May 27

Digital Documentary and the Contemporary Shifts in Visual Culture

The continual development of new media technologies has had an effect on almost every aspect of our lives. New digital media teamed with the open expression of individual perspectives has allowed for a new kind of documentary production, where now we are not only an audience, but an active viewer who has been placed into the scene on screen.

This relatively new technique in documentary making can be seen in Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison’s 2012 documentary, Bear 71. The documentary is an interactive web experience which follows the daily life of a grizzly bear Canada’s Banff National Park, who was tagged as a cub and whose movements are followed by cameras. Like an animal version of The Truman Show, Bear 71 documents the bear’s movements via numerous cameras and places you in the perspective of the bear, navigating its natural environment while demonstrating the strong human influence present. Bear 71 is an example of how digital and networked technologies can further add a sense of truth and reality to documentaries and provide insight into what the audience may otherwise be unaware of. By immersing the audience into the scene, this technique of documentary filmmaking allows the audience to question what they know and look deeper into the moral side of the subject.

New media has also changed the way we traditionally view documentaries. With the rise of social media and personal smart devices, almost anyone anywhere can create their own documentary of sorts. The popularity of YouTube has meant that almost anyone with a camera can become a vlogging celebrity, using the documentation of their everyday lives as entertainment for their global audience. The growing popularity of GoPro cameras also allows for users to create a documentary of their experiences from their own perspective and share this with an audience, placing their viewers in their position so as to make them feel as though they are the ones in the scene.

With the continual development of these techniques and technologies, the process of documentary making can continue to evolve and challenge the concepts of traditional formats, allowing audiences to not only interact as viewers, but as an active audience involved in the experience.

References:

May 20

Ubiquitous Computing and the Internet of Things

We’ve come a long way since the early days of the internet. Taking a look back over the last two decades or so, we can see that many of the ideas that once existed inside the minds of some particularly creative individuals have now become a reality. Global internet access? Check. Drones? Check. Artificial Intelligence systems? Check. The pervasiveness of these internet technologies has also crept up on us, sidling into our everyday lives so smoothly that we have not only become accustomed to it, but we find ourselves attached and unable to understand how we managed to complete everyday tasks without their assistance. Can you imagine a world without smart devices? With just one click of a laptop, tablet, or phone we are given numerous resources and sources of information in a simple and efficient manner. The accessibility of these technologies today is referred to as ubiquitous computing, where “computing is made to appear everywhere and anywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format.” (Wikipedia, Ubiquitous Computing).

With this ubiquitous computing comes the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), which refers to the “advanced connectivity of devices, systems and services that goes beyond the traditional machine-to-machine (M2M) and covers a variety of protocols, domains and applications” (Wikipedia, Internet of Things). The IoT has radically redesigned our everyday interactions, as now we are presented with a multitude of media wherever we go, especially within city regions where billboards and buildings feed us with information while our smart-devices and GPS help us navigate our way around. As David Bollier writes, “Maps are a new form of annotated “wayfinding” that makes signage and tourist guidebooks less necessary.  The Internet of Things – sensor-readable RFID tags on objects – make the cityscape more “digitally legible” in ways that previously required architectural design.” (2013).

The connectivity granted to us by these devices relates to Malcolm McCullough’s concept of Ambient Commons, which Bollier discusses. Bollier suggests that the “embedded design elements of the ambient commons affect how we think, behave and orient ourselves to the world,” as we experience life, with its information, people and locations, in different ways due to the digital nature of our everyday experiences. (2013)

The growth of IoT and the increasingly rapid development of ubiquitous technologies means that we will become further connected to one other and the things around us, creating simpler and more time-efficient shortcuts for our everyday lives. While this will be beneficial as a whole, accommodating to our 140-character lifestyles, some restraint should be taken to ensure we don’t completely replace ourselves – and our abilities – with digital technologies. A Hal 9000 situation would not be ideal.

