Final A3 Images and Text

Lend Me Your Ears…

My first image began with the idea of creating a statement about modern society’s relationship with technology as a sociopolitical force, exploring ideas pertaining to digital communication and its effects on self-expression. As discussed in Week Six, the advent of digital technology and social media in the past two decades has led to the emergence of ‘one-to-many’ or ‘many-to-many’ communications as the dominant form of media in contemporary society (Jenkins, Ito, & Boyd 2015, pp. 1–4). This contrasts heavily with the information flows of ‘many-to-one’ that accompanied the birth of mass communications in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The society which we now find ourselves in is the reversal of this paradigm: ‘control’ of media discourse (if any such control could be said to exist) now lies in the hands of the entire digital population—in some ways this could be interpreted as the ultimate form of direct democracy, where each digitally present person is allowed a medium to communicate their own opinions, complex thoughts, and ideas, with the possibility of collaboration and discussion also present.

However, this capacity for discussion also raises concerning points about the quality of sociopolitical discourse—contemporary political spheres now place great emphasis on social media, even though such media has become a hotbed for opinionated and anti-intellectual exchanges. If this is the ‘vox populi’ of the modern world, it has been irreparably changed by the introduction of social media—and not necessarily for the better.

It was this concept of the ‘vacant vox populi’ that I intended to convey with my image. In keeping with the themes of popular culture and talking/listening that I kept in mind, I had the further idea of creating this image in the style of an album cover. In this vein, I envisioned an image of a famous figure, ‘defaced’ by some form of digital symbol—in a manner similar to Green Day’s album Nimrod (1997), which ‘de-faced’ black and white images with a yellow circle and the album name.

After consideration, I settled on Thomas Edison—the inventor of the phonograph, and thus, modern reproducible music—and attempted to manipulate the image using a volume icon, captured from my own Apple iPhone’s interface. This initial attempt proved somewhat successful but overall lacking, and so I decided instead to create the image in the minimalist style—playing on the semiotic significance of symbolism and representation in daily life (as discussed in the latter weeks of the subject which focused on image, type, and the ‘visual turn’), particularly in an era where icons and symbols have come to dominate human interactions (e.g. traffic signs, emojis, graphical user interfaces for digital devices).

The ubiquity of symbolism is a concept which my final product attempts to subvert: the central placement of the volume icon and the presence of forward and backward playback symbols disrupt our common perception of these images as built-in aspects of our interactions with digital technology. This became especially apparent to me after I showed the image to one of my peers and they mistook it for an actual volume notification.

Overall, the image conveys my sentiments about the current state of digital discourse—we find ourselves at a point where humanity has faded into the background, as shown by the invisible ‘everyman’ figure of the image; displaced by a slew of devices which keep our lives in motion, at the expense of taking over our lives.

References

Thomas Alva Edison, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing front, c. 1900, photographed by L. Bachrach, Wikipedia, viewed 16 October 2016, <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Thomas_Edison2.jpg&gt;.

Bate, D. 2013, ‘The Digital Condition of Photography: Cameras, Computers and Display’, in M. Lister (ed.), The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, 2nd edn, Routledge, New York, pp. 77-95.

Green Day. 1991. Nimrod. Recorded March–July 1997. Reprise Records.

Jenkins, H., Ito, N. and Boyd, D. 2015, Participatory culture in a networked era : a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, pp. 1-31.

Lupton, E. 2010, Thinking with Type, 2nd edn, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 85-100.

Building Your Future: A New State of Mind

After completing my first image with its minimalist graphic style, I resolved to create my second image as more of a traditionally manipulated work, altering and synthesising photographs of my own making to create a photorealistic composite. In this image, I wished to explore the interactions which everyday people have with the City—an umbrella term which here pertains not only to the built environment of metropolises such as Sydney, but also to the social environments that such physical settings present, and which are sometimes reflected in the media and communication forms that exist in these spaces.

As Hoggart (in Hartley 2009) and Rennie et al. (2016) discuss in their respective works, media and mass communication can sometimes act in ways contrary to their perceived purpose as all-inclusive distributors of information; in fact, they can commonly act as exclusive forces which selectively disadvantage demographic groups. With this in mind, I had initially considered taking a photograph of a beggar in or around the tunnels of Central Station—a location where many of them are passed by or ignored by commuters. However, further consideration of this idea raised many ethical issues regarding the granting of consent and the establishment of identity for any subjects of such a photo, and so I decided against this concept.

