20/4/13 1:20 AM

CS2006

Week 3 readings

From scrapbook to Facebook: A history of personal media assemblage and archives

Social media profiles VS scrapbooks

Packed with personal information

Problematic

o Validity of a scrapbook as a biographical text

o Rarely edited nor “finished” like formal publications

o Messy, fragmentary and highly individualized

o Do not achieve “official” or authoritative status of published media like

newspapers or books

o Tend to be personal collections of ephemera (only can be enjoyed for a

short time)

o Unclear what kind of functions scrapbooks served for their users in the

past

Private objects for storing thoughts?

Serves a more immediate and social purpose?

o How should scholars approach scrapbooks as personal archives and

historical artifacts?

Historical continuities in the public and private practices traditional scrapbooks and social

media have promoted for users + methodological challenges produced for readers

Scrapbooks: physical books in which paper scraps and other items are saved + also highlights

the often blurry distinctions between scrapbooks and other social/archival media traditions

(eg, autograph, photograph & confession albums + commonplace books)

Digital carryovers of these traditions

Twitter

Myspace

Pinterest

Flickr

Focuses on Facebook as the paradigmatic site of contemporary social media use

Boasts larger membership than any other social network site

Predominant object and site of social media research

Therefore purpose = provide a historicization of FB + other similar media platforms, where

people:

Document their lives

Interact with media texts to express themselves socially

FUNCTIONAL COMPARISONS

Importance in comparisons of “old” and “new” media technologies via shared functions due

to the ability to shed light on social media use

Novel phenomenon with no cultural precedent

Wide variety of personal media practices can be seen as promoting a range of

simultaneously documentary and performative behaviors

Has private and archival functions /similar to scrapbooks: helping users perform

specific social and performative tasks in the past

1. Documenting friendship

a. Facebook = SNS “social network site” (Boyd & Ellison, 2007) as compared to

“social networking site”

i. Purpose isn’t go “network” or meet strangers

ii. Rather, to “enable and make visible their existing social networks”

iii. Majority of contacts on SNS are between users who already have some sort

of offline relationship

Facebook creates textual links between real-life connections

Makes social experience perusable, like pages in a book, by providing a structure

and setting for users to “view and traverse” their social links

SNS = “web-based service that allows individuals to visualize relationships in the

user’s extended social network”

o Construct a public/semi-public profile within a bounded system

o Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection

o View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others

within the system

2. Navigating new media abundance

3. Communicating taste and building cultural capital

Week 8 Readings 20/4/13 1:20 AM

MOVIEMAKER MASTER CLASS WITH MARTIN SCORSESE

Biggest problem: Intent; what the filmmaker wanted to communicate to the audience,

because:

Direction the camera is aimed at shot by shot

How does each shot build up to make a point which the filmmaker wants the

audience to comprehend?

o Purely physical – Man walking into the room and sitting on a chair

o Philosophical

o Psychological

o Thematic (Includes philosophical and psychological points as well)

Sometimes, younger filmmakers have nothing to say

Resulting in the films becoming very unclear or very conventional and geared

towards a rather commercial marketplace

Basics: Where do you aim the camera to express what you put down on paper in the script?;

How can you edit all your shots to create what you want to convey to the audience?

First question can be : “Do I have anything to say?”

o Not necessarily literal that can be expressed through words

o Can be a feeling or an emotion

Talk about what you know

60s and 70s filmmaking more personal as compared to 80s onwards

Consistently less of personal filmmaking in mainstream media

Nowadays, independents also starting to show a trend toward melodrama and film

noir; more commercial aspects

The more singular and personal the film, the more it can claim to be art

What makes a film personal?

Making a distinction between directors and filmmakers

Directors (people who interpret the script, who turn it from words to images)

Filmmakers

o People who will be able to take somebody else’s material and still manage

to have a personal vision come through

o Shoot the film or direct actors in a manner that will eventually transform

the film so that it becomes part of the body of work of other films, with

similar themes and approaches to material and characterization.

Know what you are talking about

Know your material; have some personal experience with it prior

Week 9 Readings 20/4/13 1:20 AM

Week 10 readings 20/4/13 1:20 AM

NEW MEDIA AND VISUAL CULTURE

Goals

Understanding key concepts of the qualities and experiences of the digital image:

virtuality, simulation, immersion

Understanding key techniques of digital visual effects in cinema (digital

compositing, 3D CGI, etc)

The impacts of digital technologies on the traditions of cinema: realist and

spectacular traditions

Virtual:

Means that the virtual (whether virtual spaces, virtual worlds, or virtual

environments) is largely present in contemporary media culture as a major trope

or theme

Necessary for us to understand it’s meanings in order to understand digital

visuality

Map, museum, studio, community, etc.

Virtual reality: an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact

Importance: in virtual reality is how it exists

Something we may call “virtual” does not exist in physical or actual sense

However, the virtual exists because it has some properties of the object and event,

such as shape, sense, value, that we know, experience or imagine

Due to the fact that it incorporates properties of the physical object or real event

Eg, Virtual money and online banking

o You know that your money is in the bank but you don’t have it physically

o However, you still can make purchases with this virtual money

o We can also deposit to and withdraw from our online account

o Yet the real fact, when you take all your money out, both effect and fact is

that you are bankrupt

Eg, Video games (call of duty 3): first-person shooting game set in a fictional near

future war in Russia

o Game doesn’t exist physically

o But we feel that the virtual game world is real

o Not just because the computer graphics of the game look so real and vivid

o Due to the fact that the game allows us to experience what we know or

imagine about warfare

High-speed chaos

Prompt responses to enemies for survival

Skills of targeting and shooting

Learning new weapons and tools

Digital world models not just visual elements of the real war.

Models the knowledge and sensory perception of the human being

who experiences the war

Characteristics of VR: Simulation

Simulation: (context of digital media) refers to various computer methods for

modeling

Virtual: an object or event that does not exist actually but nevertheless we

perceive and experience as real

o Requires bringing key properties of the object or event to our field of

experience or knowledge

Does not necessarily the virtualization of a tangible object or real

event

Fields or disciplines have consistently developed and used

o Virtual reality technologies:

Sciences, including engineering, natural science and medical

science

VR technologies are used to visualize theoretical objects such as

atoms and particles; phenomena/objects that are not visible with

naked eyes, such as stars and planets in astronomy, and cells and

organs in biology and medical science, etc.

Methods for modeling something that assumes the appearance or effect of a real

entity or event

Modeling is not necessarily limited to a tangible object or real event (eg

hypothetical objects, imaginary worlds, etc)

o Applications of

Objects of simulation are more than making visual illusion (movements of

physical objects, natural phenomena, human behaviors, etc.)

o Distinguished from imitation

Week 10 reading 1 20/4/13 1:20 AM

NEW MEDIA AND VISUAL CULTURE

What happened to virtual reality?

Context: 1980s-1990s, populist hype, widespread experiment, frequent conferences and

artists’ projects explored virtual reality; how can this waning of interest be explained?

Example of a “new medium” (potential candidate to be one)

Enthusiasm for VR was part of the euphoric techno-utopian expectations of the

period and the heady mix of the computer counter-culture and the neo-liberal

Silicon Valley entrepreneurship

Therefore, VR has returned to where it came from

o less commercialized/for the masses like the internet

o more into the industrial complex in the military; where research continues

Lead researcher Stephen Ellis at Advanced Displays and Spatial Perception

Laboratory (NASA):

o “The technology of the 1980s was not mature enough”

o vision ran ahead of the available hardware and software

o too little was understood about how the human sensorium responded to the

degree of bodily immersion that was attempted

o However now, computers become many times faster

o Peripherals more lightweight

o Futher research into the biology and psychology of perception can be

drawn upon, renewed and serious interest is being shown again

Not only NASA but in ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency)

Is VR a new medium?

