christopher valenti : screen shot 2016

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Ă˜ : c hr i s va le nti / 2016

Screen Shot

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Screen Shot 2016-01-22 at 6.00.00 pm of

Ă˜ : chris valenti / 2016

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foreword :

Although humans are able to “discern the relative complexity and orderliness of paintings or patterns after only a single glance afforded by a 50 millisecond exposure,”1 it is the brain’s ability to continually decode and recode information which allows us to compute every situation we encounter uniquely different. This type of fragmentation is a way of connecting disjointed components together to create a complex structure of how we view the world around us. In our modern life images play many roles as we are constantly “producing and consuming images [which] have an extraordinary power to determine our demands upon reality.”2 Images can act as a bridge between desire and truth, hope and fear, and have become “coveted substitutes for firsthand experience, [where] they then become indispensable to the health of the economy, the stability of the polity, and the pursuit of private happiness.”3 The manufactured image which most commonly circulates throughout our networked lives is susceptible to market forces, the flows of networked propagation and regulation. It has the ability to integrate vertically into complex multichannel markets and the potential as an asset to yield capital on its investment. Through its circulation the embedded currency it accumulates is appropriated and subjected to the politics of censorship, the edict of paradigms and the demographics of consumerism. It is an image which has been sequestered by institutions, conglomerates and multinationals, all of whom dictate the flows of information in order to maintain control over the capitalisation of images.

In this fabricated world all data, code, programming languages, syntaxes, and algorithms manifest themselves as image. This type of polarity allows the image to strategically position itself as the primary interface within any network transaction. A coterminal object, where And the political and economic weight the visual representation that the image carries is incentivised through of its mathematical these distribution platforms where it accumulates decodings express more social and economic capital. As the image themselves as images in a gains increasingly more ‘data-currency’ with each state of latency. Where the transaction it is engaged with, its embedded value closed loop of any digital is proffered by those controlling entities. In this infrastructure provides a exchange what appears to be a binary-transaction secure platform for text becomes a contrived moment of reciprocity where to transform into image; the benefits of that exchange are disguised as where static images social expansion. become moving images Within these complex interrelated – as they scroll up and interactions the image is mediated by our down, left and right across screens, where it is no more than a ‘front-end’ our screens – moving abstraction of its ordinal ‘back-end’ persona. images become multiWhere “the real is produced from miniaturized framed images within static units, from matrices, memory banks and windows, contained within 4 command models” and the manufacturing of bounding boxes. Images perception is shaped by human hands in order creating moments and to broker the socialisation of images. events which we peer into.

As we record our lives at arms length, inserting our ‘real’ into the virtual we betray our ‘position’ within the larger sphere of universality in an attempt to understand what it is to be human. And as we retrieve and disperse the memories stored in random spaces throughout our networks we are defined by the data we fabricate, share and distribute; leaving behind our ‘digital-persona’ to be stored on a server, a memory bank or in a cloud, temporarily archived or backed-up. And when needed that ‘image’ of us can be reconstituted as a set of data points on a series of colourful wiggly lines, bars or pie charts, projected through the artifice of light of yet another ‘lens’ in some boardroom half way across the world. But if we stand back and view the complex, intertwining multiplicities of our modular world as a whole we can begin to understand how connected we really are. And we can begin to understand, and break down, the hierarchies of those who have commandeered the image in our information systems. //

Request for comments: 2016.01.22 key words : portable network graphic, PNG, screen shot, image, manufactured, data currency, disruptive, politics of code, consumption, machine made, algorithm, modular,digital-persona, compression, information

