viz. - technology

“No phonetic pronunciation”—xkcd and Layered Aesthetics

Laura Thain — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 14:34:38 +0000

Image Credit: xkcd

I’ve been following the webcomic xkcd for the better part of my adult life, despite its warning that it may contain “strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).” (Clearly, I was always already a liberal arts major, any way you slice it.) Randall Munroe’s bare-bones aesthetic consistently privileges an idea above the attached illustration; each entry thrives on an invented ethos of the supremacy of text to convey this idea, rather than the illustration itself. This ethos is also heavily grounded in an empirical interest in physics, mathematics, and programming culture, and this empiricism translates quite cleanly into any comment the comic makes on the condition of being human; that is, that it is always based in lived experience, but that this experience is best crystallized in the juxtaposition of concrete, minimalist illustration and sparse but highly suggestive prose. Its only flourish is that each comic contains a “hidden” joke in the roll-over text—often one that works to undo the rhetoric of the initial panel.

Munroe set aside his reluctance to utilize the possibilities presented by a web interface on Wednesday, when he posted a toggle-able webcomic. Titled “Click and Drag” (but with no explicit instruction within the comic to do so), the final panel is navigable in the same fashion of Google Maps, which, in drawing on common procedural memory, brings attention to unnaturalness of the act of click-and-drag navigation. In short, while most of us consider navigating Google Maps to be intuitive, it is, of course, a learned motor skill.

The navigable panel is the last. Image Credit: xkcd

The landscape Munroe constructs if vast, and, of course, I took to exploring it. Within 10-20 minutes, I became curious as to how the interface was constructed and examined the script, looking for a way to view the toggleable-panel in landscape mode. For instance, did the navigable landscape exist as one large image within the frame? Could I access that image?

What I discovered was that the artist created the interface in java with a series of NSEW quadrants (again, much like Google Maps), and so I immediately started to try to assemble them.

An extremely cropped version of Munroe's js--Isn't it beautiful? Image credit: Screencapture from source code, xkcd

After an hour or so of this, I discovered that at noon, mere hours after the comic was posted, an ambitious blogger had already fully mapped out the “click and drag” universe and blogged about the process. As disappointed as I was to be scooped, the process of trying to construct that same map made me appreciate the aesthetics of this particular comic on an entirely different plane. The script’s construction and its seamless marriage with the visual material is a piece of art in itself—an additional layer, if you will, of the aesthetic experience.

Ultimately, having the complete landscape undermined my personal experience with the visual components of the webcomic interface, but the process of trying to construct it—of deconstructing (sorry, Randall), if you will, Munroe’s project, revealed another component of creativity, but one which I would still argue privileges language (that is, that "most horrible kluge," JavaScript). So I ask, how can a piece like this help us expand our boundaries of what constitutes language and reshape our concept of the interaction between the textual and the visual? What sort of media artifacts might we group with it? And how can these artifacts continue to change our notions of how multimedia works rhetorically, aesthetically, and cognitively?

Startup Channels Candy Land to Explain Itself to the World

Calliope — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:10:56 +0000

Image Credit: Appidemia.com

Scrolling through the online list of startups launched this week at Disrupt SF, an annual technology conference hosted by TechCrunch, feels a bit like peering into the future the Web. The catchy slogans and names of companies like Hop.in, Oogababy, and Okdo.it proclaim a new kind of Internet experience, one that is better, faster and more seamless than ever. The only caveat is that many of these startups will not get the chance to impact the Web. Almost half of new businesses fail before they hit their five year mark.

Nevertheless, the roster of aspiring and early stage companies at Disrupt offers a snapshot of where entrepreneurs and app developers think the Internet is headed. Strangely, the success of YourMechanic--which won Disrupt's equivalent of the battle of the bands--suggests that the future may favor internet companies that are simply better than brick-and-mortars at providing access to basic services, like quality auto repair. Yet many of the startups featured at the conference don't bother with the real world at all. A sizeable number are devoted to allowing users to filter, personalize, or simply digest the seething contents of the ever-expanding Web.

Some of these aspiring businesses are strikingly abstract. Take for instance, Appidemia, a not-yet-live social-networking website for sharing and learning about--you guessed it--apps. If you're like me, you might wonder how this process works and how it could possibly be useful to anyone. It seems the founders anticipated utter--excuse me--user confusion since they dedicated the entire background of their "coming soon" page to illustrating--in bizarre, childlike iconography--the platform's central concept. The image below, which appears on the left side of Appidemia's site, seems to portray the mysterious processes of app creation, discovery and bundling, while the segment above (from the right side of the website) pertains to the sharing of said apps with the rest of the world.

