Conor McGarrigle: Territorial Play Project Proposal

Everything is Related (in hybrid space) -working title

Tobler's first law of geography states that 'everything is related to everything else, but closer things are
more closely related'. The project questions whether in the light of the much heralded collapsing of space
& time brought about by ubiquitous mobile telecommunication this still holds true.

The project is a walking based intervention which links two cities Dublin & Nottingham (and then
sequentially Nottingham & Warsaw, Warsaw & Amsterdam, Amsterdam & Berlin) in a situationist inspired
derive which overlays a playful space over the real space of the two cities connecting two discrete artistic
interventions through the hybrid space of mobile internet and semacode tagging/encoding of real space.
The project looks at how situationist inspired notions of re-enchanting and transforming urban space are
reframed through the application of locative media in the emergent hybrid-city .

The Project
Acting on a predetermined set of instructions a group of artists will conduct a walking derive in Dublin
completing ten location specific tasks on this walk. These actions will be recorded and encoded into a
semacode - a bar code like image which can be read by any mobile phone with a camera (figure 1).

For the Trampoline Territorial Play event participants will re-enact the Dublin walk and complete ten
location specific tasks set by the Dublin participants at locations analogous to the Dublin locations (in the
logic of the work). The two interventions will be connected via mobile internet and semacode tagging of
real space.

The instructions which will be determined by the artist based on the classic situationist approach to the
derive i.e. a set of directional instructions which the participants follow (more recently seen in social
fictions .walk project) such as first right, second left, third right, repeat.

How it works

1. The Dublin crew sets out acting on strict direction instructions with ten tasks to accomplish. Each task
is locational specific with the location being reached according to an instructional sequence - the exact
instructions have yet to be decided but they will follow traditional Situationist approaches such as 'take
the first right, then take the second left, walk for three minutes, stop and turn to your right' with the
location reached being the site for the first task with instructions continuing for subsequent tasks.

2. Each task is then carried out - tasks are yet to be decided but will focus on documenting and responding
to the location, influenced by the fluxus event score the tasks will act as a framework to be creatively
interpreted by the participants. Each task will be documented using mobiles phones as video or still
images and posted via email to the Posterous website (a the free site which creates a blog-like post of any
media emailed to it, posts are geotagged if mailed from a phone which supports this feature). The Dublin
crew will then set a task for the Trampoline participants to carry out. The documentation of each task and
the instructions for the next set of participants will be encoded in a semacode (or QR tag) which will be
printed as a vinyl sticker and sent to trampoline for the Nottingham leg.

3. Participants in Nottingham will set out with the encoded semacode documentation and tasks and follow
the exact set of instructions as the Dublin participants. Upon reaching each task location the participants
will use their phones to decode the semacode, view the event at the analogous Dublin location (the
location where the Dublin participants ended up when following the same instructions) and receive their
instructions. The semacode can then be left at the location as a discrete tag, as the event will be
documented online this allows the casual or dedicated observer access the record of the event.

4. Participants will then carry out their task, document it and post it to Posterous where it can be viewed
alongside the Dublin task . They will then, in turn, set a task for the next participants in Warsaw. The
Nottingham walk will then be encoded in semacode form to be passed on to the next iteration in Warsaw
and subsequently to Amsterdam and Berlin with each iteration informing the next.