Brianna J Ruminations

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Week 14 Rumination

This week’s chapter on scientific looking was very interesting to me. I had not thought to relate the principles of looking to anatomy. The two main things that sparked my interest this week were medicine as spectacle and evidence, classification & identification. The process of looking became more complex after modern imaging heightened the knowledge of bodies. The anatomical and surgical theater believe that man was not created from the same principles of the natural world but instead a microcosm of the world. Meaning that we as people encapsulate in miniature the characteristic qualities of the world. Anatomists would entertain and educate audiences in anatomy theaters. In these theaters, they would use the bodies of criminals which made the morbidity with crime a central feature of the visual spectacle of modernity. Cameras are a part of identification, evidence, and classification because they reveal truths that otherwise cannot be perceived. The term positivism refers to the value that truth comes from sensory experience. I love photography and filmmaking so I was intrigued on learning about how photography related to this chapter. It was said that in photography, mechanical instruments intensify our access to empirical truths, getting rid of human error and subjective impressions. Empirical truths also known as actual truths are based on evidence and research gathered by observation or experiment. Sturken and Cartwright emphasize to see is to know and photography helps with this. Photographic documentation supports classification and document studies and diagnosis. Prior to reading I hadn’t realized that photography is in science and medicine. The same way I might capture an image to conserve a memory or document my life is the same way they use it for discovering and understanding the human body. Technology is used for a number of things in various occupations. Biometric technology is used for profiling and identifying individuals. Other technological systems like X-rays, PET scans, and sonograms assist in viewing one's interior and supporting biomedical truth.

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Week 13 Rumination

This week we examined Gries still life with rhetoric. We examined the History of the 2008 Obama Hope campaign, as well as the four characteristics of visual ideographs. These characteristics are ordinary images, high-order abstractions, culture bound and warrant certain uses of power. Remixes and parodies are a major theme of this chapter. Shepard Fairey first remixed the original Obama photo by changing the word “progress” to “hope”. Above are two examples of the Obama Hope parody. A parody is referred to as an imitation of a particular style for comic effect. In the first image Obama was replaced with the fictional character the Joker and the word hope was changed to joke at the bottom of the campaign. You even see the political sticker originally on Obama changed to a smiley face which is Joker’s signature. In the second image, Obama was changed to a zombie. They remixed the image and turned the president into something else and added the word brains to support the image. Another thing I wanted to talk about within this chapter is Media Viruses. According to Douglas Rushkoff, there are three kinds of media viruses. These three kinds are Intentional, Co-opted or bandwagon and self-generated. I looked into Rushkoff and his popular book Media Virus: Hidden Agendas In Popular Culture. This book uses media activism as a way to empower others. He coined the term “media virus” to convey how ideas can spread and develop in a place with greater interactive communication. I was intrigued by the different ways he described and examined media viruses. Rushkoff believes popular media both manipulates and is manipulated by others. We experience this daily with social media. Individuals become influenced by the things they see or hear on various platforms. In this same sense, people bandwagon football teams and other popular media. This is what Douglas Rushkoff expresses within his book.

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Week 12 Rumination

In chapter 8, we discussed postmodernity. Postmodernism is understood as existing in the waste or debris of modernity. When applied to visual style, postmodernism is a collection of trends in the late twentieth century that question authenticity among other things. Postmodernists believe in relativism, the belief that truth or ethics are situational to a certain observer or situation. They also believe in fragmentation, which is the idea that we have our own truths and perspectives as modern subjects. I want to focus on a few postmodern critiques. I think these critiques are a little black and white. For example, with the concept of good/evil, who determines what is truly good or entirely evil? The example used was Batman and Joker. Batman is seen as the “good guy”, he fights crime and stands up for people while the Joker is all evil. However, Batman is still a vigilante who is dark, has his own problems, and wears all black. I think a lot of these concepts have a sort of gray area where they can possibly co-exist within each other. Think about rational/emotion, it is very reasonable to be both emotional as well as rational. My only critique is that I don’t exactly believe it is necessarily one or the other. Another example is masculine/feminine, but then where do non binary individuals come in? Someone or something can be masculine and still have feminine qualities or the other way around. From my understanding, these critiques are seen as two ends or opposites whereas I see it more as a spectrum. The last one I want to touch on is real/illusion. If something is real it is perceived as being true, the opposite of illusion. Although something may be real, how do we depict it as true?

