05 12/14
09:00

Tool for the visualization of historical data (Chronologies)

Errata:

  1. In page 563 in paragraph 1 the sentence “In recent years, research in the humanities have started to …” should be: “In recent years, researchers in the humanities have started to …
  2. In page 563 in paragraph 2 the sentence ” … because there is no way to intervene from outside the way how the program process and render the data.” should be: “… because there is no way to intervene from outside the way how the program processes and renders the data.

The processing sketch is available here: http://bit.ly/1pifGi1

Update 20 Jan 2015: Bibliographic reference:

Montaña, Ricardo Cedeño; “Design of a tool for the visualization of historical data”, p. 563-566 . In: Proceedings of the XVIII Conference of the Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics: Design in Freedom [=Blucher Design Proceedings, v.1, n.8]. São Paulo: Blucher, 2014.
ISSN 2318-6968, DOI 10.5151/despro-sigradi2014-0116

Download

[pdfjs-viewer url=http://drnn1076.pktweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/rcedenom-sigradi-2014.pdf viewer_width=600px viewer_height=700px fullscreen=true download=true print=true openfile=true]

18 03/14
09:31

new dictionary entry: DIYer

Tags: | Categories: diseño, DIY

The noun DIY has got a new subentry in the Oxford English Dictionary: DIYer

DIYer (n.): A person who engages in do-it-yourself activities; an amateur (in construction, repair, etc.).

The OED offers two examples of its use:

  • The relentless DIY’er has recorded hundreds of his songs in a makeshift studio in his bedroom, where you can imagine him retreating from a frigid evening.
  • A do-it-yourselfer – or DIY’er – is allowed to do everything else, so the great Kiwi tradition of people being able to build their own homes has not been affected, at all.

05 01/14
12:22

Portable Media: I carry therefore I produce

Portable Media: 10 January-7 March at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Georgenstraße 47. EG. Atrium. 10117 Berlin.

Super 8 film cartridge

This exhibition shows some of the results of the research project DIY and portable media for moving image production. A series of cameras and storage units, a historical examination of portable media, and three video productions are exhibited. Three presentations will take place during the exhibition. Two special guests, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schäffner and Prof. Dr. Frieder Nake, will discuss about media and algorithms. I will talk about the historical development of physical containers for moving images. Portable media emerge from the physical reduction of media supports and the compression of the storage formats into small machines and units. Focusing on the formats and storage units of small gauge film, consumer analogue video, and camera phones, this exhibition highlights the expansion of media carried everywhere and used at any moment.

Programme:

10 Jan 18:00 Opening

10 Jan 18:30 Wolfgang Schäffner. What is a Video? Media Revolutions of the Moving Image

3 Feb 18:30 Frieder Nake. On the Move – Image Algorithm

14 Feb 18:30 Ricardo Cedeño Montaña. Portable Storage: Chargers, Cartridges, Cassettes

17, 24, and 31 Jan 18:00 screening of Super 8 films.

website: http://media.hu-berlin.de/portablemedia

17 09/13
10:01

Luz portátil para vídeo

El díagrama del circuito se puede descargar de http://bit.ly/193yVgF
The electric diagram can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/193yVgF

13 06/13
21:02

Meopta Somet 8 – Kodak Super 8

Tags: , , , | Categories: DIY, technical media

The official history says that the coaxial super 8 cartridge was an innovative design by Kodak Research Laboratories from 1965, but the Czech company Meopta had already produced in 1956 a strikingly similar coaxial cartridge for its camera Somet 8.

Meopta 1956 (photo by Jürgen Lossau)

Kodak 1965 (Photo by Rachel Ryans)
Insides of a super8 cartridge.

08 03/13
11:25

27 03/12
10:08

self-portrait (2012)

| Categories: art, digital media, DIY

 

Self-portrait (2012)


The individual portrait was a Renaissance invention and it has been popular in visual arts since.  Today, a portrait is still described by the stylistic rules of the Renaissance portraiture. In this kind of depiction we observe the subject either in profile or in frontal position; and his or her eyes, nose, and mouth are easily identified as such. We have an idea of how the governing elites of the courts of Florence and Venice looked because they had themselves portrayed. The purpose behind these depictions was always the same: to make the subject identifiable and recognisable as the ruler.

The advent of photography facilitated the production of portraits at an individual scale and made them portable. Nowadays, one of the primary devices for identification is the ID photograph that can be found in ID cards and passports. The style of these photographs is always the same: frontal position, lack of gestures and headdress, and neutral background. Contrary to the Renaissance, the portraitist, photographer, is not necessary as this style is embedded in the photo booth. This style allows to thoroughly measure the face of an individual. The distance between eyes, dimension and position of the nose, width of the mouth, height and breadth of the face, and all other sort of physical features are documented. The aim of this process is the certain identification of each particular person. The modern systems of control in public places like airports and government facilities largely depend upon the boring ID portrait.