Medium: set of social, institutional and aesthetic (as well as technological)

arrangements for carrying and distributing information, ideas, texts and images

(whether neutral or not as a medium is never separable from the information or

content it carries; it contributes to, shapes, allows or disallows meaning)

Not medium

o prime example of technology (or collection of technologies)

o stage where development and investment are taking place for a variety of

speculative reasons

o Immersive VR has no firmly settled institutional pattern of distribution,

exhibition or use (social context)

A medium is more than the technology that it depends on; it is also a practice

Skilled work on raw materials (eg words, photographic materials) which uses

conventions, structures and sign systems to make sense, to convey ideas and

construct experiences

Therefore it is still questionable whether VR can become a form of social communication and

representation in the manner of radio, cinema or television

Stages to determine which potential communications technologies or media will “pass”:

1. Existence of basis in society’s general scientific competence so that a certain kind of

technology is feasible (ground for a technology’s possibility)

2. Stage of “ideation” where an idea or concept of how that available scientific competence

may be given a technological application is envisaged by several individuals in their

supporting contexts in various locations

3. “Invention” when a technology can be said to exist properly as it moves beyond an idea;

prototype stage as clear necessity or use is seen and finds social acceptance

Social availability of VR:

Hybrid technologies of immersive VR appear to be teetering between repeatedly

reinvented prototype and invention

VR occasionally flickers to life at prestigious art or media festivals and trade

shows (mostly unique and short ones)

Due to construction of “state of the art” virtual spaces and environments being

intensive in it use of technology

Therefore, outside of the military sphere, realizations are restricted to few fleeting

locations; usually requiring expensive travel and maintenance in real time and

space for those who wish to participate

Ironically, viewer has to be in a precise and expensive institution or place in a real

world if they wish to be in “virtual” reality

Case study: VR, art, and technology

Douglas MacLeod, director of “The Art and Virtual Environments project”

2 years of intensive and groundbreaking work for artists and technologists to bring

a range of VR projects into completion

Huge effort only provided a “suggestion of what this medium could be”

Too complex and artists have dispersed along with their expertise

VR is very rare in terms of spatial/geographical distribution due to its costs

Most ubiquitous (found everywhere) form of VR is stripped down versions;

“shoot-em-up” arcades

Outside of commercial arcades and theme parks, university or corporate research

departments, immersive VR is hardly accessible to most of us

Contrasts ubiquity of the personal computer

PC= used for entertainment, interpersonal communication, self-expression and

access to information of many kinds and therefore PC = media

o Such uses have also developed distinct genres, institutional frameworks

and patterns of consumption; difficult to say for VR

THE VIRTUAL AND VISUAL CULTURE

Nintendo Wii = weaker than the immersions or simulations promised by “head

mounted displays”

Nevertheless, presents us with visual (and sometimes haptic) experiences that

attract the description of virtual

Recently, existence of dramatic changes in the way that images are produced in

the ways that we meet and access them and in the kind of relationship we have to

them; the fact that we are not wearing those “head mounted displays” and

immersed in virtual worlds does not mean that the virtual has not become an

important characteristic of visual culture

Retreat of VR nevertheless remains important

Virtual (“worlds”, “spaces”, “environments”) abounds in contemporary media and

visual culture

o Immersive quality of videogames/ first-person POV/avatar that allow us to

project into and move within the game world

o IMAX cinemas filling field of vision

o Networks of webcams monitoring public spaces, online image banks and

virtual realities

VR AS AN OBJECT TO THINK WITH

Full blown VR remains a paradigm; example of a discursive (lead by argument +

reasoning rather than intuition)

Apparatus which produces a kind of experience that raises questions about the

nature of reality, perception, embodiment, representation and simulation

18th century, Camera obscura was thought of this way

Today: camera obscura = instrumental technology; forerunner to photographic

camera; kind of camera without film used by painters and draughtsmen as an aid

to constructing images in perspective

Use these terms predominantly to describe camera obscura because it has been

mainly art historians who have paid attention to it

Use in 18th C, not instrumental (not for making images) but possessed by people;

philosophers and natural scientists in order to stimulate philosophical reflection

and speculation on the nature of visual perception and knowledge

Provided a model for and raised questions about the relationships of the external

world, eye and brain

Practical model and a point of conversation and discourse used to understand the

rocesses of perception and our experience of the visual world more generally

Both Camera Obscura + VR serve similar functions in that they promote intense

speculation about vision, embodiment and the nature of experience

VR has a discursive status due to representation in other media; “matrix factor”

rather than frequent first-hand experience and use

“Virtual” now a major theme in media culture as it has close relationships with

other themes; simulation and immersion along with older concepts related to the

study of images; representation, illusion, mimesis, even picture, copy and fiction

are drawn into the sphere of the virtual

Through time, relatively settled definitions become unstable and there is a lack of

clarity in the relationship or difference between representation and reality,

between representation and simulation and between “looking” or gazing at

immersion

Digital “virtual” enters into visual culture with early experimentation in human-

computer interface design; the means by which a human interacts with the

machine

Seen as promising to go beyond the physical objects (screen, keyboard mouse);

“Technology goes away because we are inside it” (Jaron Lanier)

IVAN SUTHERLAND (pioneer of computer graphics and simulation technologies) key

figure in the operational and conceptual history of VR

Demonstrated that the impulses (electrical pulses within a computer; electricity)

translated into an electron beam that was visible on a visual display unit (screen)

Envisaged the possibility of going beyond graphic display to make the results of

computation tangible

Formed the idea that if a computer reduced and processed any kind of information

as a series of impulses, given the appropriate algorithms and programming, the

physical movement of the human body – and even material resistance to that

movement – could be encoded as information which the computer could process

FROM IMITATION TO SIMULATION

Sutherland’s inspiration = joystick of Link Flight Trainer which simulated the

“feel” of aircraft in flight back to the trainee pilot

Work on flight simulators showed how human actions could become computable

information hat was then passed back to the human subject via servo mechanisms

and sensors to then inform or control their further actions

Flight simulator = black box with no external morphological reference to

aeroplanes but once entered; sensory conditions experienced in real flight can be

more fully generated to include programmed negative flight conditions

Simulation of planes that haven’t been built or flights that have not yet been taken

Distinction between imitation and simulation: notion that in simulation (as against

imitation or mimesis) the model now, in some senses, precedes the reality – a reversal of the

expectation that “models” are built (imitate) pre-existing realities

Following recognition that what distinguishes simulation from imitation:

Artifact that is a simulation (rather than copy) can be experienced as if it were

real, even when no corresponding thing exists outside the simulation itself

We are familiar with simulated reality effects (CGI in movies and TV)

“A head-mounted three dimensional display”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B8aq_rsZao (watch this to see it at work; purpose:

present the user with a perspective image which changes as he moves)

Generated mathematically

Structured by 3D Cartesian grid with its 3 spatial co-ordinates imaged

stereoscopically on the binocular TV screens held close before their eyes

Sutherland’s invention of an apparatus that would generalize the flight stimulator

No specific purpose; just a visual and tactile interface with a computer

This was basic, spatial, visual, tactile and kinaesthetic

IMMERSION: A HISTORY

Sutherland’s perception of VR was of a “continuity” as compared to other

scholars at that time, Margaret Morse who feel that it is a experience of

immersion; of being “inside” and experiencing completely different worlds

Morse: “VR user is a spectator whose station point is inside the projection of an

image, transformed from a monocular and stationary POV into mobile agency in

3D space”

Jonathan Crary: historical break from renaissance period; not a copy of reality

before lenses but a transformation in visual culture

Sociologist “quantum leap into the technological construction of vision”

Emphasis on these views:

Stress on the immersive experience

Provides and (in some) a shift of vision from its dependence upon the spatially

positioned human eye to its production by machines and technologies

Key idea of passing through the surface of an image or picture to enter the very

space that is depicted on the surface

“stepping through Alberti’s window”

ALBERTI’S WINDOW

“perspective” in images

“St James the great on his way to execution” by Mantegna (left)

Orchestra pit (right)

Mantegna makes the viewers envision what it would look like (left image) from

the perspective of people in the orchestra pit (right)

Feet of the guy in the center as if it’s protruding off the stage; feet of figures

depicted as further away from the viewer and are cut off from view

How this was achieved depends on managing the relationship between the

viewer’s position in the physical space and the position of the depicted figures in a

kind of a virtual space

(Diagram of Alberti’s system)

Alberti thought of a picture as a vertical plane (AB-CD) that was inserted at a

certain point within a cone of vision centered on the spectator’s eye (ALBERTI’S

WINDOW)

Distance from painter to AB-CD is physical distance between viewer and painting

AB-CD to figure S is “pictorial space”, the space that is seen through the window

Alberti’s schema is to connect 2 kinds of space: that from which the image is

viewed (actual space visitor inhibits) and that which is viewed within the image

(seeks to be “as good as” and continuous with that space)

Mantegna is hinting at in making that foot protrude as if crossing from one space

to another

We are therefore, now in a position to think of pictorial perspective (Alberti’s system) as a

technology for constructing the space within an image and for managing the relationship of a

viewer in physical space to the virtual space of the image

PERSPECTIVE AS A SYMBOLIC FORM

Building of temporal dimension into static images

Depth axis of perspective to solve narrative problem: how to depict the unfoding

of an act over time, in a single, static scene which depicts space as a unified

continuum

In right image, we see one neophyte in the process of undress, another waits,

naked and shivering and a 3rd receiving baptism

3 images can be read as 3 moments in a continuous process

Can be read as 3 men doing different things or as stages of one man’s actions

(left) in this image, perspective which integrates pictorial and architectural space enables

Masaccio to represent St Peter as he walks past 3 beggars and as he does, the cripples are

cured and rise up

3 different levels

Peter looks ahead, out of picture space and into spectator, who’s viewpoint is

beneath the saint

He appears to walk, curing the sick as he passes and with a powerful implication

that he is about to enter into our real space; suggestion that we are next?