Image Credit: Appidemia.com

There are many things to marvel at here: the extra-terrestial setting and its Candy Land-inspired trees, the oozing purple river (or is it an oil spill?), the app-showering hole in the sky, fuzzy cube creatures, and last but not least, the friendly pack of flying fish. The combined effect of these variously endearing, alien, and ominous elements is ambiguous. It seems to hinge on how comfortable the viewer is picturing herself in an otherworldly, inhuman place, and how willing she is to imagine herself engaging--as a prospective user of the site--in the work of manufacturing and re-packaging digital things. Comfort levels, and thus, the picture's appeal would seem to vary with the viewer's prior and/or simultaneous involvement in similar hyper-artificial web environments.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this image is that its purpose--to inform visitors of what the site does by literalizing its procedures--has the secondary, unintended effect of trivializing the whole enterprise of building, investing in, and subscribing to internet services whose sole function is to perpetuate further virtual experience. I would argue that Appidemia undermines its own service, and other narrowly self-reinforcing web services, through a few highly literal aspects of its banner. For one, the apps undergo a very slight change after passing through a giant robot machine; they get slapped together with a few other apps and tied up with a ribbon. So, essentially the site's functionality gets compared to that of a gift-wrapping station. Secondly, the viewer almost immediately transfers sympathy from the fuzzy dice characters to the pictured planet Earth. Not only do we prefer its inviting, serene appearance to the loud colors of the foreground's virtual landscape, but also, we worry that Earth is being assaulted with an app-loaded slingshot! In the end, Appidemia comes off as a factory that doesn't make much, and I want to shout, "Watch out, Earth! The Internet of the future is foisting on you all the apps you never knew you needed."

Being with Technology

Megan Eatman — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:25:55 +0000

Daniel Everett, detail ofGoals

Noel's post on tweeting with the body reminded me of Daniel Everett's work, which also deals with the intersections of man and machine. His pieces suggest, sometimes playfully, the myriad ways in which interaction with technology shapes selfhood.

Daniel Everett, two images from Search Queries

All three of the above images suggest the way the Internet in particular affects day-to-day life. While the first image, which invokes the consuming nature of online media, is amusing, the latter two seem somewhat darker. Their title plays on the frequent overlap of personal/emotional and online searching; if you have or think you might have a personal problem, you check the Internet first. Searching "self esteem" online may yield information that will actually help remedy low self esteem, but it also maintains the aloneness (if not actual loneliness) that can negatively affect happiness levels. I actually searched "something meaningful" and found a lot of self-help information which (depending on the particular advice) can also allow the individual to solve her problem without human contact. The spare, empty room in these words appear emphasizes the absence of others.

Daniel Everett, Speed Run

While I think Everett's work gets at the both personal and cultural functions of technology, I wonder what it would be like if it were more immersive. While these images invoke formative experiences with technology, they keep the viewer at a distance; they therefore draw attention to how certain media (photography, for example) work differently than others. How might someone accomplish similar arguments, but within a more interactive space? What work does the recognition of immersion through a more distant viewing experience do?

QR Codes in the Classroom

catherine_c — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:37:22 +0000

Image Credit: Screen capture of a powerpoint from my E314 course

For my final viz post of the semester (I'm officially off duty in the spring, but might pop back in occasionally), I'm going to reflect back on one of the more pedagogically interesting technologies I've discussed this semester -- using QR codes in the classroom.

I've talked with a lot of people about QR codes this semester and encountered discussions of them all over the web. On viz, I've written entries on their history and background, use in outdoor art intended for Google Satellites, and use in artwork in general, including material generated by this semester's DWRL guest speaker, DJ Spooky. viz has also had the pleasure of collaborating with the DWRL's Immersive Environments group who are getting up close and personal with QR codes and incorporating digital links into real world environments.

Image Credit: Link from DJ Spooky QR code ("Nauru Elegies") at Art Basel, Summer 2010, from Mickie Quick's Flickr photostream

While I only discussed QR codes in passing with my Reading Women Writers class this semester, I've found several interesting discussions of their use in pedagogical contexts on several teaching blogs. I've also been asked several times if I think that QR codes are going to stick around for good in cultural contexts, though their commercial applications seem increasingly entrenched with Calvin Klein featuring them in provocative ads and Ralph Lauren allowing customers to shop instantly from their ads through a QR code link.

Image Credit: New York Calvin Klein Ad, by way of Signature 9

One seemingly unavoidable collision is presented by the increasing number of smart phones in the backpacks of college students. Having been a student all the way from when phones were an abnormality to be warred against through when they were an unavoidable annoyance - "don't even have it on vibrate, just turn it off!" - I'm eager to embrace this technology. Teaching in the DWRL has shown me that students are more likely to be engaged in course materials when these materials are available to them in the mediums that they use most often and with which they are most comfortable. Use of new and familiar technologies should not undermine standards of classroom etiquette -- in fact, incorporating these technologies into the classroom has inspired me to present materials in my Rhetoric and English courses in ways that engage students' attention and keep them focused on the matter at hand. QR codes are a great way to encourage this kind of learning and exploration.

