SYNTHETICS (touch please) by Cherry Logar, VR component by Michelle Brown, Photo by Louis Lim
For this month's Hacks/Hackers, we dive into the world of Augmented Reality (AR) with two speakers who are researching and using the technology for different storytelling applications.
Tim Madden is a designer at ABC News who will give us an overview of the current state of play with AR tech and how different companies are using it. Tim will also look at some of the opportunities for the ABC to use the technology, particularly on mobile, for new audience experiences.
Michelle Brown is an artist, curator and creative technologist based in Meanjin, Australia. Working primarily with emerging technologies, her practice explores transformation, experimentation and liminality, and how we use technology to create meaningful connections between people and their environment.
Event details
When: 5.30pm, Thursday 27 July
Where: Foyer of the ABC building, South Bank
Register on Humanitix
Last month
In June we heard from Lucinda Nelson (QUT/ADM+S) on the challenges of everyday misogyny in online discussions about gender-based violence.
The subject of Lucinda’s research is ‘everyday’ misogyny, which she distinguishes from more heavily studied extreme misogynist behaviours like doxing, physical violence and targeted harassment.
Everyday misogyny is a pervasive feature of online discussions. While its harms may be less acute, this doesn’t diminish the cumulative harm of receiving or being exposed to everyday-misogynistic messages. Everyday misogyny on the internet is also not disconnected from harms perpetrated offline.
Lucinda took the online discussion about the Depp v. Heard defamation case as a case study of everyday misogyny. We saw specific examples of everyday misogyny, in which irrelevant details of Amber Heard’s testimony were extracted and used to mock and discredit her.
To respond to online everyday misogyny, the first challenges to identify and describe it. But misogyny is context dependent, both in terms of a broader social context and in terms of specific cases (as in speech which has been ‘reclaimed’ by a marginalised person). This means automated tools struggle to deal with everyday misogyny, especially toxicity couched in ‘civil’ language. Platforms rely on these automated tools and so they current do not adequately address misogynistic speech.
Some ideas worth further investigation focus on recommendation engines – can everyday misogyny be demonetised, removed from recommendations, or down-ranked? On the flip-side, can expert content about DV be promoted when, for instance, Depp v. Heard is trending.
From elsewhere
I’m a bit light on interesting links this month, partially because I’ve been busy-beavering on a visualisation of the 2024 Brisbane City Council election. You can see the map and have a play here. There are some plausible and some ludicrous scenarios to explore, and hopefully it is non-partisan enough for apparatchiks of any colour to pull their hair out.
Two great visual stories coming out recently were The fraught journey to reach the Titanic (ABC) and How to lay a perfect offside trap - and how to break it (SMH). Helpful if you are thinking of taking a submarine ride (please don’t) or watching the World Cup (I’m keen on Ireland–Nigeria) over the next month.
Looking forward to seeing you next week!