The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev (2014) — Data Narrative and Lev Manovich, a Realist?

The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev (2014)

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Alchemised by Lev Manovich, The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 hours in Kiev is the first to analyze the use of Instagram during a social upheaval. Using computational and data visualization techniques, here is an exploration of 13,208 Instagram images shared by 6,165 people in the central area of Kiev during 2014 Ukrainian revolution (February 17 – February 22, 2014).

“When popular media covers exceptional events such as social upheavals, revolutions, and protests, typically they just show you a few professionally shot photographs that focus on this moment of protest at particular points in the city. So we were wondering if examining Instagram photos that were shared in the central part of Kiev would give us a different picture. Not necessarily an objective picture because Instagram has its ownbiases and it’s definitely not a transparent window into reality, but would give us, let’s say, a more democratic picture.”

– Lev Manovich

Manovich’s macroscopic point of view mirrors that of Infocomm Development (IDA). Manovic clairvoyantly pointed out that “after seven or eight years of social networks, there is a need for studying the social and the cultural through analysis of people’s data, in addition to the commercial use of consumer preferences.” IDA has $1.2bn is set aside for tech products, alongside the willingness to release data while crowdsourcing for ideas for innovation. Discover government data at OneMap and data.gov.sg.

Why Open Data? Open data is a massive yet untapped library of information that is available to the public. With the correct use of open data, significant benefits can be reaped such as improved measurement of policies, in-depth analytical insights and sharper business decisions.

(Source via Asia Data BootCamp)

Prof. Randall Packer pointed out a question that would be of interest to artists traversing different mediums in our time. The key to unlock storytelling with social media would be data visualization. Narrating data visualization does not have a name.

Edward Segel and Jeffrey Heer wrote on Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data that most sophisticated visualization tools focus on data exploration and analysis.

In Net Appropriation: Sexy Data, Prof. Louis-Phillipe Demers challenges our experiment on Net Appropriation. “Data mining requires interpretation and analysis, but this is data scavenging,” said Demers. Co-founding partner of DataCraft, Mike Anderson who specialises in data analytics and IT architecture suggested that this is a mean comment. However, designer Petra Valdimarsdóttir describes an artistic process to which, incorporating strategic design.

“I was browsing the internet for archives on american culture I was actually looking for material related to cowboys. Out of no where came this beautiful archive of these native american tribe portraits. When you find something like that you just simply can’t let it go- so I started saving all the images and dissecting them, and finally translating it all into a book and an installation piece.”

– Petra Valdimarsdóttir

Read article on project Data Scavenging here on how “she scratches at copyright boundaries by re-appropriating information and images to reveal the raw humanity that belies it”.

So, how do we tell “data stories” effectively? Gershon notes that it “requires skills like those familiar to movie directors, beyond a technical expert’s knowledge of computer engineering and science”. Lev Manovich explained his choice of Instagram allows us to get a view of a different place of reality then what the journalists would get during times of protests.

Juan Camilo Gonzalez, whose research involves data visualization has great advisement. For the lack of better word, find Juan’s telepresence (very, very cool) and documentations here and check out his multiple award-winning film, SiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSiSi (2011). In his sharing, Juan finds resonance with Robert Wilson’s mathematically conceived structure to allow for ideation process to be wild and free creatively. From his vast knowledge in the field of research, John Cages’ Notations was also pointed out to be an interesting extension in the idea. For which John Cage and his legacy, Prof. Randall brought up the use of I Ching in John Cages’ composition of music, writing and visual art.

The basic principle is to remove one’s own intention from the work and hand that over to the oracle. Intention is always to some extent circumscribed by one’s own tastes and personality, whereas non-intention moves beyond like and dislike and becomes something more resembling an act of nature.

(Source via Yijing Dao of Biroco: The Art of Doing Nothing)

As such, we have come to contemplate upon the idea that to build a narrative for data, a structure is necessary. There are insatiable amount of methods that a structure may be initiated, and that could highly be personal as to be impersonal. “… it’s the interplay between the structure and also the randomness of particular images,” says Lev Manovich.

“To me I think it’s a successful metaphor for how to speak about society today, when you think about all the traces you leave on social networks. I am trying to find the static visual forms to represent our new sense of society from seemingly random acts of individual people. So what I am trying to do is, ultimately, behind this kind of methodological, scientific veneer, I am an artist who is trying to find visual forms, which would represent what I see as central structures or central themes, relationships between individuals taken from random behavior.”