Pedagogy blog Eat. Sleep. Teach. has several outstanding suggestions for incorporating these codes into classroom life. QR codes are a great pre-class "hook" (and can be seconded by shortened URLs in computer classrooms for students without smart phones). QR codes can be linked with YouTube videos or other media, class blogs, or other online resources to get students thinking about the topics for the day. They also suggest linking up additional information or questions during presentations, featuring information for new students on a tag. Other activities where images or facts are linked to QRs and must be researched or identified or where visual images for rhetorical analysis may be presented out of context and then analyzed are also possibilities. Social games are a more in-depth option.

Image Credit: Example of QR Tag in a Powerpoint from Eat. Sleep. Teach.

UK eLearning blog Don't Waste Your Time expands upon the usefulness of linking shortened URLs with QR codes. The codes generated by shortened URLs are less complex and more likely to be read easily by more mobile phone readers, even at the back of the class. Shortened URLs also ease access for students using computers. Some uses suggested on this site are mainly for presenting additional information that you don't have time to cover in class including videos, links, online readings, etc. Instructors could even link to library e-book links or call numbers for interested students, links to polls or surveys, or to audio copies of the lecture, online course content, extra credit or take-home assignments. QR Codes are also quick ways to allow students to share contact info for out-of-class collaborations or peer reviews or to create direct links to blog entries. I've also found browser plug-ins that generate QR codes to be useful in allowing students to instantly and paperlessly save articles they have found online or library call numbers.

Image Credit: QR Link to Mobile Project Gutenberg Site on Main Page

For classes focused on digital media and writing that seek to incorporate mobile technologies into the classroom, QR codes are a great way of linking up information. In other types of courses, they are a convenient way to link sources and ideas together in a flowing and natural way. While quite a few exercises in QR coding end up being too complex - I have found that simple codes like URLs, phone numbers, email addresses work better than the more complicated codes like those featured in QR Comic (where I frequently had to "cheat") - these codes are great for linking up information in simple and easy to use format that encourages students to learn using a variety of different platforms.

As technologies improve, the smart phone market expands, and more students become familiar both with how these codes work, QR codes will likely play a significant part in classroom life. These codes suggest a horizon of future possibilities for visually encoded information that will not only spread information but suggest new connections and possibilities.

Beauty and the Bomb

Megan Eatman — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:43:29 +0000

Image: Peter Kuran, How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb, via The New York Times

Inspired by Eileen's post, I focus this week on a fascinating image. If it weren't for the title of this post, or the image's caption, you might not be able to identify this image. Even with context, I spent a moment staring, attempting to understand how this could be what its caption claimed it was: the beginning stages of a nuclear blast, captured by a special camera placed two miles away from ground zero. In its deviance from the typical mushroom cloud, the image argues for an even more complex understanding of the massive destruction that humans create.

Technically speaking, this image is a close-up; it was captured with a special camera that was placed much closer than a regular camera (or a photographer) could be. But one of the provocative qualities of this image is the way it mimics a much closer close-up. Black and white, with darkness in the background, the image looks like something you might see through an electron microscope. While this aesthetic complicates perception of the actual scale of destruction, it also invokes the incredibly small action from which the massive explosion stems.

For me, the image also invokes the intersection of humanity and technology. The ball, filled with light, exudes a potentiality with no immediate point of origin; it grows on its own, as if alive.

Image: Peter Kuran, How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb, via The New York Times

This image is particularly explicit in invoking growth and reproduction. The bomb looks as if it is giving birth, but to what? A caption indicates that this image shows a fireball "begin[ning] to destroy the tower that holds the weapon aloft." While the first image, taken at a later stage of the explosion, shows no indication of the weapon's beginning, this image shows the destruction of the support structure, the development of the explosion as an independent entity, and thus hints again at growth. While biological creatures are certainly not the only entities that grow independently, the birthing image seems in particular to invoke human and non-human animal reproduction, providing a stark contrast to the elimination of human life that accompanies such an explosion.

The significance of these biological visual tropes might lead us to a somewhat overtrodden message: nuclear technology destroys its maker, humans are their own worst enemy, etc. I like to think that they can do more than that. If nothing else, they force us to think about an almost unimaginable scale of destruction in a different way, considering its processes and products anew. But there is also a beauty, one that I think complicates the concerns visual scholars have long held about the aestheticization of violence. The combination of beautiful image and historical knowledge might enable the viewer to both appreciate the glories of technology and its very serious consequences.

