Across Weirdish Wild Space

BoingBoing pointed to a great blog entry today from Errol Morris, the director of the amazing documentary The Fog of War (which you should really see if you haven’t. It did win an Oscar you know.).

Besides Powell’s now-infamous WMD photos of non-existent chemical weapons facilities that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, it also covers the photoshopped Iranian missiles photo that ran across a number of US newspapers (the NYT article even has my very favourite mock shot of the Iranian missile launch photos, the godzilla in the midst of the launch field).

From a course I took back in Canada on Anthropology and the Image (fascinating by the way and well worth the time and effort – note now that the course is called Visual Ethnography), I know that photography as a political weapon, even as a cultural weapon, especially with reference to people like the Navajo and Africans, was amazingly devastating in associating a set of negative attributes with a culture, but the amazing thing in the modern era (perhaps because of the ubiquity of photographs in general), is the commonplace manipulation of them, or their captioning to achieve desired political ends, whether those be supporting invasion, instilling fear or misdirecting attention. Got to be a good book or documentary in there somewhere.

But a great read. Hopefully, Morris is working on another fab documentary along these lines.

The interesting thing though, is that the fodder here for activists of all stripes, to increasingly draw attention to disinformation and political propaganda by mocking these things. For example, Worth1000-esque photoshopping contests coordinated with a photosstream on Flickr and just tagged with an appropriately complex tag to make sure interesting photos get surfaced.

via BoingBoing

OK, a long, long time in coming, but I finally cried uncle on writing descriptions for all the photos I took at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico and just upped them to flickr.

Quite proud of a few of the shots and if nothing else should give you a pretty solid idea of how amazing the museum is and why it is a complete must-see if you’re ever in Mexico City.

(I will try and get all the ones of Istanbul when I was there at the end of June up as soon as possible as well).

I think this is so cool as I had originally wanted to do my MSc thesis on an AI expert system/neural net to automatically scan satellite imagery for possible unknown archaeological sites (I got the idea from the 1990 discovery via SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) of the long lost “Atlantis of the Sands”, Ubar and a similar system for astronomers for finding stellar objects). More info about Ubar (since lost cities are a bit of an obsession with me).

An Italian computer programmer was playing around with Google Earth and Google Maps checking out the area around his house.

His eye was caught by unusual ‘rectangular shadows’ nearby. Curious, he analysed the image further, and concluded that the lines must represent a buried structure of human origin. Eventually, he traced out what looked like the inner courtyards of a villa.Mori, who describes the finding on his blog, Quellí Della Bassa, contacted archaeologists, including experts at the National Archaeological Museum of Parma. They confirmed the find. At first it was thought to be a Bronze Age village, but an inspection of the site turned up ceramic pieces that indicated it was a Roman villa.

Link

(via BoingBoing)

Followup to my post on the centrifugal fan mechanism from 1907 :

OK, so it’s probably obvious I have a strange thing for interesting and old mechanical things, particularly those connected with ancient astronomy or astrology. Anyone who’s ever seen my coveted astrolabe (at right) that I picked up in the dark depths of the Marrakech souks should probably be as convinced as anyone of that.

I think because they are these incredibly great snapshots of the incredible ingenuity and cleverness of our ancestors and the simple genius of humanity in general in all its cultural forms. Because in a sense we don’t learn from other cultures so much as appropriate them without learning and we tend to get seduced by more advanced technologies when simpler ones will do the same job better. And we underestimate the intelligence of both the past and other cultures in it (and in the world today).

A great indication of this is the Antikythera Mechanism from 87 BCE which is an incredibly intricate meshed gear computer that apparently was designed to make fairly precise astronomical calculations about the movements of the sun, moon and stars. The device is unique because no one had believed that the technology to create both the computer and the calculations had been available to the Greeks. Great article here from the author of an article in the American Mathematical Society.

The device is currently in on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (where I missed it when I visited in 2001).

(via Boing Boing Blog)

Fascinating essay from the always insightful Danah Boyd on generational differences between rss, blog and IM. Particularly interesting after the Web 2.0 conference’s vision of the future of syndication.

apophenia: a culture of feeds

The difference, as she points out too near the end (I really, really wish she’d continued on with those ideas rather than obsessing on youth IM/LJ use), is really about content versus community. Resolving that issue is really the tension that syndication needs to deal with in order to leap into the business mainstream. People only being peripherally aware of a conversation without participating are really only eavesdropping on the train. Unless they participate the usefulness is really only about newsfeed neuroses (or take and use it in other ways). The point about youth culture using feeds is that they are more involved with the conversation. IM is their community. Because communities are conversations.

