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Liverpool
It was a pleasure to speak at the Brilliant Festival in Liverpool, where we got into all the ways in which technology is fostering new skills within education. This new event is likely to develop a major legacy for the region, so well worth a follow.
This week, I took part in a Battle of Ideas debate at the UK Space Conference in Liverpool exploring the Internet of Things and its transformative potential. It was a pretty far reaching debate, but my main argument focused on the need to step back and imagine a world where the IoT is not imagined as something in the service of humanity, but something which may serve a wider notion of ecosystem well being. This doesn't mean ignoring the desires and needs of humans, but instead trying to come to terms with what might be afforded by this technology if we adopted a wider perspective. I went on to advocate the need to think about an 'Interstellarnet of Things', which takes us beyond the confines of our planet in imagining the potential of this technology, along with the importance of thinking about some of the consequences of artificial general intelligence and the possibility that objects becoming sentient. In this regard, the idea of an Internet of Things at all misses the point - they will not be things, but beings, entities which may have a certain moral status by virtue of its capacity for volition or self-actualization.
Finally, I talked about the importance of the open data initiative and the need to overhaul some of the conventions operating around digital platforms which restrict our freedom to roam by precluding us from exporting our data into some universal language.
2015.07-UKSpaceConf
What makes art democratic is its capacity to allow someone to remake it as their own art work. Take this bench for example, part of the Liverpool Biennial 2012.
It is beautifully presented with awesome lighting. If you take a good photograph of it, you can come away with something that you feel pride in having experienced and captured.
The art of this artist becomes your art, the moment you line up the camera, choose your angle, perhaps even your settings, and ‘click’. It may even become more artful, if you use some creative software to edit the image, or some unique processing technique.
Art that allows people to recreate the work is the most compelling example of democratic art. Galleries that restrict photograph or other kinds of remaking limit their ability to democratize art. There may even be an important political reason for why all art should be democratic, but we will have to think carefully about how to support the artist in this system
Photos from the mass spectacle in Liverpool last month...
In 2008, Slavoj Zizek was in Liverpool for a couple of days. I took a few photographs of him at a lecture, which have been published in numerous books about him. It is also the photo used within his Wikipedia entry and, today, another publication has used this image. I am very fond of this picture and am sure that its success is predicated on its being freely available online.
However, given the many uses to which it has been put, I wonder whether one may begin to describe it as an iconic image. The photograph conveys a lot about the man, his independence of thought, his simple, but complex ideas and the bleak background also mark him out as a thinker who can be both celebrated, but also isolated at times, alone with his thoughts.
The success of the photograph makes me wonder whether our sense of what constitutes an iconic image has changed in a digital age. I don't really claim that this photograph has become iconic, but expect that the repeated distribution of a single, free image can create a singular impression of a person which previously may have been afforded by publication in leading periodicals.
UPDATE 2011.08.09, 4pm: The streets in my neighbourhood (L8) are quiet, but there is news that shops in the city centre are closing early to be on the safe side and people are moving their cars from my road. There's a feeling that the Police are more on top of things today than they were yesterday, so I'm optimistic. There are still debates about why this happened, including discussions about whether social media was an important catalyst. Here's my take on it, sent to the website Seven Streets who got in touch after seeing my initial post.
I think it is a red herring to point to social media as the catalyst for what took place in Liverpool last night. Undoubtedly, the use of private messaging and mobile communications played an important role in organizing the riots. However, it is important to distinguish this from social media, which tends to play out within the public arena. It works best when people can just follow a public hashtag on Twitter, for example. I think it unlikely that rioters were using disguised hashtags to organize themselves. It is more likely that social media reporting on Twitter and Facebook helped people understand what was taking place, than help the rioters organize.
Personally, without Twitter, I'd have been lost to know what was going on around my area. Most of the UK media were not paying attention enough - most likely because they did not have the resources. BBC News 24 barely mentioned Liverpool, the BBC Radio Merseyside do a great job during the day, but they're also limited in how detailed a knowledge they can give of our individual neighbourhoods where most of us are interested in the 7 streets surrounding where we are, as a priority.
What we need is a much more organized hyperlocal media reporting of what's taking place. Even the Facebook group on Liverpool Riots Updates isn't really doing the job it needs - it's managed by someone in Manchester and this morning promised more updates by this evening, which is absurd. We were up all night and today we want second by second updates on the Police's latest impressions of what to expect tonight and a clearer sense of why this cannot happen again. Such reassurances cannot be guaranteed of course, but communication serves to help people understand how city leaders are addressing the situation and this is already a help, just knowing someone is giving a lot of thought to what's taking place. In my street, we just received flyers for cars indicating that they are welcome to park in a different neighbourhood tonight, if people are concerned about the car's safety. This is the sort of action that matters to people, as does the Liverpool Riot Cleanup campaign, which has been widely reported.