 

References:

May 13

Affect

Affect can be a powerful thing. It is linked to our experiences and describes the impact which these experiences can have on us and us on them. It is a two-way street which can be brought about through various different ways, not always reliant upon human interaction. In today’s media-driven society, affect (and affecting) can be seen in viral videos and the ways in which sharing content affects popularity and the impact on all of the contributing forces.

As we all know, affect comes from various different forces which are not always human. Natural forces, man-made forces, and social, political, scientific, and artful forces all have the potential to affect (or be affected), and a collaboration between these forces (including human) can work to create mass affect. As Massumi and Zournazi write, “in every situation there are any number of levels of organisation and tendencies in play in cooperation with each other or at cross purposes. The way all the elements interrelate is so complex that it isnt necessarily comprehensible at one go.” (2002). We can see this in the ways in which social media had been utilised to promote and encourage debate and action over certain events and movements, with the collaboration of various different forces to further extend the affect.

It can be seen in viral videos of recent years, such as Kony 2012 and Barack Obama’s Presendential campaign, and even more recently in the ‘Look Up’ campaign, which encourages people to embrace the world around them and put down their smart devices (though the video is from YouTube). Each of these videos are examples of how these forces, by themselves and collaboratively, can affect change and spread their overall impact across large online communities, helped by the audience actively sharing the content and allowing themselves to be affected. As Massumi and Zournazi also write, “When you affect something, you are at the same time opening yourself up to being affected in turn, and in a slightly different way than you might have been the moment before.” (2002). Through collaboration and the shaping of content, people can both lend to the affect as well a allow themselves to be affected by the experience.

References:
Massumi, Brian with Zournazi, Mary (2002) ‘Navigating Moments: A Conversation with Brian Massumi’, in Mary Zournazi (ed.) Hope: New Philosophies for Change, Sydney: Pluto Press: 210-243

May 6

Micropolitics

This week’s topic looked at how useful new media can be in allowing networks of people to form groups and communities in order to initiate change and growth, looking specifically at micropolitics as the driving force for action taken by the community.

Jellis’ article, Disorientation and micropolitics: a response, gives a definition of micropolitics as “either small-scale nor situated on the ‘left’ or ‘right’ of the political spectrum, micropolitics operates transversally, activating the “affective potential of the interval between feeling and doing”” (Himada & Manning, 2009: 5 as cited in Jellis, 2009). This concept of micropolitics places an emphasis not only on the desire of a group of individuals to incite change and development in real-world issues, but the actual collaborative efforts of these groups to actively seek out and become instigators of change. These sorts of efforts have been seen in the past, but have become more frequent with the rise of online platforms which serve as a boost towards greater action. Significant groups in this type of movement include Anonymous and their support of activism in events including the Steubenville rape case and protests against various governments and institutions, including the Westboro Baptist Church and the Church of Scientology. The Occupy movement is another example of international networks of people coming together in order to seek change amongst established political and social forms, seeking to establish equality on social and economic levels.

While this movement towards forming groups and networks to actively seek change can be revolutionary, the omnipotent presence of government structures across the internet can derail the concept of peer-to-peer communication, as is discussed by Rushkoff in his article, The Evolution Will Be Socialized (2011). Despite being aware of how tightly regulated the Internet can be, there is still a desire amongst networks of individuals to create a move towards bringing about change and resolution to issues which effect the population on an everyday basis. Rushkoff is an example of this, as he discusses his move to convene a summit entitled ‘Contact’ which will “seek to explore and realize the greater promise of social media to promote new forms of culture, commerce, collective action, and creativity.” It is this attitude, when shared by groups of individuals, which can bring about change and inspire action over passivity.

 

References:

Jellis, Thomas (2009) ‘Disorientation and micropolitics: a response’, spaces of [aesthetic] experimentation, <http://www.spacesofexperimentation.net/montreal/disorientation-and-micropolitics-a-response/>

Rushkoff, Douglas (2011) ‘The Evolution Will Be Socialized’, Shareable: Science and Tech <http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized>

Apr 29

The Fate of the State

Transparency is a particularly important topic within our new media age. Since the advent of the internet, and the rise of social media within the last decade, we are afforded the opportunity to gather and receive information with ease, and the accessibility of this information allows us to remain in touch with what is happening on various social, political, and cultural levels. Transparency within bodies of government is especially relevant today as the relationship between politicians, governments, and ordinary citizens is closer now than it ever was, thanks to the use of social media sites such as Twitter.

