Collaborative Photomosiac: timeline
It looks like I'll be working on developing the Collaborative Photomosiac concept for the first part of my senior project. Here's a tentative timeline:
Week 3
- Select source photos
- Research MMS/email/server interaction
Week 4
- Average color verification script
Week 5/6
- Develop flash interface
Week 7
- Beta release testing
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Project Proposals
Visualizing Social Networks in Physical Space
We live in an increasingly technology-mediated world. This project attempts to capture the physical and social context around a person and create a visualization of social spaces both physically and virtually. It also seeks to draw comparisons and highlight the convergence of virtual and physical identities.
It investigates these questions:
- Has the digital taken the place of normal, physical interactions?
- How do interactions in the virtual world compare to those in real life?
- How are our social networks different between real and virtual worlds?
Technical details:
- Virtual: based on Facebook network and friends
- Physical: based on real-world “tagging”
- Manually-entered people present or Bluetooth detection
- Phonecam photos (MMS/J2ME)
- Manually-entered location or GPS location
- Other metadata (quotes, context, etc)
Mediated Voyeur
We are inexplicably subjected to the gaze of other humans as we exist in this physical world. Conversely, we subject others under our gaze as an act of social surveillance. This project seeks to explore these questions:
- What if this experience was automatically mediated by technology?
- Would it function as a true extension of our eyes?
- What social implications would it have?
Technical details:
- Installation-based webcam sends random clips of video to participating users via MMS
- Users can send MMS messages back to the server, which is displayed at the installation
Collaborative Photomosaic
Yahoo image search-based photomosiac generator, Jason Ting (2005)
We’re in an era where Time Magazine as deemed the person of the year as “you.” Critical Art Ensemble’s statement that “the population in the US is generally skilled only as receivers of information, not as producers" is changing with the advent of internet technologies.
There's an emerging trend seen in the reversal of privatization of culture items. The internet is bringing a new cultural production revolution where and accessibility, (re)producibility, and distribution is easier than ever.
The population of internet users are being challenged out of just of receiving but to also produce. New online startups like YouTube, innumerable blogging services & social networks (Xanga, Myspace, Facebook) encourage the web populace to make themselves known.
Though these startups have huge user bases due to their popularity, the creation of content has stayed extraordinarily individualistic.
This project is solely community-based; the photomosaic functions as a virtual metaphor of the people that contribute to it. It seeks to investigate these questions:
- Today’s tech culture/society has proven ready for personal production. Is it ready for community-based creation?
- What new aesthetic does technology-mediated, community-based artworks bring?
Technical details:
- Server parses selected image, calculates pixel colors needed and sends SMS/email to user with color needed
- OR, The user directly selects color box from interface display (Flash)
- Users take phonecam/webcam/digicam picture and send to server
- MMS->Web
- J2ME application -> Web
- Email ->Web
- Flash interface -> Web
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Sunday January 21, 2007 
