I began looking at how we adress digital identity in contemporary culture. This brought me to photo identifiation.

 

 

 

"Hi-tech eye scanners that track passengers as they walk through airport go on trial in UK"

 

 

We are being captured more an more in  images and videos these days as technology advances. Surveillance to security and safety now have cameras recording our moves in most public places. As soon as we are captured on film or uploaded to a database the images of us become inherently digital and as this profile builds up it becomes a record of us - our virtual imprint.

 

We see technology leaping ahead in security where airports have full body scanners, face recognition and iris identification at their fingertips. This instant and effective method of identification is there to protect us but is usually seen as an invasion of privacy.

Is surveillance and identification going too far? Is it all bad?

Is there a way to make it into something less threading? Can it be redesigned and re-purposed for as a tool to make a statement?

 

 

A more analogue and raditional method of identification was fingerprints.

 

Fingerprints were unique to every person. I like the aesthetic of a finger print as it used basic shape and line to create a patter-like image. It has a simplistic aesthtic and usually taken in black and white.

 

I began to think about using fingerprints in my designs, taking their simple form and making into audio to see what it sounds like and compare them against other fingerprints. Hopefulyl like the finger print each sound will be unque.

 

Choosing an Image for the Designs and a Title.

 

I like the black and white aestehtic of the finger prints they are very clean and sterile. I am considering keeping this style on in the video but first I have to sort out how they text will read and the typeface to use.

 

I have been thinking some handwritten style type may be nice, to refelect the quality in the fingerprints?

 

I think it would make sense to make this into a short video that uses the main aspects of my investigation and hearing the digital identity of people. "What does your fingerprint sound like?"

 

Okay I instantly realised this was a bad idea... It looks like something you would get in a primary school classroom and doesn't pull off the aesthetic I as looking for. I think something cleaner and more crisp will fit the video better for the serious theme.

YES YES YES!

 

This Last one is my personal favourite its big, bold and clear. It looks like it means business and it means any other text i use in the video will be smaller and clearly set out a hierarchy - the rest of the text will obviously not be tities/headers.

 

Making a title screen for the video will be necessary, giving it a title and an overall look.

The Video show the unique sounds of 3 different fingerprints. The prints were exported form photoshop as BMP files so that they were in a code format that could be read by audio Editing software. In C-Edit Pro the digital sound of the images were saved  and played back in the short film.

This allows us to not only see an individuals identity, buit hear it too; building an profile that can spark veiwership and listnership.

 

After this video I wanted, I was now able to tackle identity as a issue, using sound and image to help convey a message. However, I wanted to more strongly assert an issue and I thought that instead of showing just image and sound working together - the synergy between the two - I'd also allow a change to make comparisons.

But complaining set of image and sound against another the audience would be able to SEE and HEAR the difference for themselves and draw their own conclusions instead of me pointing them out.

I began looking at more complex images for more complex noises and it made sense that I looked at the face. This way a persons identity can be seen instantly by the viewer as there is more features and changes in faces than fingerprints.

 

n this video the power of the face is discussed. The expressions made and the narrative of the face even without dialogue

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The changes we make to our faces are also questioned - the way we groom, the cosmetics we use and even the extreme surgical options available. There is a statement made by the face and this can be intentional or unintentional.

If we are showing our identity through our face then we are also showing our inner self through expressions, this means there is basic visual factor in how we looks as we are displaying our emotions.

At the same time as this there is a factor in our expressions that effect how we see ourselves.

Its human nature to be your own worst critic and this video shows the hyper critical sense of self affecting our perception.

We have this inbuilt desire to be attractive and there are many rules to what is "attractive" such at geometry, symetry and the Golden Ratio. But more and more in the contemporary culture we see  images that are the climax of beauty in magazines and editorials.

 

However, these images have been manipulated. they are photoshoped to have no blemishes, their fat trimmed and hips accentuated to become more of a sexual icon.

These are ideals we cannot achieve. It is a hyper real image, but the effects it has on our perceptions on others and ourselves are very real.

 

I really like this music video by French Musican Boggie. It highlights even video can be airbrushed. What we seen on screen can be manipulated to look more appealing and is not an accurate portrail of the human image.

 

I like that the video shows the changing image editing in real-time so you can see all the changed being made, not just a before and after.

 

After watching this TED Talk Video I knew i wanted  assert the growing pandemic of an unachievable identify from images Using my method of I breaking down images into code and creating digital images and sounds profiles. These digital profiles will create a 'Digital DNA' and by juxtaposing sound and image we can see no matter how the image is made to look more visually appealing, the Digital DNA remains virtually unchanged.

 

Eva hits the issue head on. This is a global issue where people cannot achieve the combination of 'fashion, photoshop and porn' all mixed into one hyper-model. Women (and Men) are affected by these images weather it be perfect skin or bigger chest or abs of steel and the height of masculinity.

 

People are naturally drawn to organisation, the equdistant, the adjacent the parallel and the perpendicular.

 

We have a natural affinity for symmetry and are drawn to faces that have these characteristics.

 

I the video the Geometry of the Mona Lisa is assessed. While the video is a bit of an overeggeration - making geometry out of areas in the image, I do like the idea of an intetional set or rules that make an image more attractive.An opposing theme to this is when an image is the opposite and lacks order. There is also an aesthtic in this that is usually complecx and detialed

 

I have found in my work, there is an so of chaos and dis order. there tends to be no main foreground background or mid ground and lacking a main focal point. instead the image is a complicated mixture of layers and details that look like something from afar butis entirely something else up close.

 

The Golden Ratio is a formula and the number, universally recognized as ideal, is usually rounded to 1.62. It is also known as phi (Φ) in Geometry, Fibonacci numbers in India, feng shui in Asia, and divine proportion. This ratio 1:1.62  is nature's symmetry and occurs naturally in life.

 

Da Vinci himself used it when he drew the perfect human male body in his famous work the Virtruvian Man. The premise behind this is that the closer a face or object is to the golden number 1.62, the more beautiful it becomes. 

MAN VS WOMAN

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but according to a study from the University of Nebraska, a smaller nose and chin, along with a larger distance between the eyes and a smaller mouth width are deemed desirable traits for women. Females were proven to be seen as the fairer sex, rated more attractive by both men and women.

 

In men the Golden Ratio Tend to feminise the features and do what is visual attractive is more ambiguous in males than women.
 

 

Although there has been a lot of focus on the female image and how women are affected by images, i want to raise awareness for men too as its a unisex issue. Men are also targeted by magazines with other guy
s with buldging muscles, perfect hair, immaculate grooming and all the best gear.

 

This seels products but deminished the ego, and can cause self confidence issues and personality complpexes of inferiority. Its important that both men and women are made aware of  photo manipulation so they know what is achiveable and what simply, is not.

 

The Sun took a satyrical stance on the subject, using ordinary male models to recreate famous looks in fashion shoots. The results show the comparison and likeliness of success in acheiving the same look.
 

 

Photographer, Martin Schoeller working with National Geographic created this stunning set of photographs of how new generations will look in America. It features a multi-racial and diverse set of indivduals that hae anew look. These people are the next generation and with them its possible that beautify will be redifined. Hopefully in a positive way.

 

Looking at live images and their idenity stripped back and raw. Aollying the glich image with rules of Aynaesthesia.

 

CORE is a transdisciplinary project created and developped by 3 graphic designers and a programmer, all students, within a larger project called Écoute Voir organized by ESAG Penninghen, Hetic and La Gaité Lyrique, the famous French digital museum.
 
Inspired by the idea of the primitive sound and the traditionnal transe rituals throughout the world, Core is a pre-birth experience. Functioning as an artificial synaesthesia, Core invites you to listen to your heartbeat with your eyes : humans conscious of their own frequency, of their intimate resonance.
 
 

 

 

Images are becoming more and more influenced by social media and digital applications where photo manipulation and image editing can be done in a few simple steps with auto-enhancers and filter galleries on our devices. Naturally, we desire to look our best but in a world where mainstream Images are showing a hyper-real edits of celebrities or even our friends and family; we are faced with an unrealistic ideal of self identify.

