Into the Neverlands

Obama inauguration photosynth


Obama inauguration photosynth

A more interesting take CNN used on Barack Obama's inauguration today (following the now legendary Jessica Yellin's hologram) is a tool developed by Microsoft called Photosynth: thousands and possibly millions of pictures taken in the same place shape a visual 3D space through which you can navigate.

Such networked photographing and publishing of photos might completely change our way of experiencing the visual in the future. (Shame I couldn't download Silverlight on my Mac PowerBook...)

There is a superb talk on that on Ted (scroll to middle of the speech to see the remarkable 3D look of Notre Dame de Paris):



PS once again - yes we did

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In 2007 Kevin Kelly in his talk on TED said that we make 100 billion clicks per day, send 2 milion emails per second and a million instant messages per second. Compared to the Congress Library, which is about 20 terabites, we send 7 terabites of information per second. Bless him for the ability to gather the numbers.

I was chatting with another fellow student a while ago over a cup of coffee and she pointed out an interesting thing on how fragmented our communication has become. Those in their 30s are the generation of the emails, those in their 20s (like me) - instant messaging, while the teenagers are the mobile generation, or the 'thumb generation' as Mizuko Ito calls them. I twittered once asking whether 200 messages a day was a lot and got a confirmation that I am in a bit of a generation gap.

I'm afraid a 13-year-old American Reina Hardesty is has risen the bar: she sent a mind boggling 14,528 text messages in a month (or a message every 2 minutes of every waking hour).

What's fascinating is that another champion in texting is a 16-year-old girl from New Zealand. Is the gender factor a coincidence?

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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's art work has become one of the most refreshing discoveries over the past few weeks.



The above embedded 'Close Up' is an interactive display that reflects the viewer's shadow which in fact consists of hundreds of tiny screens that display previously recorded videos of the people who have recently viewed the piece. Whenever the viewer advances towards the work, the screen starts recording her, instantaneously adding the video to the database that will be watched by the next viewer. In other words, the camera is used to recreate us through those who came before us. The artist calls his work "temporary antimonuments for alien agency", where the tools we mostly associate with surveillance, in this case the camera, are used in order to create an organic entity which would be impossible without the viewers' participation.

Tate Online provides an interesting talk that Lozano-Hemmer gave in 2007.

I came across the artist while researching metadata as I am currently writing a paper on folksonomies. Shame I wasn't among the lucky ones to attend a recent symposium in Goldsmiths ' Force of Metadata'. As Yuk Hui pointed out there, 'metadata is taking over content and changes both the products and mode of production of the web'. In other words, please tag me and let me be your Delicious.

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In a forthcoming book Dutch visual culture theorist Anneke Smelik says that ‘art and popular culture sometimes stride ahead of academia’. The book is Doing Gender in Media, Art, and Culture (Buikema R., Van der Tuin I., eds., To be published by Routledge, 2009). A virtual friend of mine told me sssh about these guys, but I can't help it - Facebook is a bad place to post secrets.


Lina exhibited | MMIX

When I saw my friend's new profile picture on Facebook I thought damn she's famous. It was a bit like this one - yet with her portrait all over the gallery walls. Photofunia allows to visualise your 15 minutes of fame. All one needs is mug shot. What previously was possible to Photoshop prodigies has become networked.

Judging by their LiveJournal blog it seems that the the fun makers from Odessa, Ukraine, as they call themselves are increasing the number of possible styles you can acquire: Surrealism, Macho, God Father, Drag, Warhol, etc...

Photofunia also expresses a loyal admiration to one of the most popular comedians in the post-Soviet plateaus - Yevgeny Petrosyan - he is one of the main faces in the montages (as you might know, the second largest community on LiveJournal is Russian - or more precisely those who write in Russian).

I guess, Warhol once again has been proven right - in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. And it's documented this time.

PS have you noticed that Roman numerals for 2009 make up the word MIX?

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Looking at the research done on social network sites compiled by danah boyd along with other researchers, it seems to me that two main categories covering the subject are the social aspect (mostly focusing on reconceptualising 'friends' and the extension of our social life onto SNS) and privacy/surveillance issues. Much is also being done on teens - mostly probably due to the fact that MySpace managed to draw significant numbers of them.

I'm currently reading Bruno Latour's The Invisible City and looking at his introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. While the application of Latour in SNS research might bring about some perils (and Latour is warning on keeping a certain distance with social networks as such when looking at ANT), what interests me in his corpus is the questioning of what is social - 'a peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling' ¹ (Latour 2005: 7).

It seems to me that with the emergence of social networks much research focused on (re)presentation issues and performing identities, to quote boyd. However, the move most probably was inevitable, particularly with young people building their spaces online, as teen culture is inextricable from identity issues. On the other hand, with the growing age of SNS members (due to their borders expanding and due to teens growing up on SNS), I am wondering which way the research will proceed in the next couple of years. I suppose, much of it will still scrutinise identity issues as SNS have become home to those who might be considered as being on the fringes of the conventional.

