The Camera as a Meeting Place for Decision Making

Peer reviewe

PRIMA — Privacy research through the perspective of a multidisciplinary mash up

Based on a summary description of privacy protection research within three fields of inquiry, viz. social sciences, legal science, and computer and systems sciences, we discuss multidisciplinary approaches with regard to the difficulties and the risks that they entail as well as their possible advantages. The latter include the identification of relevant perspectives of privacy, increased expressiveness in the formulation of research goals, opportunities for improved research methods, and a boost in the utility of invested research efforts

Experimental indices: Situational assemblages of facial recognition

Facial recognition technologies are increasingly used outside of constricted, laboratory-like settings. While supporters of the technologies contend that they help in identifying threats by linking specific bodies to hard evidence, we argue that the indexical relations they exhibit are best described as experimental, pointing to specific situational constellations within which they were initially created. By revisiting key moments in the development of (semi-)automated facial recognition technologies from the late 1960s to the present, we identify varying situational assemblages of facial recognition that depend on different understandings of indexicality. These experimental indices rely on historical dynamics, including significant government interest in the development of facial recognition technology, expansion in the scale of experimental settings, and dissolution of the formerly strict boundaries between the social spheres of private image-sharing, commercial image distribution, and institutional image forensics for identification. In coupling experimental indices with the development of facial recognition technologies, we hope to show a way forward to comparing the histories of other evidential technical images too.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Photorealistic computer-generated images are difficult to distinguish from digital photographs: A case study with professional photographers and photo-editors

Accepted May 12 2017 for publication in Visual Communication

Keeping Distance. Notes on Video-Mediated Communication During the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly changed communication practices, as physical proximity has been curtailed in order to deal with a global pandemic. For many, video-mediated communication has replaced face-to-face meetings, as work, education and leisure activities have been moved online. While video-mediated communication has a longer history, we are witnessing an unprecedented scale and scope of video-mediated interactions. These affect established ecologies of social interaction, and participants need to learn and negotiate novel stocks of knowledge for appropriate ways of being together. While in public discussions many lament the lack of face-to-face interactions with those dear to us, it is argued that video-mediated communication tends to socially sort our interactions towards those we already know, or towards those who are introduced to us via trusted intermediaries: it is much less amenable to the unexpected, and hence to the valuing of diversity in our social encounters.Non peer reviewe

Seeing with special requirements: visual frictions during the everyday

The predominant approach in visual studies, explicitly focusing on how vision is socioculturally constructed, tends to neglect the physiological substrate for vision. Images, and our visual surroundings, are often considered from the premise that those dealing with them specifically see with average eyesight and that differences in seeing can be accounted for by cultural and ideological analyses. I set out to question this premise and the normalisation of vision it implies, by drawing on accounts of seeing by Conrad, a friend and colleague who sees with special requirements. His well-articulated verbal description of the requirements involved in his seeing makes it clear that our vision is tightly intertwined with visuality. Our visual surroundings are the way they are partially on account of the ability to see implied. As Conrad puts it, “they are designed for average eyesight.” I posit that the concept of activated affordances is useful for taking into account that vision is socially constructed, as suggested in important works in visual studies, and that physiological substrates for vision exhibit variation. I will focus particularly on how the designed environment becomes an area for Conrad in which visuality is lived out differently in accordance with how this eyesight happens to manifest itself. Conrad’s use of “social hacks” provides a case in point for discussing how Conrad activates affordances in unforeseen ways, in order to fulfil desires for socially meaningful action that does not reduce him to stereotypical behaviour when being treated as visually impaired. Maintaining that vision and visuality remain difficult to disentangle, I will argue that we all see with special requirements, even if we might not notice this. For studies of visuality, I suggest reflecting on presumed understandings of vision. The argument in textual form is complemented with a brief video that features an edited interview focusing on Conrad’s account of seeing with special requirements. It is supported with visualisations representing an attempt to render aspects of his seeing. Instead of purporting to visualise exactly how he sees, I intend the imagery to provoke reflection of seeing as a complex process, mediated via our ability to see and by the social construction of what to see.2015 A. Lehmuskallio. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license