Masaccio paints a sequence of separate moments into one frame, unlike other

artists of his time; they therefore become embodied and embedded in virtual

space, and a sense of anticipation as well as physical experience is expressed

BAROQUE

Paintings on the roof of churches; when spectator looks up, it’s like he’s looking into heaven

These baroque paintings invite the spectator to enter a virtual space; they draw the viewer

into a space that changes with their movements; navigable spaces of persuasion

THE PANORAMA

Installation of 360-degree images in purpose built sites known as “panoramas”

Spectator positioned in the center of the panorama, surround completely by a

seamless, illusionistic painting of a landscape, a historical event, or battle

Spectator’s gaze = mobile; they are either free to move & turn themselves or be

moved by a rotating mechanical floor

Central viewing position in a gallery ensured that they were kept at an appropriate

distance from the painted scene to reinforce its optical realism

As they developed in the 1900s, the illusion was enhanced as appropriate with

other effects like sound, lightning, smoke, mist

In entering the panorama, the paying spectator entered a artificial world.

Panorama installs the observer into the picture

THE STEREOSCOPE

Early 19th C technology of seeing that would appear to parallel closely to the VR

experience

3D of photography that the stereoscope achieved is the only way in which at the

beginning of the 19th C, a number of boundaries between what was real and what

was represented began to blur

These devices didn’t enclose the body and hide the limits of surrounding images

by architectural design but by placing binocular images very close to the viewers

eyes; similar to Sutherland’s head mounted displays

All the above are part of a continuum of technological development, rather than an absolute

and revolutionary break with earlier image forms.

After several 100s of years of perspective as a pictorial technology, the photographic camera

industrialized perspective

VIRTUAL IMAGES/IMAGES OF THE VIRTUAL

The Virtual & the real

Not opposite of the real but a kind of reality itself

Eg, Ravi term paper, when you say it’s “virtually complete” it exists in your

computer; for all intents and purposes, you have finished, it’s “as good as”

finished. But once you print it, it will then actually exist

A digital image resides in a computer file, it is a code or a set of information, a

kind of latent image awaiting visibility and material form when it is loaded into

appropriate software and projected or printed

Virtual isn’t the same as an illusion

Illusion suggests, unreal.

“Virtual” different from the “actual” but both are real in different ways

Increasingly, the virtually real and actually real are not completely distinct or

separate worlds

There is overlap or coexistence and in technologically developed societies we

move between them

EXAMPLE: ATM

o At the ATM we simultaneously inhabit the actually real and the virtually

real

o Machine is actually real

o World of online banking and our “virtual” cash we access are also real

o If we find out we don’t have money in the virtual world we don’t have

money in the real world as well

Virtual, simulation, representation

In new media, virtual has come to equal the “simulated”

synonymous terms: virtual realities and virtual environments are produced by

simulation technologies, principally: computer graphics software and

telecommunications network

Shared space simulated in which we can interact with simulated 3D objects and

our view of such spaces and places changes in response to our simulated

viewpoint

We are familiar with:

o Computer aided design and the simulation of objects and events that do not

actually exist

o Software techniques such as “ray tracing” and “texture mapping” which

digitally generates the visual forms and surfaces of invented objects as if

they conformed to the physical law of optics

o Production, animation and seamless fusion of still and moving photo-

realistic images

o Equipping of robot machines with the ability to see

o The hybrid collection of technologies that produce the illusion of

inhabiting and moving within virtual places

o The technologies of telepresence that allow the body to act, through vision

and touch, on remote objects

o New forms of medical and scientific imaging (such as magnetic resonance

imaging) that allow the interior spaces of the human body to be non-

invasively seen and imaged

o Synoptic images of the art and space in which a range of data gathered by

satellites is translated into photographic form

Way of defining “simulation”, to contrast with “representation”

Representation, media studies, visual culture

Representation: key idea in traditional media studies

Points to the role of ideology, belief and selective perception in act of

communicating ideas abut and experiences of real world

Draws attention to role of language and realm of visual representation the signs

and codes that we necessarily employ in making images

The way that the words or visual signs used (signifying processes) necessarily

mediate or change the objects in the world that we communicate about

Strongest form: the world only has meaning for us because of the concepts that we

employ to make it meaningful

Images:

o Lead us to “see” the world in varying perspectives

o Shaped by our ideas and a culture’s priorities and interests

Technologies available play a role in these processes

VS. Simulation: modeling of a dynamic system; of a structured environment, a

universe with its own rules and properties with which the user or player interacts;

not confined to imitating existing worlds or processes although it may also do that

part

Wider perspective in “digital” visual culture; distinctions between representation and

simulation that make sense in the study of computer games doesn’t hold due to:

Not only simulations are real

o Representations are as well as they are also artifacts and are composed of

material stuff just like the things they represent

o Both involve work on materials and utilize tools and technologies and both

are artifacts

Mimesis: theory or representation

o Meaning is thought to lie in real things themselves and hence the work of

representation is to faithfully copy the appearance of that thing

o Aim: convey meaning rather in the way that a mirror reflects reality

o Contrast: simulation produces and constructs while representation mimics

something pre-existing

The lack of an original

o Simulation: an artifact that can be experienced as if it were real, even when

no corresponding thing exists outside of the simulation itself

o Simulation cannot be a copy of the original

o Yet, there is also a large class of visual representations that nothing

corresponding exists (dependent on beliefs): Baroque’s impression of

heaven on the ceiling

From representation to simulation (and back again)

Genre of painting “trompe l’oeil” (tricking the eye)

Artists paint their images in places where we might expect the real thing to be

Success: momentarily belief that depiction = reality and also triggers haptic sense

Viewer oscillates between awareness of the image itself and of the means by

which it was produced

DIGITAL CINEMA

Popularization of CGI and it’s use in special effects and computer animation

Forms:

o Materially and historically situated technologies and media

o On the other hand, perfoming a technological imaginary where the impact

of digital technology on cinema is presented as either symptomatic of, or a

causal factor in the “virtualization” of the modern world

VIRTUAL REALISM

Great excitement of future possibilities of immersive or interactive entertainment

But, fear that digital technologies are leading film into a descending spiral of

spectacular superficiality

John Ellis’s identification of a number of realist conventions in cinema and

television

o Common-sense notions and expectations such as correct historical details

in costume drama, or racial stereotype in war films

o Adequate explanations of apparently confusing events, establishing logical

relationships between cause and effect in events

o Coherent psychological motivations for characters

Recent debates that Hollywood films deny the contradictions of a reality

characterized by class conflict, gender inequalities and hidden power structures

Realist codes ensure that conflicting POV + power relationships within a film’s

fictional world are always resolved or reconciled

A world riven by contradiction is always, by the end of the last reel, whole &

coherent

If ending not happy, there still is closure

While technological apparatus of cinema and TV is sometimes discussed in these

debates, it is rarely identified as a key factor in the construction of the ideological

effects of these realisms

Allen:

o Realism no longer film theory’s set of ideological and formal conventions

of narrative, character plot and hierarchies

o Rather, technical and aesthetic qualities of sound and image

o Realism now operates between the image and its qualities and the

technological apparatus that generates it

o Uncomfortable conflation of three distinct notions of realism

Photographic image is seen to be privileged among all other

representations in its grasping of the real world

Spectacular or illusionistic

“immediate” grasping of reality in which the medium itself seems

to flicker out of the picture

o The more visually realistic a film or special effect sequence is, the more

artificial or illusionistic it is.

Leads to:

VERISIMILITUDE: appearance of being true or real

Claims to capture the visual appearance of the world, people and objects, as they

appear to the human eye

Eg: “Trompe l’oeil” genre of painting

In reality, it is taken for granted

In CGI, it becomes an object of interest to both producers and spectators.

Eg, in Toy’s story, toy soldiers = rendered complete with all the imperfections of

a cheap toy in real life; shows attention to detail

INDEXICALITY: relating to or denoting a word or expression whose meaning is dependent

on the context in which it is used

Photographs, pre digital age’s characteristic was that the images were created

through a direct physical relationship with their referent

Current anxieties are that this now can be manipulated

PHOTOREALISM: a style of art and sculpture characterized by the highly detailed depiction

of ordinary life with the impersonality of a photograph

similar to verisimilitude

But these CGI sequences are not so much capturing external reality as stimulating

another medium

Measured more by its figuration of these other media than by any capture of the

look of the real itself

HYPERREALISM: extremely realistic in detail

Identify a distinct and dominant aesthetic in popular animation, developed by

Disney

Disney animation presents its characters and environments as broadly conforming

to the physics of the real world

Context of animation: not wholly constrained by live action conventions, Disney

hyperrealist animation never fully remediated the live action film; always exceeds

verisimilitude; evident in graphic conventions of caricature in character design as

well as exaggeration of forces of the real world

REALITY EFFECTS

Photorealism in CGI and the hyperrealist imagery and narrative structures of

Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks animated features

Understood as, or are claimed to be, in different ways, offering a more realistic

experience, a less mediated grasp of the world and experience

Each of these reality effects references not the actual external world directly, but

rather other cinematic and media conventions

SPECTACULAR REALISM

Advent of popular CGI cinema, left with an apparently paradoxical notion of

realism; referral to both a perceived immediacy but also a heightened illusion and

spectacle

Verisimilitude not on indexicality of photography but on the “wizardry” of digital

synthetic imagery and its designers that re-introduces that least realist cinematic

form, animation back to the mainstream

Paradox serves to foreground 2 more important factors

o Continuities with earlier spectacular visual media forms

o Critical concern with the visual image over the other aspects of cinema

Spectacle: not so much a set of particular cultural or media events and images but

characterizes the entire social world today as an illusion, a separation from, or

masking of real life

SPECIAL EFFECTS AND HYPERREALITY

The Mask – popularity based on use of CGI

Special effects: best distractions from, and at worst, deleterious (causing

harm/damage) to the creative or artistic in cinema

Special effects driven films (sci-fi, horror, fantasy, action) seen as illusory,

juvenile, superficial

More associated with the technology rather than the “art” of cinema (character

psychology, subtleties of plot and mise-en-scene)

