Digital Maps & Tracking

Related to last week where we explored surveillance, this week we looked at tracking and digital map technologies.
We started off by looking at Google Maps and instances where they'd messed up. It's interesting that Google Maps is so advanced yet has trouble understanding bridges...

Further interesting is how you can view remote places in the world that you would probably never otherwise get to see, such as the abandoned Hashima Island off the coast of Japan, which can be recognised from the latest James Bond film, Skyfall.
The island was used for coal mining, and was inhabited up until 1974 when the mine shut down, as was happening all over Japan.
It's crazy to be able to explore this distant and abandoned island almost as if you were actually there...

After looking at maps we moved onto tracking and the use of GPS technologies (which is, incidentally, what I'm currently writing my essay on.)
While presenting a great opportunity for advertising and marketing, these new locative technologies are seen as invasive for many.
For example, apparently police now able to use mobile phone tracking to track anyone...

However, some people are finding ways to rebel against this and to claim back a degree of privacy...

The iPhone tracker app is another way that people are taking back some control/agency over their use of these technologies.

After this week and all of the research I'm doing for my essay, I'm definitely starting to think more about issues of privacy and how our supposedly meaningless information is perhaps being used. I might now think twice before allowing random iPhone apps to access my location and information!

Surveillance Society

In the seminar this week we thought about surveillance and how we are constantly being watched, and therefore governed. This links to what I'm writing about in my essay, but I'm looking specifically at issues of surveillance and the invasion of privacy posed by GPS technology on mobile devices.
I'm using Foucault's theory of the Panopticon, as well as using a lot of David Lyon's ideas to do with surveillance society, which are really, really interesting.

I came upon this article on the internet and thought it was particularly notable...

Spy Cams in Planes Would Track Facial Expressions for Terrorism and ‘Air Rage’

In the workshop we also looked at facial recognition systems, and how people have been experimenting and finding ways to get around them.

This website, 'How to Hide from Machines' is definitely worth a look, there are a lot of interesting ideas on there.

Also interesting is the work by artist Adam Harvey, who is experimenting with the same sort of things.

The image below is one of his pieces of art, showing how make up can be used to confuse facial recognition systems...

His website can be found here.

I've particularly enjoyed this week as the subject is something I'm especially interested in and I think is very relevant today.
As Richard Thomas, the government's information commissioner said, we need to be careful we don't 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society'...

ReacTIVision

In today's workshop we looked at a programme called reacTIVision:-

Apparently what reacTIVision does is perform the 'tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects'.

So it understands things like this...

...But doesn't quite understand faces.

As you can see, it gets a bit confused but in the process creates quite a cool effect .

 I took some screenshots of me messing around on the program (with the lab in the background).

I like the effect you get with the black and white contrast for hair....

It's a pity you can't mess around a bit more with how the image looks, you can't change any controls to alter the it unfortunately.

Image Glitching

In the workshop today we've been looking at image glitching, which is something I'm pretty interested in. I'd never really heard the time glitching before in relation to images; from what I understand image glitching is basically messing around with, distorting, and corrupting an image (to get a cool effect).

Some great examples of image glitching are as so...

There's a really good HTML 5 tool to use for image glitching, and I've been messing around a bit with the image of Kate Moss that I'm using for my project.

So I've gone from this...

To this...

And this...

And then this...

Very fun to mess around with! I'm thinking that maybe I could find some way of incorporating image glitching into my project.

Visual Culture & Photoshop

This week our topic of discussion was Visual Culture. We were made to question the significance of the digital image, thinking about how it relates to conceptions of photographic truth.

http://think-silly.com/2009/06/25/visual-culture-optical/

I found the readings this week really interesting. In particular, Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' talked about the implications of the reproduction of the visual/works of art. Benjamin argues that reproductions are lacking a presence in time and space, and therefore destroy the aura of the work of art.
Nowadays it seems that nearly everything is reproduced, and often on a mass scale. For example, pieces of art, such as Andy Warhol's, have been reprinted to make millions of copies, and therefore losing their worth. Photographs can be reprinted as many times as people wish for barely any cost, and they can now be digitally enhanced, often without people's knowledge, which is considered by many to be a dangerous thing.

