After a long week of updates, we’re drawing it to a close until the next big period of activity. To summarize what has just happened:

And of course, there is much more work ahead. Here’s our to-do list.

Make the Benchmarks

The proliferation of hackerspaces notwithstanding, it is harder than one might think to price out a medium-sized production job at a rate one can be assured of hitting. We’re really excited to get this phase of the project complete, and test it out. Previous plans involved giant spike nails or screws, but the best method of fixing these to the ground is seeming like it will be a rivet and epoxy. So, this is going to need some trials as well, before attaining its final form.

Work on the Cards

In addition to filling out the interpretive text, we’re also going to be designing the layout for the cards, so they can be printed. If we didn’t mention this earlier, we’re thinking that we want to condense the format from the size of an index card to the size of a playing card, because that will make them much easier to shuffle and handle in the field.

Design the Form and Reference Card

Nothing that exciting here, except some fun hours of typesetting! We might try some experiments in bindery and papercraft though. Wouldn’t it be cool if all the forms came on a pad, that had a cover that was the reference card itself?

Database Design

Researching the best database solution and integrating it with the website will be a major task, but an important one. While this is one of the cheapest parts of the project (considering we’re doing all the work ourselves) this is probably the most pivotal task towards making the Survey useful.

The Next Trip

We have firm plans for the next trip, but we’ll be taking another one soon, probably the end of June at the latest, with other quick day trips through the next month and a half. We’d like to get the benchmarks ready before the next trip, but at the very least we’ll be getting the new-and-improved card set ready by the next big trip, as well as the forms, in order to make sure those are all functioning correctly.

And that’s about it, from where we stand now. Thanks for listening to our updates. It’s been fun sharing with all of you backers, we hope it’s been at least a little entertaining to hear about. Stay in touch if you have any questions, and we’ll talk to you again soon!

- Rosalynn & Adam

Using the Kit, we collected data. For now, it is recorded in a spreadsheet. We have 36 records with 26 data categories each, meaning a total of 936 data. Looking at these in the spreadsheet is lovely, if you are the kind of geek we both are. After thinking about this project for years, planning it, raising the funds, and driving all over the continent, this is what has come off the press.

But this rainbow of data: what does it mean? The data itself is never as important as its analysis and its interpretation. That is why now we are asking ourselves a number of questions about the database that will hold the data and help us use it.

So what is the data? The data is two-fold: there is the geographic data that helps find and maintain the benchmark points, and then there is the subjective data as prompted by the card system that we’ve devised. The geographic data largely is what it is–there might be aspects of it that are more important than others, more accurate or more useful than others, but it all relates to a particular place on the surface of the earth. The subjective data, on the other hand, is the point of the Structurodetic Survey. It’s something that we’ve invented on our own, and depending on what we do with it, it might be only a curiosity, or perhaps completely meaningless.

Our idea is that by decontextualizing the typical stream of consciousness, and then re-contextualizing with a series of prompts we might achieve measurable pieces of subjective response. It would be measurable if it is in small enough pieces that they can be compared and contrasted to similar subjective responses from other points of view, in other places, and made by other people. This is not a very scientific goal, as it has far too many uncontrolled variables. It’s result is not very quantifiable. But it does create a repeatable experiment, for better or for worse.

Taken on its own, the subjective response to the Survey is a little hard to follow. Take these entries, from record #28, benchmark # A5-2:

First Impression: drainage lines
Card A: places for performance art
Second Impression: how many people made this?
Card B: property
Third Impression: fenced off areas
Card C: symbol
Fourth Impression: shapes with an “up/down” to them
Card D: beta
Fifth Impression: did they bother to erase/fix these?
Card E: cyborgs
Sixth Impression: local to water source

If you understand what the Survey is about, there might be a certain poetry to these. You can understand these as part of a progression of thought, a Markov chain perhaps, or some other building algorithm. But without that narrative, does the data mean anything? One way of presenting the data that we’ve considered is having the database output a single record in a highly structured narrative form. A web page could show the photo, the GPS points on a map, perhaps overlaid with satellite photos. Each of the data above could be led with text reading, “I thought about…” and “Then I read…” in order to make it clear that this is a person, thinking these things in a particular place and time. With this narrative mask over the data, it would be understandable as the captured experience of another person.

But there could be other ways. What if we took all the responses from a particular latitude line, and looked at them together? What if we did a text search of the database, and pulled out all records in which the person Surveying spontaneously thought about “fences”? Or what if we put all the responses to a particular card together, and looked at them? Here are all the impression responses to the particular card in Category A, Places for Performance Art:

Record 03, Benchmark A1-1: well, we’re doing that now
Record 07, Benchmark A1-3: we’re still doing that
Record 28, Benchmark A5-2: how many people made this?
Record 37, Benchmark A6-3: opportunities to see

Is this any more interesting? What will happen to a grouping like this, the more data we collect? What sort of analysis could we do on pulling these sorts of records, when they don’t just total four, but total four hundred? At some point, will having too much data make these sorts of sorting practices less interesting?

What about sorting the data according to the person who conducted the Survey? Maybe this data will not only tell us something about the place, but about each person visiting that place. Perhaps by using these Survey, it will help us look at our own reactions with fewer pre-conceptions. Here are Rosalynn’s sixth impressions, taken from one single day of surveying, in which six benchmarks were laid down:

4/24/13, Benchmark A3-1: heritage is explained in 300 words, visitors’ interpretations are illegally exhibited on the walls
4/24/13, Benchmark A3-2: idyllic thoughts about the past
4/24/13, Benchmark A3-3: the feasibility of making this land hospitable
4/24/13, Benchmark A4-1: access
4/24/13, Benchmark A4-2: hidden enclaves for development
4/24/13, Benchmark A4-3: forceability of shape

What was going through Rosalynn’s mind on that day of surveying? What would others conclude from this list, as opposed to what she herself would conclude? Is it more interesting to know these responses without the contextual information of where she was, or would that help in attempting to draw a conclusion? Should we be trying to draw any conclusion at all?

