Another hour, another post...

In relation to what I just said in my last post, I was thinking about Visual Intelligence's conception of the way in which TV's are not photographs because the images on them are fleeting things, only to be seen for a split second before the next image is displayed for the audience, and how the TV can allow Forrest Gump to photo-realistically meet John F. Kennedy (57). Just like we have discussed in class, Ann Berry discusses the possible issues with being able to create fake realities for people to watch; she discusses how they could be used to manipulate people. What I wonder is what will happen is when we can do more than watch a prettily made lie on TV, but rather when we'll be able to interact with them in a videogame or virtual reality setting. What happens when the difference, expereince wise, in interacting with a real person, and interacting with a fake representation, is nil.

Audiences, to a certain degree, are already becoming somewhat prepared for this eventuality, as in text-based speech we already expect that people can fake their identity, and their purpose online. Heh, they can even fake a video link, all it takes is a is a decent understanding of the technological processes. Visual experiences are problematict, we tend to, as Barry points out, believe the News because it is the News, but also because it is visual. What happens when the visual is a much more immersive experience? How would this extremely hot (as in Marshall McLuhan's meaning of the word) medium push viewers to believe in new ways, and therefore have to learn a new technological savvy in order to understand how easy or difficult it might be to dupe the interfacer? Being in the middle of a news scene, and not having it seemingly framed in the same way TV is now (with the four corners of the TV pointing your angle of view in a single direction), would make it harder for people to question a news report, to challenge its validity. We would have to understand new frames of reference and therefore think of things not in terms of the TV screen framing, but the placement of the virtual device as a frame itself.

You get the idea...

Wow....this turned into a rather long post of nearly speculative fiction.

Well, hope you enjoy.

To a degree, this is probably already possible (though prohibitively expensive)

Let's see, which of the texts do I want to write about. Throughout this class I've been pushed more and more towards trying to think about visual, the creation of visual, and the experience of the viewer, in different ways. In my research into video games, I came across something rather interesting...it was the idea of procedural rhetoric. Procedural rhetoric is an idea that Ian Bogost uses in relation to videogames. It is somewhat unusual, and also somewhat cool, and I think it has a distinct connection to what we've been doing in class.

Essentially the idea is that computers, computer programs, and pretty much everything else, have procedures to them. These procedures can range from the turning the page of a book to the complex procedures that go into interacting with a piece of technology. Cell phones, for example, have been going through a rather drastic change in procedural rhetoric over the last couple years...moving from a keypad system to a touchpad system that is supposed to be interconnective, but that also requires a larger knowledge of how to interface with the particular technology.

A procedure, just like an image, or a text, has meaning, has values attached to it, and just like with images and text, those values can be simple or complex. Bogost likes to examine the complex examples of political videogames through this lens. He points out how good political games force the player, through the procedures of the games, in order to see a particular point. A specific example he uses is of a videogame which lets you act as American forces dropping bombs to destroy terrorists. This game would show you through play that everytime you eliminate terrorist that you aren't going to be able to avoid hitting civilians. The mechanics, therefore, produce more terrorists, expontially, for every civilian you kill. The procedure demonstrates a losing battle against a terrorist threat, by forcing you to only have one option for interaction, an action that only produces problems rather than helps.

While Bogost's example is rather effective... he also doesn't move too far afield from videogames. Procedural rhetorics are visible in everything from our everyday jobs (what does the simple procedure of sitting behind a desk typing mean? What about being a teller at a bank? How do these two things produce different kinds of meanings through their procedures?) to the way in which art is produced (how do we go beyond analyzing a painting, to analyzing the persons entire way of painting? The gestures that they make, the times where artists simply throw paint at a canvas, what do all these mean?). What's more is, how can we take this to discuss rhetorics that we know in entirely new ways?

Also, considering how often we looked at technology in our class...what can we say about the procedures that computers themselves go through to perform any action that they do? These are more than simple machines, but rather are products of hundrds, if not thousands of procedures running in sequences. How does that change the way we see an image, a video, etc?

