If a citizen takes their petition to 10 Downing Street they are literally and symbolically banging on the ‘front door’ of government and demanding that their issue be given due care and consideration by the highest elected authority in the land.

Our friends, MySociety, facilitate their own online brand of this complaint process; the No 10 Petitions Website – How does this online experience compare?

If you have encountered No 10 Petitions Website it might well have been through receiving an invitation to sign a petition via email (something like) -

Protest the Pope, 10 Downing Street Petition

Petition the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown

Please sign:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ProtestthePope/

And, the Number 10 Petitions Website fosters this kind of signature-gathering-via-email approach, which appears to be a very efficient way to:

• gauge support for current issues
• raise the public profile of an issue
• bring an issue to the attention of central government

When I visited to the site today I noticed that there was a new petition there, campaigning for legislation regarding ‘Mosquito youth deterrent devices.’

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/MosquitoUse/

The petition was created by Howard Stapleton and reads:

‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Legislate
the use of the Mosquito device.’

I ’signed’ the petition, (since I strongly disagree with the use of these devices*) and it was pleasingly simple to do so.

Perhaps too simple?  Whilst the online petition is certainly an efficient delivery method, the process feels much more like making a mundane consumer complaint (rather than taking part in an engaged political action).  And that is not the only problem.

The No 10 Petitions Website operates, on one level, on a similar model to the previously mentioned FixMyStreet:

• “report-the-problem-to-the-relevant-authority Model”
  

Can reporting a pothole in need of repair (or reporting a broken traffic light in the DIY Democracy example) to a council department REALLY be equated with reporting bigger, less well defined, more complex issues to the Prime Minister?

*These totally unregulated ‘mosquito devices’ send out a high frequency pulsing sound which can only be heard by younger people, indiscriminately targeting them; making their lives unpleasant. The legal use of these devices has not yet been tested in the British Court, but it is widely believed that they are a violation of International Human Rights Law.

Downing Street image file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Brazil license.
Original image here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lula_and_Brown_1_April_2009.jpg

DIY DEMOCRACY – these guys have developed an iPhone App for… well… engaging in Democracy…

The ‘DIY DEMOCRACY’ App allows citizens to report back to government agencies when they encounter an ‘issue’ and it also gives immediate access to the written law – it even has a button to ‘challenge the law!

The logic of the App seems to be that, given the correct information, our elected government bodies will ‘fix’ society’s problems e.g. broken traffic lights

Here is some more from the App’s website (it’s currently only available for use in the US):

“FIX YOUR STATE”
“FIX YOUR CITY”
“DOCUMENT YOUR EVIDENCE”
“TAKE ACTION”
“SHARE YOUR ISSUES”
“CONTACT YOUR LEADERS”

The above are all really good ideas BTW – but really… with an App? – I’m a little skeptical…

In recent years, in-keeping with the web 2.0 ‘participation,’ ‘interactivity’ trends there have emerged a great number of websites and applications which seem to offer to act as ‘broker’ between disenfranchised citizens and political process.

In the UK, quite a few sites operate under the banner of the charity ‘MySociety.’

An example project is ‘FixMyStreet,’ a website which deals very sensibly with a constant problem – potholes – by putting pro-active citizens in the position of informal ‘monitors.’

If you spot a pothole then you can simply enter the location (postcode) into the site (or a geotagged photo if you like) and all of the necessary information is AUTOMAJICALLY reported to the SPECIFIC RELEVANT LOCAL AUTHORITY so that they can schedule a repair.

In crowdsourcing pothole reporting, FixMyStreet has a very modest and clear remit and I think the website works primarily because it takes a lot of the hassle out of the ‘civic duty’ of COMPLAINING.

The DIY DEMOCRACY App takes this notion of reporting ‘problems’ to a totally different extreme:

THE POWER OF CHANGE IS IN YOUR HAND

Its rhetoric is very seductive, and raises some questions:

Are all of societies inequalities and failings mere logistical ‘bugs’?

And, can we REALLY solve all of our POLITICAL issues by remote control?

There are a growing number of transparent democracy websites and below is a link to a comprehensive blogpost by Tom Steinberg (of MySociety) outlining various emerging trends and strands:

Nine is the number: The different flavours of transparency website in 2009

My Digital Media Research Masters Final Project will require a theoretical understanding of the alliances and interactions between law and digital technologies and it is my hope that this learning can be aided through discussion with both the designers, programmers and theorists resident in Culture Lab and also legal academics across at the Law School.

