Andri Kumar

After seeing Cameron’s World in class, I realized that I am really interested in internet archives. I use the word “archives” instead of history because I feel like archives are less about specifically describing a period of time and instead are focused on capturing the essence of a time. For instance, when we did the timeline activity in class, the activity was focused on facts and concrete ideas. However, an archive is less focused and instead tells a bigger story. When looking at the different images in Cameron’s World, I was able to learn about the ways people at that time thought about their presence on the internet,  internet culture, what expression on the internet meant, and what people thought was valuable to communicate. While I do not learn much about who designed these images or the years the images were created, I feel like I leave with something larger that allows me to better reflect on the present technoculture and future. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FytIB8Z-nuOHWJe49L7Jx8FY1mudagjOylMIkNnwBNs/edit

While the assignment was to notice internet infrastructure, I actually found myself noticing surveillance cameras more. Perhaps that is because they are more visible (and it is kinda hard to tell what is internet infrastructure once you leave a room) but I never had noticed all the cameras in NY before. 

I think I became interested/distracted by the cameras because I feel such a strange but intense apathy towards them.

I guess I should first explain that I have never felt safe in the streets of NY as a woman.  I always call someone if I am walking home late so the person on the phone will know if something happens to me.

The strange thing is that for some reason, I feel safe if someone would know it happened (even if its my mom who’s on the phone miles away). To me, it just matters that someone would know.

Yet, these cameras would also know. Nevertheless, I have never felt comforted by then and I still do not (even though I am more aware of them).

Sure, surveillance cameras probably do not comfort most people. But I also do not feel scared by them (even though they have probably seen me cry in the streets after a hard day). 

Returning back to the internet infrastructure, I think my relationship with internet infrastructure is similar to the one I have with these cameras. They feel distant and almost not apart of my life in anyway. 

Not only do I forgot they exist, but I feel this overwhelming apathy towards them as well. I do not feel comforted by them. I do not hate them either (as an internet user I do not know if I am allowed to). Instead, I actually feel nothing at all about their presence.

I thought after class that I would be in awe by the amount of internet infrastructure there is. However, I quickly forgot and had to remind myself to even look around for this assignment. It is so weird to have such a silent and passive relationship with structures that are everyone. Especially in the case of internet infrastructures, which are the reason I can look at Twitter memes on my way walk back home but also the reason Google can track me throughout the day. 

I guess this experience doesn’t change what it means to be “online” but it makes me curious about my lack of emotions towards these infrastructures. Are these lack of emotions a result of me growing up around technology or did companies work to foster apathy?

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I did take a moment to read "I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can't Write My Name". I think this piece in particular begs the question of why are we so accepting of technology as it is presented to us. Should we not question it? Should we not wonder why it limits us in some ways but gives us the opportunity to do other things? It also adds to conversation of how technology can perpetuate to racist practices (like cultural erasure).

my router! a strange alien box

I am not 100% sure, but as I did this exercise I realized that it is really hard to be 100% for anything besides a router (which I could tell since it was the only strange thing in my closet).

I am not sure exactly which one of the readings the assignment is referring to but I think for the purposes of this response, I would like to share my thoughts on Stealth Infrastructure, Tiny Tuvalu, and Conflict Materials.

A little known fact about me is that I was actually born in Australia. During the time my parents were there, my dad’s job was maintenance for cell towers. Growing up, he would tell me about all the tall buildings he would end up scaling in order to do his job; however, he never told me about the history of how many people found these towers invasive. I was kind of aware of people’s worries about radiation and cancer, but I had no idea that people were almost hunting them like the article explains. When I called my dad asking if he knew about this, he explained that one time while he was working on a tower, a man came up to him with a gun. My dad said that a lot of people felt invaded. The man came as a way to protect himself and his family, but had no real anger towards my dad. It’s insane to me how much times have changed and how little people think about the presence of technology in their lives now. Or perhaps I should really just speak for my generation because I do feel like people in my generation definitely care less about it.

It blows my mind how much Chapnik spent to own the .tv domain. I cannot tell if it was worth it. I mean I tried to search emmy.tv and got redirected to emmy.com. While no one is using .tv, clearly emmy.tv is still being paid for (even if its just for the purpose of redirecting). I am not sure if it is a bit a stretch but Chapnik’s actions feels very colonizer-esque (sorry I know this a fake word but I am not sure the right word). In Tiny Tuvalu, Chapnik was just trying to take all the internet “land” he could; just trying to own and dominate as much as possible. He is almost just trying to colonize space in the world wide web.

