EXP.INT | sousveillance

Surveillance, is a term many people are familiar with. It’s a French term, for “to watch from above”, which describes situations where person(s) of higher authority, such as security guards, department store owners, watch over people. (shoppers/citizens)

Sousveillance is something newly introduced, contradicting surveillance, as it relates to bringing cameras from the heavens, “down to earth”. Sous-veillance is French for “to watch from below”, the complete opposite from surveillance.

There are two aspects of sousveillance, hierarchy reversal & human-centeredness which are often interchangeable.

Sousveillance’s mainly acts as a tool for multimedia artists, for effortless capturing, processing, storing, recalling and transmitting of an activity by a participant in the activity.

Even in Singapore, sousveillance is getting more common, especially seen in STOMP, whereby users upload videos of other people, to raise social issues. Even drivers, they have cameras installed to record the happenings on the road.

In relation to Fine Arts, sousveillance is very much like “living art”. The sousveillance industry has been growing ever since, with workshops held. With the advancement in technology and art, there are more varieties of sousveillance art, one being lightvector painting, mentioned in the article.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with sousveillance art, especially when it involves human interaction. I like the concept whereby there are no hierarchical standing between both parties, and have a personal touch. But, there might be people taking advantage of it, resulting in an invasion of privacy. Per say STOMP, many users upload videos of other people with bad behaviour, and shaming them online, and the people in the video might not even know they are getting video-ed.

The intention of sousveillance might be good and useful, but with the addition of the Internet and social media, it might turn things the other way.

This actually caused me to be more aware of my surroundings, and always be on my best behaviour in public, as we won’t know, we might be the next people that get video-ed without consent and leaking it online.

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
x

EXP.INT | oh shoot!

Project Name: OH SHOOT!

Team: Christina Koh, Loh Wei Ting, Foo Kai Qi Gladys, Jamie Lim

For our final project, we will be doing a hunt & shoot game, which involves Processing and maybe Arduino. We will be keeping it in view as we are not sure if it works!

OH SHOOT! is a first-person view game, where the player will have to shoot certain objects/animals, such as birds, deers, etc. There are also certain objects that the player must avoid shooting, or else the game ends.

 

We intend to link the game to Arduino, using sensor touch for the player to play the game, just like Wii.

And that’s it for our final project brief!

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
x

EXP.INT | midterm project

For our midterm project, we had to get into group of 2-4, and create anything we want, using Arduino/Processing/Adafruit.

I grouped up with Claire, Dinis & Dominique & we came up with the idea – Fruit Piano. 

We researched on all different platforms and bounced off each other ideas. And we finally decided to use Adafruit’s capacitive touch as the main geist of our work, and linking it to Processing.

On our first stage of experimenting, we split ourselves up to do different tasks:

Claire – In charge of processing, and code a system that allows different effects when a different keynote is pressed.

Dominique – In charge of Adafruit, using capacitive touch, so that when we touch on different objects, different key sounds are produced.

Dinis & I – Experiment with different materials such as agar-agar, jello & actual fruit/veg objects.

This is what Dinis & I made over the weekend!

However, things didn’t go as planned. Adafruit’s capacitive touch wasn’t very receptive to the jello and agar-agar, and could only work on the objects itself. We poked the crocodile clips into the fruit objects itself, and it was responsive! Although some might take a longer time to react due to a bigger surface area, we were glad it worked!

But thankfully, the Adafruit capacitive touch proved to work!

While we were trying out, Claire was focusing on Processing’s side, while she attempted to create visuals for our piano.

During our consult, we had a problem linking Adafruit to Processing and we tried searching for ways online. However, we couldn’t find tutorials/article related to it.

Our idea was that when one key on the fruit piano is pressed, it creates a reaction in Processing, and forming on-screen visuals.

However the adafruit code couldn’t work directly on Processing, and we had to link it to Arduino first! Dinis & Dominique managed to troubleshoot some issues faced while linking, and they eventually successfully transferred the code over.

