Digital Artifact – Dystopian frequencies
My digital artifact, dystopian frequencies tries to capture the feeling of dystopia through image, sound and text.
Please click on the image to access the artifact itself.
A reference list of materials used in the artifact are available here.
Hi Nikki – I couldn’t get Glogster working for me
Will have to give it ago again. Love the narrative ability here and your drawing – kind of fixes the transliteracy element. I would have like to hear your thoughts (?).
This is great. I really like the juxtaposition of the lo-fi pencil drawing against the tech theme & embedded content. The bright, cartoon eye is a huge impact and really drives home the notion of surveillance.
I agree with Steph. The difference in texture really made the presentation very effective.
I’m a bit disturbed now : ) It was interesting how most of the videos/songs portrayed surveillance as kind of tacked-on, not ubiquitous (I especially liked the camera/speaker combos in the Blur video, that someone had just stuck in the middle of the road on a cheap tripod); it was all a bit messy, and sometimes the technology was having problems of its own. Good combination of media!
Nikki, I really like the definition of dystopia you’ve used here, and your drawing emphasises the quality of the ‘imaginary’ that’s highlighted (both the textures and the medium, and, I think, the window that is framing all the stuff that’s as bad as it can be as outside, somewhat elsewhere). Is there a suggestion that inside the room is a place of safety and privacy? The camera is pointing the other way, though the eye is looking in, and I’m not sure if the cobweb structure is inside or outside the room…
For me the room represents ‘all that is as good as it can be’ sitting in opposition to the hostile environment outside. The wooden window frame is what provides detachment to the viewer from the exterior…as close to sanctuary as is possible [in this fictional scenario] In placing the viewer’s perspective inside of the window there is an element of security and privacy. The web outside reminds those standing at the window of the ever growing force of the ‘company’ in charge. The camera a reminder of the non-blinking surveillance that must be endured for ‘one’s own good’.
I would like to think that there is more to this room than an element of safety. In a utopian dystopia [!] I would like to believe that this room represents hope …possibly the nerve centre for an underground rebel unit focused on the restoration of harmony and peace.
oh good – I am glad the web is outside!
This is a reassuring self-interpretation of your image – even where things are as bad as we can imagine, there might be spaces of sanctuary and a possibility of change. Does that mean you can’t imagine anything truly hopeless?
I’m not sure that imagining something *completely* hopeless would be quite as effective as imagining something *almost completely* hopeless…
I see a concrete role in having that sliver of hope as it creates a binary equation that only serves to emphasise the plight of the downside even more.
By introducing a binary equation we also introduce the possibility of the ‘other’. In a sense it creates a line of reason that would be absent in a one-sided depiction. The sliver may be minimal and unfeasible but I think that it ought to be there all the same.
In the same way that I’m hesitant to imagine anything truely hopeless, I would caution myself against imagining anything truely hopefull!