Barlow’s declaration does not translate into today or speak for most Internet “citizens”. Barlow asks for there to be no government presence on the internet. He claims that it is a free space where people are finally liberated and the people can regulate themselves.

However, this idea of a free new world does not live today and there is definitely not enough “self-regulation”. For instance, the internet has become to new place for gruesome violence towards women. Whether that is sexual harassment, verbal abuse, or with the rise of DeepFakes, women are far from safe or free on the internet. In order to keep women safe, there needs to be some sort of institutional moderation of content and other internet citizens. Of course women, are just one example of a community receiving abuse. Children, with the rise of child pornography, and people of color, with the rise of racist hate crimes, are another.

Clearly, the internet, like every other space occupied by people, needs forms of regulation and protection. I think Barlow fails to remember that in his declaration because of his identity as a white male tech elite. Barlow not only has privilege in the non-virtual world but his technological literacy makes him immensely privileged in the virtual world as well. I believe this privilege renders him blind to how people on the internet or in any space actually interact. I mean he literally claims “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth”. Obviously that is far from the case today.

ABSTRACT ONE

In this project, I propose different methods of depicting emotion in the context of text-based conversations.  Currently, the main practice is to accompany text with emojis to highlight the users desired emotion. However, as Miller et al. found in their paper “Blissfully Happy” or “Ready to Fight”: Varying Interpretations of Emoji, the nuanced details of emojis can lead to a significant miscommunication in conversation. It is clear there is a need for less vague signifiers in text especially as more conversations happen digitally. I began this project by researching different signifiers that the mind uses to determine emotional expression. I then transformed these signifiers into digital representations that can be incorporated in the text conversation experience. The effectiveness of this project was evaluated by measuring the error rate in which emotional miscommunication occurred between two parties.

This project would find a great home at Interactive Awards since there have been projects with similar tones: https://awards.ixda.org/entry/2019/digital-body-language/

ABSTRACT TWO

Large technological products, such as Google and Amazon, tend to feel removed from their CEO’s. In a way, these tools are faceless. While it is known by academics and elites in the technology field that these tools are riddled with bias from their creators, that bias is easily forgotten and gone unseen by the masses. As Lankton and Mcknight discovered in their paper “What Does it Mean to Trust Facebook? Examining Technology and Interpersonal Trust Beliefs”, individuals see these large-scale technologies, such as Facebook, as a quasi-person which cause them to trust these corporations. In this project, I reintegrate the faces of these corporations into their products. I begin by creating a brand new interface for Facebook.com. In this interface, users no longer type or scroll. Instead they are met with a screen with Mark Zuckerberg on it. Users can type questions to Mark to complete tasks they normally would on Facebook. A video of Mark will then play, providing that information to the user. This video of Mark was created through DeepFake technology, which allows me to add visual effects to puppeteer Mark.  

This project would fit well with LACMA Art + Technological Lab, since the lab also explores technology through an interdisciplinary way but values strange approaches like the one this project takes.

ABSTRACT THREE

Recently, there has been a growing trend in the mobile app industry to create mindfulness apps that guide users through meditations to ease anxiety and irritability. As  Flett et al. found in their paper, “Mobile Mindfulness Meditation: a Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effect of Two Popular Apps on Mental Health”, these apps can have significant positive difference on user’s health. In this project, I explore additional methods to introduce mindfulness techniques to the device that is glued to our bodies: our phones. However, instead of creating another app, I opt to create various haptic phone cases that serve mindfulness to users since digital solutions do not support all users. These haptic phone cases were fabricated over the course of 8 weeks through micro-controllers and physical materials. The effectiveness of these cases was measured through a two week long study in which users incorporated these haptic phone cases into their daily lives. Participants of the study reported their depressive and anxiety symptoms during this time and this data was evaluated to determine if there were any improvements to their mental health.

