Public display project

I've fallen a bit behind on my blog posts, and hope to write several this week which target the last of the book readings as well as observations about project work.

Speaking of project work, I have pretty much settled on an idea for my public display, and I spent today scouting out the location I want to do it in. I've decided to do it in the middle of the walkway in the Leslie Groves Park.

My public display will involve me and one of my friends playing a game of Axis & Allies on a gaming table on the park trail. We will make an attempt to dress the part of commanders/soldiers fighting in World War Two.

The idea behind this is that while we are sitting in a peaceful and serene environment, with the river behind us and the park all around us, internally we will be confronting the chaos and confusion that is present in warfare.

My plan is to have one camera recording us from a short distance away, which will make note of people's reaction to us, as well as showing the peaceful setting we are in. Another camera will show more of an overhead shot of the board game as it is happening, probably with sound effects to reflect the sounds running through our minds at the time. I figure I will switch between the two camera views a few times to show the contrast between the two as well as noting the responses of those around us.

Triptych geocache drop

Dropped off my triptych geocache without issue today in the hills behind Badge Canyon. Works with my overall theme for the project.

GPS location is at: 46°9'23.46" North, 119°17'31.96" West

I had made a bit of a write up about the project, as early on I had thought we would need to submit one with the final images. I went ahead and threw it on here. Read on at your own peril.

For my triptych, I decided to pick something I can relate to personally. Over the years I have accumulated several boxes worth of random parts and components from building computers and doing computer repairs. In my case, these computer parts sit in a closet where they gather dust, as the parts are anywhere from four to ten years old. Since improvements in computing technology occur in leaps and bounds, these parts quickly fall into obsolescence within just a few years. In the past, I had simply thrown out parts as I deemed them unnecessary, a practice that many typical Americans follow.

                The problem with this (aside from the cost, both monetarily and in environmental damage of being thrown into a landfill) is that there is a better solution which can have a tremendous impact on the lives of the less fortunate on the other side of the world. There are several organizations around the globe that run services dedicated to recycling aging computers and electronic devices by sending them to poor developing countries for use in education. By doing this, they keep perfectly functioning electronics in the hands of people that can use them, instead of being dumped into a landfill or worse. Children in these countries are then able to learn about these technologies and interact with them in a way they hadn’t been able to before, which will be incredible tools to further their education and perhaps provide a way for them to improve their standing in their life.

                For my images, I took a photo I found of a landfill in the United States with several thrown computer monitors, desktop computers, and other e waste. I then took a statistic I had found on the subject and put that on top of the image of the landfill with a translucent American flag in the background of the text. The second image consisted of a photo of a group of kids studying in Bangladesh. This photo shows the children sitting on the ground reading from their textbooks. Whether or not it is intentional, the children all seem to not have shoes, which could be an indicator of the poverty in which they live. Underneath the image, I placed a couple of e waste logos with a background of light green behind them.

                For my found item, I ended up going with the idea you suggested of breaking up some of the components, and sticking them in a container. This gives it an artistic element to the object, as I am both taking an object and then changing it into something that looks aesthetically appealing in a way.

                I left my geocache under some sagebrush a little distance away from a road behind Badge Canyon. This location ties in nicely with the overall theme that I am going for. By breaking up the computer components and leaving them out in the desert, I am making a comparison to what would end up happening if the parts were thrown into the garbage instead. If thrown away, the parts would have been broken up and left in a landfill.

Finished Geocache (before dropping off)

POL reading 389-401

When looking into the flow of visual culture, so much has happened in the last fifty years that has continued to erode borders between people of different geographic locations and cultures in our world, through the prevalence technologies that allow for mass distribution of images and other mesia, such as television, radio, personal computer, and the internet, etc.
After doing the reading, I was surprised by the fact that it took a bit of activism on the part of the public (by people such as Stewart Brand) before NASA released a photograph of the whole earth in 1970. I had always believed that images of the earth in it's entirety had been taken and released to the public years before that during the space race. It was interesting to see the effect that this photo which NASA called "the blue marble" would have on many people across many countries. This image as well as other striking images that came after (The Last Whole Earth Catalog) became strong symbols for peace movements around the world, as they pushed the idea that humankind should be unified across national boundaries. The effect that images can have on bringing together support for a cause or an ideal is staggering.
Cultural imperialism being put to use as a new weapon in the cold war as a means to influence the views and perceptions around the world was a way in which people could be exposed to new cultures. While this had been intended to garner support to the ideals of either the West or the East, it still contributed to this spread of visual culture.

