The people at Apple never cease to amaze…

http://gizmodo.com/5045269/apple-multi+touch-data-fusion-adds-camera-voice-force-sensors

and the discussion at the end of the article is equally as interesting!

“By contrast [with cinema], if there is a narrative form intrinsic to still photography, it will search for what happened, as memories or reflections do. Memory is not made up of flashbacks, each one forever moving inexorably forward. Memory is a field where different times coexist. The field is continuous in terms of the subjectivity which creates and extends it, but temporarily it is discontinuous…”

A photograph is simpler than most memories, its range is more limited. Yet with the invention of photography, we acquired a new means of expression more closely associated with memory than any other. . . . Both the photograph and the remembered depend upon and equally oppose the passing of time. Both preserve moments, and propose their own form of simultaneity, in which all their images can coexist. Both stimulate, and are stimulated by, the inter-connecctedness of events. Both seek instances of revelation, for it is only such instants which give full reason to their own capacity to withstand the flow of time.

Photographs can relate the particular to the general. This happens, as I have shown, even within a single picture. When it happens across a number of pictures, the nexus of relative affinities, contrasts and comparisons can be much wider and more complex.”

http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/2006/07/mohr-photography-memory.html

Some nice quotes I came across, in relation to photography…

(Found at: http://politicstheoryphotography.blogspot.com/)

• “WHAT WE NEED IS A CRITIQUE OF VISUAL CULTURE THAT IS ALERT TO THE POWER OF IMAGES FOR GOOD AND EVIL AND THAT IS CAPABLE OF DISCRIMINATING THE VARIETY AND HISTORICAL SPECIFICITY OF THEIR USES.” – W.J.T. MITCHELL. PICTURE THEORY (1994).
• “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” ~ Dorothea Lange
• “Photography is nothing – it’s life that interests me.” ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
• “Photos always seem to exist as sort of stuffy, unnecessary antiques that we put in a drawer — unless we take them out, put them in current dialogue, and give them relevance.” ~ Mark Klett
• “Light, then, …. is indeed a wonderful instrument …” ~ Mark Rothko
• “What the modern means of reproduction have done is destroy the authority of art and to remove it – or rather, to remove the images which they reproduce – from any preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us the way language surrounds us. [. . .] The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. It’s authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose.” ~ John Berger
• “[P]hotographs depend for their meaning on networks of authority. The image supplies little in itself. What counts is its use and the power to fix a particular interpretation of the events, objects or people depicted. Some people, and especially some institutions, have much more clout in this processs than others do.” ~ Steve Edwards
• “The first question must always be: Who is using this photograph, and to what end?” ~ David Levi Strauss
• “… A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum. … Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon we can use and which can be used against us.” ~ John Berger
• “A picture can be an answer as well as a question but if you can’t answer your question try to question your question. There are clever questions and stupid answers as well as stupid questions and clever answers. There can be questions without answers but no answers without questions.” ~ Ernst Haas

I found this paragraph whilst researching. I thought the line “One inventor of photography called it “nature’s pencil” was a really interesting idea. It also brings up some interesting thoughts for development further in the paragraph.

Photography, Pixels and New Technology: Is There a “Paradigm Shift?”

The computer age is redefining photography, and yet notions of photography can still be colored by the 19th-century view that photography is a slice of time and hence, of reality. One inventor of photography called it “nature’s pencil,” and courts have seemed to agree by traditionally allowing photography as evidence in trials. The core of the news photographer’s paradigm is that photography has a moral authority that eludes words. But the pixel (computer data transformations of a photograph) is replacing film with silicon chips, and darkrooms with computers. New technology will test the notions of photography as a slice of reality, a legal document, and as traditional photojournalism. There is a larger societal impact of this new technology, and the traditional ethical discussions regarding words and reporting do not fully encompass digitized computer photographs. Photojournalists, and perhaps society, are facing a “paradigm shift.”

http://eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED310388&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED310388

And another article which discusses virtual worlds… (again from The Age)

Spore hits Planet Earth

September 7, 2008 – 10:12AM

Spore, the eagerly-awaited computer game five years in the making allowing people to play God by re-creating the universe, hits stores worldwide this week.

