Asko Lehmuskallio
Professor of Visual Studies at New Social Research, Tampere University, Finland
Visiting 2021/22 at London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Focus on visual studies, media anthropology & digital culture
Ongoing research:
PI, Banal Surveillance | Academy of Finland
PI, Image/Knowledge | Åkerlund Media Foundation
Research Fellow SFB 1187 A03 Navigation in Online/Offlineräumen | DFG
Previous positions:
University of Siegen, DFG GRK Locating Media, 2015–16
UC Berkeley, School of Information (Visiting Scholar), 2012–13
Aalto University, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, 2006–13
Hfg Karlsruhe, DFG GRK Image-Body-Medium. An Anthropological Perspective, 2003-06
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Bellas Artes, 2000-01
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies, 1996–2003
Title of Docent 2016, Visual Studies, University of Tampere
PhD 2012, Media Studies, University of Tampere
M.A. 2003, Cultural Anthropology, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Address: Web: https://bit.ly/2S2tJrx
Twitter: @verlook
Visiting 2021/22 at London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Focus on visual studies, media anthropology & digital culture
Ongoing research:
PI, Banal Surveillance | Academy of Finland
PI, Image/Knowledge | Åkerlund Media Foundation
Research Fellow SFB 1187 A03 Navigation in Online/Offlineräumen | DFG
Previous positions:
University of Siegen, DFG GRK Locating Media, 2015–16
UC Berkeley, School of Information (Visiting Scholar), 2012–13
Aalto University, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, 2006–13
Hfg Karlsruhe, DFG GRK Image-Body-Medium. An Anthropological Perspective, 2003-06
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Bellas Artes, 2000-01
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Studies, Peace & Conflict Studies, 1996–2003
Title of Docent 2016, Visual Studies, University of Tampere
PhD 2012, Media Studies, University of Tampere
M.A. 2003, Cultural Anthropology, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Address: Web: https://bit.ly/2S2tJrx
Twitter: @verlook
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Book Chapters by Asko Lehmuskallio
Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices"
Papers by Asko Lehmuskallio
There are strict guidelines on photoediting in newsrooms, and serious professional repercussions if failing to adhere to these, while computer-generated imagery is increasingly
used in other areas of visual communication.
This paper presents empirical research on the
ability of professional photographers and editors to distinguish photographs from photorealistic
computer-generated images by looking at them on a screen. Our results show clearly that those
studied (n= 20) are unable to distinguish these from another, suggesting that it is increasingly
difficult to make this distinction, particularly since most viewers are not as experienced in photography as those studied. Interestingly, those studied continue to share a conventional understanding of photography, that is not in line with current developments in digital photography and digital image rendering. Based on our findings, we suggest the need for developing a particular visual literacy that
understands the computational in digital photography, and grounds the use of digital photography among particular communities of practice. When seeing photographs on screens, journals, exhibitions, or newspapers, we might
actually be looking at computer-generated simulations, and vice versa.
nudity, which came into effect on 1 February 2013. In a city known for its tolerance, the
measure banning public nudity explicitly raises the issue of what kinds of images citizens
ought to construct in public space, including those shown on their bodies. The example is
helpful in explaining how the body can be understood as a site for displaying, and
apprehending, images that are considered to carry particular moral values. The nude
body, in contrast to the clothed, provides an image of the human body that defenders of
the measure consider as a challenge to moral standards of social interaction. Some of
those protesting against the ban underscore the naturalness of the naked body but just
as much its role for making a political statement against wider societal values.
Interestingly, photos taken of those appearing nude in public are used in widely available
news media, blogs, and social network sites to draw attention to the debate. These
photos make images of nude bodies in public available and are difficult for authorities to
control. The discussion surrounding the measure banning public nudity, along with its
pictorial representation, brings out the role of images in societal body politics.
Information Security Trends (Kasi – tulevaisuuden tietoturvatrendit) conducted by
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT and VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland. The project is a part of Tekes Safety and Security Research Program
(Tekesin Turvallisuus-ohjelma) and its purpose is to provide rigorous and systematic
foreseeing knowledge for the implementation of the Finnish National Information
Security Strategy (kansallinen tietoturvastrategia).