Social media is not isolated from other forms of communication technology - from the high resolution CCTV cameras that will help the police to bring perpetrators to task, to the mobile phones which help people understand where to avoid or, indeed, where to go and watch the destruction. We have to accept both are a consequence of having the technology, but getting rid of it won't prevent it. After all, there was no social media in 1981.
Living on the edge of the area where the riots took place in Liverpool 30 years ago, it was saddening to have seen what took place here last night. I moved to Liverpool in 2006, when it was gearing up for the European Capital of Culture year in 2008. The city has changed dramatically in 5 years - for the better, in my view. Liverpool is beautiful again. However, last night brought home the fragility of our society, not just Liverpool. We were awake most of the night as gangs of youths roamed around the neighbourhood, helicopters flying over and I even had to call the fire service for two wheelie bin blazes that started behind our apartment around 3am.
This morning, nearby streets are eerily normal, with only a handful of burned cars and many more smashed car windows as evidence that something untoward took place. Seeing the crowds of youths around the streets at the early hours of the morning, seeing the photos of Smithdowne Road and watching coverage of what was happening on twitter - with the occasional 5 second mention on BBC News 24, it was apparent that the media - social or otherwise - still isn't optimal in these situations. What I'd really have liked to have access to was a live satellite camera, so I could see what was happening all around us.
That said, there seems consensus across all reporting that people do not understand why this has happened now, which makes it seem like a very difficult situation to diffuse.
Here are some pictures from this morning. I wonder where all those kids are right now.
This remarkable theatre production took place in Liverpool tonight and is not to be missed if it comes to your city. It is performed by The Wired Aerial Theatre Productions. Here's a photo selection from the evening.
dreamspace
Dreamspace is in the news again this week. It was the first art work i saw in Liverpool when I moved there. It subsequently blew away and killed a couple of people. My reportage is my most viewed selection of photographs on Flickr and it was a wonderful experience. I hope someone is brave enough to remake it one day. Sadly, the artist Maurice Agis died in 2009 soon after the case against him for gross negligence mansalughter was resolved. The court were unable to reach a verdict and he eventually received a reduced fine of £2500.
Speaking today at DaDaFest09 for a panel titled 'Art with an edge' with Debbi Lander, Tom Shakespeare and others.
Some notes from the day:
Photography of people with acquired disabilities
Sky tv wer recording magnolia prize in 1998 - when they discovered I had won, they did not want to show the work
“Ok to show physical difference in a scientific context, but when it is in an artist context, it was somehow unacceptable”
“image of me the author of the work who incorporates the otherness that these bodies represent”
“inclination to desexualize people with physical disabilities”
Skin (2001) - research at hospital - medical photographs - not just documenting skin conditions, but beautiful photographs - led to a photo and text work - skin as acceptable, social surface - interface between me and rest of the world - what happens when surface is not ‘polite’ - invu 10-12 people, photographed 5 - digital snap shots - fabrics to complement - re-appropriating medical photographs and inserting into different contexts - trying to make beautiful.
Noella - psorasis -
June -
Cover Story (2006) - installation - work about the face - what it would be like to live without a legible or viable face - identity invested in the face - originally used in Norwich for UK Science week (2006) - needed to be accessible and function in public space - visual cue: a blob that slowly becomes a face - try to read the face: its age, gender, race, etc - to assign character in history - second video: taking fragments from people speaking about their faces and bring together, narrated by someone who has no unusual face
Nazis used photography to identify profiles and types
Tom Shakespeare
Disability is at heart of human condition
Happy for non-disabled artists to make work about disability
Instead of ‘disability’ use ‘predicament’
Traditional: art with disabled people
Representationa: art about disabled people
Radical: disability art by disabled people for disabled people
Individual: artis who happens to have a disability
Existential: art as a tool for thinking about disability, by anyone for anyone
John Keats - ‘negative capability’
Cathy Come Home - Ken Loach - homelessness - led to ‘shelter’ - art can bring home an issue in a way that academic may not
What do disabled people need? -understanding of shared humanity - recognition of social barriers - acceptance
Mona Hatoum (1998) Untitled (wheelchair) - clinical medical wheelchair - cannot self propel - uncomfortable - push handles are carving knives - disability, anger, relationships between carer and cared for - tool for thinking - title: does not prescribe
Julian Germain - bioethics, genetics - family photographs - generations - resemblance - single sex - all wearing same shirts - heredity write large - can see how genes determine them - personality
Christine Borland (2001) Progressive Disorder - drawings of young boy with Duchenne muscular dystrophy - boy getting to his feet - from 19th C doctor -
Aidan shingler - www.oneinahundred.co.uk - Rorschach blocks - one is a butterfly - 1 in 100 experience schizophrenia - butterfly reflects the joy of the condition - psychiatrist often wear bow tie - ‘The Butterfly Collector - commentary on psychiatry -
Elio Caccavalle - MyBio, Utility Pets - use art to think of futures - interested in genetically modified animals - xenotransplantation - how develop products to help negotiate bioethical challenges -
Tom Shakespeare, The Wrong Birth (after Fuseli), 2007 - original has a horse - in original, was a goblin - mistaken idea that night mare meant horse in your dream - concern that was about the fear of having a disabled child - in terms of prenatal diagnosis - every pregnancy is tested - now more aware of possibility of having a disabled child - whatever she chooses, have to take responsibility - didn't want to comment on it - just wanted to realize it - I didn't actually sit on her chest, we photoshopped it - image 1.5m wide - photography by Keith Patterson - Jack Lowe did photoshop -
Tom Shakespeare, The Good Death (after Mantegna), 2008 - dead Christ - limited tonal range - Christ laying on slab - early years of perspective - radically foreshortened -so much so that the man could have restricted growth
Tom Shakespeare, Figure with Meat (after Bacon), 2009 - from Velazquez pope on throne - most interesting part of picture is the meat - hard to access - meat markeing board sent these images.
