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TAGGED LANDSCAPE
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Daniela Cardoso, Cristina Ribeiro, Petr Vacek
annotation “Being connected” and “sharing” became a part of our daily-day life. Gigabytes of data uploaded onto social networks offer an opportunity to analysis and research, which leads to unexpected results impossible to gain in the past. With development of those media on user level, sciences can’t stand apart. To keep them progressive and up-to-date, new approaches and work methods need to be considered. Landscape can be represented by its picture. With social networks for sharing, like Instagram, Flicker, Facebook, Picassa, Snapshot, we get acces to a huge source of various kinds of images, taken all over the world by large amount of users with different purposes in different time. Saved online, this database offers an unexplored area for research. Further research focuses on Instagram as a completely new tool to evaluate, analyze and map landscape. Images, tagged by people, open door to people’s perception about place. This issue is a starting point for further work.
What does #anyplace represent? Can #anyplace represents a territory? Or better, which qualities of territory #anyplace represents?
index annotation 3 quotes 4 #society and landscape 5 parametric landscape 6 tagged landscape 7 #esposende 8 #esposende: evolution in time 9 #esposende: direction and density 10 #esposende: interests 12 #esposende: the present and the past 14
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Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. (…) But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing that establishes our place in the surrounding world. We explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. John Berger, The Way of Seeing
Life in pre-cyborg places was a very different experience. You really had to be there. It is time to update Churchill’s bon mot. Now we make our networks and our networks make us. New instruments shape new environments by transforming our view and experience of the world. But a free-net’s superimposion of the virtual onto the physical, while sensible enough, is not a logical or technical necessity. In fact, one of the most interesting questions for twenty-first-century urban designers to ask, is “how should virtual and physical public space relate to one another?” MITCHELL, William J. City of bits: space, place, and the infobahn.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation. The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a world vision which has become objectified. Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior. The spectacle, as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present-day society. DEBORD, Guy. Society of the spectacle.
Memory is the fourth dimension of any landscape. Janet Fitch
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become. Margaret Drabble, A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature
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#society We work with fundamental precondition: contemporary society is image-oriented. Its relationship with landscape under rapidly developing network and digital technologies has to be reconsidered. Increasing implementation of computational power into all aspects of human daily day life opens access to new tools for mapping and understanding landscape.
PHYSICAL IMAGE-ORIENTATION Example: Asians taking pictures on their smartphones and cameras. Because of tight schedule travelling they often can’t experience the whole of visiting place, which is later re-experienced while watching pictures at home. We got used to believe in images, since they gained widely accepted value as informative medium. Visual is important in many fields from advertisement, architectural visualisation, product design, fashion, sharing experiences, business, policy, science and so on.
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMAGE-ORIENTATION What is your image? How others see you? ... We used to build our imaginary images and started to believe in their meaningful character. Virtual sharing offers a powerful tool how to improve such a kind of medium. By intentional uploading, tagging, commenting and connecting, we have a powerful possibility to construct literally any character and make it virtually alive. Images of ourselves, tagged and uploaded to social networks, says “look, that’s me, I have been here, this is what I am.” The same power are using other fields of human society to promote specific intentions.
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Parametric landscape is dynamic, variable and thus hardly describable. Static mapping of few specific elements of landscape is at the moment of publication already out-ofdate as each parameter is permanently transformed. Known landscape mapping techniques still represent essential working tool with its intelligibility, understandability and simplicity. Moreover, those techniques are widely accpeted and understood as a kind of language, norm or a code.
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Element, once modified, triggers chain reaction of changes. This dynamic process, is happening continuously in time. The whole complex system of parametric landscape with its permanent peer-to-peer influence leads to permanent reccurence. Parameters of landscape include diverse fields of human and natural environment. Of course, angle of view can be more specific and focus on only few factors, like nature, geography or man-made interventions, since all of them influence landscape obviously. But rather than that, we include full range of potential parameters that emerged after asking “what does NOT influence landscape?” Parametric landscape is both natural and cultural.