I think some of what she says is true. rss news aggregators do lead to the same sort of inbox-itis that you get from mail and make you feel you’re part of a discussion without the actual impetus or feeling you need to respond. You read… you’re not necessarily part of that discussion or the community. You’re peripherally aware of the information and can use it, but there is no reason to unless compelled or incited. It’s the broadcast TV model really, you just get to scan all 500 channels of the universe at once.

However, as a means of disseminating and finding out about information, I have to say they’re invaluable at least to me. I’ve definitely seen rss useful in business in terms of keeping people informed and allowing information to go to them rather than having to search for it.

Also, I think she underestimates how adults use IM as well. I know for me it is a way to keep intimate community contact, much more so than my blog which is more a braindump for me which friends can comment on and a public record somewhere between my private journal and direct conversations even digitally mandated (even though they seem to prefer syndicating it to a point where people comment on the syndications rather than my site). So in that sense, I don’t think what she says is abnormal for either youth or adults.

I think the problem Danah misses is, at its very root, a problem with the economics of information. Information has a cost. What information consumes is attention. And as any economist will tell you, it’s a scarce resource that needs to be allocated.

The tools, whether IM or rss are irrelevant to the larger problem in my opinion which is finding ways to make the myriad newsfeeds work for me and extract the information out of them which is actually useful in maintaining both communities and productivity (The 100+ sites I check daily would be overwhelming me in terms of the number of headlines, but I stick to checking all but a few feeds once a day and have become tyrannically efficient at using the “Mark All as Read” after a headline scan or flagging a post so it doesn’t disappear if I deem it interesting but not of immediate attention. This utility also has a lot to do with how well my newsreader, NetNewsWire 2 is designed though. I’m not sure I could be this efficient with other rss tools I’ve seen). I see aggregators as basically scanning a newspaper constructed for me. Much like the morning newspaper, not every single thing is relevant.

Boyd seems to mix in this post community, participation, content and attention. Which I think is misguided. As social software begins to rise we are trying harder and harder to maintain the intensity of connections between far flung virtual communities. The tools that are really required are ones that can somehow take the inflow of information and distil what is essential in them to our priorities about maintaining communities and receiving new information. Right now, rss is like gazing at everything in the 500 channel TV universe at once. Channel surfing everything available as a snapshot in time. It just allows you to look at many information sources as summaries much more quickly.

Now that we’ve aggregated though we need ways to subtract the chaff from the wheat.

playing : Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag by Pigbag

My long suffering Anth 495 compatriot ML, after surviving near lethal doses of my mad scribblings, has started her own blog.

The interesting thing is ML named the blog for the 23/5 meme that swept through the LJ community about 6 months back. I hadn’t heard of this one so had to trace its origins back via her links.

Along these lines, this week has seen an avalanche of forwarded emails from concerned friends warning me about thieves with perfume bottles packed with ether and the dangers of flashing your headlights at other cars (when you do get those unbelievable emails, please check the Urban Legends Archive. I’ve got it as a feed in my news aggregator to track new legends).

What I particularly find fascinating is how these things actually get started. And the fact, they occur in just about every culture to varying degrees. What the germ of a meme is that begins it propagating or how an urban legend actually moves from a whispered story to something like Mikey, pop rocks and soda pop (for those outside of North America, the post pic is of Mikey of Life cereal fame which I think is the first urban legend I ever heard as a kid).

Looking into it apparently the term originated from Prof. Jan Brundvand from his book The Vanishing Hitchhiker (also scarily, I’ve been told the title story on more than one occasion). One to add to the reading list.

In Anth 495, we studied similar ideas about the transmission of photographic tropes, how certain images and compositions are constantly recreated and embellished but tie into deep pre-conceived visual notions and convey certain messages in ways that make it difficult to discourse effectively outside of the context of these images. In particular, the idea that these tropes become part of the collective visual unconscious is of course a very similar concept to the idea of memetic transmission in popular culture.

So, once you’ve moved past origin and transmission though is the question of why these memes and visual tropes remain in the collective popular culture. It does seem somewhat viral as you do seem to have outbreaks and pandemics of certain memes whereas certain eventually become contained and are wiped out.

