Triangulation

For this task, it was really helpful to be able to put all the thoughts I have been having regarding this project into one place and explain it. Seeing the links begin to be formed between points and ideas has sparked some further ideas. I think I will pursue the ideas of self-expression meeting cyberculture - essentially exploring how culture and society forms in the digital realm. I want to look at ideas surrounding how we filter and portray ourselves online, influencers, and automation. I also want to look back on how cyberculture has evolved and formed over the last few decades, as the internet grows more global and accessible.

Study Task 4 - 200/300 Word Summary/Intro

Access to modern, ground-breaking technology has never as global as it is in this moment in time. Especially in developed countries, it is commonplace – even expected – to own a smartphone, whereas the first iPhone was released only a decade ago. The leaps and bounds this kind of technology has taken has lead to an interesting phenomena, known as “cyberculture”. The term originated back in 1963 by A.M. Hilton, who defined it as “that way of life made possible when an entire process of production is carried out by systems of machines monitored and controlled by one computer.” Today, cyberculture more commonly denotes the online communities built around a common interest or platform, and can also widely refer to the idea of automation and “cyborgazition” of the human mind and body. This phenomena has led to much criticism, especially by generations that did not spend their formative years experiencing this kind of digital freedom. The rapidity at which this technology has advanced in the last three decades is unlike any other revolution that humanity has experienced. James Harkin, in Cyburbia, states that “The electronic information loop that its prophets imagined would tie us all together has, to a large extent, now been built.” This raises the question of where we are to go next with this ever evolving technology. The cyberculture that has been created is mostly populated by millennials and Generation Z, with today’s children consuming content through tablets. While this raises a whole host of new problems, such as children “being deliberately targeted with content which will traumatise and disturb them, via networks which are extremely vulnerable to exactly this form of abuse. (James Bridle, There is something wrong on the internet), it has also given rise to new generations that communicate and are a part of a cultural revolution akin to that of any culture seen in the world today – complete with discourse, subcultures, artistic influence and counter-culture.

What I learned at MAF

This year at Manchester Animation Festival, I watched a few short animations that dealt with the theme of digital technology. What was frustrating - but not at all surprising - was how they chose to view the topic. One animation I will look at for this post is iRony, which I have linked the trailer to below.

iRony took the form of a spoken poem, accompanied by animation to bring to life the words. However, this animation mostly focused on digital technology - namely, social media - being a drug. It likened social media to pills and an addiction, only focusing on how "likes" and using social media makes humans dumb and like "sheep". While I think the actual animation itself was fairly good, the overall message and meaning was unoriginal and very holier-than-thou. It frustrates me that animations, and other texts much like this, are so popular. They show only the extremes of social media and digital technology, berating those who choose to use them, rather than also pointing to the positive uses of such technology.

What struck me as truly ironic was how the previous animation shown in the screening was about a divorced father, whose only way of seeing his son was through social media and video calling. This is clearly not what the creators of iRony were targeting their animation towards, and it is interesting how texts such as iRony choose to ignore the positives of these growing technologies.

I do think there are problems in the way we use social media in the 21st century, but I don't think they are the problems that iRony shine a light on. Additionally, by showing only the extremes of social media (girls that starve themselves for likes), the message is completely blown out of proportion. The problems in real social media aren't always as extreme as the ones shown in this animation, which leads those who experience real problems to dismiss their own experiences, as they don't believe them to be as bad as the extremes portrayed onscreen.

In the end, narratives such as in iRony are overdone, and seem preachy. They are not relevant, and while there is still validity in the points they are making, the over-exaggeration and offensive metaphor leads texts such as iRony to feel like parody.

texts Referenced

Lanier, J. (2010). You are not a gadget. London: Allen Lane.

Phillips, W. (2015). This is why we can't have nice things. MIT Press.

Hollings, K. (2014). The Bright Labyrinth. Chippenham: Strange Attractor Press. 

Harkin, J. (2009). Cyburbia. St Ives: Little, Brown.

"A distinctly cybernetic aesthetic has burrowed its way into the stories we watch on TV and in the cinema, and a cybernetic sensibility is also finding an echo in everything from alternative theatre to football to the organisation of the mainstream media."
"The electronic information loop that its prophets imagined would tie us all together has, to a large extent, now been built."

d'Arnault, C. (2015). What is Digital Culture? https://digitalculturist.com/what-is-digital-culture-5cbe91bfad1b, Accessed 9/11/2017

"More contextually, digital culture is using social media as our main mode of interaction with others; sharing every moment of your life on the internet; the selfie phenomenon; the live streaming obsession; the anonymity provided by online communities; Apple Pay and Android Pay; wearable technology; the use of emoji to enhance communication; internet/cell phone addiction; the sharing/on-demand economy; cloud computing and storage; the internet of things."

