Identity - Maps and Networks

IDENTITY 

So.... After a very few stressful days of trying to get things done, my original idea was around family resemblance and how eyes can look like our parents and siblings.... However no idea how I was going to convey this.


So I then changed it to how we are all connected through our eyes, as well as differences, such a colours and shapes, whether we wear make up or not.... but after shooting, and making it I really wasn't happy, again I didn't feel it made any sense, and was it going to make sense to the audience... I was very stressed and on the verge of crying.


Therefore, to get the work done and have something I'm proud of, Paige helped we come up with a new idea, which was an original idea anyway, on finger prints and identity!


So I drew a really big finger print on a big mounting board in pencil, and then went over it with black ink felt pens.  Then I went to Facebook to ask for help from fellow students to come to the library and stamp their finger prints on my big finger print, in different colours.


My idea came from the idea of identity and having our own individual identity, There is this idea on identity fraud, people taking names and using them on passports and other forms of identity, to steal peoples identity, however you can't steal someones fingerprints and make them your own, and that's why its so personal to people, because no two fingers prints are the same.

It was also a sense of trust for people to do this for me, because its quite a thing to give someone your fingerprints and for them to be on display.

I did have a few people say no when I asked, and a few people weren't really up for it, but I did have a good turn out with lots of helpful people, especially a few in class.

Research 

Fingerprints are used as a form of identity for Police, when you get booked for a crime, they take your picture and finger prints and its on a database forever. Crime labs find fingerprints at crime scenes and then then put them in a system to see if they can find someone who matches.

Some places use fingerprints, for cars, banks, businesses, organisations, to get in to places.

Our fingerprints are everywhere, on our phone screens, laptops, that shop door you opened, the table you rested your hands on, objects you've held in your hand, like coffee cups, pencils, and pens. Although its easy enough to remove your fingerprint from a surface, its almost impossible to remove your fingerprints from your self. Even are toes have certain swirls and lines which we can be identified by.


We use out fingerprints to open our phones, and pay for things.

Fingerprints are even more unique than DNA, the genetic material in each of our cells. Although identical twins can share the same DNA -- or at least most of it -- they can't have the same fingerprints. They form from pressure on a baby's tiny, developing fingers in the womb.

All of the ridges of fingerprints form patterns called loops, whorls or arches:

• Loops begin on one side of the finger, curve around or upward, and exit the other side. There are two types of loops: Radial loops slope toward the thumb, while ulnar loops slope toward the little finger.

• Whorls form a circular or spiral pattern.

• Arches slope upward and then down, like very narrow mountains.

The technique of fingerprinting is known as dactyloscopy. Until the advent of digital scanning technologies, fingerprinting was done using ink and a card.

There are two different types of prints. 

• Visible prints are made on a type of surface that creates an impression, like blood, dirt or clay.

• Latent prints are made when sweat, oil and other substances on the skin reproduce the ridge structure of the fingerprints on a glass, murder weapon or any other surface the perpetrator has touched. These prints can't be seen with the naked eye, but they can be made visible using dark powder, lasers or other light sources. Police officers can "lift" these prints with tape or take special photographs of them.

There are records of fingerprints being taken many centuries ago, although they weren't nearly as sophisticated as they are today. The ancient Babylonians pressed the tips of their fingertips into clay to record business transactions. The Chinese used ink-on-paper finger impressions for business and to help identify their children.

Identifying children

Chinese and Babylonian business transactions

Fingerprints weren't used as a method for identifying criminals until the 19th century.

Sir Edward Henry, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of London, soon became interested in using fingerprints to nab criminals. In 1896, he added to Galton's technique, creating his own classification system based on the direction, flow, pattern and other characteristics of the friction ridges in fingerprints. Examiners would turn these characteristics into equations and classifications that could distinguish one person's print from another's. The Henry Classification System replaced the Bertillonage system as the primary method of fingerprint classification throughout most of the world.

When fingerprints came in, detectives would have to compare them manually with the fingerprints on file for a specific criminal (that's if the person even had a record). The process would take hours or even days and didn't always produce a match. By the 1970s, computers were in existence, and the FBI knew it had to automate the process of classifying, searching for and matching fingerprints. The Japanese National Police Agency paved the way for this automation, establishing the first electronic fingerprint matching system in the 1980s. Their Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS), eventually enabled law enforcement officials around the world to cross-check a print with millions of fingerprint records almost instantaneously.

