Emma@Uni

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Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra - an interesting form of "new media" art!

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“But is it Art?”—the new dynamism of art

In the late 19th century, Viennese art scholars Riegl and Wickhoff were the first to explore art as a reflection of the perceptions of the time that the work was produced (Benjamin, 1936). This makes me think: what reflections of our society’s perceptions are artworks of today going to portray to onlookers in the future? Is our complex and constantly diversifying use of new media within the artistic sphere going to convey us as instigators of significant social change? Or is our artistic behaviour just the same manipulation of the media forms available to us that has been occurring for centuries? I believe artists of today are pioneers of creating art that stimulate a complex combination of aesthetics, sensation, intellect and social organisation.

Through the process of transduction, computer technology is increasingly developing new ways of expanding and extending the range of data organisation and distribution. “Transduction suggests a way to link practices like physical computing, fabrication, networked environments” (Armstrong, 2005). An interesting example of the way convergent technology has been used in this way is the development of the ‘Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra’ using iPhone technology. The orchestra extends across multiple ecologies by incorporating physicality and technological synthesisation into its sound production, while also using internet and mapping technologies to share this sound with other musicians all over the world.

German theorist, Walter Benjamin (1936), was influential in the politicisation of art. He looked at social relations between products and labour and the shift of artistic meaning created by modern reproducibility (Bejamin, 1936). However, he also theorised that although modernity has attributed to the desacralising of art, new artworks are still embedded in the old structures of the aurified economy (Benjamin, 1936). I can recognise this in the work of the ‘Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra’, as they are using old practices of the physicality of playing an instrument (e.g. blowing) and incorporating this with the simulation and reproduction of new convergent media.

Overall, I think it is very much evident that our definition of art is changing. However, this proliferation of new artistic forms is not devaluing the process of creating art, but actually inventing exciting new ways for people to experience aesthetics and sensations. 

Sources:

Armstrong, Keith (2005) ‘Intimate Transactions: The Evolution of an Ecosophical Networked Practice’, the Fibreculture Journal 7, <http://seven.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-047-intimate-transactions-the-evolution-of-an-ecosophical-networked-practice/>

Benjamin, Walter (1936) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.

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The Future, again

As a third year university student, on the brink of starting my professional career, I find myself continually looking towards, and almost living in, the future. I think this is the case for many people today. There is a fascinating excitability evoked by the “what if” that the future holds. In the context of media studies, this fascination with the future is attributed to the opportunities that new technologies may afford us in years to come.

In my experience interning at an advertising agency last year, I was given the opportunity to carry out a research report on the trends and patterns of facebook use. This prompted my interest in the potential and growing influence of social media on business, advertising and even politics in the future. With the expansion of convergent media, our perceptions of time and space have been drastically altered. As Brian Christian (2011) discusses in his ABC report, internet technologies have created a new found “collective intelligence” within society. Drawing on the previous week’s topic on ‘Big Politics’, I believe that this “collective intelligence” created by the new online network society will be increasingly vital in the strategic behaviour of politicians and advertisers in the future. This is very much evident in the online campaign strategies of President Obama, which I will be investigating in my final project.

Jane McGonigal (2011) adapts this idea of the future to the technology of gaming. Although much concern in the past has centered around the negative aspects of gaming on health, concentration and socialisation, McGonigal explores the positive problem solving impacts of gaming on society. She claims that the virtual aspects of gaming can be incorporated into “serious initiatives” and can even be utilised to benefit political and economic processes (McGonigal, 2011). Overall, I believe that McGonigal’s work can be attributed to most aspects of emergent technology by showing us how thinking transversally can be utilised for positive social change in the future.  

Sources:

Christian, B. (2011). 'The Most Human Human'. <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2011/3211726.htm#transcript>

McGonigal, J. (2011). 'You Found Me'. <http://janemcgonigal.com/>

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The Generosity of New Media—Science, Technology and Innovation

I am definitely not a scientist and I never will be. For some reason I have always thought that science was above me, that only the best of the best could understand the overwhelming complexity of scientific findings. However, after exploring this week’s readings I began to question this judgment. After all, science is all around us and is ever present in our lives. Why should I exclude myself from scientific knowledge just because I am not a scientist?