Return-Path: <lorna.sockpuppet@gmail.com> Delivered-To: <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz> Received: from msgsrv3.mail.isx.net.nz by msgsrv3.mail.isx.net.nz (Dovecot) with LMTP id LE81HVi7nFb4swAAYazzlg for <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz>; Mon, 18 Jan 2016 23:15:52 +1300 Received: from imr3.mail.isx.net.nz (imr3.mail.isx.net.nz [111.65.230.100]) by msgsrv3.mail.isx.net.nz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74283F12 for <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz>; Mon, 18 Jan 2016 23:15:52 +1300 (NZDT) Received: from imr3.mail.isx.net.nz (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by imr3.mail.isx.net.nz (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0C516ACDEE for <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz>; Mon, 18 Jan 2016 23:15:55 +1300 (NZDT) at mail.isx.net.nz X-Virus-Scanned: by SpamTitan X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam-Score: -1.899 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.899 tagged_above=-999 required=5 tests=[BAYES_00=-1.9, DKIM_SIGNED=0.1, DKIM_VALID=-0.1, DKIM_VALID_AU=-0.1, FREEMAIL_FROM=0.001, HTML_MESSAGE=0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW=-0.7, SPF_PASS=-0.001, ST_P0F_UNKN=0.8] autolearn=ham Authentication-Results: imr3.mail.isx.net.nz (amavisd-new); dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=gmail.com Received: from mail-yk0-f175.google.com (mail-yk0-f175.google.com [209.85.160.175]) (using TLSv1 with cipher RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by imr3.mail.isx.net.nz (Postfix) with ESMTPS 40639ACE03 for <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz>; Mon, 18id Jan 2016 23:15:47 +1300 (NZDT) Received: by mail-yk0-f175.google.com with SMTP id v14so514364255ykd.3 for <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz>; Mon, 18 Jan 2016 02:15:47 -0800a=rsa-sha256; (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; bh=zN+Cgd39KTZw8ndQg/V6N3DmaYVwW9da4OEQk7JC+QY=; b=anHRGQ0NUy+RmVYDlPhPJ7y2NrSKhgw4EH/ L2ky27uHpjGhRfLsbNLxnStehoOEzoQ kxljEBy1/gB/dxyykbASdRtSK6G0BCFGP4R/ YzyTZ04fv3xyqvHbT0L3MraFJZ4l9aly GztM/Mzb65ysMxaPG1ofjBho5BAJb9yVw+SGvIZZzTJjYY43NCzhkrok8VTS9QY5BSB8 LVWP5OAGjQbaFVhCPzLYH9EKeZ+N+eNACX7q8LRFsRTYUYymMRazx0WLENHiwIfXvIz5 W0LwodZxHRx7daegpuHrLfFgkl75GiMD1WxeyeSfyC5ne9zMwIMkvCr0JSFuba/ DPu/1 3qSA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=zN+Cgd39KTZw8ndQg/V6N3DmaYVwW9da4OEQk7JC+QY=; b=PECK5pFIKHfkwAEfrXck83oU/ ZnqjwDobZaUFNuskfX+J0WV+JNswkZaDuG21yHPmC QHpliwhRWcXvEDi4OcE5HsUFCwDZRDocqETHK9i3I8JCAmV38H2yZxum7moH+8KATBIU K3Mjy1fWh4ydvL1BUwc2M0o1TzHebcEhT/ ZupPPd1wWBgECmdzcWcIS6Dw5yduD9CLNK 1suamakjsTVl9+cgl73uU2xRFJdOYwPYrOrDn1wts7tSTA5NzV7ITMMxNQDefET4H6vw PiKDZ9YePYKDqlvxre06Pt35bFnaKGZc8M28rHtVYmIj4jqRnYFYAvtqZHTmA0r9nUsS sz0Q== X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQkRD5+Dj/25qAyHUclX671xTdcQo1AfTIwoIsZV82yyNJZE1jWZghrsOuValeEjir7ipiSSR664P7IuD+nW4j2/ NEoE1w== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.129.31.67 with SMTP id Mon, 18f64mr14621639ywf.94.1453112145383; Jan 2016 02:15:45 -0800 (PST)Mon, 18 Jan 2016 02:15:45 -0800 Received: by 10.37.109.136 with HTTP; (PST) Received: by 10.37.109.136 with HTTP; Mon, 18 Jan 2016 02:15:45 -0800 (PST) <CANQ2BB=MTgWuFMm3+MWAaF2RyOkA0OSyZeVffvSKBHkVEXLYfg@ In-Reply-To: mail.gmail.com> References: <79BBC6E7-6ED5-4B46-B3FB-9FC9DFDAAC8F@propagator.co.nz> <CANQ2BB=MTgWuFMm3+MWAaF2RyOkA0OSyZeVffvSKBHkVEXLYfg@mail. gmail.com> Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2016 23:15:45 +1300 Message-ID: <CAHgSahai6N=NEUUPdd33A-PVuJxD5KMWjv2sKA2CiYjGvOGJLQ@ mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: the PNG - RFC From: lorna sock-puppet <lorna.sockpuppet@gmail.com> To: subversive pixel <subversivepixel@gmail.com> Cc: Blended theory <blended-theory@propagator.co.nz> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a1141ed3c3e9c2105299909bb --001a1141ed3c3e9c2105299909bb Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Disruption seems like a cliche? Love the masking idea and the thought of transparency, seems at odds but you know how it get about that sort of thanks stuff. on all hosting stuff, forb-t. Lorna On Jan BTW 18, 2016 5:08 AM, the "subversive pixel" great <subversivepixel@gmail. wrote: com> > Hi Nicolas .sounds interesting, jus wondering about the idea of a real > to augment the .png ..any thoughts how this might happen? > space On Jantor.co.n= 18, 2016 4:58 AM, "Blended theory"on <blended-theory@propagaz> > wrote: > > Here is the latest on the PNG stuff. comments and/or thought most > > > helpful - thanks for all your inputs=E2=80=A6. sub.p any chance of some m= ore > screenshots? and lorna can we close the loop - getting a bit draughty rou= nd > here . talk soon. nicolas

