Humping The (new) Media Landscape

Talking Pictures

    

    I want to talk about photography.

    Not famous photos or works of art but simply the act, which we are all, willingly or not, participating in constantly.

    My own picture making education began in an era when digital cameras were not affordable or accessible or even of interest to the average student of the medium. I remember having lengthy discussions with teachers and classmates concerning how digital cameras would change “things”,  but never could we have predicted just how much. I started this writing as a personal exercise but since it only seems to have become more relevant I am posting it here as a conversation starter for any one else thinking about this.

    I identified four distinct characteristics that most effect the way we are making pictures, today. These differences are, without a doubt, having a profound effect on the uses and meaning of photography in everyday life. Since its inception Photography has effected how we see ourselves. Ubiquitous, virtual, distributed and immediate; the tendencies of contemporary vernacular photography have made an entirely different kind picture of ourselves, because our selves have been made different by it.

I'll post my thoughts on each in the coming weeks and I encourage you to comment and share any, anecdotes, links or images that it brings to mind, so we can explore the idea further, together.

 

 

No Emoticon

A Manifesto.

 It is not too late to say what you feel.

Every time you let one of those little emoticons slip into your technologically mediated communications you let a little bit of your humanity slip away. An emoticon is an inadequate and irresponsible stand in for real emotions. And more so, it is an insult to the human ability to express.

Each of us, currently has the right to speak about how we feel to each other. And we have a right to transmit that, in most cases, through a variety of text-based medium. Do not take that lightly. Your personal communications are political. There have been times and there are places today, where you must us symbols to stand in for feelings in order to avoid persecution.

The ability to express is not a given politically nor is it a given practically; we must learn it though practice and experimentation.

Consider each emoticon you choose to eliminate, as an exercise in freedom and practice of expression. Practice the written expression of your emotions with abandon! Use language. At a loss for words? Then say that, or explore a thesaurus. Make up language, if the words you find won’t do. Every colon followed by closed parentheses is a missed opportunity for an expression of human joy. Just think about all the deliciously, salty language experiences we miss out on when someone chooses to express themselves with a semi-colon, closed parentheses rather than a full description of their thoughts at that moment.

Emoticons are feelings for computers. And you, as much as, you may like to think otherwise, are not a computer. Fundamental our experience as a humans, is attempting to express feeling, failing or succeeding, and in the process, creating beauty and understanding. Trust that the thoughtful choice of words will mean, as much if not more, than the immediacy of your response, for every emoticon you eliminate from your communications is a small heroic human act.  

@narcissus can you give me a hand here, I think I'm drowning ;)

The internet is an amazing place to work, play and live but it is also a confusing mess. I am trying to get better at writing about it, to figure out my own boundaries here and hopefully be helpful to other people who struggle to understand their place here.

I originally wrote this essay for Technologies of Persuasion with Douglas Rushkoff at The New School in 2009. I finally got around to making some edits to it and wanted to share it. 

 

Narcissus by Caravaggio

    Check out Ye Olde Narcissus, the beautiful young man, who in a self-absorbed trance, is unable to tell the difference between himself and his reflection.

    His name is thought to be derived from the greek and in his trance he is numb, so numb that he drowns. How embarrassing for him. Today, in a sea of self created reflections, it is far too easy to indulge in our own narcissistic tendencies, with seemingly little consequence. And just as easy to look at others who are drowning and not feel any responsibility. Increasingly, the tools we use for social connection double as reflective surfaces intended to trap us in our own trance of self love.

     

    Initially, I sat down to write a light-hearted piece about how to tell the difference between real people and fake people on the internet. Real people being, you know, your mom, and fake people I assumed, would be brands, “brand ambassadors”, and worst of all those involved in the shameless art of “personal branding”. I thought it would be fairly easy to devise a kind of Turing test which we could apply to help root out the “friends” from the friends. However, as I compared various individuals activities on Facebook and Twitter I found it was more challenging than I'd expected to set a standard for human-ness within the confines of online personal profiles. Here everyone is reduced to a charming, trading card version of themselves; all the quirky profile icons, each representing the identity of a different friend, a collection of words, links, photos that serve as a mnemonic device for recalling individuals I once knew in the flesh. As I looked at all of my trading card friends, I realized there was no way I could point a finger at any of them for being fakes, they were simply doing as the medium asked of them, as was I.

    Connect! Share! This is the persistent call from the internet, today.

