Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Spectacular Mega-Public Space
Seats have conveniently been placed around Times Square so persons can sit and observe.
Described as an 'ever changing theater set, with both fixed and temporary elements'
'world class public space' because of the number of people this medium reaches as opposed to any other.
The function of this public space is to choreograph chaos.
Global audience..such as New Year's in Times Square. Perfect time to advertise or market products.
The seated audience are now also part of the screens content, therefore they are performers.
"This media group is comprised of four other companies: billboards, wallscapes, kiosks, and Times Square spectaculars vendors, progressive non-traditional marketing services, mobile marketing vendors who specialise in ways to target audiences on their mobile devices, warped sidewalk bridges and scaffolding company" <--- range of different marketing strategies within the space.
"The most concentrated mass market in NYC, Times Square employs 20,000 people, has
500,000 passerby per day, and 10 million viewers to programs such as Good Morning
America, a sign in Times Square gets ‘1.5 million impressions per day and the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop hosts 1 billion people – including visitors and global audience’."
pedestrians are made to fit within marketing strategies...audience discipline.
NO engagement from public...it isn't encouraged: A more active participation than that of a mere spectator is limited to text messages that are also staged for consumption purposes or free events that promote specific goods sponsored by the district.
Described as an 'ever changing theater set, with both fixed and temporary elements'
'world class public space' because of the number of people this medium reaches as opposed to any other.
The function of this public space is to choreograph chaos.
Global audience..such as New Year's in Times Square. Perfect time to advertise or market products.
The seated audience are now also part of the screens content, therefore they are performers.
"This media group is comprised of four other companies: billboards, wallscapes, kiosks, and Times Square spectaculars vendors, progressive non-traditional marketing services, mobile marketing vendors who specialise in ways to target audiences on their mobile devices, warped sidewalk bridges and scaffolding company" <--- range of different marketing strategies within the space.
"The most concentrated mass market in NYC, Times Square employs 20,000 people, has
500,000 passerby per day, and 10 million viewers to programs such as Good Morning
America, a sign in Times Square gets ‘1.5 million impressions per day and the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop hosts 1 billion people – including visitors and global audience’."
pedestrians are made to fit within marketing strategies...audience discipline.
NO engagement from public...it isn't encouraged: A more active participation than that of a mere spectator is limited to text messages that are also staged for consumption purposes or free events that promote specific goods sponsored by the district.
Large Screens and the Making of Civic Spaces
This interview occurred on the occasion of the launch of Tomorrow City Plaza, Songdo, Korea August 7th 2009
Few screens that are actually not commercial. Screen displaying art from all over the world. Creating a public space where contributors can express opinions, wishes, desires and interact with each other.
[What's the interaction? Digital interaction?]
"With interactive technologies the possibilities are wide open for new ways of experiencing time, space and community....Artists, curators, and art administrators can no longer exist in enclosed spaces."
The screen can take not only video but files that are played on the computer.
"...connected to the Internet and mobile networks for live web streaming and interactive telematic events".
Making content appropriate:"For that our curatorial team discusses with various artists until they together come up the suitable ideas. Then we discuss them with the city council that is in charge of administering the large screen and the public space. Usually they say OK unless they see some nudity or obscene languages. They seem to apply similar standard as that of public TV stations, though they haven’t come up with certain set of rules and regulations". <---- Still limitations. Art must be scanned first before they can be aired.
Comments about the audience: Technological projects always grand?
Appeals to the younger audience. Older audience "perplexed" because of new setting. Audience seemed passive.
[Was this actually an interview? Seems more like a discussion...]
Content my be cleverly mixed as to appeal to all types of viewers.
Inspirational text or posters have somehow come up in daily conversations. ... the aim is to make something that enters the public domain.
Public art
Emotion is a mystery...a black box in the study of humans...
"Art is at the forefront of studying and understanding humans because it almost always stirs emotions, new and strange."
