URBAN CYBERNETIC PATENT

Hero Machine (2011)

Prototype

Patent for an Interactive Installation

(0) Hero Machine is an intearctive installation, which situates itself in a specific cultural and political context, seeking to: Creating and consuming heroes Communicating between different heroes provocative questions Obseving the appearance and disappearance of heroes. (1) Inventors: Anne Schmidt Brad Crane Ling Fang Correspondance address: Harvard University Graduate School of Design 48 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138, USA heromachine@gmail.com (917)822-7388
projector

Circuit of prototype

light

backlighted projection screen smoked glass sensor

(2) Keywords Internet, bottom-up, hero, censorship, installation, government, authorities, regime, China, Iran, content, sensitive information, criticism (3) ABSTRACT The internet creates heroes: websites like YouTube and Twitter become platforms for the inception of pop stars (e.g. Justin Bieber), or internet activism (e.g. Julian Assange and Wikileaks), which eventually manifest themselves outside the medium. A bottom-up, participatory structure is the basis for these hero-creation processes. At the same time heros are purposely being consumed, meaning employed and used in a varity of contexts. The withdrawl of

URBAN CYBERNETIC PATENT

Hero Machine (2011)

(digital) attention and the practice of censorship may dissolve heroes. Hero in our sense of the word is a dynamic status obtained through both, appearance and disapperance in the internet. In several countries, government and authorities censor and monitor internet usage, by employing increasingly sophisticated means of control. Sensitive information is being distorted and hidden. In extreme cases - in countries with strong central authorities such as China or in single-value countries such as Iran - searching for a provocative term in Google may result in interruption of the current internet session in manifold ways.Internet users situated in such restrictive conditions invest tremendous efforts to bypass censorship and reveal manipulated content. Grassroots heroes like e.g. Ai Weiwei became well-known because of their posing provocative questions and their criticism on authorities, which subsequently caused their disappearance - both virtually and physically. However, originally the hero is not elevated into its herostatus by employing Western values and criticism within authotarian regimes. Rather posing the question, what an individual means to a larger society, especially those societies that are not open and transparent, will reveal why. Our project situates itself in a specific cultural and political context, seeking to: Creating and consuming heroes Communicating between different heroes provocative questions Obseving the appearance and disappearance of heroes

(4) Description By censoring data on the internet governments are limiting the availability of a dynamic world view. This limitation is indicated by the willingness to omit or redact search results. Our data is further indicative of what is available versus what is viewable. In Hero Machine data is used as a direct statement about the policies of a country toward a specific person or topic. This quantification is essential in the understanding of the way countries perceive and understand events both current and historical. The lens which we each view the world, the heroes we hold dear, they all shape the way we think, act, and respond to our environments. Our data is limited by the behavioral tendencies of web use. It is a colloquialism that no one ever looks past the first page of google results. We have doubled this in our set for a dynamic, but usable dataset. In the overall archipelago the dataset would be created for all 10 countries proxy results. This set would be larger but would never exceed 10x20 results. The data visualization is dependent on the user engaging proactively the spirit of the installation. If the search query, for example, is cupcakes, perhaps it is 100% available and the results are uninteresting. In this case our device will respond with a provocation, like Perhaps you would like to see how an inspirational hero in your life is

URBAN CYBERNETIC PATENT

Hero Machine (2011)

seen in <the country>. A continuous log of the results is kept by the printing scrolls throughout the exhibition. This analog record can be browsed or just acknowledged peripherally. (5) Technical Claims Data collection: The application searches Google for a user input query term. The top twenty results are collected into an array. Each result is then tested through an Iranian proxy server to check if the link is viewable or is censored. A blocked / available array is generated and contains the second layer of data. The dataset is entirely dependent on the query search term given by the user and the provocative nature of their attitude toward the installation. The data is assumed as static, but is dynamic in response to the international policies and politics of the current moment. For example, as the news of the day evolves different things would be blocked in response. In Iran the censorship policies the day before the Green Revolution and the day after were likely drastic. Repeated or popular searches could be compared over the life of the installation. It would be a serendipitous occasion where the dynamism of the data would be perceptible.