The week's workshop was based on Adobe's Photoshop. Indeed, the debate surrounding Photoshop is certainly a lively one. There have been many cases where it has come to light that Photoshop has been used to manipulate images from advertising campaigns, most notably in the beauty and fashion sector.


http://prolificphoto.com/2013/01/07/focus-stacking-with-photoshop-cs5/adobe-photoshop-logo/
http://www.notcot.org/post/6288/
http://all-odesk-test-answer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/odesk-adobe-photoshop-cs3-test-answers.html


One particular case where Photoshop was used particularly badly was with the Ralph Lauren advertisement below. After touch ups, the model was left looking more like a Barbie doll than anything, with her head too big for her tiny body, with especially small waist. There was uproar about the photo which led to the ad being hastily pulled by Ralph Lauren.

http://stylefrizz.com/200910/ralph-lauren-and-the-photoshop-issues/

There are some interesting articles I found relating to the regulating of the reality of images that comes about with the use of Photoshop (excuse my use of the Mail Online..):-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2138998/Teens-protest-Photoshop-use-outside-Seventeen-magazine-offices.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2048375/Self-Esteem-Act-US-parents-push-anti-Photoshop-laws-advertising.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivian-diller-phd/photoshop-body-image_b_891095.html

Anyway, moving on to the workshop, I had never used Photoshop before and for some reason had it in my head that it would be fairly easy to use, when in actual fact I found it anything but. I found the software pretty confusing, with there being so many different buttons and options of things to do, but it not being particularly clear how to do each thing (in my humble opinion).

Despite my difficulties, I was keen to learn my way around Photoshop as I know it's a very widely used piece of software, so I did my very best to follow our workshop tutorial.
I think the thing that most confused me was the whole thing about layers. Perhaps if just working with one single layer the whole programme would be a lot easier to use.

I experimented a bit with a few different images, such as with this one below...

I was trying to create a pinhole camera effect, and although it kind of worked I think it could be a lot better (it looks like I don't have a nose).

All in all, I think I just need to spend a bit more time messing about on Photoshop to really get to grips with it.

Social Reading & Writing - Storify

This week we looked at a number of things in the workshop, including Twitter and IFTTT, but the thing that I most enjoyed was the website Storify.



For those of you who haven't used Storify before, it is a fairly new social media site (available for public use since 2011) that allows you to create stories or timelines by bringing together a number of different pages and forms of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.
The site is very interesting as it allows you to link to a number of different sites/artefacts in your story, for example to individual Tweets or Facebook statuses, or to a specific article or blog.
I linked my Storify account to my Twitter account in order to share stories easily.

Users can share their created stories with other members of Storify, as well as on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, or by email.

I really like how the site allows you to bring together lots of different pages and elements that would usually be separate, all in one place. I found Storify fairly easy to use and navigate, and I really like the idea behind it. In my opinion it is quite empowering, allowing you to create and publish informative pieces with direct links to numerous different sources.

I made a story myself, click on the burger to see it (and yes, it is about Krispy Kreme cheese burgers, believe it or not...)

There are lots of interesting stories on Storify, and you can browse by categories such as News, Government and Brands.
If you haven't already, it's definitely worth checking out...

This related to the seminar this week which was on Social Reading and Writing, as we discussed the decline of books and print, and looked at the consequences that this was having. We explored a new term, 'hyperreading', which is a screen-based, computer assisted form of reading, which could also be thought of as speed reading or skim reading.

Storify could be considered as participating in this new form of reading, as it encourages the reading and processing of lots of different pieces of information at once.
Although I can see a danger in hyperreading, in that it could be thought to kill concentration levels, I still think that Storify is a great programme and could be used to great effects.

New Beginnings

So I have recently embarked on my Digital Media MA and am attempting to document my learning curve, as well as commenting on what I enjoyed most/found difficult/made me want to die with frustration.

Theory and Practice of Interactive Media (#tpim2013, as you may see me tweeting) is one of my core courses this term and looks very interesting from having a look at what we're going to be learning from week to week. I'm looking forward to learning lots of new things and just generally experimenting with lots of programmes, even if it doesn't always go to plan!

My undergraduate degree (Media and Cultural Studies) was completely theoretical, so the practical part is going to be completely new to me, but hopefully I'll be able to pick most of it up fairly quickly. The course is taught in two parts; there is a seminar each week studying from a theoretical perspective, as well as a workshop that studies the practical side, so it will be interesting to make the connection between theory and practice.

The aspects of the course that I'm most looking forward to are learning more about this 'new aesthetic' that has been mentioned, and just generally being introduced to new programmes that I haven't previously experienced.

I thought this image below quite nicely summed up lots of the elements of Digital Media...