ICAM 40 / VIS 40: Introduction to Computing in the Arts


FINAL PROJECT

1. Collect information about your use of digital media throughout 1 day (12 hours).
Use of media includes the following: taking digital photos and video (using a camera or a cell phone), editing them using different software, sending them to other people, downloading image, video and audio media from the web sources (podcasts, itunes, Flickr, blogs, P2P, etc.), moving media between different devices (a computer, a MP3 player, a media player, a cell phone, etc.), putting media on your site, blog, myspace page.
In other words, you should note all the operations where you acquire media (recording your own or using media which already exists), modify it, move it between devices, send it to other people, and put it somewhere on the web. Include receiving, sending and forwarding email which has media files or links to media files. Similarly, include chat sessions where media was exchanged.

2. Using a template explained in class, make a diagram which shows the information you collected. For each piece of media, the diagram should show where it came from and what happened to it. Note that the paths taken by media can be long or short - but it has to be minimum two points (i.e. simply looking at photographs on your computer is not a path.) An example of a longer path: I took a digital photograph with a camera, put it on laptop, modified with Photoshop, send it to a friend. An example of a shorter path: I downloaded a set of audio files from the web source, and put them on my iPod. Or: I put an image comment on somebody's myspace page.

3. Take this information and create a visualization. Your visualization should foreground "media mobility" - the movement of media between places, devices, people. It is up to you to come with an interesting way to visualize your data but whatever method you choose, it should be quite different from the diagram you used in step 2. Try to find a visual form which is not only interesting by itself but which communicates the particular aspect of your lives which is relatively new: media mobility (movement of media between devices, places, people on a scale which is historically unprecedented). Ideally the visualization should also reflect media patterns which are specific to you.

Your visualization should either include the labels (which indicate types of media, devices, places, etc.) or it can contain no labels but in this case it should include a separate legend which explains how you translated your data into visual terms (for instance different types may be represented by different colors or different shapes etc).