Lawrence Lessig (2010) explains in his article, Against Transparency, his concept of ‘naked transparency’, which “marries the power of network technology to the radical decline in the cost of collecting, storing, and distributing data. Its aim is to liberate that data, especially government data, so as to enable the public to process it and understand it better, or at least differently.” With this explanation in mind, we can relate this understanding to the presence of whistle-blowers in recent years, such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, whose use of the internet and social media platforms brought to light private government documents and created storms of controversy. In the case of Snowden, a former employee of the CIA, the decision to leak thousands of documents filled with classified information led to him being charged with espionage and fleeing America to seek asylum in Russia, however the leak led to questioning by the public over information privacy and government secrecy. In cases such as these, apparent transparency can lead to the discovery that not all information between governments and the public are entirely transparent.

While people like Assange and Snowden have been hailed by some as heroes for being whistle-blowers, it can be argued that transparency may not always lead to better outcomes for either party. Lessig (2010) suggests that complete transparency within the actions of governments and other bodies of power can have a negative effect across the board, as continual revelations of corruption and misdeeds can result in a reception of chaos by the public. It is possible that in the case of transparency between governments and the public, some rare moments of ignorance may in fact bring bliss.

 

References:

Apr 1

Virtual Insanity

Interactions in both real life and online form and shape our relationships and ways of communicating with one another, with the latter medium giving us a platform to construct realities that can greatly differ to that of our everyday life.

In this week’s reading, we looked at both virtual reality and augmented reality and their continual development over the years. Virtual reality is a “computer-simulated environment that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds … displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays.” (Virtual Reality, Wikipedia) whereas augmented reality is a “live, copy, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are … supplemented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.” (Augmented Reality, Wikipedia).

Both of these have been the subject of pieces of pop culture, with the most recent being the use of augmented reality in the film Her (2013), though most of these depictions within various types of science fiction books and films are yet to become a reality.

The growth of both virtual and augmented realities alongside the growth of technology has allowed for a change in the ways in which social relationships are formed, shaped, and maintained. Online gaming has become a major part of the existence of both of these realities, with popular games such as The Sims and Second Life allowing players to create their own virtual realities with individually-crafted characters and environments, while also being able to socialise with other players online. Dourish (2004) discusses the related idea of “social computing” which looks at the ways to “incorporate understandings of the social world into interactive systems.” (p. 16). Through the players’ interactions within these virtual realities, social bonds may be formed which mimic those of real life and which allow the players interacting with these platforms to replace their current reality with an ideal virtual one.

 

References:

Mar 25

Stiegler and memory

Memory can be a slippery thing. There are various things which we can do to help us train our minds in order to improve our memory and expand our knowledge base, from simple mental activities to popular applications such as Luminosity, which work to help us retain greater amounts of information. However despite the help those tech-based approaches like the latter can provide, technology can also be detrimental to our memory and result in a weakened memory and a loss of knowledge. These ideas are best explored in the reading by Stiegler and his discussion on mnemotechnologies.

The human memory can be a powerful thing and can store vast amounts of information. As Stiegler looks at the development of human memory, he inevitably reaches the point where human memory takes a step behind the development of mnemotechnology, which takes the place as our electronic memory bank. With the emergence of new technologies, our over-reliance on these developments has led to us becoming used to gathering brief bits of information quickly and then losing our grasp on them so rather than retaining knowledge, we are disposing of it.

