chootka / radical-networks

Repo for all things Radical Networks.
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encoding vision: from emulsion to emoji #153

Closed rebleo closed 7 years ago

rebleo commented 7 years ago

encoding vision: from emulsion to emoji

Name : rebecca (marks) leopold Location : Brklyn, NY Email : rebeccaleopold@gmail.com Twitter : @rebeccaleopold GitHub : rebleo Url(s) : site.rebeccaleopold.com

Speaker Bio

reb :/

rebecca (marks) leopold is an artist, writer and programmer living in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, Knockdown Center, NurtureArt, SITE Santa Fe and featured in the Philly Fringe Festival. A double graduate of Bard College, she holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard. She is a recent graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. blog, insta

Type of proposal

A talk, about an artwork.

Description

I am troubled by the ease with which technological authors are collecting and categorizing us and our actions online. With a mobile device in hand, pocket or by the bed, networked culture is increasingly socially and psychologically immersive, exposing us to servers eager to supply our next thought. Our tools for real-time communication are rapidly changing how, where and when we choose to express ourselves. Due to how they function technically, Emoji are the meeting ground between computer language, spoken language and human visual language. Although the unicode remains the same through transmission, the design of a character changes depending on the proprietary platform.

Many recent emoji represent people and each character comes in six skin tones. This organization system is based on a 1975 dermatologist rating of skin color, The Fitzpatrick scale, named for it's creator Dr. Thomas Fitzpatrick. As we currently engage in conversations about bias in algorithm systems we can see that here, at the granular level of unicode, power structures are present and made strikingly apparent by a simple emoji.

I have been working on a piece of software that enables a viewer to create new images with this raced and branded visual language. the Em😶ji Palette is an API and web application that must be "art" - as it is populated with over 14,000 pictures which are the property of Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Samsung, Windows, etc. I would like to present my software and research to consider how technology is shaping and controlling our language(s) - the tools we think with.

The Palette is in process and currently not live. I would consider Radical Networks my launch and would have a beta version ready and available online in advance of October 19.

Duration (not needed for artworks)

Most likely 20 minutes I think.

Workshop technical requirements and materials list (if applicable)

n/a

Artwork installation requirements (if applicable)

n/a

Performance requirements (if applicable)

n/a

Et cetera...

words + pictures ITP Thesis talk screen demo & a viewer testing