So, any ideas on what constitutes something going viral ? I kind of find it an interesting anthropological study. Other than actually examining the actual stories (and what they say about our modern culture’s oral tradition) I’m not sure how many people have actually done a lot of research work on them.

playing : Medley Egyptien by Claude Challe

I ran out to the site again early in the morning. I figure you don’t get that many opportunities to work with a real archaeological team on a serious dig so wanted to make the most of it.

Lucky I did actually. Prof. French had set me to work on shovel testing and about a trowel blade length down I ended up coming up with a microblade (lamala?) in one of the sifts. The prof was super happy about it and said it was actually a major find.” Us newbie volunteer types have been getting super lucky this dig it seems.

I was actually upset to leave and wanted to stay, but hopped into the car and zoomed back along the gorgeous scenic drive back to Kelowna. Great drive actually. There is no radio in the high mountains, so I strapped on the iPod and screamed down the highway singing in the car. Phenomenal drive of clear open highway and the spectacular views really kind of make you feel quite patriotic about Canada looking out over mountains and forests and these amazing vistas.

Class was great but the 37 C heat today was really taking it out of me both from the work on the site and the drive to the school. Had to polish it off as it was the final class for the course and besides that wanted to go out for a beer with some of the people from class afterwards. Was nice actually though it was way too hot and I have to admit I was thinking it would have been much nicer on a beach somewhere.

Came back to the house and kind of kipped out for a while and then ended the evening, vaguely braindead out on the deck watching the skies for the Perseid meteor shower. Saw a few nice shooting stars but have to admit it was a lot more disappointing than other years and showers I’ve seen.

The short drive out to the dig is quite beautiful and winds past real live cattle country and ranches. The dig itself is on this beautiful section of Nicola Lake and incredibly picturesque. It’s salvage archaeology as there is a limited time before the developer starts bulldozing stuff. It’s a pity really, because the site, at least to my untrained eye is obviously much bigger than originally thought and seems like it was an important processing spot both to the Kamloops and an earlier people we’ve not definitively determined later. The politics between the developer, the ranchers and the band are the archaeologist though are very complex and intricate. I’m glad I’m not in the middle of it.

I met the crew who were largely Native, super nice and lots of fun and

Prof. French, who I adore for asking a lowly amateur out on a dig (it is really, really hard to get in on digs these days even if you pay), set me to work screening dirt from one of the major trenches they were excavating.

I was actually getting a little jealous as even the shovel testers were finding more stuff than I was until I finally came up with some basalt debitage. Took my little victory photo of it and after a long time doing this, we ended up going to lunch and afterwards I worked on looking for surface finds.

One of the other archaeologists found this stunning projectile point just lying on the ground at one point. It is a perfect example of Kamloops style I am told and looks like something out of a textbook being completely whole and not even broken a little (very rare).

The work was not hard, but it was very dirty, and really very hot (35 C). I did manage to find a really interesting chalcedony flake away from where everyone was digging which I got congratulated for as apparently they are not very common. They actually marked it in the site map though I doubt it was in its original provenance (and was really bummed I couldn’t find the larger piece it had been flaked from).

I really loved spending the afternoon doing the work though. Computers seem so abstract sometimes it is really nice to be able to work on something concrete and anchored to the past and the earth in an intimate, visceral way. Decided to stay overnight and do a little more in the morning before screaming down the highway in the car back to my final Anthro class.

After that, we went for a beer at the lovely Quilchena ranch, a combination hotel and real live operating cattle ranch. It’s amazing how good beer sometimes tastes after you’ve swallowed that much dust and sweated that hard in the sun.

Then we went to dinner at a local pub and I evilly convinced some of the archaeologists to come out for ice cream at this local place and waylaid them into coming to my hotel and playing on the rather surreal waterside built onto the pool. Was amazing fun and a fantastic end to the day.

I am so glad I came. Hope I get many more opportunities like this in the future.

For me, the jury is still out on Navajo and Photography. It was required reading for the Anth495 Anthro and Image course I was taking and it focuses specifically on how photography was used in a manner to represent the Navajo in a sort of replicated tropic way (think memes if you don’t know art theory – the word was new to me too) in order to convey a sense of the Navajo in terms of wide themes which both divorced them from telling their own stories but also de-contextualizes them to a simple image which removes the entire back story of their culture, heritage, and voice to their detriment and almost stereotypical treatment. Themes such as the “vanishing race, “noble savage”, “family of man, and “Navajo as victim” are explored in the book and while the text is a little annoying in places (particularly the captioning) the photographs are superb from a case study perspective.

