Morten Jonassen, Author at Morten Jonassen | Blog & Portfolio

Great Circles – The shortest way from point A to point B

Morten Jonassen — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 15:47:45 +0000

What is the shortest way from Berlin to San Francisco? Read on to know why your map might be fooling you.

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Creating digital art with AI technology

Morten Jonassen — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 20:59:28 +0000

As an aspiring digital artist, you might be wondering what kind of AI systems can help you create amazing artwork without much hassle. Well, you're in luck because there's a new AI system on the block that's going to change the game. It's called DALLE2, and it's the latest and greatest in the world of AI-generated art.

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Greenland vs. Africa. The true size of the world.

Morten Jonassen — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 18:43:10 +0000

Do you know how big the world actually is?
If you take a look at the map below, you will probably think Greenland is a tad larger than Africa. Their shapes even look quite similar don’t they? But which one is actually bigger?

A common world-map with Greenland and Africa looking similar in size

The answer to this question might surprise many, but also underlines the silliness of the very question itself. The correct answer is of course Africa.
Africa has a larger landmass than Greenland, MUCH larger!

The African continent, with its 30,365,000 square km, is more than 14 times larger than the island of Greenland with its 2,166,000 square km. In fact the African content is larger than USA, China, India, Japan and Europe – combined!!

Check out this “true size” projection of Greenland on top of Africa. It really puts sizes into perspective.

Greenland overlaid on top of the African continent

But why does Greenland look so massive on the world map?

Well, this is the due to the representation of the landmasses on the common Mercator projection map. A disadvantage of such a map is introduced when the cylindrical landmasses are projected onto a flat 2D surface. The areas on the top and bottom will simply distort and become overly exaggerated in size.

To get a better idea of the true sizes of countries, I suggest looking at an old style physical globus. Alternatively, you can in fact use Google Maps. Just make sure to enable the “globe” view setting, which will give you a more accurate spherical representation of the world map.

The true country sizes with the “Globe View” in Google Maps

Visit The True Size of and generate your own size projection map. Here you can even overlay more countries to get a true grasp of the size of the world. Happy mapping and don’t believe in all the flat earthers.

References

The True Size of

Britannica: Greenland

Britannica: Africa

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Photos from Cactualdea Park: The largest Cacti Park in EU

Morten Jonassen — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 18:17:35 +0000

Cactualdea (the largest cactus park in europe) is a wonderful park located on the northern mountain slopes of La Aldea de San Nicolás - Grand Canaria. I stumbled upon this park by pure coincidence and decided to pop in for a closer look. I snapped a couple of photos along the way.

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A Great Favicon Generator

Morten Jonassen — Thu, 13 Feb 2020 17:55:20 +0000

Favicons are quite cool and provides a nice touch of visual identity to your web application. These days favicons are commonplace, but the icon landscape has become much more complex. In order to cover the full visual spectrum, you have to deal with other icon formats such as Apple touch icons, pinned tabs icons, windows tile icons etc. With all these different formats, it has become a rather tedious and time-consuming task to create a full covered visual representation.

To mitigate this challenge, let me share the link to a nifty little online tool, I stumbled upon: RealFaviconGenerator

This is by far the best favicon tool I have seen thus far. Within minutes you can create all your desired icons with lots of different options. The tool will generate all the necessary files and code to paste into your markup.

Lets take a quick look at some of the many great options of the generator using my example icon illustrated below.

My example icon from perlarsen-musik.dk

Favicon options for browsers and Google SERP

Pinned tabs and MacBook icons for crapple devices

Icon options for Android devices

Generate icons for iPhone and iPad devices

Options for Windows Metro style

You can try the icon tool here: realfavicongenerator.net

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The Greatest Quotes From Frasier

Morten Jonassen — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 19:19:08 +0000

This a list of some of my favourite quotes from the tv show Frasier.

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The Wopper Index

Morten Jonassen — Sat, 14 Dec 2019 19:24:00 +0000

Okay, we all have guilty pleasures right!? Even-though I belong to the flexitarian crowd – meaning the majority of my meals are vegetarian – I shamefully have to admit that I’m a fan of the Whopper from Burger King.
Back in the day (during the burger revolution in Copenhagen) when I was still eating meat on a daily basis, I would oftentimes visit new burger joints around the city. However, all these so called “high quality ingredient restaurants” never really faired well against the tasty flame grilled Whopper. I always left these restaurants feeling a tad dissatisfied and wished I had gone to BK in the first place

The Double Whopper

Nowadays, I only eat Whoppers when I get the chance to travel. It has become a tradition of sorts – eating Whopper’s in every airport and country I get a chance to visit. Don’t ask me why, but I thought it would be fun to try and index the worldwide prices. The financially inclined have undoubtedly heard about the so called “Big Mac Index”. Well this is my index—the Whopper Index.

I’m going to need some help though, so please feel free to contribute with prices in the comments below and I’ll update the Index accordingly.

Now, you might be asking yourself; why should I care about the worldwide Whopper Prices?
Well… I don’t know the answer to that question yet! Perhaps the prices can be turned into a travel guide of sorts… I have to put on my creative thinking hat. But feel free to leave me some suggestions, along with your Whopper prices.