Tomorrow, at 2pm, I’ll be making a presentation to a PHD Research group at Newcastle Law School to introduce my research and thinking regarding areas where technology, art and law appear to intersect:

Title: Interfacing with Law

John O’Shea is working on an AHRC Research Project at Newcastle University’s Culture Lab proposing and prototyping new kinds of technological ‘interface’ between citizen and law.
The convergence of digital-media collaboration tools (such as wikis), G.P.S. enabled mobile devices, and ubiquitous social networking technologies present not only new challenges for legislation but also new possibilities for governments, corporations, communities and citizens to interact with legal frameworks.
John will present examples from his current avenues of research and open up a discussion regarding the implications of current technologies for citizens and the legal profession.

As well as discussing current examples of “Web 2.0″ technologically enabled initiatives between citizens, government and legislation I would also like to direct some focus onto instances where the two streams – technology and law  – seem to merge and hybridise instigating problematic scenarios brought about neither by citizen nor government BUT instead simply through the advancement and free proliferation of new technologies.

Real practical examples of these unanticipated pairings are often evidenced in the tabloid media:

Top: Recorded data in G.P.S. systems (potential evidence of wrong-doing) causing headaches for businesses and lawyers.
Below: Low unit cost of fingerprint scanners is enabling new, non governmental, identification schemes.
Bottom: To counter thieves, designers technologically ensure that mobile phone owners keep their device on their person at all times (again using G.P.S.)

In each of the three story examples, technological innovation is portrayed in an unswervingly positive light and, although each of these developments could have very obvious implications for the privacy of individuals involved, these concerns are not voiced.

In his ISEA2009 keynote, Clive Van Heerden of the Phillips Technology ‘Design Probes’ division discussed these kind of throwaway news articles and used the phrase ‘weak signals’ to liken them to a kind of cultural indicator.

This idea has parity with one of Marshall Mcluhan’s 1969 conceptions of the role of art and artists in relation to technology:

I think of art, at its most significant as a DEW line, a DISTANT EARLY WARNING system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.

More info regarding DISTANT EARLY WARNING at this excellent site HERE!

My thoughts have returned to the unusual Prenzlauer Berg gravestone and I have decided to make a model.  The black outline will be cut from leftover acrylic plastic in the workshop and the design element (in red above) will be engraved (is engraved the right word – sounds quite grand -  anyway, it will be cut also but not all of the way through.)

Having already made an approximation of the spirograph design I have worked with Processing’s bezier() function to make an outline shape similar to that of the original stone.  It took some time to understand how to programme the curves but once the bezier principle is understood it is actually very simple.  Basically, the curve is constructed through combining both sets of co-ordinates for the construction lines (in red below).

Click for sketch and code.

PDF. here also. (any questions please add comment.)

(this instance of DIY gravestone manufacturing may or may not have been inspired by this Home Office video designed to help young people with everyday problems…)

(slideshow created using flickrslidr)

This stone was the most interesting art object that I encountered during my visit to Berlin’s Transmediale.10.

The dead individual (whom this stone is representing) presents us with a subtle, final-word: a challenge to living-beings.

The ‘optical illusion’ of physical depth against this pristine, flat, surface evidences our flawed and filtered sensory apparatus and disturbs any complacency regarding attempts at understanding the nature of perception (and by extension: space; consciousness; life; and death…)

I have begun working with the design from the stone to test out some ideas in Processing.

(My initial code for the above outline is shared here.)

int a;

void setup()
{

size(500, 500);
background(255);
smooth();
noFill();
stroke(0);
a = 10;

ellipseMode(CORNER);

ellipse(125, 250, 250, 250);

for(int a=0;a<360;a=a+10)
{
pushMatrix();
// move the origin to the pivot point);
translate(250,250);
// then pivot the grid
rotate(radians(a));

// and draw the square at the origin
noFill();
ellipse(-125, 0, 250, 250);
popMatrix();
}
}

• a manmade laser rainbow across the sky
• ominous droning from the bell tower
• mass gathering outside of the House of World Cultures

Price and Value of Cultural Work – Session:

Liquid Democracies – Discussion:

• Steve Lambert – EYEBEAM
• Matteo Pasquinelli – Digital Neofeudalism

What is Futurity Now?

(insert blog post here!)

