Other blog explorations were occupied with the use of sound (Sterne article, check his blog), and especially how to separate sound from their subordinate role of illustrating visual content. In a New Media context, can we develop a new framework for researching the use of sound? How does sound contribute to ‘deterritorialising’ (in a Deleuze sense? need to check this out…) visual internet space?

As part of the film week cyborg/android discussions were held via twitter. There seems to be an opposed view of Androids being superhuman, and at the same time being inferior, disposable thus offering ethical dimensions.

This blog is requiring further attention, potentially tweaking the design, with especially tags and the use of Pages under review. This part of the module is an interesting meta activity: the dialectics of visuality and technical formalisations of the WordPress platform affecting my intentions and may be even discourse.

On many occasions I take photos with my camera, mobile phone.

This time, however, I thought I would just focus on sound. It is a (poor quality) recording of a cantering lesson my daughter had…

(thanks Phil and Jen for the technical support!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Professor Kevin Warwick

Brain gates in 2020: time to start ‘becoming technology’…

Click here to view the embedded video.

from Google Art Project: Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh

(from the Rebecca Johnston article)

Metaphors … are lenses which refract current cultural beliefs and values. They not only provide a prism through which to understand consumption behavior but, in their use/instantiation by individuals, are creative ways of seeing.

I think that is a good starter for describing how an aesthetic experience may be defined in an online context

and furthermore

The primary (or conceptual) metaphors that were used repeatedly in the editorials were those of physical space, physical speed, destruction, and salvation.

Steven Jones (1997) discussed the tendency to view intangible ideas as tangible spaces. “We have a tendency to understand mainly in spatial terms, observing it as if visually, through the use of visual metaphors, as if it were indeed a highway being constructed through our backyard.”  The Internet is a physical space metaphors appeared in multiple ways, but these were not the only, nor even the most dominant, type of metaphors in the corpus.

in this respect I think aesthetic online experiences will be linked to the metaphor of space.

would the other categories (speed, destruction, and salvation) also play a role?

more questions for the dissertation. A great article for mindmapping…

Following Amy’s post ‘What is real‘, I thought I would like to ask a number of related questions. Some of these have been on my mind since the first IDEL module and are also part of my dissertation considerations.

1. Can we have an aesthetic experience from this image?
2. How does the experience differ from seeing the painting in a gallery, or indeed on other digital devices (phone, PC, tablet…)

The Tate website explains:

‘The letters IKB stand for International Klein Blue, a distinctive ultramarine which Klein registered as a trademark colour in 1957. He considered that this colour had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched.’

This digital image also represents the immaterial. But a different kind of immaterial. Can the immaterial of the internet help us understand different interpretations of ‘immaterial’?

I am currently reading around the topic of Deleuze’s ‘Rhizome‘ and hope to find more theoretical support.

The manipulation of sound, sound sampling for instance, is turning sound into a physical or ‘measured’ object therefore giving it a spacial representation, similar to architecture.In that sense, sounds extends digital geographies.

I would like to use this clip I found on You Tube as an example

Click here to view the embedded video.

The “WAG” is a mini 3-dimensional, single room gallery that fits into your pocket ’cause I’ve developed it for IPhone, IPod Touch and I Pad. Every month, directly on your mobile, The “WAG” hosts a solo digital art exhibition related to the dynamic site-specific contest. So, the Widget Art Gallery works both as a sort of ‘kunsthall’ showing temporary exhibitions and as a permanent collection museum because conserves all the past exhibitions inside an online archive.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-06/18/amazon-tribe-google-earth

If we consider what is digital culture and what isn’t then I feel it is hard to draw a line between what one could consider a-digital, non-digital or ex-digital, I am struggling with the linguistics here…

For example the Amazon tribe using Google Earth, would have their cultural map (is the natural environment part of culture? I think it is we do shape it), re-mapped digitally,  it is now part of a global map, which we are all part of , and affects us through political and social action. This action taken as a result its associated digital space thus has an effect on the physical space.

We all live digitally. Conversations we carry out over the internet are mediated digitally, indeed may never be expressed other than in a digital context. People meet over Skype and may never see each other in’ real’ life. True this reflects the distinction between form and contents, with data digitally transmitted but thoughts held in our conscious.

Many of us carry mobile phones, iPads, laptops… extensions of our consciousness, our memories, our ideas. Tracked and positioned, we lead our lives online and offline.

My guess is that cyberculture is rooted in a computer mediated environment in which we usually deal with an ‘inter-face’, and how we interact is mainly directed by visual input. The use of sound is therefore in relationship to the image.

Looking at cinema may offer some theoretical support (writings on Robert Bresson for instance, who was a master of sculpting images and sound tracks by the use of silence) but Sterne suggests an epistemic break and  ’object construction’,  involving a move  away from research problems that carry certain assumptions of the institutions in which they were defined.

As an experiment,I have been looking for projects that could potentially break with cinema and TV, that may support Sterne’s challenge.

http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk/index.php/survey/soundmaps/more/97/35/

Tied by the interface of the computer, a map outlines London, based on the (visual) ordnance survey maps. Click and select a sound sample, and the spacial restrictions disappear, instantly moving your mind to London. No visual clues here which would render the sound subordinate, but sheer audio pleasure!

One particular favourite is described as ‘Raindrops and rush of rainwater, thunder, the rain grows more intense, faint birdsong’

And why would this one have any particular visual quality, other than the sound it is attached to?

Click here to view the embedded video.

According to this website,

http://archive.org/details/LondonSoundSurvey

Mind the Gap is one of their top downloads (this is a US website) This seems linked to a desire to ‘possess’  sound, similarly to downloading images possibly for a ringtone on a mobile phone. American tourists visiting London?