Teodor Mitew | The University of Sydney (original) (raw)

Videos by Teodor Mitew

In this lecture I discuss the concepts of schema and frames in the context of the process of perc... more In this lecture I discuss the concepts of schema and frames in the context of the process of perception. I examine the way framing can be used to alter perceptions and discuss the case of Edward Barnays' 'Torches of Freedom' campaign.

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In this lecture I am discussing Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigms and the process of paradigm sh... more In this lecture I am discussing Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigms and the process of paradigm shifts, with a specific focus on the mechanics of transitioning from one paradigm to another.

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In this lecture I discuss the decision making and feedback process of observing, orienting, decid... more In this lecture I discuss the decision making and feedback process of observing, orienting, deciding and acting in a complex and chaotic environment, as first conceptualized by John Boyd as the OODA loop.

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Papers by Teodor Mitew

In this piece, I propose that the most subversive yet elegant method to triumph over a competing ... more In this piece, I propose that the most subversive yet elegant method to triumph over a competing system is to make it detour itself into a state of inertia. Moreover, this self-detour can be induced as if casting a spell.
I call it the naked king spell.

Sensors, Nov 20, 2020

There is a significant nascent market for ethically produced products with enormous commercial po... more There is a significant nascent market for ethically produced products with enormous commercial potential around the world. A reliable method to signal the provenance of products is therefore critical for industry, given that competition based on price is not a viable strategy. The ability to trace and signal ethical treatment of animals is also of significant value to textiles manufactures. The efficacy of such a method can be measured with respect to the cost of implementation, scalability, and the difficulty of counterfeiting. The key to traceability is to win the trust of the consumer about the veracity of this information. Wearable sensors make it possible to monitor and improve the management of traceability and/or provenance. In this paper, we introduce a method for signalling the provenance of garments using radio frequency watermarks. The proposed model consists of two levels of authentication that are easy to use by legitimate vendors, but extremely difficult to imitate or hack, because the watermark is built-in and based on the radiation signature of electroactive materials.

This paper develops the notion of heteroclite sociable objects in the context of the emerging int... more This paper develops the notion of heteroclite sociable objects in the context of the emerging internet of things, and examines their transformative effect for understandings of sociability and agency. The notion of sociable objects attempts to capture the heterogeneous identity-shift occurring when heretofore obscure and mute objects ranging from toasters to thermostats acquire the agencies to leave semantically distinct traces online, and detour their human interlocutors into an object-mediated entanglement. Using a toolkit drawn from actor network theory and object oriented ontology, the paper discusses several examples illustrating the case for new parameters of sociability, better suited to a materiality acquiring conversational and anticipatory agencies.

This paper engages the class of technologies described as the Internet of Things, and concentrate... more This paper engages the class of technologies described as the Internet of Things, and concentrates on its problematic implications for the notions of social identity and agency. The paper argues that this problematic is fundamentally a function of a social projection ill-equipped for encounters with objects becoming actively sociable, and suggests an examination of networked human-object assemblages with a conceptual apparatus borrowed from actor network theory

The Fibreculture Journal, 2008

... One example of what this article means by cartography of attachments is provided by the work ... more ... One example of what this article means by cartography of attachments is provided by the work of Dutch location-media artist Esther Polak. In her Amsterdam Realtime (AR) mapping project several inhabitants of Amsterdam ...

There was once a village, and close by it there was a waterfall. Villagers believed that under th... more There was once a village, and close by it there was a waterfall. Villagers believed that under the waterfall there lived a stone golem. This golem was thought to be largely good-natured, as it wouldn't mind people bathing in the pool downstream. Old people remembered that once the golem saved a drowning child by putting a rock under its feet. Many years passed, and the Bureau of Tourism and Recreation briefly considered using this story in its advertising materials for the region. Senior management rejected the idea, as it was thought to contain folklore elements that may be confusing to a global audience.

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, Oct 1, 2016

Virtually all human cultures routinely wear garments or some sort of attire, both for protection ... more Virtually all human cultures routinely wear garments or some sort of attire, both for protection against the elements and as part of a complex social display of everything from class status to gender to the act of belonging to a particular subculture. Smart garments, in addition to performing their social functions, can act as transmitters, sensors, or energy-harvesting entities. Furthermore, such garments may also possess some processing capability, enabling them to perform a variety of tasks, perhaps in conjunction with cloud-based server resources.

