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Bluetooth and Art
May 22, 2007
From the BBC, I came across Project Loca, which is an artist-led project exploring surveillance and mobile-media. An excellent twist on the standard "let us proximity market at you" use for Bluetooth, Loca deploys a network of sensors around a city, and willing participants set their devices to 'discoverable". Then the fun begins.
As people pass by sensors (Bluetooth Access Points), Loca picks them up and records some information. With the data, Loca can "know" certain things. For example - you spent an hour in the park; you were standing at that bus stop for 25 minutes; you spent the whole night in this bar, etc.
Loca sends messages to the participants, starting off by sending them "chatty" conversational style comments: "you're looking good", "saw you in the bar", "lovely weather in the park today", and gradually becoming more cryptic and/or sinister: "are you ignoring me", "meet later?".
[Aside: surely someone will plug a twitter feed in to Loca so that participants might auto-generate tweets, plus potentially receive random tweets from other participants?]
Ultimately, people are directed to a specific access point where they can get a full log of their activities, giving them a concrete feel for what Loca (or other surveillance systems) can track, and infer, from their movements.
Loca has been run as an "installation" at specific events in London, San Jose and Helsinki.
It's waaay cool. I can see social/commercial/fun angles all over the place.
Great job all.
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