Studio Feedback (4th October)

After settling on the idea I had come up with the week before, and having thought and discussed the various ways in which to execute it, and which would be the best, I have come up with a plan.

The initial idea for the idea was to have illustrated pictures of people, and then the paint over the top, however even a brief few experiments lead me to understand that the drawings would get too cluttered too quickly, and it would just be a mess that wouldn't be understood.

However, using photographs as the base image, which are then editied on in photoshop look much cleaner, better looking and I think also fits more thematically with my project.

This alteration in methodology also adressed the other big dilema I was facing with my project; whether to use real people as a case study or simply make up people and use them instead. However, now that I am going to be using photography in this project, the shift to using real people has to be made.
I feel this is a good choice, however, as it provides the project with slightly more legitimacy and authenticity, as rather than just making up personas and interactions they will be more turthful.

We are Social Media. (4th October)

The Internet is simply a way for people to connect and data to be shared, there are no borders and very few restrictions. It is a network of networks and is a culture of cultures, but it is still a technology and beneath any piece of technology is humanity.

We are all reflected onto the internet as people and personalities when we interact with the internet, the technology becoming an extension of ourselves. However, the freedoms the internet provides allows for that mirror to become a lense that we use to focus specific ideals and aspects of ourselves more strongly.

However, the internet also reflects just as strongly back, becoming a part of who we are more and more in our day to day lives.

It is impossible to understand The Internet without understanding that all technology mimics and aspect of humanity, and is there to help seve a purpose.
Cybernetics, when stripped back down to its simplest meaning, is just the act of steering towards a goal. To act, see, sense then steer towards what we, as humans, want.

The worlds we live in; The Physical, Social and Digital, are all there to work and the cybernetics within them manifest as ways to measure and correct failures to meet tasks. Our conversations are moderated by the cybernetics of what is and isn't socially acceptable. Our bodies are regulated by the cybernetics that keep our hearts beating and our body temperatures constant. The internet follows endless cybernetics to keep it afloat.

Simply put, The Internet is simply another human construct that is there to help humans be more human.

Studio Feedback (27th September)

With this being the first day working on our new brief, there were many ideas going on in the initial development of the project.

Many different responses initially came up, from animated caricatures roaming around the real world getting in touch with people (providing a positive social aspect to technology) to flat posters with literal illustrated walls of technology separating people (obviously highlighting a negative)

I eventually distanced myself from these ideas, as they felt massively simple, not only in terms of their concept but also their execution, and wanted to try some new techniques and present the work in a radically new way, which the tutors (Both Jay and Johnny) agreed with and supported whole heartedly.

This lead onto ways to hide an image within another image, first just overlaying an image over the top in Photoshop, then by literally hiding with it with UV or Glow in the Dark inks.
After having the concept a little fleshed out, Johnny suggested, rather than buying £70 UV ink cartridges, having a stencil cut and using paints over a printed image, as well as discussing in greater detail the types of people that could be used as 'case studies' for the projects, such as intense gamblers and cyberbullies, and bringing light to the very serious issue of internet addictions.

Jay reflected a lot of what Johnny said, but also suggested that instead of using made up people to highlight extreme cases of divergent personalities on the internet, using people on campus and asking them questions on their online habits, and using them instead. This would add a whole lot more legitimacy and authenticity to my work, but could make the separate pieces less interesting as I doubt I'd get as wildly interesting answers.

 

Self Presence and Expression as "We're Surfing on the Internet!" (27th Spetmeber)

Cybernetic Self, as the brief is titled, is a project in which we are to represent the concept of self representation on the internet, and how we interact and ultimately change ourselves as more and more of our social lives depends increasingly on the internet.

The project can be broken up into three distinct angles;
Network Self, Autopoiesis and Sociomaterial.

Our Network Self relates to how we present ourselves on the internet, be this how we choose to behave to others, or just the websites we choose to interact with. This has huge impacts in both how we, as humans, socialise with people and spend our time, as well call into question how private our social lives are if we are constantly sharing it with the world, and how ultimately all these things alter us as people.

Sociomaterialism is the concept used to describe how technology and social interaction are both intrinsically linked in the workplace and our day to day lives, and whilst technology cannot be reduced to the social, and vice versa, they are almost inseparable in the way we approach both.

Finally, Autopiesis is the theory and practice of people defining themselves in a social environment, that without social interaction we are no one. People build themselves as autonomous and as though they are completely in control of their own self, but their own self is built purely for interaction with others, and therefore can never be truly autonomous.
So what happens when the human element is taken away and replaced with a computer?

 

This project personally appeals to me greatly, as it allows for a lot of interesting ways to express different sides of people, and the interactions people can have. 

The idea I'm currently investigating, after spending time in the studio, will be a multi-layered print out, using clear UV paint over a printed document, which, when exposed to UV light, will reveal the self that comes out when exposed to a computer.

The current decisions I need to make whilst developing this idea are what styles do I use, using real photos of people or illustrations for the base layer, beneath the UV paint, and if the subjects be fictional and highlight more extreme cases of differing behaviours on the internet, or use real life people and have the internet selves be comparatively more normal.