LAUREN: https://lauren-mccarthy.com/LAUREN

I am choosing to critically reflect on the piece LAUREN because it was originally the piece I was most conflicted about. I could not tell if I absolutely loved LAUREN or if the project was flawed. Since only one other person raised their in hand class to show support for the piece, it is clear that LAUREN is a piece that receives a range of opinions. With the ideas of “Bad Writer” in mind, I would say that LAUREN meets many of the standards that Ahmad had listed out. For one, LAUREN is clearly a piece that is well researched before it was made. In order to even make the project, McCarthy must have had to do a great deal of research on how networked smart devices work and how to create her own. Additionally, LAUREN truly encompasses this idea of taking a cliché and challenging it. Many pieces try to explore this idea of surveillance by creating works that are binary and typically demonize the assistive technologies and their associated companies. Many of these works just fall into the whole “Big Brother” narrative. However, LAUREN breaks away from that narrative. Instead of McCarthy trying to tell viewers about a technology, she just becomes it. As a result, she is able to create a powerful narrative that asks great questions about the role of smart devices without having to paint the devices as 100% bad. The piece obviously in the end informs viewers about the amount of data smart devices carry, the problematic branding of smart devices and woman, and presents an idea of what our relationship with technology should be (technology should support not be in control).

I am drawn to this piece because it is not a cliché and does not just succumb to the easy narrative of calling all Alexa’s bad.

I was really inspired by portfolios that had a minimalist quality but still conveyed a level of individuality. A lot of my work is defined by my experiences conducting research and thinking with a scientific mindset. I thought it would be interesting to try to better convey this in my portfolio because it is what sets me apart from other designers. I have always found the layout out of scientific research papers to be beautiful, so I wondered what it would looks like if my portfolio was formatted like one.

First, I found two research papers that were just absolutely beautiful to look at.

I then created some wireframes to play with layout and color. During this process, I realized I preferred designs that more closely followed the composition of the papers. I really disliked designs with color etc.

Finally, I started to create a prototype. During this process, I spent a lot of time deciding how many animations /other quirky interactive features I wanted. I realized that I really preferred the whole less is more and opted for a few fade ins.

Here is the end result: https://www.andrikumar.com/experiments

Before I began looking for portfolios, I decided to narrow down the values/themes I find most interesting. Since I describe myself as more of a designer, I knew I wanted to look for examples that were more conservative and could easily translate in the wider professional world (where non-techy people may look at them). Typically, I find myself excited by sites with some sort of motion design, so I wanted to challenge myself to find site that surprised me in other ways than their animations. Here are the sites I found that stood out to me the most:

http://www.dmcg.co/

https://www.danmachado.com/

https://s-a-o-r-i.com/

What is my relationship to art?

I am someone that finds myself almost perpetually tongue-tied. Most days I feel completely unable to find the words to describe my thoughts because I never feel like I have the right set of words. Even when I spend hours searching for a good enough word to describe an emotion, I cannot. I think it is because words (in their initial form of text) are very black and white. Words are nothing more than their definitions. They are rigid absolutes, the form of concrete blocks in sentences.

I find it hard to translate myself through such strict objects because to me, the human experience is far from structured. If anything, the human experience is an infinite grey area; it is not one thing and not the other. So, how can one describe grey with things that are the polar opposite like words?

I am gravitated to art because art is the one thing that truly gets the human experience. Art, unlike words, is not pre-determined or defined. Most importantly, art, unlike words, can never truly be defined. Even if the artists tries to push for a work to have one meaning, every viewer of the piece will ultimately have their own experience and interpretation. It is because art is not an absolute, like text, that I am so drawn to it.

I do want to clarify that I do not mean to say that one cannot make art with words. I do think there are applications of words in which artists are able to bend word arrangement, specifically syntax, to get at the grey area. I think poetry is a perfect example of that. However, I do think traditional forms of writing, like articles, simply cannot get into the deep layers of the unknown that other art forms can.

This is not to say that there is one perfect form of art. As an artist, I draw inspiration from all forms as long as the content is provocative, asking questions about humanness while keeping in mind there are no perfect answers. In my own work, I have created AR and VR experiences that as similar questions about humanness as a collage does. For me, it completely about the subject and if it is taking advantage of exploring grey areas in life.

In all honesty, I am bit anxious to write my post about this reading piece because I know it would probably be considered bad writing by Michael Mohammed Ahmad; nevertheless, I will be giving this my best shot.  In class on Tuesday, we talked about the two main topics: art as argument and how we should evaluate art. The piece connects to both of those topics.

