This movie shows the prototype of how the Installation could happen.
In this images below you can see how the actual words are coming from the actual analysis.
By: Ana Maria Gutierrez in collaboration with Maria Mendez
First pototype images…(infra red lights, security camera (camera traking)..
EN TERMINOS POPULARES (“in popular terms”)
Is a real time based language analysis of web based content and exploration of nontraditional visualization will provide a framework for revealing the often invisible links between the official discourse, media coverage, and the fluctuation of people’s individual perception on reality in the context of Colombias’armed conflict.
As part of my further research for this project I want to explore different mediums in that the project can be made public. In addition to web presence I want to investigate the possibilities of physically express the analysis of the information.
The first result of this research is a collaborative project with Maria Mendez, an installation in which the visitor are labeled via projection/video tracking with words that are part of the outcome of the text analysis that research of the most used terms to stigmatize civilians as part of the actors in the conflict.
The aspect of being “watch” and “named” is a phenomenon that occurs in Colombian society from each side of the conflict. There is not a structured sourveillance in Colombian society (meaning a organized structure where “one or the ones in power watches all”
like the one established in the panopticon) there is not a hierarchy in the way people sourvey and stigmatize civilians. What occurs is a more constant sousveillance between the different actors of the conflict. In this installation the use of a security camera and the way it will be set for camera tracking with infrared lights is trying to express the constant sousveillance and stigmatization among us.
The Colombian experience may be specific in its details, but the inquiry it poses to net based political activism is universal. The goals of this project is to first create a new way of viewing the use of the language in web-based social networks in Colombia. And second, generate awareness about the potential of on-line participation as new framework for different actions, ideologies and social relations.
There are three phases to this project. In the research phase, for the next following weeks I’ll gather information from El Tiempo newspaper online forum and relevant Facebook groups and I’
ll use a custom concordance application to find the most used words to determine keywords. The second stage of the project consists of implementing a Bayesian text analysis tool for the creation of generative text displays with the distinctive tokens of a given moment in the political landscape.
The third and final phase of the project will focus on the exploration of different approaches to make public the result of the programmatic text analysis as well as creating the situation for the viewer to feel he is someone subject to vigilance and stigmatization.
From Wikipedia:
“ On February 4, 2008, several rallies were held in Colombia and in other locations around the world, criticizing FARC(Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) and demanding the Liberation of hundreds of hostages. The protests were originally organized through the social networking Facebook. Millions of people in Colombia and thousands worldwide participated in the rallies.”
The Facebook-promoted global protest against FARC is a cas’d’ecole of the power social networking as means to foster civic and political engagement across different countries and social groups. Looked closely, it made evident subtle processes that operate at the levels of culture and language, such as the alarming process of polarization of opinion in all sides of the Colombian political spectrum. A reflection of this are the online discussion forums of EL Tiempo, the countries most influential newspaper: the content and tone of the entries reflect the tendency to radicalize against holding slightly leftist positions as guerrilla, conversely, those supporting the government are labeled as accomplices of the paramilitary death-squads. This dynamics has quietly generated a reversal of ethical values among Colombians of all political parties, to an extent in which members of either sides tend to condemn the atrocities of only one of the actors in conflic, while justifying the others. This is were sousveillance between each side of the conflict takes place, each side justifying their position to tagged and sousveil the other.
The level of language violence in these public forums is a reflection of the surrounding physical violence, and can be analyzed as a function of the kind of media coverage that a given particular instance of a forum is about. The hypothesis is that the wages of the publics opinion are affected (exacerbated or otherwise) by the language and inherent political biases of the corresponding newspaper or social network, and that this can be made visible through technical XXX in order to produce a compelling artistic reflection of the complex interplay between reality, media and individual and group politics.