Keeping with the theme of social commentary, I instead decided to present a message similar to what I originally envisioned in the above—a work which reflects on the manipulation of messages through media in urban environments. I decided to satirise the ongoing campaigns by the NSW State Government and the City of Sydney Local Government which promote their focus on construction and infrastructure growth, with slogans such as ‘My Sydney: Tomorrow’s Sydney’ and ‘The New State of Business’.

I manipulated an image of a white brick wall and placed red text upon it with what I perceived to be a relevant socieoeconomic message; the aesthetic of this was heavily inspired by the album cover for Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979). For this reason, the text is drawn by hand in an attempt to emulate the appearance of graffiti. The wall itself was the first part of the image to be manipulated, using a rough and manual eraser to create a rugged feel for the edges of the bricks.

Behind this wall, I placed an image which I took while on vacation in the Philippines; a sunset over a mountain which is intended to signify the natural paradises that once existed outside of cities and the built environment. Between this backdrop and the wall I placed silhouetted cranes (sourced from Creative Commons) which are positioned as if they are constructing the wall—in this sense, the image presents the notion that society is building walls between us and our goals and desires; almost as if imprisoning us within its frameworks.

The cranes were originally taken from a photo I had captured in Lane Cove. I first corrected for the perspective of the photo, but during the process of manipulation I found it too difficult to remove the blue background of the cranes, and so instead decided to use the publicly-sourced silhouettes in the final version.

References

Hartley, J. 2009, ‘Repurposing Literacy’, in The Uses of Digital Literacy, pp.1-38.

Pink Floyd. 1979. The Wall. Recorded December 1978 – November 1997. Columbia Records.

Rennie, E., Hogan, E., Gregory, R. Crouch, R., Wright, A. & Thomas, J. 2016, ‘Introduction’, Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities, pp.13-27.

Transport for NSW 2016, Tomorrow’s Sydney, viewed 20 October 2016, <http://mysydneycbd.nsw.gov.au&gt;

Building Your Future: A New State of Mind

After completing my first image with its minimalist graphic style, I resolved to create my second image as more of a traditionally manipulated work, altering and synthesising photographs of my own making to create a photorealistic composite. In this image, I wished to explore the interactions which everyday people have with the City—an umbrella term which here pertains not only to the built environment of metropolises such as Sydney, but also to the social environments that such physical settings present, and which are sometimes reflected in the media and communication forms that exist in these spaces.

As Hoggart (in Hartley 2009) and Rennie et al. (2016) discuss in their respective works, media and mass communication can sometimes act in ways contrary to their perceived purpose as all-inclusive distributors of information; in fact, they can commonly act as exclusive forces which selectively disadvantage demographic groups. With this in mind, I had initially considered taking a photograph of a beggar in or around the tunnels of Central Station—a location where many of them are passed by or ignored by commuters. However, further consideration of this idea raised many ethical issues regarding the granting of consent and the establishment of identity for any subjects of such a photo, and so I decided against this concept.

Keeping with the theme of social commentary, I instead decided to present a message similar to what I originally envisioned in the above—a work which reflects on the manipulation of messages through media in urban environments. I decided to satirise the ongoing campaigns by the NSW State Government and the City of Sydney Local Government which promote their focus on construction and infrastructure growth, with slogans such as ‘My Sydney: Tomorrow’s Sydney’ and ‘The New State of Business’.

I manipulated an image of a white brick wall and placed red text upon it with what I perceived to be a relevant socieoeconomic message; the aesthetic of this was heavily inspired by the album cover for Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979). For this reason, the text is drawn by hand in an attempt to emulate the appearance of graffiti. The wall itself was the first part of the image to be manipulated, using a rough and manual eraser to create a rugged feel for the edges of the bricks.

 

Behind this wall, I placed an image which I took while on vacation in the Philippines; a sunset over a mountain which is intended to signify the natural paradises that once existed outside of cities and the built environment. Between this backdrop and the wall I placed silhouetted cranes (sourced from Creative Commons) which are positioned as if they are constructing the wall—in this sense, the image presents the notion that society is building walls between us and our goals and desires; almost as if imprisoning us within its frameworks.