    Sites like YouTube and Twitter are built entirely upon the human desire to do just that. But parallel forces are at work. Of course we all want to connect, its in our nature. I want to show photos of myself to my family and see a video of my friends' kids being adorable, I want to tell friends about an interesting article I read. But the way these sites intertwine earnest connecting and sharing with a non-stop public performance is dubious and requires some closer inspection. First of all we need to always remember that these corporate structures for group participation, are just that. All of this public sharing of personal information is taking place on private property. These private properties are businesses with typical business bottom lines. Their goal will always be to make money. No matter if their website tells you that they are here to help you connect, share, make friends etc. all you have to do is look for the 'terms of service' or 'advertise' link in 8 point type at the bottom of the site, to see the other side of this business model. Make no mistake, while these sites may be entertaining and helpful, they are exploitive. All effective persuasion works by taking advantage of preexisting human tendencies and what could be more human than narcissism.

    Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the innumerable other social networking tools we have become dependent on to navigate the internet as a public space, exploit this most predictable of human tendencies for commercial ends. We are being trained to create database versions of our identities, neat and categorical, a fill-in-the-blank persona which can be slotted into demographic and psycho-graphic types that can be sold off to the highest bidder. While this ultimately may not prove be as dire as narcissus' condition, we need to understand how this makes us weak. Maintaining online identities, through which we manage real relationships with real people is effecting how we has humans see ourselves. To successfully telescope ones identity online through these tools we must flatten and become an iconic version of self. The more iconic and symbolic the better - these iconic identities can then be rated and valued based on clicks and friends. The value is public and continues to help drive further increase in value. The way you see yourself establishes a sense of self worth. Establishing a sense of self worth based predominantly on the externalized value in the internet identity market is the slippery slope to a real narcissistic personality disorder.

    The story of Narcissus has persisted in culture for so long because its lesson, is one that has always been needed. But look around and you will be hard pressed to find any similar allegory, today, because the engines of commerce have become dependent upon the obliteration of a Narcissus' lesson. We are getting trained to build mirror images of ourselves, that we can constantly check in on, update and reference. The modern Narcissus' is egged on by the “What are you doing?” box on Twitter and the echo of the resulting 're-Tweets' and @replies of a hundred of other Narcissuses'. She does not merely come upon her image in a calm pool, but is completely surrounded by reflections of herself. She participates in the constant reproduction of her image. She feels empowered by the technologies that do this, she is confident that she is in control. And yet, there is a third party implicated in this situation.

    Unlike Narcissus she is not locked in a gaze with her mirror image, she is looking at me, you, her audience, her followers, her friends, while she holds a camera with its mechanical eye pointed at her. Such triangulation represents for me a far more powerful force than Olde Narcissus could have ever felt. Should this trance be interrupted is she not at risk of tripping backwards and fall in? Narcissus' enchantment made him unable to tell the difference between himself and his reflection but the modern narcissus is so numb that she appears completely unaware that she is surrounded by water, which I can help but imagine rising with each new video she publishes.

    With no modern parables to warn against the dangers of narcissism we are culturally, at risk. For unchecked vanity, becomes vulnerability. Because I don't believe in throwing the baby with the bathwater, I do think we can learn to use these tools without becoming tools. I appreciate Douglas Rushkoff's uplifting assertion that new media “allows people to relegate the inhuman parts of themselves to the machines, while preserving the human for the real world.”  However, until we can identify the reflection from the self we will probably have trouble determining such distinctions.

Sarah Austin “Lifecaster” Photo by Mark Stanton

We'll Make Great Brands: Branded Identity and The Internet Public Sphere

A final paper I wrote for Media Studies: Ideas course with Peter Asaro  at The New School. It is a rambling flood of ideas but I am posting it since it touches, on just about everything I want to address in my further study in grad skool. 

“Everyone has a chance to be a brand worthy of remark.”   Tom Peters, 1997

This quote appeared in Fast Company magazine in an article by Peters entitled, The Brand Called You
The basic premise laid out by Peters is that, for individuals to be successful in the contemporary business environment, they must look to prominent billion dollar brands like Nike or Pepsi for inspiration.

“It's time for me -- and you -- to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that's true for anyone who's interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work.
Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”

 Peters' message goes beyond pointing to corporate branding strategy for inspiration. It calls for individuals to actually act as corporate entities in creating an identity for themselves. In the decade since the piece was originally printed, the idea of “Personal Branding” has only become more relevant as tools for identity distribution through the internet are changing the way individuals and corporations approach mediated communication. The Internet provides a unique venue where individuals can gain agency amongst the corporate giants and this has necessitated that formerly monolithic corporate brands  borrow the identities of individuals for authenticity, one of the greatest currencies online. However, this notion that individuals can and should brand themselves in the same way that corporations are branded brings with it a very complex set of issues, that have greater implications for how we understand and develop personal identity.
    While Peters and many others like him, have been coaching individuals to brand their identities as corporations are branded, those very same corporations have been learning to behave online in a manner which mimics the way individuals use the internet for personal interactions.  This is where my personal experience comes into play: my job, for a billion dollar company, is essentially to ensure that our interactions with consumers online are authentically human. As more and more personal relationships have some element of computer mediation, the internet grows increasingly personal. For brands looking to be perceived as more human, the opportunity to communicate to potential consumers  where they engage publicly and emotionally with each other is irresistible.

