Name: Amanda Thai s3656343

 

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services

 

Media Making Blog Posts

Week 9 Photo (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/18/week-9-photo-exit/)

Week 9 Video (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/18/week-9-video-now-arriving-at-narre-warren/)

Week 10 Photo (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/25/week-10-photo-lonely/)

Week 10 Video (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/25/week-10-video-the-door-that-makes-me-late-for-class/)

Week 11 Photo (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/10/02/week-11-photo-hidden/)

Week 11 Video (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/10/09/week-11-video-level-1/)

 

Title of Report: Post Pumpkin Gnocchi

Word Count: 1462

 

Post Pumpkin Gnocchi

I am at dinner at Eating House in Rowville with my high school friends. My pasta arrives, pumpkin gnocchi in one of those large black dishes somewhere between a plate and a bowl. It’s February 2018 and my friends have been encouraging me to get Instagram for years.

            My friends peer over my shoulder as I edit the photo, enhancing the orange colour of the pumpkin.

            ‘Oh, wow,’ they say, ‘that really brings out the pumpkin.’

            They give me the hashtag: #poppinpumpkin.

            I first used Instagram in 2012 and I thought it was a photo-editing app.

            Now I realise 2018 Instagram is a totally different world.

 

~

 

Vintage

It’s Christmas 2014 and my eldest cousin, Kat, hands me a Polaroid camera so I can take a photo of her in front the Christmas tree.

            ‘Stand closer than you think you need to,’ Kat instructs.

 

            It’s Week 9, Semester 2, and I’m using Instagram for the first time since the pumpkin gnocchi and I realise I can’t zoom in. I’m pinching the screen—as smartphones have taught me to—but the image isn’t enlarging.

            So there I am, in an empty media classroom, leaning over desk chairs and Macs trying to take an Instagram photo of a door.

 

            I look for a zoom ring on the Polaroid camera. There is none.

           

            The square format and vignettes were constraints of the Polaroid, limitations that the technology was striving to overcome. In 2018, we have this technology. I’m taking, viewing and distributing these photos and videos from the same device on which I call people.

 

            While we have this impromptu photoshoot, my older uncles and aunties discuss how impractical the Polaroid camera is, how we all have phones, why don’t we use them?

 

            Yet these constraints transcended and became ‘conventions…literally hard wired in camera designs’ (Manovich 2016, p.54). Instead of sports mode and portrait mode, Instagram has simply—vintage. Even in the digital age, we mimic physical qualities of a technology long obsolete , all the while we distribute these “vintage” photos across the globe in milliseconds.

 

            My younger cousin, Paris, wants a photo with me. After I see the Polaroid in her hand, with its natural vignette and classic white border, I ask to take another one for me.

 

            When I edit photos on my phone, I always, without fail, add a vignette or a lens blur—both potential flaws or limitations in the early days of photography.

            To this photo of a door, I intentionally blur two-thirds of the photo.

 

            That Polaroid photo is still stuck to a magnet board on my bedroom wall.

 

            We idealise a past we were never part of. It translates not only to the features of our favourite software, but our idea of what makes a perfect image.

 

~

 

Tactile

I’m down in Cape Paterson with my friends, Sam and Meg. Sam got a Polaroid camera for Christmas and we are walking back from the beach, instant photos pinched between our sandy fingers.

            We pass them around. There is only one copy of every photo.

 

            I’m writing my Week 10 blog post. My phone is open to my student Instagram account, this week’s photo on screen. In a browser tab, that same photo is open, just larger.

            There are potentially infinite copies of my photo.

 

            I’m at Stacks Pancake Bar in Karingal and Sam is back home from the Cook Islands.

            She passes me her iPhone—‘a miniature photo album…passed around the dinner table with friends’ (Palmer 2014, p.248).

 

            I’m on the train home from uni and I’ve just posted my Week 10 photo. Seconds after I uploaded it, my phone buzzes with a like from an old dancing friend.

            I passed my photo to her phone. She, and anyone else on my Instagram from their phone, holds a copy.

            Physical distribution—more instant than an instant camera, but just as tactile.

 

~

 

Artificial Spontaneous

I’m with Sam at the 2017 Melbourne Show and we just bought a massive fairy floss flower.

            ‘Let’s take photos of us eating it!’ she says.

 

            It’s Week 12, I’m late to posting my Week 11 video, and I’m standing at the back entrance of Building 9, waiting for the elevator. My finger is poised above the record button on the Instagram app.

 

            ‘Don’t look at me, look at the fairy floss,’ she says, ‘just eat normally.’

 

            Inside the elevator, I aim my iPhone camera at the open doors and lean over to press the ‘close doors’ button, careful not to disrupt my camera angle.

            I press down and film the doors closing.

 

            Instagram photography and videography is kind of like ballet.  Like ballet, Instagram demands effortlessness. It craves spontaneity and the slice of life yet it must be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, polished.

 

            I press the ‘open doors’ button and the record button simultaneously. Then I stand there, alone in an unmoving elevator, trying to get the video posted.

            Someone calls the elevator up to the fourth floor. I’m stuck here.

            A teacher enters and looks mildly confused why I didn’t exit the elevator.

            I stand there awkwardly and exit with him on the ground floor.

 

            How do you achieve this paradox without preparation or planning? Like ballet, Instagram’s effortlessness is often the product of choreography and practice.

 

            I would love to say that I truly embraced the spontaneity afforded by Instagram, whipping out my phone to video any doors I passed.