Google piracy article

"Google changes 'to fight piracy' by highlighting legal sites" is the name of the article, and it does a good job of conveying the overall subject of the piece. 

     So the criticism is that in the past has been that an individual that wants to pirate, or illegally download music, movies, etc. from the internet, all they needed to do was do a Google search the desired content and a list of providers would be listed as a place to download the media. The criticism comes from those that whose intellectual property is being illegally obtained, and therefore argue that they are losing potential profit due to this ease that Google allows someone to pirate their content.

    Google is making changes which would put services that allow for the legal purchase of content instead of showing links to websites that allow for torrenting the content illegally. The idea being that a user will see the online distrubtors and then proceed to either storefront to purchase the content that they were looking for. It is possible those in support of these changes hope that by moving torrenting sites and sites that promote illegal downloads of content off of the front page of search results, that pirates will be discouraged.

    On the discussion of whether I support Google on these changes, I'd have to say no. This isn't because I am someone that pirates tons of illegal content (although I have in the past when I was younger and didn't care whose intellectual property I was infringing on) but rather because I see the measure as being ineffective. "Google changes 'to fight piracy' by highlighting legal sites" is the name of the article, and it does a good job of conveying the overall subject of the piece. 

          So the criticism is that in the past has been that an individual that wants to pirate, or illegally download music, movies, etc. from the internet, all they needed to do was do a Google search the desired content and a list of providers would be listed as a place to download the media. The criticism comes from those that whose intellectual property is being illegally obtained, and therefore argue that they are losing potential profit due to this ease that Google allows someone to pirate their content.

Google is making changes which would put services that allow for the legal purchase of content instead of showing links to websites that allow for torrenting the content illegally. The idea being that a user will see the online distrubtors and then proceed to either storefront to purchase the content that they were looking for. It is possible those in support of these changes hope that by moving torrenting sites and sites that promote illegal downloads of content off of the front page of search results, that pirates will be discouraged.

       On the discussion of whether I support Google’s changes, I'd have to say no. This isn't because I am someone that pirates tons of illegal content (although I have in the past when I was younger and didn't care whose intellectual property I was infringing on) but rather because I see the measure as being ineffective. The effect that these changes will have on a person’s ability to illegally download movies or music is doubtful. The problem is twofold, because Google is simply moving these “shady” websites to lower rankings, the search result will still provide the links to the pirating sites, the user will just have to check the second page of results and they will be able to find them. The other problem is that is that it is likely that someone that Is illegally downloading content has done so in the past, and probably knows a couple of websites that provide access to the torrents. In the latter case, the user will just go straight to these sites instead of going through a search engine. Lastly, lets pretend that that Google completely removes the links to these “questionable” web sites and a user doesn’t have several of these types of web sites favorite, they would still have the alternative of using another search engine such as Bing or DuckDuckGo and finding the sites they are looking for. This all comes down to being ineffective at curbing the amount of pirating happening in the long run.

          There is also the question of whether Google should be having to alter its results based on these criticisms. As Google’s model is to providing users with the results they want, is it really their responsibility to police the content their users have access to? In some ways, you could make the argument that Google is just providing the means to reaching your destination, they aren’t providing the destination itself. Google gets results through an algorithm that they are tweaking and changing constantly. This means that Google isn’t selectively promoting these illegal sites over others, they are just pushing the desired sites to the top because that is what the user wants and that is what the algorithm delivered.

          So to end it all, I have to say that I don’t agree with Google’s changes because it is not going to make a large difference in the amount of pirating being done.