Something cool to think about.

There is a lot of discussion in WJT Mitchell’s text, Picture Theory, about what it actually means to discuss comparisons between images and texts. I think my favorite part of this, or at least the part that was most interesting for a discussion, was the idea that there is a tendency to do comparative work in relation to the broad concepts that are the framework for how we think about art/literature, etc, from a certain time period. His specific example is that in a course that “compares (say) cubist painting with the poems of Ezra Pound [...] the real subject of the course is not the image/text problem, but modernism” (88). This, while useful for modernism, isn’t quite as useful for conceiving the of the work with images and text; especially as the mediums that use these continue to advance in interesting and unexpected ways. Seeing as it will be my project as the semester moves on, I thought I would discuss video games a bit.

For those of you who don’t know, the Smithsonian has decided to do a exhibit on video games, and specifically, on video game art. For the record, this is awesome, a great step forward for the medium and hopefully an opening for people to start making games stretch the range of artistic exploration in the field, and hopefully a movement outside of our normal ideas of what a game should be (that is, the constant reliance on combat as an equation to equal fun).

However, when going through this, I couldn’t help but think that the first response of art critics, and perhaps of the critical approach in general, would be to make a comparison of video game art to the other kinds of artistic exhibits that travel through the Smithsonian on a regular basis. As Mitchell suggests in his book, this kind of comparison, while productive in certain ways, is also reductionist and limiting, it ignores, as he discusses, “other forms of relationship, eliminating the possibility of metonymic juxtapositions, of incommensurability, and of unmediated or non-negotiable forms of alterity” (87). Even examining the current games, a comparison based on the same artistic standards obviously is going to work out the detriment of games, which rely on entirely different mechanics in order to engender art. However, while that kind of comparison isn’t going to be very fruitful for an examination of games, examinations based on the other values that Mitchell mentions could be very interesting.

A juxtaposition of a video game with a different form of artistic representation, might however, call into question the ways in which the two mediums present different ways of interacting with image, even with text. Without the video game comparison however, elements of interest might be concealed, even ignored. Comparing the mediums calls into question not only what medium can do, but what it can’t do and what functions it is limited by...but interestingly enough, it also provides the opportunity to see the ways in which it is capable of qualities that haven’t been fully explored yet, thereby expanding both mediums and there ways of representation. Film culture has changed the way in which books work in significant ways, offering new viewpoints and new ideas, and those who first notice through the placing of one beside the other become innovators.

However, even beyond that, the different kinds of relationship that can be made between different mediums can provide interesting new ways to use them in cohesion; they can possibly make the new simply by working together, or in counterpoint...or in ways that people haven’t even conceived of yet.

Hmm......

A Virtual Reflection of Protest...

Recently I was reading this mashable article discussing the way in which Second Life has become an arena for Islamic communities to display their identities, and interact with other communities from around the world, both Islamic and not. What really interested me though, from the visual standpoint, was the discussion of the protest that occurred on Second Life. In this virtual world, reality was being displayed as a virtual protest was made of the violence happening on the Gaza Strip. The protesters used the virtual world to display images of a reality happening (I highly recommend, if you are interested in the political discussion, that you go beyond the fold on this link and read the comments below). The virtual reality, in the moment of protest, becomes surprisingly real. It does more than reflect a reality, it makes commentary on it with images of violence, destruction, and death. This is then catalogued in news sources like protests taking place on the actual streets of cities (though usually on a smaller scale).

So what do we do with this? I think there is an idea of the novelty of this inflating its current importance...but really, I think what is more interesting is the way this points to a path to a virtual exploration of complicated and troubling issues, as well as a way to bring people from widely differing backgrounds together to discuss the issues in a way that is not only peaceful, but could possibly becomes very effective. Imagine the virtual worlds with millions of players world wide demonstrating these values...what's more, imagine the very walls being made up of images of protest. The effectiveness of the medium then becomes reflective largely of the popularity of the medium.

