We are doing research, honest!

OK. So quite a few things have happened since I last posted on here.

I persuaded Ian to through caution to the wind and get some stuff written, so we began working on an Abstract at the beginning of term. We needed to consolidate our knowledge and decided what it was that we had to say about his game, and also, what we were going to do with the information. I did some peripheral reading of Lyons (2001) Surveillance Society and also found out that there is a Journal of Surveillance, which could yield some useful information. I also think there is more mileage to be gained from Foucault on this subject.

Sooooo, we looked for an upcoming conference, wrote an abstract and now.... we are going to give a poster presentation of our ideas at next years annual British Sociological Association Conference which, handily enough, is being held in Cardiff.

Arrgh though!! Neither of us has given a poster presentation before, so it's a bit daunting. I've been told it's nicer than giving a customary paper - in that it is less stressful - which will be good. Excited as we were by the news, the 'oh, so what do we do now?' kicked in quite quickly, so we managed to clear the decks for a couple of hours, met up for coffee last week and came up with a cunning plan. We went to have a look at some poster presentations that are already up in UWIC and now we have a much better idea of what it is that we need to do.

We also realise that we need to test some of our ideas. As the paper is about autonomy of users in a computer game, we need to be able to define autonomy and measure it among users. Therefore, we need to do a few key things:
1. develop the game more fully
2. conduct a pilot study of users of the game from which to draw data to inform this presentation
3. look into the ethics of researching users of this game

I am going to do some reading around the subjects of surveillance and autonomy, and Ian and I are going to meet up on the 6th of February 2009, to discuss setting up the pilot as the conference is the 17th of April - arrgh!

Research Assistant Update

This is the perspective movie from the previous post, this time using the webcam (if you have one)

Research Assistant Update

Getting further along in my trig experiments. This one will be useful because it adds the z axis and interactivity, especially useful for Ian's current research. You need to click on it once to get it going. There are problems when the ball moves behind the viewer on the z-axis, but I think that can be fixed quite easily.

Research Assistant Update

Continuing to develop my understanding of trigonometry so I can better tackle this project, here are a couple of Flash movies using trig generated animations:

Research Assistant Update

first foray into 3D - I've started to look at the 3D techniques that could be of benefit to this project, and this is my first attempt. I'm not entirely sure how it works, so I need to do some more research into trigonometry to fully understand it.

Panopticon

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."[1]
Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."[2]

"a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind" 

Jeremy Bentham, 1785.

1. Lang, Silke Berit. "The Impact of Video Systems on Architecture", dissertion, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 2004.

2. Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon (Preface). In Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon Writings, London: Verso, 1995, 29-95.

Missenden Centre

Following a very useful Research & Publishing Seminar at the Missenden Centre in Buckinghamshire, I have invited Ashley Morgan to collaborate with Matt and I in the Gridlocked project and blog. Ashley will complement our digital media skills with a more thorough approach to the underpinning theory and questions that the research reveals. Following our discussions on main themes of surveillance, gaming and timecode, I will explore the relationship between the webcam and prison, in particular the panopticon, as designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785.

We need video content....

We had an idea that current students and graduates of the Graphic Communication programme in Cardiff would be willing to contribute to our research by sending short video clips of themselves working at their computers. As a year tutor on the programme, I had access to many email addresses. Production values were unimportant and a varying quality welcome to add authenticity to the videos within the grid. As a year tutor on the programme, I have access to many of their email addresses. I sent the email included below and waited for the avalanche of responses.

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Hi Graphics students

Do you have a computer?
Do you have a webcam?
Would you like to contribute to a research project exploring webcam narrative?

Matt Leighfield and Ian Weir are exploring how a webcam can be used to place a computer user inside the narrative of an on-line experience. Our ideas and prototypes can be seen at the following url:

http://webcamnarrative.blogspot.com/

What we need:
30 seconds of video shot from a webcam of you working at your computer
We are not over concerned about production values – use auto settings
If it is under 5MB it can be emailed as an attachment to Matt [mleighfield@uwic.ac.uk]
If it is too big to email give it to Matt on CD

When we need it
Provide Matt with an emailed attachment or file on CD by Friday 15th February

What you should do:
Sit in front of the camera
Be as natural as possible - do some work , surf the web for example
Look at the screen- it is ok to glance at the webcam however
Save the video as Quicktime

What you should not do:
Have lots of people in the picture – work on your own
Avoid over expressive movements (like standing up or hysterical laughter – we will be looping the video)

If you take part we will keep you informed of developments and your contribution will be much appreciated.

Ian/Matt

Research Assistant Update

This week I have been getting started using Actionscript 3, learning about the structure of OOP coding, which so far seems very different to Actionscript 2. We now have Flash CS3, and as the Research becomes more complex, using Actionscript 3 seems to be a more appropriate programming method.