First Monday

This paper aims to develop a systemic perspective of the mechanics of an online memetic warfare c... more This paper aims to develop a systemic perspective of the mechanics of an online memetic warfare campaign. The paper uses as its case study the #DraftOurDaughters campaign, a viral memetic campaign conducted in October 2016 as part of the U.S. presidential election campaign. #DraftOurDaughters was organised and produced by anonymous members of the Internet board 4chan, and then deployed to wider audiences on platforms such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. This process is documented from inception to completion, capturing the swarm like topology of 4chan’s /pol/ forum, and the logistics of the swarm’s rapid prototyping, coordination, production and dissemination of content. Through examining these phenomena, this paper also provides perspective on the manifestation of collaborative design practice in online participatory spaces.

Journal of Strategic Security

New Media & Society, 2009

Spatial representations, metaphors and imaginaries (cyberspace, web pages) have been the mainstay... more Spatial representations, metaphors and imaginaries (cyberspace, web pages) have been the mainstay of internet research for a long time. Instead of repeating these themes, this article seeks to answer the question of how we might understand the concept of time in relation to internet research. After a brief excursus on the general history of the concept, this article proposes three different approaches to the conceptualization of internet time. The common thread underlying all the approaches is the notion of time as an assemblage of elements such as technical artefacts, social relations and metaphors. By drawing out time in this way, the article addresses the challenge of thinking of internet time as coexistence, a clash of fluxes, metaphors, lived experiences and assemblages. In other words, this article proposes a way to articulate internet time as a multiplicity.

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Sensors, Nov 20, 2020

The Fibreculture Journal, 2008

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, Oct 1, 2016

First Monday

Journal of Strategic Security

New Media & Society, 2009

Sensors

The progressive unfolding of the internet into all spheres of life brings forward new types of pu... more The progressive unfolding of the internet into all spheres of life brings forward new types of publics which question prevalent notions of technology, the social, and spatiotemporality. These network publics pose a problem to social science because they escape the traditional projection of a social sphere populated by actors and a natural/technical sphere populated by objects. Therefore, to analyse the politics of networks, researchers need a projection capable of examining hybrid actors questioning the very conceptualisation of the social used in social science. This thesis sets out to reconstruct internet politics as a gathering of techniques, I would have never started this thesis without the encouragement, help, and guidance of my supervisor Dr Michele Willson. Without Michele's willingness to spend many hours in discussion with me I would have not progressed in my argument, and I would have never finished without her patience and trust. Associate Professor Matthew Allen, head of the Department of Internet Studies, was, like a deus ex machina, always there when I needed his help. Without him, my first six months in Perth-the most isolated capital city on this planet-would have also probably been my last. Susan Leong, Marta Celletti, Dr David Savat and the other members of the internet studies discussion group were great colleagues to have and bounce ideas with. Julian Bleecker's work was an inspiration for me and he graciously agreed to his Slow Messenger appearing on these pages. Same goes for the work of Beatriz da Costa and Carlo Ratti. I thank you all. Thank you Stan, mon frere, for helping me stay sane in the process. Finally, thank you Xue Ling, for believing in me, and giving meaning to all of this. a local setting. This shift of projections frames the starting point of my argumentation. 29 Chapter 1 Networks: from zoom to shift Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly. The human in command of the exercise, however-an Army colonel-blew a fuse. The colonel ordered the test stopped. 'Why?' asked Tilden. 'What's wrong?' The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg. This test, he charged, was inhumane.

Four provocations, or, thinking digital media

Seminar presented at the Institute on Social Transformation Research: The talk will be structur... more Seminar presented at the Institute on Social Transformation Research:

The talk will be structured as a provocation examining the notion of anticipatory materiality in the context of the internet of things and 3D printing. As objects become more and more sociable - think smart fridge, smart car, etc. - they become less and less ‘stable’ [think of rocks, coffee mugs, etc as examples of material stability], and more and more like a twitter feed. 3D printing only compounds this process as the material is literally liquefied and injected based on computer code – in effect the code is primary, and tangible materiality is secondary in this process. The resulting materiality is literally ‘on demand’ – in that it exists as relational data first and foremost and as material artefacts only when demanded; and anticipatory - in that the main characteristic of connected objects is their capacity to initiate action based on predictive algorithms.

Presentation of my philosophy in curating the Digital Media and Communication [DIGC] Major at the... more Presentation of my philosophy in curating the Digital Media and Communication [DIGC] Major at the University of Wollongong

How to think of sociable objects in an interesting way?