>> the Portable Network Graphic: The disruptive potential of the screen shot within networks (working title)

We are consumed by images. They devour us with their promise to inform, confront us, begging us to gorge on their richness. They invite us to be enveloped in their pulsating lushness, to be seduced by their glimmering pixels, engrossing us in their visual subterfuge, they ingest us into their captivating narratives; they trick and divide us, transporting us into other worlds. Images which are defined by their file formats or compression rates and where the .JPG dominates to exploit the attributes of human vision in order to assemble certain types of “visual artifacts that emerge when [...] compression is pushed to its limits.”5 Operating as an acronym for the Joint Photographic Expert Groups it is bound to a structure of multiple ownership, at the disposal of an elite group of ‘experts’ who proffer from its algorithmic gymnastics. For embedded deep within the .JPG is metadata which is vulnerable to unknown appropriation, implicating it in a type of ‘user activated labour’. An exchange where reciprocity is not a transparent barter of equal or perceived worth. It is the preferred format in the proliferation of stock images, which are defined by their market value, transported through our screen's interface having been aggregated and arranged by their relevancy. They are classified by their pixelated colour densities, skin-tones, or ‘ethnicity’; constructed images aspiring to impersonate our real world, to appeal to a fixed demographic. An image bound to a contractual obligation, to time constraints, scripted gestures and specifically designed soundscapes where “the flow of images carries everything before it, and it is similarly someone else who controls at will this simplified summary of the sensible world”.6

While scrambling to restructure the uninhibited stream of discourse and to impose their latent qualities into our freeflowing networks these images employ Images adept at portraying varying intervention degrees of our 'real' and come drenched techniques disguised in (mis)information taking centre as security stage as protagonists of capitalism. measures, software Disguised as ‘magicians’ who promise updates or social to dispel our economic insecurities by engagements. providing us with an ‘effective means Such algorithmic of communication’ through information interventions play portals which repeatedly spit out on our emotional copies of the same rhetoric. Images rationale for logic which have been employed to divert our while simultaneously attention from looking at the whole, collapsing our embedded with language that tempts us to reason into fear and engage, to convince us of their ‘higher- blurring the truth. value’, their efficiency at ‘increasing productivity’ and leveraging their capacity to “promote bi-directional global values.”7

However as the machinations of institutional power are slowly exposed, they in turn jostle to hold onto our attention by using the politics of code, the beguiling world of datasets, and the perplexing syntax of programming languages. By using time-stretches, cadence, colour and movement, our ability to decode a situation, emotion or image has been corralled. And it is here that the image has been conscripted, manipulated and hyped-up to stimulate our synapses into a state of apathy.

