January 29, 2008 at 3:15 pm · Filed under design, play
I’ve been also playing around with Processing the past couple of weeks. We decided that we need to hack this platform as it crystallizes a lot of our interests in computers and art. So we’ve started coming up with simple experimentations that we can get our heads around, eventually working towards more complicated interaction between film, code and visuals for some of the projects we are prototyping now. It’s funny, unlike Soum, my background is in visual arts rather than computer science so for me it’s been trying to first figure out the somewhat unintuitive relationship between code and aesthetics. I have done some Flash and Actionscript earlier but still mostly a rookie in these matters. But after the beginning difficulty, things seem to be now coming along rather nicely. Its always fun to be able to learn something while the end is something that, occasionally, also looks rather pleasing. These ones were some simple experiments I made while trying to get my head around drawing in 3D. Basic ellipses can go a long way. Click on the image to see the original experiment. The generative animation will open up in a separate page and you will need to download the Java applet to see it.
January 29, 2008 at 8:29 am · Filed under play
One of my first experiments with Processing that simulates human population growth (starting from one Green Adam and Red Eve), with built in pregnancy, probability, death and life expectancy. Needs lot more tweaking (think proximity, mating behavior, natural disasters etc).
January 29, 2008 at 6:54 am · Filed under technology
I am currently a Teaching Fellow in Digital Cultures at SOAS (University of London). A part of my tasks is to design a practical-theoretical course that would look at emerging digital technologies in the non-Western context. One of the key themes to be explored here – that is: what the future media will look like globally and what the implications of these will be for commercial, social and artistic fields. See below the first draft of the course outline that I suggested as a basis for the dialogue. Let’s see how this develops:
EMERGING DIGITAL CULTURES IN ASIA AND AFRICA – THEORY AND PRACTICE
DRAFT V 1.0
JANUARY 28, 2008
OVERVIEW:
The course Media 2.0 in the Global Context looks at the emergence of new media technologies from a distinctly global perspective. We have all heard the buzzwords recently: web 2.0, wikis, Second Life, social software, blogos, locative media, multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), mobile convergence etc. Much of the debates, however, has so far focused predominantly on the Euro-American context. Yet some of the most interesting developments are happening elsewhere. For instance, in Korea online multiplayer games are now more popular than television among young people. In sub-Saharan Africa, the explosion in the use of mobile phones has led to new innovative business models where paid airtime is now used as a new currency for cross-border interaction and banking. In India, software engineers are busy coding the future applications of the Internet of tomorrow. In Iran, weblogs have emerged as a new turbulent political space where future of the country is debated. What unites all these divergent media is the challenge they pose for media research in the 21st century. The course therefore asks: are the methods and theories that emerged out of the legacy of older media systems such as print, radio and television still applicable to understand the impact of some of these new developments globally? And if not, how should research adapt to the logic of what we could call broadly media 2.0; that is, the emergent new media technologies that increasingly mediate lives across the world?
With this in mind, this course aims at unraveling some of the methodological and theoretical problems that are raised when we look at what we could loosely call media 2.0 in the global context. The course, however, does not pretend to provide a final word on this shifting and emerging field. Unlike many other introductory courses to “digital culture” and/or “new media” (in many variations) the course instead aims at providing students with the necessary tools that allow them to begin investigating the issues that get raised for themselves. Its focus is therefore as much experiential and experimental as it theoretical and academic. It aims at providing both the theoretical background to some of the key debates dealing with contemporary digital cultures globally today but as importantly the practical know-how for students to begin using and exploring these new technologies first hand. It therefore encourages students actively involved in the debates that are taking place around new media technologies globally as well as use these new technologies for conducting, promoting and publishing research in multiple environments.
January 29, 2008 at 6:53 am · Filed under technology
There has been a lot of hype recently about the “mobile revolution” taking place especially in the poorer parts of the world. India alone added some 76 million mobile phone subscriptions in 2006, a lot of it in its smaller cities and rural areas. Africa, considered often the poorest part of the planet, now has, according to some estimates, 100 million mobile phone users – that is: every ninth person on the continent now sports a mobile phone in one form or another, connecting regions that don’t even have electricity or normal landlines.