Claims that blockbusters are bringing about the “dumbing down” of culture

Fears that popularization and pervasiveness of electronic technology has

profoundly altered our spatial and temporal sense of the world

Overlapping discourses of CGI

a. Forms and aesthetics of CGI = latest in an evolutionary process of ever-increasing

verisimilitude in visual culture

b. Pessimistic version of (a) – characterized by a suspicion of CGI as illusory, superficial

and vulgar; opposition to the “true” creative qualities of film as a medium as taking over

traditional cinema and the technical virtuosity (artistic pursuit) it brings

c. Cybercultural perspective, digitally generated verisimilitude marks a new distinct phase

in western culture

d. Inversion of cybercultural perspective; cinematic tech is symptomatic of technological

change more generally but this is a slide into digital illusion and depthlessness rather than

the creation of new “realities”

Early cinema to digital culture

“cinema machine” is the product of social and economic forces, drawing from the

diverse range of photographic and other technologies for the presentation of

moving images

technologies which operate across the boundaries between entertainment, art,

science, government and the military seem to offer an analogous (comparable)

cultural, historical and technological movement

digital technologies, unlike cinema, emerge into a world already familiar with a

century’s development of mass media

Digital visual culture although new in important ways, is at the same time

continuous with a “tradition” of spectacular entertainment that runs through the

twentieth century

Despite diversity in all the forms, they share an invitation to their audience to

engage with the visual or kinaesthetic stimulation of these spectacles, and to be

fascinated by their technical ingenuity by entertainment technology itself as

spectacle

“cinema of attractions”: acknowledged spectator rather than inward towards the

character-based situations essential to classical narrative

Did not disappear but continued in other moving image forms like animation

Audiences and effects

Most Hollywood feature film production now feature digital effects; but not

always presented as such to the audience. Digital imaging is used to generate

backdrops or climatic conditions that prove difficult or expensive to film

conventionally

Some effects are designed not to simulate ostensibly normal events (Titanic) a real

historical event but still aimed to inspire awe in the technological spectacle

Play with other registers of filmic realism. Eg Forest Gump where the character

was inserted into a documentary

Effects mark irruption of other media (animation) as disruptive force.

Week 10 reading 2 20/4/13 1:20 AM

WHAT IS CINEMA?

Digital cinema and the history of a moving image

Cinema, the art of the index

Most discussions of cinema in computer age focus on possibilities of interactive

narrative

o Majority of viewers and critics equate cinema with storytelling

o Computer media understood as something that will let cinema tell its

stories in a new way

However, this only addresses one aspect of cinema; neither unique nor as many

argue, essential to it

What used to be cinema’s defining characteristics are now just default options

with many others available

o One can enter the virtual 3D space

o Viewing flat images projected on screen is no longer the only option

New developments change the identity of cinema

Cinema’s identity traditionally in the 1970s as a “super-genre”

Fictional films are live action films, consisting of unmodified photographic

recording of real live events that took place in real, physical space

Now with the onset of the 21st century, those can only be limited to the time of the

20th century

During cinema’s history, a whole repertoire of techniques (lighting, art direction,

use of different film stock, lenses) were developed to modify the basic record

obtained by film apparatus

Yet, behind those techniques, we can see the bluntness and unoriginality of those

photographs

No matter how complex, its stylistic innovations, cinema has found its base in

these deposits of reality; samples obtained by a methodical and prosaic process

Cinema emerged out of the same impulse that led to the rise of naturalism

(method of representation based on accurate depiction of detail)

Cinema’s identity is formed by it’s ability to record reality

What happens now, if it’s possible to generate photorealistic scenes entirely on a

computer to produce something with perfect photographic credibility even though

it was never actually filmed?

What is the meaning of these changes in the filmmaking process from POV of the

larger cultural history of the moving image?

o Manual construction of images in digital cinema represents a return to the

pro-cinematic practices of the 19th C when images were hand-painted and

hand-animated

o At turn of the 20th C, these techniques are now delegated to animation (also

defined as a recording medium)

o In the digital age, these techniques are becoming commonplace in

filmmaking process

o No longer an indexical media technology, but rather a subgenre of painting

A BRIEF ARCHEOLOGY OF MOVING PICTURES

Original names of cinema: kinetoscope (early motion picture exhibition device),

cinematograph, moving pictures

Cinema was understood form its birth as the art of motion; art that finally

succeeded in creating a convincing illusion of dynamic reality

This approach allows us to see how it took over earlier techniques for creating and

displaying moving images like the

i. thaumatrope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv6QArYoHik 2 images

tied with a string, and when you move it, the pictures overlap until they look

like 1 image)

ii. zootrope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaHcY_1pRt8 thingy that

spins and if you look through the holes in the device you can see the

animation)

iii. phenakistiscope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUoduIp5My0 when

you spin it, it has a certain animation),

iv. praxinoscope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez_UJAafRMs spins also

like the zootrope and phenakistiscope but this time has mirrors)

v. choreutoscope (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F66v-669Fmc its like this

wind up thing and the inside images move)

All that ^ have in common are that the images were hand-painted or hand-drawn

Not only created manually, but manually animated

Only in the 1890s did automatic generation of images and automatic projection

become combined, emerging into cinema.

Cinema eliminated the discrete character of both space and movement

Pre cinema; moving element was clearly separated from the image; as seen from

above

Actions limited in range and only affected a clearly defined figure inside rather

than the whole image

All of the above devices were based on loops; sequences of images featuring

complete actions that can be played repeatedly and they progressively grew longer

over time (can see in sequence above, from thauma to choreu)

FROM ANIMATION TO CINEMA

Once cinema was stabilized as technology, it cut all references to its origins

Everything characterized as moving images pre cinema was delegated to

animation, which picked up in the twentieth century

Animation openly admits that its images are mere representations it’s visual

language more aligned to the graphic than to the photographic

Discrete and self-consciously discontinuous; where characters move against a

stationary and detailed background in sparsely and irregular sampled motion

Contrast to cinema who’s public image was about photographing what existed

before the camera rather than creating the “never-was” of special effects

However, blue-screen, matte paintings, glass shots, mirrors and miniatures, optical

effects and other techniques that allowed filmmakers to construct and alter

moving images could reveal that cinema was not really different from animation

CINEMA REDEFINED

Sign of this shift is due to the new role that computer generated special effects

have to come to play in the new Hollywood industry in the 1990s

New genre of “The making of…” videos and books in Hollywood due to

popularity

New principles:

o Rather than filming physical reality, it is now possible to generate film-like

scenes directly on a computer with the help of 3D computer animation and

thus, live-action footage is displaced from its role as the only possible

material from which a film can be constructed

o Once live action footage is digitalized it loses indexical relationship to pre-

filmic reality as the computer doesn’t distinguish the origins; all pixels and

thus live-action footage is reduced to just another graphic, no different

from the images created manually

o Live-action footage now functions as raw material for further compositing,

animating and morphing and thus film now obtains a plasticity that was

only previously possible in painting or animation (layers etc, like subtitles,

combining images; green screen stuff)

o In traditional filmmaking, editing and special effects were separate

activities but now in the new age, the computer collapses this distinction

and both involve “cut and paste”

Therefore digital film = live action material + painting + image processing +

compositing + 2D computer animation + 3D computer animation

Digital cinema is now a particular case of animation that uses live-action footage

as one of its many elements

History of the moving image thus makes a full circle born from animation, cinema

pushed animation into its periphery, only in the end to become one particular case

of animation

So therefore, production becomes the first stage of postproduction

Eg, Starwars, traditional on set filming took 65 days but postproduction took 2

years because 95% of the film was constructed on a computer

Computing tools to manipulate the image are important to the digital painter as

brushes and pigments are to a painter

This fact thus erases the difference between a photograph and a painting

Given that an artist is easily able to manipulate digitized footage either as a whole

or frame by frame; a film thus becomes a series of paintings

What was previously recorded by a camera automatically now has to be painted

one frame at a time, and not just a dozen images like in the 19th century but

thousands, in this 21st century

From Kino-eye to Kino-Brush

20th century, cinema played 2 roles at once

o Media technology: capture and store visible reality, due to early

difficulties of modifying images once recorded that lent it’s value as a

document; assuring its authenticity

Mutability of digital data impairs the value of cinema recordings as documents of

reality; back then it was just an isolated accident in the history of visual

representation which has always involved and now again involves the manual

construction of images

Cinema becomes a particular branch of painting - painting in time; no longer a

kino-eye but a kino-brush

Role played by the manual construction of images in digital cinema is one

example of a larger trend – the return of pro-cinematic moving-image techniques

o Initially marginalized due to the onset of cinema being a “super-genre”

o Therefore, it was relegated into the realms of animation and special effects

But now, with technological developments, these techniques are reemerging as the

foundation of digital filmmaking

o What was once supplemental to cinema becomes its norm; what was once

on the outer limits of cinema becomes the norm

The cinematic realism is being displaced from the dominant mode to merely one option

among many

THE NEW LANGUAGE OF CINEMA

Cinematic and Graphic: Cinegratography

In commercial media, 3D animation, compositing, mapping and paint retouching

were used mostly to solve technical problems whilst traditional cinematic

language is preserved unchanged

o Frames handpainted to remove wires that supported an actor whilst filming

o Flock of birds added to landscape

o City street filled with crowds of stimulated extras

Invisible effects: practice of simulating traditional film language

o “Computer-enhanced scenes that fool the audience into believing the shots

were produced with live actors on location but are really composed of a

mélange of digital and live action footage”

