OLI - Our Lower Identity
OLI - Our Lower Identity Tiago Areias
Pedro Teixeira
Pedro Branco
engageLab Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351 917 621 488
engageLab Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351912 247 184
engageLab / Dep. Inf. Sys. Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351 912 247 184
tiago__areias @hotmail.com
[email protected]
[email protected]
ABSTRACT Our Lower Identity (OLI) is an ongoing artistic project focusing on the role of footwear in apparel-based non-verbal communication. By gathering two sets of pictures of people’s shoes, from two contrasting locations and then displaying them side by side, we hope to highlight the ability of shoes to act as reminders of significance of individual people or collective groups within a given sociological context. To accomplish this we are designing a standalone artifact for photographing people’s shoes.
Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.2 [User Interfaces]: Prototyping, Humanities]: Arts, fine and performing.
J.5.
[Arts
and
General Terms Performance, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors.
Keywords
to say clothing alone is capable of doing this but when associated to a given a context its rich symbolical core can easily sprout meaning and interpretation. We consider shoes constitute compelling symbols of individual lives and act metaphorically to suggest an intimacy with the person who wore them. As artifacts, shoes carry the marks of the individual who wore them in many different ways, physically as well as symbolically [3]. By photographing and exhibiting a large scale of people’s shoes we intend to create visualization “maps” where apparently there are no elements of identity, no single individual is traceable, only their shoes are displayed. When gathering and displaying a large amount of side-by-side images of shoes, for instance from different locations, the apparent lack of identity might reveal otherwise. We are leading the public to reflect if the images still enclose any important traces of individuality and collectivity that highlight or reveal social contrasts. Patterns may emerge depending on time, date, location or country.
Footwear, clothing, fashion, installation.
1. INTRODUCTION Our lower identity (OLI) is an ongoing project for gathering, storing and sharing pictures of shoes. OLI consists on an artifact containing a camera for image capture and computer for image processing and storing. The device is placed on distinct locations. These locations are chosen by their ability to highlight contrasting aspects and invoking tension, being it economical, racial, religious, or other. The pictures taken are then stored and accessible online. They can also be displayed in a public space such as museums or galleries with the information where the pictures are taken. This, we believe will generate a richer and broader dialogue between the images and the audience.
2. CONCEPT Clothing and fashion are subjects whose history, if properly written, encompasses most of social life [2]. We won't go as far as
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Creative Showcase and Interactive Art, ACE'2011 - Lisbon, Portugal Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0827-4/11/11 ...$10.00.
Figure 1. Photos of captured shoes.
3. THE ARTIFACT The first OLI setup was built using a camera, a LCD shield and Arduino for embedded in a steel pedestal. The first prototype was built in 1.5mm thick steel plate. The camera was placed at the bottom and the LCD screen was placed on a tilted surface on the top (fig 2). The artifact was designed so it would be able to blend in the urban landscape. After an initial series we realized most people would not voluntarily approach the artifact. The object itself with the LCD screen did not constitute enough motivation to do so. Therefore we decided to redesign the setup to be as discrete as possible. The idea is to hide the camera at foot level in places where people usually pass by or where people stand. Crosswalks, subway platforms and bus stops are all valid examples of locations we wish to explore.
The software that controls the camera uses image processing and background subtraction techniques for detecting the presence of people. It was implemented in the Processing [1] platform using the OpenCV library. At this stage the artifact is dependent on a computer and a power source to operate, future plans include making it autonomous and able to work for several hours thus facilitating its deployment in public spaces. We are also replacing the web cam for a high quality camera and attempting to control light conditions in order to improve picture quality.
4. FUTURE WORK We are now preparing for the second stage of trials using the new version of the artifact. We are considering the following contrasting locations: •
theatre vs. sports stadium;
•
school of engineering vs. school of architecture;
•
subway station vs. bus stop;
•
traditional restaurant vs. fast food restaurant.
We are hoping to find, in the collected images, a sense of individuality and collectivity though we might as well be surprised by the uniformity of the captured images of what otherwise might be considered contrasting contexts. This reflection summarizes the goal of the project: to provide a technological enabled device that exposes those issues to the community.
5. REFERENCES [1] Processing. www.processing.org [2] Riello G. 2006. A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [3] White, C. L. 2009. (eds). The Materiality of Individuality: Anthropological Studies of Individual Lives. Springer. Figure 2. Our lower identity (prototype).
