My Notes from Data Forensics [in the landscape]

Discovery Through Experiments

We are surrounded by electromagnetic phenomena. We cannot (for the most part) see it, feel it, hear it, or touch it. How can we experience the unseen directly? How do we even talk about the invisible? What is the phenomenological experience of electromagnetic phenomena? Can there be one?

Spectrum -- Frequency -- Wave

Electromagnetic waves are hitting your body -- entering your body -- impacting your body -- but you cannot see them or make sense of them. What are the biological effects of these unseen electromagnetic waves?

>ionizing radiation -- Chernobyl
>non-ionizing radiation -- ubiquitous -- the realm of information

How do/can you make sense of the data/information landscape?

How do you look at the world through electromagnetic phenomena?

>information leaks
>detective work
>forensics

Translating electromagnetic waves to light waves or sound waves through modulations and demodulations.

Groping in the Dark -- Feeling Around

The Steps:

>detection and collection of signals
>analysis
>interpretation
>visualization/reconstruction

All of these things reveal some sort of story that can be pieced together -- a complex ecology of electromagnetic emissions -- devices and clusters of devices -- layers of data from the seen to the unseen -- models of a abstraction and encapsulation. Observing, revealing, and pinpointing the moment of abstraction.

>amplitude versus frequency modulation
>field of influence
>signal -- protocol -- packet

Sensing equipment:

>high-tech = WiFi
>low-tech = dousing rods

Even our thoughts emit electromagnetic waves these are visualized with CAT scans, PET scans and MRIs, etc.

>cryptography -- encryption -- fugitive information -- strategic ambiguity

How can we create/design stimulating electromagnetic events? What can we learn by exploring the invisible terrain of data/electromagnetic waves? Can network traffic be presented as a recording of a performance?

>network typologies -- network topography

Ghosts in the Machine

Can electromagnetic events be built as bridges to other worlds?

>spirits
>telepathic
>dimensions

The experience of ghostly phenomena is often registered as an electromagnetic disturbance.

“Ghost in the Machine” Exhibition at the Kunstnernes Hus

Data forensics [in the landscape] at Atelier Nord

George Brecht, Fluxus Artist, Dies at 82

George Brecht, Fluxus Artist-Provocateur, Dies at 82 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Mr. Brecht came of age as an artist in the late 1950s, when Abstract Expressionism and the cult of the heroic creative genius were ascendant. Inspired by the Conceptual art of Marcel Duchamp and the experimental music of John Cage, he began to imagine a more modest, slyly provocative kind of art that would focus attention on the perceptual and cognitive experience of the viewer.

American, European and Asian artists who were thinking along similar lines included Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Ben Vautier, Nam June Paik and George Maciunas, who in 1962 came up with the name Fluxus for this confederation of like-minded Conceptualists.

Ulsteinseminaret, 8-9 December 2008

Informasjonsutdanninga ved Avdeling for Mediefag, Høgskulen i Volda

Link List for My Presentation

Interactive Design Education: The precarious balance between theory and practice

Design Background - IceHouse Design

Yale University Graduate School
Egyptology
Vermont College of Fine Arts

Teaching

Quinnipiac University
Interactive Digital Design
Student Work

Keys to the Curriculum

Writing Across the Curriculum
Matt Blog
Chris Blog
Mercedes Blog

Foundation: Design Research and Methods
Capstone: Senior Seminar and Portfolio

Social Media

Blogging for students
Facebook

Data Body & Analytics & Surveys

Student Work

Matt
Chris
Eric

My Research (links in sidebar)

Intermedia at UiO

Isolation from Cell Phones

My Phone Must die 01
Originally uploaded by letsmakeart

Here is a list of posts on textually.org for the tag “isolation from cell phone ideas,” which date back to 2005. Emily Turrettini of Geneva, Switzerland keeps three different blogs on aspects of mobile phones and mobile content. You can see that this is a recurring idea in creative works. There is a pervasive ambivalence about these devices that intrigues me - directly related to my own ambivalence, of course. It is the aspect my mind returns to again and again...

textually.org: Isolation from Cell Phones ideas

Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate

From the New York Times: Becoming Screen Literate

Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.

ReBlogging from my own blog...

Is there a name for that?

Pilgrim at Bottle Creek

...The Tinker Creek kind of detailed concentration and focus of observation is impossible when the cell phone is ringing. Perhaps it is even impossible simply with the device in your pocket – a sliver of consciousness and concentration always diverted.

Lost in Text Flickr Pool

Flickr: Lost in Text

Lost in Text 1
Originally uploaded by apolaine

Spectral Ecology

I am working on a long post about the Data Forensics workshop I attended last week, but my pictures are trapped on my camera for the moment (lost cable.) In the meantime, I just had to post this picture of me with the WiFi antenna I built from a juice box. The process was quite a bit more persnickety than I had imagined it to be.

Siv has uploaded a lovely gallery of photos she took at the workshop.

Cellphone Rebellion

Wife/Mother/Worker/Spy - Trying to Live a Cellphone-Free Life - NYTimes.com

Our culture has reached a point where giving up a cellphone is perceived as aggressively rebellious in the modern age.

