Transparency Revealed

I was intrigued by our transparency/whiteness vs. "mojo"/blackness discussion last week (ala Nakamura), so I decided to search "transparency" in Flickr and see what it gave me.  The first half of the movie draws from those images.  The rest you can interpret for yourself....

Make sure your volume is up.

Misc.

In the spirit of miscellany, some random thoughts on Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger:

**  Obviously, the form of this work -- a printed, fixed-in-time-and-space, paper-constrained book with tidy chapters and subheadings and no messy hyperlinks -- seems pretty ridiculous and therefore provides the perfect commentary on a second-order world that is not completely ready for the "third order of order."  Weinberger's book did, however, manage to feel less outdated than Nakamura's (although today Facebook and MySpace would have made for more appropriate examples than Friendster and could have advanced his argument about the social nature of knowledge), partly because he much more frequently acknowledged that the state of the web in general and particular websites would likely be different by the time someone read his book.

**  As does the Slate article that Andrew linked to, I did wonder if the discussion of wikipedian (yes, it's an adjective) NPOV was a bit too utopian.  Is neutrality possible?  Is it preferable?  Do we define neutrality by the number of people participating in the conversation?  Even if millions participate, does this guarantee that the power, privilege, and hierarchies of our world won't be replicated in the ways knowledge is shaped in the third order?  What about group-think?  (Actually, I would suggest that collaborative websites are much less likely to succumb to group-think than in-person gatherings.)

**  The Slate article, written by Chris Wilson, makes frequent references to secrecy and hidden agendas.  He calls sites like Digg and Wikipedia "oligarchies" rather than democracies, and, like Nakamura and (to a much lesser extent) Weinberger, he says that the internet has not lived up to the "fairy tales of participatory culture of Web 2.0."  He ends by saying, "Digg and Wikipedia would do well to stop pretending they're operated by the many and start thinking of ways to rein in the power of the few."  Similarly, Weinberger lauds sites (like Wikipedia) that make the discussion part of knowledge- and meaning-making available to all viewers.  Even so, we would do well to remember how much goes on behind the scenes:  As many constraints as the digital third order removes, it still operates within certain boundaries and limitations, and there are still programmers and entrepreneurs and others pulling at least some of the strings.  Take this blog, for instance:  Because I have neither the expertise nor the time to design and program my own website (although I did take a C++ class about a hundred years ago), I am constrained by a very useful but very limiting template that shapes the way I write and present myself and my ideas to you; it is, therefore, shaping the way I make meaning and the way you make meaning of my meaning.

**  For those in this semester's "Rhetorics and Democracies" class, I was thinking about the "public sphere" throughout this book, related especially to questions of "democracy" (raised above), social structures, and collaborative meaning-making.  For those who were in last semester's "Feminist Rhetorical Theories" class, I heard some resonances between our readings last semester and Weinberger's discussions of "gaps" (e.g. "knowledge exists in the connections and in the gaps" [146]) and re-mapping (we can no longer rely on Aristotilian "trees" or other second-order "maps" of the world).

**  A side note about the massive amounts of stuff available on the web, the ease of finding much of this stuff, and how quickly it has become second (first? third?) nature to grab my laptop and search for something I want:  A few weeks ago when I was blogging about being watched by a Van Gogh painting, I wanted to find the poem I wrote about this experience when I was in college.  Even though it's safely tucked away on a piece of paper in a folder in a box somewhere and the only digital copy is on an old computer that wouldn't start up the last time I tried, my automatic reaction was to pull up Google.  This is MY poem, written 7 years ago, never published, never emailed, never uploaded, shared only with my professor and a few peers in a workshop...and yet, somewhere in my subconscious mind I was just sure that if I wanted it, I could find it on the internet.  (Thank goodness I can't, and neither can you or anyone else!)

**  Though I have some critiques and there were places I felt Weinberger could have theorized or problematized further, I really enjoyed reading this book.  Clearly, his audience is not (primarily) academics, and that was refreshing!

Wisdom from the Web: "owning a Mac = getting owned"

I don't like to be manipulated. I try to be wary of the ways that ads and commercials seek to shape my attitudes and choices. But Apple totally has me in its back pocket. I love Macs for their performance, but I have to admit I also love the "metaphysical mystery of cool" (113). Even before reading Nakamura's chapter 3, I had often discussed with my husband the new Apple ads, which began after Nakamura submitted her final manuscript (reference our discussion last week) and which are entirely predicated on the "cool" factor. Some of the ads don't actually say anything about the performance of Macs, but they make other computers look silly, old, uptight, unhip, and boring simply by juxtaposing young, nonchalant, hip-without-trying-too-hard "Mac" against bland, suited, older "PC." After reading Nakamura's discussion of the "'mojo' of blackness" and "Afro-futuristic visual culture" of The Matrix and Apple's iPod ads, I wondered if the "Mac vs PC" commercials would have worked or worked better with an African American playing the role of "Mac." Would this have critiqued whiteness in a similar manner as the Matrix movies? Are white Americans ready enough to align themselves with black "mojo" for the commercial to work? Buying into an idealized (and stereotyped) image of African Americans in order to enjoy a movie is one thing; identifying with and acting upon this identification (to go buy a Mac) is another. (By the way, I am by no means uncritical of this use of race to entertain and sell.)

