Collaborative Map of Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Posted on 2011-09-28 by Daniel Belasco Rogers
Collaborative Map of YSP

Collaborative Map of YSP

By way of saying a huge thank you to the participants of my GPS workshop at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this weekend, I put together all the tracks we made in QGIS and produced the collective map above. Maybe I should also update the OpenStreetMap entry.

I felt very good, after a bit of a hiccough, that I finally got everyone who wanted to, able to plug in a Garmin eTrex, download tracks and perhaps edit them with GPSBabel, visualize them with GPS Visualizer and with QGIS.

Here’s the obligatory photo of me pointing at a projected image of some GPS traces, taken by the fabulous Hannah Nicklin, the only photographic documenter of the weekend I think. More of her photos here.

Pointing at Projection. Dan at GPS worshop, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Pointing at Projection. Dan at GPS worshop, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Posted in Diary, GPS, Walking | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Collaborative Map of Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Locative Media, Psychogeography, links to three interesting essays

Posted on 2011-09-24 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

I’m having a fantastic time at the GPS workshop I’m leading at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and I think the participants are too. It’s very stimulating indeed to be in a room with such inquisitive, interesting and intelligent people but it’s daunting too. I really hope I didn’t put them off when I couldn’t get a mac to recognise a usb-to-serial converter I use to plug my Garmin eTrex in with. Will set that right tomorrow.

I promised that I would link to some of the essays I gathered together, so here they are:

Time to hit the sack to be bright for day two. I’ll post more documentation later when I can focus (and I don’t mean concentrate, I really mean focus).

Posted in GPS | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Line Made by Walking Without Marking the Earth – A GPS Workshop for Artists

Posted on 2011-09-22 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

An entirely flexible schedule for the workshop I am giving at the YSP on 24-25 September 2011. Posted here for the participants and anyone else who might be interested.

Location:
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
West Bretton
Wakefield
WF4 4LG
01924 832631
Our Contact: Damon Waldock damon.waldock@ysp.co.uk

Schedule

Day One
10:30 – 10:45 Brief introduction to my own work
10:45 – 11:30 Participants introduce themselves and their practice and what they hope to gain from the workshop. Any previous experience with GPS? What?
11:30 – 13:00 What is GPS – a theoretical class about the components of the Global Positioning System

  • What isn’t a GPS
  • How does a GPS work?
  • A range of different hardware and their differences
  • What to look for

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 14:30 Practical GPS induction – getting satellite reception and understanding the basics – outside
14:30 – 16:00 GPS drawing exercise – outside TIMES WILL SLIDE FROM THIS POINT
16:00 – 16:30 Introduction to GPS downloading – inside
16:30 – 17:00 Group analysis of results of first drawing, questions, discussions – inside
17:00 – 18:00 Opportunity for second exploratory walk, probing the difficult areas and interior spaces.
We have until 19:00 if we need it.

Day Two
11:00 – 13:00 Artists who use GPS

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 14:30 What tools are available for downloading and viewing GPS tracks?
Free Stuff:

  • GPSBabel – cross platform, many types of GPS supported, including data loggers, many conversion options, command line only but there are GUIs available for all operating systems (I use Gebabbel – Linux)
  • BT-747 – cross platform. For downloading tracks from data loggers
  • GPS Visualizer – web based (so cross platform)
  • Qgis – cross platform
  • Viking – Linux, Windows

Shareware / Commercial:

  • Gartrip – Windows, Shareware – very good, used it for years before I switched to Linux

14:30 – 15:40 Applications of GPS: Locative Media

15:40 – 16:00 Applications of GPS: Roll your own

  • What are the possibilities for building your own GPS?
  • Why would you want to?
  • How do you use GPS as a sensor?

NMEA sentence parsing. This session will look at my own sonorisation project written in Python and Pure Data as an example. The length and depth of this session will depend on the participants’ knowledge and interest.
15:30 – 16:30 Opportunity for individual tutorials installing and teaching each participant how to use a GPS with their own laptop while others have a chance to experiment with more GPS drawing and recording, testing the limits and granularity.
16:30 – 18:00 Hardware advice reiteration

  • What to look for in a GPS and what to avoid.
  • Can I use my smartphone?
  • Preparation and collation of material, making sure everyone has all the data and information they require.