But not all images are prisoners to their own consumption. The ‘screen shot’ is not the result of any sophisticated type of sensor capturing technology which has emerged from a form of prosthetic optics. It is not subjected to the polarity of the bending of light mediated by a 'relocating plane' or any “artificial or synthetic vision”8 either. The ‘screen shot’ results from a portion of a computer's memory. It relies on the plotting of information to convert the colour values of every pixel on the screen into a numerical pattern where the information for each set of numbers in the grid creates the distinct set of picture elements from its integrated 'framebuffer'. It is a moment of numerical referencing where the images that resides on our screen are immune to the subtleties of reflected light. A construct derived from a combination of keypad synchronizations, of ‘F’ key configurations or other such dexterous compositions, a machine-made image, a copy of a copy, a version of a version. Disconnected from its digitised ‘other,’ it can operate within our highly regulated networks as an image which obfuscates its simulated-self through the constriction of its data. A ‘masking’ which allows it to appropriate a subversive disposition, empowering it to insert itself into our data streams as a creative agent with a capacity to engage and to disrupt. It positions itself as an outsider, a non-conformist, a recluse who does not adhere to the exploits of commercial image formats. Relying on its “simplicity, portability, its legally unencumbered well compressed interchangeable flexibility and robustness,”9 it is a free-moving entity which is not subjected to the conceit of data compression technologies or prone to the ambit of copyright laws where desirability is governed by portability and accessibility. With its potential to elude third-party intermediary parsing algorithms, and its streamlined ‘dataweight’, it is able to nimbly move around our networked environments discreetly. It is a lightness borne out of its file format; a ‘portable network graphic’ otherwise known as a .PNG, where its verity is defined by a file name, a visual timestamp that escapes any potential of annexation.

Light — electromagnetic radiation — the light emanating from this screen, traveling through the air, focused by your lens and projected onto the retina — is a continuous signal. To be perceived, we must reduce light to discrete impulses by measuring its intensity and frequency distribution at different points in space. This reduction process is called sampling, and it is essential to vision. You can think of it as a painter applying discrete strokes of color to form an image (particularly in Pointillism or Divisionism). Sampling is further a core concern of computer graphics; for example, to rasterize a 3D scene by raytracing, we must determine where to shoot rays. Even resizing an image requires sampling. Sampling is made difficult by competing goals. On the one hand, samples should be evenly distributed so there are no gaps. But we must also avoid repeating, regular patterns, which cause aliasing. Mike Bostock

Visualizing Algorithms

immediate identity The .PNG manages to roam about so that collection our networks employing a non-patented algorithms are form of cross-platform lossless data unable to exploit compression as it “builds on the idea its social mobility of transparency”10 to augment its unique with tracking and features. In the world of esoteric code mass aggregation and data encapsulation, the degree of software. coded opaqueness is what allows the .PNG The 'screen to move about the internet unimpeded by shot' also records commercial constraints. This type of the exact point ‘data-lucidity’ allows it to maintain in time when we the integrity of its prototyped persona. are engaged with By not being subjected to the layering our screens, of software syntaxes, which convert data a historical into metadata, it is able to abstract its reflection of an

intimate moment that we share with our devices. It captures images of images, converting text into image and multiple images into single images, clones of our digital lives. The ‘screen shot’ allows us to document the unfolding of our

world in a way which is not subjected to the demarcation of its extraneous data. In this way, the 'screen shot' challenges how our networked environments operate and how information is being controlled and manipulated by start-ups, multinationals and corporates. In this complex maze of algorithmic constructs the 'screen shot's’ portability and its desire to be inclusive, accessible, and democratic can be employed to disrupt the monopolized systems of information and offer us an alternative point of view.