That changed in 1999, with the introduction of Integrated AFIS (IAFIS). This system is maintained by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division. It can categorize, search and retrieve fingerprints from virtually anywhere in the country in as little as 30 minutes. It also includes mug shots and criminal histories on some 47 million people. IAFIS allows local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to have access to the same huge database of information. The IAFIS system operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Koalas have them too. :) 

Even in death, our fingerprints stick around, which makes them very helpful in identifying bodies.

When apple created a sensor to unlock you phone in 2013, for the Iphone 5s, people could unlock their phones, A techgrunch writer decided to commandeer a cat and used its toe pad to create a new profile to unlock his phone, he wrote "and while it encountered more frequent failures than did a fingerprint, it was able to unlock the phone again repeatedly when positioned correctly on the sensor.”
Although apple claim to be the first it was first developed in 2007 by Toshiba and then publicly launched by Motorola with the Motorola artix in 2011

Wartime vigilance meant that the FBI was collecting more prints than ever before, from soldiers, foreign agents, and military suppliers, as well as draft dodgers and potential spies. By 1943, the collection included more than 70 million prints. To manage the explosion of information, the agency moved to a big warehouse (nicknamed the “Fingerprint Factory”) and hired and trained thousands of women to sort prints 10 hours a day, six days a week.

Our fingerprints are developed while we’re still in the womb and are unique based on our movement, location in the womb and composition of our mother’s amniotic fluid.

There are some diseases where people are born with out fingerprints these are called; Naegeli-Franceschetti-Jadassohn syndrome (NFJS), Dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis (DPR), and adermatoglyphia. NFJS and DPR cause a range of symptoms, most much worse than smooth fingers. Adermatoglyphia, on the other hand, has just one indicator: no fingerprints. It’s sometimes referred to as “immigration delay disease,” for the trouble it causes people trying to cross borders.

Chemotherapy patients may lose their fingerprints.

Synopsis:

I want to create a large fingerprint surrounded my lots of little fingerprints to show how no two fingerprints look the same and the uniqueness of the fingerprint itself. How we use the fingerprint to be identified as a person, in paying for objects, unlocking phones, cars and accessing bank accounts

Treatment:

Theme is to show different fingerprints on a big mounting board, covered in colourful fingerprints.

Structure of my piece will be a large mounting board with a large fingerprint surrounded by little fingerprints.

I plan to show it using bulldog clips and then hung on the wall, to show how fingerprints were shown and stored before computers. Using black ink for the big fingerprint as well as a few fingerprints being black to show how they use to be stored and how times have changed with colourful fingerprints as well.

Evaluation

How it may progress – I could do one specifically on families, and do a family tree, I can further it on with finger paintings and how we have progressed through the years, I can also look at it from a digital perspective and looking how fingerprint identification has developed over the years and how it can be used.

What have I learned – Start earlier and attended more tutorials to try and crystallise my idea, so I don’t feel so disappointed with the outcome and have to change my idea very last minute. Use a tripod to make sure that the images are still and don't cut corners when it comes to the digital side of filming. 

I feel much happier with my fingerprint project, it was an original idea anyway, I just wish I followed it through right at the beginning so I wouldn't be in this position, and being so late to the game.  I wasn't overly happy with my family resemblance idea.

Not a lot of people turned up to help me with my piece but a few people came and helped out for me to get my desired outcome, it was mostly the class which I'm really thankful for

Set building- Day one 22/11

After a partially stressful beginning to our day, and slight miss communication, we've gotten off to full swing. Set is up and currently having the holes filled in and then being painted for group A's shoot next week.  Paige and Suzi have gone to get all the fabric for the first day of shooting on Monday.

All in all we've had a productive day with the set being built and then finishing touches to their walls tonight and tomorrow.

Chris has been a big help in the building of the set.

The set looks really good and we are all hopeful for a good shoot.

in terms of research bit disappointed in some peoples attempt as it feels no pride or effort when in, other people having to pick up the slack when they have other things to do.

Savina is a very good DOP, being organised and motivated to get things done. besides being let down by a few others

So proud of Suzi for coming out if her comfort zone and being a really amazing producer, she's got everything organised and ready to go, again despite being let down.

