Mobscene is an attempt to turn people into pixels, and turn a moving crowd-into a moving image.

The following is a brief lead-up to Mobscene where I will make obvious generalizations which are necessary to lay the foundation for this project, but are not sufficient to prove my theories correct. That is not my intent.

A powerpoint presentation that accompanies this short description can be found at http://amostle.com/mobscene/MobsceneHalfway.ppt

BACKGROUND

Historically, the visuo-spatial organization of crowds has followed a parallel path to the evolution of communications technology.

Starting with word-of-mouth type organization, people were instructed to show up at a particular location at a particular time. This led to the sort of crowd organization we refer to as the rally. The rally topological model is used for events such as Hitler’s Nuremberg rally of 1934, the annual Mass Gymnastics in North Korea, and other stadium stunts. A rally’s spatial topology is generally rigid and crystallized.

The next step towards decentralization is the cult-like organization with a clear leader in a hierarchical relationship with his followers. This sort of organization is generally smaller and more intimate. There is a looser structure to the spatial topology, and also to the way the participants interact.

What we consider to be more modern forms of mass activity have taken a looser form. Participants in concerts or raves tend to be thrown together spatially in a more-or-less ad hoc fashion. These semi-random organizations of people of course have their own clusters and subgroups, but in generally they appear looser and more informal. What is currently considered more interesting visually are such loosely-held organizations.

The use of technology to mediate crowd organization has tended to augment, rather than supplant, the traditional forms of crowd organization. Hence we have projects like Golan Levin’s Telesymphony, which is a very top-down model of rigid, crystallized organization. Flash Mobs represent an example of using flexible modern technology for the same old end – instructing people via email to show up at a given time and a given place. However the spontaneous nature of the organization Flash Mobs makes it unlike Telesymphony or rally-type organizations.

Pac-Manhattan promised a new use of cell phones. Although not a crowd organization, the Pac-Manhattan team used cell phones to instruct participants dynamically and reactively. The technology allowed for meaningful spatial movement on a moment-by-moment basis.

MOBSCENE CONCEPT

Mobscene is an attempt to combine the sponteneity of Flash Mobs with the reactive dynamics of Pac-Manhattan. The use of cell phones will allow a crowd to spontaneously self-organize to form a moving image.

Participants use their cell phones to obtain up-to-date information about the overall image the crowd is producting, and how then can help organize it. Based on the technological hierarchy of SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech, participants will have varying amounts of information about the group, and their own participation in it, based on which technology they choose to use.

NETWORK CHARACTERISTICS

Nodes: The nodes are the participants.

Protocols: existing SMS, MMS, AIM, and speech protocols, all via cellphones. In addition, pure speech between participants on the ground allows them to organize themselves.

Transport: the existing cell phone network handles all transport except pure speech, which requires no transport other than sound pressure.

Contents: text messages, multimedia messages, text chat, and voice are used, where available to transmit images, advice, and text instructions to participants on the ground. The content between people on the ground is left open-ended.

Addresses: phone numbers.

Topology: ad-hoc, loose.

STACK:

Application layer: Participants request information via their chosen protocol. Respondents in a control room react by transferring images, instructions, are simple guidance to participants. Participants talk or yell to each other on the ground however they wish.

Transmission layer: All application layer processes rely on the existing cell-phone transmission layer, or pure unadultered speech.

Physical layer: cell phones and people.

VISUAL EXPLANATION

please see the power point presentation linked at the top of this document.

PREDICTIONS

I expect the technological hierarchy (which cell phone technology the participants choose to use) to lead to a social hierarchy. This will be the result of the discrepancy in the abilities of the different protocols to transmit information. In other words, MMS, which includes images and other visuals, will allow a participant to request a copy of the whole image of the crowd. From this, they will make judgements about where they are located within the image, and where they should move to in order to change the picture. In contrast, a participant with SMS, will be restricted to text instructions about what to look for, or where to go. This will lead to limited independence of SMS users. They will rely on users with more information, such as those with SMS for instructions. The participants with the most information will end up instructing the surrounding participants as a result of their information superiority.

I expect voice to be at the top of the information hierarchy. Although MMS should provide rich media information. It seems as if there is nothing more efficient than human speech for dynamic, reactive communications.

RESULTS

Through a series of experiments, I found that SMS, MMS, and AIM are not suitable for real-time dynamic organization of crowds. The potential latency in transmitting the messages proved to be so great as to be of no use whatsoever for this project. In a series of tests using SMS, MMS, and AIM between two Cingular phones and one Verizon phone, it seemed that there was no correlation between the carrier and the latency. A few messages took half a day to be received. While most were received within a minute or two, there were enough outliers to disprove the feasibility of using these technologies.

In a sense, the disproof of the first prediction suggests another reason to believe in the second prediction. The fact that cell phone messaging technologies are not ready for dynamic instant communications, leads one to conclude that speech is still the best, most efficient, way for communicating in real-time. My indended prediction was that even if there were technologies that were capable of real-time messaging, speech would still be the preferred means of communication. This remains to be seen.