As you can see, now that we have data to look at, questions about how to consider the data proliferate. Which, of course, is certainly a rationale for designing the Structurodetic Survey. But it is also makes the process of defining the database and designing it for public access difficult. We want this database to be as useful as possible. But this is a very new idea, and so any design will have to be an experiment in itself. We’re still playing with ideas, and so we’ll have to wait before we share out plans about the database’s release.

@mykola asked a bunch of very interesting questions on Twitter, and since most of them are on the subject of the data and the database, we thought we’d re-print and answer them here. If you’d like to ask us questions, do email us or get in touch with Adam via Twitter @interdome.

@mykola: Do you also have prompts for more quantifiable readings? A normalized ‘pleasantness’ factor (1-10), etc? If you did that then you could enable powerful analytics, which is maybe exactly NOT the point, but could be cool.

Rosalynn & Adam: At this time, no. As we just discussed a little, having some non-quantifiable readings is indeed the point, as you suggested. However, that doesn’t mean that a quantifiable Survey module couldn’t be added in at some later date. It’s important to us that the Survey will be open (most likely licensed for derivatives via Creative Commons), and that others can modify it for their own uses. We’d also like to make the database compatible with non-canonical Survey data… additional or altered card sets, different methods, etc. Right now all the data has been tagged with the “Card Deck Version” field, (we’re calling this the “Alpha Set”), keeping the possibility of sorting out data using different Card Decks in the future. We could foresee adding additional fields for a quantified module, and allowing the data to be sorted on that basis.

Something that did occur to us, is that “state of mind” is very much a factor when doing the Survey. If we were tired, dehydrated, hot, etc, this affected our recorded impressions significantly. To this extent, we added a “mindstate description” field to our spreadsheet… but there is no data recorded, because we didn’t record it while surveying. We imagine that there will be other fields added in this way, and therefore holes in the database will be opened as we decide to start recording information that we did not record on previous surveyed sites. But what’s a database without some missing data?

But as for the “mindstate”, this is also a subjective response. However, maybe this is a place to add more quantified data? Should we take our pulse? Our blood sugar? The number of hours since we last slept? In the same way that the geographic data is purely quantified, perhaps there is physiological information that should also be quantified. This is a question we’re still thinking about.

@mykola: Also, what db are you using? I assume it keeps track of time stamps for all entries? time as a data vector is vastly underutilized.

Rosalynn & Adam: No particular DB yet. We will have to do some research about DB software to find out what is the best option for the Survey. We’d love any suggestions.

We are tracking the time, however. The date and time of the actual survey at the site is a field in the data charts. This is important for tracking the progression of the Survey–we are currently in alpha testing, after all, and want to watch how we adapt to the process and evolve it. And as you suggest, it could be a very interesting line of analysis. Are our responses different in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening? And with the date, time, and latitude and longitude (all of which have been recorded), it would even be possible to feed in weather reports from historical records, even collate data about the angle and position of the sun in the sky.

@mykola: Do you assign an ID to the person doing the reading? Could be cool to trace overlaps between individuals etc.

Rosalynn & Adam: Yes. Right now, we’re just marking ourselves by our initials. When we have the database online, hopefully we’ll be able to create user profiles, so that others who add to the database as well can make information about themselves available, and link it to the data they’ve submitted.

@mykola: What about tags? Be cool to have a pre-defined set of tags that could be applied to a given location.

Rosalynn & Adam: This is an interesting idea. Adam, in particular, has thought a lot about tags as a way of sorting information. He tends not to trust them because the initial list is already a qualification, but then they can be tallied as if they were a quantification. That said, it might be interesting to do some sort of “word cloud” analysis on the impression data, and then use that to make tags. It could have a negative effect, in that it would bias other subjective impressions towards using the language already in the database. Or, maybe it could be useful in those situations in which “I just can’t think of anything”, as occasionally happens with word association games like the card set.

Or, maybe tags would be a good way to deal with some of the “mindstate” questions that were just raised. Rather than attempt to analyze something as removed from subjectivity as heart rate, the person doing the Survey could choose from a list of ten emotional tags, to describe his/her mood.

@mykola: Last thought, a simple mobile app could replace most of the kit requirements. Compass, GPS, Camera, Notes, DB integration….

Rosalynn & Adam: Realistically, the database is probably going to tax our technical skills to the limit. While this might be a great opportunity to learn how to program in order to make an app, we’re going to have to put that idea in the Medium/Long-Range plan category.

Except the custom database functionality, there are many apps that do this sort of thing already. Heck, even a contemporary digital camera with it’s EXIF data configured correctly can capture almost all of geographic data. In a pinch, and in network range, a smart phone could function as the kit. When we open the Survey up to the public, we strongly suspect that smart phones will play a large role in how people interact with the Survey.

But we also wanted to make sure that the Survey could function without a smart phone. There is probably a hint of “archaic technology” fetishism going on here–it’s fun to use a compass, a GPS receiver, a clipboard. If we had a sextant and star charts, we might even use that to calculate our co-ordinates, just to do it! But having a bit of physicality is important to the project, we think. While sorting through index cards in the wind can be kind of a pain, there is also something useful about this physicality. We could, if we wanted to, substitute cards into the deck on site. This would be more difficult with an app. Writing out responses in longhand is a meditative task. And there is the ability to re-design the procedure on the fly when you are writing by hand–again, more difficult with an app. We’ll leave the argument of which particular technological method is objectively “better” to the digital dualists, but for now, using this hybrid of digital and physical tools for conducting the Survey seems to be working well. But we won’t disregard the possibility of an app in the future, either. We’ll just leave that on the Medium/Long-Rage list.

Thanks for these great questions! As said, do contact us if you have more questions. These are really helpful for judging how understandable the Survey is, and for refining our methods for talking about it and explaining it.

The next update will be our final summation of everything so far, and the explanation of the next steps for the project.

And now, the cards!

The cards are the pivotal element to the Structurodetic Survey. Without the cards, this would be mostly an exercise in mapping.

