29/4/2001
Imaging New England
Mobius, Boston
Installation by John Craig Freeman, Lisa Link, and Margaret Wagner. Imaging New England, like its parent project Imaging North America, is an interdisciplinary collaborative research initiative, conducted across institutions and over distances. It uses new technology to bring disparate bodies of knowledge together through the investigation of place.
Installation by John Craig Freeman, Lisa Link, and Margaret Wagner.
Imaging New England, like its parent project Imaging North
America, is an interdisciplinary collaborative research
initiative, conducted across institutions and over
distances. It uses new technology to bring disparate
bodies of knowledge together through the investigation of
place. Our method attempts to bridge the gaps between
esoteric understanding, which has developed as a result of
rigid industrial specialization, and more experiential
interactions. We recognize that the tools now exist, in the
form of interactive hypermedia, for converging the work of
experts without sacrificing the depth and dimension of
specialized knowledge.
The method we used in creating this work began with
organizational meetings to identify a site or place of
investigation. Although this choice was somewhat
arbitrary, it was driven by a sense of ambivalence. We
investigated places that are simultaneously attractive and
repulsive. The only qualification we attached to the
choosing of a site was that it must have earned the status
of contestation.
Once a site was identified, John Craig Freeman conducted
a search of satellite and aerial image archives. The
satellite images are drawn from a variety of national and
local sources, including the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, the United States Geological Survey,
the United States Department of Agriculture, state
Geologic Information Systems, and county Tax Appraisal
offices. The frame of the images determined the area and
the boundary of the investigation, which we refer to as
the divination zone. Everything that fell within the zone
was a potential subject. Anything falling outside the zone
was off limits.
We mapped the zone into denizens, based on the research
and the geometry of the zone. We then visited the site
and documented the denizens in what ever form was
appropriate.
This project takes on many forms, including interactive
virtual reality, installation, video and public media art. In
addition to providing a form for the dissemination and
storage of this work, the Imaging New England method
provides a model for the generation of interdisciplinary
work and a strategy for collaboration.
The artists currently involved in this collaboration are John
Craig Freeman, Lisa Link, and Margaret Wagner. All three
artists have worked with the issues and politics of place
before in their own work. John Craig Freeman is currently a
professor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Lisa
Link is an independent artist, and Margaret Wagner is a
professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Mobius, Inc 354 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02210, Phone: 617-542-7416, Fax: 617-451-2910