Seed (2011) discusses the notion of bridging this gap between academic and public spheres in order to open up new avenues of sharing and compiling scientific knowledge. He explores the emphasis placed on citations as an indication of scientific scholarly impact and how this restricts scientists from wanting to “communicate the value of their work to non-scientists” (Seed, 2011). 

However, Kevin Kelly states, “science is our most potent invention because it have given us a method to keep inventing it” (Kelly, 2010). This indicates that in the new media age, new technologies are affording us with more and more ways to access and produce scientific knowledge. The technium (the greater sphere of technology and the human mind) is increasingly “discovering new ways to know” (Kelly, 2010). Therefore, in relation to the ideas around transversal forms of collaboration in the week 9 readings, as technology advances, new communities of knowledge are established, along with new opportunities for accessing scientific information.

A scientific area which I believe this transparency of online publishing and new media will benefit is nutrition. A recent national health survey revealed that over 60% of the Australian population is overweight or obese. I believe a great deal of this trend is associated with lack of public knowledge about the science of health and nutrition. Public access to this information is now important more than ever, as it has the potential to be an instrumental factor in changing public opinion and negative behaviour surrounding health.  

Overall, John Wilbanks puts its perfectly when he says we must make sure science can be read, understood and easily used by the network culture in order for society to be truly invested in it (Wilbanks, 2011).

Sources:

Kelly, Kevin (2010) ‘Evolving the Scientific Method: Technology is changing the way we conduct science’, The Scientist <http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57831/>

Seed (2011) ‘On Science Transfer’, Seed <http://seedmagazine.com/content/print/on_science_transfer>

Wilbanks, John (2011) ‘On Science Publishing’, Seed, <http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_science_publishing>

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Big Politics – the Fate of the State

I am sure we all remember playing Chinese whispers as children, passing messages from friend to friend to see if the end result was the same as the first. We relied on these friends around us to pass on the right message but somehow it never quite ended up that way. In an age of social media dominance, where people are increasingly receiving their news through friends online, I find myself drawing back to this idea of Chinese whispers and wondering if I am really getting that same original whispered sentence when I access my news through social media.

Lawrence Lessig (2009) discusses this notion of transparency in relation to politics online. He asks the question of when and where transparency works and where it leads to confusion (Lessig, 2009). Although the distribution government archives online may liberate data and facilitate public access to information, it may also destabilise governments when false or too much information is released (Lessig, 2009).

Catherine Styles (2009) believes that what we need is visualisation to expose government functions. She proposes an “architecture of participation” in which users determine what issues are put to the people (Styles, 2009).

Drawing on these views, although I do agree with Lessig’s ideas around the “naked transparency movement” in which transparency may “push any faith of our political system over the cliff” (Lessig, 2009), I am more inclined to support the benefits of visualisation and transparency in politics.

In the U.S., “55 percent of all Web users feel that the Internet increases the influence of those with extreme political views” (Kindelan, 2011). The success of Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign in 2008, which I will be basing my research project on, was proof of this dominance of online transparency within politics. Overall, politics is utilising social media in order to work across multiple ecologies and I believe that it will be very interesting to see how this shifts political discourse in the future.

Sources:

Kindelan, Katie (2011) ‘Social Media in Politics: Positive or Polarizing?’<http://socialtimes.com/social-media-in-politics-positive-or-polarizing_b42439>

Lessig, Lawrence (2010) ‘Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government.’<http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/against-transparency?page=0,0>

Styles, Catherine (2009) ‘A Government 2.0 idea – first, make all the functions visible’ <http://catherinestyles.com/2009/06/28/a-government-2-0-idea/>

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Framing vs Transversality

As uni students, we are always encouraged to be creative and to ‘think outside the square’. However, when reading Andrew Murphie’s editorial this week, I began to think: does this ‘square’ really exists for us anymore?

