“Buscando Al Sr. Goodbar is a journey through Murcia, Spain that involves a search for the locations and authors of various YouTube videos produced in the city.
If the longitude and latitude coordinates are included with a video when publishing it on YouTube, then this video automatically appears on a GoogleEarth map and connects it to a physical location. A link is therefore made between the YouTube video and where it was produced in the city.
A bus tour was organized by Michelle Teran, who visited Murcia repeatedly via GoogleEarth and started to get to know intimately some of the people living there through the YouTube videos they produced. As the bus moved through the city, its movements along the streets were mirrored on a GoogleEarth map. YouTube videos were played corresponding to where they appeared on the map and could be viewed on a large flat screen.
In this way the audience on the bus witnessed short glimpses of what the city had to offer and started to meet some of the people living there. Somebody solved a Rubik’s cube in under 2 minutes, a young man played the piano, a group of friends drunkenly sung together, a 14 year old boy showed off his headbanging skills, somebody choked his friend and caused him to pass out, somebody played a video game, a man taught himself Arabic, two people fell in love, a festival happened on the street.” (http://www.ubermatic.org/?p=225)
(http://www.ubermatic.lftk.org/blog/?p=225)
Michelle Teran has done a number of projects that investigate the ever blurring border of everyday urban life and the virtual world of the Internet, gaming and surveillance. For example, The Parasitic Video Network transforms everyday space into media space through the networking of low fi video cameras:
“On the border between surveillance and observation, it is poetic, subversive and surreal in its design. The video network is set up to observe different architectural spaces that populate cities, to highlight their characteristics and affects on the body. Non-places of super-modernity (Auge), such as IT cities, hi-tech office buildings, airports or shopping malls and areas transformed through revitalization and/or gentrification are some interests for study.
To explore the environment the visitor carries a portable device called The Parasitic Video Interceptor (aka The Spy) that captures and records live feeds from surveillance cameras and augments them with a sound scape that is generated by the visitor’s movement through the architectural space…” (http://www.ubermatic.lftk.org/blog/?p=217)
camera setup in an office building, Kista, Sweden
aerial view of Kista and The Electrum House
exploring the Parasitic Video Network in the Jardin de Saint-Roch, Quebec City, Canada
More about Michelle Teran at http://www.ubermatic.org/
