We need your feedback!
drnic June 9th, 2009We need your feedback on our site.
Here is a little spiel to explain our research, please let us know what you think!
We are examining both the form and content of news information using the web and info graphics as interrogative tools. We feel that these two belong together as we can reach a broad audience in the same way that news media does. And at the same time proposing new ways of shaping information visually.
This is an examination of alternative news information – we don’t profess to provide answers, far more it is about presenting information in new ways. A lot of the postings so far are about the form, using new models to communicate socially relevant information, hence the content is at times arbitrary. After this initial research period we hope to have some productive visual forms we can apply to media content that we feel is worth investigating.
So after reading our spiel, please have a look and post your thoughts on the Figures website: Which postings do you connect with and why? Can you spot any key themes that are worth developing? What are some issues that you might like to be addressed? Are there any problems with this approach?
We look forward to you sharing your thoughts about Figures.
June 11th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Reading the True Comments section about the team colours showing the “national psyche” made me wonder what it says about the All Blacks!
The Suburbia section particularly interested me as I am inundated with info re ‘Over 55 secure residential estates’, which represent developments rather like caravan parks, where little built boxes are butted up close to one another. However, this ‘concentration’ isn’t reflected in the price of each box. Someone is making a not insubstantial fortune. (So now I’m renting a non-secure unit, which is butted up and surrounded by other little boxes!)
The Personal Body was innovative as far as I’m concerned - probably because I’ve never been on the fashion treadmill. It still strikes me as fashionable uniformity. I always remember working at C.I.T. in Melbourne (now Monash, Caulfield) where my boss (Dean of Applied Science) was horrified at the thought of office staff wearing a uniform and couldn’t understand my disinterest either way!
June 16th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Pat said on the following posts:
Info Zombies post:
I think a symbolic form of some sort that is present on every posting with short ironic statements is punchier than comic style irony that references many other cultural styles. I guess it is relates to some of the ideas that interest me but I think the words that are used by politicians and social commentators, when exposed in a different context, are silly or worrying enough to create humour.
The personal body as information design post:
Colours are so powerful, we only need to look at the orange colour worn by the supporters of the political party in one of the Eastern European elections and currently green being worn by the opponents of Ahmedinijad in Iraq. In Indonesia each political party has a colour that supporters wear during elections. Is this now seen as a non violent form of protest?
June 16th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Nathan says on Info Zombies:
See the only problem is, there just aren’t enough guns lying around in this country. Because if there ever is a evil virus or ridiculously spooky chain of events that causes people to turn into mindless flesh eating zombies, we cant really shoot at them. And throwing phones only works if your an actor. and even then its effectiveness may be questionable.
Perhaps this has already been thought about in the war room and mapped out on the ‘big board’? hmmm
Sarcastic satire of satire would be interesting. But would that just cancel itself out?
June 16th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Pat, an interesting idea of having ironic statements with each post. This could build up a textual narrative of the ideas that are being raised. It has some commonality with the postcard ideas that we looked at, have you seen the Postcard post FIG001 The Postcards?
June 17th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The social link between a ‘figurative’ space and physical environments demonstrated through ideas of locative media seem like not only a fascinating area of exploration, but also increasingly necessary as we are witnessing the beginnings of developments in new means of language and linguistics, namely of a visual nature.
Pictorial and other visual forms of language afford a layering of communication that verbal/textual language strips away. As an artist, it is this visual imagery language system that I rely on to communicate the unknown, personally and socially.
Developing visual systems that act as links between virtual and actual spaces seems crucial. With locative media, the information becomes spatialised in a way that blurs definition of external and internal and scale, which, I think, are layers of traditional (written/text) communication forms that have been largely stripped away by the communication environments and protocol. Prior to the development of mass advertising, media, etc., language held a very different status. Now living through the media environments that we interact in, being able to ‘hyperlink’ our actual environments into informatic space through ideas such as locative media and Web 3D is crucial.
As we progress through new forms of media, language systems develop new layers of dimensionality. While up until the last century, transcribed/ visual communications were largely two dimensional, existing only in X,Y axis and largely asynchronous. With the advent of electricity, we saw a time-base dimension adapted, thus allowing for synchronous communications to develop, i.e. telegram, fax, email, IM. Today, we are witnessing the development of complex dimensionality that thru the Internet and the Web is transcoding written/visual communications into a “hyperreal” that allows us to integrate into our communications. It seems only ‘natural’, that in this progression we develop forms of enhanced visual imagery semiotics that can provide for increased accessibility, or entry, into communications.
The idea of locative media acting as a multidimensional spatialised glyph system is not far away. We see current locative art projects, like the clunky, rudimentary Britglyph project, as a precursor to developing global communication systems that work to bring about new dialogues, and methods of communication, existing in physical, cyber, and global dimensions.
Coming back to this concept of mapping out new forms of visual communication, I’m interested to see how we adapt the information, that often seems removed from the personal, cloaked in cyber-anonimity, back into realworld perspective. Re-introducing location, developing communications that incorporate both physical and cyber spaces. Is it as simple as introducing or transcoding the constructs developed in computing, new media, and telecommunications environments to our physical spaces; like giving preference functions, drop down menus, tag clouds , and recognition devices to our transport, private, or public spaces? Or will it be much more complex, allowing for the development of new forms of communication that exist on the foundations of technologically developed cyber communications systems, like an imagery based telepathic network based on AI engines. With Web 3.0 and intuitive computing systems this seems like it’s not too far off.
How can these new forms allow for new experiences of information? How do new experiences of the world around us, transcribed/abstracted into ‘information’ adapt us, or change the way we live with the world (environments/cultures)? How are artists developing these forms, and why?
June 17th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
True Colours: Flag colours perhaps represent the omnipotence of an all-seeing, all-knowing ‘Big Brother’ who determines, monitors and controls the culture of our country. This sense of an authoritative, all-encompassing uber-institution, (or God as a country), arguably allows for the existence and naturalisation of nationalism. It gives the population an identity within the world. In identifying with ‘the green and gold’, (as opposed to the colours of the Australian flag), I would suggest that there is a reclaiming of a localised identity, one that is perhaps still determined and validated by the uber-institution, yet specific to ‘only us’. The flag and its colours is our identity in the world. The green and gold, (and perhaps ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as opposed to ‘Advanced Australia Fair’) is our identity to ourselves. It at once separates us from the rest of the world, and increases nationalism, allowing for an ‘us against them’ mentality. It is little wonder these are the colours used in international sport.
June 17th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Suburbia: Fantastic. A catalogue and its promises of a perfect lifestyle extended beyond IKEA and into the public domain. Your catalogue looks fantastic. It has, I think, great subversive possibilities, aka, the scene of guerilla terrorism in the movie ‘Fight Club’ in which the ‘What to do in case of emergency’ instruction booklets are doctored to show the iconic cartoon images of people screaming, on fire, and terrified. I’m not sure what I’d add to it, but I like the idea of something suitably small and compact, possibly inflatable.