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 9.43.25 am you tell us little / we analyse, speculate . us, all fools again . muted in disbelief . the sky falls silent and astounds . a plume interrupts the cerulean aether and the ‘wise’ man from Torez throws a lump of coal, scratching the sky . casting a shadow . life as it changes in an flash . one day you might become a tourist town and everything will pass .. a reminder to volatility , tension . independence and autonomy . language divides and colours define. power is mapped / east versus west, yellow versus red . a voice taken, a mutual intelligibility confuses and a fricative consonant brings history full circle . where did you come from ? a battle fought - the mirror above, belongs to no one but those silenced, those who crossed your path, those who disappeared .

at what point does information become misinformation? and when does misinformation become disinformation?

the speed of information: factual information may vary according to availablity

[LINK]

can public ever be private?

Light is said to propagate itself at roughly 300,000,000 meters per second. And at this unimaginable speed our eyes struggle to discern all of its subtleties. We are only capable of detecting a narrow band of frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum which is known as visible light. Yet light is still considered to be the most defining characteristic in how we perceive reality. But we should not marginalize light's ability to transfer information for light only becomes visible when matter intervenes within its flow. But how fast does information travel? What obstacles does it traverse in order to reach its intended destination, its audience? And what happens to that information as it encounters the algorithmic languages of our machines? In todays era of ‘always-on’ distribution networks, information is susceptible to the forces of those who moderate it. Now speed is not the most potent factor within this transaction, but rather it is the accessibility and the control of the flow of information – how that information is packaged, tailored and manufactured to influence our perception and emotional triggers in certain ways that is more important. In order for our brains to sample all the information we aggregate we edit certain signal components so that we can make sense of the vast amount of data that our vision collects. This technique of selective classification is similar to the way that digital information is processed. In digital image processing, information undergoes a form of ‘spatial anti-aliasing’ where distortion is reduced through a process of filtering. And through this filtering variance is exiled to the periphery of our visually saturated environments. But information is never just black or white. It is always at risk of being altered or manipulated, balancing on the brink of becoming misinformation. And just as there are often many blurry, intangible, ambiguous moments residing between falsehood and truth so it is that we need to have a diverse range of information in order to better form our world views, communicate with others and expand our understanding.

[LINK] “Bounding boxes are a key component of geospatial metadata and lie at the heart of many computational geometry algorithms as well as spatial indexing systems. Despite their ubiquity and common use, bounding boxes are more complicated than they first appear. The phrase that ‘spatial is special’ applies to this humble representation as well as to more sophisticated geospatial representations”. Unlocking the Mysteries of the Bounding Box Douglas R. Caldwell - Cartographer and geospatial analyst at the US Army Engineer Research & Development Center, Topographic Engineering Center, Research Division, Information Generation and Management Branch.

the liminal presence of ambiguous perceptual fields

[LINK]

the bus, nestled between columns, almost everywhere imaginable. While some are visible, others are far more deceptive, their identities concealed, blending in with the architecture, acting nonchalantly, voraciously recording whatever comes within their field of view. They are unbiased, performing their job flawlessly, every It would be impossible to second, day-in and day-out. know exactly how many An automated recording images of us really exist machine, an invisible in the world; how many documenter, gathering photos and videos of us information, converting have been taken, how many movement into pixel-oriented captured moments we mappings, aggregated have produced. How many visualization clusters, fractured, low resolution grouping them according to pixelated bits of data we havetheir values, encrypting the been instrumental in. How granular low-resolution pixel many bursts of time we have into patterns, information, unwillingly marked, minding data and knowledge. our own business, going Liminality is described as about our daily lives, unseen, ‘occupying a position at, or on unheard. both sides of a boundary or Data collection comes threshold’. Images today are in many forms but the liminal. They reside in that most obvious are those moment of being between inescapable cameras that two states. In the potentiality are all around us. They of being something else. can be found on top of They manifest themselves poles, on the façades of as bits of code which are set buildings, attached to in motion by the swipe of a

