Humping The (new) Media Landscape

The Immediate Picture

photo courtesy Beth Chucker

 

In my last post, I was writing about how the current ubiquity of cameras might be effecting our behaviors and thinking. Now, I want to look at how the incredibly useful immediacy of digital photography brings with it new challenges.

The speed at which the entire process happens, from documentation to distribution has collapsed into a singular activity. This does not allow for the focusing of temperament that was fundamental to an earlier era of photography.

Today, the path from taking of image to distribution of image, has been almost entirely eradicated but for a few bits and seconds. The speed of this digital distribution of images, has several notable effects. In its immediate infinite reproduction, the digital photo speeds up the process by which powerful images, are rendered impotent. Digital images can go from taboo to kitsch over the course of a day. What is shocking in the morning papers turns to absurdism on an LOL poster in the afternoon and becomes commerce when sold on a tshirt later that the evening. What is missing is the process is time for reflection.

But, what about that Decisive Moment, as Cartier Bresson famously described the moment of taking a photo,  "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."?

 Well, first of all, to understand what was meant, you have to acknowledeg that this comes from a man who would sit behind his camera in the middle of an intersection for hours, waiting for such a moment to happen in his carefully composed frame.

Bresson said that photographers should think before and after but never during the actual moment of making a photograph. A digital camera user is not given the time to do so. There is only action, all moments are reactive and none reflective. This relentless speed eliminates room for contemplating, the ethical or moral issues of making and distributing a specific image are not considered except in hindsight.

With digital photography, there is little room for human decision, we point and click, to take the image and then point and click again to share it with the world. It is so simple and painless that there is no reason to question why this subject or what effect each image may have. If it pleases the person taking the image at that instant, that is sufficient. We have a historical habit to use technology to distance ourselves from responsibility, imbuing machinery with identity and volition so as not to have to accept that machines are only an expression of ourselves. There is no "Artificial Intelligence" in these mechanisms, photos are made by a machine but we "point and click" the device to create the picture and and now we do the same to broadcast them. A claim of neutrality in photographs, and this extends into our new digital image, is irresponsible. In its digital evolution, photography no longer has defenses. The digital photographer moves so quickly from decisive moment to distribution that there is no time for the reflection that earlier more arduous processes allowed for.

 

Anyone have ideas or seen examples of tools which help create space/time for reflection rather than push immediacy?

 

The Ubiquitous Picture

photo courtesy Beth Chucker

 

Cameras are everywhere.

But what happens when everything actually, is a camera?

The phone in your pocket comes with a camera built into it, the building you live in and the stoplight on the corner are rigged with them and every computer screen has one pointed back at you. We expect it and our acclimation to surveillance is complete.

A parallel thought, these tools through which we navigate the world, are putting us under a constant pressure to make the world a picture of itself. It often feels as if every extension of ones own body ends with a camera. Using a camera to investigate the world is valuable because it pauses time, allowing a moment to be reflected upon with a perspective that only photography allows. But the distancing nature of photography, whereby the subject of a photo becomes an object, an “other” to be looked at from privileged vantage, has a negative effect of allowing people to disassociate from the conditions which allowed the image to be created and feel less empathetically towards its subjects. It also creates an illusion that the act of photographing is more a function of the tool than a behavior of the individual who possesses the tool. The feeling of being removed from authorial ownership of the digital photograph, allows responsibility to be displaced yet another degree further.

 

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 narkē meaning ‘numbness,’ 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

Your Personality Sucks

Vampire fantasy is inescapable. Today, confronted by an onslaught of particularly annoying advertising, I got to thinking about the real bloodsuckers and why we are so poorly equipped to resist them.

Yes, real vampires exist and they are way more annoying than the sparkly kind and far less sexy than the interviewed kind, but don't worry, they are equally as needy!

Edward: I have to tell you something. The reason why you are one dimensional, is because I stole your personality from you while you were busy updating your iPod apps in chem lab this morning. sorry.

Bella: That's OK, I never really had that much stake in it to begin with. Can we make out now?

So, while Ed and Bella do that, we can talk about the latest Yahoo! brand campaign.

This ad in particular, has me fired up

Now the internet has a personality. Yours.

Yahoo!: Single White Website (thanks to @dloher for that subtitle!)

On the one hand I applaud it's honesty. Openly stating that your brand has nothing to offer is pretty bold. And it's true. YOU are the product that many media companies now sell to each other. If they can't convince millions of us use their service, they got nothing. Currently, these businesses trade us services and tools for personal data and this works pretty well. But as a long term business plan? How long can this value proposition hold up?