This issue of identification is interesting to consider in relationship to race and interactivity. I wrote last week about examining the choices we make as we use/browse/manipulate the internet, and Nakamura writes about online communities that are formed by people who identify with one another on the basis of, for example, race (alllooksame.com) and gender/physical condition/life stage (pregnancy websites). How often are our choices as consumers and producers of digitality driven by our identifications? In what ways might this limit and/or increase the subversive potential of the internet? Apple.com encourages identification by asking its viewers, "Which Mac are you?" and by claiming, "Leopard has over 300 amazing new features. But most impressive, it just works the way you want it to" (italics added). But what if this backfires: What if the viewer doesn't identify? (keep reading)

When I couldn't get all the ads to play on the Apple website, a quick YouTube search revealed not only many of the original (pirated) commercials but also numerous spoofs, including one shown on David Letterman. Most interesting, in light of Nakamura's chapter 5 on the "Asian or Gay?" controversy, is a spoof entitled "Mac vs PC Parody: The Unspoken Message." (The beauty of this medium is that I don't have to explain it: Just click the link and watch it!) The poster, maddoxaom, explains, "I feel like I have to be gay to own one." The first few responses are fascinating, with such comments as: "iGay" from AcePilot101; "owning a Mac = getting owned" from noisecape; and a thread about Australian, Japanese, and American computers, which I couldn't follow. The most recent post (which is, minutes later, no longer the most recent) attempts to engage the parody on a more critical level as well as on a technical production level:

I own 6 PC's and 9 Mac's and just cannot find any humor or wits in this clip.

Is 'GAY'(hihihih, uptight, hihihi)still a topic for grown-up's? (hihihi 'GAY' hihihi)
Is it a topic still supposed of being capable to carry a funny plot? (hihihi 'GAY' hihihi)
Have I overlooked essentials?
Lousy below the line production, not less, not more, weak command of text. 10/5 on boredom. (hihihi 'GAY' hihihihi)

These parodies and resulting comments are producing, as Nakamura calls for, but what are they producing? And what are they reproducing? Are they producing openings for subverting the dominant consumer model of "cool" or are they reproducing other dominant systems of oppression (such as homophobia)? If I had more time and space, I would talk more about Kenneth Burke's definitions of identification, as well as Krista Ratcliffe's call for disidentification and non-identification as spaces in which to engage difference and practice genuine cross-cultural communication (Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness).

I think, by the way, that Apple is doing some of the "reenvisioning of what constitutes a 'major life activity' or salient 'information'" (182) that Nakamura suggests after outlining the Pew Foundation study that said minorities engage primarily in "Fun" activities. Several of the "Mac vs PC" ads juxtapose highly visual, highly social iLife activities—iChat, iPhoto, iMovie, etc.—against the business functions of Windows.

Sunny snow day

This was more fun than my last experiment, at least once I took the pressure off myself to create a self-portrait that portrayed the essence (whatever that is) of my being.  I took the background picture from my back deck on our snow day last Wednesday; the little girl is me at age 2; and the other picture was taken this summer in the spot where Luke proposed 6 years earlier.  Obviously, I used the gradient tool, but here's what I'm most proud of (and wasted the most time on):  I wanted some "snowflakes" in front of the little girl, so after trying a bunch of other methods, I simply "erased" them (at medium opacity)!  It's not perfect, but it's my crowning achievement of a long evening of PS play.

"Cyber-rape?"

First of all, I second Sarah Etlinger's assessment of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet so far:  intriguing introduction, disappointing first chapter, redeeming second chapter.  Now on to some of Nakamura's ideas that got me thinking....

The J. Lo stuff in the Introduction was both compelling and difficult for me to read.  I haven't seen the "If You Had My Love" music video, but the descriptions and stills make it pretty clear what's going on.  I was angry with Lopez for pandering to the male gendered gaze (she is not alone, of course, as this is the modus operandi of nearly all female celebrities, singers, dancers, etc. regardless of the medium), and I wished Nakamura had problematized the production/producer aspect of the video (who generated the idea? who was the visual designer? who directed, produced, costumed?).  (She does mention that "it is really the invisible interface designer whose work conditions the limits and possibilities of interactivity in this case" [19].)

