cultural probe - how do we access information and how does it change us, define us, extend us.
node based research - practical/non-practical way of researching online identity generation
extended field of vision - actual shift in field of vision as we become accustom to viewing multiple sources of information on the screen
synchronicity - identity making/generation
location
space
place - politics
Notes Personal Use:
Quotes from video-
- What we are encountering is a panicky, and almost hysterical, attempt to escape from the deadly anonymity of modern life… and the prime cause is vanity… but the craving of people who feel their personality sinking lower and lower into the whirl of indistinguishable atoms to be lost in a mass civilization.” - American Idol Auditions ( Henry Seidel Canby 1926 - anonyminity in the city, lonely, assembly line workers feeling disconnected socially. similar suburb experience
- the Real world 1992, reality tv, meh, whatever, generation raised by self-help generations, ‘whatever, i’ll do what I want’ Jean Twenge - Generation Me
- ‘it’s not you but this’ around 18:30 - referencing the person to webcam conversation - how our conversations are mediated - the interface medium is what I am talking to and this medium affects the way I talk - The medium shapes the message. The medium shapes the conversation. The medium shapes the possibilities… for community… for identity construction… for self-awareness. the conversation to the camera creates a moment of context collapse which forces a level of self-consciousness. Anonymity + physical distance + rare & ephemeral dialogue = hatred as public performance ( re comment lists on youtube) anonymity + physical distance + rare & ephemeral dialogue = freedom to experience humanity without fear or anxiety
Documented self-portrait within the Digital Domain
usemoreproduct - ”
in this video i am thinking about synchronicity and how different actions leave different fingerprints or markers. when ants communicate they lease chemical markers along the trail for themselves and any other ant that might go by. not unlike some kid with a marker in the city.
actual timelapse failed. but here is another timelapse from previous day: http://vimeo.com/5228444
0:22 I took a photo. the photo is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sixmilli…
0:40-1:07 I sent a tweet. The tweet is archived on friendfeed here: http://friendfeed.com/danpaluska/9799…
My public google latitude feed is here:
http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/b…
And you can see my current location on my website: http://plainfront.com “
This class on becoming famous on the internet bases the entire grading results on an algorythm. There is also a write up about it in the TIMES here. Great idea, creative and funny too!
The video above includes footage from the Ours:Democracy in the Age of Branding exhibition which included my filmThe Ottawa River. I don’t know where the issue lies but I still think it was a shame that the selected artists for Rebranding Acts were not credited on the exhibition ‘Participants’ page. We were lumped under the term ‘Wooloo Productions’ in the ‘Online’ section of the show. Reflecting on the point of the above course I think it could have helped our Online Identity/Online Fame/Digital Identity if we had been individually credited within the page ‘Complete List of Participants’, or maybe just listed on the Wooloo Productions page here. In fact now that I re-read the The Wooloo Production page it does not mention that the selection was juried… you have to further click on to figure this out.
So in the spirit of bringing attention to the Rebranding Act Artists + Wooloo + Our:Democracy in the Age of Branding I’m combining their names and a link to their work in this post. Does this bump up the ‘famo score’ in the Famotron?
I’ve checked the other credited ‘Online’ participants and they seem to feature on the ‘Complete Participants’ page, but if you weren’t and I have missed you let me know and I will happily add you to the list below.
Megan Smith
http://www.megansmith.ca
http://www.wooloo.org/MeganSmith/
CORPUS COLLECTIVE - Ektoras Binikos, William Brovelli, Michał Brzeziński and Avi Rosen
http://www.wooloo.org/corpuscollective/
Nada Prlja
http://www.wooloo.org/political/
http://www.seriousinterests.co.uk/
Enrico Centonze
http://www.wooloo.org/enricocentonze/
http://www.enrico111.com/
Nick Tobier ( Who also did The Sandwich Box Project for Wooloo New Life Berlin Festival)
http://www.wooloo.org/everydayplaces/
http://www.everydayplaces.com/
Dmitry Strakosky
http://www.wooloo.org/dima/
http://www.shiftingplanes.org/
Ruth Oppenheim
http://www.wooloo.org/rutopp/
http://www.rutopp.net/
Elisabeth Smolarz
http://www.wooloo.org/elisabethsmolarz/
http://smolarz.com/
Larissa Sansour
http://www.wooloo.org/lsansour/
http://www.kunstdk.dk/kunstner/larissa_sansour
No Fixed Abode - HORATIO EASTWOOD AND TERRY SLATER
http://www.wooloo.org/nofixedabode/
http://www.nofixedabode.org.uk/
Last Monday I spent the day at the London Knowledge Lab working with the Yishay Mor & Steven Warburton on the Eduserv Digital Identities Workshop Series EDID9.
