Panopticism

Panopticism summery by Kelly bruce/Cantrell.

Panopticism is the theory that criminals and deviants will behave and refrain from bad behavior if they feel they are being watched at any given moment.

A panopticon was a prison system that enabled a guard or “watcher” to see into any one of the prison cells at any given time without having to run from room to room, this was done not by the use of modern technology but by the design of the building. Circular in shape, the prison would have a centre that oversaw all the other cells and that way the guard in the middle could simply turn and look into any room of his choice.

The prisoners were not aware “when” they were being watched, they were simply aware that there was a “possibility” that they were being watched at any time and so the panopticon had a reversed psychology effect on the prisoners that ensured their good behavior.

There are many aspects of modern day culture that reflect Panopticism, for example CCTV, everywhere we go we are subtly “reminded” that we are being watched by CCTV, or that we are on camera, thieves will be prosecuted, this is a neighborhood watch area, etc. We see these signs on buses, trains, in shopping outlets, or even in your local neighborhood area.

But does this technique work in today’s society as it may have done back in history? On some level yes it does, when accompanied by other factors such as bright lights, public places and patrolling police officers.

But in cases of solitude and high crime areas people are “not” scared by these messages, but instead “offended” by them, and some may even see them as a challenge to act out worse crimes or acts of vandalism.

Do security cameras make a person feel safe when walking down the dark street at night? In my experience I would have to say no, someone could still attack you or worse, yes their blurred image may possibly be on camera depending on location and availability, angles etc. But what good has that done? Did it stop you from being attacked? No. And the attacker knows this also, they also know that their chances of being caught from CCTV are very low, seeing as we all know how bad the picture quality on a CCTV camera actually is. (thanks to television broadcasts and home CCTV kits, CCTV surveillance in movies etc)

So to an extent CCTV can work but only if accompanied by other more secure methods of preventing crime. It is also down to the individual and their state of mind as to whether they are particularly bothered about the notion of being watched, or if they are so used to it as a way of life that the thought never even crosses their minds. I for one, never feel as though I am being “watched” as such when I walk around the city, although I am aware that CCTV is in place, I do not actually envision anyone actually “watching” it 24 hours a day, at worst someone may review the recordings every so often or maybe even only in the case of a crime being reported, so I don’t really feel as though I am being “watched” in this way.

Interestingly though, if one is to make eye contact with such a device, they may look away uncomfortably, as though “seeing” the camera itself, as a pose to a sign that just tells you there is a camera, makes one feel less at ease, or in some cases more at ease, in feeling you can be seen because you can see “them”. (“Them” in this case being the robotic eyes, or in other words CCTV cameras) This notion takes me back to John Bergers “ways of seeing” essay and the first few lines written about how “soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen”.

Another aspect of panopticism is that of “reality TV shows” in which people “willingly” subject themselves to the public eye by entering an area, house or show in which they are being constantly monitored by a “fly in the wall” surveillance system in order to showcase their everyday qualities and so called “real-life” personalities to the general public.

Although one could argue that this is not “reality” TV because although the people may not be trained actors or professionals, they will still behave differently because they will know at all times they are being watched, on both a conscious and unconscious level.

The same applies to the stressed out parent in the grocery store who finds that his or her children are not behaving as they would at home and is torn about what to do about it in such a public setting away from the norm at home, Even a small child can pick up on this difference and therefore is already being subjected to the notion of Panoptics before they are even learning how to articulate a sentence.

ways of seeing

Ways of seeing, J. Berger

Summery by Kelly Bruce/Cantrell.

Bergers essay on “ways of seeing” discusses how the reproduction of an original work of art mystifies the viewer of the piece and changes the context and meaning behind the artwork.

Through reproduction the entire meaning behind a piece of artwork can be lost entirely or changed to something utterly different. For example one could crop an area of a master painting to change it into a portrait rather than a landscape painting, words can be added to an abstracted piece of work to subtlety lead the viewer toward a hinted conclusion or thesis.

Does reproduction lessen the value of an original piece of art? Or does it in fact increase the value of the artwork? On one hand reproduction enables artwork to be brought to the attention of the masses, rather than the privileged minority it once served. But this also devalues the original in that it can now be mass produced and sold on at a cheaper price, It is no longer a rarity, or a one off piece that you need to go visit in a gallery, but a flat and shiny reproduced image that can be found just about anywhere.

