Communication in Public Space: Strings

The mobile telecommunication and the internet has been accelerating the characters of the urban experience, which Milgram mentioned, into the global scale. The characters like the disconnection between proximity and friendship, superficial and disposable relationships, difficulty in trusting, anonymity, etc, can also be found in the mobile and web communication context. These characters might seem inhuman, however, it is also true that it may be the essential condition for human to develop these qualities based on the social and cognitive efficiency in order to sustain the balanced life in the current urban setting. People may not have had the options. In order to embrace the interaction among the people in the urban neighborhood, instead of the interaction among the far locations worldwide, it is important to start from what people would not feel overloaded by others or what people would not consider themselves disturbing others.

One thing I was thinking is to install the simple and playful strings in various parts of the city in order to create the relationships among neighbors and, at the same time, to conform to the characters of urban and telecommunicational life. The strings are tied in various public spaces. The string can be plucked by any pedestrians. When it is plucked, the string trembles making playful sinusoid. And this trembling string sends the signal to randomly selected string or strings in the neighborhood in order to make it tremble. Then another person who is sitting on a bench notices that a string in front of him starts trembling. He could ignore it but he plucks back the string as well thinking that there is at least one more person in the neighborhood who is plucking a string like him.

The exchange of plucking can last short or long, or the exchange may not be achieved at all when there is no willing recipients on the other side. Recipients are much more free to disregard the signal because they know it is not an urgent or specific message they can interpret, and because the trembling signal is rather subtle that people can hardly notice when they are in the course of doing something else. But when the people are in a good mood and willing to respond, the exchange of trembling starts going back and forth, and the trembling strings become the pure interaction among urban anonymity which evokes the existence of others and the willingness to communicate, but still without having to challenge the shyness, potential danger, and the responsibility to sustain the relationship.

Phone like Device for Picnic

This idea is to propose the mobile communication device that enables the dialog between two groups in outdoors settings. It has the mic, speaker, camera and the display. The display looks like a round shaped rug which can be rolled for easy transportation and works as a reflective surface of the well. The round shape is for inviting the people into the dialog equally, and by looking into the display, the conversational counterpart can be seen. For example, friends in Boston and LA can go to a picnic and have a chat together in a laid back posture, sitting on the grass, sharing the vision of their faces and the sceneries, although the picnics happen separately in a physical sense. It can also be installed in public space in order to facilitate the dialog among neighbors.

Design Problem 3: concrete and abstract portraits

1. A Portrait Based on the Physical Appearance: My Face Eating
2. A Portrait Based on the Data: A Difference Portrait

A Portrait Based on the Physical Appearance: My Face Eating

I wanted to portray myself based on the mechanical process of visual perception in order to make the self-portrait as objective as possible. Adopting the mechanical process of visual perception and getting rid of other context is needed in order to remove my own subjective preconception about myself. And, myself as an artist has to be alienated from myself as a subject in order to observe the subject as it is. *observing with a macro vision *observation 1: a single clip


What Seth talked last week about the motion portraying and its resemblance to the visual perception inspired the process of observing myself. In order to reflect the way other person's visual perception works on my physical appearance, (1)the motion perception, (2)the narrow focus range of human vision, and (3)the saccadic eye movement have been applied to the process of observing my face.

*observation 2: the motion perception and the narrow focus range of human vision

*saccadic eye movements - the trace of the gaze shows the fixations and jumps of eye movements during perceiving/searching the visual information

*observation 3: plus the saccadic eye movement


The resulting portrait consists of 150 video clips which capture the different parts of a face. A subject is eating to make the motion clearer. The layout of video clips does not appear even and this unevenness is based on the saccadic eye movement pattern during watching a human face. The uneven distribution of visual information makes the face to look like a collection of patches with many missing parts. However, this layout also contributes to acquiring more objectivity of a portrait by excluding, in the portrait, the visual cortex's stabilizing process, which fills in the saccadic gap of visual information based on a person's past visual experience and which can add the relativity to the result of portraying.

*projection of the portrait: the alienation of myself as an artist, a subject, and a viewer, and the coincidence of an artist, a subject, and a viewer. :-)

*click for a larger image

** the vertical lines are due to a projector trouble.

A Portrait Based on the Data: A Difference Portrait

This portrait uses the Google Custom Search Engine which runs based on my Del.icio.us lists with less than ten other people who have the same URL in their lists.


1. The Bookmarks with the Sharers
I tried to be as objective as possible about portraying myself with the data. So, I started with looking at del.icio.us bookmarks, which is the data that I can easily compare with others and I can get the objective perspective about myself.
Bookmarks reveal one’s interest. In each bookmark item in del.icio.us, the number of people sharing the same bookmark is seen.


The bookmark which is saved by many people can be of the high popularity and the universal sympathy. On the other hand, the rare bookmarks can reflect unique personality of its sharer.
Among the bookmarks I have in my del.icio.us, the bookmarks with less number of bookmark sharer can reveal the difference(as opposed to the similarity) of my interest comparing to the public which would make my personality salient.


