Instant Memories of a Virtual World

A photographic exploration of the more mundane moments in today's normalized digital environment.

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As our final project for class we were tasked with rapid prototyping an interactive story. Our group chose to focus on telling a story that resonates with many of our real life experiences with discrimination and microaggressions. The story we devised, titled “Pat’s Terrible Day,” involved the user taking a selfie that would function as their avatar, and then navigating a number of situations and decisions through the course of their day. These would lead them to experiencing a microagression that dehumanizes them or committing a microagression that dehumanizes another. Progress was reflected in the avatar as the player’s selfie looses its human features, eventually ending up an amorphous gray alien. 

“Pat’s Terrible Day” is not necessarily a game but rather an interactive experience. There is no win condition, since giving the player the ability to avoid being dehumanized would lesson the impact of the experience’s message. Our goal is that this could be used in an installation or as an educational tool to get a conversation going about microagressions and how they affect us. 

I am extremely happy with our prototype. I feel the experience we’ve crafted is simple and direct in its message while being a highly executable project. This image is Polaroid of the selfie sequence in the prototype. The image is out of focus to obscure the identity of the player. 

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The Museum of Feelings, a recent installation at the World Financial Center, was an interesting multimedia exhibit that questions the link between one’s senses and emotions. Through a unique combination of light and video work, scents, audio work, and tactile installations the audiences senses were almost bombarded with different sensations. The only sense absent being taste, (though with the perfume of some rooms being so heavy taste may have been unintentionally represented.) After moving through 5 rooms, each attendee was asked to pose for a selfie while a computer took their biometric readings. A color photograph was then generated along with a corresponding mood and scent. Visitors were then invited to purchase a overpriced scented candle that matched their moods, revealing this whole installation to be nothing more than an elaborate popup shop. 

This is a Polaroid of the selfie generated for me by my biometric readings. I was told I was feeling confident, which with finals looming, I can guarantee couldn’t be further from the truth. Perhaps their machines need some fine tuning, otherwise how I will know which candle to buy? 

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“Social Mediasochist” and Online IP Theft/Plagiarism: 

The music video for  indie rock band, Common Shiner’s “Social Mediasochist” is a well made, clever re-contextualizing of horror icons into a 1980′s teen movie setting. 

Oddly though, I first became aware of it when I viewed it in a truncated form that circulating on Facebook. The music video had been cut down to 2 and a half minutes removing any reference to the band and replacing the song with a cheesy 80-ish theme. There was no information on who created the video, both in the edited cut and on the Facebook pages where it had been posted. A brief search revealed the original video and what had happened on Facebook became clear. 

IP theft is something quite common online, normally it's something heard about solely in reference to torrenting but it happens quite regularly in far more unassuming ways. "Social Mediasochist" is just one example of how individuals are robbed of credit for their creative work but within social media circles this type of plagiarism happens frequently in much simpler ways. 

Tumblr is one platform plagued with this phenomenon. It relies on a re-blogging system where each time a piece of work is shared, a note is added and it’s possible to see the original poster. However, many save content to their computer and re-post it with out attribution, claiming the work as their own. This happens quite often with art focused blogs and has been documented thoroughly by the curator of Jogging. Obviously this same problem also occurs on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms quite regularly. I think it's important that with the advancement and utilization of communication technologies we as a community of users pay close attention to online plagiarism like this.

This screen cap was taken with Fuji FP-100c pack film in a Polaroid 250 Land Camera. Rather than trying to explore online plagiarism through more expressionist means, I specifically used the Fuji film to capture a realistic image and preserve the high-quality work done for this video. 

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Posting to Tumblr:

As an additional element to this project, besides making a photo album of images chronicling my media consumption I am also scanning the images and uploading them to Tumblr along with the journal entries. Tumblr makes sharing my images and musings easier while providing the ability for supplemental content and citations via hyperlinks. 

This image I’ve posted to Tumblr of posts I’ve made to Tumblr, besides commenting on my project at a meta-textual level, also has a recursive quality to it that I think embodies Tumblr’s re-blogging system and how the majority of Tumblr posts are re-blogged content. 

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Remake the New Flesh! Updating “Videodrome”:

“Videodrome” is a 1983 body horror film by David Cronenberg. It deals with the proliferation of television and video technologies shape who are both politically and ethically. Max Renn is television exec working at a studio on Canada. He stumbles across a snuff station called Videodrome that broadcasts live acts of torture. Max’s voyeurism gets the best of him and he becomes obsessed with Videodrome. Eventually he learns that Videodrome is an American political tool and the signal transforms his body into a product of the video age, he is now programmable like a VCR. 