Def "civic": "the culture of the city, the way in which the values of the city are built, how people behave and feel a sense of responsibility about their place, and how, through that feeling for that place can clarify both a personal and social identity.
What if the content offends the viewer? There is no choice of going or not going?
[But there is a choice of not participating.]
Controlled by government...so they have to handle the complaints.
[Control from the government is good in terms of regulating the artistic material that is shown. However, isn't it still limiting creativity?]
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Moving Screens Practical
I did my first animated gif using adobe photoshop. It was cool and easy to learn. I'm not sure I prefer it to Flash though.
My storyline for my gif is pretty basic. It's about social spaces and how they are linked now to technology. Have the social space been reinvented? Or does the concept of social space still exist?
Instructions:
Put the images you want to use on different layers.
Window >> Animation
Little window pops up at the bottom
Today we just experimented with the Opacity button.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
LED Technology and the Shaping of Culture
by Sean Cubit
The writer seeks to bridge the gap between technical infrastructures and the cultural and social benefits of moving screens.
First he talks about the invention of the first LED (Light-emitting diodes). Then he highlights the advantages of having them.
1. LEDs can be seen anywhere in an arc of 120 degrees.
2. They can withstand anything the weather (and most things the audience) throw at them, and
3. They can operate over a startling range of heat conditions.
The writer seeks to bridge the gap between technical infrastructures and the cultural and social benefits of moving screens.
First he talks about the invention of the first LED (Light-emitting diodes). Then he highlights the advantages of having them.
1. LEDs can be seen anywhere in an arc of 120 degrees.
2. They can withstand anything the weather (and most things the audience) throw at them, and
3. They can operate over a startling range of heat conditions.
Mobility, Cosmopolitanism and Public Space in the media city
by Scott McQuire
Media was always associated with the public sphere and McQuire is saying that also for the television. Until what was being shown was controlled by broadcasters.
McQuire says that screens went from private to public and asked various questions:
How should we understand the emergence of the electronic screen from the domestic interior onto the streetscape of contemporary cities? What are the implications of the merging of screens with architecture, which turns the surface of buildings into an active communication resource? How will the overlap between streetscape and datascape shape public space in the future?
The writer highlights 3 major thresholds in large screen technology:
1. The programmable electronic signage that used incandescent bulbs.
2. Screens that used a matrix of small Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) displays. (colour)
3. LED (light emitting diode) technology as a video display format in the late
1990s.
Media buildings – buildings that remain relatively transparent to occupants looking outside, but supports large-scale video images when seen from the street.
The media city = contemporary urbanism
"Nevertheless, digital media is clearly ascendant, not only because it is the fastest growing sector, but because the logic of the digital is remaking all older media industries from publishing to telecommunications."
Context of social space.
What I'm getting from this reading is that technology has infiltrated the social space and it is no longer private.
"...the social meaning of space becomes increasingly open to the force and potential of a generalised elsewhere."
Flexible cities – Flexible living spaces emerging because of new media such as computers.
Instead of there being a flow of vertical flow of information i.e. from the top down, the inhabitants are now deeply rooted in creating their environment. "The inhabitants must be given the opportunity to adapt their dwellings themselves to the needs of the moment"
"In place of cities and spaces designed ‘from above’ by experts such as urban planners, their mutual emphasis on user-configured space focuses critical thought on the city as a dynamic process – what Tschumi describes as an ‘event-city’ – involving complex and unpredictable human interactions as much as deliberately designed physical structures and built forms."
The decline of the public space due to technology
eg: from bargaining on the streets to buying online....totally crosses out the social space.
Surveillance – panoptic (showing or seeing the whole) to control space. One could now leave an electronic trail in the city e.g. cctv, credit card transactions. This type of surveillance did not come about because of the police but because of economic and administrative flexibility.
"As a result, everyday social interaction has become increasingly dependent upon the collection and checking of large volumes of information about individuals."