The 2016 US presidential elections were surrounded by a vast social media campaign, involving the... more The 2016 US presidential elections were surrounded by a vast social media campaign, involving the phenomenon of distributed memetic warfare on a scale unseen before. #DraftOurDaughters was a viral memetic campaign organised and produced by anonymous members of the internet board 4chan, and then deployed to wider audiences on platforms such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook. Memetic warfare in social media has recently been documented in case studies of the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict (Rodley 2016) and the 2014 Russia-Ukraine conflict (Wiggins 2016). These studies present and analyse the content generated by users, with a central focus on continual content remixing, and the generation of semiotic messaging. In contrast, this paper aims to develop a systemic perspective of the mechanics of generation of targeted memes, by analysing the swarm like topology of 4chan's /pol/ forum (Hine et al. 2017), and the logistics of the swarm's rapid prototyping, coordination, production, and dissemination of content.

The paper uses as its case study the #DraftOurDaughters campaign, which is documented in its entirety from inception to completion. The anonymous conversations conceptualising the campaign, as well as the rapid prototyping and ideation process informed by the swarm's quick feedback loop, are analysed with a conceptual apparatus informed by actor network theory, and then mapped to design process research. Concepts native to the open source movement make the foundation of the framework analysing the collaborative dynamics and production of content (Raymond 2001, Robb 2007), further developing open source remix as a fundamental mechanic to content production. Further analysis is performed using concepts from systems theory (Baran 1962), swarming in conflict scenarios (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2000), and approaches to fourth generation warfare (Lind and Thiele 2015). The behavior of the swarm in response to an identified goal is mapped to concepts central to design process methodology (Dubberly 2008).

The main focus of the argument is in developing a coherent and systemic perspective on the logistics of distributed memetic production in online spaces potentiating swarm-like behavior in their user-base. The authors examine this process in its entirety, from the logistics of swarm formation to the rapid prototyping of ideas leveraging short feedback loops, and the collaborative creation of semantically targeted media. Anonymous online spaces such as 4chan are identified as environments fostering a powerful feedback loop of distributed ideation, content production and dissemination. Through examining these phenomena, the paper also provides perspective on the manifestation of collaborative design practice in online participatory media spaces.

This paper engages the class of technologies described as the Internet of Things, and concentrate... more This paper engages the class of technologies described as the Internet of Things, and concentrates on its problematic
implications for the notions of social identity and agency. The paper argues that this problematic is fundamentally a
function of a social projection ill-equipped for encounters with objects becoming actively sociable, and suggests an
examination of networked human-object assemblages with a conceptual apparatus borrowed from actor network theory.

The Red Queen Trap, 2020

Every system, be that a single entity or a large organization, must perform itself into existence... more Every system, be that a single entity or a large organization, must perform itself into existence from moment to moment. If it stops doing that it succumbs to entropy and falls apart. Spoiler alert, in the long run entropy always wins. To perform itself into existence every system must expand a certain amount of energy, which is a function of the relationship between its internal state and the external conditions it operates in. In other words, it must expand some energy on keeping its internals working smoothly together, and then expand some energy on resisting and adapting to adverse external conditions. The better adapted a system's internal state is to its external conditions, the less energy it must dedicate to perform itself into existence, and the larger the potential energy surplus it can use to grow, expand, or replicate itself.

Recently I have been trying to formulate my digital media teaching and learning philosophy as a s... more Recently I have been trying to formulate my digital media teaching and learning philosophy as a systemic framework. This is a posteriori work because philosophies can be non-systemic, but systems are always based on a philosophy. I also don't think a teaching/learning system can ever be complete, because entropy and change are the only givens [even in academy]. It has to be understood as dynamic, and therefore more along the lines of rules-of-thumb as opposed to prescriptive dogma. None of the specific elements of the framework I use are critical to its success, and the only axiom is that the elements have to form a coherent system. By coherence, I understand a dynamic setting where 1] the elements of the system are integrated both horizontally and vertically [more on that below], and 2] the system is bigger than the sum of its parts. The second point needs further elaboration, as I have often found even highly educated people really struggle with non-linear systems. Briefly, linear progression is utterly predictable [x + 1 + 1…= x + n] and comfortable to build models in – i.e. if you increase x by 1, the new state of the system will be x +1. Nonlinear progression by contrast, is utterly unpredictable and exhibits rapid deviations from whatever the fashionable mean is at the moment – i.e. x+1= y. Needless to say, one cannot model nonlinear systems over long periods of time, as the systems will inevitably deviate from the limited variables given in the model. Axiom: all complex systems are nonlinear when exposed to time [even in academy].

Open Humanities Press, 2019