When Hollywood introduces various nonhuman characters like aliens etc, we

don’t really notice the arbitrariness of their non-humanistic ways because they are

perceptually consistent with the set (they look like they could exist in a 3D space

and thus photographed)

Electronic + digital media have already brought about the transformation of

cinema no longer needing to manufacture it’s “reality” portrayal effect

From early 1980s, emergence of new cinematic forms that aren’t linear narratives

that are exhibited on a TV or computer screen as

o Music videos

o TV shows

o CD rom based games

CD-ROM based games

Designers were aware of the techniques of the 20th century cinematography and

film editing but had to adopt these techniques both to an interactive format and to

hardware limitations (thus development of cinegratography)

1993’s Myst

o unfolds narrative through still images (and sometimes mini animations

within the images, just like pre-cinematic techniques)

o relies on techniques of film editing to subjectively speed up and slow

down time

o Through the game, the user moves around a fictional island through the

click of a mouse and each click advances a virtual camera forward

o When the user begins to descend the underground chambers (as opposed to

outdoor LS shots), there are more close ups and the user needs more clicks

to explore the area

o Therefore just like trad cinema, Myst slows down time to create tension

and suspense

1995’s Johnny Mnemonic

o Interactive movie

o Featuring full-screen video throughout

o Comes closer to cinematic realism than Myst but still distant

o Action shots against a green screen and then composited with graphic

backgrounds

As the speed of computers increases, CD-ROM designers have been able to go

from a slide-show format to a superimposition of small moving elements over

static backgrounds and finally to full-frame moving images

Mirrors the 19th century progression from sequences of still images (zootrope etc)

to moving characters over static backgrounds to full motion

Exactly after 100 years where cinema was officially born, it was reinvented on a

computer screen

The New Temporality: The Loop as a Narrative Engine

Underlying assumption: by looing at the history of visual culture and media, in

particular, cinema, we can find many strategies and techniques relevant to new

media design

3 particular relevant situations in cultural history

o An interesting strategy or technique is abandoned or forced “underground”

without fully developing its potential

o A strategy can be understood as a response to technological constraints

similar to those of new media

o A strategy is used in a situation similar to that faced by new media

designers. For instance, montage was a strategy for dealing with the

modularity (basis of design or construction/how do you join separate

shots?) as well as the problem of coordinating different media types such

as images and sound. Both of these situations are being faced once again

by new media designers

These techniques were used to discuss parallels between 19th century pro-

cinematic techniques and the language of new media; also, guides in thinking

about animation (“underground” of 20th century cinema) as the basis for digital

cinema

19th century pro-cinematic devices were based on short loops

As cinema began to develop, those short loops were banished to the low-art

realms of the instructional film, pornographic peep-show and animated cartoon

In contrast, western modern fiction avoided repetition forms in general

It puts forward a notion of human existence as a linear progression through

numerous unique events

Early forms utilized loops due to the limitations of hardware

As the CPU speed increased and the larger storage media such as CD-ROM and

DVD became available, loop usage decreased

However, online virtual worlds use loops extensively because they provide a

cheap mean of adding some life into their geometric looking environment

Animation still utilizes loops when animating limb movements

Spatial Montage and Macrocinema

Spatial montage: involves a number of images potentially of different sizes and

proportions appearing on the screen at the same time

This juxtaposition doesn’t result in a montage; up to filmmaker to interpret

Spatial montage = alternative to traditional cinematic temporal montage, replacing

its traditional sequential mode with a spatial one

Same principle with computer programming breaks a tasks into a series of

elemental operations to be executed one at a time

Cinema followed this logic by replacing all other modes of narration with a

sequential narrative, an assembly of shots that appear on the screen one at a time

20th century uses split screen to show this spatial montage

Traditional film and video technology was designed to fill a screen completely

with a single image and thus to explore spatial montage, a filmmaker had to work

against the technology

Some computer games such as Halo3 already used multiple split screens to

present the same action simultaneously from different viewpoints

The logic of replacement, characteristic of cinema, gives way to the logic of

addition and coexistence. Time becomes spatialized, distributed over the surface

of the screen

Opposed to spatial montage, where nothing needs to be forgotten or erased

Spatial montage can be also seen as an aesthetics appropriate to the user

experience of multitasking and multiple windows of GUI

Construction of a desktop that presents users with multiple icons all of which are

simultaneously and continuously active

Result: a new cinema in which the diachronic dimension is no longer privileged

over the synchronic dimension, time is no longer privileged over space, sequence

is no longer privileged over simultaneity, montage in time is no longer privileged

over montage within a shot

Cinema as in Information Space

Cinema language, originally an interface to narrative taking place in 3D space is

now becoming an interface to all types of computer data and media

Elements of language as rectangular framing, the mobile camera, image

transitions, montage in time and montage within an image reappear in the general

purpose HCI, the interfaces of software applications and cultural interfaces

If HCI is an interface to computer data, and a book is an interface to text, cinema

can be thought of as an interface to events taking place in 3D space

Just like painting, cinema presents us with familiar images of visible reality –

interiors, landscapes, human characters, arranged within a rectangular space

Exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of all aspects of the user’s experience

with a computer; this key experience of modern life – the dynamic windows of

GUI, multitasking, search engines, databases, navigable space, and others

Cinema as a code

Artists and critics point out the radically new nature of new media by staging – as

opposed to hiding – its new properties

Vuk Cosic’s ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) films

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nr9A8Tq9GQ

Cosic superimposes digital code over the film images; as opposed to Star Wars,

where George Lucas hides those codes under the images; hidden to the audience

and Zuse only showing the digital code

ASCII films “perform” the new status of media as digital data

Result = double image – a recognizable film image and an abstract code all

together, both visible at once

By juxtaposing ASCII codes with the history of cinema, Cosic accomplishes an

“artistic compression” that is, along with staging the new status of moving images

as a computer code, he also “encodes” many key issues of computer culture and

new media art in these images

Cinema, along with other established cultural forms, in this digital age has become a code as

it is now used to communicate all types of data and experiences and its language is encoded

in the interfaces and defaults of software programs and in the hardware itself. Whilst new

media strengthens existing cultural forms and languages, including the language of cinema, it

simultaneously opens them up for redefinition. Elements of their interfaces become separated

form the types of data to which they were traditionally connected

New media transforms all culture and cultural theory into an “open source”. This opening up

of cultural techniques, conventions forms and concepts is ultimately the most promising

cultural effect of computerization – an opportunity to see the world and the human being

anew in ways that were not available to “a man with a movie camera”

Week 12 reading 1 20/4/13 1:20 AM

CHAPTER 3: YOUTUBE’S POPULAR CULTURE

Accounting for Popularity

Survey of some of YouTube’s most popular content

establish baseline knowledge of the range of uses people are making of the site

Required contextualizing of YouTube’s content with everyday media practices

YouTube videos generally circulated and made sense of on other websites and are

embedded in blogs, discussed in living rooms and are produced in rich everyday

or professional contexts

This knowledge + analysis of the way particular types of videos move through the

systems allow understanding of significant and interesting patterns in YouTube’s

popular culture

Focus on apparent nature of content coded eliminates discrimination between

o “pure” user-created efforts

o Supposedly user-created for viral marketing purposes/seized upon by

marketing campaigns

In practice, indistinguishable and to some participants, perform the same role

To find out “YouTube-ness” of YouTube; shared and particular common culture

whilst respecting complexity + diversity

4 categories of popularity accounted for (all required registration + participation on

YouTube)

“Counting eyeballs in front of a screen” utilized by mainstream media industries

o Most viewed

Measure of attention other than those that have predominated in the broadcast era

o Most favorite (videos popular enough to be added to user’s profile)

o Most responded (videos that most frequently prompted a video response)

o Most discussed (videos with the most comments)

Each of the above ways of identifying YouTube’s culture constitutes a different

version of what YouTube is, and what it is for.

