Although you can see the map of Manhattan seems like a grid system, the streets in New York are more complicated. The streets are not straight and they are affected by the occupations and ethnic background of residents and other historic/political/economic/
religious factors. You can imagine that you will be hard to find near
churches but Starbucks always provide Wi-Fi. And this is the reason why I focuses on the routes than the geographic map. I can find more Wi-Fi in the business area in New York as in London. Geographical space is important but I wanted to understand how it interact with the users than take it as a objective distribution.
Yes, it will be an independent project and I am trying different ways to represent it in a scale of longer time and more broad space. I am not interested in mapping the Wi-Fi locations but paint them in artistic way.
Media is a complicated issue. I like both digital and traditional art,
so I tried to bridge them with different media. I chose to print my works and displayed them in a metro station, because traditional
exhibition is easier accessed by the public, especially the elders; I
walked in the streets to collect Wi-Fi information rather than using the existing Wi-Fi database, because I wanted to paint the landscape what my naked eyes see as the traditional artists. I think the digital art and fine art are not the opposite and the collaboration of them can help us create more unprecedented and interesting artworks.
