Neon Paradiso

[neonparadiso]

Rumination Week #16

While discussing globalization and more specifically how the incredible speed of technology allows time and distance to become seemingly much short and smaller when people across the world communicate with one another, the very first place my brain went to was online games. Specifically, massively multiplayer online role playing games, or MMORPGs. These games allow thousands of players from every corner of the world to exist simultaneously in a shared virtual experience, with everyone pursuing their own goals within the game and enjoying the company of friends that they have made through the game and who could quite possibly come from all over the globe. Now, globalization and this incredibly fast and reliable method of mass communication we call the net absolutely has its draw backs, but one undeniable positive is the development of genuine caring relationships between individuals and groups that otherwise might have never even had the chance to meet. In that spirit I'd like to share this video:

In this video, the creator has compiled the audio of just about a thousand different videos, all of people who play and love the same MMORPG, into one song. The amount of work that went into something like is absolutely immense, and it just goes to show how the ability to shorten distances is incredibly powerful, particularly for digital community building.

[neonparadiso]

Rumination Week #11

When a corporation is discovered to have been engaging in an unlawful or immoral act, and faces public backlash the response is generally very predictable. "We're sorry. We're investigating. We'll change." Of course, the messages given are often more intricately craft, emotionally colored, and stylized in the branding of the corporation responsible. Now, when these apolgoies are issued it is generally with the hope of improving the corporate image, however, it should be noted that it was the corporation that allowed whatever happened to happen in the first place. Take a look at this screenshot I grabbed from the Forbe's website.

Reads like a buzzfeed article to me. Comparative to tips for spicing up a relationship or taking your ramen to the next level. Here is the cold, hard truth: Corporations do not care about you. The old white men in charge could not even be bothered to give a second thought to their actions. They know, explicitly, when they are doing something the public will find morally reprehensible, but they do it anyways because it's profitable, and instead of attempting change while they still can, they'll ride the high of the profitable exploitation to very last possible second, and then, and only then, (once they have been exposed) will they issue their apology, which was pre-planned and pre-packaged months in advance, and then they'll do the absolute bare minimum in correcting what was wrong while telling you, their faithful consumer, that they've changed.

For corporations, apologies are not apologies, they are advertisements. "Oh, wow, they've really changed their ways. Maybe I should take a look at their products again." That's the thought they want you to have, and the fact of the matter is that it works. It is incredibly rare that a company feels the sting of backlash even without apology for more than a few weeks, a by-product of our digital age where news is news for all of 6 seconds and the discussion only lasts 6 days. People move on, the company moves one, and everyone's happy with the lie that something has changed.

To take this idea a step further I would argue that corporate apologies are prodcuts, sold on the emotional stock market. When you 'accept' a company's apology you are buying in, emotionally investing in them, giving them a free pass to sell you whatever they want. Meanwhile they'll keep on doing the bare minimum, and they'll keep lobbying and donating to politicians who actively harm you, the individual. So, do yourself a favor, the next time your favorite brand of T-shirt is discovered to be using asian child labor to make their products, or your favorite gaming company is found to have harassed a female employee to the point of suicide, don't buy the apology.

[neonparadiso]

Hobby Lobby is a company that while at times has been outwardly supportive of individuality, has semi-secretly (In that they are not vocal about this, but the records of such funding can be found with relative ease) funded pro-Christian organizations that have helped put pro-life, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-healthcare legislature into law in at least one state, Arizona. It's very clear based on their actions that Hobby Lobby is an extremely pro-Christian, pro-Conservative company that seeks to limit the freedoms of women and LGTBQ+ people. As such, I've found one of their advertisements which initially said "Live a creative life," and scratched out the creative with what I think is a nice shade of bloodish-red, and wrote over it with "Christian," that seems to be what the company really wants from its customers.

[neonparadiso]

P2P #8

In the fall of 1940, students of Oslo University in Norway began to wear paperclips on their lapel to show resistance and national pride in the face of Nazi invasion. By that time all of their existing national symbols had become banned, but the students did not relent and found a new, creative way to express their defiance. This image (Which was created by simply finding a good classic screenshot of Clipy and editing the text) portrays Clipy, the old mascot for Microsoft Word, as an ally to resistance in the struggle against fascism. It's no secret that the word "fascism" has been thrown around a lot in the American politisphere lately, and this image is meant to play on that. Now, this obviously is running face first into Godwin's Law, but it's not uncommon for comedic images to become symbols of a movement or political belief (Dark Brandon is a good example of this), and I think the image of Clipy, out there fighting for the rights of all peoples, is both hilarious and poignant.

[neonparadiso]

P2P #7

At first glance this image might seem to show crystal deposits being discovered on an old gravel road, however, I borrowed this crystals and staged them, even going so far as to cover them a bit with rocks and debris to make it look more natural. This changes the #NaturalisticEnthymeme by making it appear as though this road for whatever reason is dotted by crystal deposits, or that you might be able to find similar crystals along any gravel road. By staging the image in the way I have, it changes the story that the image is telling, it changes the narrative. Using similar techniques and with more resources and locations than I had access to, one could likely sow a rumor that a particular gravel company was doing something that resulted in these crystal deposits, which could be used to change the public opinion of that company, it could even result in regular people buying bags of gravel to sift through them in search of crystals. After all, stranger than fiction is the way of the internet. The same techniques could really be applied to anything, and I think the past decade, give or take, has shown us that no matter how easily something is disproved, if it is repeated enough on the internet, eventually people will begin to believe it.

