Get Interactive YO!

Yesterday (16/10/09) I spent the whole day getting interactive. 

I started with our second task creating a Google map I didn’t have a Google account so first I set up an account and started to look at Google maps I had used Google maps before as I think the satellite view is fantastic and also really handy if you’re looking for place’s so the task was not so much a task as much to have a fiddle, I decided to recreate my walk from my psychogeography journey onto the map so people could see which way I went and also do the walk if they wish. To do all this I first watched the ‘How to create a “My Map” in Google Maps’ it was pretty easy to understand and very easy to pick up but worth watching before I started…

So I started my map I found on Google maps where I started my walk and added a place mark then drew a line to another stop and added a place mark this carried on till the end of my journey when you add a new placemark you can give it a title change the icon upload a photo and write a description, so i did from my photos I took during my original walk I uploaded them onto my Flickr account and copied the url to put them on my map when you click on the placemarks you will see a photo of that area I was quite proud of this, but really its just the start I will add more to my Psychogeography Journey Walk, a different route at a different time of day maybe, add video to it and also add more to my map the other part of the journey add more text and make it even maybe like a story like ‘Penguin Books webpage google map book The 21 Steps’ which I took a brief look at and it seemed pretty good and maybe how mine might end up like with some more work who knows, but for now heres My Google Map.

Yesterday I also noticed after creating a Google account I now had a igoogle (your own personalised Google homepage) which is so cool with its little apps to Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Twitter, the weather, a few games and my own choice of header I found all this quite fun and spent some time on it, being all interactive. Because I could get an app for Twitter I decided to go back on my twitter account which I created ages ago to see what all the fuss was about I now have started using which you can see to the right hand side… Here’s my igoogle page layout…

I also still being in a interactive mood created a Delicious account for all my bookmarking needs after all this I widgeted it up on my wordpress as you can see to the right again where i have my updated Flickr account my Twitter and my Delicious account.

So I had a great day getting all interactive online. Also while thinking about interactivity I remembered this video by the band All Time Low called Weightless I think it has quite a funny look at interactivity take a look…

Not so interactive… old is better… and we are all sheep!?!

Lev Manovich thinks new interactivity stinks and isn’t what it used to be… he’s right but also not right at the same time…

He talk of how before computers and internet our forms of interactivity were more personal for examples games like chess, card games and board-games your interactive with other people and also the game, other than how he sees new games where it’s like you are being controlled you do what your told it’s a form of manipulation you think you’re playing a game but your being guided and told what to do. Before this course and reading extract’s I never saw games like this I thought they were the main type of interactivity I now find it funny that I saw it like this because if you think about it interactivity is a huge thing and hard to think what’s not interactive now. 

Lev also doesn’t like the internet…

“I cannot but see Internet as a communal apartment of Stalin era: no privacy, everybody spies on everybody else, always present line for common areas such as the toilet or the kitchen. Or I can think of it as a giant garbage site for the information society, with everybody dumping their used products of intellectual labor and nobody cleaning up. Or as a new, Mass Panopticum (which was already realized in communist societies) — complete transparency, everybody can track everybody else.” (Lev Manovich ON TOTALITARIAN INTERACTIVITY (notes from the enemy of the people) http://www.manovich.net/TEXT/totalitarian.html)

This all being true with the likes of social networking MySpace, Twitter, Facebook even blogging people just ‘stalking’ yes it really fun and interactive and I think Lev has a point about not just excepting new technology with open arms as older forms of interactivity can be better reading a book even submerging yourself into it. I believe its fair to say you can still have an equal mix I still read play board-games, even chess not that long ago, but I also use the internet and think it’s one of the greatest inventions, but it might be getting to smart for its own good and people get to obsessed with some aspects for example the game ‘Second Life’ I think that’s interactivity madness… but I’m starting to get more interactive as we speak ‘igoogle’ for one which I shall talk about later…

It’s funny how we all seem to follow one and other I found the video The Power Of Conformity very funny and thought it is very much true to other thing other that people in lifts, one person gets MySpace ooo what’s MySpace I’ll create an account another gets a Facebook do you have one? No? Make one so you do, and now with Twitter don’t have one? Get one! thing is you think your making them because you want one, it’s got nothing to do with the fact everyone else has them and you don’t and you feel left out, not at all… but it goes for much more than just social networking it goes for games and game consoles and mobile phones do you have an iphone there great advertising craziness app here, app there, app every bloody where, it’s the most up-to-date interactive thing around text, call, play, music, IMS,  internet for all your Twitter and Facebook needs, but who really needs it?

