The Rhythm of City. Geo-located Social Data as an Artistic MediumVarvara Guljajeva1 and Mar Canet Sola2

1independent artist, 2Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design Linz (Kollegiumgasse 2, 4010Linz, Austria)

varvarag@gmail.com, mar.canet@gmail.com

Keywords: geo-located social content, physical kinetic motion, data sonification, real-time art, mixed reality

ABSTRACT

The growing amount of user-generated data is asign for the society’s participation anddependence on digital networks. Net serviceskeep coming up with compelling socialapplications that offer us new possibilities forconnecting to each other, sharing images,videos, expressing our moods, thoughts, etc. Notsurprisingly the rapid development of technologyand cyber culture are mirrored as well in art. Thevirtual environment is an inspiration and as well aworking medium for many creative people.

The aims of the paper are to introduce ourapproach for applying geo-located social data asa significant part of our artwork, and to elaborateon the artworks that are addressing similar topic.

By describing The Rhythm of City art piece wepoint out an innovative and artistic way forapplying geo-located social data as a score. Atthe same time, the data represents a city’s paceof life. The goal is to metaphorically describelocations by extracting geo-tagged content andtranslating it into the rhythm of a physicalmetronome in real time. In short, a metronomerepresents a city. The installation consists of 10modified metronomes whose rhythms correspondto the selected cities’ digital pace of life. Theaudience is given a chance to discover andexperience an alternative way of perceivingdifferent locations through a continuousperformance of 10 metronomes. Our concernsare about the malleability of the digital world tothe physical one, and the interpretation of socialdata for artistic purposes.

INTRODUCTION

Starting with the inspiration for the project,Bornstein & Bornstein discovered a positivecorrelation between the walking speed ofpedestrians and the size of the city [10]. RobertLevine [11] demonstrated the faster pace of life inthe northern, economically developed andindividualistic countries in his study. In short, theinvestigations proved that it is possible todescribe a city and its’ culture by the speed ofinhabitants and services, and its location.

Consequently, we assume that the digital geo-located social data can give us similar results: in

economically developed countries bigger citiesgenerate more digital social content rather thanthe cities of undeveloped countries. In otherwords, we believe that the analyses of geo-located social data will give similar results ashave achieved Bornstein & Bornstein and RobertLevine. Thus, the aim is to artistically relate tothese studies.

Our assumption is based on numerous facts andwritings. First of all, the society is going throughthe digital revolution and we are living in theinformation age. Social media has gained animportant role in our lives. Kristie Fisher andScott Counts state in their paper that therelevance of social software is alreadycomparable to the older media like books andtelevision [13].

In addition to that, location-aware ubiquitous andmobile technologies allow us instant participationin digital social networks. For example, Twitterhas announced “182% increase in the number ofusers tweeting from mobile devices in the pastyear” [5]. That brings us to a conclusion thatsocial media are well received and extremelyused by the society. The usage of Internet ismuch more than the source of informationnowadays. Social media are extremely engagingby encouraging socialization and expression ofown thoughts, moods, and reporting on theevents. Thus, it can be claimed thatmicroblogging and upload of various media isbecoming an integral part of social life. “As socialsoftware becomes more integrated with evermore capable mobile devices, social networkingsoftware can begin to augment our existingphysical world social interactions” [14].

Coming back to microblogs, Fujisaka, Lee, andSumiya state in their paper that a significant partof population is sharing its’ daily life and socialevents through microblogs, like Twitter. Evenmore, the growing usage of mobile devicesmakes blogging more popular and accessible. Itmeans people are reporting about happenings,their activities, feelings, etc instantly [17]. Theauthors refer as well to the fact that it is possibleto make sense of the microblogs’ data. Althoughthe messages on Twitter are short and havelimited information, many researchers are lookingfor a set of mass movement that allows“discovering interesting and useful patterns such

as socia l /natura l events or soc ia lcustoms/culture” [17]. All this is possible becauseof a location and a time-stamp that are involvedinto many posts in social networks. As well KristieFisher and Scott Counts see Twitter as “a verylarge and rapidly changing information source”[12].

Drawing on these facts, a city’s culture, events,and pace of life can be observed by analyzing thegeo-located social data. There are a growingamount of studies on making sense of thelocation specific digital data, like instant posts onmicroblogs. Paul Virilio concludes following: “avirtual reality that dominates the reality whiledisturbing its own idea of ‘reality’” [9]. Therefore,it is inspiriting for us as artists to use the data ofsocial media as a material in our artisticpractices. Moreover, it allows us to reflect uponthe phenomenon of hybrid virtual-physical worldand provoke discussion.

CONCEPT

The Rhythm of City has a multifaceted concept.First of all, geo-located data are translated intothe mechanical rhythm of a metronome. Thesame rhythm represents a city’s pace of life. Webelieve that people’s activity in the socialnetworks can be applied for describing localculture and activity level.