The aim of the project was to study near-future information security issues that are
related to, for example, new technologies, services, and business models. Our approach
combines perspectives from different disciplines in order to better address the
complexity of the focus area. We identified relevant future information security trends
especially from the Finnish viewpoint in the next five to ten years by collecting and
analysing specialists’ conceptions and knowledge of the various developments in their
professional fields. In order to deepen the analysis, we also specified factors and
attributes that affect the realization of the trends. In addition, our objective was to
evaluate the need for establishing a separate program for continuous foreseeing
activities and provide methodological and procedural guidelines for carrying it out.
Our research process went through five separate steps: 1) outlining possible future
environments, 2) creating concrete future scenarios or stories, 3) analyzing information
security issues in the scenarios, 4) identifying information security trends, and 5)
specifying factors and attributes that affect the realization of the trends. Our major
findings concerning the future information security trends in Finland in a 5 to 10 years
scale are the following:
1. The interdependency between societal processes and information systems increases
2. New interdependencies between organizations and the state emerge
3. Information security issues become more international
4. Needs to manage private or confidential information and public appearances in ICT
environments increase
5. Protection of personal data becomes a considerable political issue
6. It becomes increasingly difficult to ensure the correctness of information
7. The correctness of information becomes increasingly important
8. Data gathering increases
9. Data combination from different sources increases
10. Traceability of persons and goods increases
11. Malicious action against information systems increases
12. Quality and security issues are increasingly taken into account in software
development
13. Automation/autonomous systems are increasingly employed to effect security
14. Availability of information increases as the public information resources are opened
15. Commercial interests drive actors to restrict access to proprietary information
resources
16. Governance of access to information resources in organizations becomes more
difficult
Realization and intensity of the trends are dependent on several factors that we have
categorized as societal, economic, technological, and legal. The factors have either
intensifying or constraining effects on the trends and the intensity of their effect varies.
We believe our work on future information security trends and issues and on the
methodological questions of reliable foreseeing activities provides relevant information
for commercial, policy and scientific interests. We propose that in order to get reliable
foreseeing results in the long term, the process of identifying future information
security trends should be continuous. While the continuous process would also provide
grounds for improving the foreseeing method, this project sets a firm starting point with
practical guidelines and the first round of results.
Books by Asko Lehmuskallio
The fifth issue of Digital Culture & Society addresses particular, situated forms of movement of people, things and data through the lens of practices. Practice-based approaches have concomitantly become pivotal for describing how people, things and data are interrelated in what can be called digital practices. While discussions surrounding the “practice turn” (Schatzki et al. 2006) in social theory have found their way into other disciplines including media studies, it has yet to be clearly identified how practices can be deciphered in terms of scale and order (Swidler 2010) and how the specifics of digital practices can be best spelled out (Couldry 2012). A number of scholars in media and anthropology have worked towards describing the various settings of “what people do with media” (Couldry 2004) in terms of media practices (Bräuchler/Postill 2010). Almost simultaneously, a mobilities turn has been identified, framing subjects of the social sciences through the lens of movement and networks (Sheller/Urry 2006). We aim to apply these approaches to a mobile digital realm; hence, we invite to discuss how particularly digital practices can be described, framed and researched and how they produce and are produced by the mobility of people, data and devices (Morley 2011).
Images are feared, images are believed, and images are belittled.
Images are burned, ripped, banned, and toppled. Images
are also idolized, kissed, and worshipped. Images may be
sent to other people to show love but equally can be used to
cause hurt. Images are part of human activity—we live with
images and through them.... [read more]
In contrast to the cameras of the past, the camera devices used today are ever more connected to digital information and communication technologies during pictures capture, storage, sharing, and display. Laptop webcams, mobile camera-phones, and digital point-and-shoot cameras provide salient examples of digitally networked cameras. Pictures taken with these devices can be shared, shown, and archived with the aid of a vast array of interoperable software applications.
The increasing use of pictures in general, and camera pictures in particular, has raised concern both in academic discussions and in public debate in mass media. Whereas some fear that the visual will overcome the posited analytical clarity of writing and speech, others embrace an era of images as a time of new possibilities in which all can participate symmetrically in a given representational sphere. Whatever the evaluative statement, it is widely believed that, because of digitization, photo use has fundamentally changed.
With these developments in mind, this research focuses on two main research questions:
1) how do we use cameras at a time in which they are ever more available, and
2) how do these cameras mediate our actions?