“Videodrome” captures an extremely specific era and technology. The idea of personal VCR’s was seen not just as a revolution in entertainment but also in communications technology. Cold War themes of politics paranoia, and mind control are updated to reflect the consumerism of the 80’s as well as television and video’s effect on humanity. Much of these themes are depicted through scenes of body horror involving the fusion of machines and flesh. The film is ambiguous as to weather or not these scenes are really happening or simply a product of Max’s mind. 

There has been a lot of discussions in Hollywood about a “Videodrome” remake. I doubt a straight remake is possible since the themes and setting of the film are so specific to the 1980′s. An update or re-imagining would be a different story. Many elements in “Videodrome” are all ready borrowed from classic cold war science fiction films of the 50's, The transformative radiation of that era has been transferred to the cathode ready tube. It's possible take the technological themes and ideas about video and adapt them to our era of web 2.0. Cell phones are the obvious choice but I think an exploration of alternative/personalized media outlets like YouTube is more interest. The narrative can focus on the effects of such specialized entertainment. Filter bubbles/reality tunnels, polarized ideologies, and the rampant dissemination of misinformation are all things that come to mind that could be caused by the Videodrome signal. These ideas could also be depicted metaphorically using body horror in a way similarly ambiguous to the original film. This is much more in keeping with “Videodrome’s” themes of how technology reshapes our lives in ways that are sometimes not for the better, than a big budget Hollywood remake (supposedly involving nano-machines) ever could be. 

This is an image from one of Max’s hallucinations. He is inside the Videodrome arena and is torturing a former mentor who is depicted on the screen of a pulsating television. 

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Remixing “Robocop” and “Star Wars”:

Re-cutting, or remixing pop culture either as a critique or to create something new, isn't an exactly as original idea. We see it early on in film with the way silent films were edited into an entirely new story for foreign markets and studios re-using scenes and clips from their older films as stock footage. However, in recent years the practice has taken on new life thanks to the internet. In 2001 The phantom editor released a fan edit of “Star Wars Episode I” and followed that up with a fan edit of “Episode II.” This was the foundation of the fan edit community, a group that re-cuts movies as a form of film criticism bringing a new dimension to the French New Wave ideal of the filmmaker as critic. 

Online forums have allowed budding film critics and makers to discuss not just how movies could be made better but also to take the initiative and make them better themselves. Members of the Fan Edit community trade techniques, give lessons in editing, and discuss narrative structure, all informally solely for the sake of the craft. Besides fan edits, collaborative film making has had a boon thanks to online communication. Film makers have banded together for such endeavors as a scene for scene remake of “Robocop” and a remake of star wars in 15 second chunks. 

“Our Robocop Remake” started as a response to the planned 2014 studio remake of “Robocop.” Over 60 filmmakers came together each doing their own interpretation of a scene from the film. These ranged from dance numbers to violent puppet set pieces, and from the low budget to the finely polished. The collaboration serves as an excellent rebuke of corporate remakes and shows how technology has allowed filmmakers to come together and celebrate the work they love while simultaneously making something personal and new. 

“Star Wars Uncut” serves a similar role only instead of just seasoned filmmakers, amateurs and inexperienced fans came together to show their love of “Star Wars” while challenging the notion set forth by George Lucas that what defines great story telling is technology. Watching “Star Wars Uncut” is a dizzying experience as every 15 seconds the scene shifts to a new cast, crew, and aesthetic. However the strength of the narrative shines through and ultimately “Star Wars Uncut” reaches a level beyond the original thanks to its shear enthusiasm alone. 

This multiple exposure contains screen caps from the dance number ending of “Our Robocop Remake” and from the animated sequences in “Star Wars Uncut.”

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“We Live in Public” and so does “Nasubi”:

In 2009 the documentary “We Live In Public” was released. It told the story of new media entrepreneur Josh Harris who in the era of the early internet set out to explore new avenues of entertainment technology and how that technology affects our lives. 

First Josh started an online television station called “psuedo.com” that produced a variety of personalized content predating YouTube by over a decade. Stock process soared but the technology ultimately wasn’t there as dial-up speeds could barely handle the low res content Josh was producing. After the collapse of his company in the late 90′s, Josh moved onto far more experimental projects concerning online technology and voyeurism. 

Inspired by the “Truman Show,” Josh’s next project was a futuristic commune in Manhattan named “Quiet: We Live in Public.” The entire commune was filled with cameras and television sets and any member could watch what another member was doing at anytime. At first most members were enthusiastic but tensions rose until finally on January 1st, 2000 the complex was raided by the NYPD who had mistaken it for a doomsday cult. 