Jennicam: Not Safe for Work

Jennifer Ringley, Jennicam, (1997)

My name is Jennifer Ringley, and I am not an actor or dancer or entertainer. I am a computer geek… I don’t sing or dance or do tricks (okay, sometimes I do) but not very well and solely for my own amusement, not yours).

“This will replace television,” said David Letterman.

With Jennicam, the ignition of reality television sparks controversial discussions. In view of voyeurism in its celebration, Hal Niedzviecki writes that “the Peep celebrity is indicative of just how entranced we are by the media machine’s ability to create the star-celebrity; we are drawn to the person-product who seems to fit so effortlessly into a society organised around the principle that people can and should be reduced to hits, ratings, views, box office gross.” A fan-mail for Jennifer Ringley states that his observation Ringley staying home on a Friday night comforts him. This judgement validates with her popularity speared from Jennicam’s 100 million hits a week.

Jennicam and NSFW

David Letterman added, “… They are lonely and desperate.”

Freeing what we watched redefines our culture and as a result justifies our inherent voyeuristic desires on certain level. Jennifer Ringley is an attractive young blonde woman that burns the heart of straight men and charges raging hormones. While an incentive like this is hard to ignore, the larger part of our collective emptiness envelopes us in the world of Jennifer Ringly, bordering between the real and virtual in Jennicam. The “third space” (a popular term coined by Randall Packer) explores limitless possibilities in cyborgian engagement.

Thank you, jenni.

Jennifer Ringley plays with her boobs.

Jennifer Ringley seduces with her boobs.

Jennifer Ringley and her ass grabbed.

Jennifer Ringley shows one nipple.

Jennifer Ringley masturbating while reading a book.

Many years after Jennicam, the reminiscence remains to be most upworthy in hits features nudity and sexual nuances that keeps discussions lingering. Albeit not the most academic, there is value in pioneering everyday live cam. Jennifer Ringley may have recede into sea of data, but she will always remain as a key icon for what she does and whom are inspired.

Read Jennicam and Project Virtual Awkwardness for first installment.

“… I’d always had a desire to sneak into a girl’s apartment and watch her through the night. I had the idea that while I was doing this I’d see something which I’d later realize was the clue to a mystery. I think people are fascinated by that, by being able to see into a world they couldn’t visit. That’s the fantastic thing about cinema, everybody can be a voyeur. Voyeurism is a bit like watching television – go one step further and you want to start looking in on things that are really happening.”

– David Lynch

GL1TCH.US: JESUS DIED FOR OUR GLITCH

Jon Cates, GL1TCH.US (ongoing)

… the dirtiness implies there is a human quality in new media, that it is not perfect, it’s not sterile, it’s the dirtiness implies there is a human quality in new media, that it is not perfect, it’s not sterile, it’s not removed from real life, but it contains its imperfections, it’s impurities, in a way, it’s organic qualities, that get closer to our “wet” lives, rather than our binary ones. not removed from real life, but it contains its imperfections, it’s impurities, in a way, it’s organic qualities, that get closer to our “wet” lives, rather than our binary ones.

Randall Packer’s response to Jon Cates idea of “dirty new media” (via A Glitch Expectations: Conversation with Jon Cates)

Glitch fundamentally disrupt the otherwise peace and order. But to have technology is to have glitch. God created men to sin; otherwise jesus died for nothing. the celebration of glitch as an art form symbolises an awakening — a new beginning for digital natives in B.G. (Before Glitch). Now with wifi as the most basic need in Maslow’s hierarchy, it is an implied need for it does not have direct nutritions to a man’s existence. It is the broadening of a man’s consciousness, the internet as an extension to men’s brain in prosthetic knowledge.

Glitch as the underdog that subverts UX/UI design

The unnerving experience in Jon Cates’ aesthetics challenges the functionality of which but above all, one’s patience for navigation. Glitch art unsettles the audience. Much reflective of the anxiety from mismatched expectations and trolling computers. It is theatrical and overloads sensory perception, inducing a hypnotic trance; a mental state of new singularity. The transgression across content curation in glitch proves to be nostalgia-inducing. To speak of instinctual reflex from the glitch aesthetics suggests a journey in associative thoughts as connected points in the cloud of hippocampus.