Lessig 213-234

Wow, after this latest reading, I am dumbfounded by the lack of sense in the Court to see the unlimited power being granted to Congress in regard to the loop of copyright extensions that are granted with such regularity.
      To answer the question of can or should information be owned, I think that it should be owned initially, but only for a period of time before becoming public domain. This view is pretty much that a creator should be allowed a period of time to profit from their works by having the exclusive rights to their creation. I completely agree with Lessig's view of the matter of copyright. I believe he is spot on that by being able to continually extend copyrights' expiration date, it is greatly damaging to the general good of the public.
     Just as Lessig says, even if we ignore those intellectual properties like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and others that have enjoyed commercial success, we still are losing much through this never ending copyright extension. We are losing out on all those creations and works that weren't successes! This was something I personally had never even thought about before reading Lessig's work. Think about the all the books, movies, works of art, and other creations that have been made veen in the last hundred years and not enjoyed any kind of commercial success. What happened to them? Did they get stuck in a vault and preserved until a later time for their discovery? No, more likely than naught, they faded into memory as the physical objects themselves were either left to rot or decay into nothingness, never to be seen or heard from again. Who know what kinds of work has been lost forever. The only crime of these creations might have been that they were simply ahead of their time. These things could have just needed time to ripen before being able to gain acceptance for all we know. Even if they were not destined for commercial success in their own time or ours, there creation could house knowledge, which could be considered beneficial for all. Again, due to their inability to generate enough profit to justify their continued existence, we lose out.
    This seemed to be the theme from the reading, and it is one that I completely agree on. I hadn't really considered copyright regarding all those properties that weren't ever profitable enough to remain available to the general public. This seems to be an especially scary idea when you consider that the media used for storing these creations, such as film reels that were used in much of the twentieth century, aren't going to last forever, and once they disappear, they are gone for good.
    Clearly this is something that needs to be addressed in the future, as this ability for Congress to extend copyright terms at the behest of profitable copyright holders that are friendly to those in office (and their campaigns for reelection) is damaging to the public good.

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

Reading about categorization and the points raised about the need to reevaluate our methods for putting things into categories was thought provoking. As Lakoff says, "In moving about the world, we automatically categoriza people, animals, and physical objects...this someitmes leads to the impression that we just categorize things as they are, that things come in natural kinds" (6). This statement is true, as I find myself coming to that same conclusion, that things in the world come in natural kinds. What is crazy is that until recently, we had thought that we had a good grasp on how we categorize the world and understanding in why we do it as such. How we classified and categorized things comes from the tradition of doing it this way, from the times of Aristotle. "This classical theory was not the result of empirical study. It was not even a subject of major debate. Over the centuries it simply became part of the background assumptions taken for granted in most scholarly disciplines" (6 Lakoff). It is only recently that we have started to question our reasoning for following in this way.
     Recent questions have been raised that make categorization an issue. For example, Eleanor Rosch focused on two implications of the classical theory: If categories are defined only by properties that it's members share, then no single member should be better examples of the category than any others in the category. Also, if categories are only defined by properties inherent in the members, then they should be independent of the peculiarities of any beings doing the categorizing (7 Lakoff). During studies, Rosch observed that categories, in general, ave best examples (called "prototypes") and that human capacities play a role in categorizations. Lakoff goes on to discuss how we use categorization in every area of reasoning, in which it plays a crucial role. "The view of reason as the disembodied manipulation of abstract symbols comes with an implicitly theory of categorization" (8 Lakoff).
     Interesting to think how important this aspect of categorization is, even if we sometimes are doing it at a subconscious level. A few more things that Lakoff brings to mind, "Category symbols can get their meaning only through a capacity to correspond to categories in the world (the real world or some possible world. To accomplish this, categories must be seen as existing in the world independent of people and defined only by the characteristics of their members and not in terms of any characteristics of the human" (8). This is again pointing out that humans own understanding and ability to reason become their own bias when putting things into categories, whether they are aware of them or not. This is one of the reasons that a new method is needed that can get around these biases of the humans making the categorization. To cut to the end of the matter, I loved this quote from Lakoff, "To change the concept of category itself is to change our understanding of the world" (9). I thought that really brings the reality of what changing our means of categorizing our world could result in.
    This reading was another interesting one, although I had to go back and read it a few times to get a better understanding of it, and even now find some of those areas a bit over my line of thinking. I find that I find the need to rethink how we as humans, categorize things to be an interesting debate and would be interested to see what alternative methods could work and if they could be brought to the forefront of scholarly thinking.

