Visual Image Search and Physical Hyperlinks

anselm@hook.orgpaigesaez@gmail.com

project #1: qrcodelove.com

• Two years ago Paige fell in love.

• With a barcode.

• QRCodes;a low-fi versionof physical hyperlinks

Physical Hyperlinks

• Physical hyperlink is a neologism that refers to extending the Internet to objects and locations in the real world.

• Physical hyperlinking does this by attaching urls to tangible objects or locations.

for example

• if you can decorate the world with an encoded semiotics - what do you say?

• graffiti? criticism? warnings? advertise? outboard memory palaces?

• The QRCode acts as a visual semiotic language extending and connecting between things and the internet

• What else can do that?

project #2: visual search

How does it work?

• same basic idea as the qrcode project except only now there is no code

• We take a photograph of something and find similar images using robot vision techniques

• Like a barcode we get back context

Such as...

• Criticism and praise

• Author, description,

• History, Medium, era,

• Similar looking images

• Where to get more

• Your longitude,latitude

Locative uses

• bookmarking places

• knowing where your friends are or were

• knowing where you are

• a landscape like australian song lines

Entering mainstream

• Tonchidot

• Photosynth

• Tineye

• Spellbinder

• Snaptell

Implications?• Images used to be mute; how does this

alter our relationship, interpretation and construction of images?

• Will images supplant words as a way of talking to computers? To each other?

• For example see

Legal freight trains

• If most peoples reality is mediated by a consensual interpretation - one not favorable to brands - how will brand owners respond?

And who owns our (augmented) reality?

Code is law

• Copyright owners may over-eagerly scour the web looking for theft - reducing everybody elses vocabulary.

• Having a power doesn’t mean we should always use it.

finding a balance

• How do we avoid being overzealous one way or the other?

• How can we protect free speech?

• How do we protect fair use?

Our thoughts• Foster an open image commons

• Like Wikipedia

• Associates images with meta-data

• Protects common interest

• Prevents undue private control

Building it

• Add photographs

• Document them

• Creative Commons Licensing

• Let anybody (not just Google) handle search requests

• Become conscious of your images

Thanks

• paigesaez@gmail.com

• anselm@hook.org

• http://makerlab.org

• http://twitter.com/anselm