Is glitched porn still porn?

In Dirty New Media, pornographic materials did not get any less sensual. Pornography by its heritage would very much prefer clarity and resolution boost in its media translation. If sheer is sexy, so is glitch. For sheer clothing evokes that sense of wonder and curious lust, glitch in its distortion inspires fantasy of a spotless mind. One perverse lucidly and iterates above satisfactory sexual scenes. Sex does not live purely on bits but engages a perfect union between virtuality and the viewer. It offers tantra from the digital realm.

Catharsis in glitch

In a non-intentional experimental spirit, I have experienced glitch first hand by crashing my iPhone 5c. Some might see brokenness as an opportunity for growth i.e. get an iPhone 6/6 plus. Some quizzed my blatant apathy to my now obsolete hardware. Others simply trolled and maybe give thanks to god for the new aesthetic.

To be broken is to be free. To acknowledge that security is elusive. And this takes time as much as the scalping of wound. Where certain glitches were not meant to be fixed, restoration comes from the faith of human’s mind detached from worldly extensions. Certain glitches are looked back in anger and disgust, whereas certain glitches merge into aesthetically pleasing forms. We decide which is burden or opportunistic growth.

The Big Kiss: Sensuality Beyond Physicality

Annie Abrahams, The Big Kiss, (2008)

Machine mediated kissing in a performance = drawing with your tongue = taking pleasure, while constructing an image = a way to be superaware of the other = never totally abandoning yourself = ???????? = not at all like real kissing, it’s better! This might be a female view point.

– Annie Abrahams

Check out 5 minute documentary:

Annie Abrahams creates situations where people reveal things of themselves they normally don’t show, being real and acting out of what is normally accepted, referring to it as an “intimate moment”. The idea is that in such a situation, people invest their thoughts and emotions while conferencing in the third space. In retrospection, it pricks to pick on their performance, in The Kiss, both performers self-consciously gestured a kiss. A kiss and its various cultural connotations deconstructed in the third space. Read more…

From Annie Abrahams’ “not at all like real kissing, it’s better!”, it suggests fear of bodily intimacy such that a mediated situation creates a simulation that human are perhaps more comfortable with from machine’s interface.

On the opportunistic point of view, it is an empowerment of the machine as an extension of our mere body. The sensuality of kissing has transcended beyond the physicality of which.

Fear is an emotion evoked by our instinctual senses that we may react in fight or flight. Women associate oral activities as emotional engagement, that prompts vulnerability. From being “superaware” of the dynamics behind the screen and bearing an overview of oneself with another through super-flat, perhaps then, an inspiration of safety be it physical or emotional propagates thrill and immersive voyeurism.

Virtual sex, no matter how realistic, was really nothing but glorified, computer-assisted masturbation.
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

When observed alone in physical space, an observer might decide to feel awkward for the participant, when in fact such engagement is so intimate to those involved. To kiss as a gesture is differentiated in implications. Where in The Big Kiss with the hint of intimacy in machine learning, intimacy pushes beyond physical and emotional, but to cognitive and experiential.

In men’s ideation of sexual fantasies and desires, physical fixation is where the difference lies in as compared to women. Annie Abrahams is might be right after all that it might be of preference to females in virtual act of intimacy.

Touch is the space of the gap, not the connection. (Source)

Datamatics: The Relationship Between Data and Knowledge

Ryoji Ikeda, Datamatics, (2006)

Using pure data as a source for sound and visuals, datamatics combines abstract and mimetic presentations of matter, time and space in a powerful and breathtakingly accomplished work. datamatics is the second audiovisual concert in Ryoji Ikeda’s datamatics series, an art project that explores the potential to perceive the invisible multi-substance of data that permeates our world. Projecting dynamic, computer-generated imagery – in pared down black and white with striking colour accents, Ikeda’s intense yet minimal graphic renderings of data progress through multiple dimensions. From 2D sequences of patterns derived from hard drive errors and studies of software code, the imagery transforms into dramatic, rotating views of the universe in 3D, whilst the final scenes add a further dimension as four-dimensional mathematical processing opens up spectacular and seemingly infinite vistas. A powerful and hypnotic soundtrack reflects the imagery through a meticulous layering of sonic components to produce immense and apparently boundless acoustic spaces. datamatics, alongside the recently released and critically acclaimed dataplex album, marks a significant and exciting progression in Ikeda’s work.