Pedro Teixeira
Pedro Branco
engageLab Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351 917 621 488
engageLab Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351912 247 184
engageLab / Dep. Inf. Sys. Universidade do Minho Guimarães, Portugal +351 912 247 184
tiago__areias @hotmail.com
[email protected]
[email protected]
ABSTRACT Our Lower Identity (OLI) is an ongoing artistic project focusing on the role of footwear in apparel-based non-verbal communication. By gathering two sets of pictures of people’s shoes, from two contrasting locations and then displaying them side by side, we hope to highlight the ability of shoes to act as reminders of significance of individual people or collective groups within a given sociological context. To accomplish this we are designing a standalone artifact for photographing people’s shoes.
Categories and Subject Descriptors H5.2 [User Interfaces]: Prototyping, Humanities]: Arts, fine and performing.
J.5.
[Arts
and
General Terms Performance, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors.
Keywords
to say clothing alone is capable of doing this but when associated to a given a context its rich symbolical core can easily sprout meaning and interpretation. We consider shoes constitute compelling symbols of individual lives and act metaphorically to suggest an intimacy with the person who wore them. As artifacts, shoes carry the marks of the individual who wore them in many different ways, physically as well as symbolically [3]. By photographing and exhibiting a large scale of people’s shoes we intend to create visualization “maps” where apparently there are no elements of identity, no single individual is traceable, only their shoes are displayed. When gathering and displaying a large amount of side-by-side images of shoes, for instance from different locations, the apparent lack of identity might reveal otherwise. We are leading the public to reflect if the images still enclose any important traces of individuality and collectivity that highlight or reveal social contrasts. Patterns may emerge depending on time, date, location or country.
Footwear, clothing, fashion, installation.
1. INTRODUCTION Our lower identity (OLI) is an ongoing project for gathering, storing and sharing pictures of shoes. OLI consists on an artifact containing a camera for image capture and computer for image processing and storing. The device is placed on distinct locations. These locations are chosen by their ability to highlight contrasting aspects and invoking tension, being it economical, racial, religious, or other. The pictures taken are then stored and accessible online. They can also be displayed in a public space such as museums or galleries with the information where the pictures are taken. This, we believe will generate a richer and broader dialogue between the images and the audience.
2. CONCEPT Clothing and fashion are subjects whose history, if properly written, encompasses most of social life [2]. We won't go as far as
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Creative Showcase and Interactive Art, ACE'2011 - Lisbon, Portugal Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0827-4/11/11 ...$10.00.
Figure 1. Photos of captured shoes.
3. THE ARTIFACT The first OLI setup was built using a camera, a LCD shield and Arduino for embedded in a steel pedestal. The first prototype was built in 1.5mm thick steel plate. The camera was placed at the bottom and the LCD screen was placed on a tilted surface on the top (fig 2). The artifact was designed so it would be able to blend in the urban landscape. After an initial series we realized most people would not voluntarily approach the artifact. The object itself with the LCD screen did not constitute enough motivation to do so. Therefore we decided to redesign the setup to be as discrete as possible. The idea is to hide the camera at foot level in places where people usually pass by or where people stand. Crosswalks, subway platforms and bus stops are all valid examples of locations we wish to explore.
The software that controls the camera uses image processing and background subtraction techniques for detecting the presence of people. It was implemented in the Processing [1] platform using the OpenCV library. At this stage the artifact is dependent on a computer and a power source to operate, future plans include making it autonomous and able to work for several hours thus facilitating its deployment in public spaces. We are also replacing the web cam for a high quality camera and attempting to control light conditions in order to improve picture quality.
4. FUTURE WORK We are now preparing for the second stage of trials using the new version of the artifact. We are considering the following contrasting locations: •
theatre vs. sports stadium;
•
school of engineering vs. school of architecture;
•
subway station vs. bus stop;
•
traditional restaurant vs. fast food restaurant.
We are hoping to find, in the collected images, a sense of individuality and collectivity though we might as well be surprised by the uniformity of the captured images of what otherwise might be considered contrasting contexts. This reflection summarizes the goal of the project: to provide a technological enabled device that exposes those issues to the community.
5. REFERENCES [1] Processing. www.processing.org [2] Riello G. 2006. A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [3] White, C. L. 2009. (eds). The Materiality of Individuality: Anthropological Studies of Individual Lives. Springer. Figure 2. Our lower identity (prototype).