Focusing on current debate around identity formation on socially networked spaces and issues of maintaining multiple projected identities, this research unit is attempting to apply pattern language to solve real world issues by accumulating a database of case studies, problems, scenarios and then finding patterns within this research to identify solutions. Our group worked from this Scenario I published on their wiki.
‘Current lifestreaming sites such as twitter, facebook, flickr, etc. currently enable a hybridization of previously separate identities. While users of the digital domain’s socially networked space generate varied levels of considered profile identity the purposeful acts to open up separate ‘faces’ to new/old/unknown audiences is an act communicating that is relatively uncontrolled. This openness approach shares data rapidly in non-linear patterns that are no longer geo-graphically bound; placing new ‘faces’ in new spaces.’
To give this scenario a real life context we discussed my desire to open up all my public identities so that people of every group could see what I am doing and interested in. There are two main driving forces for this approach.
1- An open fluid transfer of knowledge between networks encourages learning.
2- While I can identify with a time where my identities were kept private and separate due to geo-graphical constraints and a lack of time to write letters in order to maintain networks, the current generation in schools is growing up in a web 2.0+ space where facebook, MySpace, tumblr status updates are both constant and take many forms, ie. text messages, microblogs, voice, video, photographic.
What comes of this generation who’s identity is socially placed within a realm that extends beyond their contacts? As an artists and researcher I have a goal to extend my own work beyond my immediate network and to encourage growth of my social space in relation to expanding my skills of practice, increasing my knowledge base and ensuring I encounter and learn from fellow practitioners. However, miss-interpretation is a concern especially if I am allowing identities which are no longer associated with the present to penetrate my current networks. A similar concern exists when my past and present identity/s is observed by a stranger. Where I can still be physically observed by a stranger while waiting for a bus at the station, these people watching me are not necessarily voyeurs into my daily rambles on a twitter stream, they don’t chose to listen to the same music as I am on Last.fm, and they probably are not browsing pictures of me and my family by the seaside while I patiently wait for the bus. However, they may catch my bluetooth signal and try to. Within the digital domain though it is likely that someone is following my status and movement, at least a little from time to time. I see this act of following, whith geo-graphically freedom, as a constructive method for maintaining social groups and support networks, for strengthening cultural traditions, languages, and among other things retaining a core network. Obviously within all people/groups there is good and bad, for the purpose of this research I acknowledge that the digital domain is also a haven for abuse and though I am painting a positive picture of how social networks can contribute towards open learning and perhaps will bring about a positive shift in the social environment it does not escape me that some societies still do not have freedom of speech nor access to uncensored information, some peadophiles probably watch children on youtube, some money hungry hacker may be farming my pins, passwords and memorable sentences from my profiles, and horribly sad networks form online to acquire bomb making skills to retaliate against another.
‘Lurking’ and ‘Lurkers’ were terms that came up during the workshop words that have a ring of ‘peeping tom’ or ‘voyeurism’. However, I wonder if these terms are more an interpretation of an action seen from a perspective of the age of those who came before the internet. They ring of skepticism and are slightly demeaning terminology to describe a new era of giving and receiving data. Yes, these ‘observers’ be them strangers or contacts can maintain a distance by watching but they are also learning about you. If they chose to take a step forward through contact they enter a new space, or as we explained in the workshop they enter a new gradient of intimacy. A single person depending on the number of networks they operates within can have several gradients of intimacy moving from public to private space. In an effort to visually demonstrate how we felt these ‘observers’ could operate within the digital domain we drew the picture two posts below.
A butterfly - can enter and exit a window without one knowing, they can flutter by as you sit on your font porch, they can enter your back garden and settle on the pool noodle while the children play. They can be a friend from 25 years ago reading your status, a colleague catching up on your blog, a stranger reading your report, your aunt looking at your family photos, the person who is considering the purchase of your car through the online auto-trader. Sometimes you glimpse them through stats, comments, trails they leave behind. Sometimes you don’t notice them as all and yet they have been by.