2. Fifty One Bookmarks with Little Sharers
I decided to select the bookmarks with less than ten bookmark sharers from my del.icio.us page to induce the difference of my interest. There were 51 bookmarks among total 137 bookmarks since 2005. Following is the titles of the 51 bookmarks, and it can give some sense about what I have been interested in and how I am like.

Scientists image vivid ‘brainbows’
Magnetorheological fluid
YouTube - Digital Water Pavilion
hi-shutterbug!
Darfur: a letter from Europe's leading writers - Independent Online Edition > Commentators
International Paper - Characteristics
Home : Lindenmeyr | A Central National-Gottesman, Inc. Company
Paper Making Process: Virtual Tour
Voith AG
Christopher Alexander | Project for Public Spaces (PPS)
Flash Research
Amazon Online Reader : You Are Here
"50 Things"
Typotheque: How Good is Good? by Stefan Sagmeister
Little Pastry Shop - Maison Bertaux on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
croque monsieur on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
ICA_london on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
watch/talk/drink/eat on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Central Point from Southampton Row on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Westferry Road/Lockesfield Place E14 (west) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Footprint - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nerd's Life - Touchless Interactive Window - LM3Labs Ubiq'window
Superior Picnic Baskets From Blue Ribbon Bakery, Sapa, and Bouchon Bakery -- New York Magazine
Antony Worrall Thompson :: AWT Club :: AWT Online :: AWT Shop
Search The Modern Word: Query Results
Cascando by Samuel Beckett: Division 13 Productions: Joanna Settle, Artistic Director: Katie Taber, Managing Director; Anne DeAcetis, Development Director
Fernando Pessoa
Disquiet: Pessoa's Trunk
Guardian Unlimited Arts | Arts features | Where have you been all my life?
리더십의 근본
태우’s log - web 2.0 and beyond » Blog Archive » 더 많은 것은 좋은 것, 아니면 나쁜 것?
Everything you ever wanted to know about David Walliams
D'or Ahn - Chelsea - New York Magazine Restaurant Guide
First things first 2000 Manifesto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
First things first 1964 Manifesto - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Design Council | Business
eye | feature | reputation | Graphic Thought Facility
Digital SSALLZIP
Kerr Noble / The European Design Show: Graphic Designers - Design/Designer Information
The centralised road to mediocrity
누가 국민인가
구글이나 엠파스가 성공하는 가장 좋은 방법
구글이 한국에서 성공할 수 없는 이유
Do You MySpace? - New York Times
퀵타임라이브방송공작단 Ver 2.0
About Digitile Ltd
MakeZine.com: Volume 02: Home Entertainment
welcome to the wurst
Interview with Rick Kim of Cyworld (Weekly Broadcast)
Funny animated GIF of Marc Canter hailing a cab
No Social Networking Site Is an Island
An empty language for empty-headed executives


3. The Interactive Data Portrait Which Reveals the Difference of the Interest
However, the information that the title can provide is very limited. The topic and area of interest is reflected in the actual contents of the site the bookmark refers, scarcely in the title. So, I put these data into Google Custom Search Engine to make it possible for the audience to ask and estimate the interest of mine. This customized search engine becomes the interactive portrait which reveals the difference about my interest.
Please feel free to visit and query things here, and let me know how your impression is. Sohin's Difference Portrait


4. Test
I tried some generic keywords and saw what would come out. Since the pool is small, many keywords do not have the results. Here are some interesting results. When I query ‘dog,’ no result appears. I actually like dogs, although I don’t live with a dog now. I may not be interested in dogs as much as I though I would be.

When the keyword ‘designer’ is put, ten results come out which are mostly from the same website.

And ‘David’ makes seven results and four of them refers the same David who is one of my favorite comedian.

assignments #5

1. Two Answers about Portraits
2. Two Portraits

Two Portraits

#1
David Rokeby’s Giver of Names, the preliminary version(1997)
(The image above is the current version of Giver of Names)

Giver of Names is an interactive installation which translates the computer vision of the objects into the spoken language by analyzing the various aspects of visual information of the objects and inducing the implied words and ideas. This current version works as the exploration about how to perceive the still life.

The first preliminary version of Giver of Names only involves in verbal aspect. In the first version, all the written languages David Rokeby produced by the time was processed in the computer. The pattern of his language usage forms the landscape of piles of languages. And the new sentences are generated out of the piles of languages, which can be conceived as the possibility of what he might have written or what he is likely to write in the future. This often absurdly generated language is the portraiture of self-identity with the possibility of occurrence in the past and the future. It raises the question of hypothetical and parallel representation of an identity, shifting the traditional concept of portrait as depicting the past moment of actual occurrence to a richer, more ambiguous and alternative dimension of the portrait creation and appreciation.

#2
Christian Boltanski’s Reflexion(2000)

Many of Christian Boltanski’s works deal with the concept of memory and identity. When the audience enters the gallery, the projected portraits of anonymous evokes the sense of mystery and alien identity about unknown people. The only thing the audience can confirm is that the represented people must have had the specific moment in their life. The appearing and disappearing self images reflected on the mirrors on the wall juxtaposes the past mystery of anonymous’ memory with the image of self wandering in the present. Ironically, once overwhelming evocation of identities soaks into the realistic photographic imageries losing the sense of identity and memory in its anonymity.