But here's where I really got interested:  "The pleasure of the interface lies partly in its power to control movement between genres and partly in the way that it introduces musical genres that audiences may not have even known existed" (25-26).  Actually, my mind took off after "power to control movement" and went in a different direction from the rest of the sentence.  Due to the interactivity of the simulated interface portrayed in the music video, and of actual websites, the user literally controls the movement of the objects in/of/on the site -- in this case, the object is Jennifer Lopez.  With simple clicks of the mouse, the viewer "makes" Lopez dance, in the style of his choice; he "makes" her undress, shower, etc. in front of him (or he could -- I don't know if these "selections" are shown on the video); he is allowed "multiple points of entry into her digital image" (19); he can replay particular parts of her performance over and over, at any time, at his whim.  Thus, in a sense, he "controls" this Latina.  I couldn't help but write at the bottom of page 25: "cyber-rape?"  Nakamura says, "The interface lets you 'have' Jennifer Lopez in a variety of ethnic and racialized modes by clicking on one of many links" (28).

You might argue that the viewer and his "object" are not operating on the same plane:  He is not actually controlling her because he sits as a physical presence in his darkened office, and she exists (as far as he is concerned) only as pixels on a computer screen.  But as Nakamura writes, "In the case of the video, the cursor functions as a visual proxy that in this case stands in for the viewer; it is itself a kind of avatar..." (26).  Thus through the cursor, the viewer enters the digital plane and joins Lopez there, but though they "exist" together, she is still the object and he the subject with the power.  His control is limited, of course, by what has been programmed into the website:  He cannot see more than she has chosen to show him.  But this brings me back to my earlier questions of who is really calling the shots behind the production of the website/video?  Not only do I suspect the involvement of male producers and directors, but, as Nakamura points out elsewhere in the book, commercial pursuits are always at the mercy of the consumer.

Nakamura gives us another example of the user's power by way of the cursor in Chapter 2's discussion of alllooksame.com:  "The site also shows that racial codes come from the user as well as the interface or content of the site itself.  The site exposes the user's participation in this construction; it shows how individual acts of viewing and 'typing' or clicking create race just as surely as do large institutions such as schools, medical establishments, and the law" (83-84).  Earlier on page 83, she refers to "interactive self-reflexivity."  I'm not sure that I agree with her that "alllooksame.com produces a community based on a shared act of interactive self-reflexivity," but I am intrigued by this concept.  Does the internet encourage us to be self-reflexive?  Other than remembering to delete cookies and browser cache every once in a while, and perhaps going to the "click here every day to end breast cancer" websites, do we think critically about our choices to click or not click, and what the implications of these choices may be?  Even though the entire premise of the internet is networking, how many of us consider surfing and interacting with websites to be an intensely personal activity?  How many of us get angry when confronted with the fact that many sites track our clicks, implant cookies on our machines to recognize us and record our movements, and seem to learn our tastes and interests (I don't know about you, but Amazon's "Recommended for You" creeps me out with its accuracy)?  More importantly, what world is constructed by the choices we make with our mouse?  Anne asked us the first day of class, "What kind of world do you want to live in?"  Do the ways you interact with/in digitality help move the world toward or away from your imagined ideal future?

Less than average

I took the test at alllooksame.com.  I got a 5.  Out of 18.

Semiology and Propaganda

I chose to write about this image for two reasons:  (1) I hate to be manipulated so I like to analyze advertisements and commercials; and (2) I'm fascinated by my response to this poster versus the expected and probable response from its intended audience (which I assume to be Chinese people, particularly Chinese youth).  This analysis will be brief and very incomplete.  (See previous post for an interesting reaction to something else in Visual Methodologies.)

Following are a few signs, along with what they seem to signify "in themselves," how they relate to other signs "in themselves," their connections to wider systems of meaning (from codes to ideologies), and what they say about ideology and mythology (98).  I will address both what they represent to me and might represent to their intended audience.

(I have to admit that I cheated a little bit.  I noticed the title of the image file, so I searched Lei Feng and found a Wikipedia entry with the exact same image and a translation of the Chinese characters as, "Follow the examples of Comrade Lei-Feng" or "Learn from Comrade Lei Feng.")

 

Doves (?) and Gun - These seem to me to be in stark contrast with one another.  In my cultural understanding, doves (if that is what they are) symbolize peace and even carry a religious connotation (the Holy Spirit descending like a dove at Jesus' baptism).  Therefore, it is anachronous in my Western discourse to see doves and a machine gun (which I equate with violence and ugly death) pictured together.  But in China's militaristic, nationalistic, socialistic culture, it may not be unusual to equate the two.  Guns in China may signify peace, pride, and duty to one's country (a devotee of Chairman Mao, Lei Feng joined the Communist youth corps and later the People's Liberation Army, before his death at age 22).  Or, perhaps this is precisely what this propaganda poster is attempting to do: "transfer" the viewer's association of peace from the dove to the gun, and from the gun to the military, the government, and even Mao himself.  As Rose writes, "[I]n that process of making meaning, the viewer is also made in specific, ideological ways" (99).

