Thesis Proposal
²WHAT IS YOUR THESIS QUESTION? (approx 2-3 sentences)
In order to give your project depth and rigor it is helpful to frame the idea you are exploring as a research question. What is the central question, problem statement, or area of inquiry that you will try to investigate and answer/address? What is the significance of the question? Why does it matter and to whom? Here are some guiding principles we have found helpful in working through your question:
- Is it something that you are genuinely interested and curious about?
- Is it broad enough that it doesn’t allow for simple factual answers (yes/no responses)?
- Is it narrow enough that it can be answered/addressed given the available time and resources?
The central question of my project is : “will big data lead to a lost of freedom?”. I’m interested in the fact that big social media platform such as facebook or google can influence people filter bubbles and echoes chambers, the fact that researchers already manage to successfully predict the behavior of humans with accurancy of 90% (e.g Alex Pentland and his MIT students), the fact that some of those big companies start to impact other countries freedom of speech (e.g. account of politicians from various country have been closed permanently or temporary) we know that the development of an AI is strategic and the closest one to do so are those big companies from US and China which could be a huge issues for all the other countries. This topic is interesting because there is not yes or no answer to it as there are a lot of benefits to it but also raise a lot of questions and fears. The goal here with my question is more to raise awarness and make people think about the pros and cons.
WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO MAKE? (approx 3-5 sentences)
- What form will your thesis project take?
- How does what you plan to make address your Thesis Question?
I wish to do an installation for my project. This will address my thesis question in the sense that people could question themselves about big data and freewill.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO YOU? (approx 3-5 sentences)
- Why do you want to do this?
- What is your passion behind this?
I have a passion for new technology and I’m highly interested in the developpment of AI and the consequences that it could have on us. The force of the war is the big data, and a lot of researches are about how to predict the future of humans, how to predict their behavior and how to influence people to do something instead of something else which could lead to a lost of freedom.
WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT? (approx 3-5 sentences)
- What do you envision as the outcome of this project?
- What do you hope will be the impact of this project?
I hope that this project will be good enough to allow me to find a job in the interactive media art field after the graduation. Ideally, I wish a museum could be interested in displaying an improved version of this thesis in order to reach as many people as possible to talk about the relation between big data and freewill.
INFLUENCES OR INSPIRATION? (approx 1-2 sentence description accompanying each link)
- Share at least 10 links to references that directly relate to your project. Discuss their relevance and how you can build upon them in your work. The following categories should be covered in the links you share – projects, publications, persons.
- Share links to any projects you have already done yourself that you intend to leverage and/or build upon?
Video Installation Art by SONIA FALCONE
This video installation art is kind of related to my project in a sense that I imagine the flow of data as some part of this installation, I like the feeling of peace generated by the image and the sounds. If I can create some visual effect (on a screen or projection), I wish I can do something as pretty as this installation.
A lot of Bansky works talk about freedom & choice. He is one of my favorite artist and he is really inspiring for me. Maybe I can build upon his work on the prompt, I can display on a screen, make sentences more powerful in order to make people think.
He is a source of inspiration as I like the visual and sound aspect of his work and he works on the visualisation of data as well. I still don’t know how I can build upon his work as my final project will depend a lot of my capabilities but I wish my thesis could be as beautiful and immersive as his work, and if I cannot, I really hope I will be in a near future.
His serie of works called “the illusion of choice” question ourselves on “what is it to make a choice?”. Do we pick something because we really want it or does a visual information (e.g. a sticker, a discount, ..) push us to do it? I could probably build upon by showing similar things to people and ask them to make a of choice and this choice could trigger other interactions, other choices.
Min Kim is talking about Whoever Controls the Media, the Images, Controls the Culture and this is somehow related to what I said earlier when I was talking about Collin Pollard. I could offer various choices in a row, and based on the previous choices narrow the following options, until only one choice is available and see if people still want to choose others (keeping them available but not highlited)
Aaron Koblin is a artist who works with big data. He said in his TED talk that he believes that data make us more human and the art piece I have seen don’t judge the topic they illustrate. This is really what I want to do, I want people to think about my topic and that is why I should be as neutral as possible
Alex Pentland works on understanding, predicting and influencing human behavior and has a strong influence on social media companies and overall on the big data field. His academic papers and books (such as social physics) are a good starting point to understand the current status of the field and to question ourselves if this is good or bad for humans.
Other academic papers:
Consumer Choice and Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
The tyranny of perceived opinion: Freedom and information in the era of big data
These 2 publications are linked to my project as they are talking about the problem of lack of freedom created by the big data.
Breaking the filter bubble: democracy and design
This one is related to my idea of the lost of freedom/free will due to big data, and show how filter bubble can diminish the freedom and therefore the democracy.
HOW DO YOU ENVISION REALIZING THIS PROJECT? (max 150 words)
- What are the key steps necessary to make this project a reality?
- Are there key benchmarks you will need to meet?
- What techniques, tools, materials are you planning to use and why?
- Is there a community, space or audience you will need to access?
- What further research and/or skill-building will you need to do?
I plan to use arduino and sensor to track the position of people and I want to create something visual (color dots flowing, …) that moves from their location to another specific one. So the key benchmarks will be do successfully track a person (ideally more than one) and to display those visual cues through projections. Everything else would be bonus for me. So I first need to be able to program an arduino and sensors to geolocate a person accurately to then send the coordonate the position to a program that will generate the visual flow of data from this location to another one dynamically and then display this information by sending the visual to a projector.
I will need to develop skills about tracking with sensors in order to determine the position of people in a room. Ideally if I manage to make it work as expected, I wish to add projection mapping to my project but it will depend on my progress on the rest of the project.
OPTIONAL QUESTIONS (approx 2-3 sentences each)
- WHAT ARE YOUR AREAS OF STRENGTH?
My area of strength are not really related to this project so the project will be really challenging for me.
- WHAT AREAS DO YOU NEED TO WORK ON?
I will need to work on coding to program the arduino and the sensors in order to track the people in the room, more coding to create the flow of data from the person to a specific location, and to project in on the floor.
- TECHNOLOGIES YOU WANT TO EXPLORE IN MORE DEPTH?
Ideally, I wish I could do more projection mapping but since the project should be intereactive, I will first work on the interactive part before.
TAGS
Please share up to 5 “tags” that you would like to associate with your project that help to address both the content and the form. Tags should be single words. You’re welcome to use any tag words you like. Examples might include “installation”, “climate”, “identity”, “vr”, “sound”
“installation”, “big data”, “surveillance”, “freewill”, “projection”
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