A Tag's Life - George Holsheimer, Mirjam ter Linden, Daan Odijk, Putri Sadiqah, and Raoul Siepers Web 2.0 is often depicted by its ephemeral nature: trends dissolve as fast as they got introduced and users tend to migrate from one social network to another. Web 2.0 critics like Andrew Keen even review Web 2.0 and its 'user-generated content' as the deterioration of culture, since amateurs are able to distort mainstream media with irrelevant and false information. However, there are also Web 2.0 enthusiasts, who encourage users to mobilize themselves as 'smart mobs' and 'citizen journalists' in order to exchange information which opposes traditional media. The application "A Tag's Life" is developed to use the Flickr, an online photo sharing platform, as an analytic and trend watching tool by visualizing the life course of tags. This visualization turns the user-generated content of Flickr into a mirror of cultural trends. A Tag's Life has been developed by George Holsheimer, Mirjam ter Linden, Daan Odijk, Putri Sadiqah, and Raoul Siepers. This interdisciplinary group of researchers has a background information sciences, new media and design. A Tag's Life displays how trends evolve on the Internet over time and investigates the life line of certain 'tags' on Flickr. Users of Flickr can add tags to their photos by way of extra information about a particular photo. The frequency with which a tag is found, reveals the popularity of the photographed object. For this reason, the team applied the tag as the central parameter for localizing trends on Flickr. Whereas 2.0 websites such as Youtube en Flickr mainly show the current popular trends, this project goes one step back by visualizing 'historic trends' on the Internet. With this, the tool opens up a kind of historic dimension which is usually lacking from these popular and changeable websites with their main focus on the 'new'. A Tag's Life is a visualization consisting of various parts. A window provides tag data, such as the date the tag was first used, the number of times the tag was selected and the week in which the tag had the largest number of hits. This information is linked to other windows representing this data graphically. Here, the tag use and screen display is shown for each week. In addition, a separate window shows a world map revealing the geographic locations at which the tags were most frequently selected. While navigating the application, it becomes clear that the tag's popularity has both a geographical and temporal dimension. The application explicitly invites visitors to start their own investigation into tags relating to their own field of interest. Because the information processing can take 24 hours, you can send requests for certain tags. You will receive a message when your tag is incorporated in A Tag's Life. A Tag's Life can be downloaded or used as an applet in your browser. More information on how to use the application can be found in the manual Click the link to visit the project: A Tag's Life. An interview with the team can be found here. UPDATE: A Tag's Life in exhibiton "Tag Ties and Affective Spies" A Tag’s Life, is selected for the online exhibition “Tag ties and affective spies”, which is curated by Daphne Dragona for the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. A Tag’s Life has recently been developed by George Holsheimer, Mirjam ter Linden, Daan Odijk, Putri Sadiqah, and Raoul Siepers for Impakt Online’s exhibition “It’s about time”. Other selected artists are artists are Christophe Bruno, Gregory Chatonsky, Paolo Cirio, Wayne Clements, Jodi, Ramsay Stirling, Personal Cinema & the Erasers and Les Liens Invisibles. “Tag Ties and Affective Spies” can be found here. |
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