[img]http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/images/2008/02/invisi_icon.jpg[/img]
Turbulence Commission:
<a href="http://turbulence.org/works/invis/"><strong>Invisible Influenced</strong></a>
by <em>Will Pappenheimer</em> and <em>Chipp Jansen</em>
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<strong>Invisible Influenced</strong> is a Rorschach test for envisioning the US as the recipient rather than the cause of worldwide events. Contrary to the notion of impervious superpower, the artwork projects the emerging perception that the country is vulnerable to foreign conditions of climate, public opinion, economics and a variety of social institutions. Shape reads, in this case, as the confluence of intercontinental subconscious activity, which is in the process of becoming visible. The work also operates metaphorically through the concept of the "butterfly effect" from chaos theory. Small changes to nonlinear dynamical systems can produce large long term transformational phenomena. The beating of a butterfly’s wings in the Kurile Islands causes a hurricane over Florida. The site displays a simple map silhouette of the country with pull-down menus for a number of searchable real-time categories of influence. Users select from foreign sources of news, weather conditions, health conditions, stock indexes, and blogs. Informational sources are chosen for their seeming "distance" from the US daily experience.
Qualitative and quantitative indices found in global internet texts and databases are translated into up to four directional vector "magnitude" forces surrounding the continent. The US map silhouette then responds and distorts according to elastic physics properties programmed to its perimeter. The right-hand selection panel displays menu choices and the source information, text and imagery being retrieved. There are two modes for operation, a default "test" mode that allows the forces to act for a limited period of time, generating a finished image test and an alternate "drift" mode allowing the map to continue to transform until the program is reset.
<strong>Invisible Influenced</strong> is a 2007 commission of <a href="http://new-radio.org">New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.</a>, (aka Ether-Ore) for its <a href="http://turbulence.org">Turbulence</a> web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.
BIOGRAPHIES
<a href="http://www.willpap-projects.com">WILL PAPPENHEIMER</a> is an artist working in new media, installation and multi-media. His projects utilize home surveillance networks, participatory media and information aesthetics. He has exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions including the ICA Boston, Exit Art, FILE 2005, Sao Paulo, ISEA 2006/ZeroOne, San Jose Museum of Art, Florence Lynch Gallery and Postmasters Galleries, New York, Cabaret Voltaire and Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zurich and the Museum Fine Arts, Boston. His work received a half page photo citation in the New York Times at Art Basel Miami 2003 and a chapter of Gregory Ulmer’s theoretical book, "Electronic Monuments." Current projects include commissions from Turbulence.org, Rhizome.org and the Tampa Lights program for the Super Bowl 2009.
<a href="http://www.chipp.org/">CHIPP JANSEN'S</a> interests currently lie at various intersections of Art, Computer Science, and Geography. Artistically, his work is based on food production performance, cable network news subversion, and cartographic advocacy. His work in "CNNPlusPlus" was exhibited at ISEA 2006/ZeroOne, San Jose Museum of Art. With an interdisciplinary programming culture focus, Chipp has taught in the schools of Computer Science, Art and Architecture at the University of Michigan, Brooklyn College, City College, and at the Pratt Institute. Currently he is also pursuing a Master's degree in Geography at Hunter College - CUNY with a focus on new media in cartography, and transportation geography. He is also a research member of Bu-Con, working on infrastructural solutions for the after-future and exhibits with them regularly.
Invisible Influenced
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Type: discussion
Comments
I like the concept, but I would love to see the implementation more elaborated than it is now. Three comments:
1.
We convey geographical concepts in more ways than just positive space / colored boundaries. During the primaries, and I expect during the upcoming elections, we've seen and will see lots of new ways of graphically representing geographical data.
2.
The algorithm processing the Twitter and Flickr feeds is simplistic – you could do a lot more here. You take a Twitter feed and count the characters? Parse what people are actually saying in Chennai! Number of images matching a keyword in Flicker? Use some image analysis libraries or grab some images from what people are doing in Reykjavik!
3.
The States are neither a monolithic entity when they affect world events, nor are they a monolithic entity when they are affected by world events. It would be interesting to see the internal dynamics of the country being affected, not just a giant blot called "USA." For example, a war in Afghanistan enlarged the role of Texas and Texans (from Charlie Wilson to George Bush, and everyone that voted for them).