The Price Index (Work in progress)

Location: Flensburg, Germany
Double Whopper: 6,49€ (Aug 2024)

Location: Andorra La Vella, Andorra
Double Whopper: 8,45€ (Aug 2023)

Location: Germany, Northeim
Single Whopper: 5,39€ (Aug 2022)

Location: France, Colmar
Single Whopper: 5,40€ (Aug 2022)

Location: Spain, Las Palmas City Center
Single Whopper: 5.25€ (Dec 2021)

Location: Spain, Aeropuerto de Las Palmas
Single Whopper:
~~5.10€ (Dec 2019)~~
6.60€ (Nov 2023)
Double Whopper:
~~6.90€~~ ~~(Feb 2020)~~
~~6,70€ Dec (2021)~~
9.15€ (Feb 2024)

Location: Spain, Tenerife North Airport
Single Whopper: 4.45€ (Feb 2020)
Double Whopper: 5.60€ (Feb 2020)

Location: Denmark, Middelfart
Double Whopper: 8.02€ (Mar 2020)

Location: Spain, Maspalomas
Double Whopper: 5.65€ (Dec 2019)

Location: Thailand, Suvarnabhumi Airport
Single Whopper: 7.92€ (Dec 2019)

Location: Thailand, Bangkok
Single Whopper: 4.70€ (Dec 2019)

Location: Denmark, Copenhagen Airport
Double Whopper: 7,76€ (Aug 2017)

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A new kid on the blog

Morten Jonassen — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 22:54:00 +0000

Welcome to this new page design—with an article section to boot. I decided 2020 would be the year I finally began contributing to the blogosphere. Yeah, I’m a late adopter—I know!

The purpose of this endeavour is twofold. Firstly, I want to use this new site as a playground and a type of testing facility. I’ve got a few writing ideas and projects floating around, which I intend to explore on this site. Secondly, I want to practise my writing skills, since I rarely get to do much writing these days.

In the meantime, until the boat gets rockin’, I felt a need to at least publish something! Therefore, for starters, I have published some of my old academic papers, written during my studies at the IT-University of Copenhagen. These are probably quite boring and well….. academic, but more exiting writings are hopefully to come in the future.

Aside for the tech geeks:
I created this site using the front-end framework Foundation 6 and the CMS is powered with WordPress.

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Creating a 3D-clock animation with Autodesk Maya

Morten Jonassen — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 20:28:45 +0000

This article is about the entire process and creation of a mechanical clock animation in Autodesk Maya. I created this clock animation and article, as an exam project during a 3D introductory course at the IT-University of Copenhagen in 2013. Watch the finalised 3D clock animation below.

Where it all began

I love clocks! These fantastic timekeepers are without a doubt one of mankind’s greatest innovations. The mechanical clock especially, has influenced society in unprecedented manners, right from the earliest mechanical clocks, which dates all the way back to the 14th century. Back then, these things where huge contraptions who relied on bells to tell the time. The fun however, really started in the 16th century, when the spring-driven mechanical clocks were invented. The spring made it possible to manufacture small and portable clocks. In fact, the development of the steam engine and thus the industrial revolution, were explicitly made possible by the precision engineering of the mechanical clock (Scientific American, 2012).

Although not quite as old as the clock, 3D graphics is quite fascinating too. Allegedly, the first digital 3D rendered film was produced as late as 1972 (Nerdplusart, 2011). Of course a lot has happened since then, but the basic principles and techniques introduced in this movie still remains the basis for the kind of 3D rendering, which is done in video games and movies today. What makes 3D special is the way objects can be simulated with its twists, bends and surfaces whilst appearing in a perspective view. The fact that you can generate realistically looking animations from simple bits (ones and zeros), is nothing short of an amazing achievement. This article is about the creation of a 3D animation featuring the mechanical clock in all of its wonderful glory. The presented combination of the old technology of mechanical clocks and the modern capabilities of 3D animation is my personal celebration of both of these wonderful technologies.

Inspiration

What I find especially fascinating about mechanical clocks is the perfect orchestration of the many cogwheels and parts working in perfect unison. I guess these mechanics are just appealing to the engineering- geek inside of me.

This fascination and interest for the mechanical clock originally stems from a web project I created for the Danish Watchmaker School some years ago. During this project I got to play around with some clockworks and I was introduced to some truly amazing 3D animations created by the German watch producer A. Lange & Söhne (L&S). Figure 1 shows a screenshot from some of these animation movies.

Figure 1: Rendition from A. Lange & Söhne

Context

I think the animations from Lange & Söhne are quite inspirational since they contain a lot of complex moving parts and stunning texturing. Right from the get go, I knew I wanted to create a presentation type animation in the same style as L&S’s i.e. a short animation with all the focus aimed directly towards the mechanical elements of the timepiece. In essence, I wanted a neutral setting where the only thing, which matters was the clock on display. The purpose of my final animation is meant for web-based presentations – quite thinkable for educational purposes or perhaps just for a general presentation of the model.

Ideation Process

For a novice like myself, trying to create something as comprehensive as the above renditions would obviously have been mission impossible. Of course, I did not realize this until after I started researching for timepiece blueprints. Such timepieces are actually insanely complex pieces of engineering. Therefore I chose to aim a bit lower and go for a very simple clockwork type of model. However, given the complexity and interplay of cogwheels I would still need a reference in order make the final animation turn like a real clockwork. So, I have used a screenshot of a 2D animation from a functioning online clock. Figure 2 shows the screenshot reference, which I imported as an imageplane into Maya.