After the failure of his commune, Josh and his girlfriend, Tanya, started another experiment where they would be the first couple to live their lives entirely in public. Their home was fitted with cameras and viewer could watch them and interact with them through an online TV channel and chat room. This ultimately put a huge strain on Josh and Tanya’s relationship as viewers manipulated them for their own amusement. This is highly reminiscent of the fictional “Year of the Sex Olympics” only online technology has allowed Nigel Kneale’s dystopian vision to become a reality. 

While Josh Harris was unable to successfully realize his live life show on the internet, the idea has seen success in the US with a slew of reality TV shows about the lives of celebrities. In Japan however, reality TV shows have reached a level far beyond that in the US and the show “Nasubi” can be seen as the full embodiment of Harris' ideals. 

“Nasubi” is a show about Nasubi, a man nicknamed eggplant (nasu in Japanese), and his challenge to live locked in a room with only what he could win in various sweepstakes. Nasubi suffered for more than a year, was subjected to gross humiliation, and audiences ate it up. His public life and suffering was one of the most popular shows in Japan. It serves as a reminder that when looking at speculative fiction, sometimes reality can be much more telling of where we are and what’s to come. 

This image is a multiple exposure of a clip from “We live in Public” and a screen shot from “Nasubi.” The developing agent failed to spread evenly and much like Josh Harris' plans or the dreams of Nasubi, this photo will never be fully realized.

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The YouTube Generation in “Chronicle”: 

“Chronicle” is a 2012 found footage action film about three teenage boys that mysteriously gain telekinetic powers. It is essentially a retelling of “The Craft” with one of the boys using his powers for dark purposes and the other two have to stop him. I certainly appreciate how “Chronicle” is critical of male aggression but what I actually find most interesting about the film is how it takes the basic structure of the found footage genre and updates them as a critique of the narcissism inherent in the “YouTube Generation.” 

The YouTube Generation refers younger kids and teens to whom living in public through sites like YouTube has become normalized. Many young people have found surprise popularity and success with online vlogs for merely recording their thoughts and occurrences throughout the day. This not only creates a sense of narcissism but also fuels a “need to share.” 

In “Chronicle” we start out with the boys simply filming the goings on of their everyday lives. As strange things start to happen the camera becomes a way for them to document it. The title “Chronicle” is excellent, referring specifically to this recording of the events in the film. Eventually they realize that with their telekinetic powers they don’t need to hold the camera, the camera can just float there (this functions as a Steadicam cleverly solving one of the main problems with found footage films, shaky-cam). By the end of the movie they are filming themselves subconsciously with the floating camera and continue to do so throughout some elaborate action sequences. The camera and its audience have become an internalized extension of the characters. 

This image is a screen shot from “Chronicle” where two of the boys are looking at clips of themselves on YouTube with their phones. Off screen to the left, the third boy is also looking at his phone while simultaneously filming the three of them with a floating camera. There is a meta-textual element to this scene that I’ve added to by having my camera replicate the point of view of their own.  

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Surveillance Culture and Online Permanence in “Unfriended”:

In the 2014 found footage horror film “Unfriended,” six friends friends are haunted by a ghost during a Skype call. The ghost is revealed to be an ex friend that committed suicide after one of them uploaded an embarrassing video of her to YouTube (Unsurprisingly, YouTube did not take it down for inappropriate content). As revenge, the ghost reveals personal and embarrassing photos and videos of the surviving friends, driving them to suicide. 

“Unfriended” takes many of the themes of teenage cruelty, suspicion, and paranoia, seen in earlier teen horror films, such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “The House on Sorority Row,” and updates them to the era of web 2.0. Instead of a knowing adult or friend as the mask killer, the teens in “Unfriened” are literally haunted by the ghosts of their old data. The idea of online permanence is represented here as in today’s digital world it’s nearly impossible to permanently delete things as a copy of it almost always exists somewhere. This is often seen with old tweets, photos, and emails all backed up on servers. 

Surveillance culture is also a major element to ‘Unfriended.” Through social media the teens constantly watch and judge what each other do while simultaneously sharing their own lives and the lives of others to be judged. This behavior has been normalized since not only do they not know how not to watch others they also don’t understand what it means to not be watched. The ghost comes into play as the creation of the teens’ actions and a metaphor for their guilt, implying that their deaths through the course of the film truly are of their own design. The original title for the film was “Cybernatural” which is far more evocative of these themes than “Unfriended.”

Here is a screen shot from “Unfriended” taken with a high contrast, yellow/black duochrome film. This photo, a POV shot through the lens of my camera, highlights the voyeurism inherent not only in the film, but also in the act of watching it. 