The Survey is attempting to capture some of what happens when we are out in an environment, interacting with structures–whether the structures are built architecture, natural structures, decaying structures, structures of ideas, social structures, or any other kind. The geographic data that we are collecting is simply to ensure that this process is repeatable. If we go and collect these subjective, structural impressions at a particular place, we want to be sure that we can go back to that same place, and do it again at precisely the same spot. The subjective, structural impressions are interesting, but we think they will be really interesting when they are collected in a formal way such that they can be repeated, compared, and cataloged. If two people record their subjective impressions in the exact same spot five minutes apart, how would they differ, and how would they be similar? What if they record their impressions five years apart? This, if we had to sum it up, is the “point” of the Survey.

While collecting the geographic data is fairly straight forward, as we discussed in the last update about the equipment in the Survey kit, collecting subjective impressions is a bit more difficult. What is the best way of doing this? Should a person simply be asked a series of questions? Should we have someone simply write down their thoughts? What about allowing someone to draw an interpretative picture, or other spontaneous artwork? Should we administer some sort of psychological projective test, like a Rorschach test? All of these would be interesting, perhaps. But we developed our own method that is a sort of combination of all these, using the Structurodetic Cards.

The Structurodetic Cards provide prompts to which the subject responds with text. But the prompts are provided in a series, in the attempt to stimulate a progression of thought rather than isolated responses. As well, the prompts are not specific questions, but more along the lines of topics that allow tangential thoughts. They are short statements or phrases, combined with supporting text to explain a bit of their context. And in this way they tend to prompt the subject to respond with similar short statements or phrases, which could possibly be incorporated as future cards. The cards are also chosen at random, but grouped into categories. In this way, each step in the progression of thought is not a reaction to the same prompt, but a reaction to a general idea, spread through randomized interpretations and thought nodes.

But to describe the Cards is more confusing than to simply show what they are. So, let’s look at some of them.

As we previously described, the method for using the Cards is as follows.

The result of each step is recorded on the Survey form, and this process is repeated once at each of the three benchmarks surrounding the site. We suppose you could go around again, if you want to. But this process, three times, along with the rest of the geographic data is what constitutes a single Survey site.

Here are the categories, along with a few examples from each one.

The first category is Typology of Place. Most of these cards take the form of Places for…. For example, Places Fit for Tresspassing and Exploration, Places for Performance Art, or Places for the Telling of Stories about Other Places. The goal of this category is to start off the progression of thought along the lines of the general question, “what is a place for?” But, rather than simply asking that question, one of these cards chosen at random proposes a particular use, and let’s the subject decide how this idea of use might apply or not apply to this particular site.

The second category is Systems, which propose a number of systems that could relate to spaces and structures, in the effort of nudging the progression of thought towards looking at underlying systems in a place, and how this might affect our apprehension of a place. In the same way, this category doesn’t just come out and ask that question, which is a bit daunting. Instead, it proposes examples, like Favela, Habit, or Distribution, and allows the subject to consider how these labeled terms might apply or not apply to the site.

The third is Philosophical, which are similar to the second category, but much more abstract. Cards like Past/Future, Double, and Modernism might not be directly understood by the subject, given his or her own intellectual background. But this is where the explanatory text on the cards comes into play, explaining some references and providing information on further reading. And, often a reaction to the card’s term without a detailed knowledge of its canonical connotations creates a better response, rather than falling into a canonical rut of interpretation according to what “the books” say about a particular idea.

Technology is the fourth category. We felt that technology has a particular role to play in any contemporary consideration of the structures of place, and wanted to provide some particular stimulus from this direction, vast and elusive though it might be. We had particular trouble refining the cards for this category. Either they seemed too general and not very useful, or too specific in terms of their technology (e.g. API, or “advanced programming interface” seemed like an interesting stimulus but is hard to understand for those not already familiar with it). And yet, cards like Video, Prototypes, and Database were definitely interesting for pushing the progression of thought into the realm of technological structures that deeply affect the way we interact with environments.

The last category is Tangential, which even more than some of the more obscure cards in other categories, attempt to push thought out of its standard ruts and into new areas. While these cards are the hardest to interpret thematically, their particular content, like Fungus, Street Intersection Patterns, and Aesthetic Genre are often deeply evocative, and the right card picked at the right time is often very interesting.

In the next update about the data, we’ll share some of our responses with you, and talk about what these cards actually stimulated. But as for the cards themselves, we learned that we definitely have cards that we like more than others. Some cards, after being picked a few times, elicited groans from both of us. Megan in particular came to hate the card Archetypes, as she had significant theoretical disagreements with this concept stemming from her background in folklore theory. And though Adam had suggested the inclusion of Feudal Capitalism into the deck, after picking it for the third time, he wasn’t sure if it would ever stimulate any interesting thought. On the other hand, there were cards that proved to be unexpected treats. All of the Typology of Place cards were very easy to respond to, and we were very pleased with that category in general. We also seemed to respond particularly well to Performativity, perhaps because we were thinking about the design of the Survey while doing the Survey–which is a very performative exercise in itself.

We do need to continue to expand the accompanying text with the cards, to make them easier to interpret. And, we’re working on a box to help shuffle the cards without losing them in the wind, which was quite a challenge while juggling clipboards, compasses, and cameras. Another thought we had was how to enable the use of different card decks in the Survey, while incorporating the recorded results into the same database. To add or subtract cards from the deck seems easy enough, but what if someone wanted to use a completely different card deck with different categories, or perhaps no categories at all? But this is a question for considering in conjunction with the Structurodetic Survey Database, which has now officially been created, and which will be the subject of our next update about the data.

We’d like to introduce you to the kit of equipment that we used for the Survey. There are a few items missing, that we either didn’t have yet or discovered that we needed, that we’ll talk about as well. By taking you through equipment, you should also get a good idea of the information that we are collecting from each survey point.

All of this equipment fit into a small tote bag, so the Survey is really quite portable. We were originally envisioning a padded equipment case to lug everything around and protect it, but as the case weighed more than the stuff inside it, it seemed ridiculous.

