The emergence of communication technologies has affected the nature of visual presence and perception of space. Communications networks tend to be largely invisible and silent, or at most relatively hard to discern. The result is that there is a general tendency for people to ignore or even deny the effects of the invisible environments of media, simply because they are invisible. Consequently a number of authors have highlighted how the predominant visuo-spatial way of understanding of the city is being fundamentally affected by such technologies that have very little visual presence, and enable us to be anywhere and everywhere. Graham draws attention to the fact that "most weave unseen through the fabric of urban spaces, using very little space" (Graham & Marvin 1996, p. 50). Batty further noted that "cities are becoming invisible to us in certain important ways" (Batty 1990, p. 128), and in another paper he set out a research agenda which looked at a series of methods for enabling a visualisation of these nodes and networks (Batty & Miller 2000). This has also been addressed by Dodge and Kitchin (Dodge & Kitchin 2000) in their work on describing the features of what they term "cyberspace". Similarly Townsend (Townsend 2000) and others have highlighted how the temporal quality of wireless and mobile networks reconfigure the spatial and visual qualities of the city, and so should cause us to question the nature of city infrastructures and how we plan out cities and physical and social sites of activity. It would seem that the layering of digital and physical space enables us to experience some sort of intertwining of experience, which is subsequently conceptualized. As with the process of mentally mapping urban space, corresponding images of the abstract topologies of communications networks and electronic spaces "need to have emotional and subjective information about the qualities of the electronic places found as well as basic information designating what is where within the complex and interlocked web of logical spaces" (Graham & Marvin 1996, p. 122). Consequently the predominant visuo-spatial way of understanding of the city is being deeply affected by such technologies that have very little visual presence. Urban Media Infrastructures Mobile and wireless media have specialized infrastructures, and as these technologies emerge in the city, they become overlaid with existing urban infrastructures. The individual's image of the city, which they use to navigate and orientate themselves within urban space, is no longer confined to physical elements and configurations. The concepts of landmark, node, path, region and edge (Lynch, 1960) can be re-mapped onto digital infrastructures, supporting new interaction in the city. It may be problematic to make the features and configurations of such technologies image-able in the sense that Lynch originally intended the term, but it is possible to consider a way of making them legible, in the sense that they can be clearly understood and acted upon. Mobile phone networks operate through cells that are equivalent to regions, WiFi nodes can be considered in the same framework as Lynchian nodes and RFID and Bluetooth create media landmarks, where digital information is confined to a distinct physical location. However, GPS operates more as Hertzian space (Dunne 1995) as it consists of an infrastructure of omnipresent waves, which have no clear spatial structure equivalent. Mobile phone devices can receive a signal anywhere within the network. As an individual moves around in space the network infrastructure monitors when they approach the boundary of a cell and transfers their call to the next cell. Mobile phone networks are provided by a series of transmitters, typically located on masts or on the top of tall buildings. These remain largely invisible in evryday life, and thus the infrastructure of mobile phone technology is rarely considered, aside from when an individual moves into an area where there is no "network availability". In this way mobile phone technologies create regions, where users move in and out of the range of cell towers. The switching between one region to another is fluid and unnoticed by the user, but the the technology must make complex calculations to ensure that the signal remains constant despite the crossing from one bounded space to the next. The proliferation of wireless internet or WiFi nodes in urban environments is creating a dense communications infrastructure, which re-draws existing spatial thresholds and territories. The nodes, which are essentially black box transmitters operating on the frequency of 802.11b standard create a region of access of between forty-five metres indoors and ninety metres outdoors. Due to the extent of the region, or territory, access to the node can be available well beyond the physical borders and thresholds that traditionally delineate the boundary between private and public space. The information flow ignores the material thresholds of walls and doors and extends beyond traditional materially bounded notions of space (Willis 2008). The nature of the frameworks in which nodes are understood by urban citizens can be further investigated through the practical ways in which they are identified. Indeed the very vagueness of the word node "indicates the loss of a language for naming environmental value" (Sennett in Carter, Donald and Squires 1993, 319). WiFi nodes are understood more along the metaphor of a switch, which simply establish and break linkages, and as such they equate with access to information flow. Bluetooth, which is a short-range radio technology, also operates in a manner similar to nodal networks but differs distinctly from WiFi nodes in that it is closely associated with the enabling device which is usually mobile. Offering a typical range of ten metres or thirty-three feet, the node creates localized access. On this level Bluetooth technology can be considered in the form of a landmark, where landmarks are point references and their key physical characteristic is singularity, some aspect that is unique or memorable in context (Lynch 1959, 78). As such Bluetooth does not create immediately visual landmarks but is instead perceptible within the device interface, which despite being mobile has a consistently identifiable presence regardless of its actual location. In some cases the mapping of spatial characteristics onto communications technologies creates issues, because the two frameworks function on different levels. This is the case with GPS which operates through signals sent from a series of satellites orbiting ten thousand miles above the earth, which is terrestrially translated into location information by receivers. Despite the fact that the infrastructure operates to deliver spatial information the framework itself is spatially abstract. An individual attempting to identify their location with a GPS receiver and remaining in the same physical position could be presented with a series of different positional co-ordinates whilst remaining stationary. The signal transmission is interrupted by material structures such as tall buildings, creating in effect information shadows overlaid on physical space. These "shadows" from large physical objects effectively cloud the accuracy and boundaries of the information space (Willis 2008A). However, due to the distant motion of the satellites this accuracy is variable over time, such that in the period of a few seconds GPS accuracy can change from a few metres to fifty. As such GPS does not create a structure in the manner of a network, but instead exists as a global Hertzian space that can in effect be tuned by those receiving the signal. The space of GPS is not materially bounded or inhabited, but temporally fluid, and operates beyond physically conceivable limits. As such, the manner in which the infrastructure exists at both a human scale, in terms of the receiver, and concurrently at a spatial scale of tens of thousands of miles makes it particularly difficult to map onto existing spatial structures. Summary The infrastructure of mobile and communications offer significant issues for the way in which urban space is perceived and constructed. Thus, physical infrastructures which have traditionally been viewed as the dominant form in the city as a spatial construction, are being re-mapped through the ubiquity of communications networks. The physical world comes to be considered as part of the space of the digital interaction. Yet the converging of physical and digital space gives rise to a series of significant transformations in perception and interaction. These more fluid and abstract notions of space interrupt our mental images of space since physical form and visual appearance have conventionally shaped our perception in the spatial city. As such the nodes and networks of mobile and wireless communications create an intricate invisible landscape which overlaps, re-configures and often interferes with the physical infrastructures we have come to regard as framing urban life. |
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