The expansion of new media technologies has made ‘thinking outside the square’ unavoidable (Murphie, 2006). We are now, more than ever, thinking transversally which, as week five’s readings described, means thinking across multiple ecologies. Institutions and practices are continually reforming as “new lines cross between older disciplines, older fields, older cultural practices” (Murphie, 2006). Therefore, I am starting to think that this ‘square’ of the socially structured industry frame no longer applies.

Andrew Murphie uses the example of the music industry being affected by changing perceptions and processes involved in transversality. The recent ‘Youtube Symphony Orchestra’ performance at Sydney Opera House was a prime example of how the music industry is blurring the lines between different ecologies. The orchestra was the world’s first collaborative online orchestra, being formed primarily by auditions on Youtube. Over 100 musicians from 33 countries came together to participate in a multimedia performance involving large projections of the musicians on the outside and inside of the Opera House (see video).

Another industry that has developed new ways of thinking across different ecologies is the fitness industry. The ‘Cross Fit Games’ involves Cross Fit members from all over the world uploading weekly fitness tasks onto the website in order to qualify for the finals of the international fitness competition. Fitness blogs, recipes, fitness research articles, photos and videos are collaboratively added to the Cross Fit website, forming an online fitness community.

These examples demonstrate ‘technogenic’ events, in which occurrences are made possible by the changing uses of technology (Murphie, 2006). Events like music auditions or fitness competitions are no longer happening in the ‘real’, but are now taking place in the ‘virtual’. I see this as a major shift in thinking in order to facilitate opportunities for greater creative collaboration. Industries are not dying, they are more alive than ever before!

Sources:

Murphie, Andrew (2006) ‘Editorial’, [on transversality], the Fibreculture Journal, 9 <http://nine.fibreculturejournal.org/>

Sydney Opera House, 2010.<http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/ytso_family_and_friends_concert.aspx>

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Data and Media – An Unrequited Love?

I heard on a trivia show that the most googled word in the world is ‘love’. Whether that is true or not, I do not know. However, when I typed the word ‘love’ into google search, 4,220,000,000 results were found. This made me think about Howard Rheingold’s theory of information overload (Rheingold, 2011). How could one person possibly look through over four million pages of information? It is becoming increasingly apparent that as global data continues to grow, society must learn new ways of utilising media in order to filter this vast and often overwhelming amount of information. It is a question of unrequited love: how do we actually form a relationship with data?

Rheingold calls the process of relating with data ‘infotention’ (Rheingold, 2011). This involves using a blend of social and mental skills as well as technology to filter information. Relating to the readings last week, I believe infotention involves ‘thinking transversally’, as people must think across social as well as technological ecologies in order to access the right data. I find, however, that although this process may work, a negative is that it favours those who are ‘technology savvy’. Intelligence dashboards, RSS readers and information filters are all very foreign terms to people (like my parents) who are not familiar with using computers. Therefore, education is vital in helping everyone access appropriate and useful data.

Paul Edwards (2010) discusses three issues in his article: making global data, making data global and data friction. He brings up the “models vs data” debate and highlights the controversies involved in creating, collating and interpreting data. He states that “without models, there are no data” (Edwards, 2010). I agree with this statement, as without data models society could not make sense of the extent of data available.

Overall, I think it is important that media facilitates new and more accessible ways of filtering data. Without the marriage of media and data, society has no hope of making good use of information and expanding global knowledge in the future.

Sources:

Edwards, Paul N. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: xiii-xvii (note that you can download sample chapters at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080>

Rheingold, Howard (2011) ‘A mini-course on infotention’ <http://howardrheingold.posterous.com/a-mini-course-on-infotention>

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Reality – actual, potential and virtual

As new media evolves, our perceptions and interactions with the world are continually changing. Ecologies are pluralizing, “initiating new and multiplying existing connections between science-society-ethics-aesthetics-politics” (Genosko, 2003). Transversality, transduction and virtual reality are affecting our potential within multiple ecologies and diversifying our process of relations in all aspects of society (Murphy, 2004).