Literature review for media project Sexy, Funny (working title)

Concept

This project stems from a series of interviews I have filmed with women who are burlesque dancers as well as conversations I have had with women working professionally in standup, improv, sketch comedy and comedy writing. There is something very specific to the kind of agency these women are creating for themselves through the intentional use of burlesque to lampoon established images of femininity in western popular culture. They are intentionally using their own bodies to be confrontational and at the same time charm their audiences with a coquettish sexuality.  Using the reemergence of burlesque as a spring board to look at the idea of comedy and sexuality as the emergent mode for female dominance via media.  Through interviews and textual analysis of performances, of women who write and perform their own material as investigation of the possibilities for women to assume control in the larger narratives and representation of women within popular culture. There is a wealth of writing on topics related to this idea including historical documentation of women performing comedy, theoretical texts on sexualized self representation by women and explorations of humor and feminism.  I selected a cross-section for this review as a touchstone for beginning my own research. Some very relevant books have been omitted from this review but only because I was not able to access them in the timeline for this assignment.

Feminist Theory

The subject of women and humor is clearly present but ultimately as a side note in feminist theory. However, it seems like an obvious way to engage with younger generation of women who do not feel they are part of a specifically feminist history.  I am interested in foregrounding the burlesque combination of humor and sexuality as a mode of critique for  women writer/performers working within the contemporary media environment. By using a sophisticated combination of humor and sexuality women can burlesque centuries worth of feminine representations. In this way, they craft hybrid identities for themselves within the heavily mediated contemporary cultural environment. This could be prescribed as a feminist mode of media critique, which can be highly visible and thus effective in influencing new perceptions of femininity. Much of the writing around feminist theory and humor is often about  a lack of humor in feminist theory due to feelings that the subject was too serious to make light of.  Helen Cioux's 1975, Laugh of Medussa, provides an excellent text for exploring the feminist theory aspect of this for several reasons.  It advocates that women must write and I think women today would especially appreciate that Cioux does not specify content or form – which opens a door for many types of female authority to emerge. She also writes that women must use their bodies to tell their stories since they cannot escape the meaning of its presence – so, women must write from their perspective and they must acknowledge their physicality in order for their writing to assert power in a larger cultural dialog.  The inversion of the medusa myth from screaming to laughter is the perfect parallel for looking at how women are writing/performing themselves, today.

Women's Humor

There have been many attempts to identify a sense of humor specific to the female experience. In the book, They Used to Call me Snow White, Regina Berreca points to the fact that women have used double entendre to provide coded messages in comedy (performed on a stage or personal life) out of necessity because showing outright wit was not socially acceptable. Berreca looks at female characters in classic and contemporary texts and even the actors who portrayed them on screen. She mentions the formidable Lorelie of Anita Loo's Gentlemen Prefer Blonds a story itself that burlesques a type of woman which Loo's felt was the type men  desire. A coded message that would " have no trouble getting by the censors despite the fact that the hidden message could easily be understood by the audience." (p17) A woman who purrs to men cloyingly with a wink to women watching that this man is clearly a fool. She describes a 'double-voiced dialog' in which women, aware of the humor in a situation are trained by societal conditioning not to confront it directly.

Personal Branding in The Internet Public Sphere

Some general notes for Media Studies: Ideas Final

I would like to address the recent trend, calling for individuals to craft their identities online as if they were a brand. On the one hand, learning to use the internet as a tool can be very effective for individuals with a specific goal. On the other, creating a brand of oneself denigrates identities into shallow demographics. This may be great for marketers eager to figure out how to funnel the communications of individuals online into ad placements but is it good for the internet as a public sphere and the individuals that make it up? This trend works against diversity which, in theory, would be what is important for growth and survival of any living organism.

Individuals identities online are also useful to brands right now, because they offer authenticity. When individuals online have effectively branded themselves are their identities less authentic=less valuable. In effect this makes the individual a competitive brand or a potential business partner with corporate identities online. With individuals are seeking to function like brands online and brands looking to be perceived more like individuals, what are the implications of this mediated relationship between corporations and individuals online? What are the ramifications for personal identity and what an identity is vs. a public profile?