[neonparadiso]

Rumination Week #7

When a person takes a photo, they naturally color that photo with their own ideologies. It's an inherent practice that you can't really avoid because your perspective is in large part a product of your position in relation to your subject, and your position is coded by your ideology. Because of this natural coloring, or context-giving, ever photo ever produces will have some kind of argument to it, that is to say that it has something to say to its viewer. That inherent fact of making some kind of statement, I think, then connected the argument of an image back to the destruction of looking as defined by Elkins. Specifically, Elkins said that looking at an object has the inherent effect of change the viewer, it's small changes but changes nonetheless. What I assert, however, is that the message that the image is making is a tool in that destruction. When you look at an image and you take in its meaning, perhaps in the case of a policitcal image that defames a particular candidate who is running for office, you are using societal codes to extract and intended message, or argument, from the image, taking that message unto yourself, and thus being changed by it. Thus, the inherent argument of an image is one method by which objects (and images as the object in this case) are a destructive and violent force. To demonstrate this, I'd like to share with an image I took while experimening with size and distance for our forced perspective activity.

Now, after looking at that image you could take away several meanings. One of the most obvious, is that this is a chess piece, therefore I probably like chess, and you'd be right! That knowledge, however represents a change in you, and a change in the way you might perceive me, and those changes in turn might change the way you interact with me, or the things you talk to me about. That potential change in behavior is indicative of the change in self caused by the image and the context surrounding it that I have presented. Thus, destruction.

[neonparadiso]

Week 5 Rumination

Truth be told, this week's content has been a source of great frustration and dissatisfaction with society as whole for me. Learning the story of Sharbat Gula and thinking about how it relates to images I have seen my entire life, and how we treat women as subjects is really shedding a light on how problematic our culture's treatment of women is to this day. Western society is obsessed with the female form, and we reproduce it in everything we make endlessly. Advertisements, art work, all the way down its just a repition of the same body shape, one that predominately white men in power understand as "desireable." Take a look at any online community dedicated to sharing art work, photography, or writing, and you will see that post that involve a female subject, often nude, usually sexualized, gain massive traction very quickly. Now, it is not uncommon that the female subject is also the creator of the work, and their expression is a powerful and valid statement, but more often than not the creator is a man who feels that his depiction of the nude female body is in some way "deep." The fact of the matter, however, is that we don't actually care about the female subject as a woman, as a Human being. Their story, their perspective on the image, these things are almost never shared, and if they are shared, or if they are sought out, what ends up being the bulk of the "story" is the search for her, and not her own words. Even in making efforts to include the subject in the conversation, we erase their perspective and instead prop up the mystery, the discovery of the subject. As a society we view women as something to be "taken" (as in the image) and something to be "found" (as in the rediscovery of the subject), and seemingly never as a person to be heard.

I struggled to find an image that encapsulated my thoughts here, I decided to make another meme in hopes that it would help me cool of from this topic.

[neonparadiso]

P2P #5

This image, of the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Da Vince in 1503, is one that has been circulated in every single medium for many, many years. It is arguably the single most recognizable piece of classical art that exists in the western world, perhaps the world over. Just like Afghan Girl, this is an image that has circulated and been reproduced ad infinitum, and continues to do so. Another aspect of similiarity, however, the presence of an (until recenly, as in the case of Afghan Girl) unknown female subject. Now, there are historical candidates for who the subject of the Mona Lisa is, however, that fact is not nearly as widely circulated as the actual image, and I think this, along with how NatGeo treated Sharbat Gula and her story, speaks to a much larger truth: That western society is obsessed with the female image, but not the woman herself. Both of these images have been around for longer than most people in this course have been alive, and they continue to this day to be used for everything, including advertising and promotional work. Yet, the stories of these subjects as Human beings goes largely untold, or if it is told it's told in a reductive, genuinely insulting manner. In fact, it seems that we care more about the adventure of discovering the woman than we do about what she actually has to say once she is discovered. In short, we circulate these images, we reproduce them, we continue doing so until all meaning and original intent is lost and the subject become nothing but a subject, and at the same time we do absolutely nothing support the women who made the images possible in the first place.

[neonparadiso]

Week 3 Rumination - Memories, Kitsch, and Digimon

When I was a kid, my heart belonged totally to Digimon, and there was nothing I wanted more in the world than a "digivice." They are essentially knock-off Tomagachi's (which were already plastic, kitschy toy pets) marketed for boys. Like a lot of that things from that era, they were toys tied to fun cartoons designed to sell, sell, sell. However, they also hold power in that for a lot of people, myself included, they represent childhood and that sense of wonder you feel when you discover something new and exciting. There was a time when being kitschy meant cheap pre-packaged sentiments wrapped in plastic and solid en mass. Even in that there is a certain power, though; the ability to package up big ideas into smaller bite-sized pieces that can be consumed and understood more easily allows for accesible entry points to big, complicated topics. In a way, that is what the digivices I still own do for me, they carry the big romantic notions of childhood and wonder in little packages, and when I see them, look at them, they inact upon me an opening of memories and feelings which are still incredibly raw powerful. Those emotions and connections which are communicated through the kitschy toys of our youth make kitsch powerful; in fact I would say they make kitsch beautiful. The ability to carry complex interpersonal messages across time and space in such a small package is incredible, and it seems like most people today enjoy their kitschy little objects. Everyone has a toy or a piece of a jewelry or even a car or movie that was given to them, that was mass produced, that’s cheap and probably not of the highest quality, but they love regardless because it carries that message to them over and over. So who cares if people think it’s in “bad” tastes? Be kitschy!

[neonparadiso]

For this week's P2P activity I decided to take things in a more meta direction. Kitsch things are formulaic, but they also take emotions and ideas and package them up mass consumption. Memes, in a way, do the same thing. They take big, cultural movements or ideas, package them into a nice little .jpg and send them out to the masses for circulation. So, my #memehistory trend to focus on is memes themselves, and the way they allow communication of big ideas through neat, comedic little packages.