Check out the immersion documented:

Albeit augmented as an experience of Ryoji Ikeda’s works, the common trend of black and white, extreme polarities, seen and then unseen. Mathematical, computational, and a generative demographics of sensorial transfinite space and time is newly defined.

I propose data visualisation as the sublime experience in ecstatic truth, with reference to Datamatics by Ryoji Ikeda. Much unlike Lev Manovic’s stance on data visualisation as a new form of abstraction and anti-sublime, in Ikeda’s alchemy. In its representation we find a deliberate lost translation; an atmospheric inclusion of one being into one entity in space-time continuum.

When Werner Herzog coined “ecstatic truth”, it was to describe state of sublimity from which “a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual”. In Datamatics, the human body finds itself immersed audio-visually in real data. Revered sublime beauty lies not only in information aesthetics, but also ecstatic truth relatable to general human system.

According to Mario Costa, the new technologies are creating conditions for a new kind of sublime: the “technological sublime”. Data visualization in new media art transcribes raw data into a form of experience. It is driven by data, and its form follows from the optimisation of efficiency in inputting data into a human brain. It is pragmatic, rational and logical. On the other hand, it evokes emotions through its aesthetics, communicates, distills complex ideas into simplicity. In its consumption, it is sometimes involuntary, however a pleasant disruption and controlled chaos that breed new form of harmony.

Especially in Datamatics, it encompasses the human body and its relation to environment. The experience is designed for interaction to be quiet and observation in subtlety. On the other side of coin, an assault of the technology —the question of what “real” reality is poses itself constantly.

The Pirate Cinema: The Free Cinema

Nicholas Maigret, The Pirate Cinema, (2012)

In the context of omnipresent telecommunications surveillance, “The Pirate Cinema” reveals the hidden activity and geography of Peer-to-Peer file sharing. The project is presented as a monitoring room, which shows Peer-to-Peer transfers happening in real time on networks using the BitTorrent protocol. The installation produces an arbitrary cut-up of the files currently being exchanged. User IP addresses and countries are displayed on each cut, depicting the global topology of content consumption and dissemination.

Nicholas Maigret’s presentation to show the world through technology and language of our time, as he explained to has existed through historical avant-gardes, aligns with Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye manifesto (1923):

I, a machine, am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see. […]

I free myself for today and forever from human immobility.

This is I , the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic movements,

recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations.

Freed from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever I want them to be.

My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world.

Thus I explain in a new way the world unknown to you.

The erection of TPC (The Pirate Cinema), could be explained at large with Lisa Jevbratt’s opening to Coding the Infome: Writing Abstract Reality where she is quoted “to write code is to create reality.” In TPC, physicality of generative visual material in its dimensionality establishes non-linear space-time continuum; “it is similar to the act of making a sculpture or designing and sewing clothes – to start with a material and feel how it folds and falls and cut out two dimensional surfaces that turn into three dimensional shapes by sawing them together in specific way.” Truly, a “global village” of internet’s age of independence is beautifully woven.

At first glance, the clashes of visual imageries identifiably of pop icons and colossal NSFW feeds the viewer overwhelms yet ironically satisfy the short attention span of modern digital natives. Albeit arbitrary in the orchestration of audio-visual channels, the transitory aesthetics of failure in glitch harmonise the bytes of familiarity, evolving into resonance of our interwoven identity our Internet contemporaries.

The curation of top 100 downloads could perhaps be most illustrative of popular choices then polling and voting systems helmed by any human host and the authenticity of an open source network most genuinely conveys human-to-human connection makes this work of art brilliant in demonstration. To recall and speak of the present cinema, is to speak of The Pirate Cinema. The cinematic language has to progress and it is of every concern of today’s cinematographers in frames from the traditionally calculated aspect ratio to explosive immersion of dome. In TPC’s live performance, demographical interests is further data mined and visualised in total honesty. Medium at large, TPC ironically brings audiences back into the cinematic experience a black cube. The extraction of focus without mobility of an Iphone screen reminds for the piracy of content, sacrificed was the past infrastructure, though not necessarily abhorred against. The new, is however, going back to the old for the newer, the endless cycle provides “the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes”, says McLhuan. We are certainly anxious.

For more information, check out it’s home site and array of visage at TPC’s photo stream.