Faris makes some good points and the photographs he picks are very good at conveying his point though I think he takes a lot of liberties with the way he implies certain emotional states of Navajo in the photographs (I mean, how the ell does he know?). Another big problem with the book is that while he states he wants to give Navajo back their voice and is kind of naive in his understanding of the use of photography, he never really speak to Navajo about the photographs which feels like it is a salient missing point.

He does, in my opinion, redeem himself in the latter quarter of the book where you start to see the point he is trying to make (also his tendency to highly academic writing really obscured his points in a lot of places). He really, for instance, speak highly of a portrait of Navajo code talkers as retrospective (by Kawano) where there are simple photographs and they are able to tell their own stories about the pictures and their experiences.

Not sure if I’d recommend the book to others, but it does produce a fascinating, direct case study of the type of topics we’d been discussing in class and in particular speaks particularly powerfully about the use of Images and the power of misuse of photography in creating an artificial and distorted sense of knowledge of the “Other” historically, generally through a Western European lens as context. Particularly, it’s very poignant when taken into account with work by people like Oguibe and Pinney about post-colonial photography and the power of oppression of images when it was specifically the “white man’s medium.”

Yes !!! My old archaeology prof just called and invited me up on her new dig just north of Merritt. I’m so hyped !

Looks like I have to drive up the Coquihalla Connector Tuesday night and stay over in Merritt to get there for the morning, but still… How cool is that ???

I’m really excited. It’s really hard for non-professional archaeologists to get in on serious digs and I’m super honoured to be invited on one.

I’ve just got so much going on this week. The amazingly lovely SJ was really super cool about moving our dinner to Monday night instead of Tuesday. Um, and somewhere in there I need to study for my Anthropology final. And er, put off final interview till the week after for those jobs.

It sounds like a real interesting dig. My prof sounded exhausted but told me it is a salvage archaeology dig that she’s turned into a research dig. Apparently, there is a highway going through. More details as I get them.

Stay tuned !

One of the cool things about my latest Anthropology courses is that they both deal with perception in terms of how it corresponds to both Art and the Image (for those of you in Europe, Archaeology is a subdiscipline of Anthropology in North America).

The latest course, Anth495 Anthro and Image is kind of fascinating to the degree that it mixes philosophy, sociology, cognitive science and well, anthropology. It is way outside of my comfort zone in things and deals with things I know little about which was exactly the point of taking the courses. Loving these and archaeology so much seriously thinking of doing yet another degree, just for personal interest.

One of the coolest things we’re discussing is how the mind perceives images (image formation, recall and the consciousness of image I’ll save for another day). This of course feeds into all these great optical illusions I haven’t seen since I was a kid and a huge number of ones I’ve never seen before. Some are unbelievably cool if not downright nausea inducing.

This checkerboard illusions on shading is amazing.

And these freaky moving ones from Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

As a bunch of you know, I decided while I was taking some time out here in the mountains to pursue some courses in one of my personal interests, Archaeology at the University of British Columbia here in the Okanagan. In North America, Archaeology is a subdiscipline of Anthropology so I’ve been taking some interesting Anthropology courses available during the summer session in Anthropology of Art and the latest, a 4th year class on Anthropology and the Image.

Today was the first full class. We discussed a fascinating article on the Diary as Witness (pdf) which really powerfully speaks to the idea of the diary as a raw conveying of experience. The necessity of it in keeping the weirdness weird. Discussing Sartre in the second half and his ideas of the image versus perception and reflection was not as fascinating to me but brought up some interesting ideas.

The prof is really pushing keeping a sort of field journal of the class and doing a lot of examination of images, primarily photography, as the dominant practical portion of the class. Learning by doing. My last Anthropology of Art class, which was much more fascinating than I thought it would be, also had a “Response Journal” (it never occurred to me at the time but both these exercises are actually excellent practice for the need for Anthropologists to keep research field journals). Thought it was kind of a fluffy requirement at first, but the longer I went in the course the more I realized it is actually a much better means of evaluating student learning and course depth than exams… which really test you to a large degree on what you don’t know than what you do.

The whole pattern though fits in well with the current blogging and scrapbooking phenomenon (which I was unaware of) that has exploded in North America. Thinking this might be time well spent though a little nervous about the time and work requirements. Lot of work for a short semester.