Final Project - Writing with Light

Chapter 9 - Of Synthetics and Cyborgs

Ritchin opens this chapter with a few interesting thoughts that I’d like to challenge. First of all, Ritchin discusses the future of cameras where a computer will use face recognition to tell us who we are talking to or even record our drunk moments to later view. I don’t know about Ritchin, but I’m pretty sure most people probably would not like to see how embarrassing they were in their inebriated state. Secondly, Ritchin makes a statement about how today everyone is plugged into their phones or iPods, and how you could walk into a café and see all the tables taken by only a single person holding a conversation with someone who is not actually there. Though I’ve had similar experiences in the past, I do feel that today we are moving away from that. True, people are still constantly plugged in to their music, phones, and laptops, but I feel like a form of social etiquette has formed in response to situations like Ritchin’s café experience. People used to do things like that in public because it was cool and new. If you go to a café these days to have a phone call with a friend you just look like a jerk. I found the part of the chapter on Steve Mann and his technologies were interesting, such as facial recognition and underwear that activates the air conditioner. However, none of the things he created were all that necessary or even that much more convenient. I mean I can stand up and walk two feet to the thermostat in my room to change the temperature, and if I were having a conversation with Alan Alda, I sure as hell would not need a computer to tell me so. I think the fact that when parted from these technologies, the man was actually disoriented to the point of needing a wheel chair shows that he is probably much better off without the stuff. He is trading the functionality of his own human machine for a few novelty short cuts.

Chapter 8 - Toward a Hyperphotography

In this chapter Ritchin explores a term he calls “hyperphotography,” which is the ability for digital photography to be linked to other multimedia and provide an interactive experience. Ritchin goes on to talk about the differences between digital and analog photography and the possibilities digital yields by being able to manipulate each single pixel or how easily accessible and instant digital photos are. It was funny that this ended up being the subject of the chapter because today my sister discovered Skype for the first time and was amazed at how far technology had brought us that she could now chat with me when she is over a thousand miles away. Ritchin talks about the video ability that digital photography grants us and Skype is a good example of that. Ritchin also goes on to talk about a day when cameras could be part of our skin and be controlled with brain impulses. This also reminded me of something I learned today about the new Xbox Kinect, which like Skype allows you to video chat but also reads photos of you and inputs the movements into video games. The interesting thing I learned is that apparently the Kinect never actually stops recording you, which makes me think that the digital photo is already becoming a more intrusive part of our lives.

Scanography

Montage

Chapter 7 - The Social Photograph

I feel like Ritchin does a really great job of picking opening quotations that really make you think. Chapter 7 is no exception with a quote that flips the question of photography being a form of art on it’s head by instead asking if it has not changed art’s entire form. I thought that the argument Ritchin then introduces was an interesting one. On one side, you have photos being taken of people to preserve their memory and make their experience well known. On the other side you have the invasion of privacy, and the fact that not everyone wants to be photographed, especially when information has become so accessible with new technologies such as the internet. The second part of the argument made me remember how some tribes thought of being photographed as their soul being stolen from their bodies. Though Ritchin goes on to talk about how information can be expressed through photography, you do have to wonder when it becomes too much. Perhaps with an excess, we are actually limiting ourselves, or limiting photography as an art form as it becomes more about the information it holds.

Chapter 6 - Beginning the Conversation

Ritchin opens up this chapter by recounting an experience he had at a computer graphics conference in Las Vegas where people could hold conversations with a fictional, virtual woman. He also mentions the “Turing Test” which is a contest put on by software companies to see who can develop artificial intelligence capable the most realistic human conversation. I find all this really interesting because I can’t help but notice that we are really beginning to blend reality and the digital world. Entire worlds are created for movies that are now getting hard to distinguish from real environments. Video games are becoming so realistic that they look like the movies! The only reason you can tell that they are fiction is because you know that nothing in our reality exists as you are viewing it there on the screen. It also makes me very curious to know where photography is now going with this. I’ve heard talk of 3D cameras in the make. Who knows, maybe one day the newspapers will resemble those in the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Ritchin expands his ideas with the possibility of having a conversation with a dead relative. That to me opened of the dangers of the advances of technology. If you could some how capture the essence of a deceased family member, why stop there? At that point anyone could be copied, willingly or not, which could lead to a lot of trouble.

Exercise 5 - Film Scan Smack Down

Chapter 5 - Image, War, Legacy

Ritchin begins this chapter speaking of the power of image and how it can sometimes come back to haunt us. He goes on to give an example of 9/11 that I don’t altogether agree with. Ritchin talks of Arabs being portrayed as “anonymous villains” in the media causing such destruction as kidnappings and the hi-jacked planes of September 11^th. Somehow I think their motives went beyond the media. As chapter 5 progresses, Ritchin gives another interesting example of the power of image with Nixon vs John F. Kennedy. He tells us that before their televised debate, Nixon was actually favored. However, Kennedy’s charms in person on screen won the public over. A quotation by Ray Price was included in this chapter stating that voter approval comes down to a “chemistry between the voter and the image of a candidate.” I feel like that could be easily applied to the most recent election, where Obama seemed to have a much better appearance in the media.