Feb 6, 2007 8:00 AM

Remapping: from cell phones to collective consciousness

A new UCLA-initiated venture is taking students and their ubiquitous cell phones to a cultural and technological plane beyond mere text messages and chatfests.

The project, called Remapping LA, is putting both to good use, along with other digital tools, to help create an innovative, technologically advanced collective memory of Los Angeles.

Students are using advanced mobile phones, global positioning system devices, digital cameras and geographic information systems to create a multimedia database of photos, maps, videos and audio recordings that, when combined with historical material, will provide a comprehensive profile of the Los Angeles State Historic Park, the first site chosen for the Remapping LA project.

Site of the city's first railroad yard, the 32-acre future park east of Chinatown is nicknamed "the cornfield" because corn seeds that spilled from railroad hopper cars around 1879 eventually produced cornstalks. It is considered by ardent community preservationists and state park officials, who paid $36 million in 2001 to acquire it, a microcosm of Los Angeles history. Spanish explorers camped near the spot when they first set foot in what is now downtown Los Angeles. It is also where the city's first depot and hotel were built.

Plans to develop the park are still up in the air. San Francisco-based Hargreaves Associates, a consulting firm, was chosen last November as the winner of an international competition to design the park and has been given a year to come up with specific plans.

Leading the UCLA venture is the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP), a joint collaboration between the School of Theater, Film and Television and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. The project is being done in cooperation with the California State Parks department and the local communities that surround the site.

"The purpose of Remapping LA is to understand what is going on socially and culturally in this location," said Jeff Burke, executive director of REMAP. "We want to provide a resource for local communities and other L.A. citizens so that they can explore the history of the site, the communities surrounding it and the geography of L.A., in every sense of the word."

Remapping LA has three goals: to explore the city, then collaboratively design and develop new technological systems with the communities that express what is discovered, and finally to invite the rest of the city to experience and comment on what is created.

The historical database will be updated continually and provide source materials for indoor and outdoor media installations, performances and other cultural works. For example, REMAP researchers are working with UCLA's Center for Embedded Networking Sensing, Cisco Systems and others to create the wireless infrastructure for large-scale interactive experiences that will be open to the public.

In the first phase of the project, Fabian Wagmister, an associate professor of film, TV and digital media, co-director of REMAP and creator of Remapping LA, and students in his Engaged Media Production Workshop are working out of a downtown media lab near the site.

Later, using these same high-tech tools, L.A. residents will be able to add images that embody their own culture and identity to the database.

Wagmister describes this collective authoring as "an opportunity to do something significant, starting something totally from scratch that is constantly open to continued transformation. It's very creatively liberating."

In the long run, those involved feel that using participatory technology will empower the community.

"Think of it this way: Every day our society forces us to sift through mountains of media just to survive and understand our surroundings," said student Chase Knowles, project coordinator. "Being able to design and use media to self-define your own environment can be a really exciting and empowering thing for many people."

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