The cranes were originally taken from a photo I had captured in Lane Cove. I first corrected for the perspective of the photo, but during the process of manipulation I found it too difficult to remove the blue background of the cranes, and so instead decided to use the publicly-sourced silhouettes in the final version.

References

Hartley, J. 2009, ‘Repurposing Literacy’, in The Uses of Digital Literacy, pp.1-38.

Pink Floyd. 1979. The Wall. Recorded December 1978 – November 1997. Columbia Records.

Rennie, E., Hogan, E., Gregory, R. Crouch, R., Wright, A. & Thomas, J. 2016, ‘Introduction’, Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities, pp.13-27.

Transport for NSW 2016, Tomorrow’s Sydney, viewed 20 October 2016, <http://mysydneycbd.nsw.gov.au&gt;

Lend Me Your Ears…

My first image began with the idea of creating a statement about modern society’s relationship with technology as a sociopolitical force, exploring ideas pertaining to digital communication and its effects on self-expression. As discussed in Week Six, the advent of digital technology and social media in the past two decades has led to the emergence of ‘one-to-many’ or ‘many-to-many’ communications as the dominant form of media in contemporary society (Jenkins, Ito, & Boyd 2015, pp. 1–4). This contrasts heavily with the information flows of ‘many-to-one’ that accompanied the birth of mass communications in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The society which we now find ourselves in is the reversal of this paradigm: ‘control’ of media discourse (if any such control could be said to exist) now lies in the hands of the entire digital population—in some ways this could be interpreted as the ultimate form of direct democracy, where each digitally present person is allowed a medium to communicate their own opinions, complex thoughts, and ideas, with the possibility of collaboration and discussion also present.

However, this capacity for discussion also raises concerning points about the quality of sociopolitical discourse—contemporary political spheres now place great emphasis on social media, even though such media has become a hotbed for opinionated and anti-intellectual exchanges. If this is the ‘vox populi’ of the modern world, it has been irreparably changed by the introduction of social media—and not necessarily for the better.

It was this concept of the ‘vacant vox populi’ that I intended to convey with my image. In keeping with the themes of popular culture and talking/listening that I kept in mind, I had the further idea of creating this image in the style of an album cover. In this vein, I envisioned an image of a famous figure, ‘defaced’ by some form of digital symbol—in a manner similar to Green Day’s album Nimrod (1997), which ‘de-faced’ black and white images with a yellow circle and the album name.

After consideration, I settled on Thomas Edison—the inventor of the phonograph, and thus, modern reproducible music—and attempted to manipulate the image using a volume icon, captured from my own Apple iPhone’s interface. This initial attempt proved somewhat successful but overall lacking, and so I decided instead to create the image in the minimalist style—playing on the semiotic significance of symbolism and representation in daily life (as discussed in the latter weeks of the subject which focused on image, type, and the ‘visual turn’), particularly in an era where icons and symbols have come to dominate human interactions (e.g. traffic signs, emojis, graphical user interfaces for digital devices).

     

The ubiquity of symbolism is a concept which my final product attempts to subvert: the central placement of the volume icon and the presence of forward and backward playback symbols disrupt our common perception of these images as built-in aspects of our interactions with digital technology. This became especially apparent to me after I showed the image to one of my peers and they mistook it for an actual volume notification.

Overall, the image conveys my sentiments about the current state of digital discourse—we find ourselves at a point where humanity has faded into the background, as shown by the invisible ‘everyman’ figure of the image; displaced by a slew of devices which keep our lives in motion, at the expense of taking over our lives.

References

Thomas Alva Edison, three-quarter length portrait, seated, facing front, c. 1900, photographed by L. Bachrach, Wikipedia, viewed 16 October 2016, <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Thomas_Edison2.jpg&gt;.

Bate, D. 2013, ‘The Digital Condition of Photography: Cameras, Computers and Display’, in M. Lister (ed.), The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, 2nd edn, Routledge, New York, pp. 77-95.

Green Day. 1991. Nimrod. Recorded March–July 1997. Reprise Records.

