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SEVEN MILE BOOTS

Year
2004

Author
Laura Beloff, Erich Berger, & Martin Pichlmair

"Seven mile boots, the magical footwear known from folk tales, enables its owner to travel seven miles with one step. With little effort one can cross the countries, to be present wherever it seems suitable and to become a cosmopolitan flaneur with the world as the street." (Beloff, Berger & Pichlmair 2004)

With the SEVEN MILE BOOTS one can physically walk through the Internet. The work consists of a pair of interactive shoes with audio. By walking in the physical world one may suddenly encounter a group of people chatting in real time in the virtual world. The chats are heard as a spoken text coming from the boots. Wherever you are with the boots, the physical and the virtual worlds will merge together. The seven-mile-boots piece is built upon feet and shoes as an interface to move in this text-based non-space of the chat rooms. The piece offers a perspective into the processes, which are an inherent part of our current lifestyle. The artistic focus of the piece is in the construction of an open structure, which is filled by real people in real time; real life. The structure creates a possibility space which pushes the users forward in a search for more. This deficit produces the desire for sub-stance, a desire to consume and to experience.

After putting on the boots they start looking for active chat channels. When the user walks around s/he can locate a chat activity through audio. S/he will hear himself passing through a group of chatters or s/he can decide to stop for closer observation. The boots log into the chat rooms automatically under the name of"sevenmileboots". The channels are selected according to their activity and topic. Everytime while walking, the boots are looking for a new selection of channels from the net. The boots contain all the necessary technology;a computer with wireless network, microprocessor, sensors, amplifiers and loudspeakers. The boots are ready to function in any location with an open wireless network.

The project Seven Mile Boots was conceptually visionary at the time, as well as it was technologically demanding. The project was imagined and realized long before the current smartphone era with ubiquitous and constant individual presence online. The Seven Mile Boots was a work that foresaw the near future with ubiquitous connections across virtual and physical landscapes culminating onto mobile bodies.

At that time (in 2004) there was no existing technology for experiencing the merger of physical and virtual connections through one’s physical body and its movements without a need for a monitor. The authors built this possibility from scratch by using technological devices and components that were available. The Seven Mile Boots was “realized as a pair of wearable and usable boots that enabled one to walk in the physical world and simultaneously in the virtual and code-based world of the Internet. The virtual walking was perceived via audio cues and real-time chat room conversations, which the walking user could eavesdrop. […] However, being able to walk on physical terrain and simultaneously walk through the Internet, which we—at the time—were accustomed to accessing through the computer terminal, opened up ideas about the gradually emerging connected world that blended the physical and the virtual realms.” (Beloff 2018)

Later on, Beloff has written about the Seven Mile Boots project the following: “As an afterthought I believe this project was successful because it provoked the public to imagine beyond the actual capacities of these boots and the situation. It triggered visions of our future, connectedness and possibilities that this kind of world would open up.” (Beloff 2018) With the Seven Mile Boots people began imagining the networked reality, which has today become more or less our everyday condition. However, at that time the imagined concepts by users of the boots were coloured with positive dreams, rarely were people fearful or critical of the on-going industry-driven developments. The full scope of what would come and what it meant was not yet comprehended at the time.