Despite the advancements in new technologies that are constantly being driven out, they still have the ability to lose the information as quickly as it has been stored there by us. With our reliance on technology making us lazier and worse at storing pieces of information within our own memory, the fact that tech-based memory storage is not always guaranteed is a sobering reminder that we should not take our ability to remember great amounts of information for granted. This is also looked at in Kyong-Chun’s The Enduring Ephemeral, where she writes “digital media are not always there … [they] are degenerative, forgetful, erasable.” (Kyong-Chun, p. 192) Rather than shoving human memory to the side in favour of technology, we should work towards strengthening our own memories and becoming more self-reliant than tech-reliant.

 

  • Kyong-Chun, Wendy Hui (2011) ‘The Enduring Ephemeral, or The Future is a Memory’ in Huhtamo, Errki and Parikka, Jussi (eds.) Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications Berkeley: University of California Press: 184-203
  • Stiegler, Bernard (n.d.) ‘Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the first thinker of the proletarianisation’ <http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis>
Mar 17

Bateson and Meta-communication

In today’s technology-driven society, where people tend to feel more comfortable using a laptop than a pen and paper, face-to-face communication is often relegated to the background in favour of mobile technologies. Considering the fast-paced society we live in – where 140 characters is all that is needed to express oneself – these mobile technologies present themselves as a more convenient means of communicating with one another in an instant, however this results in a loss of the true meaning of the information being communicated, as the absence of social cues and tone of voice, amongst other things, means that the message becomes somewhat more ambiguous.

As was discussed in the lecture, communication across various mediums lacks the emotional weight and impact which face-to-face communication can have. This means that messages sent through SMS or email are unable to properly convey tone and attitude as they do not possess the tools to help interpret the message. These tools are known as ‘redundancies’ and refer to the personal touches which help to convey the full nature of the message. Redundancies such as body movement, gestures, and changes in tone mean it is easier for the recipient of the message to understand what the speaker is trying to say, without misconstruing it; as can be possible when sending a message through more ambiguous platforms like email.

These redundancies – or patterns – which help to convey and interpret messages are what Gregory Bateson referred to as “meta-communication”. It is with these cues which accompany the speech that a greater understanding of the message can be had, without the ambiguity that is attached to text sent through SMS or online. Though this sort of meta-communication does not have to be completely restricted to face-to-face communication, and can be achieved – with varying levels of success – through additional features such as emoticons, punctuation and format.

Despite this ability to somewhat convey textual information in a stronger way, face-to-face communication remains a better platform for meta-communication, as according to Bateson, it allows the listener “to recognise that the other individual’s and its own signals are only signals, which can be trusted, distrusted, falsified, denied, amplified, corrected, and so forth.” (Bateson, 178)

Bateson, Gregory (2000) ‘A Theory of Play and Fantasy’, Steps to an Ecology of Mind Chicago: Chicago University Press: 177-183

May 22

Aye Aye Robot!

Ubiquity refers to the state of being everywhere – no simple task for your everyday human, sadly.

Unless they’re a part of X-men.

But let’s be serious … most of them can’t even do that.

However the ubiquity which I should be discussing is ubiquitous computing, which essentially means data is everywhere, or, omnipresent.

As explained by Andrew, ubiquitous computing refers to “a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities.” This integration of technology into our everyday lives has become so common that it’s sometimes hard to imagine what life was like before we had the internet or mobile phones. It’s also hard to navigate through life without the assistance of this technology  – something which most other Gen Y’ers would have to agree with – as even as I’m writing this blog, I’m using my laptop, checking my phone sporadically, and listening to music on my iPod.

An example of ubiquitous computing is multi-platform publishing, where we see examples of information and other forms of publications span across several platforms as a result of human-computer interaction. The best example of this is newspapers and the rising number of publications becoming available, or originating, online. With the overbearing influence of social media in our lives, cross-platform publication has become the norm and social interactions between people are increasingly being done online rather than face-to-face.

As the always wise Wikipedia states, ubiquitous computing can be defined as “machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs.”

In reading that, I’m glad it’s not the other way around. Imagine we gave machines enough knowledge and power to eventually take over? Actually, no. Let’s not think about that.

Because I’ve seen I, Robot. I know how these things could turn out.

 
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing#cite_note-1 (2013) Accessed 22 May 2013