Bridle, J. (2017). Something is Wrong On The Internet. https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

Hilton, A.M. (1963). Computers and Cyberculture. Michigan: The University of Michigan. 

“that way of life made possible when an entire process of production is carried out by systems of machines monitored and controlled by one computer.”

Cavallaro, D. (2000). Cyberpunk & Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson. London: The Athelone Press.

The configuration of the female body as a cyborg uterus, its manipulation by the fitness and beauty industries and its subjection to penetrating technologies bear witness to the fact that the meat-and-bones body has not melted into thin air as a result of cybernetic interventions. In fact, it is central to the perpetuation and reformulation of legion technologies of subjectivity

Claudia Springer observes that this opposition is embodied, within cyberculture, by the contrast between the phallic and hypermasculine cyborgs of popular cinema and the ‘“feminized” computer with its concealed, passive, and internal workings’.18 Taking into consideration a further stereotype, the one based on the association of the female body with a troubling sense of mystery, it could also be argued that digital technology is metaphorically feminine to the extent that even experts find it somewhat impenetrable. 

Thus, virtual sex does not take the body away but actually multiplies its users’ experiences of embodiment, to the point that, as stated in Susie Bright’s Sexual Reality, ‘you could look like anything and be any gender or combination of genders you want. There’s no particular reason for you even to be a person.’63

Study Task 3 - Image and Theory

Select and define important terms / concepts you have discovered through your reading (if you do not have any you may choose from the list below)

Aesthetics / Millennials / Automation / Fandom / Influencers / Virtual Reality / Automation/ Cyberculture

Collect and analyse examples / images / phenomena that could be interpreted as following these concepts.

Instagram trends - blogs with a good "aesthetic" do well, visually pleasing = popular. Ideas of "themes" on these sites.
Fandom culture, the things that people (often young teens) follow becoming part of their personality. Especially true with vloggers. 
The idea of amateur production often being totally false - scripted, sponsored etc. Sponsorships of popular posts/videos without audience being made fully aware. 
Nostalgic influences, digital and physical aesthetic of the 80s and 90s coming back into fashion. 
Self-representation online often carefully filtered and mediated - art?

How could they be used to interpret your theme / question? Triangulate with theorists and critics.

You may apply the analysis technique below to examples - to help deconstruct your choices.

Theorists: 
James Bridle 
Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto)
Alice E. Marwick (Becoming Elite: Social Status in Web 2.0 Cultures)
Sherry Turkle (Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet)

Other:
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberculture.html
http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/Cyber/mindvox.txt

• Context / when it was made / where it appears (including when)
• Subject / content / compostiton
• Audience / who is it aimed at 
• Purpose / why was it made / why was it used 
• Method of production

Living Landscapes Brief

My response to the Living Landscapes brief ties in with my themes of social media and it's influence aesthetically on the users. I am focusing on the influencers and cult of personality on social media and in 21st century technology, as well as looking at the way automation is seeping into these elements of our daily lives.

Reading Academic Texts

Problems with finding texts relevant to my area of study:
The texts are often outdated and do not contain up-to-date information, even by a few years. This means that I find that online texts are preferable to physical ones as they are more updated.

Process of reading...
Skimming, taking down key quotes and notes, trying to find nuggets of information that are relevant to what I am studying and looking for, looking at chapter titles to direct me to the right area. Indexes, looking for keywords, asking tutors. Writing down thoughts and responses.

What worked for you?
Using both online and physical resources, using the library as well as books I found on Google Books and recommended texts.

How do you get what you need?
J-STOR - has more updated articles. Google Books, the library.

Vocabulary - Search Terms - Triangulation
Social media - character - robots - automation - fandom - influencers - aesthetics - trends - identity

Task 3 - Select and define important terms/concepts you have discovered through your reading 
Collect and analyse examples/images/phenomena that could be interpreted as following these concepts.
How could they be used to interpret your theme/question? Triangulate with theorists and critics.

COP Session Notes - 2/11/2017

Sentient Spaces - Living landscapes within animated worlds

Snack and Drink - animation about a man with autism. Sounds loud, senses heightened. 

Prometheus' Garden - Bruce Bickford (1988) Everything is transient, moving, changing and evolving. 

Based off of The Garden of Earthly Delights - Heironymus Bosch

Sentient Spaces - Wider Context 

Hundertwasser - bringing nature back into an urban environment

Cities are "living"- CCTV, google maps/earth, a living landscape already

Emotion Garden from Coraline - Henry Selick

Similar to Gaudi - almost cartoonish use of colour and black and white

Surreal, abstract shapes + forms

4 main visual elements in animation - characters, foreground, midground, background.

