EMMA: New Ground

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

Dancers mix old, new for genre defying performance - Arts

posted by Unknown @ 7:14 PM 2 comments

Taking Orders

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

"Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald's outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed..."

"Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being subjected to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and speed, and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she is paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds. In the break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes have elapsed since they left their workstations..."

"The operator of one of the McDonald's centers is developing a related system that would allow big stores like Home Depot to equip carts with speakers that customers could use to contact a call center wirelessly for shopping advice.... With a wireless system in a Home Depot, for example, a call-center operator might tell a customer, "You're at Aisle D6. Let me walk you over to where you can find the 16-penny nails"..."

"The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked much more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr. King's computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not meeting standards. "You've got to measure everything," he said. "When fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled.""

posted by matt @ 10:17 AM 0 comments

Re: Teletubbies

I would have to agree with Manovich's definition. I feel that telepresence without the ability to act is just voyagerism. I guess the real concept is that it is all a scale. The OnStar operator is not telepresent himself except for his voice being at the scene, but the system of OnStar is fully telepresent as the ambulance acts as a giant arm that can pull you out of your car. Although, I would agree that this definition may change as new technologies come about. One day, a virtual self will be able to present itself to a new location via some realistic type hologram, and then anything less than that will not be considered telepresence. What Manovich defines as telepresence by being able to act and see through a robot will not be enough since the robotic application will only be a puppet relationship and not the full sensory machine that would ideally be invented.

posted by Steven G. @ 11:39 AM 0 comments

Teletubbies

Lev Manovich discusses the ideas of teleaction by describing the recent way in which communication has changed in the information age. The Internet and the world wide web have changed the way we interact with each other. In my short life I have seen communication change from using a telephone that was in the home or a telephone booth downtown to having a phone in my pocket that I can use talk to others, send text messages, play video games, look up the location of thousands of busniesses in Columbus and many other cities, read newspapers, check movie times and write this paper. It is a different world from when I was younger but even though much has changed much has stayed the same. Manovich explains that in this world we are "accessing new media instead of creating it" by way of teleaction.

With the Internet we "travel" to different web servers and access the information on them. We also use the web to interact when we use web camera, email, chat and instant messaging. Manovich says "web cameras allow users to observe remote locations" so the web is portal that allows us to see places that we are not physically present in. Television does this but television does not allow us to choose what we see or to interact with others at that location. Because of the unique nature of the web Manovich says that "websites with hyperlinks allow users to teleport to different remote servers" and that some "web designers try to keep users on the site" through the design of the site" but he contends that "no new object is being made" so this is a different idea of cultural representation.
Instead of creating new art objects we are "navigating conceptual space." When I saw the movie "The Lord Of The Rings" directed by Peter Jackson I was struck by the power of the story and less interested in the incredible special effects. I felt that the effects enhanced the story, but effects alone are incredibly boring. I am reminded of Peter Jackson's King Kong movie whose story took a back seat to the effects. This three hour movie cold have easily been done in one and been an incredible movie. It does not surprise me when Manovich speaks of the cinema being more interesting than real-time communication like talking on the telephone because as he says "recording reality does not contribute to aesthetic principals." However effects that do have aesthetic principals cannot stand on their own as in time we tire of them. I am reminded of the dreaded blink tag in HTML. Although it captures your attention it continues to do so over and over long after you get the message. Similarly, when I would go to a restaurant food court in DC the restaurant kiosk I frequented was more interested in giving away samples than taking my order which I found very annoying.

Manovich asks "can we expand aesthetic theories to include search and communication" I think it depends on what you mean. Search can be a scavenger hunt but there are objects that can be found and presented. However, the skill and the fun is in the search. But search observed is not very interesting at least not to me. In reality television, the enjoyment comes from the conflict between people and not simply the show itself. I believe the television show, Lost, takes advantage of this idea by scripting a kind of reality show as a fantasy.
Manovich makes a distinction between the image and interaction when he says "web cams are not true telepresence because you cannot act on the images, where as a remotely navigated device is telepresence because you are operating the thing." I disagree with this assertion as it simply takes a surveillance camera as an example to disprove this. In surveillance watching is the operation and not being in one place is vital to the operation. I also disagree that "using the web is teleportation because the pages come to you or are revealed to you through the browser.

