Week 11 - Multiplicity
Multiplicity in relation to New Media and today’s society revolves around the concept of many pieces of content being put together to form a coherent structure that can be visually displayed or explained. Multiplicity can be found everywhere in modern day society, in relation to ‘media’ and furthermore, ‘web 2.0’, multiplicity is the basis for various content available to a web user. For example, a single pixel, alone it represents one block of colour, seemingly insignificant right? However, when that pixel combines or ‘multiplies’ it can form any type of image, from a panoramic landscape to an animated character. The ‘pixel’ is literally. the building block of an image. The following is an exaggerated example of pixel art.
(Courtesy of ‘Geek Logie’ - http://www.geekologie.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=pixel+couch&IncludeBlogs=&IncludeBlogs=1&x=0&y=0 )
Upon further research of ‘mulitplicity’, I have realised that the best way to explain ‘multiplicity’ is to visually show it and make comments about the particular image. I have found various examples of multiplicity and will now show the differences and similarities and hopefully come to a coherent conclusion of ‘mutliplicity’.
The following is a stop motion video of ‘Human Tetris’.
(Taken from ‘notsonoisy’ - youtube.com)
The following is also a ‘stop motion’ animation entitled ‘Sorry I’m late’.
(Taken from ‘siicockerill’ - youtube.com - a short film by ‘tomas mancovsky’ - http://www.sorry-im-late.com/ )
These videos represent an animation technique known as ‘stop motion’. An object/s is moved is moved in small intervals whilst a photograph is taken for each individual movement. The illusion of ‘continuous movement’ is created when the individual frames are played in a continuous sequence. Therefore, an image, singularly insignificant becomes part of a working sequence when ‘multiplied’ with other images of a similar nature.
“Multiplicity”
(Taken from ‘rocklowend’ - youtube.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F58oTqTJ2sY&feature=related
This video also demonstrates ‘multiplicity’ on a graphics level. By using various video editing techniques, the creator was able to ‘clone’ or ‘multiply’ the same person 4 times and create a video using one person interacting with themselves. Once again, if only one layer of this video was viewed, it would be incoherent and be seemingly, insignificant. It is only when all 4 layers are combined, that a coherent story and structure is uncovered.
Finally, with reference to the ‘Francis Galton at the fair story, ‘multiplicity’ can also be reflected in data. Upon learning and researching ‘multiplicity’ to a further extent, I have found it’s presence in many data forms. For example, many websites run daily ‘web polls’ to obtain public opinion about many issues, some serious such as ‘job security’ and others as frivoulous as to whether someone ‘scrunches or folds their toilet paper’. To a greater degree, a census in Australia is conducted every 5 years to determine the population of Australia and other statistics such as religion, occupations and marital status etc. Once again, a single piece of information (which in this case is a person), is insignificant as a single piece of data, however, when combined with the remaining pieces of data (remaining people), information, trends and statistics can be determined such as 10.5% of employed Australians being ‘Labourers’ as of the 2006 Census. (Source - Census - ABSDATA)
These examples demonstrate ‘multiplicity’ in various mediums and each show how a single piece of data can be ‘multiplied’ or combined with others to create a coherent visualisation or set of statistics relating to any number of issues.