Jenkins, H., Ito, N. and Boyd, D. 2015, Participatory culture in a networked era : a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK and Malden, MA, pp. 1-31.

Lupton, E. 2010, Thinking with Type, 2nd edn, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 85-100.

Image and Type Exercise – Week 8

The Divide: Digital, or Cultural?

Assessment 1: Critical Reflection 3

Our subject material and discussion for Week Three centred on the ‘Digital Divide’ in Australia: the gap in the prevalence of digital access which is most apparent in remote Outback communities that normally feature high proportions of Indigenous Australians. This divide is exacerbated by an imbalance between extremes: Aboriginal communities which have a disadvantage in access to the Internet also have the lowest rates of adoption and digital literacy, and fare poorly when compared to non-Indigenous communities in similarly isolated localities.

Our reading noted that assessments of the digital divide must also take into account significant cultural factors—the movement of population between rural settlements and the interactions of different groups (as well as reluctance to adopt digital technology) is heavily linked to Aboriginal culture, which itself is being modified as a result of the increasing reach of digital communication (Rennie, Hogan, et al. 2016, pp. 17–18). As reflected in the adoption of the NBN, not all digital infrastructures will be adopted in the manner they are expected to; some communities view it as lacking in importance to their daily lives and thus feel no need to take it up, which places them at a disadvantage in a society that increasingly views telecommunication as a blanket solution for many socioeconomic ills. I was particularly intrigued by this point, and the notion that while we in Western society are beginning to view the Internet as a basic human right, there exists a non-Western conception of the Internet as merely another element of cultural imperialism; the 21st-century equivalent of the ‘white man’s burden’.

Indeed, while online interaction may grant rural communities greater self-agency, by no means does it solve larger failings of government policy towards disadvantaged communities—not least of which is the delay which rural communities experienced in receiving infrastructure for telecommunications. Having been present on the ground during the process of adopting digital communication, the researchers noted that the nature of Outback life renders seemingly simple choices about internet usage and adoption much more complex. Overall, they found that the introduction of online interactions does not change lifestyles, but rather supports or enhances existing lifestyles. Ultimately the success of such solutions requires an understanding of the choices which communities make at the level of the individual, rather than at the level of policy which relies on impersonal statistics.

References

Rennie, E., Hogan, et al. 2016, ‘Introduction’, Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities, pp.13-27.

Who Tells the Story to the Storyteller?

Assessment 1: Critical Reflection 2

Week Two explored the notion of interactive narratives in digital media—a concept which is becoming increasingly significant in an era where the story of a game is now of equal importance compared to its mechanics and dynamics. As discussed in our reading and lecture, the primary problem of interactive storytelling is that it must accommodate the player being granted a great deal of agency, as their actions determine how the game progresses rather than any predetermined course (Abraham 2011, pp. 62–63). This newfound role of the player-as-storyteller is especially apparent in first-person action games, where players move their characters around virtual maps and at times interact with their environment in a series of rapid commands.

Our reading thus explored the methods which interactive storytellers have employed in an attempt to maintain the presence of a narrative—particularly, we explored attempts to unite narrative and music in games, adhering to Western conventions of these two elements as being linear. In the case of Halo 2, the most direct solution which storytellers attempt is to impose restrictions, either by having actions fit predetermined scores or by making scores which adapt to actions. However, Abraham notes that such an approach is not practicable in most cases as it removes the crucial element of agency from the player, and so the notion of ‘forced marriage’—random synchronicity between otherwise aural and visual elements—is discussed as a less direct method of creating a narrative atmosphere.

Abraham also attempts to explore the musicality of Halo 2 outside of Western convention, by exploring the manner in which music can be ‘assembled’ from the components of a scene. The composer of Halo not only creates scores for each level with differing emotions, but he also builds musicality into the game’s virtual components by having the sound effects of weapons be tuned to the key signatures of certain pieces—a diminished form of leitmotif which enhances the player’s experience.

