#According to the Web this film went through a lot of behind the scenes issues and had a lot of interference from the studio but I can't

[love-ashley-evans-blog]

Are your children safe online?

Digital security in the context of digital citizenship

The internet is part of human existence as we have come to know it, that is, if you were born after 1990. It has become our primary source of information, a source we trust and defend more so than parents, siblings, friends or teachers.  Our reliance on the internet is as profound as our reliance is to electricity and various modes of transport.

As exciting as this new world is, it is an ever changing and dynamic form of media and with this comes uncertainty, fear and insecurity especially as it pertains to children.  To understand both the advantages and trappings of such a beast is imperative.  Facebook have imposed an age restriction of 13 years of age before someone can have a Facebook account.  As we know, children way younger than this have access to ‘surf the web’, it is as loosely managed as a PG rating is for children under the age of 18 when it comes to films or video games.

Children can learn, create and connect in a digital world of possibilities when used in supervised environments, but we need to ensure their safety online?  “The insatiable data-collecting vacuum that is the modern internet was not built for kids” (Newcomb, 2018)

The number of children online increases by 175,000 every day, according to UNICEFand children’s digital advertising market is expected to be worth $1.9 billion next year, according to the PwC Kids Digital Advertising Report.

“With the amount of personal information we are placing online through social media sites, banking and online services, it’s important to be aware of how to best protect this information from being accessed.  Kids need to learn how to ensure privacy settings are created and maintained, that passwords are strong and not shared with anyone else but their parents, and that they are careful of what they divulge to others online.” (Digital Citizenship, 2018). Thus digital security is imperative.

The age of children online is becoming younger as they are more familiar and accustomed to having technology around them. This fact is reinforced by Ofcom's Children and Parents Media Use and Attitudes reports which found that 46% of 11-year-olds, 51% of 12-year-olds and 28% of 10-year-olds now have a social media profile (Ofcom, 2017).By the time a child turns 13 years old , advertising technology companies will have gathered 72 million data points about them, according to SuperAwesome data.

There is no statistical evidence of the awareness children between the ages of 4 years and 13 years have of the of the dangers that come with using technology and the internet.  There is certainly not the emotional maturity to understand the possible dangers.

There is several key dangers which children should be made aware of when they are ‘online’.  Firstly, online predictors (people who stalk kids on the Internet), taking advantage of children's innocence and curiosity and, even luring them into dangerous situations and even worse encounters. These people lurk social media platforms and gameing sites that are most popular with kids.

Secondly, children also fall into the trap of contaminating their technology with Malware which is a “computer software that is installed without the knowledge of permission of the victim and performs harmful actions on the computer.”(Usa.kaspersky.com, 2018). This includes stealing personal information from a computer. Cyber criminals often trick children into downloading Malware. A further danger is that many social media sites allow young children to host a public profile. If children’s privacy settings are not correctly activated, the information children publish or post on their profiles will be accessible to hundreds of people.  Finally, there is the concern with how easily children can stumble across completely inappropriate content or can easily access adult content. Inappropriate content does not have to be intentionally sourced. Children will often come across inappropriate content by chance; disguised under seemingly innocent URLs, attachments, or even circulated on leading social media sites.

Dylan Collins, Chief Executive of SuperAwesome, a London-based technology company has a solution for the digital safety of kids. Dylan Collins is building kid-safe products for companies, that have  accepted to a list of data privacy regulations.Collins is also trying to create and build another internet, one in which children can click, browse and view advertisements safely without having personal data collected. “SuperAwesome powers the kid’s digital media ecosystem. Our kidtech is used by hundreds of brands and content-owners to enable safe, digital engagement with the global under-13 audience. Built specifically to ensure total digital privacy for children, our technology footprint reaches almost half a billion kids across North America, Europe and APAC.” Collins stated that the company has benefitted from public understanding of the internet and what it can mean for kids who are spending a lot of time online.

https://www.superawesome.com/

“Far too many companies turn a blind eye to the fact that advertisers claim to be complying with COPPA when they're not,” Barrett said. “I think the objective of building safer advertising products for kids is laudable, or at least certainly better than just hoping to fly under regulators' radar.”

SuperAwesome currently has over 300 brand partners, such as Mattel, Hasbro, Nintendo and Warner Brothers, which help promote their products as well as  comply with children’s privacy laws and adhere to SuperAwesome’s policy to collect zero data across apps, games, platforms and advertisements. Such companies are seeing positive returns from the marketing campaigns they run.  This demonstrates the support parents are providing so that their children will be protected.With television viewing decreasing, SuperAwesome reaches more than 500 million new users each, which include PopJam, a platform where developers can build experiences that allow kids to like, comment and share content, and Kids Web Services, which simplifies the process of building apps.

Collins credits the shift to digital for SuperAwesome’s growth in the past year. The company said it projected to double its revenue in 2018 and has its sights set on going public in 2020.

“There needed to be some sort of company to help both sides overcome that friction,” said Hussein Kanji, founding partner at Hoxton Ventures, a London-based firm that was an early investor in SuperAwesome.

