G-LOCAL | VENICE BIENALE | WATERWAYS 2005

What is the correlation between production and destruction? Culture is changing nature and nature is changing culture.

We are building a body of knowledge, a cultural map, a physical guide that is relevant to the present and continually evolving. Our machine, G-Local, measures the effects and byproducts of production on indigenous matter, vernacular customs and exchanges. Here, we use the city of Venice during a time of cultural activation as a control to determine the interchange, dependence, and disparity between nature and culture.

The comprehensive use of the G-Local is to measure the (de) evolution or (non) progress of a place, since environment and culture are linked inexorably. It has two sets of sensors: Cultural (measuring the ephemeral fluidity of the exchange of ideas) and environmental (measuring concrete evidence of physical change). Its primary sensors read person-to-person exchanges in the form of eye contact, dilation, stance, blood flow, stride, odor, and conversation as well as synthetic-to-nature exchanges including noise levels, water composition, chemical and organic emissions, gases, and ultraviolet radiation.

The theory of the 77 global cultural index is manifested in the Reader's ability to create maps through specific poetic and algorithmic readings captured in diverse communities through sampling and recording. The result can be found locally in the participation and awareness of the Reader, or it can be found globally and quantified in the near future.

Original sketches for G-Local

Vaporetto before G-Local was mounted on top deck