So Lev Manovich’s dystopian view of the NEW interactivity is in some way true we shouldn’t just absorb and welcome with open arms every new interactive bit of technology because we may regret it one day.

Task 1 (TICK) Complete.

During our first workshop lecture on Tuesday (06/10/09) we spoke about Psychogeography and our first Task which was to make a 1min psychogeographical video.

Psychogeography is “precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals” (taken from Psyychogeography and the derive webpage) in plain English when we walk somewhere we will always choose or maybe not even think about which way we go it’s like an automatic route planned out in your head for example my walk to uni last year I walked from Earlsdon to Coventry Town Centre for uni nearly every day, I would go the same route everyday but if I every had to get back at night I would hop on the bus or go a different route because you know/think you don’t want to go that way for whatever reason at that time of day.

So taking this into consideration for our task we had to set out from a starting point somewhere near Coventry Town Centre or where we live and walk 1km in a direction away from the starting point, then at every 100m interval, including start and end point, we should take 2 photos/moving images they could be taken anyway we wanted. but also while walking we were told to pick up or take photos of small objects that you see that may have been discarded items, for example that you might normally see or pay attention to when walking. In total we should have 20 images plus any discarded objects or images of them. We also had to record sound to place with the images or moving image.
Once completed we put the images and sounds together in the order in which they were encountered into a short 1min narrative of the walk.

I decided to walk from Earlsdon to Coventry Town Centre like my walk last year, I took photos and recorded sounds with a Marantz I also took photos of 3 discarded items…

 

And here is my finished video: MY TASK ONE  PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY VIDEO

Interactive Media – Interactivity

So what is Interactive media?

Well Interactive could have quite a wide range of meanings there’s interactivity between people and people, people and computers, people and phones people and games to name a few for example now you can really get into games with such consoles as the ‘Nintendo Wii’ but also just on normal/old games were in example like ‘Tony Hawks Pro Skater’ you control a skater to do certain tricks and whatever you want, you are interacting with the game. 

As mentioned in the Manovich lecture interactivity between people and mobile phones and computers has grown massively over the last 10-20 years when mobile phones first came out only people in certain jobs interacted with technology and had these phones it wasn’t until “In 2004 Nokia introduced its first line of “fashion phones” declaring that personal technology can be “an object of desire” (two years later this became true for the whole mobile phone market).” (Taken from Manovich lecture.) A little time before that, almost everyone started to get and use mobile phones and computers, almost every home now has a computer which makes me ask the question would anyone really have a computer or laptop if there was NO INTERNET! I for one would not, the only real reason you need a computer is to go online and to do work and we managed to do work without them before. The internet is one of the most interactive things I could possibly think of what you can do is almost endless but before the internet, computers had to develop and become more interactive changing, moving forward for example all the different types of window just keep improving and becoming more interactive windows 98, XP, vista, all improving letting you do more with your computer. 

The internet is interactive in many different ways and it keeps on becoming more and more interactive for example, Hypertext links making words and items clickable is almost the start of interactivity between people and the internet from that we now have people emailing, blogging, Sharing, uploading, downloading, social networking (twitter stalking who really cares what you had for breakfast weirdo),and Instant messaging, talking live to anyone over the world you can even use webcam and microphones with headphone so you can see and speak to people instead of just writing messages, RSS feeds and tagging all of this is very interactive.

My interactivity:  TV Sky+ the ability to watch, rewind and fast-forward live TV and also record onto built in hard drive this is a brilliant piece of interactive which means I never miss a show and never miss parts when people ring me or someone’s at the door. Games I’m not much of a gamer but Nintendo Wii is pretty damn impressive when I have had a go on it, but really my main source of interactivity as I’m not much for human interactivity, is my laptop and the internet I share, download, upload, instant message use social networking site (Facebook) email, blog and shop.

But really the word interactive can get over analysed and seen into many different ways making it easy to describe but hard all at the same time it becomes ‘wooly’.