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.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, January 24, 2011
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.
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.
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