Figure 2 – Reference clockwork

This clockwork is of course quite simple, but most importantly is the fact that the proportions and number of cogs on each cogwheel is true to reality. This means the final animation look realistic, since the individual cogwheels will rotate at the correct speed ratio. In the following, I will go through the workflow process of modeling, animating lighting and rendering involved in creating the animation film for this clock.

Modeling

The first decision to make before the modeling process begins, is deciding what kind of geometry type to use. This requires knowledge about how the model will be used later, since the typology affects the behavior of the model down the line (Alias, 2007). There are four basic types of geometry: NURBS, Subdivisions, curves and polygons. Since polygons are by far the most forgiving geometry to work with, these are the ones I am using.

Manipulating polygons

Non-organic shapes such as the mechanical parts of a clockwork are good to build with polygons since it is easy to manipulate the edges, vertices and faces, which together makes up the polygon mesh. During the modeling phase I used the box modeling technique, which means manipulating primitive shapes by extruding, scaling or rotating faces and edges as well as welding pieces together, and bridging gaps and holes with polygon faces. The basic shapes I used during the modeling of the cogwheels were the polygon pipes and cylinders. Figure 3 shows an example of the process involved when extruding faces in order to create the center part of a cogwheel.

Figure 3 – Extruding the pipe primitive

The process of modeling the cogwheels was quite straightforward and did not pose any major problems. However I made the mistake of modeling all the cogwheels in their entirety. When working with symmetrical shapes such as these, a much faster approach would have been to model half of the wheel and use the mirror geometry tool. I guess extruding all those cogs was just my moment of zen. Well – you live and prosper. As the amount of shapes increased in the scene, I started to rely more and more on the outliner and the layers editor. Figure 4 shows the grouping of the different cogwheels in the outliner and the distribution across different layers. I think a good organization like this is quite essential for maintaining a proper overview of the scene. Furthermore the parent/child relationships I created at this point would become useful during the animation phase.

Figure 4: Outliner and layers

According to my initial strategy for the project, I did not plan on adding more to the model beyond this point since the purpose was to showcase the clockwork and not a complete clock model. However, I felt the cogwheels were a little out of context without an actual watch casing to frame the cogwheels. So, I decided to create a casing for the clockwork. Since I did not have any reference for a casing I modeled it by free hand. Figure 5 shows the casing in the early stage.

Figure 5 – The early clock casing

Since I still wanted to maintain focus on the actual clockwork I left the backside of the casing open. Furthermore, in order to accentuate the clockwork I added the gap to expose some of the cogwheels. I think this works quite well and gives the model a unique character. All in all I am happy with this compromise.

Typology

Books could be written about typology, which is a quite advanced topic, but also an essential part of digital 3D modeling. Typology refers to the mesh structure of the model and ties directly to the edgeloops, which defines the model. In general, good typology allows for greater detail in the model. Furthermore it defines how well the model animates and how easy it deforms (Blender Cookie, 2010). Figure 6 shows the three typical types of typology which defines the faces in terms of the edgeloops i.e. triangles, quads and n-gons.

Figure 6 – Triangles, quads and n-gons

As a general rule of thumb, triangles and n-gons should always be avoided. When creating a model, the best approach is usually to aim for quads. But this depends on the purpose of the model. Good typology is especially essential when doing stuff like character animation where the character deforms. Gaming engines however, will convert everything to triads; so working with quads for this purpose is a waste of time.
Figure 7 shows an example of using the face split tool to clean up the resulting n-gon, after bridging edges and filling the hole in the center of the cogwheel.

Figure 7 – Cleaning up the mesh

In the case of my model I have tried to keep the triangles to a bare minimum, but the model still contains a few. In my case, since the actual model will not deform during the animation, this is of lees concern.

Animation

Manipulating the movements of three- dimensional objects over time is the trademark of telling a story through computer animation. In fact the term animate means ‘to give life to’. With the possibility of placing the objects at different distances from the viewer and moving them at different speeds, with respect to each other, a true experience of “moving perspective” can be achieved (Cazzie, 2012). But animation is obviously not just about moving objects around like lab rats on amphetamines. According to McLaren there must be some greater meaning and purpose with the animation:

Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn; What happens between each frame is much more important than what exists on each frame; Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames
McLaren, cited in Furniss, 2007, 5

In the case of my clock animation, the narrative is quite simple, since the essence is on presenting the revolving mechanics of the watch as a celebration to this fantastic piece of engineering. Therefore I wanted to increase the speed of the cogwheels and pointers in order to demonstrate the mechanical interplay of the actual clockwork. Furthermore, the fixed placement of the clock on the turning pedestal is a classic technique of presenting objects and is often used by jewelers and within the car industry. Maya offers several different techniques and tools for the creation of animations. These include methods such as keyframe animation, nonlinear animation, path animation, dynamic animation and expressions (Keller, 2010). The keyframe animation technique is perhaps the easiest method and allows transforming objects over time by setting keyframes. But why rely on using keyframing when you get the chance to produce code?