Nonetheless, what else is there to SNS besides profile and wall analysis and where is that analysis? It is a question I have been asking myself trying to embark on the research and methodologies that could follow the exponential nature of the Web and evolve along with it. The reason I am questioning this is because it seems to me that much the academic research on SNS comes to conclusions that my 13-year-old niece who is a devotee of Bebo could have explained after a few weeks of hanging out there. If SNS are becoming the extension of our social worlds (or turning into alternative ones - depending on which standpoint you support), we need to broaden our scope. The kids are challenging us.


Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-network-theory, Oxford University Press.

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It seems like I wasn't beating around the bush with the post on privacy settings on Facebook. danah boyd calls them 'the most flexible and the most confusing privacy settings in the industry' yet she maintains that many Facebookers don't realise their flexibility.

Howeer, she also points out that privacy settings should be about awareness and context besides the possibility of control. In other words, ideally each time we tag somebody in a photo it would be pleasant to know who can view it and customise that.

Another exceptionally good distinction regarding privacy is made by Clay Shirky - the fact that between private and public personal has disappeared. He gives an example of having a chat with a stranger in a park - it is not a private act, yet not a public one either. Shirky points out that nowadays we mostly tend to use the word personal when we refer to technology.

In this respect and with the growing popularity of SNS and the being online which in fact is increasingly becoming doing online as our presence on the Net is becoming increasingly participatory by chatting, linking, commenting, tagging, embedding, posting, twittering, it seems that our previous understanding of what is private is irreversibly changing. I can observe two camps emerging: those who try to keep at least a minuscule amount of privacy while participating in the creation of Semantic Web and those who seemingly are no longer concerned with privacy. Nowadays posting information online and hoping to keep it private is a bit like having an affair at work - mostly it gets exposed anyway.

My suggestion for those worried instead of evoking notions of Big Brother would be to think twice before posting anything. And read privacy settings beforehand. And enjoy this data whirlpool which lurkers will never understand.

On the other hand, the privacy issue that worries many is the fact that other Facebookers can upload pictures with you without prior notice. It is possible to detag oneself if others have tagged you and even report the photo for nudity or pornography/drug use/violence/attacks individual or group, yet Facebook warns that they 'will NOT remove photos just because they're unflattering'. I guess, it means say cheese?..

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This one is about inspiration. And patience.

Ted Nelson once said that 'schooling systematically ruins things for us, wiping out these interests; the last thing to be ruined determines your profession' ¹.

During one of the seminars in Utrecht University one girl (luckily, not from the Media studies) expressed her worries about online universities and online lectures. I'd like to know which corners of the Net she's treading and I could suggest a good few.

I adore sites like Ted.com or Fora TV and obviously the good old friend YouTube. Some of the talks on Ted are so remarkable (needless to say free) that I they should make any ambitious professor rethink the content of her lectures twice before even starting to prepare for them. One aspect that makes Ted particularly compelling is the passion that I savour in numerous talks available on the site.

During the past few weeks I realised I would like to learn to program - mainly after watching Jonathan Harris' projects. Which reminds me that in his 1995 interview Friedrich Kittler suggested that students researching cultural studies should know at least two software languages - only then 'they'll be able to say something about what 'culture' is at the moment, in contrast to 'society'² (although that's quite a challenge when media scholars mostly are being trained within the faculties of arts or humanities...).

After Johny Lee's presentation on Wii Remote hacks I thought I should at least get better acquainted with the hacker culture and the ways their practises become quintessential examples of what De Certeau calls 'tactics' (2002)³, such as New York hackers turning iPods into drum machines or devices on which they play Doom. Mirko Schäfer just defended his PhD "Bastard Culture! User participation and the extension of cultural industries" in Utrecht University where among other issues he covers Xbox hacks as examples of participation culture.

Another talk I came across today cost me 4 hours spent in front of a square sheet of paper. I wish I was taught mathematics, computer science and arts the way Robert Lang talks about merging mathematics and origami! Talks like these are like watching the Olympics on the telly or listening to exceptionally good musicians performing - whatever they engage in seems so flawless, yet at the same time so simple, that I instantly consider becoming a figure ice skater or a pianist. I guess my idea of origami was similarly naive... While at first I was intending to make a water bug, for the moment it is a bit of rocket science, so with a bit of visual help, I rather chose to make a more basic beetle.



It's a bit beetle-tired, but it's mine... I wander if I can crack origami, can I hack something?..

Hope everybody is having as much fun this season :)

1. Nelson, T. H. No more teachers' dirty looks. 1970. In N. Wardrip-Fruin and N. Montfort , eds. The new media reader. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

2. Technologies of Writing/Rewriting Technology. An Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler about Cultural Studies in Germany, Literature in the Age of Technology and the Blind Spot in Media Theory by Matthew B. Griffin and S.M. Herrmann, available here. The interview originally appeared in Auseinander, Vol.1, No.3 (Berlin, 1995).

3. De Certeau, M. (2002) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: UC Press.

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