Vijay
Vijay,
These are great comments and you might well have been a ghost sitting in on our meetings as the project developed. It's true that there are many ways we could represent influence and geographical data. Each require we both project focus and plenty of programming. Since we had to choose a few issues to accomplish within this project, we chose them and then built a real-time database that we can use for future projects. The reason for using the US outline here was the idea of Rorschach inkblot, its shape being the most important for interpretation and diagnosis. But inkblots have plenty of interior tonal variation so that leaves more possibilities for future iterations.
The algorithm processing for the Twitter and Flickr feeds might indeed be a bit simplistic. The magnitude of the tweet being the magnitude of the influence, the number of images taken around a location being an interest level indicator. However faced with processing many influences we sometimes had to take simple roads. This gets into questions of the balance between accuracy and artistic gesture, an issue that is important to data visualization art. Twitter feeds were so interesting to us that the area calls for its own project!
We discussed the idea of whether we could and should register influence at the state level, affecting the physics of the US interior rather just its boundaries. This is very appealing to us but again a bit challenging to start out with in our given time constraints. In this case presenting the States as a monolithic entity points towards it's self image as "the greatest nation on earth." (Not exactly our position.) As this emblem begins to drift, it calls that notion into question, not the that this is a particularly new revelation. We have set things up so we can work with any country, so starting with the US was a choice about this moment in national consciousness where I think the US populace is beginning to wonder about its supremacy and vulnerability.
Look forward to more discussion…
Will
…more brainstorms than critiques…
"This gets into questions of the balance between accuracy and artistic gesture, an issue that is important to data visualization art."
Data visualization art can be a pretty numerical deposit, a hard simulation / artificial life, or somewhere in between. It's fun to push a project that's closer to one extreme to the other extreme, and vice versa.
"The algorithm processing for the Twitter and Flickr feeds might indeed be a bit simplistic. The magnitude of the tweet being the magnitude of the influence, the number of images taken around a location being an interest level indicator. However faced with processing many influences we sometimes had to take simple roads."
I understand.
It'd be interesting to see more of a trace of the data stream affecting the image before the viewer's eye. Selected images from Flickr could pop up at various points on the screen… you could throw in various Orientalism in it: scary brown terrorists shrink the East side, beautiful Asian women and technology erect the West side… ;-)
"Twitter feeds were so interesting to us that the area calls for its own project!"
Yes.
[size=150]Contexts[/size]
"We have set things up so we can work with any country, so starting with the US was a choice about this moment in national consciousness where I think the US populace is beginning to wonder about its supremacy and vulnerability."
It'd be interesting to model a dialectic between two or three countries:
USA / Mexico
- You could slice this any number of ways, but one way is illegal immigration: plot ratio of immigrants that successfully cross the border to those that die trying (the more that cross successfully, the more the border stretches North; the more that die trying, the more the border stretches South), modulo area (each state has statistics you can amortize to make live) and stretch the blot in the corresponding area …
Pakistan / Kashmir / India
- A 3-element system with Kashmir as the "protagonist," stretched in one direction or the other based on newsfeeds, or imploding based on newsfeeds indicating Kashmiris' desire for independence.
North Korea / South Korea
- can grab feeds from the citizen-journalist hub OhMyNews
- hm..I don't know how you'll get a feed from North Korea :-|
…
Every transformation problem involves a problem in points of reference, and I think 2/3/n-country iterations of "Invisible Influenced" might be able to play with these in interesting ways.
[size=150]Rorschach[/size]
"The reason for using the US outline here was the idea of Rorschach inkblot, its shape being the most important for interpretation and diagnosis. But inkblots have plenty of interior tonal variation so that leaves more possibilities for future iterations."
A problem with the representation is that an inkblot is static, whereas "Invisible Influenced" is dynamic. A moving blob rather suggests an amoeba or lava lamp.
I'm not sure how to get around this problem. You could display sequential iterations, but then the idea of smooth/live influence is weakened.
Data Visualization is the Socialist Realism of Neoliberalism.
because numbers = capitalism ?