Goodbyes.
We have until 19:00 if we need it.

Posted in Diary, GPS, Walking | Tagged , | Comments Off on A Line Made by Walking Without Marking the Earth – A GPS Workshop for Artists

Questions and Artists

Posted on 2011-09-21 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

Artists answer questions about GPS
I asked the following artists:

all of whom have used GPS in their work, the following questions:

  1. What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
  2. What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
  3. What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (software)?
  4. Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?

I have anonymised their answers, so that they don’t endorse anything.

Artist 1
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
For composing and sound making i’m mac all the way. Currently writing with Native Instruments Maschine, Ableton Live + Logic. For GPS authoring it’s been web based with Calvium toolkit (now called Appfurnace ), but i’m going to use NoTours for the next project, which is also a web based authoring system but runs on android phones

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
ipaqs (yay!) iphones a bluetooth gps receiver feeding straight into a MAX/MSP patch. (this was for a relational gps piece, i.e. not location based but built around how you travelled from your start position) I’ve also played around with the built in GPS device on a gumstix computer running PureData and embedded Linux, but haven’t managed to write a good pd patch for editing maps.

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (soft- ware)?
ah, i think i answered this too early! mscape notours and a custom maxmsp patch, used a GPS data parser I found in a forum somewhere, could dig it out if it’s useful for you.

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
I’m still looking for a system that allows me to link sound triggering with musically tight timing that is location sensitive. This is potentially possible using rJdJ on an iphone but the GPS implementation is not that great. It would be possible on an iphone and/or android but i don’t know enough about coding for them to do this.

Artist 2
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
Linux only.

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
Garmin consumer etrex GPS, Trimble Lassen SQ module, GS407 Helical GPS Receiver

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (soft- ware)?
For the etrex: gpsbabel, viking, gpsman 2 For the modules: custom AVR code written in C to parse GPS NMEA messages on the microcontroller and log, and a mix of Python and gnuplot to view and plot the tracks.

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
Many things some more technical than others. . .

  1. experiment with differential GPS (DGPS) for 10cm accuracy for surveys.
  2. the production and transmission of “fake” GPS satellite data to shift consumer units readings.
  3. more conceptually how to figure out some kind of real time, not necessarily graphical, overlay of surfaces (for example overlaying changes in wideband signal intensity across some representation of location).

Artist 3
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
OSX for all day to day and linux for server at home

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
I own lots of garmin Etrex, about half are the High sensitivity ones I have a whole bunch of OEM GPS units that use the SIRF 3 chipset I also co-own some GPS bluetooth dataloggers – can’t remember their name but the main good thing is that they have a button on top for one-push waypoint entry

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (software)?
Oh over the last years I have used many things. If i need results quickly i would use Google Earth or https://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ For more considered stuff i would use a GIS package like Esri, Grass, Man- ifold, QGIS or build my own software in Processing

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
Its not easy to make triangulated surfaces from a collection of GPS tracks geospatial data. I built some software to do it but it always felt difficult.

Artist 4
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
mac

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
a garmin something or other. . .

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (soft- ware)?
hmmm. . . well to be honest i never did. . . when i had made a drawing on the palm pilot i then looked at the screen of my garmin and wrote down the numbers as text onto the drawing. I don’t have any data beyond those transcribed figures. . . my iphone now does all the gps stuff for me. In- stead of me typing in the Northing and Westing onto a drawing it is added automatically to a data base when i upload the drawing.

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
I think it would make more sense to have a solar-system framed gps rather than a planet specific one. It would be interesting to be able to plot ones position in space both as the planet is spinning and as it is rotating around the sun. The earth centered-ness of gps gives the illusion of stability – that one gps coordinate looks like it stays in one place, when it is actually spinning and hurtling through space in a variety of ways. . .

Artist 5
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
I use all of them if needed . We even do GPS performances without any com- puter, nor logger involved, using just memory, sand or threads for example on last pixelache https://wp.me/pv25S-67 it’s all on the https://www.geotales.wordpress.com blog

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
We decide depending on the needs of the project. This might take some research. i experience this as it is part of the fun. This is how we came to do also GPS performances without any electronics. But i find it also revelled to have an understanding on how this and likewise techno is used in society. Lately i met some parachute peoples and they have their own devices developed, that give feedback with different bleep sounds depending on direction and altitude. So they use it to hear their position.