The questions are answered within a framework emphasizing pictorial practices and qualitative empirical case studies of actual uses. In terms of theoretical underpinnings, the research draws on the work done by Hans Belting in his anthropology of images, as well as from work published by scholars on practices that focus explicitly on material mediations. The research underlines techniques of the body as the first site of any technology and, accordingly, the importance of embodied techniques in studies of camera use. From this perspective, looking and being looked at is of special interest for understanding camera use, as is the question of how networked cameras play their part in these relations.
Because of the sheer quantity of data available, a heuristic approach is applied for coming to terms with non-professional uses of camera pictures at a time when cameras mediate ever more social interaction. The empirical case studies have been conducted in southern Finland and around Berlin, Germany, among mainly middle-class camera-users. The case studies focus on the role of digital cameras and photo services in the use practices of snapshot photographers, on the boundary regulation strategies applied in decisions on what kinds of pictures to share on a photo-sharing site privately or publicly, on the use of mobile camera-phones and an accompanying photo site in a kindergarten, and on image strategies of political activists who try to draw public mass-media attention to their issues of concern.
The empirical case studies show that non-professional camera use is organized into meaningful pictorial practices, which, in turn, are influenced by both social conventions and material mediations. Knowing when to take a picture, whom to depict, and what is to be done with the pictures is learned in face-to-face interaction; by looking at the pictures taken; and through the aid of manuals, advertisements, Web content, and mediated information of other types. With the help of digitization, knowledge of how to create novel pictorial practices can be transmitted rapidly over vast distances and, therefore, is not bound to one specific locale.
Thus non-professional camera use, embedded in translocal pictorial practices, supports life in surmodernity (a concept of Augé), which presents itself in an abundance of events, an abundance of space, an individualization of references, and mediation of everyday communication. For example, parents, in having to fill several roles in society, attempt to be good workers, good friends, and good parents, and they do so increasingly by using information and communication technologies. Unable to be everywhere at once, they find that the mediations used assist them in contracting spatial distance so that the parents can be present in all of these spheres, even if at a distance. The cameras used from afar, as is shown in the exemplary kindergarten case study, assist parents in juggling these various roles.
The research posits that cameras mediate our actions through relational affordances that have to be activated as part of meaningful practices. We have learned to relate to specific ways of taking pictures and to being depicted. Digitization confounds these ways, and interaction learned in offline settings does not translate effortlessly into novel interaction environments. Through digital networking, pictures taken with cameras can be transmitted automatically to a wide variety of recipients, searched with the aid of algorithms, and archived in various forms. Individual pictures quickly become part of global news or are removed from their original context and used in new communication acts. Digitally networked cameras influence this in ways that call attention to the mediation that these cameras provide for, especially since cameras are used for ever more purposes in ever more situations. New questions become important, such as What kind of information is collected in networked camera use? and What kinds of action do they stimulate or encourage? At their best, digitally networked cameras enhance our embodied capabilities, extend our motor and sensory organs, and direct useful sensory information into the body, thus becoming momentarily part of us. The benefits of seeing and interacting with others with the aid of cameras should outweigh the disadvantages if we are to live in a digitally networked "cam era."
Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices"
There are strict guidelines on photoediting in newsrooms, and serious professional repercussions if failing to adhere to these, while computer-generated imagery is increasingly
used in other areas of visual communication.
This paper presents empirical research on the
ability of professional photographers and editors to distinguish photographs from photorealistic
computer-generated images by looking at them on a screen. Our results show clearly that those
studied (n= 20) are unable to distinguish these from another, suggesting that it is increasingly
difficult to make this distinction, particularly since most viewers are not as experienced in photography as those studied. Interestingly, those studied continue to share a conventional understanding of photography, that is not in line with current developments in digital photography and digital image rendering. Based on our findings, we suggest the need for developing a particular visual literacy that
understands the computational in digital photography, and grounds the use of digital photography among particular communities of practice. When seeing photographs on screens, journals, exhibitions, or newspapers, we might
actually be looking at computer-generated simulations, and vice versa.
nudity, which came into effect on 1 February 2013. In a city known for its tolerance, the
measure banning public nudity explicitly raises the issue of what kinds of images citizens
ought to construct in public space, including those shown on their bodies. The example is
helpful in explaining how the body can be understood as a site for displaying, and
apprehending, images that are considered to carry particular moral values. The nude
body, in contrast to the clothed, provides an image of the human body that defenders of
the measure consider as a challenge to moral standards of social interaction. Some of
those protesting against the ban underscore the naturalness of the naked body but just
as much its role for making a political statement against wider societal values.
