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMu1S5HvZBU
2010 New York Wi-Fi Landscape, http://vimeo.com/16345994
2010 Wi-Fi trip, http://vimeo.com/17010261
Woorks
2011 London Wi-Fi Scores, http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Mixed-Media-Found-Objects-London-Wi-Fi-Scores/160262/1311707/view
2009 Group By Cites, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/choose_city.php
2009 Colour in different forms, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/
2009 "Cyborg in Wi-Fi London" Performance and Exhibition, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/cyborg_exhibition.php
2009 Wi-Fi in New York, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/ny.png
2009 Wi-Fi in Taipei, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/tp.png
2009 Wi-Fi in London, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/ln.png
2009 Wi-Fi in Leeds and Hong Kong, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/lk.png
2009 Colour animation, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/wireless/en/colour_show.php
2007 Colorful Network--- Wireless Art Project, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/wireless/en/
My works are the uncategorized for anthropology, archaeology, fine art and digital art.
I try to depict the development of my works step by step.
The focus of my research is the interaction between material culture and human activity.
I had several opportunities to participate in archaeological fieldwork when I was an undergraduate student. I was fascinated by the archaeologists who created a study subject based on a hybrid of time and space by digging at various sites, and locating and categorizing the remains using horizontal grids and vertical layers via a soil color chart. Although the archaeologists focused on the analysis of the remains found, without regard to the visual aspect of the archaeological discovery progress, their grids and layers system made a great impression on me.
Based on the kinship courses I have taken, I learned about the house society theory proposed by Claude Levi-Strauss. Levi-Strauss led us to rethink how a house as a material culture helps anthropologists to explore the visible and invisible relationships and activities in societies. For my B.A. thesis, I attempted to analyze the phenomena of multiple figures of one Mazu goddess in Taiwanese Mazu folk religions utilizing the house concept. I replaced temples for houses and used incense burners as the medium for figures sharing body substances. This attempt aimed to present the connection between identity and objects via “temples as houses” to understand how believers perceived the relations between Mazu figures. At the same time, for my NSC project, I continued to develop a house study via the study of international spouses living in rural villages. In that project, I noticed that sharing food and kinship duties were the main keys to converting foreign spouses to members in the family and house. During this period, I was training myself to think broader, beyond the kinship aspect of the house society theory.
To expand my knowledge and abilities for my postgraduate study with interdisciplinary collaboration, I enrolled in psychological linguistics courses in a graduate institute of linguistics to explore the connection between external presentation and internal logic. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory, proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, is a key concept that I learned from the courses in that it links objects under different categories via breaking the boundaries using the mapping principle. The mapping principle is a rule which connects the Target Domain (the idea or concept that is described) to the Source Domain (the object applied to describe the Target Domain). The Target Domain and the Source Domain are separated into different categories, so linguistics looks for attributes that are shared by both to understand the mapping principle. In anthropology, categorization is an important system in which the natives distinguish themselves from others, such as in Huang Ying-Kuei’s study concerning the Bunun’s food categorization system. The Conceptual Metaphor Theory aids in analyzing categorization and understanding how conceptual metaphors help natives configure information about the boundary between themselves and others. The house theory is similar to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, since people construct their identities based on food sharing and living in the same house. In my subsequent studies, the Conceptual Metaphor Theory was a fundamental method in discovering the connection between houses and other objects in societies.
My M.A. thesis focused on the construction of identities via house-related material cultures. I integrated my previous studies with the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and created an archaeology project investigating a Paiwanese village and their abandoned settlement. I applied cultural layers to describe the migration of the tribes and the grids to locate their objects (i.e., house, tomb, and settlement), which were connected by the Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Although the building sources had changed and the duration of the settlement was short because of multiple forced migrations, houses became the Source Domain for the identity metaphor. The reason houses became an abstract concept is the accumulation of migration stories about houses and their eventual separation from their tombs, where ancestors ceased living with the living physically and hence conceptually.
From my experience in anthropology studies, I have found shortcomings and restrictions in this methodology. Anthropologists obtain abundant information by staying at particular spots for long periods to investigate and study the daily life of natives as living biographies. Under those conditions, anthropologists are passive receivers and interpreters. The text is full of native terms creating an exotic atmosphere, and every culture seems different from other cultures. The result is that every culture is seen as independent, with a difficult-to-compare existence, and hence cross-cultural studies become a battlefield of vocabulary without holistic viewpoints. In contrast, I wanted to reverse this method of study to create a specific way to conduct cross-cultural researches. This shift is different from traditional anthropology, so I needed support from different disciplines to achieve my goal. At the same time, I found that contemporary art offered me a possible way to develop my experiment.