the hass effect “In 1951, Haas examined how the perception of speech is affected in the presence of a single, coherent sound reflection. To create anechoic conditions, the experiment was carried out on the rooftop of a freestanding building. Another test was carried out in a room with a reverberation time of 1.6ms. The test signal (recorded speech) was emitted from two similar loudspeakers at locations 45° to the left and to the right in 3m distance to the listener.

The “precedence effect” was described and named in 1949 by Wallach et al. They showed when two identical sounds are presented in close succession they will be heard as a single fused sound. In their experiments, fusion occurred when the lag between the two sounds was in the range of 1 to 5 ms for clicks, and up to 40 ms for more complex sounds such as speech or piano music. When the lag was longer, the second sound was heard as an echo.

Knowing time offsets between sources can affect imaging but at the expense of ripple (comb filter) or smoothness is the tradeoff of Art vs. Science. With wireless tablet control of these sub-systems it’s relatively easy to change these delay offsets and hear what’s happening in real time. We can “pull” or “push” the image around but remember the tradeoffs.”

Martyn “Ferritt” Rowe Director of Engineering Services OSA Intenational

screen. And it is during this stage-of-encounter that pixels come alive and transform themselves into a digital glow of light-emitting stimuli, intermingling with over 130 through fire-walls, through million nano-receptors, each encryption software portals, of which reacts to the power virus scans, multi-platformed and wavelength of the light it digital ecosystems and collects, constrained only by varying versions of the polymers of the display. operating systems? But And as this stimulated more importantly, what do image converts light into we become? Have we now data it travels unfathomable been altered as we inhabit distance at constant speeds, multiple dimensions, those crossing unimaginable of the virtual and the real? terrains through varied Have we now become slightly topologies, ignoring warped, diluted, and a bit geopolitical boundaries, weary from all that digital possible bifurcations, parsing? All those machine distractions, while flowing translations, ‘lexical analysis’ through contended spaces. and ‘left recursive production But where do all those tools’; converted from a images of us go, all those C++ complier to HTML, from pixels collected on servers, Python to Bison or Lemon to hard drives, thumb drives? Parboiled? From input data And what happens to us and source trees to output; as we are copied from one from being interpreted and institution to another, from analysed, have we become one server to another, passingtokenistic along the way?

To Hieronymus Bosch, painter. What is meant by that astonished eye of yours, Bosch, or that pallor in your face? As if you had seen ghosts, the spectres of Erebus, flittering in front of you. I could believe that the caves of greedy Pluto and the houses of Tartarus lay open to you, seeing as your hand could paint so well whatever the lowest hollows of Avernus contain. Dominicus Lampsonius Effigies of some celebrated painters of Lower Germany) 1572

a society measured / the privilege of access

Our vision is a complex system of light receptors, colour interpreting cones, compressing techniques coupled with a highly acute signalling mechanism all of We have used similar which transmit information technology to capture aerial to the brain. In order for us shots of foreign landscapes to perceive objects, colours, on earth. From the sky a movement and perspective patchwork of colours have we constrict the amount of collided along a corridor of light into fractured pulses green. Flanking it to either of electricity through a side an expansive stretch of process of measuring brown tumbles away as the frequency and intensity at Rivers Syr Darya and Amu varying moments in space. Darya envelope a town. These A navigational strategy trickling rivers once flowed to which also helps us move feed the withering blue that through space. And when is the Aral Sea – its origins, the Mars Reconnaissance east, high in the mountains Orbiter’s 2.52 gigapixels of Uzbekistan. A sea which HiRISE camera captured has had its shape taken from the Martian surface, image it, its boundary reconfigured processing software was by a manufactured diversion designed by a team of altering the course of gravity. engineers so that they History tells us that when could tile the hi-resolution these waters once flowed images into a composited freely, a young scholar in the intelligible graphical Persian House of Wisdom representations of a foreign brought to the world the landscape which is about wonders of mathematical 225 million kilometres away. algebraic computations.