Allows simplified + automized model of audience engagement to be calculable

and measurable

Metrics shape the character of the most popular content; users can

o Deliberately attempt to produce content that will achieve mass attention

according to preset criteria

o Ignore criteria and get dramatically smaller audiences

Mainstream media interpretation: produces a feedback loop between the perceived

uses of and value logics of YouTube and it’s “actual” uses and meanings

Coding scheme

2 primary categories

Apparent industrial origin of the video

o user-created

o product of a traditional media company

Apparent identity of the uploader

o traditional media company

o small-to-medium enterprise

o independent producer

o government organization

o cultural institution

o amateur user

The Two YouTubes (User-created/traditional media)

User-created videos

40% vlogs

15% user created music videos (fan vids + anime music videos)

13% live material (music performances + sports + “slice of life” videos)

10% interviews, video-game reviews, newscasts

8% sketch comedy, animation, machinima (video game animation)

Debunking of myths

Very little cat videos (LOL)

No videos of children hitting each other

Traditional media sources (videos produced within the established media industry and

frequently taken from an original source such as TV broadcast/DVD and then uploaded with

minimum editing)

30% informational programming news clips

21% scripted materials (sketch comedy, animation, segments from soap operas

from Turkey and Philippines)

17% live content (sports footage, US primary debates)

13% music videos which came mostly from US top 40 artists

11% promotional materials (trailers for films/advertisements for products)

Clips and quotes: Uses of Traditional Media Content

YouTube context: something people make use of in everyday life

Bruns: participatory culture and digital tools mean audiences no longer need to

resort to auxiliary media forms to respond to the culture around them

Everyday experience of media audiencehood needs to be rethought to include new

forms of cultural production that occur as part of ordinary media use

New forms of publishing

o “redaction”: production of new material by the process of editing existing

content

o Due to too much instantly available for everyone to see the whole world

Hartley (2008): origin of meaning migrated along “value chain” of the cultural

industries

From author to producer and the text to the citizen-consumer so that consumption

is a source of value creation and not only it’s destination

Therefore, media consumption becomes not “read-only” but “read-write”

Redaction provides an alternative to the discussion of copyright infringement

Also suggests that uploading is a meaning-making process rather than an attempt

to evade the constraints of mainstream media distribution mechanisms

“uncertain” could be due to violation of copyrights under YouTube’s terms of use

Suggests that there may be a larger proportion of traditional media

YouTube introduction of HD viewing to improve video experience

10 minute limit on YouTube to allow users to draw attention to the most

significant portion of a program

Best way for users to quickly catch up on public media events like 2008

presidential elections and break new stories and raise awareness as “citizen

journalists”

Music and its role in postmodern identity formation

Music videos most common under most favorite category

Dual status as a marker of individualism and signifier of group participation

Also been central to the formation of other social networking services

o Significant role as a marker of identity in user profiles particularly teens

Particular patterns that emerged from the content survey hint at the shape of YouTube’s

common culture – a “structure of feeling” neither unique to YouTube nor synonymous with

web culture or popular culture, however those categories are understood

Vaudeville to Vlogs: User-Created Content

Makes up more than 2/3s in Most Responded and Most Discussed categories

Aesthetics mainly concerned with experimentation with the video form

Foregrounding of the medium itself that has historically been associated with the

emergence of new media technologies that resembles the technological and

aesthetic experimentation of Vaudeville (type of US entertainment popular in the

US in the early 20th century)

Most of the most popular user-created content has a noticeable focus on video as a

technology and on the showcasing of technique rather than technology

o Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LtUX_6IXY Original

Human Tetris

Most of these frequently forgo narrative and resembles something most akin to

parody or video art.

Logic of cultural value centered mostly around novelty and humor

Vlogs: an emblematic form of YouTube culture

The form has antecedents in webcam culture, personal blogging and “confessional

culture” that characterizes TV talk shows and reality TV focused on the

observation of everyday life

More conversational as compared to traditional media, which doesn’t particularly

invite conversational and inter-creative participation

Vlog as a genre of communication invites critique, debate and discussion

o Frequently responses to other vlogs

o Carrying out discussion across YouTube

o Directly addressing comments on previous Vlog entries

In Most Discussed and Most Responded:

o informational content (user-created newscasts, interviews, documentaries;

things that bleed into the Vlog category)

o Frequently critiquing popular media or comment on “YouTube dramas”

through visual juxtaposition or adding commentary/on-screen graphics

Music videos

o Sharing of experiences in creating the music video

o Invitations to comment suggest and subscribe

o Most artists use this to communicate with their fans like all those who join

American Idol and are eliminated; to allow their fans of the show to follow

them

Beyond the Professional and Amateur Divide

Existence of content that are unable to fit in the boundaries of user-created content

and traditional media

o E-lectures by USW and UOC Berkeley

o Online presentations by Google

o Footage of military aircraft landing by Royal Australian Air Force

Model also fails to appropriately characterize uploaders seeking talent like “Ford

Models” (provision of all things fashion like make up tutorials how to catwalk etc)

Category of “user” also complicated by web-v start-ups like

o NoGoodTV that produces risqué programming (or MadTV!)

Resembles traditional TV producers using the internet as a way to

distribute niche programming or specialized content without

needing to negotiate cable or TV distribution deals

Some users also use YouTube as a business venture by participating in YouTube’s

advertising sharing scheme and draw revenue from their presence on YouTube

o Success attributed to grounded knowledge and effective participation

within YouTube’s communicative ecology

Practices of “audiencehood”

Quoting, favoriting, commenting, responding, sharing and viewing all leave traces

All have effects on the common culture of YouTube as it evolves

Those who insist on treating YouTube as if it is a broadcasting platform are

probably less likely to achieve the aims of their participation

CHAPTER FOUR: YOUTUBE’S SOCIAL NETWORK

Most people use YouTube to watch videos

Existence of YouTube as a social network; categorized as “YouTubers”

Argument that the activities of “YouTubers” are very important drivers of the

attention economy of YouTube, and significant in the co-creation of a particular

version of YouTube’s emergent culture

While traditional media companies are well represented in the Most Viewed List,

the list of Most Subscribed channels is dominated by “YouTube” stars whose

brands were developed within YouTube’s social network

YouTubers as User Innovators

Striking feature of YouTubers’ community is that they take place within an

architecture that is not primarily designed for collaborative or collective

participation; as compared to other SMS designed for collaborative or collective

participation

Architecture of YouTube does not overtly invite community-building,

collaboration or purposeful group work

YouTube’s visual design consistently dominated by thumbnails of videos, not user

profiles, groups or conversations

Seen as an alternative broadcaster as compared to a social network

Ban on downloading and absence of user-control over licensing creates barriers to

collaborative production and there are no overt invitations to collaborate with

other users, or to remix or quote each other’s videos

YouTube’s design focus on usability and a simple and limited set of features

o However, people workaround the lack of features using other third party

sites

o Showing that YouTubers, as cultural agents, are not captive to YouTube’s

architecture

o Also demonstrates the permeability of YouTube as a system

o Connects with surrounding social and cultural networks

o Users embedded within these networks move their content and their

identities back and forth between multiple sites

o YouTube has never functioned as a closed system

From beginning, offered embedding tools into other websites

Other competing video websites have more features like annotations over the text;

YouTube was late in jumping on to this bandwagon

YouTubers themselves came up with innovative ways around these problems;

they interacted with the tags themselves

o Shows YouTubers’ desires to embed their video practice within networks

of conversation rather than just to “broadcast themselves”

User-led innovation in YouTube includes content innovation; creative adaptations

of the existing conventions of online videos

o Eg: most basic form of Vlogs are a talking head, basic editing and a

camera

o Vlogs have grown increasingly innovative with the use of more advanced

video editing skills like shot-reverse-shot and green screens to make the

videos look more professional

Content survey of the above study show that the more popular ones are those who

consider themselves as activists and active participants in the ongoing process of

shaping and negotiating the meaning and uses of YouTube

At least 10% of the most popular YouTube videos (between June and November

2007) were explicitly concerned with YouTube itself

More than 99% of this were user created and not traditional media

“meta YouTube” videos range; 2/3 Vlogs entries implicitly addressing an

audience of fellow YouTubers and a wider imagined audience

Vlogging also tends to be canny and knowledgeable about YouTube’s attention

economy, with all its many faults

Also critiques some aspect of the way the website measures and awards attention

o Companies that are willing to get videos viral for a fee

Shows that the most active participants on YouTube are highly knowledgeable;

some possibly even more so than the company itself of the specific ways in which

these measures of popularity can work to support or disturb what they see as the

authentic “bottom-up” culture of YouTube

Literacy and the Social Network

Digital literacy is one of the central problems of participatory culture

Due to the “digital divide”