Also..."surveillance is no longer mainly about what happened in the past, or even what is happening now in the present, but about anticipating what might happen in the future".
Reinventing public space calls for "frameworks capable of strategically addressing the new dimension of social space created by the intersection and overlapping of media and architecture in ‘media cities’, moving beyond current paradigms based upon security and commerce to instead think about facilitating other forms of engagement in public space".
Experiments in public space
Public Space Media Art "personal participation and collective interaction, between active engagement and reflective contemplation". Strangers meet in a public space and through the technology realised that they, enacting a collective choreography, can alter its ambiance. City becomes an experimental public space.
The use of public screens in social rituals...would the countdown to the new year in NYC's Times Square be an example for this?
Are we public participants? or just passers-by?
Do these screens facilitate a transnational public sphere?
Media was always associated with the public sphere and McQuire is saying that also for the television. Until what was being shown was controlled by broadcasters.
McQuire says that screens went from private to public and asked various questions:
How should we understand the emergence of the electronic screen from the domestic interior onto the streetscape of contemporary cities? What are the implications of the merging of screens with architecture, which turns the surface of buildings into an active communication resource? How will the overlap between streetscape and datascape shape public space in the future?
The writer highlights 3 major thresholds in large screen technology:
1. The programmable electronic signage that used incandescent bulbs.
2. Screens that used a matrix of small Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) displays. (colour)
3. LED (light emitting diode) technology as a video display format in the late
1990s.
Media buildings – buildings that remain relatively transparent to occupants looking outside, but supports large-scale video images when seen from the street.
The media city = contemporary urbanism
"Nevertheless, digital media is clearly ascendant, not only because it is the fastest growing sector, but because the logic of the digital is remaking all older media industries from publishing to telecommunications."
Context of social space.
What I'm getting from this reading is that technology has infiltrated the social space and it is no longer private.
"...the social meaning of space becomes increasingly open to the force and potential of a generalised elsewhere."
Flexible cities – Flexible living spaces emerging because of new media such as computers.
Instead of there being a flow of vertical flow of information i.e. from the top down, the inhabitants are now deeply rooted in creating their environment. "The inhabitants must be given the opportunity to adapt their dwellings themselves to the needs of the moment"
"In place of cities and spaces designed ‘from above’ by experts such as urban planners, their mutual emphasis on user-configured space focuses critical thought on the city as a dynamic process – what Tschumi describes as an ‘event-city’ – involving complex and unpredictable human interactions as much as deliberately designed physical structures and built forms."
The decline of the public space due to technology
eg: from bargaining on the streets to buying online....totally crosses out the social space.
Surveillance – panoptic (showing or seeing the whole) to control space. One could now leave an electronic trail in the city e.g. cctv, credit card transactions. This type of surveillance did not come about because of the police but because of economic and administrative flexibility.
"As a result, everyday social interaction has become increasingly dependent upon the collection and checking of large volumes of information about individuals."
Also..."surveillance is no longer mainly about what happened in the past, or even what is happening now in the present, but about anticipating what might happen in the future".
Reinventing public space calls for "frameworks capable of strategically addressing the new dimension of social space created by the intersection and overlapping of media and architecture in ‘media cities’, moving beyond current paradigms based upon security and commerce to instead think about facilitating other forms of engagement in public space".
Experiments in public space
Public Space Media Art "personal participation and collective interaction, between active engagement and reflective contemplation". Strangers meet in a public space and through the technology realised that they, enacting a collective choreography, can alter its ambiance. City becomes an experimental public space.
The use of public screens in social rituals...would the countdown to the new year in NYC's Times Square be an example for this?
Are we public participants? or just passers-by?
Do these screens facilitate a transnational public sphere?
Reading the City in a Global Digital Age
by Saskia Sassen
Topography: Graphic representation of the surface features of a place or region on a map, indicating their relative positions and elevations.