The Little House - Disney, 1952.

Steven Pinker defines consciousness as:

self-knowledge (the sense of awareness of our own existence)

access to information (the introspective response to our own knowledge)

sentience (subjective experience and the "raw feels" that collectively make up our conscious states)

Concepts of sentience, awareness and consciousness seem to focus on individual entities, such as people, other organisms and their putative surrogates as robots. 

Monster House - Gil Kenan

Suspension of disbelief is often an essential element for a magic act, circus sideshow or an animation. In monster house, an audience is not expected to actually believe that a house becomes alive in order to enjoy it. 

Sentient City - Mark Shepard suggests that "... a sentient city, then, is one that is able to hear and feel things happening within it, yet does not necessarily know anything in particular about them. It feels you, but doesn't yet know you..."

Jean Dubuffet

Practical Task: Establish your theme and then design a "Living Landscape" in response to your theme and animate it on a loop

This should take no more than 1 hour and should only consist of either 4 drawings or no more than 6 stills, the animation should loop seamlessly

Study Task 2 - Reading and understanding texts

The Future of Social Robots
Video by Fw:Thinking

• A lot of robotics companies choose to make their robots look less human to avoid the uncanny valley
• They still include some features to make it easier to have a social interaction with the robot
• Things such as facial features to encourage natural interaction
• Human psychology - triggering natural empathy
• Adults more accepting of child-size and child-like robots making mistakes - Honda Asimo
• More forgiving of "naive", "cute" robots

Computers That Think Like Humans

Video by Fw:Thinking

• Computers can do advanced mathematics
• Natural architecture of human brain to recognise things - music, faces, etc
• Computers traditionally only do one thing at a time, while brains can do millions of operations at once
• Brains take up less energy, naturally designed to learn or "reprogram" itself
• Google Brain able to learn what a cat is based off millions of YouTube videos
• Robot that responds to positive reinforcement

I am interested in looking at human interactions with robots, and how the future of robotics can affect various elements of our lives, such as social media and jobs. 

These videos have helped me gain an understanding of robotics as they are today, and how they might progress into the future. It seems that robotics is based heavily around being "humanlike", and with social media this can be seen with users who bridge the gap between technology and humanity, as well as bringing into question whether or not heavily edited images count as real anymore, since they are so distorted from reality. It is also interesting to note how humans react to these robots, and how we are more empathetic to "cute" robots. 

Study Task 1 - Initial Ideas

• What are your interests?

I am interested in cyberculture, feminism in the 21st century (online), and internet subcultures.

• What have you found out?

I have found out that there are many different areas of interest when looking at digital subcultures - different groups and people who use the internet to connect from all walks of life and niche areas of interest.

• How have you collected information?

I've listened to podcasts and read articles on digital culture, as well as looking at videos exploring the niche areas.

• How can you extend your research?

It would help to read more academic books on the subject, which I will find both online and in the university library.

• What planning might you need to do?

I definitely need to think about what areas I am interested in looking at, as it is a really broad subject and by refining my area of interest I will be able to dive deeper, rather than scratching the surface.

LAUAN501: Preparatory Task

1) Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Dir. - Isao Takahata, Japan

Released by Studio Ghibli in 1988 in Japan - follows the story of siblings during the end of WWII.

This was the first film that Isao Takahata directed for Studio Ghibli, and he grew up during the second world war, surviving a US air raid when he was nine.

During the time of it's release, Japan was experiencing an economic boom, with their new technologies resulting in higher standards of living.

Globally, the world nearing the end of the Cold War, and was engaged in the Soviet-Afghan war. 

2) The Cameraman's Revenge (1912) Dir. - Ladislas Starevich, Russia

Created by Ladislas Starevich, this animation used insects animated in a stop-motion style, and is one of Starevich's earliest surviving animated films. 

Starevich was a trained biologist, who initially created animations with his embalmed insects for educational purposes.

At the time, Russia was on the brink of revolution, and war. Tensions were high in the country as Russia was involved in the conflict in the Balkans, which led to the First Balkan War in 1912.

Also during this time, World War I was on the horizon, as tensions grew globally, especially in Europe.

3) Hong Gildong (1967) Dir. - Dong-heon Shin, South Korea

This animation was based on a traditional Korean folk tale of the same name, as well as artist Shin Dong-woo's comic "Hong Gil-dong The Hero."
During this period in Korean history, Korea had been involved in the Vietnam War for two years upon Hong Gildong's release, to support South Vietnam against communist attacks.
At the time, there was also a strong global anti-war movement, particularly in the US, which was protesting against the Vietnam War. This was in part due to the introduction of colour television, which allowed the public to see the full gory detail of the war.