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (software)?
Both existing and self developed Software. To visualise tracks for NomadicMILK we invented the sand – robot, and this again had an strong impact on our theoreticals ideas about GPS as visualisation medium and also for our software. For more details on the matter I give the link to the essay “elastic mapping” https://www.elasticmapping.net/PolakISEA-ElasticMappping.pdf

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
ahahhahaahh good question. . . . For this you have to wait and see what we will do in our next project. We always try to do stuff that we have found no solution for yet, why make art otherwise?

Artist 6
What operating system(s) do you use (Mac / Windows / Linux)?
Mac

What GPSs (hardware) have you used?
I have a Garmin summit & have used Garmin geko’s for workshops – have always had a garmin of some kind as a reliable back up to the experimental stuff with mobile phones. Have used various bluetooth GPS devices, what- ever was cheap and good at the time when we were doing Running Stitch – we linked them to custom software on a mobile phone in order to send live GPS data now also using GPS on iPhones – the GPS is better than in e.g. a Nokia – because iPhones use cell ID to make finding GPS location quicker. And about to start using GPS on android phones. for me its all about using live GPS signals.

What do you use to download / view / edit the GPS tracks (soft- ware)?
MacGPSpro – for basic download and view of a line google maps my own cus- tom software for visualising gps tracks – either on a website or desktop – dif- ferent versions for visualising landlines (images on https://www.landlines.org) (live tracking) or comob (live linking of groups). (https://www.comob.org.uk) Now working at Pervasive Media Studio on new work sonifying and sharing live GPS data – so not viewing it so much as listening to it. Just made a ’space metronome’ that ticks according to distance covered rather than time passed https://www.watershed.co.uk/ished/projects/2011/embedded-artists- residency/journal/listen-to-the-space-metronome

Is there something you would like to do with GPS that you haven’t found a solution for?
I’ve always wanted to be able to map speech onto a GPS track so that I could drag a mouse over the line and hear what was said at that point in a walk, but never done it – I’m sure its possible, but never got around to it. – this was the nearest we ever made: https://www.satellitebureau.net/p12.php#gallery (takes a minute to load)

This data was gathered in September 2011 for the workshop ’A Line Made by Walking Without Marking the Earth’ led by Daniel Belasco Rogers and held at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park over the weekend of 24-25 September as part of the Live Art Development’s DIY scheme. Many thanks to the artists, all of whom responded so candidly and generously.

Posted in Diary, GPS, Software | Tagged , | Comments Off on Questions and Artists

A new category for filtering ‘rogue’ trackpoints?

Posted on 2011-09-20 by Daniel Belasco Rogers

Having just downloaded our GPSs for this period, I was playing around with looking at the GPX tracks in Qgis and something struck me.

Qgis output of recent GPX tracks (Berlin) showing errant trackpoints

What you can see here is that some trackpoints are clearly ‘wrong’ or ‘inaccurate’ or just plain ‘ugly’ and these are the ones that Mathieu Baudier and I are working on removing from our database (and eventually for anyone else who wants a tool to ‘clean’ their GPS tracks). To do this we’ve been looking at things like speed, acceleration and azimuth variation (what angle you change direction from one point to the next). So far (I think) we’ve left out elevation because it is a pretty inaccurate reading anyway but as you can see from the picture above, it might just be very useful for identifying our ‘ugly’ trackpoints.

In the graphic above, generated by Qgis, I have coloured each track-point by elevation and selected some to display the value. You can easily see that those trackpoints that make the strange triangle at the end are all way outside the elevation value expected for Berlin. There would be problems if it really was 943 metres below sea level. Interestingly, there are a few ‘errant’ trackpoints earlier in the track which are also worth taking out if you zoom into that particular area. It seems that when you suddenly meet an elevation radically outside what is expected, the x and y values of that point are also dodgy and worth filtering out.

Posted in Diary, GPS, Software | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A new category for filtering ‘rogue’ trackpoints?