Above I have described the new virtual map as a projective visualization of the collective and social identities and social interactions of the users that contrib-ute to its formation. Such developments invite new topics for, and methods of, visual qualitative research. Yet in what follows I go beyond the usual dis-cussions of how technologies may be used in research methods. In doing so, I examine the implications of the technological basis of these potential digital research tools for their use in new forms of visual research.
The virtual map is evidence of another technological change, which is linked to the development of new software and hardware platforms designed to handle and reassemble this wealth of data and information. This software, which relies on the ever-increasing computing power of mobiles and portable devices, uses mathematical equations and designed algorithms and criteria to compare, combine and represent images (texts and sounds) in simulated 2D or 3D rendi-tions of available information and data. These algorithms are the building tools that construct the virtual maps of the world, designed and developed to man-age vast quantities of information, and assemble them according to specified tasks and criteria. In the case of visual mapping of multimedia data and infor-mation, well-known examples of these software applications are Google Maps, Google Street Views or Photosynth, in which composite photographic images are merged to display photographic renditions of physical environments and specific locations, or augmented reality (AR) applications such as Layer or Wikitude that ‘overlay existing physical reality with an additional (augmented)
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layer, making visible information that can only be seen through a lens or on a screen’ (Uricchio, 2011: 31).
Photosynth, an application developed by Microsoft Live Labs in collaboration with the University of Washington, generates a navigable three-dimensional model of a series of photographs taken in the same area. The software works in two steps. Multiple images taken in the same area are processed and analysed using interest-point detection and matching algorithms. Once the images’ matching points have been captured, the software generates a points cloud that generates a 3D map of the positions and angles of each picture. The Photosynth viewer then uses this points cloud to created a navigable 3D ren-dition of the photographs that allows the user to seamlessly ‘move’ among the overlaid and juxtaposed pictures. Very similarly to Photosynth, Google Maps and Google Street View use custom-made photographs of physical spaces and locations to generate a seamless 2D or 3D navigable composite image of con-tiguous locations. In the case of Google Street View, the images are generated by an 11-lens camera called ‘Dodeca 2360’. The camera, patented by Immersive Media, captures very high resolution, 360-degree video and geodata from a unified camera system configured according to a dodecahedral sphere (a 12-sided sphere). The video is then post-processed to select a number of (360 degree) frames that are then linearly arranged according to a 2D points cloud to pro-vide the illusion of seamless 3D linear movement in space in a fashion very similar to the one used in Photosynth.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are applications that take advan-tage of the scanning, multimedia, imaging, location and other data-capture capabilities integrated in smart phones to use the physical space as the activat-ing background of a new projected layer of information generated by users and designers. Such augmented reality applications, Uricchio explains, currently use three established systems ‘to link the real and the virtual’. One system, the most primitive of the three, uses ‘fiduciary markers’ or ‘coded tags that are physically attached to the object for which an overlay is sought’ (Uricchio, 2011: 31). The second and currently dominating method uses a triangulation among ‘geo-positioned data, GPS (Global Positioning Systems), a compass and an accelerometer’ to provide geographically relevant information. The last and more interesting of the three finally uses ‘nature feature tracking’ (Uricchio, 2011: 31). This represents a fast-emerging system that is particularly interest-ing for its similitudes with the previous geo-mappinterest-ing applications (Google Maps, Google Street View, Photosynth):
Natural feature tracking systems represent a fast-emerging image technology that assigns data to location by making visual corre-lations between physical places (i.e. ‘recognising’ them) and the information to be appended. An image-recognition system, it
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requires the user to position sights within a viewfinder, which the algorithms then process to find any correlations with the stored database. The system’s search for unique identity points is conceptually related to Photosynth, except that in this case, the user is in the physical world attempting to correlate real and vir-tual data in order to trigger a virvir-tual graphic overlay. (Uricchio, 2011: 31–2)
Such software applications represent instances of what Uricchio calls the ‘algo-rithmic turn’ (Uricchio, 2011: 25), and I define, paraphrasing Baudrillard, as the fifth ‘geolocational’ order of the simulacrum (Lapenta, 2011: 17–18), an evolution of graphic forms and photographic representations that are trans-forming the once binary relation of the image with its objects of reference into a multitude of algorithmic geo-reinterpretations. The algorithmic turn is characterized according to Uricchio by different forms of ‘algorithmic inter-vention’ and the emergence of new ‘algorithmic regimes’ (Uricchio, 2011: 31), such as the ones constructed by different software and applications like Google Street View, Photosynth or Layers, ‘that now stand between the object and its representation’ (Uricchio, 2011: 31) and are based on a different interpretation of location and space as the unifying and organizing principle (Lapenta, 2011).
Uricchio follows Culler’s (1990) postmodern critique of the concept of
‘authentic’ as ‘something unmarked or undifferentiated’ (Uricchio, 2011: 34) to interpret authenticity as a ‘sign relation’ (Uricchio, 2011: 34) that, as Culler writes, prevents ‘one from thinking of signs and sign relations as corruptions of what ought to be a direct experience of reality’ (Culler, 1990: 9, in Uricchio, 2011: 34), but rather demonstrates ‘that salient features of the social and natu-ral world are articulated by what Percy calls “symbolic complexes” which are revelation of “the structural incompleteness of experience” and “its dependency on markers”’ (Uricchio, 2011: 9). According to this interpretation, a rhetorical concept, that of ‘the map of the empire’ (the signifying system, the map, that wants to replace its system of reference, reality), can be transformed and inter-preted as a social and experiential phenomenon, ‘the virtual map’, that com-posed by algorithmic representations (new digital signs and markers) interacts with, rather than replaces (or assumes the existence of an unmarked) reality.
The logic that informs the interpretation of the algorithmic turn has long- reaching consequences. Some refer to the epistemological value of the evolving relations between the object and its representation and the function of the specific algorithm designed for their representations. Others refer to the socio-cultural consequences of these different emerging ‘algorithmic regimes’ and their social functions. It is at the intersection of these two dimensions of the visual algorithmic turn that we can speculate about the heuristic potential of these algorithmic visualizations, and how they can be used or framed in new
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or old methods and theories of (visual) sociology (Goodchild and Donald, 2003; Steinberg and Steinberg, 2005) or ethnography relating to ‘netnography’
(Kozinets, 1997); ‘virtual ethnography’ (Hine, 2000) or ‘digital ethnography’
(Masten and Plowman, 2003); or GIS-based ethnography (Brennan-Horley et al., 2010; Matthews et al., 2005). This would involve not only studying the social and cultural effects of this evolution, but also elaborating on the heuristic potential of these new forms of algorithmic visualization, and exploring the methodological potential of new data and information visualization techniques for social research and publication.