Clipboard

Every researcher needs a clipboard! This helps take notes in the field, as well as making you feel a little bit professional when jotting down the Survey results.

Survey Pad not made yet

For the Alpha Test, we took notes on a legal pad. As you can see, it would be helpful to have a form with item boxes for everything to be recorded. (For some reason, we kept forgetting to write down the elevation.) We think that we should be able to make a three-part form on one page, where all three benchmark points at one site could be recorded.

GPS

The very first thing we wrote down for each survey site, after the name, date, and time, is the GPS coordinates of the benchmark locations. For each site, we chose three benchmarks. These are our three “view points” onto the site, and they typically form a triangle of some sort, around the site, looking inward. We go through the survey procedure once at each of three benchmark points, and that is a “completed survey” for the site. With the GPS information, anyone using the database should be able to find the same benchmark point and stand exactly where we stood, and see exactly what we saw (temporal displacement notwithstanding).

We used a handheld GPS unit, that seemed to give pretty good results. A benefit of the handheld unit is that it works anywhere in the world with the same accuracy. A downside is that it requires line-of-sight to geostationary satellites, so if you are inside, or up against a wall or a cliff it cannot get a signal. We’re going to experiment with this, and maybe use a smart phone as backup to see if that gets us some extra accuracy indoors.

Compass

At each site, we chose a “point of reference” that was visible from all three benchmarks. This could be a piece of the structure, a spot on the ground, or anything. We generally oriented ourselves by standing at the benchmark, and facing towards the reference point. The idea with the survey is to get three different views of the same site. We would observe more than just the reference point, of course–but this provides a starting place, to make sure that others could find the benchmarks, and orient themselves in a similar way. To this effect, we recorded the compass bearing from the benchmark to the point of reference, so even if the appearance of the site changes so the point of reference is no longer visible, with the GPS coordinates and a compass heading, one could stand on the same three points, and face the same three directions with some sense of accuracy.

Camera

And to aid the process of orienting oneself at the benchmark even easier, we also took a digital photo from the benchmark, looking at the point of reference. Any digital camera will do, as long as it has a system for uniquely numbering the photos’ file names. We also used analog film cameras, because we like photography. But the digital photo for each benchmark can be included in the digital copy of the database, to help reference each particular benchmark.

It’s also nice to have data from the benchmark that is not simply a number. Looking at GPS and compass data in a database, a person does not get any sense of where the benchmark is without also referencing a map. Even the name of the site written in text is not necessarily meaningful without prior knowledge of the area. But a single photo says a lot. One can see the ground, the background, the color of the air, how much light was available.

A major discovery that we made on the Alpha Test, is that once you start considering what sort of environmental structures affect your subjective interpretations of a space, there is nothing that does not seem relevant. We’ll get into this more in the section on the data, but we started wondering what other sorts of things we should be recording, along with our subjective impressions. The weather? Our pulse? What is important? The idea is not to prove some sort of correlation between subjective impressions and objective data, but to provide the best picture possible. Those questions aside, providing a photo certainly helps creating a wider view, sharing a lot of those incidental factors that might not be recorded any other way.

Distance Laser not acquired yet

We brought a tape measure to measure the distance between the benchmark and the point of reference, but our 30-foot tape was insufficient for many of the site layouts, so we had to guess. We considered getting a 100-foot tape or a measuring wheel, but in doing some research we discovered that laser measuring tools for ranges of over 100 feet, and accurate to 1/16 of an inch are fairly reasonable, and much easier to use with less than two people. (Like this one.) So, we’ll be investing in one of those.

Benchmark not made yet

The benchmarks, small metal washers that are riveted to the ground (you can find similar ones on any sidewalk in the United States, see photo) mark the benchmark points, and are the mostly-permanent marker for the Survey sites, so that others can find where we Surveyed, and repeat the procedure themselves. In our overview, we mentioned that getting these manufactured is taking more time than we thought, so we didn’t install any in our Alpha Test. However, with the geographic data we collected, we could easily re-visit these sites, collect more Structurodetic data, and install the benchmarks at that time.

The marks are fairly simple. They should be a metal ring, marked with the website URL (so people stumbling across them can find out what they are) and a unique ID number that links them to the database. For the Alpha Test, we numbered the survey points as AX-Y. A for Alpha Test, X the site number, and Y the benchmark number at the site, 1 through 3. So the benchmarks we surveyed were A1-1, A1-2, A1-3, A2-1, A2-2, etc.

Conducting the Alpha Test without the benchmarks gave us some perspective on this part of the Survey. For one thing, a problem we’ve always been considering is how to install benchmarks on private property, if we don’t get permission. We thought we could just proceed to the nearest point off the private property, benchmark that point, and conduct the Survey from there, even if it is hundreds of feet away, or even a mile away. That would be weird, but maybe interesting. But then we took the Survey to National Park land, where is protected as an environmental site. Even though this is public land, we didn’t want to pollute the ecosystem with metals and potential finishing residues. So what to do? We’re happy to report that doing the Survey without benchmarks is totally possible, although not preferable. So we may work up some protocol or special numbering system for non-invasive “invisible” benchmarks, for use when the particular site is not suitable for leaving an artifact behind.

Reference Card not made yet

It was always part of the plan to make up a laminated reference card to guide people through the process of using the kit and conducting the Survey. But naturally, we wanted to do the Alpha Test before we made up these cards. It should be a fairly compact affair, with some pictures and a brief list, detailing all this equipment. That, combined with the forms on the Survey Pad should make completing the Survey for the first time fairly straight forward.

Card Deck

Right now, the card deck is a stack of index cards, sorted into five categories. The way this part of the Survey works, is that you write down your first impression, standing at the benchmark point while oriented towards the reference point. Then, you pick a card at random from Category A, and read it, and write it down. Then you write down a second impression. Then you pick a card at random from Category B, read it, write it down. Then write your third impression… and so on. By the end of the process, you will have written down five card draws, one from each category, and six impressions (including the first one, before seeing any cards).

This is the central data of the Survey, so a lot rests on the cards. We’ll be talking about the cards in the next update. But from a physical standpoint, the cards are a good size, though we think that the final printed version (which some of you will be getting as rewards) will be a little smaller, more playing-card sized, for easier shuffling. Also, a box of some kind will help–it’s hard dealing with a rubber band wrapped stack of paper when you’re in the middle of the windy desert!

* * * * *

And that’s it! Not such a bad field kit.

The items are presented in basically the order that they are used in the process of doing the Survey, so if you imagine using all of these things three times over, that is pretty much the Survey. We’ll get to the particular categories of data in an upcoming update.

It just so happened that we were going to be between San Diego and Los Angeles for a few days, in a break between other engagements. So, we thought that would be an excellent time to take the Structurodetic Survey out for its first test drive, in the area around the Colorado and Mojave Deserts.

We love the desert. Each desert is an ecosystem unlike any other, as the particular features of the limited water resources create a web of species that survive in the niches of possibility. In the shade of each rock, in the eroded gutter of each arroyo, in the unique chemistry of every geologic uplift or dry, alkaline playa is home in which something could potentially grow, if only its biology adapts to those particular circumstances.

The desert is a particularly good place for the Structurodetic Survey, because this simultaneously sparse and rich environment allows for us humans to apprehend particular growths in a singular way. The desert is filled with vantage points in which we can see one mountain, one river, one plant, or one animal thriving, apparently on its own. Of course, each of these entities could not exist as it does without all the other systems around it, invisible though they might be. But because we can view each of these things as standing out from the rest of nature, it provides an opportunity to reflect upon how that “single” thing came to be the way it is. It is a way to view the tree, without the forest getting in the way, so to speak.

And this works for human-built structures as well. In the deserts of the Southwestern US, there are plenty of buildings, aquaducts, artworks, and individuals who appear to be “in the middle of nowhere”, even though the fact of their existence makes that place a very definite “somewhere”. And into these structures of “civilization”, leaks the desert. Everything in the desert is very apparently in a state of approaching-ruin. The wind and dust erodes and discolors, the scrub brush digs deep roots into the foundations of anything approximating shade, and everything sinks into the strata of an accelerating, elapsed time, becoming part of the evolving deep geologic structure of the desert, whether it wants to or not. And yet the desert preserves, drying things out, petrifying them, blending contemporary litter from passing motorists with the detritus of indigenous people from times that must be carbon-dated to be understood. The ongoing accumulation of ruin-space in the desert levels adobe, gold mining, vacation homes, and freeway rest areas to the same plateau, of the continuum of history, of the knowledge that everything is always already falling apart.

The desert is also nice for less philosophical/structurodetic reasons. It’s hot and sunny. It makes you consider your hydration as a necessary factor in your continued life, which we don’t typically feel in our current home of the Pacific Northwest. There’s plenty of camping, although it is sometimes a bit of a search to find good camping rather than the typical RV/KOA highway-side campgrounds. It’s simply beautiful. And there is the pleasure of the road trip–of constantly seeing new things while experiencing the sensation of speed and distance, but not at such a high and removed vantage point as flying. Traveling across the desert, you really get a sense of how vast this continent is, cut up by watersheds, mountain ranges, national and provincial borders, private property, and protected or reserved government land.

We set out in our light SUV, perhaps the perfect vehicle for our light sporting and utilitarian needs. With a couple water jugs, a tent, sleeping bags, a propane stove and a stock of canned and dry food, a variety of 12 volt DC to USB charging adapters, and some on-again-off-again mobile internet, it was fairly easy to feel vaguely self-sufficient, ignoring our need to fill the car full of processed liquid hydrocarbons every 300 miles or so.

Our first destination was the Salton Sea area. Here’s something that Adam wrote elsewhere about the Salton Sea, if you are unfamiliar with its particularly odd and unfortunate history. It seemed as if it would be a good destination for starting our alpha test. After looking at a number of areas, we stopped in Bombay Beach, at a collection of ruined trailers and cottages. Their ruin was far advanced, and it was difficult to tell what exactly had brought them to their current state. Though, we did know that flood waters from storm runoff had partially buried some parts of Bombay Beach, before the level of the Sea retreated. We picked one ruined trailer as our first survey point.

Then, we proceeded around the Sea to the east side, where we visited Salvation Mountain, at Slab City. Slab City is a decommissioned Marine base, where everything was dismantled except a few tanks and pill boxes, and the concrete slab foundations that give the city its name. Now, it is an off-grid camping area for RVs and other long-term residents. It’s often brought up as an example of a TAZ, or “Temporary Autonomous Zone”, because it is largely self-run by the artists, travelers, and outsiders that are there. The city has developed its own particular culture and ethics in line with its situation, which we don’t have room to delve into here. But it has also given birth to Salvation Mountain, a large-scale, on-going art piece created by Leonard Knight, who lives there and continues its construction. Salvation Mountain was our second survey point.

Next, we drove north through the brand new geothermal power plants, up into the Imperial Valley. Passing north through Palm Springs, we entered Joshua Tree National Park. We camped there amid the gorgeous Joshua Trees, and hiked out into the desert to see the old Ryan Ranch, a former gold-mining homestead. This was our third survey point. We also hiked around some of the large, picturesque rock formations, and picked a particular formation as our fourth survey point.

We drove east to the Colorado River, a rare band of green and blue in the middle of the desert, that provides most of the Southwest with its water for irrigation and drinking. Around the river are signs of the programmatic authority of the various water districts–organizations of various combinations of public-private on the state, county, and local level that are responsible for managing the liquid resources and apportioning them. The canals stretch across the desert in unnatural straight lines, signs bearing their insignia inform passersby about the ownership and cleanliness of various exposed watersources, and homemade billboards along the roadways advertise the landowners’ political opinions about the current state of permanent water crisis. We visited a much older landscaped sign of human habitation–the Blythe Intalgios. These giant symbols and figures were carved into the desert terraces above the Colorado River by persons unknown, at a time unknown. All that anyone can do is look at the shapes, created by scraping away the top layer of compacted desert stone called “pavement” that reveals the sand beneath, and speculate on their meaning and origins. And that’s what we did, making this our fifth survey point.