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Week 11 Rumination

This week we discussed chapter 7 brand cultures. Brand culture is the “traditional” forms of culture mediated through consumer/brand culture. This can include family, religion, community, nation, etc. An entity that acquires value through consumer experience is defined as a brand. Consumers engage in a brand’s culture as a lifestyle or a way of living when brands operate as a culture. The textbook states, “The brand is not just the look and feel… It is a broad cultural form through which identity and belief are experienced. Think of the brand Savage x Fenty by Rihanna. Consumers choose to participate in their culture because of what the brand stands for and who the owner is. This brand is known for its broad inclusivity across several sizes and skin tones. Brands allow a person to express their identity through purchasing their goods. This loyalty to a brand that you like can cause Brand attachment. A great example of brand attachment is Apple. Several people continuously buy the new Iphone because they refuse to switch to Android or Samsung. Although these consumers may sometimes critique the brand they still would not change from using these Apple products. Another example could be Jordans the shoe. There are several other sneaker brands and thousands of other shoes, but consumers have attached themselves with this particular brand. I found myself purchasing nothing but Jordans for several years because I liked the shoes and attached myself with the brand. With every new pair or purchase I was given an experience that I enjoyed. Similar to several others, I see fake jordans on several websites and social media accounts. These “dupes” are sometimes very similar to the original product, so much so that the average person may not recognize a difference if I were to purchase one. However, my loyalty and attachment to this brand deters me from purchasing these knock off versions.  

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Week 6 Rumination

This week we discussed realism and perspective. There is photographic realism, social realism, perspective realism, and the myth of photographic realism. Realism describes external reality. With photographic realism there is no artistic agent. Nowadays, you don’t see many images that are completely true. Whether for magazines, social media, or personal use lots of people manipulate and change their photos. Walking around campus, I decided to take an image of the road. I then used a photo editing app to alter the colors of the image. This makes me wonder how many photos do we consume daily that are edited and manipulated? If I can take an image and completely transform it in a few minutes everyone else can too. Pre-processing, analog post-processing and digital post-processing make up the myth of photographic realism. These sorts of steps include but are not limited to framing and cropping, composition, color manipulation, clipping, and brushing/paints. Each of these elements worked to create the second image. Forced perspective photography was a concept we worked on that utilized perspective to tell a different story. There are three different challenges to perspective. These challenges are impressionism, cubism, and surrealism. After creating a forced perspective image and the images above, I’m going to try creating an image for each of these challenges. Impressionism captures movement of light color, cubism has multiple simultaneous viewpoints, and surrealism aims to capture a dream state. This chapter reminded me of my love for photography and I really enjoyed taking these images. In digital media, perspective relies on perspectival realism and extended point-of-view. Explained in this week’s chapter, Alexander Galloway a media theorist states, “if photographs are images, and films are moving images, then video games are actions.” The notion of realism and photography is not confined to images alone. They are shown in films, paintings, photography, video games, and more.

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Week 5 Rumination

This week we covered two articles. One titled Cover to Cover by Holly Edwards and the other Female Spectatorship and the Masquerade by Jui-Ch’i Liu. Both of these articles were an interesting read and honestly frustrated me in a way. In Jui-Ch’i Liu’s article Sherman portrays herself as an object for the male gaze. Her narrative-oriented works illustrate many ideals of a housewife. She utilizes suspense and femme fatale to motivate spectators to connect with her. For several years women were only seen as objects and caregivers, which is why I understand this parody of stereotypes. Personally, I think it’s insulting to belittle women in such a way that we must fit in with the construct of the male gaze. I would agree that Sherman’s work seems to reinforce and destabilize the male gaze. There is no doubt that her work is art while she plays both the model and the artist. However, when you look at these sort of candid images it is very similar to those that appeal to the male audience. Whether in books, paintings, and/or photography, the female subject is almost always hypersexualized, nude, or lacking intellect. For example, in a perfume commercial it is rarely about the woman wanting to smell and feel better about herself. She is wearing this perfume to be desired by men. The white man has a particular criteria for what a woman’s body should look like. They believe we should all be striving for a specific body goal to be attainable. It is crazy that the subject, the main focus, the women are not considered when thinking about perspective. Similar to Afghan Girl, her story told many years later may not have ever been heard if no one thought to question who the child was and how she felt. The story told to the masses through a magazine cover was completely different from the one that came straight from the source herself. Sharbat Gula was very upset when getting photographed and preferred not to unveil herself. Situations like these make me think about every other woman I’ve seen in an article, magazine, or news story. The spread of fake news in publishing is a huge ethical issue, and there may be several other stories from women that’ve gone unheard.

Balciauskas, M. (2018, December 17). 50 feminist memes that will make most people laugh but trigger sexists. Bored Panda. https://www.boredpanda.com/feminist-memes/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic