Home after a good day at workshop No 1. Lots of good work achieved today with a wide range of attendees from beginners to more accomplished Time-based artists looking to move their practice, more reports from today to follow soon.
Link to the recored live stream https://youtu.be/dZ9aSO1BUL0?t=18
As part of my journey into media lobotomy, I decided to stop wearing my smartwatch, but first, I would record how often I used my watch and phone in a working day. After a week, I could not believe what my results were showing; on an average day, I would look at my watch or phone over 30 times a day. My work collages knew this so much that I found out that if they wanted me, I would not get a phone call but an email as I would always look at the notifications the watch gave me. This was the point I decided it was time for a change.
“Why do we need data to tell us we walked a long way? You know you had from how your legs feel.”
“Have we become a society that relies on data we do not need”
I use to think a smartwatch worked for me because I saw it for what it was: not a life-changing, wholly new sort of utility but rather a supplement to my smartphone — a handy accessory that made it easier for me to keep up with information and take care of basic tasks. Revolutionary? Nope. But convenient? Absolutely: It was a device that let me stay connected without constantly pulling out my phone. I was wrong by removing the smartwatch, and I found out I stopped looking at my phone so much allow myself to look around and take in the world. Next time you are in a shop waiting for your coffee or at the station waiting for a train, take a minute to look up and see how many people are on their phones. It will shock you; the art of talking is fading away and being taken over by the screen.
Since the start of Media Lobotomy, mobile phones and tablets have been a technology that has been hard to find out what can do; if the tech not too old, it is possible to do a clean install and pass out, but the big question is that do you do with the rest of them.
“Buying a new smartphone consumes as much energy as using an existing phone for an entire decade.”
(source)
With this new, ever-evolving world of technology, the average person keeps a mobile phone for 34 months. This hunger for new phones and has aided Consumerism in the social and economic order, in turn, encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts, so the drive to always have the newest technology with the ever-growing operating system makes phones obsolete before their physical time of expiry.
The phone suppliers keep offering more and more features tempting the end-user to get a new phone before reaching its service life.
“1.5 billion Mobile phones manufactured in 2018.”
Over the past, I have used old phones in the artwork. One of the last ones was using the phones as wifi detector to paint wifi patterns allowing you to see the unseen.
Over the next few weeks, I will investigate recycling options and other options as I am doing with the laptops.
Good news media lobotomy is looking for creative people to test laptops; each laptop has been installed with a media lobotomy version of Lubuntu and installed with applications for creative people.
If you are inserted, please contact us; the difference between the laptops used by media lobotomy and other recycling schemes is the computers unfortunately do not meet the requirements of most other recycling plans. Still, in our first test, we have had excellent speed and usage results.
We believe that there is an untapped talent out there in the creative market, and these laptops will enable it to get out into the world.
Media lobotomy first started from reading Sean Cubitt, Finite Media; this book leads me to question the following into days society.
The Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies.
How digital media effects environmental degradation.
Over-production and consumption of digital media affect us today.
How the above affected digital rubbish and electronic waste
In this book, Cubitt looks at how the resources of the earth are finite, and it’s not just the fact that we are running out of them but also the fact that for every digital resource made today, the required envy to matin them goes up.
From reading this book, I started to look at my use of technology and how I interact with it daily; I am a high user with a smartwatch and phone on me, and I think all people should think about it their relationship with technology.
Did you know that one search on google uses about as much energy as your body burns in 10 seconds, and around 10% of the worlds total electricity consumption is being used by the internet, according to a recent research report from Swedish KTH.
Linux has come a long way from my early years of using it as an ICT manager in education. With Linux, once the geek’s operating system, it has now become a robust system for older spec computers. With such Distros as Ubuntu Studio, the choice has never been so good to the creative person that can not afford the price of the so-called industry-standard software costing hundreds of pounds a year.
I have read a lot about the disadvantages of a Linux based computer but find it hard to fault the systems I have used over the past few weeks. You will find many articles on the internet about the poor documentation on the systems, but this is not a problem with the true spirit of open source. Just a quick search in google finds the answer within a few clicks.
I enjoyed looking at the spins from Fedora with its design suite coming out on top for the user that has little knowledge of Linux https://labs.fedoraproject.org/en/design-suite/
Ubuntu Studio is decently the best all-round creative suite and has excellent support but I found it almost had too many options and you are left wondering what program you should be using, but I would say it is always worth a look at .https://ubuntustudio.org
The two above are the main two I tested. Still, you will find many others worth a go if your intros lie in a different area, from AVLinusx for music production to Apodio for video production. All I can say you need to try to decide for yourself.
For my project Media Lobotomy, I have decided due to the vast gap in specifications from the best computer to worst; I would base my system on LUbuntu building my custom ISO based on a creative student’s needs, not giving lots of choice of programs finding the best for each situation and making several different Distros for the graphic, video and audio users.
Today I started to look at what we can do with the old dead laptops and will show you what can be saved and what ends up in a landfill over the next few post. We all know you can keep the hard drives and turn them into external drives with not a lot of trouble. Did you know things like the screen and camera can be easily used for 2nd monitors and cameras turned into external web cameras documents cameras.
Media Lobotomy will be running a group of workshops over the next month looking at adressing the follow areas.
•The Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies.
• How digital media effects environmental degradation.
• Over-production and consumption of digital media affect us today.
• Digital divide
The workshops will look at the following
Diy \ Media
Open source software.
Our workshops offer the participants to become familiar with basic hardware and software design while at the same time gaining hands-on experience making. The workshops are open to participants of different backgrounds, and no programming or electronic skills are required. The idea is to start from scratch and create a complete project over a short time, including concept.
for more information at this time and to express interest please email [email protected]