Animating with expressions

With background knowledge in programming, it was a natural step for me to explore the animation expressions of Maya. Animation with expressions simply means writing formulas for the animation in the expression editor, which Maya then turns into action upon playtime. Expressions can save a lot of time when it comes to manipulating simple mechanical objects such as the clockwork. Furthermore expressions make it possible to precisely control the rotation speed of each individual cogwheel. This is quite essential since the cogwheels must – like real clockwork – rotate in relative speeds to one another. Although the math is probably quite simple, I actually had a hell of a time calculating the correct speed ratio of these cogwheels.

Expressions can essentially be written for anything with keyable attributes. As illustrated below, the actual expression involved in the rotation of a cogwheel is quite simple:

cog_big_min.rotateZ = time * 6.6;

This syntax is very simple. The first part refers to the object being manipulated; in this case it is the group cog_big_min, which I created during the modeling phase. As illustrated in Figure 8 this group consists of two cogwheels, a connecting shaft and the minute pointer. In this manner this single expression will affect all of these objects.

Figure 8 – The cog_minute grouping

The rotateZ attribute is the one being affected by the expression and simply tells the program that we want to rotate the group in the z-direction. The time attribute simply returns the current time of the animation in seconds. This value is multiplied by 6.6 in order to speed up the rotation speed.

This is of course a very simple expression, but it gets the job done. The same expression principle is used for the resulting cogwheels and pointers, only with different multiplier values. Furthermore, the entire clock with all of its objects and its pedestal are grouped and animated with a rotateY expression, which not surprisingly makes it rotate in the horizontal axis.

Materials

While the geometry defines the shape of an object, its material defines how the object will display once rendered. Though this is one of the more difficult areas of Maya, a basic understanding of how objects are shaded is a needed. In order to achieve realistic looking images, the qualities of materials such as the color, specularity, reflectivity and transparency must all be adjusted. These qualities of the materials can be set up using special shading networks, which are managed in the hypershade editor.

Shading

Maya includes several different types of materials such as Phong, Blinn and Lambert, which each holds different shading characteristics. The main difference between these is the way they handle specular highlights when rendered (Alias, 2013, p. 60).

Since both the cogwheels and casing of a clock are made of metal I have used the mia_material_x for these surfaces. This is a development of the Blinn material, which Jim Blinn developed in the seventies (Blinn, 1977). The mia_material uses the mentalray render and was designed specifically for architectural design renderings and supports hard surface materials, such as metal, with its glossy reflections and refractions (Autodesk, 2013). Since optimizing these materials for the proper metallic look is a rather difficult task, I have used a set of professionally developed shaders (LeFebvre, 2010). The mia_materials shaders for the clock casing and pointers are my adjustments of the preset shaders of Maya’s mentalray. Figure 9 shows the materials in the hypershade editor.

Figure 9 – Hypershade Editor in Maya

Lighting

Darkness is the absence of light. Without the lighting all we would be left with are black blobs of nothing, which would make for a very boring animation. The lights define the shape and form of objects and spaces. Furthermore it can be used to set the mood and create an atmosphere. Obviously this is an important part of the 3D production. However, lighting setup is definitely not my cup of tea. To be quite frank, it is a total nightmare.

Three-point lighting

Maya offers different light sources, which will illuminate the scene differently. The most typical types are directional, spot and point lights. The most common lighting technique is the three-point lighting, which is used in both photography and Hollywood studio films. This method uses a key, fill and back light as the main sources of light in the scene. The classical Hollywood style is characterized by high key lighting, which in the early days ensured that all the money spent on the set and props would be clearly visible (Digital Film Archive, 2013). This classic Hollywood style seemed like the ideal choice for the clock presentation.

But this setup is not easy to achieve. I tried tweaking different lights and attributes but the result always looked like crap – and not photo realistic at all.

Image based lighting (IBL)

Instead of the spending all my time with the hopeless setup of three-point lighting, I used an HDR sphere instead. The concept of the image-based lighting is based on lighting the scene with natural color values from an image. This method relies on the mental ray render to create the realistic looking lights.

The basic process involves adding a surface shader with an HDR image node onto a dome (sphere). The HDR image is a special image, which unfortunately requires lot of setup to create. So, instead of using a real HDR image I am using a procedural texture, which is a computer-generated representation of the natural environment. The IBL setup is illustrated in Figure 10 where the HDR sphere is illustrated in the wireframe mode and the objects are seen placed in the center of part the spherical dome. Since the dome emits light from all sides the clockwork is shielded with a backdrop plane.

Figure 10 – HDR Dome Lighting

I think the results produced with this technique looks quite nice and are definitely easier to create than the three-point lighting technique. Of course there may still be areas, which could be improved with additional lighting inside the scene. An example is the space inside the clock casing, which looks a bit underexposed in the final renderings. But generally I am satisfied with this lighting setup.

Rendering

This the part where all efforts, all the hard work and all the general faith in life is smashed into bits of atoms by unreliable hardware and coincidental circumstance. Well, perhaps not quite so. In fact this is the joyous part where you kick back with a cup of coffee and pray the render does not crash – but of course it eventually does.

Rendering with mental ray

I used the Mental Ray engine since its more powerful and produce better results than the Maya engine. In order to achieve a high quality of reflections and shadows I used raytracing. This technique produces better results than other engines such as scanline rendering methods – but this of course adds time to the rendering process. Since Maya apparently always crashes during render time, I used the batch render functionality, which produces sequence image files for each frame. This way the rendered images were safe and secure when the render finally crashed, which in my case happened after 80 hours of rendering. Unfortunately, I did not realize that command line rendering is an actual possibility until after I had finished rendering. In the future I will probably use command line rendering instead since this is a much more stable approach (Keller, 2010, p. 669).