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Multiple Exposure of the Black Mirror Episode “White Bear” and the BBC TV Drama “Year of the Sex Olypics:” 

Pop Culture has often attempted to comment on and critique technology through a variety of different mediums. The BBC show Black Mirror is a contemporary speculative fiction show that aims to examine the “unintended consequences of modern technology.” I watched the episode titled “White Bear” for class and was not impressed by it. The premise is in the future there are people being hunted and killed by others while everyone else films the violence on their phones as a form of voyeuristic entertainment. The episode didn’t develop this concept much further and had difficulty sustaining itself over 45 minutes. What I found to be most disappointing about this episode was the shear unoriginality of it. This premise has been done countless times, from more recently with “The Hunger Games,” to “The Running Man,” and “Death Race 2000.” However, the originator of this story premise is also from the BBC. 

In 1968 a teleplay by Nigel Kneale was aired called “The Year of the Sex Olympics.” It presents a split society of “high” and “low drive” people. The “high drives” are in power and the “low drive” are meant to live vicariously through television. Television is used as a means of control and easing “tensions.” Later in the film the “high drives” broadcast live acts of murder and violence not as means of intimidation but rather to serve as catharsis through voyeurism. 

This image is made up of multiple exposures meant to show the lineage of “White Bear” back to “The Year of the Sex Olympics.” I do think older stories, especially ones about technology, can be updated to modern times as a means of examining how current technology affects our lives. However, it’s important that they do so in ways that are specifically relevant to the technology and the times they are critiquing, otherwise we are merely rehashing old stories in ways that are far less meaningful. 

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Selfie of a Selfie:

Selfies are something that goes back to the earliest days of photography, indeed self portraits could be said to be a pre-photographic selfie. However with the introduction of instant photography in the mid 20th century and later at the beginning of this century with the proliferation of affordable digital devices equipped with cameras, the selfie has taken on new life and meaning. Selfies are meant to look spontaneous and natural yet the event often requires special set up. This particular selfie is a fusion of two eras of as I captured an analog version of a digital image, allowing the cell phone camera and screen to be transformed into the mirror so ubiquitous to the selfie aesthetic. 

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My Video of Men’s Butts Posted to YouTube is Censored:

For class we were asked to created and manage a YouTube channel. Our group decided to re-edit clips of male celebrity butts as a means of critiquing content that objectifies women. The description on our channel was as follows, “For far too long the splendor of man booty has been left to languish in the shadow of the feminine form. It's time to honor the male celebrities that bare it on the big screen with all the love and respect given to their female co-stars.” I edited a video called Public Ass-istance in which a collection of non-sexual clips of men’s butts was edited to Major Lazer’s Bubble Butt. The video was removed from YouTube for inappropriate content which I found quite upsetting. I outlined my issues with the removal in an appeal below:

Hello, 

The video, titled “Public Ass-istance” was part of project for graduate school where we remixed clips of men's butts as a critique of the male gaze. By flagging it for content that objectifies men, YouTube is effectively undermining the validity of that critique. Also all the clips of men's butts in that video were already on YouTube and none of them were sexual in nature. All we did was re-contextualize them in a way that objectifies them the same way women's bodies are. There are countless videos on YouTube sexualizing women in ways far more gratuitous than the video we made of men. Another aspect is since we are viewing men's butts through the male gaze this content becomes homo-erotic and by flagging the video then the appropriateness of gay content is being questioned while all the over-sexualized content of women is deemed totally fine. This raises complicated questions about censorship and how it enforces normative ideals. YouTube is a public forum and despite attempts to regulate content there are countless videos with offensive material ranging from the misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, etc.. by censoring our video which was intended as a critique of misogynistic content, Youtube is blocking the ability of marginalized groups to respond to oppression in creative ways. I hope when considering our appeal YouTube takes into account the creative ways people can respond to offensive content and the double standard at play when it comes to what is and isn't appropriate when depicting women's vs men's bodies. Sincerely Frances Damian Arpaia and the Man Booties team

As a response to this censorship I plan to re-edit the video to have my voice-over explain the issues with the censorship that I wrote in the appeal and I will use a women’s butt as a censor bar to cover up all the “offensive” man booty. 

UPDATE: Here is the “censored” video.

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Augmented Reality with Priya’s Shakti:

In response to the heinous gang rape on a bus in Delhi, writer/director Ram Devineni, artist Dan Goldman, and transmedia producer Lina Srivastava created a comic book called Priya’s Shakti, about a rape survivor in India and how they respond to cultural issues surrounding gender based violence in India. It is an incredible project and very powerful. What’s most notable is an augmented reality aspect to the comic that allows the reader to access real stories of rape survivors on their smartphones. This adds a deep, personal touch to the comic that would have been absent without the AR functionality. 

