EVALUATIVE REPORT

Facebook Message In A Bottle

This work explores whether the fact that digital communication is so quick and easy it means that there is some loss in the value of messages sent, to the point where the information being sent is frivolous.

I am not a Facebook user, however my observations of the social networking site have often left me thinking that much of the messaging that takes place is superficial. This lead me to consider if the time taken to send the message was extended dramatically, would the writer still feel that the message held enough value to be sent.

My initial thought was to place the Facebook message in the context of a postal message, in terms of the method of communication. However the idea of a message in a bottle is even more poignant in terms of considering time as factor. The concept of sending a message in a bottle is fascinating as the sender will not know how long it will take for the message to be received, or if it will be at all.

Laser Cutting

I created a vector file using Adobe Illustrator and using a CNC laser cutter engraved my design onto a A4 sheet of 300gsm card.

5 General Views Of The Internet

1. Just a tool

2. Big but becoming dull

3. Big but bad

4. Big and getting bigger fast

5. Big, good, could become bad

After some thought, i consider the first view to be of most relevance. However, i think what we know as the web, and what it can offer us today, is simply a tool. In the future, the possibility of an intelligent web, and the ability to predict will make it more than just a tool. This can be considered WEB 3.0

WEB

If we call the origins of internet use, simply 'WEB',

where web pages are created and published with readers only able to access and view, without any control or input themselves.

WEB 2.0

This is the stage at which internet use is, today. It is a creator and user generated system. Prime examples of this are: Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter.

What can WEB 3.0 be?

Prediction of personal interests of the user.

Semantic Web - It's internal logic and understanding of language is pivotal.

Media Revolutions

1. Printing Press

2. Photography / Film

3. Telephone

4. Television / Radio

Virtual Revolution (BBC)

Ideas and interests from the BBC series: The Virtual Revolution

The Industrial Revolution created by The Invention Of Steam As Energy

wikipedia -

The idea is that instead of truth, knowledge, and accuracy being agreed on by experts and handed down from an elite above. It will slowly emerge from the masses and come up from below.

LIBERTARIANISM - (Definition)

The adherents of libertarianism believe that private morality is not the state's affair and that therefore activities such as drug use and prostitution, which arguably harm no one but the participants, should not be illegal. Libertarianism shares elements with anarchism, although it is generally associated more with the political right (chiefly in the U.S.). Unlike traditional liberalism, however, libertarianism lacks a concern with social justice.

The whole earth catalogue. The counter cultures bible

John Perry Barlow - Grateful Dead

Barlow's Manifesto was a challenge to traditional authority.

A space for freedom.

Manifesto Name - Declaration of the independence of cyberspace.

Email was created in 1965.

Music Movie Download P2P Sharing.

The web has threatened the way any traditional industry, based on information and communication, does business.

Free-Web comes at a price. Privacy is non existent in the digital world.

On a computer at home we feel we are in a closed private bubble. But the reality of the webs open networks is that we are in effect always public. What we do on our computers has the potential to be seen, analysed, and used by others all around the world.

Does the web trivialise our relationships and rot our brains?

At it's heart this is about what makes us, us, and the question is whether the web distorts or enriches our very humanity?

Virtual Revolution or Virtual Evolution.

Web Youth

The key criticism of Facebook is that it makes friendship meaningless, and that undermines society.

Are online friendships anything like real relationships, or is the majority of online connections used for voyeurism.

We are no longer nourished but consumed, in some way, by what we have created.

Are books still at the heart of education?

Web shaping the real world.

Generation web is re-engaging with politics.

Bottle

CONCEPT: Facebook Message In A Bottle.

I have been questioning the concept of time within a digital environment, comparative to time in a real environment.

Article from the telegraph involving a found letter in a bottle and the recipients search for the sender.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7836150/The-mystery-of-the-message-in-the-bottle.html

Exhibition - Unleashed Devices

Many of the pieces in the exhibition were no longer working. This is a huge downfall of digital artwork that i had not considered.

My favourite work on show - Owen Bowden

Crimewave is a radiophonic police drama featuring live police radio from across America. Police radio communications from several cities are intercepted and fed live over the net to the Watermans building where they are combined and layered with tense incidental music.

Disembodied voices report with nonchalance the sometimes chilling criminal proceedings of the cities made the more chilling with the realisation that the events unfolding to the listener are in the present and not a recording. These real events though are dramatised through the artificial imposition of the filmic soundtrack. The work explores themes of privacy, policing, radio and the relationship between reality, drama and soundtrack.

[Taken from 'Unleashed Devices Catalogue']

WEB:

http://www.watermans.org.uk/exhibitions/exhibitions/archive/unleashed-devices.aspx