body as location as landscape

The camera will prove to be the ancestor of all those apparatuses that are in the process of robotizing all aspects of our lives, from one’s most public acts to one’s innermost thoughts, feelings and desires. — Vilém Flusser, 1983.

The history of the United States is a technological one. Photography’s earliest proliferation coincided with the Civil War and gained its formal language as government funded exploratory expeditions expanding the rail roads (and land rights) to the Pacific. Images have been used to classify, quantify and construct a nation: its people as well as places. That information, became the barometer that continually justified incongruous practices and ideologies that have maintained power structures.

Three days ago, the iPhone turned a decade old as we enter a cultural landscape vastly different than the one we left behind in 2006. Connected devices allow us to take part in mass media in real time, from sharing a momentary thought to igniting societal change. By engaging with these tools, we are all journalists now – sharing our stories as we explore our world(s). And, as Diamond Reynolds taught us on July 6th of last year: while these technologies attempt to obfuscate the powers of societal production, they are also laying bare the realities.

Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used against us.John Berger, 1974

The rate at which emergent technologies have changed contemporary society is astonishing and somewhat bewildering. Bewildering, for those old enough to remember a before, and bewildering for those young enough to assume the speed and weight of this communication is inhabitable (re: normal). If it is possible to use the first-person plural at all in a meaningful way, we no longer fully have a grasp on what is ours. A massive chasm has emerged and in it we have cast everything we once held most dear: our realtionships, our thoughts, ourselves.

Our homes and communities are no longer the locus of our private lives. A picture of a loved one on a desk was once the extent of personal information brought into the office as an intimate conversation was allocated to one of the few rooms of our home with a telephone. Our devices encourage us to bring our internal psychic and emotional space everywhere we go and provide the opportunity to broadcast that space everywhere we are not. Our preferences and interests were once observed by looking at our libraries (our books, CDs, VHS tapes, tool kits, etc.) but now we carry them around, informing platforms our momentary decisions.

Every individual is both consciously writing and naively generating a massive amount of information making their geographic location, likes, conversations and private actions available anytime and anywhere to telecom providers, search engines, social networks and other eager open ports. Tethered to our devices, our bodies are now the starting and vanishing point of mass surveillance and big data.

I’m not on the outside looking in. I’m not on the inside looking out. I’m in the dead ducking center looking around. — Kendrick Lamar & iOS Auto Correct

Over the second half of last semester, I became totally obsessed with 360 video streaming: trying to get the Rioch Theta to stream in WebVR. I got close, but ultimately failed because it was hard. But through all this I did circle back around to what I’m actually interested in: phones. The powerful computers we don’t think of as computers but carry around with us all the time. In my mind the Theta is basically a phone – a small powerful device with a camera on both sides of the sensor plane. It is a machine that suggests the possibility of 360 filmmaking but there are many other concepts implicit and technologies embedded in a mobile device. I think I got distracted by this damn VR zeitgeist. But that’s okay.

Somehow school information seems, less personal than home. Safer to say, “here i am.”

So instead, I made this: Channel 9, for Live Web and Actual Fact with Tahir Hemphill. Using the Hip Hop Data Base, I found all the Kendrick Lamar songs that had the word “camera” or “Channel 9,” somewhere in the lyrics. Channel 9 is the a local television station Lamar mentions often in his work and is also the Microsoft developers site, named after the channel airline pilots would allow passengers to listen in on cockpit conversations (We the Media, Dan Gilmore, p. 75).

The page automatically reloads if the lyric is longer than the window, and a new phrase is randomly selected. If you click the canvas, the text turns green and clicking the black lens icon will save the current state of the canvas to your local machine. The program is designed for mobile – using the accelerometer, if a viewer shakes their device the animation will stop and the words stand still.  But because iOS doesn’t allow certain JavaScript functionality, the saveCanvas (or the “click” to take a picture) only works on Android or on a computer. 

someFormat 1

In Digital Imaging ResetEric gave us a small webcam to play with. Our challenge was/is to take the sensor and construct our own camera around it. I thought it would be fun to quick & dirty a digital camera that writes to the browser using my Zone VI large format camera & some basic code from Live Web. The marks are dust on the sensor. Even at my most formalist moments, I’ve always been partial to dust, cords & tripod legs in my images as a nod to the means of (photographic) production, or whatever.

The tiny spectrum-reflective rectangle in the center is the CCD sensor.

I removed the sensor circuit board from the camera and fashioned a cardboard film holder.

Quick & dirty film plane.

I had some initial trouble knowing what I was looking at. Because the focal lengths for the lenses are calibrated to throw an image that covers a 5 inch by 4 inch space, the micro inch of the sensor plane only captures a fraction of what one would normally see on the ground glass and at great magnification. Using the camera and 210mm lens Eric was able to make this streaming video image of the Empire State Building antenna from the window of his office.

ER’s First captures of Empire State Building antenna tower. So neat, also pink.

