The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and of ourselves.
Urban Cursor is a GPS enabled object by Sebastian Campion, designed to facilitate social interaction and play in public space.
The object, which is shaped as an oversized 3-dimensional computer cursor (pointer), was placed on a square in Figueres, Catalunya during the cultural festival Ingràvid. Here, people could touch it, move it around and sit on it as an alternative to the benches. Despite being removed from its normal screen based environment, the cursor was still in touch with the digital world. Via an embedded GPS device, the cursor transmitted its geographic coordinates to a website. At the website, the coordinates were mapped in Google Maps thereby documenting the cursor's movements in the physical world and making it possible for participants to see how they collectively helped move the object around.
"My experiments are focused on the human presence in cities. How to appropriate public spaces with cheap medium and ephemeral action, questioning the frontier between public spaces and private spaces I use regularly with various techniques with tapes, sealing foil, inflatables and I propose new shaped spaces (which are grafted onto the existing urban furnitures) that become multifunctional by people uses, allowing passersby to take the time to sit, watch, children playing, then leave. "
"I approached people on the street and asked them to define their own personal border around themselves, while in front of the official one. I offered them a box full of different coloured chalk with which to draw their borders on the street. Most of the 40 participants instinctively defined their personal borders in a public space as a circle around themselves."
Iris Hoppe, Individual Borders (2003), the movie
Iris Hoppe, Interventions in Public Space