In order to make the deadline of the project I chose to save time by outputting the images as .jpeg files instead of .tiff files. The .tiffs offer far better quality than .jpeg which are compressed, but I think this was a good decision since the renderer would probably still be at it, if I had chosen .tiff.

Another problem I encountered during the rendering phase, are weird rendering errors on three non- adjacent frames. Figure 11 shows how this error occurs on frame 1318. The error is a small imperfection on the shadow of the pedestal. While this is tiny imperfection, it is nevertheless quite visible when the animation is played back.

Figure 11 – Rendition error in the object shadow

In order to solve this problem I tried re-rendering the three frames separately – this however did not solve the problem. An explanation for these errors is possibly the anti-aliasing setting, which is used to control and reduce flickering and artifacts along the edges of the objects (Keller, 2010, p. 676).

Nevertheless, it was only three frames with this error; therefore I simply imported the images into Photoshop and fixed the imperfections so they are no longer noticeable in the final animation.

Conclusion

Everything must come to and end. Hopefully this does not apply to my ongoing development with 3D animation and Maya. The process of creating this clock animation has been both fun and also quite enlightening. As witnessed by my preceding writings, I actually did not face any real major problems during this project, besides the mentioned rendering issues. Sure, it has been a challenging process of trial and error in some of the phases, but the problems have really been minimal. Perhaps this is due to some of the experience I already had with the program – limited as they were. Quite befitting, I remember a funny anecdote, which was passed to me by Mr. Jens Blemmer, the headmaster of the watchmaker school I mentioned in the introduction. Apparently, his old teacher and mentor always gave him a lot grief for not making any mistakes and oftentimes told him “make some damn mistakes Jens – that’s the only way you will ever learn!”

If I were to believe the old mentor of Mr. Blemmer, I guess that would mean I have yet to uncover my full potential of 3D animation with Maya. No matter what, I am personally more than satisfied with my learning outcome of the course. At the onset of this project, I did not expect the result to turn out as well as I believe it has. Therefore I feel quite confident and exited about exploring even more of Maya in the future.

References

Alias (2013). The Art of Maya: An Introduction to 3D Computer Graphics. 4th ed. Sybex.

Autodesk. (2013). Softimage User’s Guide. [online] Retrieved 15 May 2013 from: http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/softimage2013/ en_us/userguide/index.html?url=files/mentalray_mia_mat erial.htm,topicNumber=d30e720074

Blender Cookie (2010). Learning Mesh Topology Collection. [online] Retrieved 15 May, 2013 from: http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/learning-mesh-topology-collection/#header

Blinn, J. (1977). Models of light reflection for computer synthesized pictures. Proc. 4th annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques.

Cazzie (2012). Animation history | Trial Image Ink. [online] Retrieved 15 May, 2013 from: http://trialimagestore.com/blog/tag/animation-history/

Digital Film Archive (n.d). Three Point Lighting. [online]. Retrieved 14 May 2013 from: http://www.digitalfilmarchive.net/clda/docs/ThreePointLi ghting.pdf

Furniss, M. (2007). Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Keller, E. (2010). Mastering Autodesk Maya 2011. Indianapolis, Ind.: Wiley Technology Pub.

LeFebvre, D. (2010). Metal shaders. Retrieved 14 May 2013 from: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/shaders/ c/dl_metalshaders–2

Nerdplusart (2011). nerdplusart.com. [online] Retrieved 15 May, 2013 from: http://nerdplusart.com/first- 3d-rendered-film-from-1972-and-my-visit-to-pixar

Scientific American. (2012). A Brief History of Clocks Retrieved May 15, 2013, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a- chronicle-of-timekeeping

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Globalizing the local Greenland

Morten Jonassen — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 23:34:35 +0000

Imagine that you were kayaking along the coast of Greenland, and needed a chart to find your way … Why not jump on the Internet using your cell phone, and get the map that way? … But here is the problem. You probably can’t get cellular service where you are in your kayak. And even if you can, your battery is probably dead because it is so cold. Or, your phone won’t work because it is wet. Even if your mobile phone does work, and you have service, you probably can’t operate it because you can’t do so without taking your mittens off, and it is too cold to do so.
Buxton, 2007, p. 37

In this article I focus on the challenges of globalization in Greenland and the possibilities of applying relevant aspects of mobile communications theory justifying the deployment of cultural probes in Greenland. The situation in Greenland poses an array of different dilemmas in terms of IT solutions. Most challenging is the fact that mediated interaction in Greenland is not to be taken for granted. Globalization and the technology it brings have surely brought much pleasure for the individual, but problems arise when mediation reaches a critical mass. According to Ling (2012), ICT’s have become invincible and so common that they are now taken for granted – if someone does not have access to the communication technology, they become a burden to everyone else. This outlines one of the major problems of global IT in Greenland. In this paper, the challenges of mediated technology in Greenland are explored.

Globalization in the digital age

In the first section I will substantiate prevalent theoretical theories of globalization, which will provide a solid foundation and grounding of the subsequent analysis and discussion. The purpose is to theorize the interconnected tensions between global factors, locality and the influencing role of information technology.

