Tag Archives: photography

some notes about the social web

Smiling Asian woman taking a selfie

our lives changed a lot with the advent of the social web

but the social web alone isn’t the sole force behind the major shift in our cultures and our behaviors as this brand spankin’ new, always-on society of netizens take the social web and add the personal portability of our mobile devices PLUS the embedded camera technologies that make instant photoSharing as easy as peasy-ness and them’s the 3 magic ingredients that made for some major changes in the world { at least in the Americas } the mobile phone also cracked open the world to this sort of constant tower of babble that we’re all exposed to ‘out there’ in the multiverse as well — and you know what i’m talkin’ ’bout here Willis — the aural patina of constant chatter in public places like our big chain convenience stores, malls and other previously semi-polite spaces now fall victim to the ubiquitous right we all now enjoy as carriers of mobile technologies — anyplace, anytime you like you can make a call and unleash the oftentimes mindless detritus of your daily proclivities upon your publicSpace neighbors around you — and, of course, you can snap a selfie or totally lifeStream just about any part of your day, no matter how ultra-trivial it might feel { or actually be } to create those special instaMemories { complete with orange-faded photo filter effects and cutesy captionings }

of course, as a cyberSurrealist, i completely understand some untapped potential for all of this self-oriented social media broadcasting goin’ on in the world all around us

as annoying as it sometimes feels, its interesting to think about our photo-documentiatic obsessions and just how much of our human experience — whether its considered to be an actual reflection of the mirror-life we’re all creating or some sort of simulated performance alter-egotistical manifestation of what we want our lives to be projected as — gets uploaded to the interwebz …

a transitional shift

from a user-centered experience designer’s point of view, and as a self-proclaimed ‘transitional’ { mentally living somewhere between our current, over-mediated lifestyle and the previous all-analog lifestyle that came before the advent of these myriad new technological advances }, its psychologically fascinating to see the show that’s being put on and to understand the subconscious outlet that’s being documented and curated every single day — these communication channels and our usage, whether intentionally used for the purpose of cataloguing the transition or not, totally capture the immense changes we’ve all been dealing with, and the results of our introduction to these new avenues of output and interaction have tremendous and very telling influence over who we really are as a society and what we desire and what we’re becoming

these telecommunication technologies, like drugs and alcohol and other addictive consumer products, reduce our inhibitions and allow us all to behave the way we were born to behave sans our previously semi-polite social standards — walls and windows in the previous social structure remain cracked and broken open and the little Freudian Pandora’s Boxes residing at the core of our psyches have been picked open with all of our interior monsters now unleashed upon the new world of more honest { but unfortunately not nice } human behavior through the stage of our social media we see the performance of our subconscious selves acted out on an hourly basis — we share, we like, we comment with the tips of our sublingua straniera interiori — our inside-out existence technologically augments the subconscious beasts within us all, unless, of course, you’ve figured out a way to get some conscious control over what you so choose to tweet and share and instaPost to these supposedly social broadcast mechanisms

read more at cyberSurreal on tumblr

Social Media Breakfast 15 | CommuniSpace | Watertown MA

Here we go … just a few of the many photos I took while at the SMB15 with Bryan Person, Rachel Happe and Diane Hessan all talking about ‘The Power and Peril of Online Communities’

brilliant little streaks a light ::..

driving through Boston @ night … capturing light w/ my digital camera + some purposeful jigglings … check it out … see if you like …

photos for sound + texture

i took these shots over the weekend to capture some of the conceptuals for my Sound for Dynamic Media course ( taking it by night this summer as part of my grad work through The DMI ) … we started by capturing audio samples … then, the idea was to put image representation to the sound … and now, this week we need to have our first time-based ( video or video-like ) piece ( part 1 of 2 parts ) done by Wednesday …
my idea ( which came to me shortly after collecting the sound ) is to create some point-of-view visuals from the perspective of some creature … i’m thinking of making it all in Flash ( since my copy of AfterEffects was completely ass ) … i’m thinking a nice pinhole-like mask that moves about the screen … quick scurrying images w/ little stops + starts here + there … that’s the idea that i’m running with for now … of course, the titles of things come easier to me than the actual work ;] … so i was thinking of calling it something like automagicCreature # ( inserts #s 1 through whatever for the version # … or perhaps automagicCreature beta through versions 2.0 … something sort of software, semiSurreal, nice ‘n’ chocolatey ) …