MAS 963 People II

• Plaisant et al. Lifelines: Visualizing personal history
• (supplementary) Agre, Phil. The architecture of identity
• (supplementary) Suler, John. The Psychology of Cyberspace
• (supplementary) Clarke, Roger. Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy, and Definitions of Terms

Assignment:

If you have not done last week's assignment please do so.

Your assignment for this week is to begin thinking about what "digital portraits" might be. Again, you will look at examples of portraits - though this week your examples will all be computer-mediated portraits - and answer the same questions about them as you did last week (Describe what the portrait says about the person and how it does so. Does it call upon a common vocabulary of cultural icons to place the subject in a particular role or subculture? Is the portrait of a real or fictional person? Do you think the subject would agree with or like your assessment? What is the portraitist role in this process?) but this week I would like you to also describe the viewer's interaction with and relation to the portrait.

For your first example, I'd like you to use the LifeLines project. Your second example should be a graphical avatar of some kind (the Suler article mentioned above may be useful, though it is a highly subjective and not especially auhoritative piece). And your third example may be anything that is a digital portrait of some kind (a homepage; an interactive art work; even something that is not a traditional portrait, but rather a data trail, such as a Mastercard bill (see Agre or Clarke papers above)).

This assignment is due Wednesday Oct 27 by 5:00 p.m. Please submit the URL of your designs online.