What fascinates me about this rapid escalation of mobile phones especially in the poorer regions of the planet is that it becomes rapidly appropriated to accomodate to the local conditions. The problem with many of our understandings of modern technology comes from the fact that we – as a part of the global information elite located in the cushier sides of the digital divide – have been accustomed to seeing the world through the prism of our broadband, blogs, Second Life, IM, email, Twitters, Jaikus, Internet-mobile convergence etc. Because of this, we have a hard time to imagine how, for instance, mobile phone use changes drastically when there is no steady electricity (in Africa, entrepreneurs have come up with car battery-operated charging stations on motorbikes) or proper infrastructure (cross-national trade now is being done in Kenya by sending paid airtime as a viable currency for payment).
Therefore, reading Jonathan Donner’s research into the use of mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa is like pressing the refresh button on the browser. Donner argues that in Rwanda, “beeping” has emerged as a mainstream activity as a way of staying connected with each other. Basically, what this means is that instead of paying for the call, the ringtone of the phone acquires a pre-texted (ignore the pun!) meaning for the receiver, acting sort of like simplistic morse code that is sent according to an evolving sender-receiver feedback loop. Donner writes:
Beeping is simple: a person calls a mobile telephone number and then hangs up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. If the beeper’s name and number have been programmed into the recipient’s mobile, then the recipient will see the beeper’s name on the call log as a missed call. If not, the recipient will see only the number of telephone placing the call. In either case, the missed call is intentional; the beeper has sent a signal to the recipient without saying a word or typing a single character. Better yet, sending a beep is nearly free.
As these examples from the popular press suggest, “to beep” and its synonym “to flash” are common practices among the rapidly growing ranks of mobile phone users in sub-Saharan Africa:
- A lighthearted book, called How to Be a Kenyan, was originally published in 1996. The revised 2002 edition includes a new chapter called “of beepers, flashers, and vibrators” (Mutahi, 2002), reflecting the rapid spread of mobiles in Kenya.
- A columnist in Uganda writes: “I was angry with my so-called friends who ‘beep’ me all the time – blackmailing me into calling them back….I can understand someone beeping me once and a while. My problem is that so many Ugandans – from MPs to senior military officers and at least one government minister – have turned beeping into a profession. And, they never seem to realize that if they perennially don’t have “units” or airtime to complete a call, it must be the same for me too” (Pajero, 2004).
- In an article called “That Beeping”, a Tanzanian columnist explains, “beeping is a habit that transcends all social classes,” perhaps because “phones are cheaper to buy than to maintain”. His conversations with college students also suggest that “beeping is a modern fashion to say hi to friends” (Kalagho, 2004).
- On the GhanaHomePage website, expatriate columnist Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng describes his difficulties learning “Efie Nkomo (Flashing Skills)” as a returning visitor to his country. “I got loads of flashes on my phone in the days following my arrival. So many, dear reader, that I almost got blinded by them” (Nkrumah-Boateng, 2004).
As Nkrumah-Boateng succinctly puts it, “it can get confusing, all this flashing businesses”. Not all beeps mean the same thing. Some are requests to call back; some are little signals that the beeper is thinking of the recipient; others convey some pre-negotiated instrumental message, like “I’m done with my work, pick me up”.
Read the full essay HERE. So for us interested in the future media, I think it is sometimes necessary to step offline and outside our e-skins to see how the rest of the world is busy hacking the new techonologies for their purposes. The biggest problem I think that currently exists with the web 2.0 social software mobile etc is that the community that produces the tools and applications is closing in on itself, sharing the language, the desires, the lifestyles and the ways of using technology. Whereas most innovation happens when something unexpected is created and brought to the world – when “the difference that makes a difference” is produced. So the question is: how to break “outside” this? How to see what we are not habitually accustomed to seeing?
Perhaps, we should worry less about the latest trends in technology and backpack through Africa for 6 months and listen to people hacking the tools in order to make life better. Get lost on a train in India, hike in the mountains, and go offline for a month. It is (t)here where the future is being developed in unexpected ways .
Soum is a new media technology architect, ex-mixercast founding member, filmmaker, photographer, and a general wanderer who lives partly in London and rest of the time in Mumbai. He builds scalable web sites, dabbles in emerging technologies, and spends rest of his time in various film and photography projects.
Matti is a researcher, designer and visual artist working with emerging digital technologies globally. He is currently dayjobbing as a Teaching Fellow in Digital Culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and spends time shuttling between London, Helsinki and the rest of the world.
Supreet Sethi is a technology dabbler and an artist with diverse experience from enterprise computing to installation art. He has keen interest in software architecture and in-depth knowledge of mobile computing.