SuperAwesome offers companies a platform which allows them to get an accumulated view of how advertisements function, without any individual data from the children they engaged with.

“In comparison, let’s say, if you were running a campaign targeted at adults, you would be able to go in and literally track a person, in terms of if they clicked on an ad and went to the site, and if they eventually spent some money on Amazon,” Collins said. “Our technology ensures that nobody can capture that kind of data on children.”

SuperAwesome have produced a way in which kids can browse the web safely and have also created an alternative source to YouTube.The company issued its own embeddable video player. Alongside this video player, the company created a SafeFam certification for YouTubers who create content aimed at children, allowing them to go through a certification process to earn a SafeFam badge which they can in turn share on their profile.  This is an incredible statement in relation to the character of the YouTuber and one which companies targeting children will be drawn to work with.

“YouTube has had to put out a series of fires over the past two years, including the discovery of inappropriate content being marketed using kid-friendly keywords and concerns inappropriate ads being matched with children’s content. Earlier this year, more than 20 advocacy groups signed a letter to the Federal Trade Commissionalleging YouTube is in violation of COPPA.”Collins said he expects the company to continue to grow as regulations continue to evolve.

“There's a huge amount of change that's going on,” he said. “All of our technology is not only providing compliance for today, but we're ensuring that they're going to be compliant tomorrow and next year and keeping up with the latest requirements.” Dylan Collins said that “I wouldn't say we're growing based on their disadvantage, but I think certainly it is making parents much more cognizant of what is happening to children behind the scenes when they're online.”

In conclusion, SuperAwesome opens a new world for your children to safely be educated and enlightened online. A company is trying to build a kid-safe internet that stops data collection and ad tracking, moves that come amid mounting scepticism about the data practices of tech giants.

Bibliography

BBC News. (2018). Children are being 'datafied from birth'. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46112665

Newcomb, A. (2018). A kid-friendly internet? This company is trying to build one. [online] NBC News. Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/kid-friendly-internet-company-trying-build-one-n950491

Digital Citizenship. (2018). Nine Elements. [online] Available at: http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/nine-elements.html

Usa.kaspersky.com. (2018). [online] Available at: https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/top-seven-dangers-children-face-online

Superawesome.com. (2018). About Us | SuperAwesome. [online] Available at: https://www.superawesome.com/about-us

Ofcom. (2017). Children and parents: media use and attitudes report 2017. [online] Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-parents-2017

Superawesome.com. (2018). Kid-Safe Technology Partner | SuperAwesome. [online] Available at: https://www.superawesome.com

Images 1:https://www.heart.net/blog/just-for-fun/gadgets-and-apps/what-is-good-screen-time/

Image 2: https://superawesome.workable.com/

[dawnajaynes32]

Blink Cincinnati: Taking Art to the Streets

For four nights this past October, Cincinnati’s central neighborhoods were transformed into museum galleries and playgrounds, and about a million visitors went on essentially the city’s largest art crawl.   It took five organizations, two years, dozens of artists and $3.6 million to pull off Blink, a light-based arts festival that took design to the streets of the Queen City. Residents and tourists followed the path of the relatively new streetcar line to explore murals and buildings illuminated by custom designed video projections.   Cincinnati didn’t invent the concept of a citywide light-based arts festival, and it wasn’t the largest ever, but it was the first to integrate its light installations so closely to murals and existing architecture. Artists were encouraged to make their work as location-specific as possible—turning a tiny corner of a building into a 3D illusion and making a mural of a beloved singer come alive with music.

The interactive light pads of “The Pool” from Jen Lewin Studio have delighted audiences at nearly two dozen light festivals worldwide.   The agencies Brave Berlin and AGAR, nonprofit ArtWorks, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber and The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation made it all happen.

Legacy arts organizations are increasingly bringing the insides out in an effort to reach a wider audience. Lighted images, especially moving images, trigger an emotional response and demand our attention. From the first hand shadow puppets to today’s high-tech projection capabilities, art that moves moves us.

A Fest Fit for a Queen

Rust Belt cities often get a bad rap. Coastal dwellers who’ve never set foot in the Midwest might be inclined to assume these former industrial centers are devoid of culture, ambition and hope, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Like its brethren cities Pittsburgh and Denver, Cincinnati is in the midst of a renaissance. The urbanization of the early 21st century has revitalized its core and spurred economic and population growth for the first time in decades.

The arts have been a source of pride for the Queen City, even in lean times: Its symphony is world-class, the Contemporary Arts Center is housed in a Zaha Hadid–designed building, and ArtWorks has adorned walls in the city with more than 130 murals.

One of the biggest arts attractions of the past decade was Lumenocity. This free festival combined live orchestral music with light designs projected onto the face of the iconic Music Hall, a 19th-century architectural masterpiece. Media design agency Brave Berlin partnered with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to create not just a concert, but an experience. Attendance smashed all projections, and although it was crowded, muddy and chaotic, “nobody cared,” Brave Berlin’s Dan Reynolds says. The event was so popular that the next year it was expanded from one night to four, and a ticketing system was put in place.