13 10/11
09:42

DIY or DIE

Tags: , , | Categories: art, digital media, DIY

DIY encompasses the following propositions:

  • Self-made practices and text. The production and sharing of attitudes and materials is independent of those traditionally imposed by the mass media, namely, by one’s own initiative, own rhythm and way, comprising broadcast-, publish-, design-, and make-it-yourself. The content includes machinimas, game mods, video clips, photo galleries, narratives, news, knowledge, and art.
  • Persistently promotion and circulation across the open media. New tools are embraced to distribute media content. ‘Open media’ describes one single channel without contents. This empty channel is populated and fed by a multiplicity of collaborators. YouTube™, Wikipedia®, and Facebook® are examples of open media that oppose ‘closed media’ that are produced and distributed by one primary collaborator. The ideologies of ‘user empowerment’ and ‘democratization of media’ are permanently and simultaneously repeated by all collaborators of the media, and each member urges others to join, produce, and share.
  • Everything is susceptible of appropriation and becomes source material. During the 1980s and 1990s, postmodernism proclaimed the appropriation of whichever mass media contents happen to be available, generating a frenzied media bricolage [1, p.211]. The nature of source material has changed because of the ubiquity of tools used to capture the world and the ease of production of media content, made possible by digital photo cameras, video cameras, and blogs. Consumers are the source material of the open media; their lives, work, and leisure time are all part of this new content. The media has adapted itself to the logic of the source material.
  • There is no evident intervention of a specialist or a culture industry. Everyone is utterly amateur. There is a blind rejection of hierarchies as seen in professional/amateur relationships, ownership, and scholastic elitism. Although the open media certainly has owners and the tools are designed and produced by professionals, users are kept ignorantly indulged in the pleasure of self-production.



  1. Manovich, Lev. “Generation Flash”. New Media Old Media. A History and Theory Reader. Ed. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan. 2006: Routledge, New York, NY. 209-18.

02 02/11
02:54

Footage appropriation

Tags: , , | Categories: art, digital media, DIY

ap-pro-pri-ate, adj., v.


1.  -adj. particularly suitable; fitting; compatible: remarks appropriate to the occasion.
2.  -v.t. to set apart for a specific purpose or use: to appropriate funds for an environmental study.
3. to take to or for oneself; take possession of.
4. to take without permission; expropriate.

[1515-25; < LL approopriātus, ptp of appropriāre to make one’s own = L ap– ap-‘ + –propriāre, v. der. of  propious one’s own].

ap-pro-pri-a-tion, n.


1. the act of appropriating.
2. anything appropriated for a special purpose, esp. money authorized to be paid from the public treasury.

[1325-75; ME (< MF) >LL]

Abbreviation key LL: late Latin; ME: middle English; MF middle French.
Source: Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. McGRAW-HILL Edition, 1991.


22 02/10
21:47

Machinima has met Bremen-Bremerhaven

| Categories: art, digital media bremen, DIY, thesis

HI, I’m glad to share the presentation of the machinima seminar I’ve been conducting in the master programme in Digital Media in Bremen and Bremerhaven.

m106machinima-workshop

This seminar titles: Do-it-yourself media: about machinima and other hybrid beasts and tackles DIY, machinima, and hybrid media as means to research in grass-roots digital media practices.

  • Do-it-yourself (DIY) the low budget practice with high expectations, is a form of both media resistance and participation. Nowadays, DIY has become a de-facto attitude towards media, everyone is utterly a media producer and operator of machinimas, game mods, mobile apps, blogs, wikis, online radios. All these expressions have steady challenged the traditional mass media structures of content’s control. DIY addresses at the cultural impact that concepts such as appropriation, repurposing, openness, and remix have on the nature of digital media.
  • Machinima describes a relatively recent species of moving image that results from the mixture of playing video games and producing movies, a hybrid that silently in the underground but massive realm of video games has lured and inspired thousands to enter its territories. In the late 1990s, devoted video game players started to use video game software for experimental movie production. This is a marginal practice that utilizes recordings of gameplay to make short and simple narrative movies.
  • Hybrid media. What has made possible the apparition of the hybrid media? Which role plays the automation of several media languages and techniques in the computer, in the appearance of such hybrids? How could be described the aesthetics of these hybrids? Should we be afraid of them? Thus, this stream looks at the machinic combination of media in rhizomatic surfaces.


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