It is clear that Ahmad shares our class’s philosophy that art, and in this case writing, should be treated as nothing less than an argument. He begins his writing by defining that reading, and all other forms of education, is the pursuit of learning how to think more critically to have stronger arguments. He spends the rest of the piece listing example after example of writers who simply did not understand that writing was more than a hobby, but an opportunity to make a claim. As a result, he suggests that people must not be careless with their words and waste time, for example, describing the absence of things, or even worse, not even fully researching the topics they are writing about. Of course, with the context of this class, Ahmad’s writing makes a clear argument for the importance of this course. We as artists should take courses that are fully dedicated to crafting our arguments by providing us opportunity to research and critique.

Conspiracy Theories

While it definitely offered a more cynical take on celebrity conspiracy theories, the article, “Why do our brains love celebrity conspiracy theories?” raises important points regarding the impacts of conspiracy theories on mass society. Near the end the article references a quote by Dr. Jolley. The quote discusses the potential effects conspiracy theories have on society, explaining that conspiracy theories build a culture of mistrust and cause individuals to feel uncertain if they can believe what is told to them.

We already see evidence of that culture of mistrust growing in society. The most obvious example of is it the election of Trump, who ran primarily on a platform that preached not trusting the news as well as the government. Today, millions of Americans argue about the threat of “fake news”, completely engulfed in the culture of mistrust. 

Of course, I am not the first to point out that citizens not trusting facts is detrimental to the well being of society. However, it is interesting to wondering if there is any correlation or even causation between the rise of conspiracy theories due and the election of Trump. By sharing that strange article that claimed Justin Bieber is a lizard person, did we normalize distrust and paranoia?

While the article only discusses celebrity conspiracy theories, I wonder if there are political conspiracy theories. In particular, I wonder if Trump’s claim that undocumented Mexican immigrants are all “criminals” could be considered a conspiracy theory. The article claims that celebrity conspiracy theories are most likely created for two reasons: (1) they allow fans to feel closer to celebrities and (2) we have a proportionality bias in our cognition. I wonder which one of these reasons apply for political conspiracy theories like the “immigrants are criminals” theory. Does the “immigrants are criminals” theory help individuals feel closer to Trump/the Republican base or does it serve to help make sense of a rapidly changing society (one that is become more diverse)?. I personally would argue that such a fear based political conspiracy theory mainly helps bring people closer together. It helps people feel like they know the “real truth” and the “real threat to society”.

Shipping

In all honesty, I was frustrated by this week’s podcast. It is quite clear that Peter Rosenberg used hip hop and rap for extreme identity work in his white and very affluent neighborhood of Chevy Chase as a teenage. The identity he created with it was that he was the only true white rap fan and in turn, the expert on the genre. In his neighborhood (and one with a history of racial segregation), that identity was very likely accurate and most likely brought him a bit of exceptionalism and exoticism that projected his social life. With this identity offering immense social capital, it comes to no surprise Rosenberg kept this identity throughout high school and into his adult life.

Using a genre of music for identity work is extremely common. Take punk/rock music for instance. There are many teenagers that use this genre of music to identity themselves as alternative, goth, or emo, using the exoticism of the genre to gain social capitol. However, I became frustrated with the podcast because Rosenberg clearly developed his “identity” on racist stereotypes of black people. Rosenberg claims that he is the guardian of true rap. However, he only believes rap is “real” when it is aggressive, violent, and drenched with traditional notions of masculinity. Unfortunately, these are the exact racist stereotypes that are applied to the black community-- aggressive and violent.

In my opinion, Rosenberg was simply a teenager that found a way to be “cool” by using the exoticism and exceptionalism having knowledge about rap provided. While it could theoretically be possible to understand an experience you may not have, for instance the black experience when you are white, Rosenberg sees the black experience through a very limited scope.

Rosenberg wants black music to stay “stereotypically” black, not “real”. Yet, this constraints black artists, stripping them of their humanity and defining solely based on their race. I understand Rosenberg criticizes white rappers, but he chose to make a public argument with Nicki Minaj when she strayed away from her “aggressive black woman” persona and started to make light hearted music. While Rosenberg justifies his argument by claiming that young girls will think that Starships is rap (a very sexist statement), I do not think anyone sees Starships as a rap song. Whether he realizes it or not, Rosenberg was simply irritated that Nicki Minaj chose to take her new platform as a pop artist and try out different genres. Yet, why can’t Nicki Minaj make pop songs? Why do black artists who start off perhaps in traditionally black music remain there? Why can Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift transition between genres, but not Nicki?

Here are memes I made based off what we learned in class