This reading doesn't seem to address screens particular...only as elements of urban development.
"While the topography of rich and poor areas of a city would simply capture the physical
conditions of each – advantage and disadvantage. It would not capture the electronic
connectivity."
The writer suggests that while this information is still valid, by including this electronic connectivity, it would make the information more accurate in this technological day and age. As it stands, topography screens out "hunks of urban reality".
Posits that there are interconnections that are not being seen using topography eg "the global and the urban, the physical and the digital, rich and poor areas in a city". Specifically, the social and digital connections are omitted.
In direct response to theorists such as Baudrillard the writer argues that cities continue to be key sites for the emergence of new types of political subjects, often arising out of conditions of acute disadvantage.
Globalization and digitalization signal new possibilities for political action, and power has not dispersed geographically nor gone entirely virtual. The digital is never only technological.
Even the realm of finance, which is perhaps the most highly digitized activity of our time, cannot be thought of as exclusively digital. Electronic financial markets require enormous amounts of material, not to mention people.
Moreover, what takes place in finance is deeply inflected by culture, material practices, and imaginaries that exist alongside cyberspace. According to Sassen, the promise of the city in an era of globalization is precisely what the city promised in times past: The other side of the global city, she writes, is that it is a sort of new frontier zone where an enormous mix of people converge. Those who lack power, those who are disadvantaged, who are outsiders, who are members of minorities that have been subjected to discrimination can gain presence in global cities, presence vis-à-vis power and presence vis-à-vis each other.
(Edited from Abstract)
Topography: Graphic representation of the surface features of a place or region on a map, indicating their relative positions and elevations.
This reading doesn't seem to address screens particular...only as elements of urban development.
"While the topography of rich and poor areas of a city would simply capture the physical
conditions of each – advantage and disadvantage. It would not capture the electronic
connectivity."
The writer suggests that while this information is still valid, by including this electronic connectivity, it would make the information more accurate in this technological day and age. As it stands, topography screens out "hunks of urban reality".
Posits that there are interconnections that are not being seen using topography eg "the global and the urban, the physical and the digital, rich and poor areas in a city". Specifically, the social and digital connections are omitted.
In direct response to theorists such as Baudrillard the writer argues that cities continue to be key sites for the emergence of new types of political subjects, often arising out of conditions of acute disadvantage.
Globalization and digitalization signal new possibilities for political action, and power has not dispersed geographically nor gone entirely virtual. The digital is never only technological.
Even the realm of finance, which is perhaps the most highly digitized activity of our time, cannot be thought of as exclusively digital. Electronic financial markets require enormous amounts of material, not to mention people.
Moreover, what takes place in finance is deeply inflected by culture, material practices, and imaginaries that exist alongside cyberspace. According to Sassen, the promise of the city in an era of globalization is precisely what the city promised in times past: The other side of the global city, she writes, is that it is a sort of new frontier zone where an enormous mix of people converge. Those who lack power, those who are disadvantaged, who are outsiders, who are members of minorities that have been subjected to discrimination can gain presence in global cities, presence vis-à-vis power and presence vis-à-vis each other.
(Edited from Abstract)
Messages on the Wall
An Archaeology of Public Media Displays
by Erkki Huhtamo
Visual media is exterior as much as it is interior e.g. Shibuya, Hachiko in Tokyo
These screens define this cityscape. The writer refers to it as "a mutating mosaic
that is part of the cityscape and at the same time becomes the cityscape". I agree with Huhtamo when they say that passers-by glance at the screens but don't get absorbed by them.
Rather they are apart of and help to form in the ambiance of the city.
If you think about it in a historical context, these types of mediums have always existed e.g. painted pr carved wall inscriptions in ancient Rome. Also:
Banners, flags, signs
Advertising in public places was seen as cheaper than putting ads in print, tv or radio and could reach a wider audience.
palimpsest covering the wall
Advertisements on everything around us:
There is a blog I follow on Tumblr that posts the coolest ad/marketing campaigns and adverts. It's jaymug.com. Here are a few ads that I thought were creative and cool:
Advertisements were initially small. They have grown both in size and creativity. Huhtamo refers to it as the ‘Gulliverisation’ of the visual.