I often find AR to be gimmicky and I don’t usually download extraneous apps to my phone, but I was compelled to this time do to the intimate nature of the project. While the comic deals with very serious issues, having access to cultural information and personal stories placed them into a specific real world context, increasing the impact of the work. It is absolutely imperative that when experiencing Priya’s Shakti, one does so through augmented reality. 

This is an image of the cover of Priya’s Shakti and the augmented reality component on my phone. 

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Posting a T-Rex Selfie to Instagram:

Roar! For a number of years I have managed multiple social media accounts for a stuffed tyrannosaurus I own, affectionately named, T-Rex. T-Rex has his own blog, Facebook page, Flickr account, Twitter feed, and Tumblr page. Recently he has been most active on Instagram where I post numerous photos of his day to day adventures. Originally started as a joke character about the stereotypical narcissistic social media junky, he has since evolved into a stealthy queer voice and is the star of several films. This is an image of me posting a Polaroid of T-Rex to Instagram. I took his photo with the same yellow/black duochrome film I used for this image. 

Find out more about T-Rex here: http://trex.nyc

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Learning to Speed Cube: 

YouTube provides a unique form of education for many people in a variety of topics, ranging from the broad (cooking, makeup) to the incredibly specific (speed cubing). What most people may not realize is YouTube also has a host of academic videos that cover a larger selection of college courses. In all instances, both the academic and more mundane, YouTube is providing a level of accessibility to learning that previously didn’t exist. Granted, while internet access is still an issue in a large part of the world, having the ability to view a host of video tutorials and lectures at a moments notice has still allowed many people to engage with activities and content they otherwise might not have considered had it not been for YouTube. 

There is actually a large speed cubing community for such a specific hobby and video’s range from tutorials to in depth reviews of different speed cubes. I first stumbled across speed cubing by accident and became enamored with it. The minutiae of of it all is what has me amazed. Besides extremely specialized knowledge of cubing terminology and forms, the fact that someone can own a few dozen different 3x3 cubes, yet have such a specific knowledge of each one and how their differences affect solving down to fractions of seconds, is nothing short of fascinating. 

In this photo I am learning to learning how to solve a speed cube, a variation of the Rubik’s cube designed for faster turning.

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Abstract

Media Consumption Analysis:

When examining personal media consumption and usage practices, a major challenge for me is not simply tracking my usage amounts or personal trends but rather how to separate these concepts from the rather nebulous ideas of social media and the greater digital environment. The key component of this difficulty lies in the very nature of the virtual world. In regards to computers, virtual means “not physically existing” and so in an attempt to examine my own media practices I have given the virtual world form through a much older social technology, instant photography.

In contrast to digital photography and the virtual environment an instant photograph is also an object. It physically captures a moment and and preserves it an an artifact. Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid and inventor of instant photography, touches on this in an interview for Time magazine in 1973: “I think the new camera can have an impact on the way people live... It will help him to focus himself on some aspect of life, and in the process, enrich his life at that moment... It’s not merely the camera you are focusing; you are focusing yourself. That’s an integration of your personality, right that second. Then when you touch the button, what’s inside you comes out. It’s the most basic form of creativity. Part of you is now permanent.” This quote perfectly captures the personal and intimate aspect of instant photography and is the antithesis of the detached nature of the contemporary social media environment.

While the social aspects of photos predate instant photography, it is the linking of this with the act of photographing that makes instant photography analogous to our current digital practices of sharing the image we just took with our friends, either by showing them the screen of our camera or instantly uploading it to social media services like Facebook and Instagram.  In the SX-70 experience, Land predicts this as he notes the changes in social behavior that his invention has caused: “We could not have known... that a new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being... when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photographs...”

Both of these elements make instant photography an excellent choice for exploring my current media consumption. To do so I am taking a series of Polaroids of various moments throughout my week. These include using Facebook, watching Netflix, using my phone, etc... as well as pop culture I like that relates to modern social technology. Each photo captures that particular moment of usage as an object and allows me to reflect on aspects of my day to day life that often seem inconsequential in today's normalized digital world. Also trying to vary the subject matter and types of photographs I'm taking forces me to acknowledge patterns and trends in my consumption habits. I'm also trying to use more experimental photographic techniques such as multiple exposures to explore different representations of my media habits. It is my hope that when completed, an album of these photos will present a concise representation of the way in which I interact with current digital media and looking at it will force others to think of their own media consumption in new and different ways.