Most discussions of New Media Literacy are characterized by historically

unresolved tensions between “critical” or “enlightenment” views of literacy

o Critical view: Literacy as a normative and exclusionary construction

o Enlightenment view: As an aid to progress and equality, we should extend

to all people on the other side

Ubiquitousness of digital technologies means creative practice is necessary for

both critical awareness and informed participation in the media

o Young people may be learning new media competencies through YT

o Active and creative participation may also allow a “critical” viewpoint of

media messages

“Literacies” are produced by and practiced in, particular social and historical

contexts

o Too many types of literacies; visual, media, multimedia, network

Approach: Aligned with the New Literacy Studies Movement; where instead of

literacy being a “technology of the mind” or set of skills, it is considered a social

practice

o ***understanding that new media literacy is not a property of individuals

but a system that both enables and shapes participation

Being “literate” in YouTube means not only being able to create and consume

video content but also being able to comprehend the way YouTube works as a set

of technologies and as a social network

These competencies are not in-born natural attributes of the so-called digital

natives (most of the “lead users are adults in their 20s or 30s)

“Geriatric1927” 80+ year old that uses YouTube to tell the tales of old people

(he’s seriously very cute)

o You can see his progression in YouTube literacy as he grows more used to

the technology

Week 12 reading 2 20/4/13 1:20 AM

THE GLOBAL FLOW OF VISUAL CULTURE

Circulation of images globally

Global image flows allow increased circulation of concepts, ideas, politics and

images

Helps to foster the growth of multinational corporations

Fosters expansion of political influence by powerful nations over distant domains

with fewer resources

Transnational cultural flows create a homogenization of culture

Also fosters diversification, hybridity and new global audiences

Yet, flows are never equal

Flows have increased the rich-poor divide

Media and visual images as forces regarding the changing status of the nation-state and

the globalization of capital

Transnational and diasporic cultures dispersed across national boundaries are

linked in part by consumption patterns and media culture

Religious communities linked across broad geographic areas through

programming that includes webcast services, internet radio websites and blogs

Television news globalized with:

o CNN International

o Al Jazeera

o BBC world

Web provides a globally linked network through which images, media forms,

cultural products and texts circulate the world

Artworks, music, films also circulates around the web

Global ideal world without borders does not match social reality in the 21st

century

Mobility may have increased (planes trains etc), but national borders have

tightened since 2001

2001: democracies have increasingly responded with distrust, hostility, extradition

to immigrants and exilic subjects who cross national borders seeking opportunity

or asylum from political repression

Media, information and images travel when people cant

Therefore visual culture is key in this climate of escalated globalization

Different flow in different countries and cultures

Understanding how images circulate and what role they play in a global

information economy is thus crucial to understanding practices of looking in the

21s century

The Global Subject and the Global Gaze

Key historical demarcation (fixing the boundary/limits of something) of the

concept of the globe came from space travels

Those space travels by USA and Soviet Union produced the first photographic

images of earth as seen by space (originally a Cold War space race mission)

1970 declaration of Earth Day

o Marked moment in History when the idea of a unified planet carried a

strong humanitarian appeal to the mostly North American and European

advocates of this celebration

“Whole earth” image sent by NASA “The Blue Marble” became an icon of the

peace movement symbolizing global unity and harmony

Idea of “one world”

Satellites played a key factor in changing perspectives of visualizing the earth

Satellite transmission

Satellite initially a spying machine for Soviet Union

Started to be a mean of transmission for TV and news images, through which

most telecommunications (cell phones particularly) can take place

Beginning of 21st century, over 8000 satellites in space

1970s, satellites became standard mean of broadcasting important news events

Lisa Parks: satellites help to create a “global presence” where liveliness and

presence were “indistinguishable from Western Discourses of modernization”

Developing nations could only declare themselves as “modern” if they were in the

range of American, Western European, or Japanese satellite TV signals, earth

stations or networks

New perspective (up, looking down) changes our relationship to objectivity and

subjectivity in regard to knowledge about ourselves and the world – “God’s eye

view”

Suggests an enhancement of objective knowledge

Stronger sense of the subjective experience of living down inside the conditions

we observe from above

Google Earth

o Part of the history of modernity of visuality

o Early fascination with photography was organized around a fascination

with technologies for seeing things to small, too far away, or too hidden

for the unaided human eye to see

Development of remote sensing in the commercial context as an aspect of the

commercial satellite industry in the 1990s

Involves convergence of satellite, TV and computer imaging in the production of

images from above

Initially, access of these images only limited to government and military to spy

Can be used for campaign; showed us directly how global warming affects us

o Data about city lights to map the effects of urbanization on biological

productivity; correlation is between energy usage and light; so we are able

to see urban areas that consume the most energy

o Such images serve dramatic visualizations of changes taking place in the

natural and built environment

o Thus, important historical and political documents of changes in

consumption (of energy) wrought by industrialization and modernization

GPS (Global Positioning System)

Developed for use by US department of defense

Released to the world after Korean Flight 007 (commercial plane) was mistakenly

shot down after it accidentally entered Soviet space in 1983

President Reagan argued that if the world had GPS for free, this could have been

avoided

Also, if satellite images could help track enemy movement, they could also help

us to track our everyday paths, allowing us to plot our movements more carefully

in a world whose borders are more permeable but not necessarily more free of

restrictions and defenses

Rapid increase of satellite imagery provides the visual data for a society deeply

invested in the practice of surveillance at every level

Embedding of this data into mobile phones cause rise to leisure activities such as

geocaching

GPS crosses military, science, service and leisure because the system provides

comprehensive yet specific mapping data

Allows the subject to put himself/herself at the center of the world contained in

any given map

Cultural Imperialism and Beyond

Cultural Imperialism: how an ideology, a politics or a way of life is exported into other

territories through the export of cultural products

Tv is a mean through which world powers like USA and USSR invaded the

cultural and ideological space of a country with images and messages in place of

an all-out military invasion

Therefore, TV is able to cross boundaries and literally invade cultures in ways that

bodies cannot

USA: TV created global markets for US products and promote global acceptance

of US political values

o CNN having footholds in various regions (CNN en Espanol, CNN Asia)

o While retaining a globally unified brand and a major world player with

branded networks, services to 1.5 billion people in >212 countries by 2008

Dynamics of global transmission, televisual and cultural = more complex than the

simple one-way model of cultural imperialism as suggested previously

o Ugly Betty, Columbian US adapted TV show

o Dallas, CBS primetime aired in 130 countries by the end of its run

Paradox: the fact that globalization by liberalization and policies of open flow

media have not created a more democratic flow of information for the people

Instead, it’s used to shape worldwide view on topics

o When national conflict aired, coverage becomes crucial in generating

foreign support

o “Facts” may be more fluidly generated

Harder to verify independently in a media climate in which the flow of

information is fast and thick but nonetheless highly monitored, restricted and

generated by countries maintaining strict control over media

o CNN China March 2008

o Tibetan protesters in China’s Tibet autonomous region rumoured to have

been killed; reporters blocked from region

o Tibetan supporters sent incriminating video clips but Chinese mandate

contested by providing own accounts + images of Tibetan violence

o CNN Asia protest broadcast blacked out

Show the limitations in broadcasting, even by CNN

o 2008, Reporters Without Borders French protestors interrupted the ritual

lighting of the Olympic games (Beijing 2008) for the Tibetans; getting

worldwide coverage; suggests boycott

o Message: China has already jeopardized the international spirit of fair

competition and sportsmanship among nations

National and global are in constant fluid tension

o National interests using global media to shape international opinion

o Global forces struggling to work within the continued laws and rituals of

the nation-state

Hollywood, central source of entertainment programming around the world

o Hollywood gains much more globally as compared to within the US

o LOTR Two Towers earned $921m worldwide, of which $341m USA

Outsourcing of production and labor around the globe has many consequences on

changing economies and on the kinds of cultural products that are generated in the

studio system

o TV + cinematic depiction of places; increasingly generic

o Certain locales (eg, Toronto) used to simulate other places around the US

and elsewhere

Global Brands

Increased global marketing of key American brands in postwar years

Suggests other places being “colonized” by American Capitalism

o McDonalds, Coca-Cola symbols of this

Coke’s marketing strategy: Coca-Cola business; a local one

o Generating hundreds of brands across 200 countries under the umbrella of

Coke

o Hiring their people boosting their jobs

American global brands as symbols of protest

o France: Mecca Cola marketed as the anti-US cola brand

o Boycott of products of those global brands to show discord

“Multilocal”, an idea of the global village

Global Village (Marshall McLuhan): concept that the media extend our reach

across political and geographic boundaries; bringing the world together

o Body Shop

Specializing in selling products produced in specific developing

locales to consumers throughout the world

Emphasis on education and awareness of other cultures through the

consumption of their products

However, in China, McDonalds seen as modernization and a symbol of emerging

capitalism

o Chinese cities now where young people want to congregate

Starbucks

o Creation of urban, modern spaces that signify global youth culture

o Linking patrons to their peers sipping lattes or specialty teas in similar

looking Starbucks in other urban centers like New York or Paris

o Draw to appear like a savvy participant in global youth culture who

appreciates the best of coffee and tea products worldwide

o USA: seen for promoting “good tastes”

o Tokyo: signify new freedom to participate in capitalist signifiers of

consumption and western tastes in a society who’s popular drink is not

coffee, but tea

Ultimately, model of cultural imperialism is no longer a viable one for

understanding how culture travels

Concepts of Globalization

Seen as a set of conditions that have been escalating since post war period

o Increased rates of migration

o Rise of multinational corporations

o Globalization of capital and financial networks

o Development of global communications and transport systems

o Consequent sense of the decline of the sovereign nation state

o Formation of web-based communities, not geographically bound

Terms often used in globalization

o Diaspora (ethnic communities separate from country of origin)

o Hybridity (mixing of people and cultures)

o Deterritorializtion (separation of people from their traditional territories,

often by force)

o Cosmopolitanism (subjectivities beyond the nation identified with

travelling/global)

o Outsourcing (of labor)

o Transnationalism (people moving increasingly around the world as global

citizens)

Through these, we understand ourselves as living within a global context, even as

we identify ourselves as belonging to particular nations, regions, and gultures

Two aspects of identity – global/local are not contradictory but independent

Thomas Friedman: “Golden Arches Theory”; no two countries with McDonalds

have waged a war against one another

o National gains motivate mutual cooperation

Charles Norchi (director of international league for human rights): globalization is

not just about global communication and markets but a global discourse of rights;

also progression of forces that have accelerate the interdependences of peoples to

the point that we can speak of a true world community.