Meanwhile, Claire was struggling on how to code the visuals, to make them really random and pretty. Thankfully, she discovered boids and did it up for our fruit piano! It looked amazing! Other than the piano keys, there are also other keys that allows a different option to happen to the boids! How cool is that?!

I also suggested to use audio files and linking it to Processing, instead of using the sound generated from Adafruit. I went to find audio files, and coded it into Processing, so that when a key is pressed, a larger audio sound file is played.

However, on presentation day itself, things didn’t go as planned. We tried to place everything together, but it didn’t work. When we tried placing the crocodile clips into the objects, Processing records that as a touch and played the note. Due to that, we weren’t able to clip the crocodile clips with the actual objects, and had to present it in 2 different manners – one with processing and boids, and the other, Arduino and the fruit piano.

Dinis made the fruit piano with agar-agar, and added more ingredients for a thicker consistency, so that it wouldn’t be able to break, and it looks really pretty!

This is how the final fruit piano looks like & I’m glad it all turned out pretty well eventually!

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
x

EXP.INT | diwo (do-it-with-others)

DIWO, known as Do it With Others, is a distributed campaign for emancipatory, networked art practices instigated by Furtherfield in 2006. It extends DIY, Do-it-yourself towards a more collaborative approach, using the Internet as an experimental artistic medium and distribution system to forment grass-roots creativity. It helps to bring different individuals with similar interests together, where people are featured doing their interests and the current projects they are working on. The project ranges from software development projects to even social projects.

The practice of DIWO allows space for an openness where a rich mixing of components from different sources crossover and build a hybrid experience. It challenges and renegotiates the power roles between artists and curators.

DIWO has also influenced the Media Art Culture. They began with experimental sound and music, with pirate radio stations and collaborative street art projects in the late 80s and 90s.

DIWO enlarges artistic freedoms, uses the metaphors, tools, cultures and processes of digital and physical networks. It is led by experimental artistic processes rather than utilitarian or theoretical concerns. It disrupts traditional hierarchies and concepts of ownership working with decentralized peer 2 peer practices. DIWO involves diverse participants (unwitting and active collaborators), ideas and social ecologies. It generates unruly and provocative relationships between symbolic meanings and material effects. DIWO co-creates a new, freer, art context for more and more diverse people.

A similarity DIWO has to Open source, both are platforms open for people to help develop each other’s ideas or projects and provide feedback.

I feel that DIWO has a similar concept to our course, Experimental Interaction thus far. We are pretty open to opinions, with people giving us feedback. When working, we help to develop each other’s ideas and projects, although not on an online platform.

For example, the recent midterm project that we’ve done, we did it as a group. We bounced off each other’s ideas and helped to solve any coding issues that we faced.

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
x

EXP.INT | reading assignment

Open source used to be the default way of doing things. However through most of human history all information technologies and almost all technologies were “open source”. (Page 24 of reading) This shows that the usage of open source was adopted ages ago, when technology was just starting to become advanced. However, it was not as largely practiced as now.

Open source started when Richard Stallman, a computer scientist, wanted to be able to improve the softwares and devices he was working with, but was denied the chance to. He wanted to let everyone have a chance of creating tools, and sharing them; therefore he established the Free Software Foundation. During the late 1990s, a growing team of hackers built an operating system kernel that would allow an array of programs to work in coordination – Linux. Open source is a platform for peer production, where users can share and revise each other’s work, making improvements together.

Having peer-to-peer social interaction contradicts the copyright system, as peer-produced information gains no benefit from strong intellectual property rights. Strong intellectual property rights inefficiently shrink the universe of existing information, and owned inputs will be limited to human capital with which the owner of the input has a contractual relationship.

Reflection
Based on the reading, I feel that Open source is a very good learning platform, especially for students. On one hand, professionals are able to help improve operating systems of software, and on the other hand, students are able to use the software for free. Technological advancement should be a benefit for everyone, and not be used just as a money making tool. This allows users that are unable to afford, still try out the software.

Till then,
Flazéda!
jamz
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