Second, there is a twist from digital to physical.The digital data are translated into physicalkinetic motion and mechanical sound. Thus, themeaning of information has been altered andapplied for totally different purposes. To be moreprecise, the same has happened with ametronome – the device has been given totallynew and unexpected function from its’ originalone.

And finally, the users of geo-located social mediaare influencing the rhythm of a metronome in realtime. In other words, the online audience ofselected locations determines the score, andthus, has a core role in the physical installation. Itconstitutes that The Rhythm of City is aninstallation that can be viewed as an open work[19], which score is dependent on geo-locatedsocial data. As well the work goes under real-time art according to Jeffrey Crouse in his masterthesis [6]. He states that this kind of genre of artcomprises two distinct parts: the informationsource(s) and the work it self. The art piece on itsown gives a new frame for the data source, andat the same time, alters the meaning of it. Hence,the information does not stand for the informationanymore, but for something totally different. Inthe case of The Rhythm of City the geo-locatedsocial information of sources are transformed intoa rhythm of a metronome in real time. On theother hand, The Rhythm of City can be seen as

mixed reality installation because it crosses andblurs the borders of virtual and physical spaces.

What is more, the artwork goes beyond a sonicinstallation. It can be viewed as a representationof a city’s rhythm or a its’ pace of life. In otherwords, the rhythm of a metronome is an interfaceof a city. Through observation one is able tomake a conclusion on the tempo of life in certaincity and compare different locations betweeneach other. Hence, the installation can beperceived as a performance by 10 metronomesrepresenting different cities but also one is ableto observe a single metronome and listen to aspecific city, if it is wished so (Fig 1.).

Fig 1. The Rhythm of City was exhibited at Enter5 inPrague (14.-23.04.2011). Copyright Varvara Guljajevaand Mar Canet Sola.

When it comes to our inspiration for usingmetronomes, we were greatly influenced byGyörgy Ligeti, who composed “PoèmeSymphonique for 100 metronomes” in 1962. 100metronomes performed the piece and each ofthem was set in a different speed [16].

Ligeti’s work is a relevant reference in terms ofscore composition and applying a mechanicalobject as a musical instrument. In addition toGyörgy Ligeti, many other Neo-Dadaists andFluxus artists, like John Cage, Eric Andersen andmany more, were looking for new forms of scoreand art in general. Chance played a significantrole in their works often. Basically they treated anart piece as a field of possibilities that underlinedthe role of chance and choice [4]. We see anumber of parallels between The Rhythm of Cityand the early works that used chance and choiceas an integral part of the composition. Itconstitutes that the geo-located social data play arole of chance in the composition. The importantdifference is that the tempo of metronomes goesbeyond chance and adds to it cultural meaning.

Moreover, the work builds a bridge betweenvirtual and physical spaces, and thus, is amanifestation of networked society and digitalage. As Lazlo Moholy-Nagy puts “art crystallizesthe emotions of an age; art is mirror and voice”[1]. Hence, we are making use of moderntechnology in order to explore a new possibilitiesand forms in contemporary art, and to reflectupon the networked age.

REALIZATION

In order to achieve the most accurate rhythms ofcities, multiple social networks as the sources ofsocial data are used. To be more specific,according to the selected cities the recent geo-located social data from Twitter, Flickr, andYoutube are retrieved every minute. Thus, foreach location the score is composed periodically.

The score is a combination of recent socialactivities in the three social networks. Thelocation-based trends of social sites are gainedfrom Alexa.com, the web information company[2]. This institution presents a trend list of onlineservices sorted by countries.

In short, the software robot of The Rhythm of Citygets the number of posts from the socialplatforms in the last minute and converts it intothe rhythm of a city proportionally based on thecurrent trend. All this is repeated every minute(Fig 2).

Explaining the dedicated software of the artwork,the application was developed in Python. The

specific programming language was chosenbecause Python is an optimal solution forcreating web crawlers. Web crawlers is asoftware-based search robot, known as well asweb-spider that analyses web according to thetarget [20]. In this case, web crawlers is lookingfor the social data appeared in the last minute onselected social services and afterwards countsthe new input. The query of search robot islocation specific. It means the program is lookingfor the new social data only in the declared cities.

The database was created in MySql for storingthe information gained from web crawlers. Alllocation specific values that are used forgenerating the rhythm of each metronome areplaced into the database. The database is usedas well for storing the historical data of each cityin order to understand the local activity within thesocial media networks. It means the rhythm ofevery city is compared to its’ historical dataperiodically. Hence, we are normalizing the dataof each location in order ensure accuracy of therhythm. The quantified data is then returned toPhyton application that forwards the rhythm valuefor each metronome to Arduino every minute.

Continuing with physical part of the project, itconsists of modified metronomes and amicrocontroller. Arduino (microcontroller) isconnected to dedicated computer in order toobtain the scores of the metronomes everyminute. The score from 0-255 is translated to thedifferent rhythms by ArduinoMega and forwardedto the servomotors.