Does defining oneself as a brand and acting as such in online interactions, disempower or empower individuals? What is the opposite of this? Online, what really separates individual identities from corporate brands, anyway?

I welcome any suggestions for reading along these lines. I will post whatever I end up using in my research here, as well.

Reading: Everything Bad is Good For You

Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.
Stephen Johnson

Johnson's book is an argument against a common assumption that contemporary popular culture makes its consumers dumber over time. He advocates for a new set of standards to assess the value of the popular media culture object based on what types of neurological functions video game or television program is allows it’s audience to exercise rather than the moralistic view of what the content of a storyline teaches. "looking at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not a series of life lessons" (p.14)

Through a formal analysis of the narrative structures of television shows, films and video games he quoting such diverse sources as mathematicians, game theory scholars and screenplay writers. Although he includes a personal narrative and perspective to make it more rateable, Johnson primarily takes a systematic approach to investigating the subject. He culls data from many sciences including specific Sociological studies and citing Neuroscience research into how the brain works. He points to several specific studies on game theory and supports his statements with a variety of texts from the established Media Studies and Cultural Theory cannon.

Johnson coins the term Sleeper Curve for thesis that mass culture is altering the cognitive development of young people in a positive rather than negative manner. Because today's popular cultural objects are more complex in narrative structure and form than that of preceding eras the cognitive skills developed by playing a video game or watching The Simpsons, are as valuable as those developed by reading classic literature or other older forms of popular media. He identifies two forms of intellectual labor which occur when playing modern video games: Probing – essentially learning the scientific method via exploring and poking around to builds knowledge with which to make educated guesses about how something works.  Telescoping –  prioritizing and managing sets of tasks that are nested one within the next, building up complete the larger task at hand. These are important skills in today's world that are quite difficult to teach in a linear way. Similarly, modern TV also develops certain skills set in our brains for example, the prominence of nonlinear narratives and multi-character storylines which require viewers to keep track of many ideas at once and do not allow for neatly packaged conclusions.

Thus:

Audiences expectations are changing and so is the type of media they are consuming. We should not underestimate the "work" that the brain is doing when engaged with these films/tv shows/video games. Being merely a spectator in modern culture is becoming the less dominant experience. What seems passive is actually focus.

Yes, there is a lot of junk out there but in comparison to the junk 20 years ago today's junk ain't so bad and the good stuff now is really quite good.

This book admittedly does not have sufficient data to support its precepts properly in a scientific environment and Johnson hopes that the book will actually inspire more empirical research in this area. Regardless, it is a helpful starting point for thinking about what is unique to today's popular media and how to assess its value in a practical way, for example, to serve as a guide for concerned parents. Ultimately, a well informed and open minded  exploration, I really enjoyed it  - will post more personal thoughts when I have time.

Can I Call You Joe?

         The folksy talk of  "Main Street, USA" is in no way a surprising theme in presidential elections. Candidates of all stripes, determined to connect with average Americans, invoke a myriad of clichéd Americana even trotting out a middle-aged out-of-work so-and-so at every campaign stop, who happens to have an incredibly practiced personal narrative to share and a miscellaneous down home accent to go with it. These people serve as surrogates invoking a normalcy that presidential hopefuls can't have, as they have most likely spent their lives either in prep schools or working their less privileged asses off in order to attend a top law school, then in various state houses and then, ideally, getting to know how government actually works in Washington, DC.  They desperately need you, the populace, to identify with their carefully selected surrogates and they need you to do it quickly and definitively.  This concept has been taken to its most absurd turn with the current presidential race, as Governor Sarah Palin makes near constant references to “Joe-Six-Packs” and “Hockey Moms”. 

           Since I initially decided to write on this topic, the subject of a certain Joe so-and-so has ballooned to degree of absurdity beyond my wildest expectations. Something about hearing Governor Palin in the Vice-Presidential debate repeatedly calling out to her audience, the person watching her at home on the TV as “Joe Six-Pack”, struck me as very peculiar. First of all, it seemed an odd choice of words; essentially, calling ones audience by a derogatory name. But there was something else that made it feel even more inappropriate in this context. Why was this term was so familiar and yet wrong? Then I remembered, its a television industry term used to describe a marketing demographic. Use of this term betrays the humility it is meant to bestow on Governor Palin, because it is language of a marketing strategy rather than an actual down-home turn of phrase. Peggy Noonan described Palin’s entire performance as “an infomercial pitch for charm in politics” transparent yet effective. Noonan asks, at what point “shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.”1  For me this indicated a fascinating breakdown of the communication structure, where the seams of this shiny, happy populism are ripped and the strategic manipulation beneath is revealed.