Chapter 5: Visual technologies, image reproduction, and the copy

    Chapter five discussed how reproduction gets factored into the equation in different ways in visual culture.
     What I found interesting was how the discussion is started off in the book, instead of zeroing in on a specific technology (such as the camera) as being the the instigator of change in the world, the authors focus on how visual technologies emerge out of specific social and contexts instead of certain technology. As Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright state, "technology itself does not determine social change" (184). For example, photography rose to being a popular visual technology because it fit certain social concepts and needs at the time, not just because of its creation.
    The first area that was investigated was the rise of visual technologies of motion. As in the late nineteenth century, there was a desire to visualize movement. With the idea of depicting motion using sequences of images shot in quick succession, these images could be used within the scientific context. By breaking down "real" motion into a series of photos, the locomotion of a subject could be analyzed. This would be a great tool in this regard, as it opened up the possibility of further analysis of a subject. I'm curious how motion studies depicting humans unclothed, were received by the general public of time, as this certainly overstepped many social norms as being pornographic. Although I suppose that given the context that these studies were meant to be examined through the scientific lens, maybe this wasn't as taboo or simply not put on display for the masses.These photographic images that showcased movement helped make the way for the introduction of cinema.
    Despite the numerous technologies that came before, one could make the argument that motion pictures didn't come into their own until the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Whereas you had individualized experiences of cinematic viewing through devices like Thomas Edison
s kine scope, the first motion pictures to be displayed with a projector for group viewing wouldn't be ready for several years. New ideas made there way during the rise in popularity in motion pictures, with creators coming up with new techniques to be used in films. These included narrative techniques such as inter cutting two scenes taking place at the same time in order to give the spectator a sense of being in both places at once. Another example would be the cutting between two characters to indicate an exchange of dialogue between them. These kinds of techniques survived through the years and are still used in much the same way today. These visual technologies of photography and cinemas brought in complex new modes of representation that would then shift again with the creation of electronic media forms such as television. These new forms of visual technology built on the codes of the previous technologies that came before them. These new technologies would also have an effect on many facets of images as creations, such as their value in the monetary sense as well as their cultural value.
     For much of history of images, it has been the case that original, uncopied work has been dominant. Value is one of the biggest factors in the status of reproduction, originals, and copies. When produced in a series or many forms, a work of art is generally accepted to be limited value. The ability to easily reproduce a unique work of fine art in the photographic era changed the way that value is assigned to an piece in the art market. For example, the market for fine-art original paintings is still high, even though photographic copies can be made cheaply for mass distribution. In this case, the original maintains its value in the market, regardless of how close the reproduction come to looking exactly like the original.
    It is interesting that despite its ability to produce perfect images of something "that has been" and the creation of aesthetically pleasing images via camera, it took a long time for the photograph to be accepted in the fine art market. This was because the idea original works continued to be prevalent in the art community, as the photographic media as a form was still connected to the mechanical nature of its creation.
    While on the concept of the original, it is important to note the ideas of Walter Benjamin, a German critic of the twentieth century who was associated with the mid-century German political theorists collectively dubbed the Frankfurt School (Sturken Cartwright 194).His view that in the case of photography and motion pictures, there was no original work, but instead there was a series of copies that stood at the same level in place of the original work. Benjamin made the argument that the result of mechanical reproduction was to make a substantial change to the function of art. "Instead of being based on ritual, [art] begins to be based on another practice-politics", Benjamin states (Sturken Cartwright 199). The ability for easy reproduction meant that images with political meaning could be distributed to many places simultaneously. This would be a powerful tool for both the creation of propaganda, or as a tool for making political statements or criticisms. Image reproduction would also raise issues about the copyright, intellectual property, and what it meant to be an owner of the image.
     The capability for reproduction of any image are dependant on the legal management of images as forms of intellectual property. Laws dealing with copyright are used not just to regulate the flow of copies, but also shape ideas about what makes for a legitimate use of a copy and what is instead an infraction of ownership rights. At what point is the right to an image protected by law? Copyright literally mean "the right to copy", and doesn't point to a specific right but instead to a collection of rights. This include things such as the right to distribute, produce, copy, display, perform, create, and control derivative works based on the original creation. After reading through the rest of the section, I have to say that copyrights can appear to be a bit messy, as determining whether a creation is trans formative of an original and therefore acceptable can seem difficult.