So does this mean we are creating new virtual worlds or was the world always virtual?

I believe our perception of reality is diversifying as we create new virtual worlds within multiple ecologies. We have not always lived in a virtual world; however, I can see virtual realities becoming an essential part of our lives in the future. As Murphy discusses, old media forms are being replaced by new networked medias – “Changing changes” (Massumi, 2002).

Last week, we discussed the concept of technical memory in libidimal economy and how our desires are sustained in our technical environment. I can see this desire being manipulated for consumerist and advertising purposes in order to drive us towards the appeal of technical processes. I find that advertisers are zoning in on this aspect of desire in children. I found that this also related to the ideas of virtual and augmented reality in the Grayson reading this week. Mattel developed a toy line to coincide with the film ‘Avatar’ consisting of figurines from the film that “come alive” using 3D web tagging (seen in image below) (Schenker, 2009). This is a prime example of how children’s perceptions of the real and the physical world are being blurred.

I can see virtual reality also changing my tactile awareness the world and the ways in which I carry out every-day tasks. Instead of going to the shops to try on and buy clothes, I access clothing brands online and see how they fit, look and move by viewing the virtual catwalk.

Overall, it seems that augmented reality is slipping in to all aspects of our lives and with the development of convergent media I can see it becoming increasingly present in our everyday interactions.

Sources:

Genosko, G. (2003) ‘Felix Guattari: Towards a transdisciplinary metamathodology’,Angelaki Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

Grayson, Chris (2009) ‘Augmented Reality Overview’, GigantiCo <http://gigantico.squarespace.com/336554365346/2009/6/23/augmented-reality-overview.html>

Massumi, B. (1997) 'Deleuze, Guattari and the philosophy of expression', Canadian Review of Comparative Literature. 

Murphie, Andrew (2004) ‘The World’s Clock: The Network Society and Experimental ecologies’, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 11, Spring <https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/topia/article/view/2682/1887>

Schenker, Jennifer (2009) 'How Augmented Reality Will Change Entertainment and Advertising', August 6 <http://www.informilo.com/20090806/how-augmented-reality-will-change-entertainment-and-advertising-167>

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Global Mnemotechnics – has technology become an extension of our minds?

Memory is a fascinating and quite puzzling thing. Sometimes memories fail to enter our heads when we need them most and at other times memories can spring upon us without any warning. Memory is temperamental and, according to Verillio in earlier readings, so is technology. However, it is this unpredictability and almost uncontrollability that makes memory so intriguing to so many people. 

A quote from Alva Noë stood out for me in the readings this week:

“A human being, like every living being, is a locus of density interwoven coupling with the world around us”.

In a world dominated by increasing technological advancements I think it is naïve to believe that our ways of thinking and acting are not influenced by technology.  Although we may still be the "locus" of this world, it is clear that our cognitive processes are being manipulated by our new technological surroundings.

The concept of “the extended mind” is relatable to my own life. I believe that my Ipod can at times act as an extension of my own mind. When I am feeling sad my brain chooses to listen to slow mellow music and when I am happy I find myself automatically choosing upbeat songs. My Ipod is an external storehouse of my emotions, which I can switch and change according to my environment. Saved playlists act as records of these emotions, often triggering lost memories from these ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ times.

I am currently studying critical theory in English and I came across the Structuralist idea that without language there is no thought. It made me think: does that therefore mean that if technology has become an extension of our minds, there be no thought if there was no technology? Although this may be getting a little too carried away, it is definitely something to think about. Where do we draw the line when it comes to our ways of thinking about technology?

SOURCES:

Noë, Alva (2010) ‘Does thinking happen in the brain?’, 13:7 Cosmos and Culture <http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/12/10/131945848/does-thinking-happen-in-the-brain>

Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Mind>

[emmaunsw-blog]

Hi I'm Emma!

I am a Media (Communications and Journalism) student and UNSW.

I am currently in my 3rd year and loving it.

This blog will mainly be used to post my ideas and knowledge about everything I am learning at uni this year.

Enjoy :)