"Gulliverisation operates at the divide between the public and the private. The urban environment, with the skyscraper as its ultimate manifestation, became more and more ‘inhuman’, whereas the home provided a return to the anthropomorphic scale."
Billboards gave products a universal quality, while newspapers made products feel more personal. (I never thought about it that way)
"Whatever attitude one adopted, the billboard
could not be ignored. And yet, considering it a ‘screen’ in the media-cultural sense would not be justified. A billboard could suggest a narrative, but it wasn’t a medium for sequential presentations. No matter how gigantic, it was a frozen printed image. It was able to move or evolve only in dreams or fantasies, as Busby Berkeley’s extravagant ‘Optical Illusion’ sequence in the Warner Bros musical Dames (1934) suggested".
Electric landscape
Brings to mind The Medium is the message by Marshall McLuhan
The lightbulb became advertising immediately...flickering lights drew attention. This helped in making advertising 24-hrs.
Speaking of lights, electric light effect like fireworks come to mind and McLuhan's theory.
"While ‘normal’ fireworks express at most simple icons (flowers, etc.), the representational elements of the ‘machine’ added allegorical and political
meanings to the show.
Check out this light show:
After projectors, LED Billboards was the logical progression.
"The matrixes of thousands of backlit LEDs glow with power that makes the messages visible in bright sunlight, not to say anything about the night. They not only try to attract, but capture the gaze. Those who are unfortunate enough to live under their glow have begun to experience ‘false sunrises’ and demand public regulation."
The writer seems to be against the concept of moving screens but stating that their birth came from and has always been powered by advertising. I have to agree. The information these screens display is hardly about education, rather it's an ever changing technology that it's main aim is to make the consumer stop and notice.
I frankly feel a bit insulted as if we are mindless moths that are supposed to be drawn to the pretty lights.
Now that we had read where this technology has emerged, the question to ask now is: Where is it going?
by Erkki Huhtamo
Visual media is exterior as much as it is interior e.g. Shibuya, Hachiko in Tokyo
These screens define this cityscape. The writer refers to it as "a mutating mosaic
that is part of the cityscape and at the same time becomes the cityscape". I agree with Huhtamo when they say that passers-by glance at the screens but don't get absorbed by them.
Rather they are apart of and help to form in the ambiance of the city.
If you think about it in a historical context, these types of mediums have always existed e.g. painted pr carved wall inscriptions in ancient Rome. Also:
Banners, flags, signs
Advertising in public places was seen as cheaper than putting ads in print, tv or radio and could reach a wider audience.
palimpsest covering the wall
Advertisements on everything around us:
There is a blog I follow on Tumblr that posts the coolest ad/marketing campaigns and adverts. It's jaymug.com. Here are a few ads that I thought were creative and cool:
Advertisements were initially small. They have grown both in size and creativity. Huhtamo refers to it as the ‘Gulliverisation’ of the visual.
"Gulliverisation operates at the divide between the public and the private. The urban environment, with the skyscraper as its ultimate manifestation, became more and more ‘inhuman’, whereas the home provided a return to the anthropomorphic scale."
Billboards gave products a universal quality, while newspapers made products feel more personal. (I never thought about it that way)
"Whatever attitude one adopted, the billboard
could not be ignored. And yet, considering it a ‘screen’ in the media-cultural sense would not be justified. A billboard could suggest a narrative, but it wasn’t a medium for sequential presentations. No matter how gigantic, it was a frozen printed image. It was able to move or evolve only in dreams or fantasies, as Busby Berkeley’s extravagant ‘Optical Illusion’ sequence in the Warner Bros musical Dames (1934) suggested".