After stopping at a County Park on the Arizona side to swim in the river and wash off the desert dust, we headed back towards LA. We made one more stop in the Mojave. Along the remains of what was once the famous National Highway Route 66, we came across an abandoned filling station. But this isn’t just any filling station–this one, next to the Road Runner Retreat Restaurant, is the future home of The Philosopher’s Library, a project by Candy Chang and James Reeves that we only had heard about days before. (Definitely check out their website, their project looks great.) Given that we were in the area in a timely fashion, we thought we should survey the site before their renovations, to document the ruin before it became “un-ruined”, as it was adapted back for use. This was our sixth point, and hopefully we’ll survey it again once James and Candy have completed their work, so we can see how the differences look through the eyes of the survey.

We’ll talk more about the survey’s themselves in the next update. But it was actually very enjoyable. Besides the fact that we were embarking out to work on an art project that was deemed interested enough by friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers that they would want to fund a significant portion of it, the Structurodetic Survey is a nice way to spend time out in the environment and architecture. Apprehending some ruins, or a geological formation, or a particular nice view, we considered how we would have interacted with this space before the Structurodetic Survey. Perhaps we would have gawked, walked around, snapped a few photos, and maybe taken some notes if we were feeling especially reflective and literary. Or, if we really put some forethought into things, perhaps packed a picnic, and hung out in the shade for awhile. But now that we have the Structurodetic Survey, we have a new means for spending time in a particular place.

The Survey isn’t a lot of work, but it gives a certain flexible form to what would otherwise be formless. Each survey takes from 30 minutes to an hour and a half to go through, depending on how quick we run it. If we stop for conversation, consider various points before placing a benchmark, and spend some time thinking about the cards we draw from the deck rather than doing rapid-fire word association, the Survey is a pretty nice way to spend some time at an otherwise simply somewhat remarkable spot. If you consider your travels through an area like driving on a highway, the Survey is the sign that says “Vantage Point Ahead”. The Vantage Point is a particular spot, developed as a turn out for people to stop. You know you want to stop and take a photo, but you don’t know where. The Vantage Point says, “why not right here? There’s some parking, and maybe a rest room.” This is what the Survey does. We know we want to stop and appreciate something in particular, but we’re not sure how. Should we stop for lunch? Just take a photo? Try and draw a picture or write a poem? The Survey says to us, “look at this thing in three different ways. Here are some prompts. Write something down.” It doesn’t always work, just like every Vantage Point is not the best view. But it is the prompt. It’s a way to slow things down, to create a stopping point at which we can start reflecting, even if we aren’t sure that the reflection will necessarily bear fruit.

We are thinking if nothing else, the Structurodetic Survey will be good tool for opening up the mind to the idea of psychogeography and the interpretation of space. It will be a starting point, an interpretative compass, through which one could start to think about one’s ability to reflect on the environment around oneself. As for what information and interpretations result from the Survey–we have to work on designing it in order to be the most useful sort of tool that it can be. We’ll get into that in the next update, when we start looking at the Structurodetic Survey’s equipment kit.

Hello backers, and other interested folks!

After the Structurodetic Survey got its initial funding last winter, we went into stasis mode, waiting for the spring, warmer weather, and our schedule of outings that would start to make this project into a reality. And finally, we’re here. Rosalynn and I (Adam) have just returned from what we’re calling the “Alpha Test” of the Survey, in which we tried out the method we had brainstormed, collected the Survey’s first data set, and took notes about what worked and didn’t work.

We know you are probably curious for information about our progress, because we haven’t sent you an update in over five months. You are about to be overwhelmed (unless you really like experiential/performance art, architecture, and ethnography as much as we do). I’m about to write six updates to you, including this one, in the span of a week. They will proceed as follows:

There is way too much information for one update, so we’ve broken them into six. But even if we sent you one update per day for the next week, they would probably all fall to the bottom of your inbox. So, we’re also taking this opportunity to launch the Structurodetic Survey home page:

www.5ooo.org/structurodetic

This page is under construction, and will eventually be the access point for the database and all information about the project. For now, you can think of it as your single bookmarkable page. We’ll have all the updates, all the pages, all the videos, photos, and whatever else available from that page. So if you have to file away these update emails from Kickstarter now, feel free to check the Structurodetic Home Page later, where everything will be archived and saved for when you have time to look it over.

Okay, now on to business. Here’s the overview of how the project is doing.

The Benchmarks

Getting the benchmarks designed and made is one of the key tasks of the project. These are the metal disks that are riveted to the ground, to mark the locations where we recorded information. That way, other people can go out and find the exact place where we collected data, and collect their own. Also, people who stumble across these benchmarks can use the info on the mark to find out more about the project.

The original plan was to use aluminum washers, because they could be laser engraved and would stand up to the weather fairly well. However, we recently learned that it is possible to buy actual brass benchmarks with hardware, and these could be potentially laser cut. We were in the process of acquiring some for laser testing, but the person we were consulting with had a personal emergency, so the production process is temporarily on hold. We weren’t able to get any benchmarks made for our alpha test, so we went out and collected data without leaving the marks. Like any experiment, this yielded its own interesting data about the process of collecting data without leave a physical trace, that we’ll get into later.

Cards, and other Kit Materials

While we hit a roadblock with the benchmarks, we’re happy to report the development of the other materials is going well. We’ve got over one hundred cards, written on index cards. We’re refining the number of the cards, and re-thinking some of the entries, but it looks like the categories work pretty well. We also need to add more supporting text to aid in understanding the cards. The cards are the one of the more confusing aspects of this project, and we’ve definitely received the most questions about these. So we’re going to write a post delving into the cards in detail, that will hopefully help explain them a bit more.