Mechanized Spectacle: Lo-Fi Effects for Viral Content

Rachel Schneider — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:14:02 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot from YouTube

H/T: Hampton Finger

Lucky for you and me that before I started working on my blog post today that my friend Hampton asked me if I’d seen the new OK Go video for “This Too Shall Pass,” and thus I stumbled onto a much more interesting debate than any engaged in by any Texas Republicans running for the governorship.

The above video does a great job of catching the audience’s attention, as it features an enormous and complex Rube Goldberg machine (apparently created from a collaboration between the band and Syyn Labs) that not only moves a car and drops a piano, but also contributes to the song by playing music at one point. While the song itself is pleasant, the video’s visual interest overwhelms it, especially as the lyrics themselves aren’t terribly memorable. Considering that OK Go first achieved major success with their clever video for “Here It Goes Again,” in which they do a choreographed dance on treadmills, this video simply seems to fit into an artistic identity that the band has built for itself.

However, what is interesting to note is that, prior to releasing this video yesterday, the band had recorded a video for the song with the Notre Dame marching band that was released in early January. Why this video didn’t go viral as their new video (the latter of which already has generated 1.2 million YouTube hits, more than the previous one) is because their record label, EMI, initially refused to allow the first video to be embeddable on other websites. As noted by several websites, this created a controversy. The band responded not only by writing an open letter to their fans on their website, but also by publishing an op-ed in the New York Times authored by their lead singer Damian Kulash. His argument considers the power of music videos as artistic statements and financial cash machines, and asserts that EMI neglects both interests by prohibiting embedding.

He starts off the article by asserting his band’s interest in their videos as an extension of their art:

My band is famous for music videos. We direct them ourselves or with the help of friends, we shoot them on shoestring budgets and, like our songs, albums and concerts, we see them as creative works and not as our record company’s marketing tool.

However, what’s also interesting to note is that he represents the videos as much as branding devices as a creative product when he alludes to how his band is “famous” for the videos. OK Go has profited financially from viral Internet success, and Kulash isn’t afraid to admit it. However, his warning to EMI is particularly potent. While they make money from making people view the videos on YouTube, they miss out on the long-term benefits of viral success:

In these tight times, it’s no surprise that EMI is trying to wring revenue out of everything we make, including our videos. But it needs to recognize the basic mechanics of the Internet. Curbing the viral spread of videos isn’t benefiting the company’s bottom line, or the music it’s there to support. The sooner record companies realize this, the better — though I fear it may already be too late.

Kulash’s eloquence here is directed towards the bottom line: the band and EMI will only profit if people are interested in the band, and online videos now serve the purpose that radio once did. However, the “This Too Shall Pass” also raises questions as it builds onto the low-fi aesthetic of their famous “Here It Goes Again” video, which now has almost 50 million views on YouTube.

OK Go - Here It Goes Again from OK Go on Vimeo.

They’ve also played into a curiosity about their video by posting a series of making-of clips on their YouTube channel in a way that reminds me of the also-viral Old Spice commercial from the Super Bowl, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”

A part of this commercial’s success lies in its lo-fi appeal as well as its success. The advertising company behind the commercial admitted in an interview that the commercial was made in one take with no CGI, something that seems almost as impossible as OK Go’s Rube Goldberg machine. I think there’s something fascinating about the mix of viral Internet advertising and old-fashioned creative trickery that also speaks to a desire for an experience with the real (which may be a part of the appeal that The Hurt Locker has over Avatar, and why Roger Ebert is picking the former for Best Picture) in the midst of technological innovation. “Home made” art, as OK Go describe their video, just may be more appealing than anything else, especially as the emphasis is on the performance over the technology. (Maybe this is why State Farm’s logo is hidden in the video on the truck that starts the dominos: advertising is best done in a subtle and artistic fashion.)

As a teacher using technology and as a researcher interested in its implications, I wonder what such desires reveal in my students, and whether the use of high technology works best for them when it is least explicit and obvious.

Swastika barracks

John Jones — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:52:01 +0000

The image above was taken from Google Earth and shows the barracks at the U.S. Naval base in Corronado, California. Aparently the buildings are lovely from the ground, but from the air they’re, uh, offensive. The Navy is planning to spend “$600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications” to alter the way the barracks look from the air.

What I find interesting about this story is that Google Earth “created” this problem for the Navy. The technology literally allowed people to see this symbol. It reminded me of this passage from Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Aleph”:

The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny—Philemon Holland's—and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon—the unimaginable universe.

What fascinates me about this passage is that what the protaganist can “see” is limited (from our contemporary point of view) by the technology avaliable to him. While some technological developments like word processing aren’t represented by the list—he can see a book and all the letters in it—one could make the argument that he is limited because that technology doesn’t exist in the timeframe of the story. However, the speaker only sees what eyes can see—people, places, the insides of bodies, all are from the perspective given by the unaided eye. With our x-rays, telescopes, and satelites, what would an Aleph see now?