Rainbow on 12seconds.tv

Below are links to un-edited wiki notes on various sessions:

Wed 3rd Feb 2009

• Price and Value of Cultural Work
• Basis of Free Culture

On the 20th of February I made a presentation at Newcastle Life Centre’s ‘Dorkbot’ Event, which was hosted by Andy Lloyd. Here’s the blurb:

“John O’Shea is an artist and Co-Director of artist collective Re-Dock. Through the transference of digital-realm metaphors onto physical spaces, using simple material props, Re-Dock transform social spaces into information environments using cardboard cut-outs, sports equipment, old rope and balloons. After sharing some recent projects around concepts of ‘interfaces’ John will facilitate a discussion resulting in our collective mapping and extrapolation of technological trajectories for the coming decade!”

I presented a working prototype for my internal assessment at Culture Lab on the 9th of December 2009, where I used the device in conjunction with an arduino board which was relaying the analog information to MAXmsp in order to trigger and control sample audio files.

Thoughts on interface:

Aspects of the Mk 1 hardware are not ideal.  The prototype device is not using a truly ‘continuous’ potentiometer (if such a thing were to exist) – it is using a standard potentiometer which has been butchered and hacked to go all of the way round. The problem is that this leaves a gap in the turn (the resistive element inside is ‘c’ shaped rather than a continuous ‘o’) and as a result of trying to work with this, the principles of code for the current Max patch are heavily compromised.

The demo MAX patch is very buggy and only worked intermittently during the presentation – it is clear that it needs much more rigorous development.

• For a Mk 2 it would be highly desirable to find a better solution than the modified potentiometer for sending ‘full twist’ analogue data to arduino.
• A new MAX patch could then be developed which uses ‘clean’ change in acceleration data rather than periodically polling for difference in values  (which is the clumbsy way the demo ‘worked’)

Thoughts on concept:

During the presentation I was asked ‘why exactly THIS twist?’ and ‘why THIS outcome?’

The action of twisting a pen or pencil in the reel of a cassette tape is something that the majority of the adult population will at some time have done – regardless of technological confidence.  The ‘twisting action’ is the result of some kind of inate human inventiveness which arises in an attempt to fix the tape.

I had begun working with this simple twist because the action is very satisfying, and I wanted to see what kinds of things could be done with the resulting data output that might have some kind of ‘intuitive’ relevance to the cultural associations of the object and so, conceptually speaking ‘feedback’ or echo…

This approach relates to aspects of our recent theoretical study where we considered J. J. Gibson’s ‘Theory of Affordances’ (1977. pp 67-82) in the context of designing for interaction.  Early in the article Gibson, talking about the origin of his theory quotes from ‘Principles of Gestalt Psychology’ (1935, Koffka.)

Each thing says what it is…

…the handle “wants to be grasped” and things “tell us what to do with them

Later though, in a footnote, Gibson warns about making naive assumptions about the simple consequences of our interaction:

THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE WHAT THEY ARE

If the affordances of a thing are perceived correctly, we say that it looks like what it is.  But we must, of course, learn to see what things really are – for example, that the innocent-looking leaf is really a nettle or that the helpful-sounding politician is really a demagogue.  And this can be very difficult.

Strategy:

It is very interesting to work simply from this one ‘action’ and to try and see how much ‘resolution’ there is within it.  In order to make a successful Mk 2 ’simple twisting interface’ I will take the following steps:

1. use bourns continuous potentiometer to make MAX patch work ‘properly’ for demonstration.  This potentiometer allows 10 full turns (based on an internal spiral) so this will allow full development of the patch – key is that I understand how to calibrate MAX and control samples using the device.
2. Make MAX patch work with Rotary Encoder (Encoder to Arduino – how? then Arduino to MAX – filter prior to debugged patch?)
3. Make processing piece using rotary encoder - Arduino to Processing-
4. Do something interesting!

Finally

What might be  interesting outcomes if this were to be a kind of instrument for triggering music tracks, for instance, rather than a mere demonstration of principle? (and art object?)

It might be interesting if:

• initial turning ie. too slow, too fast, speeding up corresponded to audible experience (akin to ’scrubbing’ the playhead)
• turning at a consistent speed for a set period (eg. 5 seconds) allowed the track to take over and play itself
• twisting fast toggled thru available tracks (in this way, more than one track could be played at a time and tracks could be cued using the scrubbing action.)