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##Previous proposal loop-diagram.JPG
My project proposal was about the intervention of data practices from Google, Facebook, Amazon into our communication systems and all the human labor happening behind it. I made an annotated diagram of the Shannon diagram of a general communication system. So for example in the case of training a speech regognition tool,....(explain one route with listening and transcribing). At the same time these tools (like the automatic dialect analysis) are used from the state of Germany to verify the claims of origin of refugees. So there is the reality of the user, mostly western, that becomes part of the loop and the other body that is being tested.
I wanted to highlight the human involvement into this loop and the importance of voice as a unique element of our bodies that is collected into a big pool of trained data. My aim was to make experiments with other people in group sessions where we would discuss about our privacy and at the same time the discussion would become input for a process of human activities. Like transcribing, listening, eavesdropping, speaking, recording, repeating. They would immitate the processes of the training of speech recognition tools. Here is a diagram made by somebody else that explains further the exploitation of user's speech data and the free labor for the Amazon echo.
2.ai-anatomy-map-training.jpg 2a.ai-anatomy-map-training.jpg 2b.ai-anatomy-map-training.jpg
2c.ai-anatomy-map-training.jpg ...i am very interested in the databanks that contain different material from a public domain (online broadcasts, transcripts, readings online, livestreaming). Voice samples of users used by Amazon without their consent.
databanks.png
My idea for repeating these actions, immitate conversations, transcribing, eavesdroping came from these databanks. There are limitless actions happening from users that produce and publish so much material online.
My purpose was to strengthen our awareness for our involvement in the loop and answer some questions that bother me. Like how our bodies are influenced by these systems, what is the control over them and how can we appropriate these new technologies more consciously? It seems to me that in all this process our personal body [cultural, physical, political, gender] disappears. My plan was to organise a workshop at Leeszaal first, where the visitors and the volunteers are permanent inhabitants of Netherlands but are coming from different countries. I assume that they have different relations to these tools and databanks.
##Workshop
pyratechnic3_workshop.pdf
video-pyratechnic3.mp4
My first experiment was the workshop, part of the pyratechnic sessions, with the first years. I wanted to immitate a loop in which a conversation of two people leakes out to another room, through Jitsi call, where participants repeat, transcribe and then read the transcription back to them. So their words come back distorted. //Explain the second diagram//
##My research turn - voice in public:
The workshop was missing content and after the feedback I got from the participants and the outcome of it I started researching on transcripts of public speeches and that led me on my interest on the presence of the voice in public with the contribution of media.
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/chapter1-speech-recognition https://gitea.xpub.nl/Angeliki/xpub_graduation/src/branch/master/thesis-chapter1.md
So I started to focus my research on public speeches and assemblies. I am very interested in the voice and its ability to connect people but also to express the uniqueness of the speaker. I looked at specific examples of counter communication for speeches of resistance that I had come accross in a previous research.
examples-speeches.jpg
diagram-flows.jpg
I annotated again the Shannon diagram for each example.
So, in feminists movements speech-making workshops were helping women to express the violence in their private space (their home) to the public domain that was dominated by male voices. They were privatizing listening and horizontal communication. The presence of them in public was very important. //Explain the green//.
The other example: In 2011 in occupy movement speech and voice played also an important role. Public assemblies and speeches were held every day by citizens in squares. The presence is important for democratic processes to happen. It was not allowed to use amplifying devices in some public spaces so the crowd became the "human microphone", repeating what the speaker says. Youtube and live streaming was used for the fast communication of the public assemblies in internet and were perfectly fitted in the urgency of those actions.
//Explain the red one//
Similarly radio activists were always broadcasting community radio shows or spreading political speeches again with this need for rapid streaming.
I see streaming as a bottom-up approach for establishing rapid (though temporary) communication. The companies realised that and developed their own livestreaming like facebook, instagram where people stream live videos from demonstrations, terrorists attacks. Mainstream media not needed.
streaming-assemblies.jpg
##New approach in my proposal:
###what I want to organise group sessions with conversations on public speech and live-streaming that connect the public space with the private, the digital with the physical and explores the possibilities of these processes in both spaces and the potentials for a more agonistic public domain. At the same time I will engage with the tools and practices that are related to these phenomenon. The sessions could take the form of workshops and give me feedback for the development of a media object [tool or a hack to the existing tools]. I would try these sessions in physical public spaces, where the exploitation of citizens data and their restriction and control is present.
I found several restrictions regarding public assemblies here for axample. In Rotterdam, in Afrikaandermarkt, there is a ban on public assembly, for anti-hooliganism in the past and anti-terrorist concerns now. In some spaces surveillance with several technologies and devices is applied [CCTV,photographing for data collectoin] that conflicts with the constitution for privacy rights of the citizens.
###How
####Example of workshop. //Explain the blue//
A workshop in Leeszaal:
- Reflecting the issues on the rights on speech and open use of public spaces. In origin countries and here. Interrogating if women are able to speak in public. What about immigrants? What is the experience and the relation with the technology used for streaming, or recordings in demonstrations, public speeches?
- Prototyping with these daily technologies and devices, archive our converastions/speeches and make them public.
- Using the practices of human microphone, collective editing (pad and git), listening, transcribing, live streaming.
###Why The reason I am doing that: I come from a country were the public presence and resistance is important, gender inequalities are reflected in the public and private spaces and the engagememt with the technology is divided in the male expert and the other amateur. Now I live in a country were the public presence is highly controlled and surveilled and the claiming for rights is expressed mostly in bureaucratic procedures. The physical representation and face to face communication not in priority in matters of democracy and agonistic arena. I felt the need to explore ways of presence in the public space and embrace the related technology through my own eyes. But also, interrogating the contribution of daily technologies in that.
occupy-rotterdam.png
My approach may look chaotic but everyting comes together and make sense at the end. I collect and search through the broader context of the topic but then I simplify a lot the whole process. I try small experiments, then I come back to research and then experiments again.
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Questions:
Create public: how: workshops with inhabitants (daily expression in rotterdam public) and experiments in public spaces, connect with people and communities around patebin, live streaming
why: occupy public space and the contribution of media, externilize the private the need for presence for democratic processes to happen, the conflict with the powerful. Liveness that the medium provides and engagement with the technology in an aspect of the conscious user [apos]
intentions: division and exclusion in private and public
(the bublic domain of all these databanks where users publish material and the public space ((the voice in public but unconsciously-just using a tool)) with the restrictions where citizens are obliged to listen to spesific rules ((the voice in public to reclaim rights))).