So does this devalue the “original”? Now referred to as “the original” thanks to the commodity that is reproduction, or does it in fact make the original piece of work more sought after, as it has now become a rarity in itself?

The artwork is no longer defined by what it is or what it conveys but by it’s value as an original piece of artwork, and is often only declared “art” when it’s originality and heritage can be proven and certified.

The reproduced artwork’s meaning is lost the moment it is copied and transferred to a different setting, for the meaning and the message behind a piece of work is also seen in it’s surroundings, and in the brush strokes and intensity of the original.

A reproduced image now hung above hundreds of different mantelpieces, in different rooms around the world with different lighting and color schemes surrounding them, a varying assortment of furniture and other items to compliment or shadow the work can completely change it’s context and meaning because it is now “seen” differently, taking into account all these other factors.

Ways of seeing discusses how we “see” things before we can verbalize them, and how what we see around us and who is seeing us in return affects our sense of placement and belonging in the world. The same criteria can then be applied to the artwork, and how the use of the camera affects our perception of the photograph. We see the angles, and arrangement that the photographer, (or artist) wants us to see, we see what they saw, this originality and expression is lost however in the stigma that is reproduction.

The art of the past holds no authority like it once did, it has now become political, and all about the ethics of money, trade and value. Berger states that the “only” reason why art of the past has become so political is because a people or class has been cut off from it’s own past, a past in which that same class of people were able to situate themselves in history in a way that they cannot today.

Evaluation for video part 2

Video Part Two, “In a minute” Evaluation by Kelly Bruce.

 

I was excited about doing the 2^nd part of the video module as I wanted to get a better understanding of filming and using the camera, as for the first part of video early on in the year I felt my video could have been a lot stronger.

This time I would get to work in a group as last time I had been limited to working alone, as I had started the course later than the rest of the class.

I chose to work with Hoi Kam and Katharine as I was working with them on the second life brief and we all felt we worked well together and it would be worthwhile to continue as such, we had even given ourselves a group identity of 3K, and were going to have this in the credits of our film, but for some reason I think that part was forgotten! But nevermind!

At first I secretly wanted to work on my own as I had an idea and wanted it all to myself, for the fact that I just didn’t want anyone else to try and change it so maybe I was being a little selfish but as it happens I told Katharine and Hoi Kam and they both really liked it and along the way we did change things but as a team, my initial worries of having my idea completely altered were all for nothing! And I am very pleased with the result of the video and felt that we all again worked very well as a team.

To keep things organised I wrote a script, which we all read, but to be honest we had talked about the story so much that we all had a clear understanding of how it was going to work out in our heads! And because of this communication everything went to plan on the day of filming and we got everything done pretty quickly!

We did change things along the way slightly, for example the first scene was meant to be filmed twice so that we could use special effects and have the ghost on screen with the student at the same time and for her to replace her reflection in the mirror, however due to time and technical limitations we decided to not use special effects, but to just opt out of showing certain aspects of the film in the camera to give the effect we wanted in a different way.

In the 2^nd scene we were going to use special effects to have the ghost’s reflection follow the student through the reflective surfaces of pictures, glass etc. but instead we found a small square indoor window and decided that the student would stop here so that the ghost could make an appearance behind her though the window instead!

I had intended on playing a part in the movie having felt that if I wasn’t in it then it wouldn’t feel like my work, as my past videos have always had me in them, but playing the director was a good decision as I got to direct the actors who were very professional and much easier to work with than my mum! (Last video) and I also got to oversee what was going on and decide how I wanted the camera’s to operate etc.

But I made sure to take on board any ideas that Hoi Kam and Katharine had changing things here and there so that we were all happy.

I think the key to our project being successful was the cooperation and communication between us, which proved to be very effective, and helped us with time management.

We edited the video together, and Katherine did a great job on the title and credits, (she also helped me with the camera as I was unsure how to set up the tri-pod and silly things like that!)

I am a little disappointed that we were not shown any advanced video techniques in order to improve on the first attempt, besides a ten minute introduction or demonstration on how to set up the correct lighting for ‘green-screen’ use we didn’t get any further tutorage, something that I feel would have been useful, however I am sure if I had spoken to my tutors I would have gotten some extra help but as I was in a team did not need to worry so much as we all pulled together and helped each other so It’s not like there was no support, and we were assisted as much as possible with getting the footage off the tape although this was a tad frustrating as the AV suite was always too busy for us to get into, it’s a shame we didn’t have any dedicated time allocated to us as a year, but we managed without it ok once we got a tape player into the studio.

