User:Max Dovey/Reading Writing Research Methodologies
Task 1
Describe the 'what' in your work 100 words for 3 projects. [12/09/2013]
Emotional Stock Market
An Installation in which real time online content is straeamed and printed
according to emotional categorization. Modified receipt printers continuously
print out tweets containing the words ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and ‘love’. A trading
of exchanged tweets takes places between audience and performer,
according to the value of the tweets. The receipt paper piles up on the floor
below computer screens that display the streaming information. A website
accompanies the project displaying the share index and value of each
emotional that is being expressed in the tweets.
Yourhomepage
A large google maps website that contains different coloured landmark icons
that reveal videos of people remembering where they grew up against a
backdrop of the environment on google streetview. The streetview landscape
explores the local area while the person recalls their favorite aspects of their
neighbourhood and where they grew up. The video is watched in a window
frame within the google maps interface. The people talk about what they can
see, how the place has changed (or how different it looks) and what they can
remember.
The Last Day of TV
A series of 5 boxes that contain 5 videos that together make up a bootleg
recording of the last day of analogue broadcasting in London, UK. Each
box has a different UK national channel logo on the cover and each video is
labeled with the date and time information of each recording. The boxes are
in gray tone with white lettering on the case and black on each individual vhs
sleeve. Each video case contains an image of a television tower overlayed
with 5 circles that represent an analogue broadcast signal.
Evil Media
Evil media by Mathew Fuller and Andrew Geoffrey
Graham Harwood and Matthew Fuller launched his new book “Evil Media’ with Graham Harwood presenting Yoha’s new work “Evil media distribution centre’ at The New Institute, Rotterdam.
Evil Media is a presentation of how power maintained and mediated through our relationship with objects and systems. Because I have yet to read the book I will describe my understanding of Evil Media through Yohas indexing of ‘evil media objects’. Yoha present submitted objects that have been categorised as Evil with a brief description on a clipboard (clipboard being one of the indexed objects) in their ‘Evil Media Distribution Centre’. What is being communicated is that the very construction of these objects systematically induce evil properties and maintain power. Simon Pope submits a temporary steel fence, a robotic hover that contains the same motherboard as a drone, and post it notes that manage the individual with half thoughts and soft commands.
The train of thought is a response to the automation of modern society, through data sets and computer algorithms that maintain a systematic influence over our lives. The computational analysis of interplay between user and object is where this evil can be exposed. For example Graham presents the corner of a container as an evil medium, because with all four corners crates can be stacked and shipped in our globalised trading economy. This reading of media is computational in its analysis of function, command and outcome. It’s a reading of the world through a programming methodology, a breakdown of the systematic infrastructure to components that within the interplay between design and interaction become evil media.
Harwood shows particular interest into time management lifestyle programs that we have adapted in the information age. The reliance of technology to organise our constantly connected existence has created an automated experience of our day-to-day lives. Planners, diary entries, work flow charts; to do lists all create a flow of action that is designed by computer systems. The very obvious alteration that these systems have on our lives has highlighted the influence of other mediated objects that can be categorised as ‘Evil Media’.