We’ll also give you a tour of our equipment kit in another post. This worked well, too. We had procured a cool padded box to keep everything in, but as it turned out, everything fit into a tote bag much better. If we were going to do the Kickstarter again, tote bags would definitely be a reward.

Data!

We have our first data, which is very exciting! For the first time, we can actually see the hard content of the Survey, and think about what it means. There will be a full update on this, of course. But we were quite pleased to not only get data, but we were happy with the data that we received. This is a project of the obscure–the data doesn’t necessarily read as clear as day. But it is very compelling. We are sure that the data could be meaningful, if only we present it in the right way. This is a subjective project, so we don’t think we’re being overly deductive when we say that the general presentation will be the key to whether the information is meaningful. The key will be finding the right balance. We want to allow the viewer to play with the data, to explore it in a way that they can find the data’s own narrative, as they see it.

Rewards

Most of the rewards are the components of the project and the kit, so you’ll know when those are ready by staying tuned in to the development of the Survey. There are the buttons and the stickers of course, which we could get made at any time. But most of those are shipping with other components, so we’ll probably send everything out in the fall, together. Unless we get inspired to jump on the button maker, and send you all a surprise gift. So keep an eye on your inbox, and be sure to respond back to the address query email from Kickstarter when it arrives.

Onward!

So that’s the overview. Now let’s get into the details! Expect more updates shortly.

Performance and installation for Tacoma Spaceworks, December 31, 2012, through April 15, 2013.

Location: S 11th St & Broadway, Tacoma, WA.

Artists’ Statement

We interact with objects every day without thinking. We are so adept at interacting with objects that our minds go on to other things.

Design is often associated with the marketability of a product. This storefront is set up to market a product. The product is an everyday object.

The artists interact with the product “without thinking.” The artists designed the object, but they also manufactured it; they fantasize about it as a product; and they incorporate the product into their lives without noticing. The storefront is to market not only the object, but these other uses.

The artists wonder about artists’ relationship to objects, and their relationship to work.

What are the methods by which a reused or recycled object becomes original artwork? When reused materials are utilized, how does this decision effect the final outcome of the piece? Is it a question of cost-effectiveness, ecology, aesthetics, or cultural criticism?

Is art real “work”? What must an artistic product look like or do, in order to justify the artists’ work? What must the artists do during their process, to make it into “real” work? Is it a question of marketability, historical significance, aesthetics, or criticism of commodification?

These questions are present, but silent, in our everyday lives. By creating an installation of the marketing for a product, the artists have constructed a venue in which these questions are present. By performing their artistic practice in the installation, the artists hope to give a voice to these questions, and give the viewer a chance to answer.

Public Comment

Have comments or questions about the “Untitled Product” performance and installation? Leave them here.

The Structurodetic Survey is a project by Rosalynn and Adam Rothstein, which is seeking funding via Kickstarter in Fall 2012. This page serves as informational keystone for the project, with longer exegesis about the details any theory of Structurodetic Survey, as well as updates on the progress of the survey once the funding campaign has ended.

Structurodetics

Geodetic marks are small metal rivets or posts planted into the ground, as reference points for surveys. From these points, surveyors measure the differences in heading, altitude, latitude and longitude to make a database of information that will serve as a representation of the world’s geography. Without these efforts to create shared caches of information, we would be limited to navigating the world from our personal memories and what knowledge we can receive through word of mouth.

The social significance of architecture works in a similar way. We understand the meaning of physical structures by the remembered impressions that we create ourselves or absorb through shared social structures. These structures and observable to us in various ways, some opaque, some more transparent. But these social structures can be definitively identified when we can say for certain that our subjective impressions of a particular space have been changed–even if we cannot identify how or by what, precisely.

We are going to survey a number of structures and spaces, and catalog the subjective fragments that exist in the human experience of that space. By making a database of subjective judgments collected in a repeatable manner, we hope to open the door to analyzing the difference between these judgments, and perhaps getting a sense of their generation, in the process of sharing them with others who make their own judgments at these sites. We will install small metal benchmarks on the sites, (three per site, from different angles) to record the location from which the fragments were observed and recorded. We are calling our placed artifacts “structurodetic” marks, as rather than orienting navigators and mapmakers to a global system of latitude and longitude, they orient us to the social structures present in and around our physical structures. Our structurodetic database will record the social data gleaned from interacting with these structures, and we encourage others to access our database, and go to the benchmarks and record their own impressions.

Architecture, Temporality, and Ruin-Space

One definition of architecture is the design of human experience within space. However, prior to any intentional architecture, space already influences human experience and social practices. Similarly, built structures always become part of that prerequisite influence of a space after they are built. Long after the designers and builders have left, the space continues to evolve with those structures as component elements of that space. The time-space that architecture, as a separate intentional act, can actually affect is brief. But the time-space in which structures meld with the space, and function not just as an act upon that space but as continuous part of that space, in nearly infinite.

We call this much longer time-space, the “ruin-space” of the structure. Whether the structure is literally in ruins, or its ability to be used for a particular purpose is ruined, or if simply the design of the structure has decayed to reveal its real existence–the brief moment of architectural intention is complete, and all that remains is what continues to exist. To refer to material remainder of the ideal by calling it “ruins” might seem pejorative. But compared to the shadows of intention they are as long-lasting as mountains.

A building exists only briefly in the mind, as an idea. But the ruins of a building begin as soon as the structure is open for use, and last until the last bit of rubble has decomposed back into the earth. The human experience of space is an experience of ruins–of fragments, of pieces, of material, of memories of the ideal found scattered over the terrain, leaning against each other, put into place by forces unknown. Even as we use brand-new ruins, just as they were designed to be used, our experience is changed in pieces, fragmented into vantages of shattered remnants. Our social and cultural structures join the physical structures in ruin-space. Every human action and interaction in space is a network of these fragments, shifting across each other, interfacing, and inscribing their data upon each other, and us as we move.