The latest brainchild of game legend Will Wright, maker of the world’s top-selling computer game The Sims, Spore is being released in Europe and Asia on Friday ahead of its September 7 debut in the United States, with some pre-ordered versions available here late last week.

“We are hoping to build a community as big as that of the Sims,” Wright said during a Paris stopover this week ahead of the launch of the game by Electronic Arts.

“You are given this God-like power,” Wright told AFP in a recent interview in California. “You can create ecosystems, biospheres … We try to make it real science.”

Players start as microscopic life forms competing for survival in primordial ooze and work their way onto land, where they evolve into creatures that build civilisations and rocket into space.

“It is still probably the most interesting question for scientists and five-year-olds: What is life?” Wright said.

“It starts out as single-cell organisms and then you are eventually flying around the galaxy exploring new worlds, meeting other creatures and creating federations.”

Creatures can be made to have scales, fins, wings, claws, extra appendages, additional eyes, or body parts in unexpected places.

The online game’s programming gives characters artificial intelligence and creatures can pass on virtual genes to their progeny and build civilisations with cities, governments and economies.

And in a computer game first, Spore worlds will be inhabited by aliens made by players instead of professional video game programmers.

In June, ahead of the launch, Wright’s Electronic Arts-owned Maxis Studio released “creature creator” software to allow aspiring Spore players to bring a population to life in time for the game’s premiere.

The response astounded even Wright, with by July the number of creatures in the “Spore” database exceeding the number of known species on Earth.

“It took them 18 days to reach the number of creatures on Earth and, by some accounts, it took God six days,” Wright joked during a US presentation.

Determined players can go from being an amoeba to exploring space in about six hours, according to Wright. The self-described science fiction fan wove cliches from the genre’s popular films and stories into the game.

Players can add their creations to an online “Sporepedia” to share with others and record videos of their aliens in action and upload them to YouTube.

With the release of the original “Sims” title in early 2000, Wright lured women and other “casual gamers” into a video game market long considered a bastion of “hardcore gamers”, mainly young men.

Electronic Arts announced in April it had sold more than 100 million copies of The Sims, the world’s best selling computer game.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/spore-hits-planet-earth/2008/09/07/1220725824998.html

I still don’t fully understand the whole concept of the virtual world, particularly that of the game Second Life.

My opinion of it has probably been down-graded even further after reading this article I found whilst browsing The Age website today…

BigPond backs down on Uluru adverts

Telstra BigPond has come under fire for placing advertising billboards on its Second Life island right in front of a virtual model of Uluru.

The company has since removed the billboards, which contained BigPond logos, after online communities expert Laurel Papworth complained in a blog post titled “Bigpond brands uluru”. She claimed the telco was being insensitive to indigenous Australians.

BigPond – one of Second Life’s most popular brand presences – uses its 16 virtual islands to advertise its products.

The islands contain 3D models of Australian landmarks including Uluru, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. Its other popular destinations include Pondi Beach and the Billabong Bar, which – despite the recent Northern Territory intervention – serves virtual grog right next to Uluru.

Peter Buckskin, dean of the Indigenous College of Education & Research at the University of South Australia, said that, even though it was only a virtual representation, placing advertisements in front of Uluru was disrespectful.

“People would see that as insulting or disrespectful to the importance of the place … we don’t have McDonald’s signs out in front of the Adelaide Cathedral,” he said.

“It [Uluru] is iconic, it’s cultural, and it goes to the heart of indigenous people sharing their stories.”

Despite recent statistics showing there are only 12,245 active Australian Second Life users – down from highs of 16,000 towards the end of last year – BigPond recently opened a customer service kiosk in the virtual world that is staffed on weekdays from 11am to 10pm.

BigPond spokesman Peter Habib responded to Papworth’s blog, thanking her for “raising this to our attention”.

He said that, even though there was “quite some space” between the billboards and the “rock” the advertisements had since been removed.

“You are very correct in stating BigPond takes the image of Uluru in Second Life very seriously. This is why we do not allow avatars to climb or fly over it,” he said.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/09/08/1220725906421.html