The metronomes used in the installation hadbeen modified: inside each of them is placed aservomotor that is realizing the tempo ofmetronome sent by the microcontroller (Fig 3).

Limitations and reasons for applying certainsocial networks

Twitter, Flickr, and Youtube were selected forextracting social data for several reasons. First ofall, these social services are widely used all overthe world [2] and have been applied fordescribing epidemics and other social events inseveral studies [17]. Therefore, the score that is aproportional combination of users’ activity withinthese social networks is reliable and realistic forrepresenting the rhythms of cities. Moreover, theproject is one of the few ones that apply acombination of data sources and evaluate theirimportance. Normally just one source, forexample Twitter, is applied for extracting andtranslating social data.

Fig 2. The architecture of “The Rhythm of City”software realization. Copyright Varvara Guljajeva andMar Canet Sola.

The second reason for selected specific socialapplication was available search by a city. Forexample, Google provides the geo-locatedsearch by country only [19]. Only solution wouldhave been to search for the posts concerningcertain locations or look for data by a country.However this solution did not serve our needsexactly. Thus, Google as a data source wasrejected. Opposite to Google Twitter, Youtube,and Flickr support search by city in real time andtherefore were applied in the project. However, itis possible to expand the number of used socialnetworks, and thus, make the rhythms of placeseven more accurate. For example, Wikipediacould be considered as an additional source forscore calculation.

Concerning further limitation, it is important topoint out that certain social networks are bannedin some countries. For example, Youtube,Twitter, Facebook, Google and some more websites are totally or partially blocked in China [21].It constitutes that it will be difficult to include anyChinese city to the installation.

RELATED WORKS

The explosion of web technology and digitalculture continue to be an inspiration for manyartists. Moreover, virtual social environment isapplied as an artistic medium often. For example,Julian Popp has produced beautiful artworksbased on his significant exploration of digitalculture and real-time web as an artistic medium.For instance, Bit.Fall is an installation thatdisplays the most popular keywords of currentonline news. The words, extracted from onlinesources, can be read only for some secondswhile the water drops are falling [15]. An art

piece from 2003 by Jonah Brucher-Cohen calledPoliceState , is another perfect example forapplying digital data as a concept and a mediumthat affects physical matter in real-time. In thiscase, PoliceState points out the fact that certaingovernmental organizations, like FBI, aresnooping users on Internet (emails, posts onblogs, instant messenger, etc). The artist hasdeveloped a software script that makes use ofthe data being “snooped” by the authorities andturns it into the radio signals that control the toypolice cars [7].

Urban Mood by Mahir M. Yavuz is anotherproject that uses the geo-located tweets ofTwitter users in order to describe the mood ofcity. A single word that is a summery of a tweet isprojected for a minute before displaying the nextone [8]. The installation does not cross the virtualand physical space, the work remains in thedigital environment. However it demonstrateswell how geo-located social data can be used forartistic purposes within the virtual space.

The next example of an art project that applieslocation-based social data is News Leak byTimothy Devine, Jamey Cochrane, and ShervinAfshar. In the similar way as The Rhythm of CityNews Leak brings together virtual and real worldby extracting local online activities from Twitter,Flicker, and Google News; and publishing thesocial data as a kind of instant publication inpublic space. In short, the authors are collectinggeo-located data and giving it a form ofpublication as soon a person press a button of adedicated box [18].

To sum up, there is a huge number of arts, whoapply social media as a concept and as well anartistic medium. Interestingly there are much less

Fig 3. Technical realization. Copyright Varvara Guljajeva and Mar Canet Sola.

artists, who make use of geo-located social data.And even less of creative people are concernedabout transforming intangible geo-located socialdata into physical form. There might be manyreasons for that. First of all, technically it is nottrivial tasks to analyze location-based social dataand transform it into an artistic material. Second,social media platforms have a number oflimitations and not all service providers are eagerto share the data, like Facebook for example.

CONCLUSION

To sum up, The Rhythm of City is an inter-disciplinary artwork that demonstrates creativeapproach towards emerging social webtechnology. At the same time, the artwork drawsattention to the vanishing border between virtualand physical, and allows perceiving a city’s digitalpace of life.

In addition to that, the artwork introduces aunique experience to its’ audience. Suddenly it ispossible to see and hear the cities’ pace of lifethat is performed by mechanical metronomes.The score is unpredictable and never repeatedbecause it is composed by the online users ofsocial networks in real-time.

In conclusion, a significant amount of artworksthat exist in hybrid space constitutes the intereststowards digital culture, and possibilities of real-time and location-aware web are constantlygrowing. Even more, a number of artists workingwith and within social media are increasing, andthe creative and novel expressions expanding.Hence, the borders of electronic art are wideningrapidly.

REFERENCES

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