Interestingly, photos taken of those appearing nude in public are used in widely available
news media, blogs, and social network sites to draw attention to the debate. These
photos make images of nude bodies in public available and are difficult for authorities to
control. The discussion surrounding the measure banning public nudity, along with its
pictorial representation, brings out the role of images in societal body politics.
Information Security Trends (Kasi – tulevaisuuden tietoturvatrendit) conducted by
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT and VTT Technical Research
Centre of Finland. The project is a part of Tekes Safety and Security Research Program
(Tekesin Turvallisuus-ohjelma) and its purpose is to provide rigorous and systematic
foreseeing knowledge for the implementation of the Finnish National Information
Security Strategy (kansallinen tietoturvastrategia).
The aim of the project was to study near-future information security issues that are
related to, for example, new technologies, services, and business models. Our approach
combines perspectives from different disciplines in order to better address the
complexity of the focus area. We identified relevant future information security trends
especially from the Finnish viewpoint in the next five to ten years by collecting and
analysing specialists’ conceptions and knowledge of the various developments in their
professional fields. In order to deepen the analysis, we also specified factors and
attributes that affect the realization of the trends. In addition, our objective was to
evaluate the need for establishing a separate program for continuous foreseeing
activities and provide methodological and procedural guidelines for carrying it out.
Our research process went through five separate steps: 1) outlining possible future
environments, 2) creating concrete future scenarios or stories, 3) analyzing information
security issues in the scenarios, 4) identifying information security trends, and 5)
specifying factors and attributes that affect the realization of the trends. Our major
findings concerning the future information security trends in Finland in a 5 to 10 years
scale are the following:
1. The interdependency between societal processes and information systems increases
2. New interdependencies between organizations and the state emerge
3. Information security issues become more international
4. Needs to manage private or confidential information and public appearances in ICT
environments increase
5. Protection of personal data becomes a considerable political issue
6. It becomes increasingly difficult to ensure the correctness of information
7. The correctness of information becomes increasingly important
8. Data gathering increases
9. Data combination from different sources increases
10. Traceability of persons and goods increases
11. Malicious action against information systems increases
12. Quality and security issues are increasingly taken into account in software
development
13. Automation/autonomous systems are increasingly employed to effect security
14. Availability of information increases as the public information resources are opened
15. Commercial interests drive actors to restrict access to proprietary information
resources
16. Governance of access to information resources in organizations becomes more
difficult
Realization and intensity of the trends are dependent on several factors that we have
categorized as societal, economic, technological, and legal. The factors have either
intensifying or constraining effects on the trends and the intensity of their effect varies.
We believe our work on future information security trends and issues and on the
methodological questions of reliable foreseeing activities provides relevant information
for commercial, policy and scientific interests. We propose that in order to get reliable
foreseeing results in the long term, the process of identifying future information
security trends should be continuous. While the continuous process would also provide
grounds for improving the foreseeing method, this project sets a firm starting point with
practical guidelines and the first round of results.
The fifth issue of Digital Culture & Society addresses particular, situated forms of movement of people, things and data through the lens of practices. Practice-based approaches have concomitantly become pivotal for describing how people, things and data are interrelated in what can be called digital practices. While discussions surrounding the “practice turn” (Schatzki et al. 2006) in social theory have found their way into other disciplines including media studies, it has yet to be clearly identified how practices can be deciphered in terms of scale and order (Swidler 2010) and how the specifics of digital practices can be best spelled out (Couldry 2012). A number of scholars in media and anthropology have worked towards describing the various settings of “what people do with media” (Couldry 2004) in terms of media practices (Bräuchler/Postill 2010). Almost simultaneously, a mobilities turn has been identified, framing subjects of the social sciences through the lens of movement and networks (Sheller/Urry 2006). We aim to apply these approaches to a mobile digital realm; hence, we invite to discuss how particularly digital practices can be described, framed and researched and how they produce and are produced by the mobility of people, data and devices (Morley 2011).