With regards to the sound, we used a soundtrack from an "Anime" however this was a mistake as we cannot enter the video into the one minute film festival because we would need copyright permission so I changed the sound by getting some "royalty free" sound effects from "sound-dogs.com".

The effects we used were “add noise” and “blink” to get the flickering, which I am not 100% happy with, it’s not the look we were after, we wanted a more static-like TV interference effect but were limited with time and unfortunately had no training in after effects which I have heard that we could have done all that and more in such as making the ghost scenes play backwards to give a creepy effect, I only wish we had had a full 2 weeks training induction for that but I’m sure we will next year so that is something to look forward to!

Overall I am very happy with the outcome and look forward to advancing my video skills in the next year working both alone and in a team.

 

Finished! word summery/ evaluation

well I've made a design for the outside instructing people on what we are and what we do and how they can get the most out the service, I felt a sign would be easier and more eye-catching than a basket or a box with instructions in it.

Katherine has managed to find some mannequin dummies and scatter them around which is brilliant! I wish we had found about this earlier because I had ideas of having all the characters really funky and bizarre but plain and simple is better than nothing I guess!

I'm not sure if we have to write a word summery or not so I will write one anyway, (I hope we do have to write one after me now wasting valuable morning time to do one!) 

Evaluation/first thoughts:

At first I didn't really care much for second life, seeing it as a "glamorized" chat room for people who didn't get out much! (I'd been on it once or twice a couple years ago and it was full of strippers and Chav's- from the impression I got from the way they were speaking and the strippers said they were strippers in real life and second life!) and from that I just couldn't be bothered with it, I never really knew about all the building and stuff you could do.

Anyway at the start of this project we were shown how to build basic items and script, but unfortunately I was catching up on another brief for the first or second session, (because due to my old hard-drive crashing I lost half of my previous project) so having missed that session I was clearly behind and that kinda through me off track and it took a while for me to get on board again.

I didn't really get into modeling until we got into our groups properly and started making it, before that I had just been throwing ideas about and doing research- petrified of actually going into second life and probably delaying the process for as long as possible!

Objective:

Perhaps I should outline what our objective was, we had the choice of healthy living or health and well being from the direct gov website and we then had to use second life to build a 3D environment based around the chosen area. My group chose health initially focussing on general health and our plan was to make a virtual doctors surgery with different rooms for different problems but after a talk with Anna we realized that it would be better to chose one specific area, and I had been toying with the idea of sexual health anyway, so we all agreed that to make it a sexual health clinic, and that it would have the most use for second life users. 

It is often an embarrassing  topic for some and obviously can be quite sensitive, so we felt users would benefit from having a confidential place where they could go for advice and information if they needed it without the awkwardness of being face to face.

We started by developing leaflets and undergoing market research- by asking people to fill in our questionnaires, from this we found that people were thinking along the same lines as us anyway so that was easy! of course a few mentioned the elderly, but I can't really see them using second life or needing sexual advice...

 

Building: 

At first Hoi Kam had built some sort of romanesque looking thing, which I found quite daunting, if she could build that in 5 minutes what could I do?  that kinda put me off for a while, as it was already in place, I didn't know what to do, but then we got our heads together and decided exactly what we were going to do and the next time I visited 2nd life there was a nice big empty space for me to work with, the building had already been made, minus the ceiling and floor! so that inspired me to start something, and then I spent the whole day making a floor and a tunnel into the outside near the sea! (It sounds simple but for a novice it wasn't and I had to mess around with the terrain, textures etc for a while) the next day I started making simple things like block benches, inner walls, I had ideas to hae a gazebo and chairs about the place but couldn't make them for the life of me so I improvised and went and found some freebies! including a water fountain!

Outcome:

Our finished product is fantastic! we are awesome! that's all I have to say. sorry that was a joke, you will have to endure more of my writing yet! The outcome looks great visually and we have the posters with the info and the links, we have freebies and blog links which is great, we have dummies everywhere, (thank you Katherine) which look great too, but of course there are things missing which prevent it from being what it was supposed to be, BUT these things are not possible to achieve as a college project, however if this really were a government funded operation then the following could have been in place: 

A) Interactive nurse, that can respond to simple Q&A interactions

B) Private rooms for consultations, (we have these but they are not "protected" so that conversations therein cannot be picked up)

C) Actual human health officials to control avatars so that advice given is from an authority, (however this would NEVER happen! but it's a thought! and it would never work because no-body would take it seriously and thus the "officials" would be wasting their time)

D) Appointment system, I have written this on the welcome board just for the purpose of this brief, but of course this isn't going to happen without the "staff" and a drop in would be nice too. (this is getting rather silly now so that's enough of my alphabet bullets, I think I am taking myself too seriously!)

