Philosophy/ Sociology of the Visual

"A big contemporary issue/ example is ubiquitous computing (pervasive computing, ambient intelligence): a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities." 

Technology has become multi-platformed and cross platformed, for example digitalising magazines and newspapers online has reduced the popularity of the traditional hard copies. This advancement means that everything is networked and organised online in a manner that is both easy and difficult to access.

The trouble with the increased size of these online networks is navigation when publishing meets ubiquity. The data combines and flows everywhere, geographies are broken down and instantaneous messages are dissolved to your computers or internet capable devices e.g. iPad, iPhone and iPod. You the consumer of information is bombarded with messages that may not have any relevance to you. So how can you screen the unwanted flow of words and images? Take the iPhone for example, capable of internet access and apps and a high-quality camera, this device can substitute your computer when we are mobile. Constant upgrades in software and notifications are viewed daily and increased time is spend looking at the screen, it in fact is a multi-platformed device. It is your personal, intimate television, camera and monitor. The iPhone has transformed digital publishing similar to other Apple products, with the ability to post photos, videos, statues and comments onto social media networks - cross platformed. It is metadata that facilitates these new modes of communication from device to device, from computer to device and so on. The identified public in these scenarios extends to both human and non-human objects and processes, which are constantly changing and evolving - our media life is fuelled by publishing. New relationships are formed between content and experience, enabling the ongoing assemblage of new publics, "These publics become a kind of shifting data/metadata that represents an imagined community with nevertheless real effects." 

McKenzie brings to the forefront the 'hacker,' in the online network "Hackers create the possibility of new things entering the world," the crakes within an online network enable hackers to re-interpret and re-use personal information. "We do not own what we produce - it owns us," this encapsulates that the information published online looses 'ownership' and that can be reinvented for good and bad. The unknown publics create different and unrelated means of your information. "The greatest hacks of our time may turn out to be forms of organising free collective expression, so that from this time on, abstraction serves the people, rather than the people serving the ruling class." McKenzie highlights that the new forms of our collective expression are as a result of publishing, if we didn't publish the ability to hack wouldn't be at the forefront of worry for online uses - it is to our own detriment. 

McKenzie Work 'A Hacker Manifesto- Abstraction' pg 102 - 105 

Key WORD: ubiquity

The Visual, Perception, Politics

What can a visual do?

The assembling of public images requires the synthesising of many images, and the extraction of aspects of images according to filters (flesh tones, other colours etc). The image and public are broken down, fragmented, reconstituted, assembled and brought into real-time.Virilio states that "...the real action lies elsewhere, in the imminent nano-technological miniaturisation of integrated circuits that will promote the iconic insemination of 'consumer' information...with the grafting of visual interference."This highlights that these changes aren't seen and understood by the human eye, what we see is a distortion and a visualisation of something far more complex. The visualisation will transform the signal, and the meaning. The technology of merging these images diminishes impact and is skewing the truth. The social body is treating the visual similarly to written text with the ability to transform meaning and to reconfigure the reach. Virilio's 'consumer' brings our 'time' into examination,  the 21st Century advancements in technology create the need and want to create our own images/symbols/signs that are relevant and that align with the trends. This desire is the detriment to the truth, bringing past ideas to real-time is re-assembling the visual. 

Images can be considered signs. Images are motivate signs, in comparison to textual signs that are arbitrary. Images aren't coded as they capture reality, for example photographs capture a moment in time, and the compilation of images piece together the past. Textual signs assign 'to do's,' they are more specific and are context dependent with language and cultural influencing their meaning to individuals. Digital technology has transformed these boundaries.Virilio interestingly states that "...90 per cent of micro-electronic production is engaged in the manufacture of discrete components (scanners, sensors, detectors)...capable of instantaneously transmitting information on an individual's nerve function...mental imagery." The engagement between human and new innovation in technology is creating a new way of reading mental imagery-the vision machine, capable of changing what we see and going against the order of our memory - this is a dramatic technological intervention in social relations. 

Audio Visualisation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw6ahmhJFIU

Blog WORD: social body

Paul Virilio 'Eye Lust' in Open Sky London: Verso: 89-102

Visualisation - Population Density

Created by Meg Twine, Amie Nunes and Alexandria Innes-Brown


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgBKPaZYMt4

Making the Invisible Visible and Visual Perception Politics

'Automation of perception of the world is on the drawing board. As video maker Gary Hill puts it: 'Vision is no longer the possibility of seeing but the impossibility of not seeing.'

The data created on new media like Facebook and Twitter is a new form of 'seeing,' the internet poses the question on to what is visible? The fact that our information is ultimately stored, and used unexpectedly by internet giants like Google reiterates the fact that new forms of publishing have a greater 'invisible' component. It is through visualisation that we can comprehend the invisible - we create new patterns and structures to form new relationships and new forms of knowledge. It is the art of 'joining the dots', 'putting the puzzle pieces together' to code and decode new meanings. A visualisation is a representation of a more complex theme, it forms the basis of learning about something new. The purpose of a visualisation is to discover the unknown. Visualisation is a way of understanding how archives are used to create forms of content and expression, modes of publishing and distribution and aggregation. 

Codes can be visible and invisible - a recipe, morse code, brail, sign language, databases, computer programs and video games have codes embedded within, and it is that invisibility which makes them all the more interesting. Going back to Gary Hill, the '...impossibility of not seeing,' steams the question do we want everything to be visible? 

Examples of visualisations include train line maps, the Periodic Table and Facebook friend networks     (having mutual friends create a common node and builds upon an invisible connection). It is a visual tool to understanding more complex themes and relationships. It is a compilation of data, taken with an aesthetic approach to reassemble our social engagements. For example data from the Bureau of Statistics uses the past, present and future data to generate graphs and visual tools in order to interpret the invisible connections e.g. the correlation between age and gender, country and age etc. Images, like signs and graphs are a real-time visualisation which evokes context and content.

Virilio, Paul (1997) ‘Eye lust’ in Open Sky London: Verso: 89-102

WORD = 'visible' and 'real-time'