Cult ural i
SOCIETY
We understand landscape as a domain of various reciprocal correlations. Elements that landscape is composed of are variable and changing in time, influenting visible or invisible relationships between them. Thus landscape can be understood as parametrical. Not in the way of popular fashionable “parametrical design”, but according to reciprocity of landscape-making variables.
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tagged landscape Dynamic change of parametric landscape is most apparent among its human-containing components, as humans are themselves constantly under change and evolution, rapidly developing and thus influenting natural environment. Mapping of human-derived parameters requires constant stream of data, capable of immediate actual rendering. That condition only can be provided via internet online databases. Daily increasing quantity of data shared online, streamed and uploaded open unique acces to new kind of landscape parameters-describing informations. Capturing (landscape) with cameras and smartphones is increasingly popular and widespread. Image shared on social networks could transfer more than pure capture of view. There is a possibility to extract date of creation and informations about author, but also geological location, sometimes even with direction of each capture. Tag is a short description often introduced with characteristic mark (# in case of instagram). It is used for describing images and sorting them to more specific categories, according to location, event, mood, weather, activity and so on.
Capturing landscape by images and sharing online is a process of fragmentation. We believe that what we see in the picture represents some existing place. That could only be possible because of our experiences and learned language of seeing. The richness of existing place is only perceptual. subtracted features spatiality, perceptual character, continuity, temporal dimension, circumstances remaining features momental visual sensation, metadata, tags
We propose shared and tagged images as a tool to describe and visualise specific qualities of parametric landscape. Further research uses Instagram to explore tagged image as a relevant access to knowledge.
example of tagged picture: Instagram, tag #esposende uploader name, info time info captured reality intentionally shared by a photographer
By uploading image to social network, fragmentation continues. Environment of internet Network is antispatial by its nature of bits instead of atoms. Although uploaded image is once fragmented into antispatial bunch of data, additional informations are carried via tagging. Tagged images uploaded to social networks represent source of variable additional informations for further processing. description, tags (moods, place, activity)
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#esposende
Nowadays, our society needs more and more to be connected. The virtual tool can demonstrate people’s interests and perceptions. Esposende’s pictures are gained by different people with specific intentions at different time. This territory is characterized by seasonality phenomenon. Most flow of people occurred during the summer, when people capture a lot of pictures from beach, ocean, fishing and city center. We realize with Instagram pictures the existence of two extremes : summer time related to activities and winter when occurs the abandonment of places. Furthermore with this confrontation we can realize what is or what is not important for people who live or go to Esposende. Although virtual landscape is composed of and connected with a real space, there is still missing some meaning behind.
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#esposende: evolution in time Images tagged #esposende shared publicly on Instagram from year 2011 to 2014 show the most obvious information: the amount of sharing during the year. Peak period refers to most attractive activity characteristic for Esposende: summer holidays at the ocean. Every year’s usage of Instagram refers to increasing popularity of sharing, of obsession with spectacular and even of “selfies” (in the year 2014 amount of “selfies” is dramatically higher than in the year 2012).
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JANUARY
2011 - 2014
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2011
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FEBRUARY
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#esposende: direction and density the most pictured scenes Obviously, some places are more photographed and then shared online. That represents scenes that people are interested about for various reasons. Increasing density of pictured scenes and object expresses high interest of uploaders. Each image was evaluated with a knowledge of a real place. As result, its origin point and focus direction could be placed into map of Esposende. Data are visualised via lines of each image direction. Each line is enhanced by variable interest of relevant area. The more interest place has, the longest line renders.
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coastal pathway
riverside bridge
view from St. Lourenco
fort and light house
swimming pools
pathwalk at duna
Esposende center
beach life & selfies
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#esposende: interests Conceptual map merging the most pictured scenes. Origin point and approximated angle of view assists to understand the situation: what are people interested in? Overlapping and transparency adds perception of spatial complexity.