4) The Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005) Dir. - Craig McCracken (1998-2002) & Chris Savino (2002-2005), America

The show was originally conceived by director and animator Craig McCracken during his second year at CalArts, as a cartoon short called "Whoopass Stew!"
During the time the show was airing, America experienced one of the most shocking terrorist attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Centre, which left a strong impact on popular culture and modern society.
The growth of the Internet also began during this time, which connected the world and made way for faster communication, as well as internet culture.

5) The Illusionist (2010) Dir. - Sylvain Chomet, France/UK

Based on an original script by mime, director, and actor Jacques Tati in 1956, and was originally intended to be set in Czechoslovakia. Director Sylvain Chomet moved it, to be set in Scotland.
In both the UK and France during this time, the swine flu pandemic swept across the nations.
Globally, the world was still recovering from the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, while Europe was entering into the European debt crisis, which has been taking place since the end of 2009.

Self Evaluation

Self Evaluation

Context of Practice has allowed me to do in-depth research into a topic I would never have looked at so closely without the module to motivate me to do so. My research was as in-depth as the resources I could access allowed. However, I think I could have reached out further and accessed further resources, such as requesting that the college library supply more up-to-date books. Next time, I will take that extra step and communicate more directly with sources that can help me gain further knowledge on the topic.

I chose the topic due to my interest in 90s culture and aesthetics. I struggled at first to break away from ideas of the digital in relation to fine art, which limited my research and the work in my sketchbook. However, I was able to branch out and look at the subject on a broader scale, which allowed me to focus on different elements such as nature and social media.

I attended the lecture programme consistently, only missing one or two due to illness. The lectures really helped open up my appreciation for my place as a practitioner in the art world, and it also assisted my essay by highlighting certain art movements that are relevant to my research. One of my downfalls when it came to the lectures was not always putting the notes I took on my research journal, which would have made them easier to reference while writing my essay.

I think my biggest strength during the module was my ability to create visually striking pieces in my sketchbook, which drove the rest of my work. From very early on, I established that my sketchbook would be mostly visual, with minimal writing. This style forced me to convey ideas in a more efficient visual narrative, which then helped ideas flow into one another. The second half of my sketchbook is stronger, I feel, as by that point I had established the style and ideas most strongly. I also feel that because I worked on the second half in a shorter time span, I was not losing my train of thought when working, and the ideas were more closely connected.

My time management during this module was successful enough that I didn’t feel too pressed for time nearer the end, but I still think I could have afforded to do more in my sketchbook more consistently, rather than half of it over a few months and the other half within the span of a few weeks. This was due to me trying to manage other modules and juggle my time effectively, but it wouldn’t have hurt to work on CoP1 when the rest of my workload wasn’t as heavy.

I also feel like my essay was very strong, with the feedback I got midway through helping me further. I have gained strong essay-writing skills from doing mostly essay-based subjects at A-Level, which meant that writing in an academic style came naturally. I struggled with collecting many sources initially, but then used Google Books to help me find more sources to back up my points. My only struggle with this was that Google Books often doesn’t have the full copies of the books, meaning I was limited in my reading of them.

Visual Research Sketchbook

Below is a collection of key pages from my visual research sketchbook. These are pages that I feel encompass the overall themes I looked at, as well as the pages I feel are also the most aesthetically pleasing. I really enjoyed creating this sketchbook, but there were certainly some pages that I don't feel fit the overall feel of it. Still, despite these pages, I am pleased with the overall outcome.

Studio Brief 3 - Critical Reflection and Proposal

My research proposal covers topics that I found most interesting within my research during CoP1. I touched on the idea of robots being creative within my essay, and I think that is a rather interesting point to explore further. With the progression of robots taking over jobs, I think it is only a matter of time before they get good enough to create art and music that humans cannot tell apart from human-created pieces.

The full research proposal can be viewed at the following link, as well as images and websites that I found useful in exploring this topic further.

https://issuu.com/allyhorton/docs/cop_research_proposal.docx

Final Essay

https://issuu.com/allyhorton/docs/context_of_practice_-_ally_horton.d

My final essay compiles the three essays I have been working on, with the addition of a full bibliography and reference images.

It can be viewed at the above link, hosted on Issuu.

Animation Proposal

For my animation proposal, I took strong influence from certain pages of my sketchbook that I felt were both visually engaging and relevant to my quote. These were the pages that conveyed the theme of the boundary between the real and the digital best, since this is theme that has really interested me during my research.