But the logistics remained a big issue. Though the idea was to be accessible to everyone, the free tickets were snapped up in an instant. Neighborhood residents were overwhelmed by the multiple nights of crowds and traffic. After three years of Lumenocity, Brave Berlin partners Reynolds and Steve McGowan were ready to tackle something even bigger.

A light-infused art parade kicked off the weekend of Blink. | photo credit: Mackenzie Frank

Rather than force visitors to follow a set path, Blink was designed to be explored serendipitously. | Photo credits: Brian Douglas (top left) and Mackenzie Frank (remaining 4)

The Zaha Hadid-designed Contemporary Arts Center, lit up with designs from Lightborne. | photo credit: Brian Douglas

The Preparation

Members of the organizations behind Blink traveled the world to see how other light-based festivals pulled it off. Vivid Sydney, a festival designed to boost travel in Australia’s off season, now draws nearly 2 million visitors a year. Baltimore did a light festival, but not quite at the scale Cincinnati was considering. And while the partners were very excited about the plans, they had no idea if funding would come through for such an expansive festival.

So the key would be cooperation. Brave Berlin would oversee the 21 architectural projection mapping installations, the focal point of Blink. AGAR would work on a new series of street murals. ArtWorks would focus on interactive events and outreach. The regional chamber would handle event production, and the Haile Foundation would focus on funding. Local agency goDutch created the identity and branding before the kickoff. The team announced their grand plan a year ahead of the event with a parade, and the support started flowing.

Projection mapping, also called video mapping, might seem like a relatively new phenomenon, but its origins lie in the pre-digital era. According to the makers of Lightform, the first known example of film projected onto contoured surfaces was in a Disneyland ride in 1969. The Haunted Mansion had bodiless singers that were animated by projecting 16mm film of people singing onto busts of their heads.

Progress in computer graphics led to more exploration into projection mapping in the 1990s, then called “spatial augmented reality,” and the advent of smart projectors in the early 2000s made it possible to start playing with video mapping. The trick is using equipment designed to 3D scan the scene you intend to project on, then processing and projecting the video accordingly so it appears as intended.

“Projection mapping can be like painting on a canvas, or you can really interact with the architecture,” Reynolds says. But “it’s all theoretical; there is no way to practice.”

The Blink partners contracted with tech services company PRG to secure the equipment and staff to execute the ambitious plan. A total of 21 projection mapping installations. Multitudes of side events. No rehearsals. Just showtime.

Set up in front of Music Hall, Alan Parkinson’s “Architects of Air” was an inflatable luminarium visitors could explore from the inside. | photo credit: Mackenzie Frank

Blink and It’s Gone

The festival kicked off with a parade at sundown on Thursday, and people lined the streets to watch hundreds of dancers, musicians, artists and light-clad ramblers.

“We knew we had a great show, but you never know if people are going to show up,” McGowan says. “The day of the parade, we walked over there and we were like, ‘We don’t see a lot of people.’ Then later the streetcar went by and it was packed, and we knew it was gonna be big.”

There was no set path to follow to experience Blink: Everyone was encouraged to start where they felt like it and end whenever they were done. The projections ran in loops of three to 10 minutes, so you wouldn’t miss anything. Many people came out multiple nights because they couldn’t see everything in one evening.

A crowd favorite was “Swing and Sway,” a light installation integrated with an ArtWorks mural of hometown girl and “Mambo Italiano” singer Rosemary Clooney (who also happens to be the aunt of George). Jeremy Mosher, a senior multimedia producer at AGAR, had found a remix of her song “Sway” online and got permission from JPOD to use it. It was one of the few installations to integrate sound with the light, and the projection made it look as if Clooney were really singing.

The posts from Blink flowed incessantly over the long weekend on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. “What we loved so much is that Cincinnati owned it,” McGowan says.

Reynolds adds: “That’s the brilliant thing about art. It’s different for every viewer, but you’re experiencing it together. The inclusion is organic.”

Signing on to develop a citywide multimillion art festival takes a lot of faith, but Brave Berlin never doubted. “I’m proud of the fact we didn’t scale it down when money wasn’t showing up or coming in late,” Reynolds says. “It would have been easy to shorten it, but everyone resisted that and said the scale is what will make it a game-changer.” The exact frequency for future festivals remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: Blink will get a second look.

2018 Worldwide Light Events

The crew responsible for Blink experienced light-based arts festivals around the world in their research. Here’s when you can check them out for yourself this year:

Luminale Frankfurt, Germany March 18–23, 2018 luminale-frankfurt.de

Light City Baltimore April 6–21, 2018 lightcity.org

Vivid Sydney Sydney, Australia May 25 to June 16, 2018 vividsydney.com

Light Festival Jerusalem, Israel June 27 to July 5, 2018 lightinjerusalem.org.il

Lichtrouten Lüdenscheid, Germany September 28 to October 7, 2018 lichtrouten.de

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