This treatise on algebra would Modern technology and scribe him into history as the information systems have diviner of the algorithm. evolved through the use of Algorithms are mathematical algorithmic language and we phenomena, which pertain to have witnessed a massive the act of doing; they are full leap in communication, of potentiality, full of intent. education, production and They are characterised by commerce. But in contrast their ‘flow of control’ typified to the great scholars of by a set of instructions, an old whose observations, explicit formula for carrying recordings, and analysis are out a task. They are binary what helped propel humanity expressions that start at one forward, we seem to be more place and end at another. A focused on entertainment mathematical metaphor of and the marketing of our individual traverse of life, consumables and using where our collectively looped modern technology for experiences are what defines pleasure rather than for social the continuum we know as progress. existence. Our desire to record, to [LINK] transfer our thoughts, to release the images from deep within our imagination is encoded within all of us. This thirst for exploration through knowledge has always been a defining characteristic with which we demarcate important moments in the advancement of humanity. And where the free flow of information has always been paramount.

[LINK]

points of conduit and data syphons There is an incongruous symmetry to their existence. They hide between hills and valleys yet they are very much seen from the skies above, by the satellites which gather our conversations, track our transactions, aggregating our movements, recording our digital imprints. They are places of global confluences where vast amounts of chatter is collected, yet not much is said about them. They mimic our interactions and except for those few who have knowledge of their existence they remain anonymous in their intent, ambivalent in their function.

random walks : [ LINK ] . . . . . - - - . - . - . - - .- - . . . . . . . . - - - - - . - - - - - - . . . - . . - . . . . . . .- - - . . . . . . - - - - . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . - - - - - . - - - - - . . . .- -. - - - . - - - . . . .- - - - - - - . . . . . - .- .- .- . - - . . . - - - - - - - .- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - . . . . . . . . . - . - . - . - . . . . - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - . . . . . - - - -. - - . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . - - - - . . . . . . - - - . - . . - . - . - . . - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . - . - . - . . . . . . - - - - - - - . . . . . - - - - - . - . - .- .- .- .- . . . . .- - - .- - -

[ LINK ] The AWACS surveillance radar components consist of multiple units grouped in three locations. The antenna array and its electronics are in the rotodome. The receivers, radar processors, and radar control & maintenance panel are in the main cabin. The cabin equipment consists of two cabinets for the AN/APY-1 radar (digital and analog), and three cabinets (digital, analog and maritime) for the AN/APY-2. The transmitter group is in the lower lobe of the fuselage in the aft cargo bay. AWACS Surveillance Radar: The Eyes of the Eagle Northrop Grumman Corporation / Airborne Surveillance Systems BR-034-TJD-0703

Acknowledgements: Tracy Watts, David Cowlard, Anthony Byrt, Mary & Brownie Hurley-Brown, Allan Wild & Margret Richards, Craig Shead, Jennifer Hendrickson.

Images: in order of appearance. 1. Screen Shot 2015-12-07 at 9.46.32 am.png / Google Street View of Capucijnenlaantje ‘s-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant 2. Screen Shot 2014-11-20 at 12.08.19 pm.png / Cloaking Device filter effect Photo Booth Version 7.0 (726) © 2005–2014 Apple Inc. 3. Screen Shot 2015-07-24 at 2.44.10 pm.png / Google Street View . Misawa-shi, Aomoriken, Japan. The value of performance: somewhere between the here and there. Retreived from http://www.blended-theory. org/travelling 4. Screen Shot 2016-01-11 at 10.35.04 pm / CCTV footage of Andrew Young, 40, Charminster, Bournemouth after being punched 5. Screen Shot 2016-01-17 at 8.45.17 pm / pop pop pop musik. Retrieved from http://subversivepixel.tumblr.com/ post/112475033182/pop-pop-pop-musikliving-in-a-disco-shoobie

13. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.30.07 am / Retrieved from http://www.blended-theory. org/a-round-building

28. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.27.45 am / data syphons and points of conduit - http:// www.blended-theory.org/pointsofconduits

14. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.33.57 am / Captured still of iMovies editing screen

29-32. Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 9.13.35 am / Screen Shot 2015-01-10 at 11.30.18 am / Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.34.01 am / Screen Shot 2015-01-10 at 11.34.10 am copy. http://www.blended-theory.org/ pointsofconduits

15. Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 9.43.25 am / captured amateur video of downing of flight MH17

33. Screen Shot 2015-12-23 at 7.24.00 am / http://www.blended-theory.org/datasyphons

Selected Bibliography:

18. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.48.35 am / image capture from HP Photosmart C5380 All in one / printer, scanner, copier screen bed

References:

Arendt, H. (1989) The human condition. Chicago, IL. The University of Chicago Press. (Original work published in 1958)

20. Screen Shot 2016-01-04 at 11.08.17 am / Installation view of transparency in exile (2015). Retrieved from http://www.blendedtheory.org/install 21. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.55.03 am / installation view of the liminal presence of ambiguous perceptual fields (2015). Retrieved from http://www.blended-theory.org/ project03 22-23. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.08.26 am / Various gif's : liminal algorithmic modifications - new equations (2016) 24. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.12.49 am / Non-space

7. Screen Shot 2016-01-17 at 9.56.53 pm / Still footage from CCTV screen

25. Screen Shot 2015-12-16 at 10.04.04 am / Google Street View of Capucijnenlaantje ‘s-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant

9-10. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.59.23 am / Animated .gif captured from CCTV footge - nakba day. Retrieved from http://subversivepixel.tumblr.com/ post/120466466242/the-day-after-a-rubberbullet-the-day-after 11. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 8.12.27 am / Image capture of Canon LCD screen 12. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 12.22.54 am / Retrieved from http://www.blended-theory. org/inquiry

10. Webopedia: an online tech dictionary for IT professionals, educators and students. (2010). JPG vs. GIF vs. PNG. Retrieved from http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/ Internet/JPG_GIF_PNG.asp

16-17/19. Screen Shot 2016-01-07 at 8.21.47 am / Installation view of factual information may vary according to availability (2015). Retrieved from http://www.blended-theory. org/the-speed-of-light

6. Screen Shot 2016-01-17 at 9.50.26 pm.png / Image capture of Canon LCD screen

8. Screen Shot 2015-10-29 at 10.06.17 am.png / Still footage from CCTV screen

9. Boutell, T., et. al. (1997). RFC 2083: PNG (Portable Network Graphics) specification, Version 1.0. Retrieved from https://www.rfceditor.org/rfc/pdfrfc/rfc2083.txt.pdf

26. Screen Shot 2016-01-19 at 9.16.12 am / View of the Aral Sea. Maps Copyright © 20122014 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Version 2.0 (1844.0.15) Data fromTomtom and others 27. Screen Shot 2015-10-06 at 4.38.50 pm / View of the Khiva, Uzbekistan. Maps Copyright © 2012-2014 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Version 2.0 (1844.0.15) Data fromTomtom and others

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screen shot - 2016 / ø : chris valenti

A NOTE FOR THE ASSESSING PANEL This printed version of the catalogue is intended for the purpose of legibility. Some information has intentionally been removed. The full version of this catalogue contains Hi-resolution images including animated GIF’s and can be downloaded as an OSX epub from the SD card embedded in the gallery booklet. Alternatively, there is an abbreviated Low-resolution version of the catalogue available online at: www.blended-theory.org Thank you. Chris Valenti – MFA 2016 catalogue submission

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