However, there is a sharp escalation in the rich-poor divide

Globalization “doesn’t make sense” if it doesn’t address and reduce extreme

poverty

Most striking feature is the runaway quality of global finance where per capita

incomes declining in Africa is relative to changes in incomes in the industrial

countries

Arjun Appadurai: Model for understanding dynamics of globalization across a

number of social and cultural realms: suffix, scapes: derived from the

geographical metaphor of landscapes as a framework for thinking about particular

sorts of global flows

o Ethnoscapes: groups of people of similar ethnicities who move across

borders in roles such as refugees, tourists exiles and guest workers

o Mediascapes: movement of media texts and cultural products throughout

the world

o Technoscapes: complex technological industries that circulate information

and services

o Financescapes: flow of global capital

o Ideascapes: technologies that circultate

Analyzing through “scapes” allows a critique of the different power relations

within these cultural and economic movements and exchange of products, people

and capital; also provides an alternative to the traditional model of one-way

cultural flow, allowing us to see the complex directions and scope of an image’s

or text’s global circulation beyond one-way reach of broadcasting/imperial rule

Postcolonial theory: key theoretical interventions into these issues

o Considers culture/social context of decolonized countries

o Entities analyzed not only in terms of pre colonial mindset but also in light

of changes to national forms of cultural expression

Eg, Indians in Great Britain to understand a postcolonial analysis

of Indian culture as much as those who continue living in India

Result: hybrid cultures and large diasporic communities often

connected to country of origin through the global network

Cultural imperialists cannot control the complex movements of an image or media

text’s flow

Rather, viewers make meanings based in part on the context in which they

experience images

Meanings also shaped by experiences and knowledge brought to the circumstance

of viewing

Therefore, responses cannot be accurately or easily predicted or controlled by

producers

Global flow of images is central to how we understand visual culture today; as are

the global aspects of image production and the increased cosmopolitanism and

globalization of cultural narratives and texts

Visuality and Global Media Flow

Cultural products that appear “national” like Hollywood movies are made and

circulated through global network

Increasingly, popular diasporic culture from Hong Kong cinema to Bollywood are

also made for global audiences and made to be circulated

Genres of popular culture also travel across national boundaries “franchise

culture”

o Reality TV and programs air in different markets in the form of franchises

across the globes and become nationalized in their particular iterations in

other national networks (eg Singapore, American, Pilipino Idol)

Cultural forms are also created in multinational and transnational contexts; films

and their production personnel and talent travel globally

o Hong Kong cinema; 1980s and 1990s mainly produced by filmmakers

from Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Mainland China and Philippines

o Influence of HK film industry increasingly evident as HK stars and

directors moved to Hollywood in 1997: The Matrix

Showed that Hollywood no longer has the global monopoly on popular film

culture that it had in the middle of the 20th century

o May be the case the some of the dominant film industries around the world

are named after Hollywood

Bollywood (Hindi-language sector of the Indian film industries)

Nollywood (Nigerian film industry of the digital era)

However, film cultures are not derivative of Hollywood

Bollywood films: genre-based with many similar elements repeated and borrowed

from film to film: lavish musical numbers, melodramatic love stories, themes of

father son conflict, redemption and the assertion of moral values, revenge and

happy endings

o Pre 1990s, Bollywood productions regarded as low in production values

compared with those of Hollywood despite films’ huge budgets and lavish

sets

o Changed due to changes in state and private support and funding structures

o HK’s film industry experiencing an exodus of talent after change in status

from British Crown Colony to one of China’s Special Administrative

Regions allowing Hollywood and Bollywood to buy top figures over

Bollywood’s changes are indicative of larger circumstances under globalization

and trade liberalization:

cinemas formerly understood to be representative of a nation-state or a nation-

state’s region now characterized as global and diasporic, representing a range of

national and cultural influences

In contrast, Nollywood films (handheld camera + basic editing) straight-to-DVD

films achieve market success very quickly as well

o Despite limitations, it’s the 3rd largest producer of films a year, only behind

Hollywood and Bollywood

Bond franchise as transnational

o Each movie featuring at least 3 countries

o Bond women from all nationalities

Michele Yeoh’s career path to illustrate the dynamic of globalization as it affects

an individual media star

o Malaysian born but studied drama and dance in London

o At time she starred in Bond franchise, was already established as one of

China’s top female stars

o Upon returning, became Miss Malaysia and Miss Mooba (Melbourne)

o Commercial in Hong Kong with Jackie Chan

o Breakthrough in Hollywood as well

Indigenous and Diasporic Media

Movement of people + images around the world increasingly complicated in the

21st century

Immigration and asylum for refugees as heated topics for political debates

Cultural products still have the power to reaffirm ethnic and local values over the

homogenizing forces of a vast national communication system

o IBC (Inuit Broadcasting Corporation) arising in North Canada to provide a

powerful alternative media, despite the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation introducing an accelerated coverage plan designed to provide

Canadian programming throughout the country

o IBC shows that indigenous and autonomous practices of looking can not

only survive in an era of globalization but can also thrive by using global

technologies in a manner that rethinks what local means

o Use of this links people who are geographically diverse

o Also helps to preserve and reinstate cultural traditions and language

practices that have been dying out

For ethnic people living across the country in small villages and separated, these

kind of communities can provide a vital lifeline

“Local” programming across the geographic expanses of a diaspora provides what

for some viewers may be a virtual home; particularly for viewers living in exile

(due to them not being able to afford going home or because the homeland no

longer exists)

This kind of programming; opposite to model of cultural imperialism by

supporting local culture in a virtual community that is globally dispersed without a

unified geographic base

Globalized networks of electronic media and the web have also provided the

means for political movements to disseminate their ideas and build support

throughout the world; constituting global communities of support

o Zapista National Liberation army achieving worldwide support

o Proposing a broader global vision of civil society

o Used style (ski masks) to mask identities from Mexican Government

o Images of figures with black ski masks: signifier of indigenous political

movements

Other examples of the web’s role in the democratization and globalization of information

Cultural interests

Fandom

Health and disability issues etc

o Experience of illness and healthcare has changed dramatically with the rise

of websites geared towards self-diagnosis and self-care

o Shows that the understanding of the various syndromes and diseases no

longer rely primarily on expert knowledge offered in medical and

educational settings

Borders and Franchises: Art and the Global

Cities using art as a form of cultural tourism

Art as cultural capital has become a key factor in the transformation of urban

centers into post-industrial cities

o Guggenheim Museum and its branches in the northern Spanish City of

Bilbao and in Venice and in Berlin

o Draw to the place is via the buildings itself

o Tourists drawn to see the new lifestyle of commerce, design and

consumption of which the museum has become symbolic

Post industrialization; linked to globalization, creates economic contexts such as

this; where gentrification (renovation) and creative capitalism are seen as the

answers to failing formerly industrial cities and economies

The use of museums to create the image of urban centers as the locus of creative

global economies have risen over the past 2 decades all over Europe

The museums joined a globalizing economy in which new governments and new

businesses saw benefit in acquisition of the cultural capital that would come with

a vast government funded institution with strong historical and site-specific iconic

importance to the world

Also a form of showing, through expansion and building into Abu Dhabi, Qatar

and Dubai as an exception to the dominant trend in politics between the Middle

Eastern Nations; which distrust arose from the events of 9/11

The desire to situate oneself within the local and the national is always in tension

with an embrace of the global

The movement of cultural products and visual images throughout the world is

always about the way that cultural meanings and values change and power is

negotiated

As shown from the above examples, the complex history shows us how difficult it is to

predict the future of images in the twenty-first century

Convergence of industries and technologies as the focus of industry

However, also the case that people have important ritualistic relationships and

distinct phenomenological experiences with different media that make them

resistant to media and institutional convergence and conglomeration; as well as

the sense that the visual varies from culture to culture

At the same time, the image can never in itself encompass all that is entailed in

living in the world

Material environment crucial to understanding and grounding of a global world

view

Building and engineering become more than just tropes of change