A prerequisite of globalization is the concept of locality. Global flows and processes do not just originate globally; rather global flows originate locally and hereafter possibly exerting influences on the global. Therefore, the starting point of globalization theory should befittingly start with locality. But what exactly does locality entail?

In order to gain an understanding of locality I turn to Appadurai’s views on the dimensions of globalization and the production of locality. Locality is for Appadurai (1996) “a phenomenological property of social life, a structure of feeling that is produced by particular forms of intentional activity and that yields particular sorts of material effects” (p. 182). Locality can therefore be considered as a type of social process, which requires agency and purpose. This ‘structure of feeling’ cannot be separated from the setting where social life occurs i.e. the neighborhood. Neighborhoods refer to existing virtual or spatial communities, with existing social forms, in which locality is realized. Traditionally, neighborhoods have been reinforced by certain rituals, rites of passages and rules (p. 179). A neighborhood thus provides the setting for social interaction and provides a contextual generative dimension for the relationship between the local and the global. According to Stald (2009), the essential aspect of locality can be viewed by its distinct separation from other localities and its separation from the national level. The important point is the actual perception of the locality, which should be culturally, cohesive and historically relevant for the people who share it (p. 32-33). Locality is however not an easy achievement, but a fragile social aspect, which must be maintained carefully against various kinds of odds even in the most confined or geographically isolated situations (Appadurai, 1996, p. 179). A main concern here is the production of locality, which is challenged by contemporary problems of deterritorialization, diasporas and transnationality. In particular, modern media plays a vital role in these challenges, “the steady erosion, principally due to the force of and form of electronic mediation, of the relationship between spatial and virtual neighborhoods” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 189). This special influence of electronic media touches upon a core element of understanding the tensions of global IT. More recently Appadurai’s views have however turned more neutral towards the effects of mediation:

These technologies do offer new spaces and modes of building relationships and communities – even rebuilding the fabric of reality itself. While trying not to be mystified immediately by the claims of these technological forms, we must also avoid any built-in cynicism about what they might do or say. So – localities, virtuality and sociality, for me, would be the ‘anchor-points’ of a broad discussion about the new technologies of mediation, in their various applications.
Morley & Others, 2011, p. 41

Whilst Appadurai is open towards a rather explorative method of approaching globalization, other scholars are much more critical. Globalization can be regarded largely by the loss of centralized control mechanisms, characterized by ‘weak states’ or types of ‘no-man’s-lands’ where governing institutions have lost their previous powers (Bauman, 2001/2004, p. 47-56). A central element within Bauman’s theories of globalization is the direct consequence imposed by globalization itself, namely the concept of glocalization. The result of glocalization is a polarized world consisting of globalized and localized individuals, illustrated by a worldwide restratification process of the society, based upon freedom of movement and the lack of mobility (Bauman, 2001/2004). In glocalization, the globalized individuals have the opportunity to move around freely in the world, whilst the localized suffer from inferior possibilities and are tied to their place. Glocalization can thus be regarded as the distinction between the winners (the globalized) and the losers (the localized). Using the metaphor of tourists and vagabonds, Bauman (as cited by Davis, 2000) defines this distinction in the following manner:

The vagabond is the alter ego of the tourist, and the tourist’s most ardent admirer. Ask the vagabonds what sort of life they would wish to live given the chance and you will get a pretty accurate description of the tourist’s bliss. Vagabonds have no other images of good life. They have no alternative utopia, no political agenda of their own. The sole thing they want is to be allowed to be tourists—like the rest of us. (p. 23)

This distinction is the direct result of the globalization and represents in part some of the unintended and unforeseen problems affecting everybody – globally or locally. A key issue here is the impact of mediated technology, “the distinction between far-away and close-by, or here and there, have been all but made null and void once transferred to the cyberspace and subjected to the online or on-air logic” (Bauman, 2011). Consequently, any mutual communication between the two separate poles has disappeared and is worsened by the disintegration of time and space, made possible by these technologies (Bauman, 2001/2004, p. 59). With mediated technologies, localized individuals are therefore doomed to watch idly by, whilst the rest of world goes on.

As the final part of this section I will assess the ‘alter ego approach’ to Bauman, namely the more proponent globalization views as offered by Urry. Contrasting the theories of traditional globalization, the mobilities paradigm breaks with the idea that intense social connections require close physical proximity. Using the airport as an example, Urry (2007) describes how these institutions, facilitated by digital technologies, contributes to the production of cultural communities, urbanism, and cosmopolitan identities.

Mobilities also includes movements of images and information on local, national, and global media. The concept embraces one-to-one communications such as the telegraph, fax, telephone, mobile phone, as well as many-to-many communications effected through networked and increasingly embedded computers … it involves examining how the transporting of people and the communicating of messages, information, and images increasingly converge and overlap through recent digitisation and extension of wireless infrastructures…
Sheller & Urry, 2006, p. 212

Based on the increasing movement and circulation of people and information (made possible by travel and ICT’s), the mobilities paradigm thus outlines how social connections are maintainable across large distances (Urry, 2007). The distinctions between the local/global are no longer essential since mobility entails “a broader theoretical project aimed at going beyond the imagery of ‘terrains’ as spatially fixed geographical containers for social processes. It calls into question scalar logics such as local/global as descriptors of regional extent” (Hannam, Sheller & Urry, 2006, p. 5). In order to understand the global flows, we must therefore acknowledge that the use of mediated technology does not impede social relations, but rather enhances the connection between individualized networks, “Mobilities thus entail distinct social spaces that orchestrate new forms of social life around such nodes…” (Sheller & Urry, 2006, p. 213). In contrast to the utopian aspects put forward by Bauman, the mobilities paradigm thus seeks to explore the positive consequences, which mediation technologies affords.

