I’m starting a new project in creating a series of iPhone applications for Surviving Windsor. Some of these applications will be absurd, some useful, but all will be focused primarily on the specific conditions and realities found here in South Detroit.
This suite of applications takes the city as its conceptual backing, generating a set of small technologies and tools that can help citizens of Windsor and visitors investigate and understand their surroundings through critique, humour, and imagination.
Why use the iPhone? Well, I’m already familiar with it for starters — I haven’t even touched an Android phone — but I’m also interested in looking at what the potentials are in the iOS world for creative intervention, and for becoming another tool of sorts to examine and understand the peculiarities of locality.
So, what are these apps going to do? I have a few ideas, and I’m in the process of thinking through a few more, but after having skimmed through some basics on iOS development, I think it’s time to start unfolding some of these on paper. And, of course, one of these apps will be based on psychogeographic / algorithmic movements in space.
This project is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Media Artists Section.