National Emblem and red color - This one's pretty obvious.  No subtlety here.  This signifier doesn't give us the kind of interpretive "creative freedom" (99) that some of the others do, but rather seems to be an appellation (100), a "hey - I'm talkin' to you!"  And that "you" is definitely not me.

Great Wall - This seems to be a good example of Barthes's notion of mythology.  The first level of the sign is meaning at the denotive level: " 'In meaning...the meaning is already complete, it postulates a kind of knowledge, a past, a memory, a comparative order of facts, ideas, decisions' " (97).  For someone living in China, an image of the Great Wall would certainly come with all of the above.  But I imagine that it has also become something more, something bigger than the accumulation of history, facts, etc.  " 'When it becomes form, the meaning leaves contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates'....  The meaning is put at a distance, and what fills the gap is signification." (97).  The Great Wall is, therefore, a sign of Chinese superiority, national pride, and security (even though most tactics of modern warfare wouldn't be daunted in the slightest by a big wall).

Face - Obviously, this is a young, healthy, attractive (?) male, a symbol of the virility, strength, and future of the empire (even though he's dead).  His facial expression might be perceived by a Chinese person as determined, resolved, thoughtful, and - back to the doves/gun discussion - peaceful.  That isn't necessarily my reaction, but again, that's my culture/discourse coming through.  And to be perfectly honest, I'm predisposed against interpreting his expression in a positive light by the insignia, the gun, and the assumption that this is "communist propaganda."

Then again, are advertisements really anything other than propaganda?

The Painting Is Watching You

While reading the Rembrandt review by Adrian Searle (36-38) -- which ended, "Standing in this room I realised that you can't review Rembrandt.  Rembrandt reviews you." -- I was reminded of an experience I had in the very same museum (The National Gallery in London) about two years after this review was written in 1999.

One of the very first paintings I saw upon entering was one of Van Gogh's sunflowers (if I remember correctly).  Like all the other "good eye" critics around me, I stopped and contemplated it thoughtfully with my chin resting on my hand.  Then I moved on.  Several hours later, my friend and I finally made it through to the last room, a special temporary exhibit on how we look at art.  It had diagrams, for example, that traced the eye movement of a viewer looking at a painting: what drew the eye first? was there a pattern to how it jumped around the painting?

But the most interesting -- and creepy -- exhibit showed a copy of the Van Gogh painting I had been looking at earlier, but this time it was displayed next to a television monitor, on which people were looking intently at me -- or rather, at a painting of a sunflower!  That's right, the museum had mounted a tiny concealed camera in the frame of the painting, producing a "painting's-eye-view" of its audience.  I was absolutely transfixed by the concept of the painting looking back at us.  I stood there chuckling to myself over the guy picking his nose, the puzzled faces of the less "sophisticated" museum goers, and the scads of copy-cat High Art connoisseurs with their heads slightly tilted and their eyes glazing over.

I actually wrote a poem about this experience (from the perspective of the painting), but thankfully it's buried deep in some college file.

The Red Wheelbarrow

I was going for a reinterpretation William Carlos Williams' iconic poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow," using this photograph of a woman in Indonesia (with a red wheelbarrow) and a boy from Rwanda (with non-white chickens). I had to start over a couple times and got thoroughly frustrated, so what I ended up with is not what I had envisioned, but that's part of the process, right? If I have time, I'll play with it some more, but several hours is more than enough for now.

Since you probably can't read the text, here's the poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The Rwandan boy comes from the blog of photographer Adam Bacher, called Bacher's Blog. The boy holding the chickens is Jean Claude. Here is the original image:

The Indonesian woman with the corn (which, says Bacher, was what the chickens were fed after this picture was taken), came from a 2005 USAID story. The photographer is C. Gredler.



What are the copyright laws on photos posted on one internet site and used on another? Is this considered "private use"? I'm certainly not making any money off these photos, but I am displaying them to the public, a public that could just as easily find them on the original websites, as I did. Interesting.

Grrrrrr...

I'm incredibly frustrated with Photoshop right now.  Just thought you all should know.

E-Trash

As I was driving home from class on Thursday, I heard the beginning of a program on "High Tech Trash" -- exactly what Anne was talking about in class (children in third world countries salvaging tiny bits of gold from garbage dumps full of computers, etc.).  If you're interested, you can listen to a podcast of Here on Earth from Wisconsin Public Radio or check out the story and pictures in January's National Geographic.