Conclusion: 

I'm really pleased with what we have accomplished, I'm happy that I did some scripting and designed the posters and welcome sign, I love what the 3 of us have done, and am really glad we all got to work together! the only thing I would have liked to be different is my confidence in modeling, I would like to have been able to make more in terms of furniture etc. but I don't feel that I didn't contribute, I still feel like I did as much as possible for the capability and limited skills that I have! (for example I made blog links and gave out alot of ideas) Katherine and Hoi Kam were fantastic to work with, and I doubt this project would be what it is now if we hadn't all worked "together". I certainly enjoy 2nd life alot more now from this experience and can see how useful it can be from many different angles, I will definitely consider using 2nd life alot more from now on, (not professionally!) mainly to practice building and perhaps to make my own projects around?

Podcast word summery and video

Hopefully I will be able to post my finished podcast on here, I have been trying to post the animation video on here for days but even if I leave it uploading for hours it still does not finish!

I did manage to get the animation onto youtube but it skips frames and rather than you seeing all 800 frames of animation you see about 20 different stages, if that, so as you can imagine it looks awful!

Anyway back to the podcast, I used the story that I posted earlier about robots taking over the world kind of thing, I have also printed out copies of the wording to hand out so that the class will know what the voice-over is saying, just in case some of it can't be made out, I will know exactly what is being said because I wrote it but they might not.

I thought that I could make the video in half a day to be honest, I had spent most of my time on the animation brief therefore leaving myself with only a few days to do this brief and the tales brief. I had all the images ready and the voice files which I got from AT&T.com where you can get 20 second clips of a chosen electronic voice over that will say whatever you type into the box! In all I had to get 15 clips to finish my story, so it is just over 3 minutes long, well it's 4 minutes long, I hope that is ok and I won't get penalized...

I started off in Final cut and didn't realize just how long the voice and sound elements were so I started by putting in images but I tried to get them to match up with the wording too much, so after a full day of adding images, I found I had only done a quarter of the film! because I was trying to match images to too many words, so I came in late and got the rest done, trying to leave longer pauses between images and not worrying so much about every word matching up, as long as the basic theme of the images went with what was being said.

I'm a little worried about my grade as I went off on one and didn't stick to the brief, but I have now seen other students doing this on other briefs to a larger extent than I have and they didn't get into any bother so I should be fine! anyway it did say to be as creative with it as you want! 

and as I am doing creative writing as an elective I thought I would make it into a story.

If I had given myself more time on this brief I would have created some short animations, more text and edited some more images for the podcast rather than just getting them all off the Internet, although I did put 3 magazine covers together, I didn't have time for anymore, I would also have experimented with editing a bit more and put some effects in, I did put one or two in at the end but would have liked to have had it more consistent. 

I'm happy with my result and find it interesting, I like my story and the way I have dragged digital media students into it! I also think I have done a good job at syncing the images to the wording, this was harder than it looks! I never thought about everything I had written for example, when the robot speaks about humans catching fewer infections, I'd not prepared any images so decided to show some close-ups of infections and blood cells. when the robot talks about controlling human diet, I had to find images to depict fat people then toned people then something that could represent a robot controlling diet! this wasn't easy! In the end I found pictures of robots serving food and a robot hand holding an egg! and so on and so forth!

If I could do this brief again I would do as I said with the images, spend more time on the story, I never edited it or used a thesaurus I just used the first draft so I would have spent more time adapting the story, the robot voice is ok if you spend alot of time putting in fullstops, spaces, commas, etc you will eventually get it to sound alot better, or I could have used a human voice, If I did it again I would give alot more thought into the voice, but given the time that I got this done in I feel I put alot of thought and effort into this and am happy with the result.

Not to mention I have been blogging and thinking about robots in the future and how they might affect out daily routines for the past few weeks, I had been doing another brief that required more of my attention so found it difficult to manage my time.

Update for 500 word animation summary

AT LAAAST!!!