This section has offered different and opposing perspectives and views regarding globalization and the influence imposed by mediated technology. This is an important first step towards understanding the processes entailed in global IT solutions, whether these are comparative or paradoxes. In the next section I will draw upon these theories in the analysis of the current situation in Greenland.

Perspectives on Greenland

Greenland is a fascinating and challenging country in terms of digital communication technologies. Being the largest island in the world, mostly covered by vast icecaps, naturally creates barriers in the communication infrastructure. Internet access and mobile phone coverage, which we in Denmark take for granted, are services mainly limited to the larger cities in Greenland. The townships and settlements only have access to satellite services, which are slow and extremely expensive. The sole mobile provider of Greenland, TELE claims that 99% coverage is possible, but the outer districts in the north, and some in the south, do not have cell coverage (Rygaard, 2008, p. 264). As of 2012, only about half of the households in Greenland have access to the Internet (Rygaard, 2013, p. 165). This creates a problem for a country wanting to break the isolation and embracing what the outside world has to offer. In spite of the high prices, the use of ICT’s in the cities has been quite substantial, but there are problems, “The impact of modern media (film, television, video, and the internet) has played an essential role in the globalization process in Greenland, not least in the way in which today’s Greenlandic youth see themselves as citizens of the world” (Rygaard, 2008, p. 260).

The flow of information has mainly been one-way, “globalization has thus far primarily been a story of successfully embedding the global into the local” (Rygaard, 2008, p. 268). The historical media consumption in Greenland has been characterized mainly by American and Danish culture. The young people believe they know what goes on in the world, but the world on the other hand is rather ignorant in terms of Greenland. In this light one could argue that the Greenlanders have become glocalized. This is especially evident when considering the strong sense of locality, witnessed by a shortage of ambitions among the young people in Greenland. The young Greenlanders strongly value their spatial familiarity-connections and are generally non-demanding in their future wishes (Rygaard, 2008, p. 267). Essentially, they do not feel like inhabitants of the global village (Stald, 2009, p. 279), they just feel like Greenlanders. As Rygaard (2003) stated “…we can say that the majority are much more subjected to personal experiences than mediated experiences. Only very few have fantasies of becoming a member of a globalized elite…” (p. 304). This sounds like the typical trademarks of the vagabonds. While this could be viewed as a positive facilitator in terms of “the production of locality”, this does not bode particularly well with strong wishes of attracting the attention of the outside world – and eventually becoming independent from the Danish block grant.

Another view put forward by Rygaard (2003), is the complete absence of globalization outside Nuuk i.e. in the outer districts of Greenland. Currently, in these outskirts of Greenland, neither globalization nor romantic notions of mobilities prevails.

In practice, the global flow in the outer districts is so insignificant and so spasmodic that the existing reality leaves much to be desired. Although the traffic between Greenland and the rest of the world is mainly one-way and chiefly conveys merchandise and some curlural flow, the inertia of the outer districs prevents the global ‘Goliath’ from dominating the local ‘David’.
Rygaard, 2003, p. 305

This is truly the manifestation of locality in the wild. As Rygaard (2003) suggests, the answer to this reality would be to ask for more globalization in these areas. The situation in these outer districts is especially important, since it represents an interesting paradox of globalization; does the small settlements face annihilation and despair due to localized isolation or will increased global flows create glocalization or could it in fact be the savior of these communities?

The situation in Greenland is thus characterized by tensions between Greenland and the global world and by tensions between localities within the confinements of the neighborhoods in Greenland i.e. the settlements and townships. In respect to the mobilities paradigm, which emphasize that all places are essentially networked and nowhere can be islands (Sheller & Urry, 2006, p. 209), it seems that facilitation using mediated technology should start in these outer districts. This is exactly where cultural probes should be deployed. However, due to challenges such as accessibility, poverty, literacy and the digital divide encountered in these areas, mediated initiatives must be carried out with the utmost respect to the localized conditions. In the following two sections I will first shortly address important design challenges involved with the probes, followed by further elaboration of the motivation behind these probes.

Design for the wild

The specific conditions and the context are essential factors when developing digital artifacts, “in order to design a tool, we must make our best efforts to understand the larger social and physical context within which it is intended to function” (Buxton, 2007, p. 37). The first step towards designing a well-founded digital solution in Greenland, should therefore entail ethnographic research in the form of participant observation (Goffman, 1989). This could possible be followed by an iterative social-research process by setting a hypothesis, creating a research design, data collection, data analysis and finally hypothesis testing (Bailey, 2007, p. 3-11). Unfortunately we have not had the luxury of traveling to Greenland and therefore our assumptions regarding solutions are more or less conjectural. It is however not entirely impossible to imagine at least some of the situations encountered by the locals in their own milieu. Furthermore, cultural probes are actually design methods in their own right and are often used to gather inspiration and provoke inspirational responses in diverse communities (Bimber & Flanagin et al., 2005). In this light, our suggestion of deploying the probes could be regarded merely as a first step within a larger process of introducing mediated technology in the outer districts of Greenland.