 

It now at the point where we can take an image ane press a button and the image is instantly changed. It cang light up your face, hide your blemishes and slim your edges. But is it still us if we edit the image? or just an ideal version of yourself?

 

Here is a late night selfie of me and Editing using Instagram

 

From lost self-esteem, lost money and time spent fixing “flaws” and a well-documented preoccupation with losing weight ( the effects of these unreal ideals hurt everyone. We know that advertising – especially for fashion or beauty products – depends on two things: 1) people believing their happiness, health, and ability to be loved is dependent on their appearance, and 2) people  believing they can achieve physical ideals by using certain products or services.

 

One of the main strategies used to reinforce and normalize a distorted idea of “average” is media’s representation of women as extremely thin (meaning much thinner than the actual population or what is physically possible for the vast majority of women) – either by consistent use of models and actresses that are underweight or extremely thin, or by making the models and actresses fit their idea of ideal thinness and beauty through digital manipulation both on screen through computer-generated imagery

 

I wanted to capture people in their unedited form. That means without digital manipulation and without them making themselves look any better than they would in their fay-to-day lives.

Using harsh lighting and a close up head shot we can see each person and all their imperfections. However, theses images are 'real' and contain the personality and unique characteristics of each individual.

 

 

My plan is to take the Golden Ratio mask and overlay it on the raw photography of people and in photoshop and push and pul the face to fit in the guides of the mask. In theory they sound become more 'attractive '.

 

By this stage I had Taken the raw images of people

The next part of the

 

What I found is that the more the persons face is outwith the Golden  Ratio from the start the stanger it looks after editing. Those who are already close to the marks guides tend to be the ones that have the best looking outcome and more natural.

 

What I have noticed is that when you look at the raw photography on its own you just see a binch of normal people and you don;t immediately begin to think they are flawed. However, after editing then and comparing the before and after although your brain knows the final image isnt real and it look less rrealstic it stil identifies the symmentry and geometry of the face.

 

By comparison now the original faces no loner look normal but buldging, skewed, squint and uneven. This

 just shows how our minds are manipulated by images.

 

 

After this stage I began to wonder how I could take the project further and what would happen if these sounds - the digital sound - the digital DNA would be the thing becoming more attracitve rather than changing the image. If I took the audio and sampled it, looped it and changed the pitch on a beat, I could Technically make it into music.

 

Using Cubase 5 I tried this method and came up with the Audio Below from 'Lucy Kinnaird: Sound'

I triend to show the build up of the music by taking the origianl audio playing it then showing me braking it up and resampling it. Editing the Audio to make Hamonies of the 5th and 7th scales and  adding layers and a beat. Its a pretty simple outcome but it what I do with the audio which make the next phase Intersting.

 

At this stage I open an image in sound editing software (see tutorial below) and edit the audio to change the image. Once I make the music I copy the of the music audio and paste it over the original sound. This combines the sounds and edits the image.

 

From this point other in-software effects can be added such as 'Amplify', 'Reverse' and 'Delay'.

 

By doing this I am changing the sound which changed the code and inturn, it is editing the Digital DNA.

 

As my focus has been on changing the image then comparing the sounds this part involves changing the sound and comparing the images.

 

After Editing Image to the Golden Ratio to make them look more 'arrtactive; to the eye I began to test databanding on my previous image. This was to see how wel it would work visually and if the concept was going to be effective.

 

Although I  like to keep the images as true to the sound as possible I Edit them if they are off center or if the colours are too dull below you will see a combination of sound  editing and image edting outcomes.

 

I will tweek the brightness, change levels and change the blending mode to make the images more screen and print friendly.

 

Below you can listen and see the outcome of editing digital sound into music and the image after this process is complete.

 

Although the imgages look glitchy and chaotic there is a specific reoccuring aesthtic in the image.

 

I tried to capture the changes being made in a time laspe video which highlight the stages that the image goes through while being edited. This way there is a dialogue and build up so you can see the additions I make to my work to get to the final image outcome.

 

Below are the final stags in the digital profiles of those who participated in the project. These are digital illustrations edited with sound and show that in our desire to achieve our best phsical form that if we alter our DNA too much we are left with an hyper-realistic and unacievable self.