claudio castillo transborder immigrant tool
prototype stage from 2009 - 2012
Electronic Disturbance Theater - same group that made FloodNet, technically this was the 2.0 version of the group
Ricardo Dominguez and Brett Staulbaum are considered founders
Ricardo Dominguez: Previously founded the Critical Art Ensemble (http://critical-art.net/) and a cofounder of Electronic Disturbance Theater 1.0 (EDT). Also a professor and chair of the Department of the Visual Arts at UCSD.
Brett Staulbam: Brett Stalbaum is a C5 research theorist specializing in information theory, database, and software development. A serial collaborator, he was a co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater in 1998. Currently a Associate Teaching Professor at UCSD
amy sara carroll: Carroll is currently an associate professor in the department of literature at the University of California, San Diego. Carroll coauthored [({ })] The Desert Survival Series/La serie de sobrevivencia del desierto (Office of Net Assessment/University of Michigan Digital Environments Cluster Publishing Series, 2014).
ELLE MEHRMAND: sound artist for the project, considered a new media performance artist and musician.
micha cardenas: trans scholar, Associate Professor of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies and Performance, Play & Design, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, acted as the liaison for the project and outside groups. introduced queer theory to the project.
Jay Najarro was an undergraduate involved in the coding of the project.
immigrants crossing the sonaran desert in the north of mexico
integrated the experience of migrants, but also included NGOs and artists
This project was developed at a time of contention. The border recently had laws passed post 9/11 which enforced border crossings and expanded the state/power of CBP to incarcerate and detain migrants crossing illegally. Unfortunately, this did not stop people from migrating, instead funneling people to take more dangerous treks in the sonaron desert
Initially, the project received funding from UCSD and the US embassy in Mexico. This funding was contended, and mostly spearheaded through the support the artists received as tenured or tenure track faculty with their own research operations.
The primary goal of the Transborder Immigrant Tool is to increase safety during border crossing by directing heavy-footed immigrants to safe routes, shelter, food, water, and friendly sympathizers.
"We know individuals crossing the border mainly die because they get lost or run out of water"
"people have been found within just a hundred meters of water stations" under conditions of heat exhaustion and dehydration, it is difficult to stay put together and realize your physical location even when you are just a few moments from being saved
this project was built on Brett Stalbaum's Virtual Hiker Tool—a GPS you can wear on your wrist that always coordinates the most beautiful view, the most beautiful way to go, on the day you’re traveling
Motorola i455 cell phone
- which is under $30,
- available on eBay, and
- includes a free GPS applet
- often used
- accessible
- non trackable
- included audio
- vibration
open source compass-like navigation system
like where to find:
- water left by the Border Angels
- Quaker help centers that will wrap your feet
- distance from the highway
poems
- read aloud using device speakers
- instructional
- many languages
border-disturbance technology a straightforward app: it’s simple, equal parts code and poetry integrated into cheap Motorola burner phones that are meant to provide border-crossers with direction and sustenance in the form of locations of nearby water caches, first aid kits. law enforcement and information through procedural poetry.
- start up device
- provided a compass with a list of nearby water sites
- choose one
- direct you
- once you arrive there, it vibrants and shows image "agua"
image of a water cache notes about the benefits of these sites why the map data was encrypted
example 1: Do not panic. Do not panic. If you are too tired or disoriented to continue, realize that you probably will not be thinking clearly. Heat scrambles the brain like eggs. “It is perfectly noble to come out of a pose.” Know your own limitations. Turn your phone on. Search for a signal. (Walk only if you are not in range. Then, power the phone down to save the battery life to save your own. Walk, retest. Walk, retest, until you secure reception.) Call 9-1-1 or 0-6-6. Reason—it’s better to live to cross the desert tomorrow than to let the desert cross you today. translated to spanish, chinese
example 2: When everything—including this cell phone—fails, build a signal fire in dirt or sand, away from brush and trees. Use dead cacti and mesquite. A fire in the shape of an “X”—the international symbol of distress—needs no translation. translated to spanish, Malayalam
where to access source code where to access instructional guides
read aloud
"How does one govern oneself by performing actions in which one is oneself the object of those actions, the domain in which they are applied, the instrument to which they have recourse and the subject which acts" - Michel Foucault
Three layers of code: literal code - executing software on a phone and interacting with a world of machines/technology poetry as code - these poems are procedural, providing instructions and commands to follow the user as coded object - you follow instructions, but you are also being lead to water, you are being told information about the world around you with full interaction of the software performance art can be distributed, people crossing the border are performing
technically, the project was conceptualized in 2007. after ricardo dominguez tried out stalbaum's hiking tool, development for this project was created. this was the first time dominguez felt he saw GPS technology implemented in a non-urban environment. development started in 2009. However, in 2009, a VICE article titled "Follow the GPS, Ese" which interviewed Dominguez was published. After this, republican congressmen hounded the team of artists, launching 3 investigations from the government, UCSD, and financial auditors. this would affect how the artists approached development of the project.
by 2011, the project envisioned itself as an intervention. what are the laws and perceptions of immigrants in the US? the tool was not ultimatley implemented because the Narco War in the Northern Mexican desert posed too great a danger to direct immigrants through, as well as some resistance from the government
most of its uses were limited to museums and exhibits
In publications about the project, including a print book, the creators include the code side by side with the recited poems. In other words, this code was designed to be traversed as an instantiation or even execution of the project. Although fully functional, the code becomes meaningful in its potential implementation, existing as what Jessica Pressman (pers. comm., June 14, 2007) has suggested could be called conceptual code. Unlike other code examples in this book, this code was written not only to be read by humans but also to be analyzed and interpreted.
“The streets have become the location of dead capital and [. . .] to seriously confront capital in its current mobile electronic form, then resistance must take place in the same location where capital now exists in greatest concentrations, namely in cyberspace."
we currently live in a world where a technology like this might not be possible cellobrite, geofencing, and transnationality of these issues what unites us all? how do we see past the borders we are forced to live with? what does it mean for code to code us, and for us to view code as poetic, and for poetry to be code?
what are the options for the future?
"What degree can gps as a geopoetic system begin to ask questions and intervene into these other flows, the points of globalization?"
how are we moving away from augmented reality (used as entertainment) to augmented geography as a life saving tool?
what is the intersection between transborder and transgender? affect - emotion. how might we feel crossing your body as a trans experience? how do the bodies we police and the products/goods we profit off of differ as they cross our international borders? thinking about the digital version of this too is this a process of dissassembly and reassembly?
what is our image of a border crosser? how do we confront this image. why do we have an image of border crossers that "they dont have technology"
are there parallels between poems read aloud sharing knowledge of the land, and folk traditions? how do we translate ancestral knowledge in the digital age?