There is something different about the interactive, and virtual nature of created worlds though that seprates it even from social programs like facebook and twitter...something that isn't being used to its full effectiveness yet but could definately become an interesting realm where the visual encompasses everything...and where the words become secondary to the experience of that visual. When a person surroundings are not so much reality, but a visual rendering of such...how does that situate the individual and how they react to the world. And how do protests made on virtual mediums affect the world at large?

What do we say about the idea that the protest images are a visual rendering in a visual world...a world that is being used not only to create social interactions between people, but to create an alternate reality for people? When do we stop considering virtual worlds entertainment and start considering them a part of the fabric of our realities, and has this already happened? I don't know the answers to most of these questions, but I do know the visual interactive medium is starting to change the way we think about real world events. It is already demonstrating itself as our phones define the way we interact with the world...defining us through twitter and facebook posts...even if we aren't the ones posting. These are already being taken seriously by major companies, and as these ideas become more and more prevalent we are going to find the mediums through which we socially interact become more technological, and more definingly virtual.

Twittering Away...captioning lives.

I kind of wanted to continue on the idea of twitter as a tool to caption lives. Have you seen the information on the new twitter that is being rolled out recently. It is actually somewhat interesting, as it adds even more features of interconnectivity between users, but more importantly, they are trying to make it easier to embed visual media. According to their site...they are making it "easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube" . I said in my last post that I was conceiving of twitter as a tool to caption lives, that its limited space format presents the perfect format to caption and to recaption both ones own life, but also the lives, ideas, comments, and now...videos of others.

But what happens when the caption becomes the video, becomes the image? What happens when we replace short spurts of text with short clips of videos, and therefore the way we comment, and even conceive of responses changes. I'm sure this is in part already happening...hell, I've seen it on sites like facebook, and myspace...where someones response to a comment, idea, image, or movie, is a image or movie without text. Barthes, in Image Music Text, discusses the idea that barriers between disciplines are breaking down with the ideas of interdisciplinarity, that put into connection ideas that may not jive entirely with each other, but are being pushed to do something new anyways. He specifically talks about this in reference to the idea of a Text, which, as he points out "poses problems of classification (which is furthermore one of its 'social' functions)" (157) I think the same can be said when you put different media together in ways that make conversation rather than just support each other. These texts are being made to speak not as separate functions, but as ideas working within a single kind of language (however disjointed that language might be).

If images, movies, words, all fall under that category of Text, because of their incapability to be only one thing, then they can all work in similar ways in a similar format...like a tweet. The more we try to differentiate, to work towards separation, the more conversations done in this matter becomes difficult to understand and work with. Barthes whole discussion of text is as it being discontinuous, broken apart, while still managing to create connection and create meaning. It, as he puts it, attempts to "abolish (or at the very least to diminish) the distance between writing and reading" and in this case, the difference between creating and viewing (159). Tweets are a way of captioning captions, and captioning images, and captioning oneself, and captioning everything...they break down the barriers between real life events and the texts that people create out of them; they therefore turn life into text...or maybe even Text (I'm still working out what the distinction actually is).

Ok, I think that's enough of me confusing myself for awhile...I'll probably be posting on this idea again later.

Defining Oneself through Technology...through image

A lot of what Roland Barthes discusses in the beginning of his book, Image, Music, Text, is about the way photographs are increasingly designed for particular effect. They are designed in such a way that each part of the image contributes to an overall message, a connotation or a set of connotations developed from the way in which the audience is pushed to perceive the image. The composition of an image, in essence, defines how people take the message.

The interesting thing is, identity of individuals seem to be being developed through pictures, through the interaction of captioned images and composed websites. Social networking sites seem to promote the conception of an individual as much through images, videos, music, etc, as through the persons description of themselves. Facebook, for example, seems to have very little space dedicated to a self description.

What does this mean?