Data Forensics [in the landscape]

For the next three days I will be here:

Data forensics [in the landscape]

A practical workshop with Martin Howse and Julian Oliver.

With an emphasis on the active construction of hardware and software apparatus, the Data forensics workshop will apply practical tools, techniques and theory to analyse [un]intentional data emissions within the city of Oslo.

Projects are brewing...

Some projects are rising to the surface from the sea of thoughts and ideas. It is still too early to start writing about details, but there is now a page at Intermedia for the project:

Mobile Misuse

PB’s Intermedia Page

AHO Blogging Workshop

Workshop taught by Andrew, Pattie Belle and Jørn

Books and articles:

Uses of Blogs, Edited by Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs

We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture, Rebecca Blood

Mortensen, Torill & Walker, Jill. (2002).‘Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool’. In Morrison, Andrew. (Ed.). Researching ICTs in Context. InterMedia/UniPub: Oslo. 249-279. See SESSION 6:
http://imweb.uio.no/konferanser/skikt-02/skikt-research-conferance.html

researchers/PhD students that blog:
Torill Mortensen: http://torillsin.blogspot.com/
Anne Galloway: http://purselipsquarejaw.org/blog_archive.html
Malene Charlotte Larsen: http://malenel.wordpress.com/
danah boyd: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/
Akshay Java: http://socialmedia.typepad.com/
Michiel de Lange: http://www.bijt.org/wordpress/
Cati Vaucelle: http://www.architectradure.com/

video/motion graphics
http://motiondesign.wordpress.com/
http://motionographer.com/

style, attitude, critique
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/carnivorous-cow
http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/carnivorous-cow/2008/06/30/cover-blown

that get attached to wider sites
http://www.joshuadavis.com

that experiment with space
http://www.polarfront.org

academic yet chatty tone
http://jilltxt.net/

graphic design/communication design
http://www.davidairey.com/top-50-graphic-design-blogs/
http://www.beadesigngroup.com/
http://www.designobserver.com/

collaborative research blog
http://grandtextauto.org/
http://tiltfactor.org/?page_id=3D17

choreography
http://imweb.uio.no/wp-docudance/

Pattie Belle’s Blogs & Blog Info
http://mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/PHastings/bac.html
http://cyborgmommy.blogspot.com/
http://pattiebelle.blogspot.com/
http://mobilemisuse.blogspot.com/
http://quidd.blogspot.com/

From the class discussion:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/
http://squattercity.blogspot.com/

Jørn’s presentation:
http://speedbird.wordpress.com
http://liftlab.com/think/nova
http://www.nearfield.org/
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/

blogging applications
http://wordpress.com
http://blogger.com

Earth calling all mobiles...

This report by Forum for the Future is from 2006, but I doubt much has changed in two years, in terms of the environmental costs of mobile devices.

“The scope of the paper is the whole mobile phone sector, including networks, offices and retail. The first section of the paper provides an introduction and overview; the second section looks at the four processes most responsible for the sector's environmental impact (extracting raw materials used in phones and networks, manufacturing phone components, running networks, and managing equipment at end-of-life); the third section reviews a number of other important processes; and finally, in the fourth section, we look at what the future might hold.”

There is not a lot of cheery news in this report, but they try to end on a positive note:

“Using mobile phones may reduce an individual’s personal environmental impact, for example through transport substitution or effective energy management, but the research to support this idea is currently lacking. There is significant opportunity to further understand the potentially positive impacts associated with the behavioural impacts of mobile use through a detailed research programme. In addition, there are opportunities for the mobile industry to develop products and services that support and encourage better environmental behaviour.”

Cell Phone Recycling



(be sure to read the comments on this video at YouTube)

Recycling is a start, but clearly not the entire solution. The following is from an MSNBC article posted in January, 2008.

“But charity watchdogs caution that there are potential downsides: Most of the money ends up in the hands of middlemen who resell the devices. And these for-profit companies — including EcoPhones, Phoneraiser, FundingFactory, CollectiveGood, Think Recycle, ReCellular, Cellular Funds and Project KOPEG (Keep Our Planet Earth Green) — are rapidly proliferating, perhaps at the expense of similar nonprofits.

What’s more, U.S. “recycling” programs may end up exporting hazardous waste problems to developing nations ill equipped to deal with them, they say.”

Cell Phone Recycling Links

The EPA has an informational site for cell phone recycling.

Apple and others have teamed with “Rethink”

Google on “cell phone recycling”

Norwegian Commuters

Thursday, October 16, 2008
8:20 am - 9:00 am

1. On the Ferry (breakfast & the news for the 20 minute ride)
2. Waiting for the T-Bane (subway)
3. On the T-Bane

Note on Italians and Cell Phones

The guards in the Uffizi were constantly talking and texting on their mobiles (Prego! Prego! Prego! Ciao! Ciao! Ciao!) and it did not appear to be work related. People on the buses (all ages) were having loud conversations or texting constantly. Our first night in a family restaurant, a girl - about 10-12 years old was texting while her large family enjoyed a multi-course dinner.

Phones were ringing loudly everywhere, and no two ring tones were alike – no one seems to care or be disturbed by these constant intrusions into public space. Loud indicators of text messages being received punctuated the street noises. We even saw someone texting while biking…