My animation is finished! I managed to get into college today and got some help in getting it tweaked here and there, I got my issues fixed and now it's done! I totally re-did the scene with the girl in it cause it just didn't fit in, but I decided to make her slide into the initial background instead of just jumping into another background that didn't match.

So i'll leave off here cause I have to get on with my powerpoint presentation now!

and here is the uploaded final video, (let's hope it uploads quicker at college!)

500 word summery for Flash animation brief

For this brief we were given a choice of 3 companies to create a flash based animation for, that could be put onto a promotional website.

 of the 3 choices I chose Pylones gift shop because I wanted to do something different and figured half the class would pick marvel! besides I'm not particularly interested in marvel.

Anyway I started this project by brainstorming a few ideas in my sketchbook and then creating a storyboard for the idea I wanted to stick with. 

This was to vectorize the "gifts" using illustrator and then bringing those images into flash I planned on having them dance around the screen after bursting from a gift box, I decided to use Christmas as a theme and have the gifts coming from a present in someones living room, dancing around the room and also adding color as they went, I was going to follow this up with a slogan along the lines of pylones adding color at christmas.

To get the color element in there I used 2 backgrounds which I edited in photoshop, a black and white and a colored version of the same background and then altering the alpha faded the black and white background where necessary so that the colored background could shine through as the gifts danced around.

To get them to dance I decided to use guidelines and motion tweens, due to time constrictions I kept the items static, it would have been nice to have some of them moving individually as well but given the time and the sheer amount of hassle and frustration I went through with using flash decided it was not possible to do.

At the end of the film I planned on having another scene depicting a person arriving from the hallway, at this point the gifts were to dive back into the box, undiscovered... however due to the time limitations and technical ability I had to leave this out and instead just brought the girl into the current scene.

I would say the influence behind my work on this brief has definitely been a range of Anime movies that I have seen over the last few years or so, If I had to name one it would be paprika, or more specifically the marching scene in paprika, which encompasses a marching army of inanimate objects, I also took the music from the Intro of this film for my animation, however I could only get a small clip for free, so I had the choice of looping it or cutting it and adding more music, which is what I did, at the end of the scene a girl comes in and the music changes.

I feel I have tried my best on this brief, although am not 100% happy with the outcome, this is because I only have basic knowledge in flash, (a few introductory sessions) and found I didn't always get the help I needed when I needed it. 

of course there was only one tutor available for the duration of this brief who had to tend to the whole class alone, so it's understandable that I couldn't get all the tutorage I needed.

I found alot of problems and frustration with using flash, however after these things were explained to me and I knew how to resolve them I can now say I feel fairly confident in using flash, although clearly at a basic level, I feel there is still more that I need to learn and am sure I will with further briefs.

I feel I have done well given the circumstances and have definitely got a basic understanding of flash, there are still things I want to know and am sure in time I will find out! 

overall I am happy with the first half of my animation, but the 2nd part needs improvement.

(note: since writing this I have improved the second half and am alot happier with it!)

one other thing was that I was nervous about using thousands of frames, (I have learning problems with math and anything to do with numbers makes me freeze up basically) so as I'm not experienced in flash and to avoid confusion I kept them shorter thinking I could add frames and expand it later, of course I then found out that If i do this it will severely slow down the entire sequence, so I had to leave it as it was, otherwise delete it and start again! and I don't think I can do 3-4 weeks work again in a couple of days so it will have to be left as it is, which is around 825 frames, making the animation about 33 seconds long.

If I could do this brief again I would spend less time on vectorizing the images, I would have made an animatic, (and I really hope I don't lose marks for that because we were told we could do an animatic or a storyboard and it was not made clear that marks would be lost for not doing an animatic?) as this may have helped with realization, after the presentation of the storyboards I decided to just get on with my Flash as I knew what I wanted to happen, however it did not work that way! I would also plan my time alot better as you don't realize how precious it is until it's gone! Although I did dedicate almost all my time to this project for the past 2 weeks, I haven't worked on anything else because of it, I haven't even given my family the time of day because of it! so It's not an issue of not putting enough time into it, it's probably more about managing that time, which i'm sure if i had been confident in flash would have been easier!

here is the finished quicktime file, hopefully it will upload in college as I tried at home and it wouldn't upload!

(can't believe it, it's been an hour now and it STILL hasn't uploaded!)

(got it to upload at last but the quality is very very bad!!)