These pages all reflect on the theme of the digital realm intersecting with the real world, and I also really like the visual theme of text/glitches on top of the real world, or else buried within it. My quote focuses on digital art using glitches and digital noise, which I can incorporate into the real world. There are many layers to the proposal I want, which I will fully explain in my essay, but essentially I want to combine elements of virtual reality (which is on the rise), smartphone culture, and blend them with the real world. I feel like there are many cultural pieces which reflect negatively on technology's influence in the real world, and I don't want my animation to just be another hashing of that same idea. Instead, I want to explore the aesthetic of the combination of the two, and show that it isn't necessarily awful.

I also want my animation to be in a portrait 1080x1920 aspect, as this can be viewed on a smartphone screen, so that it encourages the viewer to interact with it, and view it through the same device that can be used to see the world through. 

Below is my final image sequence. It will be a continuous shot, but I want it to be interactive - in that the viewer has to physically select the options. However, selecting the option that doesn't progress the animation (so choosing "ignore" at the beginning) would just cause that notification to keep popping up forever, until the viewer selects the right option. The final few options (as it pans up to the sky) don't change what happens onscreen, and it progresses anyway.

The image sequence can also be viewed at https://issuu.com/allyhorton/docs/image_sequence

Animal, Vegetable, Digital

Animal, Vegetable, Digital: Experiments in New Media Aesthetics and Environmental Poetics is a book by Elizabeth Swanstrom that I discovered while browsing through Google Books. Unlike many of the books that I have found in the college library, this one is actually very up to date, having been written in 2016. This means it has very recent technologies in mind, and can talk about them in an up to date context.

What drew me to this book was the way it intricately links nature and technology, which is the main theme running throughout my visual sketchbook. Swanstrom acknowledges early on that "Artists are increasingly forging connections between digital aesthetics and ecological poetics that are viable and vibrant, but their efforts have not, as yet, been widely acknowledged. The reasons for this are complex, but at their base lurk deep-rooted cultural beliefs that tells us that nature is opposed to digital technology." She goes on to talk about the context of these beliefs. "From the height of the Cold War to the turn of the twenty-first century, particularly, our cultural narratives tend to treat nature and computers as mutually exclusive entities." It is within our films - she cites the Matrix franchise, as well as Blade Runner and The Terminator - movies that "signalied a world on the brink of environmental devastation and human enslavement to the machine" as cruxes for society's distrust of robots, AI, and modern technology.

I want to read more of the book, but only segments are available on Google Books. Still, it will serve as a highly valuable source to back up some of my points, and offer counter-points that I had not considered.

Study Task 3 - Animation Analysis

I have chosen to analyse the music video for Head Splitter, a song by American electronic music producer Getter. The music video relates closely to my chosen quote as it heavily employs a digital aesthetic of glitches, shapes, and visual noise throughout. These glitches are juxtaposed with retro animated images and sequences, as well as live-action footage.

The use of the retro computer graphics from the 80s and 90s are a signifier of nostalgia and create an overall dated feel to the animation. Getter himself was born in the early 90s, so would have just caught the end of this aesthetic being mainstream during his childhood, and so is most likely very familiar with it. This makes the music video accessible to others who would recognise the graphics of their childhood, and creates an overall “throwback” feel to the video. However, the video also uses graphics that are very modern and recognisable to the younger generation of today, who may not be as familiar with the outdated aesthetic of the 80s.

At one point in the video, Getter jumps onto the ground and the whole floor distorts, as if he is creating ripples from his feet. This resembles the idea of virtual reality, that the world can be distorted and changed through a technological lens. With virtual reality so mainstream at the moment, it is no surprise that younger viewers would find elements such as this more recognisable and therefore the music video more accessible. The animations create an overall sense of fantasy and imagination. As Getter explores the derelict streets, the digital aesthetic – whether its using 80s or modern glitches and effects – creates an otherworldly, trippy sensation. It is as if Getter is experiencing some kind of high, with a heavy digital influence.

The piece falls under Wells’ definition of a formal animation – it plays with and manipulates the ideas of what animation is, and uses the form of animation as the aesthetic. By blending all kinds of animation styles and genres, the video manages to create an aura of overall fantasty and other-worldness. Parts of the video are also abstract, as they consist of only shapes, colours, and glitches, rather than disernable images. These elements also add to the sense of illusion, and tie in with the idea that the main character is experiencing an induced high, as there is little continuity in the style of the animation. It could also be said that the video has aspects of paradigmatic animation, as it draws from previously existing pieces of media, such as 90s computer graphics. There are flashes of error messages, the wifi symbol, and other elements that make it highly stylised to the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.