Images are feared, images are believed, and images are belittled.
Images are burned, ripped, banned, and toppled. Images
are also idolized, kissed, and worshipped. Images may be
sent to other people to show love but equally can be used to
cause hurt. Images are part of human activity—we live with
images and through them.... [read more]
In contrast to the cameras of the past, the camera devices used today are ever more connected to digital information and communication technologies during pictures capture, storage, sharing, and display. Laptop webcams, mobile camera-phones, and digital point-and-shoot cameras provide salient examples of digitally networked cameras. Pictures taken with these devices can be shared, shown, and archived with the aid of a vast array of interoperable software applications.
The increasing use of pictures in general, and camera pictures in particular, has raised concern both in academic discussions and in public debate in mass media. Whereas some fear that the visual will overcome the posited analytical clarity of writing and speech, others embrace an era of images as a time of new possibilities in which all can participate symmetrically in a given representational sphere. Whatever the evaluative statement, it is widely believed that, because of digitization, photo use has fundamentally changed.
With these developments in mind, this research focuses on two main research questions:
1) how do we use cameras at a time in which they are ever more available, and
2) how do these cameras mediate our actions?
The questions are answered within a framework emphasizing pictorial practices and qualitative empirical case studies of actual uses. In terms of theoretical underpinnings, the research draws on the work done by Hans Belting in his anthropology of images, as well as from work published by scholars on practices that focus explicitly on material mediations. The research underlines techniques of the body as the first site of any technology and, accordingly, the importance of embodied techniques in studies of camera use. From this perspective, looking and being looked at is of special interest for understanding camera use, as is the question of how networked cameras play their part in these relations.
Because of the sheer quantity of data available, a heuristic approach is applied for coming to terms with non-professional uses of camera pictures at a time when cameras mediate ever more social interaction. The empirical case studies have been conducted in southern Finland and around Berlin, Germany, among mainly middle-class camera-users. The case studies focus on the role of digital cameras and photo services in the use practices of snapshot photographers, on the boundary regulation strategies applied in decisions on what kinds of pictures to share on a photo-sharing site privately or publicly, on the use of mobile camera-phones and an accompanying photo site in a kindergarten, and on image strategies of political activists who try to draw public mass-media attention to their issues of concern.
The empirical case studies show that non-professional camera use is organized into meaningful pictorial practices, which, in turn, are influenced by both social conventions and material mediations. Knowing when to take a picture, whom to depict, and what is to be done with the pictures is learned in face-to-face interaction; by looking at the pictures taken; and through the aid of manuals, advertisements, Web content, and mediated information of other types. With the help of digitization, knowledge of how to create novel pictorial practices can be transmitted rapidly over vast distances and, therefore, is not bound to one specific locale.
Thus non-professional camera use, embedded in translocal pictorial practices, supports life in surmodernity (a concept of Augé), which presents itself in an abundance of events, an abundance of space, an individualization of references, and mediation of everyday communication. For example, parents, in having to fill several roles in society, attempt to be good workers, good friends, and good parents, and they do so increasingly by using information and communication technologies. Unable to be everywhere at once, they find that the mediations used assist them in contracting spatial distance so that the parents can be present in all of these spheres, even if at a distance. The cameras used from afar, as is shown in the exemplary kindergarten case study, assist parents in juggling these various roles.
The research posits that cameras mediate our actions through relational affordances that have to be activated as part of meaningful practices. We have learned to relate to specific ways of taking pictures and to being depicted. Digitization confounds these ways, and interaction learned in offline settings does not translate effortlessly into novel interaction environments. Through digital networking, pictures taken with cameras can be transmitted automatically to a wide variety of recipients, searched with the aid of algorithms, and archived in various forms. Individual pictures quickly become part of global news or are removed from their original context and used in new communication acts. Digitally networked cameras influence this in ways that call attention to the mediation that these cameras provide for, especially since cameras are used for ever more purposes in ever more situations. New questions become important, such as What kind of information is collected in networked camera use? and What kinds of action do they stimulate or encourage? At their best, digitally networked cameras enhance our embodied capabilities, extend our motor and sensory organs, and direct useful sensory information into the body, thus becoming momentarily part of us. The benefits of seeing and interacting with others with the aid of cameras should outweigh the disadvantages if we are to live in a digitally networked "cam era."