Grids and layers were applied by Josef Albers and Richard Paul Lohse to study the interaction between colours and to transform 3-D to 2-D, similar to the way archaeologists and anthropologists position objects in the field and convert their fields to text. After the work of these pioneers, grids and layers were widely adopted in the minimal and conceptual art movements. I referred to the works of different artists and adopted colours (layers) and grids as my tools to create a hybrid of time and space as my study subject.
My doctoral project involved visualizing Wi-Fi networks in London, Taipei, New York, Chicago, and Hong Kong to explore how individual networks construct urban landscapes and their identities. According to Le Corbusier, houses are machines in which we live. I reversed his idea, assigning Wi-Fi users as cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) living in Wi-Fi houses. Then I applied the house society theory to visualise Wi-Fi access points as houses with colours and grids to construct 3-D-based 2-D landscapes. Colours were translated from unique Wi-Fi machine codes that represented individual Wi-Fi machines. The codes could also be tracked to the manufacturer, so the colours also offered a connection between individuals and capitalism. This work presents the different aspects of Wi-Fi machines as a house metaphor in their respective societies and extended anthropology to study material culture and human activity via multiple ways to reveal the connection between them.
For the future
In the future, I will continue to my research on the methodology of anthropology in urban landscapes, identity, technology and cyborgs. My study will focus on the application of metaphor in creating the connection between the material cultures and the representation medium.
。
The motives:
When it was born, anthropology is a visual, acoustic and sense-based discipline. Anthropologists studied the craftwork, food, architectures, languages and music to realize the social and cultural connections behind them. That approach was criticized for their lack of the context. With the emphasis of “the native point of view”, contemporary anthropologists obtain the information from the mouth of the informants and the data becomes the main “object” that anthropologist analyzed and the other objects are auxiliary. For example, anthropologists talked about house in the text but physical houses have the different appearances. The former is signifier and the latter is signified as Ferdinand de Saussure proposed. The information was transcribed with text but it results in the differences of material cultures that were ignored with the universal appearance of the text. The physical houses cannot be described/represented completely in the text. To deal with this issue, I chose to abstract the elements from the material cultures to become conceptual metaphor. Material cultures are the solid and visible metaphors of human life and they are another kind of informants. My study plans to create/produce a new methodology to organize the connections between different objects to grasp their information of “native point of view.”
Wi-Fi is a wireless technology that contains two parts, the personal devices and access points. The users utilize their Wi-Fi-equipped electronic devices, such as laptops and mobile phones, to connect to Wi-Fi access points and go on-line. This is the popular landscape in metropolitans and the landscape becomes the metaphor of the interpersonal interactions in daily life. With the municipal Wi-Fi plans and rapid-growing commercial Wi-Fi distribution, more mobile device vendors added Wi-Fi chips to their machines and the spectacle attracted me to analyze and present them in visual and acoustic way to obtain the unspoken and invisible information of “native’s point of view and action.”
The plan:
Granada Centre of Manchester University produced a series of films to overcome the restriction of discourse to challenge the previous anthropological studies “from a different epistemological position.”(Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz 2005: 2) They also acknowledge their result maybe not accepted by the academic world but it is important to extend anthropology to study the human on various of perception, such as hearing and seeing.
Their idea is similar to me and I want to begin my project with a series of combination of fieldwork data and the elements of visual/sound art, including shapes/colours and notes. As Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz pointed out that contemporary art break the conventional understanding for the objects and concepts, my works also aim to inquiry anthropology knowledge and present the fieldwork data to a new view.