Meanwhile, my own further research on the topic of interactive narrative found a compelling method for influencing player behaviours, dubbed by its authors as ‘the Mimesis effect’. This research, headed by Dominguez (2016, p. 1) found that, in the context of role-playing games (which are becoming increasingly popular as immersive forms of storytelling), there is a correspondence between a player’s actions and the character they are playing as—a level of subconscious roleplaying which is present even if players are not actively assuming a character’s identity while making decisions in-game. I believe that the future of digital storytelling and interactive narrative lies in such hidden effects and subconscious relationships—players of games (myself included) do not enjoy being ‘railroaded’ or locked into one narrative path, but games are nonetheless still able to grant players a superficial level of agency whilst actually manipulating their behavior to fit a narrative where necessary.

References

Abraham, B. 2011, ‘Halo and Music’ in Cuddy, L. (ed.) Halo and Philosophy, Open Court, Chicago and La Salle, pp.61-70.

Domınguez, I.X., Cardona-Rivera, R.E., Vance, J.K. and Roberts, D.L., 2016. The Mimesis Effect: The Effect of Roles on Player Choice in Interactive Narrative Role-Playing Games.

Literacy as Anti-Anti-Intellectualism

Assessment 1: Critical Reflection 1

In engaging with the lecture and reading for Week One, I was introduced to the concept of digital literacy—defined loosely as one’s proficiency in both consuming and creating digital media. Our reading highlights the issue of literacy in the Modern Era by examining similar circumstances surrounding print media in the 1950s, and the pioneering work of academic Richard Hoggart.

Whereas critics before Hoggart claimed absolute authority over what is culturally valuable, Hoggart instead believed that working-class popular values were a valid source of such cultural judgements, and dedicated his academic work to providing the masses with a framework by which popular culture could ‘self-correct’. This contrasted with the views of contemporary intellectuals, who saw popular culture as open to manipulation to the point of being ‘fascist’, while also conceding to their view of it as something which needs to be ‘corrected’ from the outside. While I disagree which those intellectuals’ condescending views of popular culture as inferior, I can also understand the historical context of such beliefs—having just emerged from the dictatorships of World War II, the world now found itself coming to terms with the advent of telecommunications and the rise of popular culture as a major socio-political force.

Using Hoggart’s work in the 1950s as a case study, Hartley argues that with the advent of digital culture, critics can no longer detach themselves from popular culture to critique it from the outside. In the era of digital communication, ordinary people must be recognised as equally important nodes of cultural exchange, who are not pawns of commercial and corporate forces (as academics have cynically described them), but instead regularly disrupt traditional forms of one-to-many communications by acting as both producers and consumers of information. Instead of opposing digital literacy as an extension of populism, and educating people on ‘how to make the least’ of digital media, Hartley advocates that ordinary people should instead be made digitally literate to the point of being able to serve as independent critical agents (2009, pp. 1–38).

Throughout this reading, I was struck by the overarching theme of an intellectual divide which supposedly exists between “high culture” academics and “popular culture” masses—whereas Hoggart made efforts to bridge this divide by eroding the authority of academic elites and granting agency to popular culture, it was also worth noting that many of his contemporaries revelled in their ivory towers of intellectualism. I find this particularly relevant in the context of today’s current socio-political discourse: there is much discussion of the resurgence of anti-intellectualism over the past two decades, and of the need for critical engagement in contemporary discourse as opposed to emotive arguments of a non-rational basis.

Rigney’s analysis of anti-intellectualism in the United States (1991, pp. 434–451) finds that such opposition to rational dialogue in fact stems from the very academic elitism which pervaded for decades—in some cases, as late as the 1980s—and confirms Hoggart’s argument that digital literacy is crucial for the formation of a society where popular culture can operate as a cultural force without devolving into populism. Given the current state of contemporary political discourse both in the United States and elsewhere, the negative effects of such anti-intellectualism are arguably already being felt.

From these texts, I gather that formal education systems need to better implement programs to encourage digital literacy as a life skill, and also as a mode of critical engagement with current discourse. As Hartley points out, formal education systems all over the world are only recently grasping the concept of digital literacy, whereas before it had been relatively neglected and had spread through informal structures and popular demand.

References

Hartley, J. 2009, ‘Repurposing Literacy’, in The Uses of Digital Literacy, pp.1-38.

Rigney, D. 1991, ‘Three Kinds of Anti-Intellectualism: Rethinking Hofstadter’. Sociological Inquiry, 61, pp. 434–451. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.1991.tb00172.x