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#esposende: interests of the past Interpretation of the past via mapping old pictures. Captured place is expressed by origin point and angle of view. Mostly boats, ships, jobs and traditions are prevailing as pictured event. As a source we used old books about Esposende, postcards and web archives.
historical photography
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farming
fishing
ship building
traditions
religion
social life
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#esposende: the present and the past Informations about space investigated by two different sources are expressed by two overlaying streams of data. Virtual online activity is shown by using orto-photo map: blind, ordinary space picturing just a bit more than underlaying map. Pictures from Esposende area taken in the past are merged together to express their placelessness. By showing more activities rather than places, places become uncertain and activities start mix into each other; such as life of the past was continuous and work was an ordinary part of daily-day life. Direction of contemporary activity intersects with stream of old fragmented pictures to show different “direction of activity�: present activity spreads in directoins of coastal road whilst past activity was more oriented in direction of labour: from fields through the town to the ocean as a resource of livelihood.
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focus: area of #esposende Collected data from Instagram with tag #esposende are placed to real location of creation. By working with factual data and interpretative processing is created a new kind of map. This reveals what uploaders of Instagram consider as area of Esposende. As a contradiction, official boundaries of municipality are overposed. People’s interpretation where they feel is Esposende differs noticeable from district area. For visualizing data was used simple metaball script that wraps single points with curve according to their density. Different offsets of curves provide effect of “fade out” effect and borders are blurred. Masking outskirts of central area helps to focus on what is happening. The key focused area is considered as Esposende derived from interest of people: Interesting Esposende.
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focus: area of not#esposende Inverted gradient transfers focus on those areas located around “core� area. What is happening around? No pictures from certain parts arouse a perception of ordinary landscape, where is no object of interest, at least for users of instagram. Absence of #esposende tagged points could mean also that people just consider area as a different territory and so tag will also differ.
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Until now we considered only directions of taken pictures, its placement, interpretations of historical photography and the most frequent scenes. But there is more hidden under each picture. Each scene was a) captured for a reason and b) captured by different person. Given acces to perceptions of many different peoples and reasons. Virtual landscape is thus underpinned with gentle layer of human desires. We are experimenting with reconstruction of virtual landscapes. The goal is to create new subjective perception by useing refragmentation. What can be read from created non-existing scenes based on fragments of real places?
virtual perception: Lake of Esposende 24
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Fragments of real map are shattered and expression of new scene is composed.
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Total are of swimming pools located into area of #esposende is 12.000 square meters. Pictures of various people are uploaded online providin a perception that Esposende is a city of private pools placed directly next to refreshing waters of Pacific ocean.
virtual perception: Swimming pools 27
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evaluation of virtual landscape Previous compositions are composed only by using images uploaded to Instagram, tagged #esposende. When seeing them, specific perception can be experienced. Althought creation of each scene is subjective and dependent on its creator, variability of its outcome is not necessarily unlimited. Source domain of pictures is finite, given by character of captured landscape. Each interpretation of virtual Esposende landscape produces perceptions useful for evaluation of the territory. However, no personal experiences are underalying previous compositions, except creator’s attitude and observer’s impression. Thus we created another scene composed only using photos personally captured by research team. And so last theme reflects our intimate sensations acquired in Esposende.
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tag mapping What if tags could really be used for mapping landscape? The interesting / not interesting borders, obvious at previous case study of Esposende, disappear after implemetning other variable inputs. Combination of data from multiple sources, showing spatial density of specific or abstract tags or even temporal evolution open door to unexplored space of knowing. And that all will happen in real time.
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Instagram, Flicker, Google Picassa, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Snapchat...
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territorial tag mapping Tool providing direct access to actual perception of what is considere as belonging under specific refion.
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tag mapping of development
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Dynamic continuous change of parametric landscape is streamed online in real time by sharing actual pictures. Access to this interchange is valuable to visualize the change itself and also for reciprocity of action and reactiron. Increasing interest of users about some specific issue could trigger chain reaction, influenting all parameters of landscape.
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Example showing changes of interest, after grand opening of famous “Disco Bacalhau� was opened in 2018
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abstract tag mapping Have you ever imagined “love� as a relevant landscape-evaluating attribute? Many tags are not directly bounded to existing place, but express rather feelings, moods and intangible. Merging them with geolocated data gives access to knowledge, how people see, feel and live that or those land.
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#romanticevening
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