Week Twelve Culture and Data

According to this week’s reading and lecture notes, Edwards illustrates the terms ‘infrastructural globalism’ and ‘data friction’ which both play a important role in his discussion about the collection and processing of data on a global scale. The key point can be found as data friction and infrastructural globalism. Firstly, data friction can be defined as the process of copying data information gathered from historical data through the years. For this reason, this process is significant in the publication and distribution of data on a global scale which hence shapes perceptions of society. Edwards then describes ‘infrastructural globalism’ to be the collection of global institutions which aid in collection of data and present global ways of thinking (Edwards, 2010). These two terms combine together to demonstrate how society and individuals not only engage with global data but build and add to it, finding new ways to interpret it and new ways to think.

I have chosen Instagram as it is one of my favorite social media applications which is something I view every hour. Another reason why I choose instagram is that it is a interesting and creative form of publishing and which provides a chance for every individuals to produce and publish their own photos or videos without any formality or judgment. In another word, it is a means of expression and aggregates to form a personal archive of memories which can be distributed either privately or publicly depending on the individual. Actually, instagram is not only a form of distribution and aggregation, but also can be used to trace history through the gathering of images or videos to categories data.

Instagram is included in the development of ‘data friction’ and ‘infrastructural globalism’ because it provides useful data in making these data publishing possible while further categorizing data through the use of personal profiles and hashtages. Actually, through using instagram, it is possible for individuals to follow others they are interested in on the application from all over the world and universally and collectively join this aggregation process. Therefore, instagram is a description of how all sorts of data collection from historical political data to personal photographs or videos of a holiday or weekends are now being distributed globally and shaping views to generate a global way of thinking.

rederence:http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/instagram-android-app-debuts-in-google-play-store-223939

Task 2: Visualisation Project

Myriad minutiae in our daily life impact our choices of different lipstick color in countless ways.  Our visualization project explores  people choose different lipstick color based on their skin tone. Visualization to us is an interactive visual representation of data that highlights a link of data. Not only  it is a useful tool in demonstrating this relationship， but it is also useful in researching and processing large amounts of data and correlating it into a simple pie chart or representation. The aim of this visualization is to provide a useful suggestion of choosing suitable lipstick color based on different skin tone from several of women’s choice experience.

Additionally, women are able to see to how they are supposed to choose lipstick color at certain occasions. For example, many women wrongly believe they can’t wear red lipstick. however, it can be seen from the visualization that red lipstick is timeless and bridges age and culture and you can't go wrong with this universally flattering color for all skin tones. Therefore, this information would be very difficult to communicate without this data visualization.

The methods we used to get the pattern are online researching and survey. Here is the templet of our survey and we interview 12 women both in the uni and cosmetic counter.

From the online researching, we can find some information about the pattern in the written texts but lack of data. Therefore, we gathered the raw data, put the information together and created the visualization to make this pattern visible.

The base of pie chart is the range of skin tone, from fair to dark, and the circle above is the people’s selection. Each little circle indicates different colors and the size of circle represents the percentage.  

The result shows in the middle is color true red, most of our interviewer choose  this color for their formal occasion. And the second layer shows 25-30% people choose pink based colors. The third layer represent 15-20% people used orange and purple based color, as for the outermost layer, less than 10% interviewer will select nude or wood colors.

Fair: blue based lipstick

medium: cherry red or bright berry pinks, nearly nude

tan: bright and poppy oranges

dark: purple, darker lipsticks

The color, size, texts and the base pie chart. Every aspect of this visualization is important and with these elements, we can present the best result to the public.

If it make to publish such a visualisation, people can easily find the most suitable lipstick from the data and surveys corresponding to the skin tone on the questionnaire, the difference that makes it to publish such a visualisation is it can give people who are going to buy lipstick some recommendations so that can reduce the risk that will buy unsuitable lipstick for them and reduce the waste of lipstick since some people think lipstick this kind of cosmetics is okay to buy more and more, anyway it does not expire. However, anything would like to be the same as lipstick effect, people use their little spare cash to buy a lot of non-essential items.

Visualisation is the form of control, if we can see the pattern, we can easily control the information.

For the cosmetic production, such visualisation helps to target different groups better in the global scale.

For the consumer, obviously, they can pick the products easily because they know which color suits them best.

Makeup artists, fashion bloggers and magazine publics: they can recommanded some useful things to the public

Week Eleven Distribution, Aggregation and the Social

Furthermore, we discussed “distribution” and “aggregation” in tutorial class. It is an interesting topic, and according to reading, Edwards Paul argues that without models, there are no data; and data can combine models to measurable realities. I strongly agree with this idea, because I and other two classmates saw many attractive, functional and safety information which was presented on notice boards in Food Quad. This is one mode of publishing in campus, notice board is a model, and information (post) on it is data, when they are united, they play a great role of “publishing” in university. This information can teach students; and it for students to learning, researching and socializing.

Although some students may not notice this information, but a group of students still realise and recognise it, like they will attend to some activities and learn safety knowledge. Besides, many students like to organise groups on Facebook, so they can communicate with others easily, and they can share photos and music with each other. It is the way of “aggregation” and engagement of technology; like people are connected and share contents together.

In according to this week’s resources and lecture notes, “distribution” and “aggregation” can be treated as two main points which need us to research and discuss. First of all, when it comes to talk about publishing, it has an impartible relationship between aggregating and distributing. The truth is that publishing is the process of gathering, collecting or combing texts, images and sounds, and then spreading or sharing them with the public. Actually, because of development of advanced technology, it is possible for us to have the chance to enjoy various ways of aggregating and distributing. Making information much more accessible has a huge influence on our daily lives, which can affect us to be better informed than ever before. The Internet helps in collecting data from all over the world, and spreading them in a much faster and easier manner.

According to Gregory Bateson, “… see the world not as a collection of things or persons, but a network of relationship, that network bound together by communication”, it can be seen that aggregation and distribution of information allow us to receive the exchange of data connects users, forming a network where everyone can easily aggregate and distribute information. Actually, there are many social networking websites or apps like Facebook, Twitter, instagram and so on are the illustrations of this worldwide aggregation and distribution network, however, one of my favorite site or app (it both has) is called mogujie. Here is its website address: http://www.mogujie.com/?f=mgjlm&mcfp=19_12rkefq

Mogujie is a community and shopping center website which enables users to post and upload photos of their outfits, and the other users can ‘like’ the look so that the photo will appear on the front page of the site. Users can leave comments on the photos, and also ‘become fans’ of their favourite fellow users, so that they will receive updates when the ‘fanned’ user uploads a new photo.

However, unlike Instagram or other photo-sharing SNS, the Mogujie is a site or an app which dedicated to sharing fashion inspirations. It aggregates street-fashion photos from users of different styles, and distribute them to fashion lovers all over the world. In other words, the Internet enables Mogujie to build a huge network worldwide, which will bring increasing the diversity of content available on the site or the app. For example, I used to buy fashion magazines every month, but they would only publish fashion trends that are popular in the country or that are suitable for the season. But on Mogujie, because the published content are contributed by users from different parts of the world, we can see the photos of people from the Chinese wearing beautiful floral dresses and shorts, as well as users from the Australians rocking the leather jackets.

Overall, it can be concluded that the community websites or apps like Mogujie can empower each and every one of users have the chance to become a publisher, providing a platform for us to aggregate and distribute. Just as how Andrew put it, “we all distribute and aggregate, and we’re all more interested in distribution and aggregation”, which means that It is not impossible to predict that there will be more and more these kind of sites or platforms in the future for us to participate in.