Electric landscape
Brings to mind The Medium is the message by Marshall McLuhan
The lightbulb became advertising immediately...flickering lights drew attention. This helped in making advertising 24-hrs.
Speaking of lights, electric light effect like fireworks come to mind and McLuhan's theory.
"While ‘normal’ fireworks express at most simple icons (flowers, etc.), the representational elements of the ‘machine’ added allegorical and political
meanings to the show.
Check out this light show:
After projectors, LED Billboards was the logical progression.
"The matrixes of thousands of backlit LEDs glow with power that makes the messages visible in bright sunlight, not to say anything about the night. They not only try to attract, but capture the gaze. Those who are unfortunate enough to live under their glow have begun to experience ‘false sunrises’ and demand public regulation."
The writer seems to be against the concept of moving screens but stating that their birth came from and has always been powered by advertising. I have to agree. The information these screens display is hardly about education, rather it's an ever changing technology that it's main aim is to make the consumer stop and notice.
I frankly feel a bit insulted as if we are mindless moths that are supposed to be drawn to the pretty lights.
Now that we had read where this technology has emerged, the question to ask now is: Where is it going?
Exploration 3: Light
Collect objects based on how they reflect light. List the different qualities, such as reflective, translucent, refracting, mottled, etc. (Try to collect thirty objects).
For this experiment I collected some of the many objects in my room (pictured).
Poster of a white tiger
White, glossy radiator
Bedroom mirror
Window
Mosaic glass pane
What I noticed:
This experiment works better in the day so that you can see how the different objects naturally reflect light.
Also, my blackberry camera phone sucks for taking pictures....must invest in a proper camera.
I had to research the qualities of light....*embarassed*
But anyways. here goes:
transparent: see through
translucent: some light can travel through
opaque: no light can travel through
mottled: marked with spots or patches of many colours or shades
reflective: capable of physically reflecting light
refracting: deflect (light, for example) from a straight path by refraction
For this experiment I collected some of the many objects in my room (pictured).
Poster of a white tiger
White, glossy radiator
Bedroom mirror
Window
Mosaic glass pane
What I noticed:
This experiment works better in the day so that you can see how the different objects naturally reflect light.
Also, my blackberry camera phone sucks for taking pictures....must invest in a proper camera.
I had to research the qualities of light....*embarassed*
But anyways. here goes:
transparent: see through
translucent: some light can travel through
opaque: no light can travel through
mottled: marked with spots or patches of many colours or shades
reflective: capable of physically reflecting light
refracting: deflect (light, for example) from a straight path by refraction
Exploration 1
Right Where You Are Sitting
Write ten things about where you are sitting right now that you hadn't noticed when you sat down. Use your senses. Do it quickly. Do not sensor. Okay, begin.
1. My fingers are cold.
2. My alarm clock ticks so loudly.
3. I can hear water dripping.
4. I can also hear vehicles passing. I can't make out what type they are.
5. There is a soft humming coming from my laptop.
6. It's getting dark.
7. I am losing feeling in my right leg.
8. I am very warm in my robe.
9. There is a faint scent of toast.
10. My head itches.
Intro to New Moving Screens
This blog is specific to the course I am taking at the University of Sussex called New Moving Screens. It's an interesting course that looks at the evolution of mobile and locative technologies. It investigates the emergence of screen-based media in public spaces and private experiences. Each week we are asked to do some readings and find content that helps us to better understand them or might illustrate what we've read. We are also asked to complete two experiments each week. I would like to formerly document these things using this blog. I believe it would be beneficial to me and others who might be interested in this aspect of technology. Hope it's not too boring...
Here's a cool example I found on youtube about moving screens. It has a double meaning that is so cool. It's about moving screens while moving the screens. LOL...check it out:
Here's a cool example I found on youtube about moving screens. It has a double meaning that is so cool. It's about moving screens while moving the screens. LOL...check it out:
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