Well, it could mean a lot of things. The most obvious is that our lives are, in one sense, composed of images (each of which is a composition in and of itself, with its own set of connotated meanings). The more interesting thing, I think though, is the connection of these images to captions and mini-messages inserted below them. When people post pictures; they are in essence composing identity not only through the pictures, but also through what they say, and what others say about them. The captions and the comments. These, as much as the pictures themselves, define the experience that the audience has; they define how that person is seen by each successive viewer. As Barthes points out, captions have capabilities to affirm image meanings, but also to “contradict the image so as to produce a compensatory connotation” (27). While he is specifically referring to the way in which images are used in newspaper, technology has advanced, and now these images are plastered up onto the world wide web. They are a collection of images that are not only captioned by the person posting, but by every single person viewing it. This transformational move is powerful and subtle. The caption, the comment, is now a defining nature about what the person is and how they are defined...at least so long as they decide to accept it (another interesting topic). Power of identity, both of the photo and of the person, is placed into the role of the camera and the posted persona...but also most interestingly, into whoever decides to read it and take the time to post to it. Identity forging becomes a mass production; especially the larger the scope of the network that it is being forged in. The brief caption can define, confront, change, ignore, and belittle the image, or even the set of images.

I guess the question then is, how much are images defined by the captions, headlines, and other text around them, and how do these new ways of interacting in social media really form identities. How much can we really say we are defined by our own particular input and how much of it is from the outside.

How much would a single comment at the end of this blog post change the blog post?

How about a hundred....a thousand...a hundred thousand? (Not that I'm really expecting that).

And a question for another time....are tweets just mini-captions, posted about life situations, events, etc.? They seem quite appropriate in format for that.

Losing ourselves in media

I have been thinking a lot about Berger’s “Ways of Seeing” recently, especially considering I’m teaching it in one of my classes. As I’ve been reading through Defining Visual Rhetorics, perhaps not surprisingly, Berger keeps showing up. Berger points out that the way we see is defined as much by how images are put into relationship with each other, with the world around us, as it is to the construction and the history of the image itself. When images interact with images, with the world, meanings change and adjust to fit our particular environment. The Mona Lisa is a museum gallery is the Mona Lisa; The Mona Lisa in a bedroom is a statement of identity in relationship with everything around it.

The thing is that this makes a lot of sense, especially in relationship to Greg Dickinson’s “Placing Visual Rhetoric: Finding Material Comfort in Wild Oats Market.” The article, while in its own right interesting, most interests me for its conception of peoples relationship to postmodernity, of a world where locating ourselves in time or space is extremely difficult because of the sheer amount of media we insert our identity into. Dickinson points out that “our histories are told and retold across a range of media and from widely divergent points of view. at the same time we have nearly immediate access to an overwhelming number of texts and images from our pasts. All of this [...] undercuts the establishment of a single compelling narrative arc in which we can comfortably place ourselves and which we can secure our identities” (402). He also points out that with globalization, media, and the increasing difficulty in distinguishing one city/culture from another that we are losing a sense of place. The world itself is becoming very similar from one location to the next, and our identities are shifting and changing as we are integrating into media that each identifies us in relationship with a different set of images. No longer are we just our own identity, but we are our identity on Facebook, which might put us in relationship with a particular set of images (whether those images are of key words, or of key friends, or even of key links). We become part of another location, another history, when we interact with media because the image, visual or otherwise, that we create of ourselves, is put in relationship with a literal web of connections, constantly spreading out making our identity either more homogeneous with a larger whole with each successive expansion, or perhaps making us more unique, but still identifying us through the web of connections.

Perhaps even more intriguingly, our identities take on new shapes as we act in roles in the various media we insert ourselves into, or perhaps, lose ourselves in. I know that in each video game I play I have to decide between attempting to maintain something closer to my own identity in the role I play, or assuming a role that the particular game promotes. Movies, to a different degree, similarly change our location and identity depending on how immersed we become with the medium itself (even the interaction with the TV changes us from active communicating beings to information receiving individuals). The identity of a person shifts as they interact with mediums, as they take on roles based on the mediums that they are interacting with. Distinguishing through art, I suppose, becomes almost a way to demonstrate webs that connect us to everyone else at the same bloody time. Wow....that’s actually kinda disturbing....going to have to think about this some more.