Manovich says "telepresence is the ability to act and see at a distance" but does not a monitor act when watching a home through a security system and sends the fire department when there is a fire. I think it is hard to define these in terms that are too concrete. I realize that the article was written in 1999 which was many years ago and things that were true then are not true now but in the case of the above example it is simply a matter definition as to whether one agrees with Manovich. When he says that the "essence of telepresence is that you do not have to be present at a location to affect reality at this location" I think that my example of the security monitor fits within his definition. When we use a web controlled robot we are no more in contact with the remote space than the OnStar operator who call the ambulance to the scene of an accident but just as effective.

Boris Willis

posted by Unknown @ 1:23 AM 0 comments

Spain GPS game experience

I thought someone would send this earlier:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/lafuga.html

posted by Steven G. @ 2:02 PM 0 comments

Spore

Future of the Virtual Body?

posted by matt @ 1:12 PM 1 comments

TRON and me

That TRON GPS game is a great idea. I could not stop boring my wife about it. Not only do I love the idea about making games more physical, but I love the idea of what the kids who play these games will look like. No more obese children on the playstation, but techno-kids running around making sure the laser trails do not trap them. As a side note, the little artificial intelligence of the little TRON light cycles game on the GPS page is very good...I could hardly win.

A project that I want to make that I have been thinking about for the last year is to make virtual sculptures that are positioned around campus. You would walk around campus with Augmented Reality goggles and see virtual objects all over the place. Perhaps a virtual representation of the "sculptor" can be standing around talking about the project. It would be sad not to be able to touch it...but who knows, maybe we can work with OSC virtual lab on this haptic device.

As the link, I would like to point to our very own interface lab in this same building http://www.osc.edu/hpc/bale/interfacelabinfo.shtml. For those who have not seen this lab, they are very nice and love giving students tours.

posted by Steven G. @ 8:06 PM 0 comments

Body Cartography

http://www.bodycartography.org/

posted by Unknown @ 5:24 PM 0 comments

Re: Foucalt Backwards

Thank you for tips on reading Foucalt Boris. I will try to read other Foucalt pieces and see their relevance, but I do agree that this paper once read a few times becomes more elementary, yet in my view, more confusing as to his goal. What I mean by that is that I DO ask why is he defining simple locations and giving them names. If his other works/papers connect the current culture with what he is defining, I wish he did it in this paper too. I am looking forward to your views on Foucalt and seeing more of his cultural pieces described until I read them for myself.
Steven G.

posted by Steven G. @ 12:11 AM 0 comments

Reading Foucalt Backwards

If you start with the last paragraph of Michel Foucalt article "Of Other Spaces" and read backwards to the beginning you have an understanding of what Foucalt is trying to mean. The way he writes becomes simpler as he goes on, so reading from the end gives you context for what he is saying. For instance, instead of reading about utopias and Galileo and heterotopia and why you come back to yourself when looking into a mirror, you read about rest homes, prisons and psychaitric hospitals being places of deviation, which is his point. Then all other information that comes before it informs you from something you actually understand. Then, it makes sense that he talks about looking into a mirror because the mirror becomes reflective of society. So then why is it interesting to read about someone saying that places exist and we occupy them physcially and in our minds. Actually it is not, but what is interesting is how he places those ideas in different cultures which informs us about human behavior and our knowledge increases. Reading this the way it was written assumes that we know what he is talking about and he is leading us to a conclusion that he has discovered. However, if you are not familiar with the history he describes or if you are familiar with the history and don't understand how they relate to concepts such as heterotopia the information can be overwhelmingly simplistic and you feel like so many postmodern dance audiences when they understand that there was a relationship between two people dancing on stage but they don't get it.

posted by Unknown @ 11:13 AM 0 comments