Admittedly I my self have been slacking in the motivation department due to health reasons but now finally seeing everything go up its starting to feel more real and i'm getting excited.

Alice, Jodie, Ciara and George working really hard on the set.

Everyone else is working on the research and getting floor boards measured and ready 

Cinemagraph- Practice go.

So this was my first go at doing a GIF. It took about half an hour using photoshop with lots of trial and error.... Although its really dark, it was just a practise go and to see if I could make it. which I can, next shoot i'm going to use a longer lens to get a closer zoom and better lighting to make sure its not super grainy.

It was fun to create but at this moment in time, i'm not 100% how i'm going to convey family resemblance, and whether its worth just getting lots of eyes and putting it in to a mosaic and explaining it as different eye shapes and that we all have eyes and thats a number one thing we can relate with each other, if nothing else we all have eyes, and also how we see the world in a different way.... its just working out how I can convey that in my piece and installation of my piece.

Is there something I can display it on which will help me show this? with more research i'll see if I can find the best way to show it.

Maps and networks - Initial ideas

My Idea.


My idea is to take a close up of my family's eyes blinking and then using photoshop I can turn it in to a cinemagraph, which will be interesting to do.

I'm going to put this in to a mosaic.

I wanted to show family resemblance, but mostly focusing on the eyes.

This also means I could develop this further and have other peoples eyes, showing different shapes and colours.


I'm looking forward to trying out making the cinemagraph as well! it will help develop my technical skills which I could use in other projects.

Avid - Friska deal

On Monday, was our chance to sync audio with video.... which is a lot harder than it sounds, especially if the footage and the audio don't line up.

By that I mean, sometimes the audio has started to record before the cameras have started rolling and the footage was given to us just as the clapper closed, so it was a bit of a challenge to get them to line up but not impossible.


I quite liked a challenge though so its ok.


below is my attempt at putting the first half of the sequence together, with some colour correction


To make it better I need to obviously finish it and colour correct the footage to have continuity.

Susan Stockwell

Susan Stockwell-  'is a sculptor who makes subtly political work about materials and their inherent content and histories, with injustice and inequality as overarching themes. Her work addresses political, social, ecological and feminist issues, using her trademark motifs and metaphors of maps, stacks, dresses, money, recycled computer components, paper, rubber and other everyday materials and products.'

Going through an article I found called 'Maps for Navigating to a New Perspective' written by Sylvia Gold in 2010, I came across Susan Stockwell, in this exhibition she turned a Victorian-era government maps of Scotland into a 19th-century gown, and named it 'Highland dress'  

Described as 'elegant and eerie' by the writer of the article. The exhibition was at the Katonah museum of art.  This dress was one of many she did as part of a series of sculptures.  Others being; Money dress,  Creative compass,  Love me tender, Colonial dress, Cartographic dress, Empire dress, and Coffee dress. 

Stockwell was born in Manchester, England.  She attained her Masters of Art at the royal college of art and her Bachelors of Art at Sheffield Hallam University in fine art. She now teaches fine art as a senior lecturer at the University of East London.  Her work addresses political, social, ecological and feminist issues, using her trademark motifs and metaphors of maps, stacks, dresses, money, recycled computer components and other everyday materials and products.

She quite likes her installations, Going through her website under the tab of work, it shows I believe all the work she has done, from 1990 to 2013. One of the pieces that stuck out to me the most was 'Flood, York' an 8m high, recycled computer component, site specific installation, exhibited at St Mary's York. I'm not entierly sure why I liked it so much, I just found it quite interesting, it was meant to be a take on the spire of the church, in an explanation of her piece she explains that it 'references ideas of alters as spaces for prayer and worship' and 'The title 'Flood' refers to York's flooding problem, to floods of information and floods of technology'   

Flood, York (2010)

Another piece she did was called 'Pattern of the World' which was exhibited at the V&A Museum in London. In the exhibition 'Mapping the Imagination'. It shows a map of the world made out of dress patterns, pinned together to form a Mercator projection* of the world.

* Mercator Projection - is a cylindrical map projection presented by the Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569.

As exhibited

For those who want to read about the exhibit click here

Other than mainly her work which is always different and has references to political problems, there isn't really much about her life online, but she her work is interesting to look at.