The concept of the cultural probes is rather simple; the probe is essentially an instrument deployed to find out about the unknown. This is achieved by collecting imagery, video, sound and text with the device. The probes should naturally be sturdy devices able to withstand the artic climate, but most importantly – they should be easy to use in order to account for digital inexperience among the locals in the settlements. “They should not have to make place for the device in the mobile situation, but just use it instantly in the situation at hand: it should just take place” (Kristoffersen & Ljungberg, 1999). This is one of the common challenges of ubiquity whenever mobile devices are designed. Additionally, the material collected by these probes should of course be fed back and forth – and shared across the networks. This is achievable using central hubs where the probes are able to send and receive the material. In this way probes can both as recording and multimedia playing devices, which benefits locals in areas where such technology is inaccessible.

Mediated cohesion and collective action

But how does the deployment of digital probes allow Greenland to strengthen locality and globalize the local Greenland? The aim of the cultural probes is a twofold process. Firstly, the collection of the Greenlandic culture, through the distributed probes, should serve as shared frame of reference by facilitating the creation of a strong sense of locality, not just in the townships and settlements, but in Greenland as a whole. The rationale of the probes is therefore to mimic some of the special social capabilities of mobile telephony. According to Ling (2008), the mobile phone has become a mediated totem, which strengthens social cohesion through mediated ritual interactions.

Mediated interaction can enhance the broader co-present forms of interaction and can also function in its own right as a means through which members of a group can engage one another and develop a common sense of identity … the directness and ubiquity of the channel can lead to the tightening of social bonds within a group.
Ling, 2008, p. 119

Ling refers mainly to the affordances of mobile phones as mediated interaction devices, but the aim of the probe is similar in the sense of facilitating increased flow of information, in-between the outer districs and back to the cities. The hypothesis is that the probes will create stronger bonds and social capital by engaging the communities in one-to-one or many-to-many types of interaction. It is however worth noting that probes are limited by their type of asynchronous interaction, which could pose similar delays in the information flow as witnessed by the non-simultaneous VHS days in Greenland (Rygaard, 2013, p. 167). This is obviously a bit of a deal breaker, but until cell coverage in these areas is affordable, what is the alternative?

The second goal of the probes is the collection of the authentic culture in Greenland. Such a collection contains a great branding potential, which can be utilized strategically in order to attract global interests. The probes facilitate a recalibration of collective action, which is characterized by the mediated actions taken by more people in the pursuit of collective goals (Bimber & Flanagin et al., 2005). When multiple Greenlanders participate in transforming their private discourse into a public discourse, the use of the probe crosses a boundary into non-rival collective goals. In the long term the collection of authentic material will build an authentic history of the culture, which can be used in the ever-important branding initiatives of Greenland, as seen on platforms such as greenland.com (Rygaard, 2008, p. 260). The fact that stories are collected and created by the locals themselves creates an authenticity and agency, which theoretically motivates the locals to participate.

Going local or global?

What has been suggested above can be viewed broadly as an attempt of cohesive gathering of the Greenlandic history and culture. The idea thus builds strongly on the concepts of crowdsourcing and citizen journalism. In this way each participant who uses the probe essentially becomes ambassadors of Greenland. On a micro scale the idea aims at fostering the strong local mooring throughout Greenland, and on the macro scale it aims at facilitating a globalized outward informational flow. The effect is in theory a tightly localized Greenland, which consist of members of the global village who embrace the increased informational flow. This proposal is however not without its challenges. First of all, engaging the inhabitants in the outer settlement could be more difficult than expected. Due to their isolation, we cannot assume that the locals will ever want to jump the bandwagon towards globalization, because what is really in it for them? One could argue that the rationale of the entire idea rests on an arrogant ‘globalized’ notion that the whole world should be interconnected and enlightened. This question is also addressed by Rygaard (2003) asking, “…who are the ones who wants to preserve the local culture? It is rarely the people living in the culture in question…” (p. 298). For Rygaard there is no alternative to globalization, neither in Greenland nor in the rest of the world. On this token it is worth observing the ever-increasing interest towards the minerals and oil hidden in the subsoil of Greenland. This development has the potential to completely transform this island into a technological hotbed, swarming with cheap and accessible ICT’s. In this light it may perhaps seem a bit silly to introduce a rather inferior communication device, such as a cultural probe. However, until the development permits otherwise, this is a good starting point towards reaping the benefits of globalization.

Conclusion

The current situation in Greenland is characterized by the distribution of glocalized youngsters living in the cities and the locals living isolated from any globalization in the outer districts. Utilizing the potential of digital cultural probes, the population in the outskirts of Greenland can be supported in gathering and co-creating the Greenlandic history and culture. In this manner the flow of information and communication is increased throughout the country. Borrowing from the concept and affordances of mediated interaction technology, such as the mobile telephone, the use of the probes is theorized to strengthen the social cohesion by connecting individuals throughout the country. The probes create agency, purpose and facilitates the production of locality within the spatial confinements of the Greenland. The resulting material, collected using the probes, contains the authentic stories about the contemporary life in Greenland – created by the locals themselves. Such material can be used in the marketing initiatives aimed at creating increased awareness and interest from the outside world. In this way the population of Greenland becomes key players in their path towards pushing the country into the global.

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