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.

 

 

@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

I'll take macramé over Blu-ray, anyday!

Despite the fact that it's all about YOU,  for many of the marketers vying for your attention, Target, would like to remind us that YOU can only go so far, with that whole personality, thing.

A series of commercials with the tag-line "Time for some new traditions?" serves up a narcissistic perspective on gifting just in time for the holidays!

At first look, this commercial could be seen as celebrating the wacky creativity of making up fun festive foods, but this is not the case. Several normal-type actors proudly present their off beat edible creations to the camera. Their faces are hopeful and eager to please you. However, by the time the tagline appears at the end of the commercial it is clear that you are supposed to feel sad for these people. And sure enough, the link which popped up after watching this video within a banner ad directed me to Target's website to order entire ready-made holiday meals (link). Read: spare yourself the embarrassment.

The other commercial in this series follow suit.

In this scenario you observe two couples exchanging gifts. Couple 1 gives Couple 2 a Blu Ray player (a little extravagant, no?). In return, with the same eager goofy smiles, couple 2 presents couple 1 with a macrame covered boombox (ok, that actually is awesome!) which the lady of the couple 2 apparently made. Couple 1 exchange awkward glances at each other and try to act polite by saying "this smells like a cat". 

The didactic tone of these commercials is reminiscent of a classic 1950's social instruction film. Poor Suzy she dresses sloppy and the other kids say mean things about her, don't be a Sloppy Suzy! Similarly, these commercials serve as a warning that others might be embarrassed FOR you. Should you be tempted to give out crafty crap as gifts or invent recipes, remember your friends and family think that's weird. Make everyone more comfortable and just buy stuff from Target.

The set up of these ads is meant to remind the audience of what it feels like when you have to be gracious and accept a gift that you don't really like. The implication is that this is always negative experience. But in actuality, it feels equally as great to receive something someone made for you as it does to make something for someone else. These commercials encourage a perspective of childlike narcissism only to play it against the common social anxiety felt about pleasing other people.

On a whole Target's advertising is a cut above. Their stylish and simple Worholian celebrations of commerce are completely transparent and effective, even a pre-Black Friday series featuring the comedic talent of Maria Bamford were fun without being insulting. Target has proved that it is possible to still sell things people without putting out a negative message and I guess, that's why this set of commercials feels cheap and lazy to me.

So yes, Target, it is time for some new traditions... make whatever inventive food and gifts you want to give to your friends and family this holiday season in confidence that they will love you even more for doing so.

If you don't have time or inclination to make shit for your friends and family, this holiday season, you should at least support other people who do. Considering making a stop at a local craft fair (Bust Craftacular - Sun Dec 6th in NYC!) or visit the always open online craft fantasia website Etsy.com.

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.

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.

Reflections on The Craftsman pt.1

For one my Understanding Media Studies course we are reading Richard Sennet's book The Craftsman.

Really enjoying it, an easy but very thoughtful read. About halfway through the book and a wanted to jot down a few things that struck me.

Idea of Craft as Skill + Community

I found it very relevant to this discussion that Sennet calls out the emergence of a more secular workshop coinciding with growth of cities (p.56). This leads right into to the concept of the city itself as a workshop for creativity and research. Something we were asked to reflect upon as we begin graduate studies in NYC.

The urban environment inspires much of my own practice.  My working process was build from my undergraduate studies in photography where I became accustomed to using cameras to document not so much for end product but primarily as a note taking. I have come to rely on a creative process that depends on the accumulation of these notes. I have learned to trust that over time they will result in some greater work of art/ knowledge.

The act of making something as form of thinking.
For some reason there are many cues in culture which deem hand labor and thinking to be mutually exclusive. Why does this persist when anyone who has ever made anything would argue it?

He also talks about the line between craft and art - a blurry one wherever you draw it. What is the value of separating craft from art?

The transition from Apprentice to Journeyman described as a move from gaining imitative skills to understanding the overall structures for leadership. Easily applicable to contemporary work and business management.

Great quote about $ and art:

IT'S MINE! 

-Philip II to Cellini regarding Cellini's protesting the addition of a fig leaf to a commissioned statue of Jesus.

Here is a photo of my tap shoes, they are made out of some other ladies old golf shoes. They have great mojo and they really help me think.