Click to read the rest of what I wrote on the subject

This is a link to a great interview with several demographics experts related to the election on Salon.

The Craftsman notes pt. 2

Because Sennett focuses much of his writing on the historical idea of craft  we may be prone to limiting our discussion to too narrow an approach, and thereby limiting how we are applying these ideas to our work as contemporary media makers. This is why I really appreciate how you are enlarging the idea of "articulate" from literally referring to ability to speak well to what is means to be articulate in our current environment. I feel very strongly that media makers, be they craftsperson or artist (or both), are tasked with the job of telling universal stories in the language of their time (and place, for that matter).  As media makers within a contemporary global media environment, for us to be articulate with mere spoken words is not enough for effective communication.

If we choose not to, and fall prey to technophobia, we allow ourselves to become impotent communicators. I am not suggesting that all media makers must work with new technologies, certainly those who work in a traditional craft form are doing something important by maintaining that history but they are still working in a contemporary environment. I am advocating that whatever the form your work takes you must be aware of how any new technologies relate to your craft and may effect your work. It is our job to understand them and not be fearful of a future filled with new tools and machines that will replace us. The way we make ourselves irreplaceable by understanding these tools, building upon them and finding new uses for them or deconstructing them articulately in our own work.

I enjoyed reading The Craftsman but found myself feeling somewhat removed from the text. With some consideration, I realized that this is because I have fundamentally different ideas about being a craftsperson and my own relationship with the tools I have used for creative communication. I refer to McLuhan’s description of media as “the extensions of man” and any craftsperson can attest to this on a metaphorical and literal level in regards to their tools: just ask a painter to describe brushes, a tap dancer about shoes, a filmmaker about a lens, a cook about their All-Clad pots and so on. As humans we make tools to physically extend our abilities to interact with the world.

Because of this I find it difficult to devote too much analysis to a tool or machine separate from the fact that it was created by a human to be ultimately controlled by a human. As an artist, I felt that in creating art works I was creating tools for myself and my viewers. Despite the fact that I have changed the form of my work and process I still feel strongly that media objects themselves are also tools. The works of art that had the most profound effect on me I realized were served as guides that enlarged my understanding of the world. Ultimately such tools can empower us by eradicating fears that keep us from acting honestly and compassionately.

notes On Intellectual Craftsmanship

Reading On Intellectual Craftsmanship, by Sociologist C. Wright Mills (wikipedia), was very helpful for me as I am in the process of determining what I am in graduate school to accomplish. In this piece, Mills sets out to document and explain in a simple and inspiring manner his own working process. There are several points that I found especially compelling and relevant to my own work.

Life=Work Idea of a "social scientist" ones life and work are deeply interconnected

bringing together personal experience with intellectual pursuits.

Surround yourself with your subject (and those interested in your subject). Doing things in your life  that will lead to thinking well along the lines of your work.

Keeping a file to conserve energy and capture fringe thoughts, and small snippets of ideas that once noted may lead to systematic understandings.  Keeping my own "intellectual enterprise organized and under control" has been a major task and exploration for me the past decade. I am looking to school to help me make something of it that is greater than the sum of its parts.I used to keep actual paper files in college but then moved so many times that the file cabinet was more cumbersome than helpful so I turned to the internet for that purpose.

Being overwhelmed by so many ideas - yes, all the time!

Creating a work/research/life processes to help deal with this issue and make meaning from mania.

To trust and utilize ones experience while also being skeptical of how it colors your own perceptions - building an "ambiguous confidence" which can then be justified through the documentation/file.

The file is a way of developing self reflexive habits

To engage in "controlled experience" - Love this!

Inviting Imagination

"Sociological Imagination consists largely of capacity to shift from one perspective to another..in the process building up an adequate view of total society and its components"

A technician is often too precisely trained to see outside of their practice. A social scientist is one unafraid to combine the seemingly disparate or random, with a playfulness of mind and a fierce drive to make sense of the world. "to a technician, new ways may sen loose or sloppy but the social scientist must cling to such vague images and notions, if they are yours, and you must work them out. For it is in such forms that original ideas, if any almost always appear"

Not becoming to rigidly committed to one plan from the start. re-arranging your file to find new connections. having a playfulness towards language. considering extremes. "Let your mind become a moving prism, catching light from as many angles as possible."

Voice

Mills warns against alienating yourself or clouding the meaning of your work in academic prose. Not to fear being considered pedantic or journalistic in style. Write to be readable and tell a story. Focus on your audience and voice. Avoid fetishism of technique.

In closing, he reminds the aspiring social scientist to keep perspective, not to study one milieu after another but to look at the social structures in which all of these milieu are organized.