I had visualised urban Wi-Fi landscapes and translated them into music to explore how Claude Levi-Strauss’s “house society theory” was transformed an artistic approach to provide us the broader and deeper way to analyze the relations between technology and identity. The steps are listed in the below:
1. Codes of Wi-Fi Access Points -> Colour Codes ->Colour Squares->Colour Brick->Colour House->Colour Landscapes->Wi-Fi Networks
a) Codes of Wi-Fi Access Points => Colour Codes : Dividing the serial number of Wi-Fi access points to web colour codes , but both of them have the same format - numbers and alphabets.
b) Colour Codes => Colour Squares: The web colour codes are embodied in shape. The squares are not the combination of numbers and alphabets, but the visual difference are more obvious than codes.
c) Colour Squares => Colour brick: the shape is the same but the role and the concept of the colour object are changed from the square shape to building material - brick. Brick has the different "function" and the brick implied the possibility of "construction" that is similar to the concept of "constructing a network."
d) Colour Brick => Colour House : Embodied the function of the "construction" and create an object to be analyzed.
e). Colour House => Colour Landscapes: Expanding individual conceptual object (house) to the cultural and social objects (urban landscape that was composed of houses). This change highlighted the conceptual and material aspects of Wi-Fi codes rather than a combination of numbers and alphabets.
f). Colour Landscapes => Wi-Fi Networks: The sudden change from the metaphor (house and landscapes) to the original context (electronic devices) offer an distinguishable spatial representation to emphasize the multiple aspects of Wi-Fi, especially social, political and economical distribution.
。
The conclusion: Wi-Fi codes are the identifiers of users, owners and manufacturers but their connection between the distribution and the social factors are easily ignored. The obvious bias is considering the codes are random in the cities, but the final change marked the distribution is the result of social behaviour and cultural products.
2. Wi-F Codes ->Decimal Number-> MIDI Notes->MIDI Music->Sheet Music.
a). Wi-Fi Codes => Decimal Number: the change and division from the hexadecimal to decimal was to create the MIDI notes. Hexadecimal is positional numeral system with a base of 16. From 0 to 9 represents zero to nine, and abcdef (case-insensitive) means ten to fifteen. Hexadecimal is widely applied in digital equipments. The transformation of positional number system changes the appearance of "numbers and alphabets" to "number" for fitting human’s conventional numeral system.
b). Decimal Number => MIDI Notes: MIDI is the abbreviation of “Music Instrument Digital Interface” and it is a protocol for communication between different electronic music instruments and digital devices. The communication is transmitting electronic signal and digital information not audio signal. MIDI notes can be notated by decimal or hexadecimal. The format of decimal number and MIDI notes is the same but the quality (mathematical to music) and the function (number to notes) changed. The notes also implied the composing songs.
c). MIDI Notes => MIDI Music: Embodied the notes and make it acoustic (quality).
d). MIDI Music => Sheet Music: The transformation of "digital to analogous" and "acoustic to visual". In MIDI music, sound will be affected by the neighbouring notes and our ears can not distinguish too high or too low sound. We may ignore the detail in the music but sheet music make it clear and the contour of the notes highlighted Wi-Fi codes in an analogous way.
Above all, the change in every step leads us to rethink how the fieldwork data are expressed and analyzed. In the future, I will collect more data and produce a series of textual, visual and acoustic works to explore the new methodology and new information of “the native’s point of view.”
Music
2011 London Wi-Fi Landscape, http://www.amazon.com/London-Wi-Fi-Landscape/dp/B004YXQI1E, Cuyahoga Falls: SongCast Distribution.
2011 Tube and Wi-Fi Sound in Music, http://official.fm/tracks/266727
2011 Wi-Fi London - ver. 4, http://official.fm/tracks/280240
2011 Beats in The Grid, http://official.fm/tracks/280674
Video
2010 London Urban Wi-Fi Landscape Music, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jziXJy_hO9k
2010 London Wi-Fi walking, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAOINa5VjZk
2010 The sound of step, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMu1S5HvZBU
2010 New York Wi-Fi Landscape, http://vimeo.com/16345994
2010 Wi-Fi trip, http://vimeo.com/17010261
Woorks
2011 London Wi-Fi Scores, http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Mixed-Media-Found-Objects-London-Wi-Fi-Scores/160262/1311707/view
2009 Group By Cites, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/choose_city.php
2009 Colour in different forms, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/
2009 "Cyborg in Wi-Fi London" Performance and Exhibition, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/cyborg_exhibition.php
2009 Wi-Fi in New York, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/ny.png
2009 Wi-Fi in Taipei, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/tp.png
2009 Wi-Fi in London, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/ln.png
2009 Wi-Fi in Leeds and Hong Kong, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/urban_image/lk.png
2009 Colour animation, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/wireless/en/colour_show.php
2007 Colorful Network--- Wireless Art Project, http://fireant.itaiwan.net/wireless/en/
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