Because of the bot conference on Friday, I took the rig up to the 9th floor and made some more tests of the water tower and construction cranes.

function someFun(4×5 camera, laptop, screen, webcam sensor, ice coffee){ return someLearning }

the magnification the camera movements are extremely sensitive, fractions of inches resulting in changes of hundreds of feet. My next step is to figure out a smaller format camera that is easier to work with. Rather than this overly-complicated telescope. But I’m pleased with this proof of concept. Once I get an easier rig set up I can start figuring out what to do with it…

Live image of distant city sky-scape drawn in the browser. The canvas is within the rectangle.
theScene seen from an iPhone.

the imagination pictures the real

Still reading this book . The author included a Jack Spicer poem I had forgotten about. Author’s excerpt below, full poem here.

I would like to make poems out of real objects. The lemon to be a lemon that the reader could cut or squeeze or taste–a real lemon like a newspaper in a collage is a real newspaper. I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddenly covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem–a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger…

Things do not connect; they correspond. That is what makes it possible for a poet to translate real objects, to bring them across language as easily as he can bring across time. That tree you saw in Spain is a tree I could never have seen in California, that lemon has a different smell and a different taste, BUT the answer is this–every place and every time has a real object to correspond with your real object – that lemon may become this lemon, or it may even become this piece of seaweed, or this particular color of gray in this ocean. One does not need to imagine that lemon; one needs to discover it.

Fredman p. 97 // Spicer p. 133

worldFaking

Here is the most recent incarnation of the worldFake project. Clicking on a rotating orb will reveal a 360 scene. Using a standard trackpad or mouse scroll, the viewer is able to maneuver around the scene, zoom in and out and move the worlds around. Pressing space bar will reveal one of the three videos at random. The viewer is located outside the smaller videos but inside the larger one. Clicking “save world” stores the unique information: logging the x, y and z values for each of the smaller 360 videos.

demo-ing worldFake at ITP’s Experiments in Storytelling, May 2016
https://oldobjectsnewideas.com/worldFAKE/worldFaking/worldFakingGreen.html

i successfully rewrote a part of my midterm as a function – huzzah! the only problem is sometimes it doesn’t work. i know it is something on line 41/42. how can i make a function out of the phrase.append portion? i know it can… i think, maybe. or whatever.

so sometimes it works, something is off...

 

[‘you’, ‘things,’, ‘from’, ‘know’, ‘or’]

you things, from know or
you things, from or know
you things, know from or
you things, know or from
you things, or from know
you things, or know from

you from things, know or
you from things, or know
you from know things, or
you from know or things,
you from or things, know
you from or know things,

you know things, from or
you know things, or from
you know from things, or
you know from or things,
you know or things, from
you know or from things,

you or things, from know
you or things, know from
you or from things, know
you or from know things,
you or know things, from
you or know from things,

things, you from know or
things, you from or know
things, you know from or
things, you know or from
things, you or from know
things, you or know from


things, from you know or
things, from you or know
things, from know you or
things, from know or you
things, from or you know
things, from or know you


things, know you from or
things, know you or from
things, know from you or
things, know from or you
things, know or you from
things, know or from you


things, or you from know
things, or you know from
things, or from you know
things, or from know you
things, or know you from
things, or know from you


from you things, know or
from you things, or know
from you know things, or
from you know or things,
from you or things, know
from you or know things,


from things, you know or
from things, you or know
from things, know you or
from things, know or you
from things, or you know
from things, or know you


from know you things, or
from know you or things,
from know things, you or
from know things, or you
from know or you things,
from know or things, you


from or you things, know
from or you know things,
from or things, you know
from or things, know you
from or know you things,
from or know things, you


know you things, from or
know you things, or from
know you from things, or
know you from or things,
know you or things, from
know you or from things,


know things, you from or
know things, you or from
know things, from you or
know things, from or you
know things, or you from
know things, or from you


know from you things, or
know from you or things,
know from things, you or
know from things, or you
know from or you things,
know from or things, you


know or you things, from
know or you from things,
know or things, you from
know or things, from you
know or from you things,
know or from things, you


or you things, from know
or you things, know from
or you from things, know
or you from know things,
or you know things, from
or you know from things,


or things, you from know
or things, you know from
or things, from you know
or things, from know you
or things, know you from
or things, know from you


or from you things, know
or from you know things,
or from things, you know
or from things, know you
or from know you things,
or from know things, you


or know you things, from
or know you from things,
or know things, you from
or know things, from you
or know from you things,
or know from things, you

rvrsMts

All semester I’ve been continuing to learn javascript. Specifically 2D design in Rune.js. It’s been great to focus on manifesting the logic of programming visually. Like learning to think by drawing or draw by thinking? I dunno – math, or something. Weekly exercises in how to use computation to create multiplicity. Try refreshing this poster design – infinite variations! Uh oh…