Benefits of this work - explores, depends, challenges, interpret science for wider audiences - bring disability to mainstream - reveal emotional and relational - questions about ethics and responsibility, difference and identity - complex, nuances, simultaneous: show not tell
Not keen on notion of disability art
Reveal emotional and relational
Glenway Westcott comment on Walker Evans (1938): for me this is better propaganda than it would be if it were not aesthetically enjoyable. It is because I enjoy looking that I go on looking, until the pity and the shame are impressed upon me, unforgettably.
Mike's inaugurallecture was titled 'Anger is an Energy: connecting time and space through action, movement and memory'
From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 CajaThimm, Uni of Bonn
What is Web 2.0? - user driven web - less about technology - no technological barrier – thing of the past - web 3.0 prospect
New services - advertising - 1.1
ME: how much of online advertising is web 2.0 platforms?
Wikis - we restrict use of wikipedia as citations
ME: why restrict wikipedia citations?
Blog
Videocasts and podcasts
RSS – not used a lot
Does Gordon Brown have a videoblog?
ME: WebCameron, but problem is not, how do you know that the communication mode is not politically laden? Is this really intimacy or something much more staged?
‘self marketing’
participation – citizen journalists
never know how well researched, but do have professional control teams
Social websites and communities Virtual worlds – second life
Media literacy is a social competence - ME: expand
SL is not a game, but virtual society
‘avatars are’ internet ‘users’ representation of himself’
rape in SL - ME: Different from the rape in LambdaMOO?
Neal Stephenson – ‘snow crash’
‘when you click on the website in second life’ - ME: but you don’t do this, it’s not a website, but a downloaded software
Preference to type, rather than voice in SL
Very global
Virtual self – virtual as compensation for real life
Pornography – went to a bar, not very populated - ME: what time of day did (s)he go?
Barak Obama does have an avatar. Hilary Clinton does not have an avatar.
G8 protests in SL
Free Burma in SL
The future
Questions
ME: why restrict wikipedia citations? What would wikipedia need to do, in order for it to gain the sort of legitimacy you seem to require ofit?
ME: what do we know about the demographics of web 2.0 users compared to Web 1.0
ME: what was your uni policy on citing wkipedia? What’s the objection, because you seem to celebrate the capacity of web 2.0 in most of what you say.
ME: how much of online advertising is web 2.0 platforms?
ME: WebCameron, but problem is not, how do you know that the communication mode is not politically laden? Is this really intimacy or something much more staged?
ME: expand on social competence.
ME: cannot write of technological limitations, since bandwidth and processor speed really limit use of SL.
The Northwest legacy projects for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Monday and Tuesday I was running What Do You Get If...? a two-day workshop exploring the role of social media in a) the arts and b) health and environmental issues.
I organized a 2 day event as part of the EPSRC Digital Economy cluster. The first was on Web 2.0 and the Arts, the second on Web 2.0 and Health.
On 17th March, I'll be running an event at FACT in Liverpool on Social Media and Health/Environment funded by the EPSRC Digital Economy research cluster. For this reason, the event is free, but we have limited spaces. We are now open to a general audience. For more information about the event, please link here. Drop me a line if you'd like to attend
Buy the Human Futures book by clicking here
website: http://humanfutures.wordpress.com
30 October 2008 Symposium & Book Launch 10.00-5.00pm
Location: FACT, Liverpool, UK (which is also the location of Picturehouse Cinema Liverpool)
The world around us is changing. What will make the first century of the millennium different to the last? What will we love, how will we live, what will keep us awake at night?
Join artists, scientists, ethicists, futurologists as they explore questions, ideas and propositions that explore our changing environment and the challenges humanity faces in the future.
This conference brings together contributors from FACT’s Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty edited by Andy Miah which features work by George J Annas, Fiona Raby & Anthony Dunne, Norman M Klein and William Sims Bainbridge and Oron Catts.
An updated schedule of the symposium will be added soon, but for more information contact gabrielle.jenks@fact.co.uk
To order the book contact shop@fact.co.uk
Tickets £25.00/20.00 (members and concessions)
Tickets available from 0871 704 2063 or www.picturehouses.co.uk (Liverpool, FACT)