As long as they can convince us that we are the center of the YOUniverse. And so, vampires they must become.

I saw Jonathan Zittrain give this Minds For Sale, talk at the Digital Labor conference last month. He goes through examples of the many ethically questionable deals businesses are making with individuals online all the time. I am interested specifically, in the exploitation of individuals personalities/identities but he essentially covers the same issues and frameworks. Well worth a watch plus Zittrain keeps it entertaining.

Also, it's not because they are vampires that you want to suck face with them, its because they are 16, you creepy pedophiles!

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.

FOE3 notes: Henry Jenkins opening

I have so many notes from the Futures of Entertainment Conference that I figured I should just start throwing some of them up here in posts for archival purposes. They are fairly raw because, at this point, I am more interested in crafting interesting questions for further exploration than coming up with any definitive answers.

Opening comments from Henry Jenkins:

Viral Media model traps us and doesn't allow for important questions of Consumer Agency to be asked.
The term meme has really fallen into this unfortunate usage as well, and it puts an excessive importance on preservation of original and less on changes tha occur as something gets passed around. These changes, mutations are how content is now developed and given meaning.

Hybrid Spaces where new alliances and collaborations arise between unlikely partners   - Great term, it describes very well the kinds of media I am interested in.

New active children - while much of media wants to focus on male fanboys, social media is clearly showing us that women are just as relevant as an audience, Twilight as example.

Also mentioned was the obsession in the industry with problem of loyalty in a dispersed media landscape. This is something I am confronted with working for a television network. When the entire business model is built around driving to one place to access the content, it is hard to understand the notion that content, to be succesfully distributed in this new media landscape, it needs to be fireworks exploding outward rather than a black hole pulling inward.

Lewis Hyde:  Gift Economy v. Commodity Culture
The difference between these types of exchange, is in the motivation.
Emotional, social, economic properties
Gift Economy = esteem takes place of cash, social transaction - worth more as it circulates?
Commodity Culture =monitary value - worth less as it circulates?
Antiques Road show served as a great example this back and forth between worth and value, money and sentiment and our obsession with it.

Wires are getting crossed because individuals want to participate in CC and corporations using GE to gain esteem of individuals. This is pretty much exactly what I have proposed as a topic for a paper. I think about it a lot in light of the time I spend examining marketing in this space for my job. And as well, it ties into the issues around authenticity which fascinated me in my early online video experiences. 

What happens when worth becomes value and value becomes worth?
Is it possible to create value and generate worth at the same time, how? 

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.

The Myth of Viral Media

I just returned from a weekend of convergence culture convening at MIT's Future's of Entertainment Conference. I am still reeling from all the amazing people and potent conversations. Although a relatively small group attends this event, the variety and level of engagement is remarkable. Just sifting through the pile of business cards I collected over the weekend, from experienced thinkers and do-ers, producers and PHDs alike, I am reminded the importance of this very rare, much needed, opportunity for exchange.

The conference started on a pitch perfect note when Henry Jenkins called out the Myth of Viral media, which got a hearty Amen! from those gathered before him. The point is, we know that the injection theory, is just not true. Consumers are not simply impregnated with ideas, people have agency and contexts as well, are dynamic, and especially so in todays media environment. 'Viral' is clearly the wrong metaphor to rely on, if we really want to understand the complicated things that the internet is teaching us about media and how people (have always) connected to each other through it. Avoiding use of the word became an excellent test for all the panelists, keeping everyone on their feet and avoiding falling back on BS industry terminology.

This conscientiousness with language is one of the important aspects of this conference. Having a dialog about the industry that takes place in an academic context forces more specific articulation, guiding the discussion to the real issue by not overly simplifying with some non-dairy whipped topping buzzwords.

Last year, the overall sentiment that moved me the most was a sincere desire we all shared to make (promote, distribute etc.) meaningful experiences for people through entertainment.  The this year I would say, the word empathy struck me as a defining theme. In the closing panel Maurício Mota of New Content (Brazil), created a nice bookend when he so passionately advocated for empathizing with audiences - seems so obvious but is the first the to get lost in the frenzy over new technologies and money making schemes around media.

Entertainment which is attempting to broadcast with generic broad stroke demographic information is no longer working (and I think many would agree, has always sucked.) The key is to remember that an audience is still made up of individuals with varying interests and changing needs from moment to moment.

I'll be posting more specific thoughts from various panels in the next few days. I noticed Mike Arauz is also thinking about audiences and fans in particular and I am sure he'll be posting more from FOE3 as are many others. The official Convergence Culture Consortium blog has lots of conference notes posted, as well.

(image credit - Factoryjoe )