The structures we will survey are not simply random. The list we are starting with will include places of significance representing a particular temporal vision of of the Southwest. They are not buildings that were merely created to be modern. They now represent time, as well as the form space. They extend through the fourth dimension, altering the structure in the other three. It is the same sort of significance that we find in what we call the atemporal, though not all of these structures are themselves atemporal. This is not the only significant aspect to these structures, but it looms up like a shadow of a building, extending across a field, and it cannot be ignored.

The Database and the Algorithm

How can we record our subjective judgments without making them abstract numbers, but still keep them in a form that is useful for others to study in other contexts? The Subjective Algorithmic Program is an experimental way of recording subjective impressions of structure fragments, in a way that does not prejudice the judgment into a pre-conceived rubric, like a quantitative “on a scale of 1 to X” form. The Algorithm guides the subjective record via its program, to make the information not arbitrary, but a vector for comparing and contrasting socio-structural fragments.

The Algorithm functions with a card deck, separated into five categories. Each category is a particular socio-structural aspect to be examined: Systematics, Philosophy, Technology, Esoteric, and Place Typology. Before recording a judgment, the observer draws one card from a category, and considers the result. By allowing the observer to programmatically modify a subjective impression with a random categorical aspect, plenty of latitude is preserved for the observer’s own judgment, while keeping each successive judgment recorded to be within a general categorical similarity with any other observers’ records.

Each category is drawn from pseudo-randomly in turn, resulting in six recorded impressions (five categorical impressions, and one without a card’s influence). Each acts as a pivot, channeling the subjective impression in a new direction, aligning it according to the previous compilation of the card set category. When the subjective judgment intersects with a card draw from, for example, the “Systematic” category, the next judgment in the algorithmic program will not necessarily be systematic. However, a specific systematic pattern, written on the card and placed before hand in the card deck, should give the observer a particular plateau from which to make their next subjective move. It is not as arbitrary or subconscious a process as free-association, but allows creative play in accumulating data. On either side of the card draw information is a subjective progression of thought, but is inimically linked to the card placed between it. This progression of thought continues from X to Y, and is the primary data collected in the Structurodetic database. This algorithm will be followed throughout the database, allowing for comparisons between judgments made after similar or different card draw categories.

The card set is comprised of five categories, A through E. The card data points are flexible, and can be added or removed at will, but a draw upon the card set for the purposes of the algorithm should be random. The card set was originally sorted in a random association process from a previous card set, categorized about political architecture.

Programmatically, it looks like this:

First Subjective impression = X(sub0)

Print on form as X(sub0); B; X(sub1); C; X(sub2); D; X(sub3); E; X(sub4); A; X(sub5); Y

In addition, the database also records the GPS coordinates of each benchmark, its unique number, the heading from the mark to the structure, a physical reference point visible on the structure, and a photograph of the structure. The structure of the database will be such that each entry will contain the following information:

- Structurodetic Benchmark Number (a seven digit number, with a dash, and then suffix of 1, 2, or 3, as all marks will be placed in groups of three.)

- GPS location

- Structural Reference Point (a selected architectural feature on the structure in question)

- Compass heading to Ref. Point from Benchmark (so that the vector of apprehension is clear)

- Photograph (directed toward Ref. Point from Benchmark)

- Algorithmic Structure Function data points

- X0 Judgment
- Category A Card Draw (Systematics)
- X1 Judgment
- Category B Card Draw (Philosophy)
- X2 Judgment
- Category C Card Draw (Technology)
- X3 Judgment
- Category D Card Draw (Esoteric)
- X4 Judgment
- Category A Card Draw (Typology)
- X5 Judgment
Y

- Other

The database will be made publicly available online, and advanced beta access and hard copy subscription will be available for subscribers.

Funding

We are raising the money to pay for the creation of the database, the manufacture of the laser-cut, aluminum benchmarks and mounts, and the rewards. The first stage of the database will contain information from more than 20 significant structures and places around the Southwest United States. In order to visit these locations and survey them, we will be paying our own transportation costs. The funding we seek is for database, materials, and reward production only.

Here is what how plan to spend the targeted $924:

$500 for producing the individually-numbered benchmarks, laser cut from aluminum. Also mounting hardware.

$100 for high-quality photo printing, for the hard copy of the database.

$100 for admission to the various sites.

$50 for printing of datasheets and reference cards for use in the field.

$150 for rewards: button and sticker making, printing, CDs, hard copy binders, card sets, and shipping.

$24 to cover Kickstarter’s 5% fee.

If we are lucky enough to collect more funding than our goal, we will add a significant number of new sites on to the initial database release. If it seems that we will exceed our goal, we’ll update the Kickstarter page at that time with surplus goals and details about the additional sites. In the future, we will be updating and adding to the database with more locations, definitely. But surplus funding will guarantee more sites in the initial advance release available exclusively to our supporters.

Locations

The locations we will actually visit is subject to change and evolution, but as of now the planned list is as follows:

Center for Land Use Interpretation, Los Angeles, CA
Materials & Applications, Los Angeles, CA
Nike Missile Site, Los Angeles, CA
CLUI Desert Research Station, Mojave Desert
Salton City, CA
Salvation Mountain, Niland, CA
Slab City, Niland, CA
Blythe Intaglios, Blythe, CA
Area 66, Yucca, AZ
Titan Missile Museum, Green Valley, AZ
Asarco Mine and Mineral Discovery Center, Green Valley, AZ
Roden Crater, Flagstaff, AZ
Biosphere 2, Oracle, AZ
Arcosanti, Mayer, AZ
Eliphante, Cornville, AZ
Hoover Dam/Lake Mead, NV
Double Negative, Clark, NV
Nevada Test Site
Thunder Mountain Monument, Imlay, NV
City, Garden Valley, NV
Guru Road, Gerlach, NV

We’ve collected these sites on a custom Google Map.

View Structurodetic Survey in a larger map

Blood 4x

Dandelion Pollen 10x

Drosophila 2 10x

Fiber 4x

Film Negative C 4x

Magnetic Strip 2 4x

Match 2 10x

Memory Stick Duo 4x

Needle 2 4x

Passport 10x

4-Color Process 4x

Salt 4x

Typewriter 4x