            In reality, there was a lot of me seeing a door, seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘perfect moment’, struggling to get my phone out of my bag, waiting impatiently for the app to load and, finally, watching that ‘perfect moment’ disappear before my still-loading Instagram app.

 

I’ve done ballet for thirteen years. Maybe it’ll be another twelve years before I master the artificial spontaneity.

            But by that point, Instagram will be something totally different.

 

~

 

Identifying

‘I’ll post it to my second account,’ Meg says as I show a photo of her attempting the splits.

 

            Instagram affords cross-posting to other platforms with just a flick of a switch. Yet as I linked up my Facebook and Twitter accounts, I realised a fatal flaw in this cross-platform distribution.

 

            I flick to a posed photo taken at the beach.

            ‘Ooh,’ she says, ‘I’ll put that on my main account.’

           

            My identities:

            Instagram—a disembodied project on doors. Facebook—me at school formals and friend catch-ups. Twitter—a book reviewer.

 

            I now I understand why many of my friends have a second account.

 

            The network is centralised (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/07/24/week-2-design-as-a-disease/). We spend all of our time there and hence, we—or our online personas (what’s the difference?)—become centralised too. You make a new online identity and you are making a new account on every single platform.

 

~

 

Thematic

Praise on my writing from workshopping sessions:

            ‘Your piece has a really strong sense of image.’

 

            It’s Week 10 and I’m archiving several impromptu Instagram posts from Week 9 because they didn’t match my theme.

            Goodbye, photo of pink dance studio door with clock and glowing exit sign. Goodbye, photo of brown wooden door with passive aggressive sign.

            It feels wasteful and restrictive. It feels sly.

 

            ‘The sense of colour is so vivid in your piece.’

 

            It’s Week 10 and we’re in class looking at the Instagram account @basebodybabes. I could scroll through their page forever, watching the colours shift.

            I now realise how much work is required to achieve that engagement. It’s not in the hashtags or the captions or the bio. The words don’t matter—it’s all about the visual.

 

            ‘I love the image of these coloured doors/the rain/your five-year-old self.’

 

            I am a writer with a strong sense of image, colour and metaphor. When I write creative nonfiction, I will often manipulate the framing of a piece to better suit an emotional or visual progression. I don’t feel sly reframing the truth in writing, in authoring a cohesive piece.

            Perhaps Instagrammers are writers too.

 

~

 

With Instagram and its affordances, photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in a way that is at times paradoxical and unique to the network-centric era in which we live in.

            Instagram photos and videos are vintage in appearance, with conventions that harken back to instant cameras’ constraints. Thanks to smartphones, they are tactile like Polaroids, yet can be infinitely duplicated. They encourage an effortless spontaneity only achievable through artifice and planning. It demands theme and consistency, not just from the content produced, but the person behind it.

 

            I’m getting dressed up to go play Dungeons & Dragons. I bought a new orange lipstick.

            Maybe I’ll author a photo for Instagram, enhance the orange on my lips.

            I can publish it with the hashtag: #poppinpumpkinlipstick.

            Seconds later—when Instagram distributes this photo to my friends—I’m sure they’ll be proud.

 

_______________________

 

References

Manovich, L 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego.

Palmer, D 2014, “Mobile Media Photography”, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, pp.245-255.

Name: Amanda Thai s3656343

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services

Blog Posts

Week 5 (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/08/15/week-5-jerry-uelsmanns-untitled/)

Week 6 (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/08/22/week-6-the-hills-are-alive/)

Week 7 (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/05/week-7-intimacy-and-instagram/)

Week 8 (http://www.mediafactory.org.au/amanda-thai/2018/09/11/week-8-online-video-and-being-human/)

Review

Word Count: 1065

1. Provide your own definition (in your own words) on ‘photography’ in relation to legacy and online media, by referring to the readings, additional research and the practice analyses completed in your blog.

Photography can be defined as a visual medium that involves the active capture of instants in time and space and preserving them in still images. If life is like a mediation, a photo is the ‘active practice of cutting through the flow of mediation’ (Zylinska 2016, p.13). Ubiquitous both in art and social media (Wells 2015), the image has become an integral communicative device of our culture, one that has evolved through advances in technology. In the age of legacy media, photography was elite and exclusive, open only to those with the training, resources and money to support such a new and experimental medium, one that required bulky equipment and a specialised darkroom for developing. In legacy photography, especially in journalism, the photo had an ‘assumed power of accurate, dispassionate recording’ (Wells 2015, p.14) and was almost omnipotent in how it could capture ‘information beyond that which concerned the photographer’ (Wells 2015, p.17). Plenty stock was placed in its objectivity and impartiality. In the age of online media however, after the disillusionment of modernism, photography also considers the source, purpose and circumstances of a photo, rather than viewing it as representative of absolute truth (Wells 2015). Online photography is democratic (Wells 2015), available to more than just the wealthy. When absolute truth is disregarded, photography allows the world to be viewed from alternate perspectives (Wells 2015).

2. Provide your own definition (in your own words) on ‘video practice’ in relation to legacy and online media, by referring to the readings, additional research and the practice analyses completed in your blog.

Video practice can be defined similar to photography as a medium that captures audio-visual data in a moving image, accompanied by sound. In the era of legacy video practice, film and television were the dominant forms of video, ‘a centralised, one-to-many broadcast medium’ (Sherman 2008, p.161). However, the advent of Sony’s portable video cameras allowed artists and social activists to use video practice as a way to circumvent and challenge the commercialised central narratives and instead allow a wider scope of representation (Horsfield 2006). Legacy video practice was valued for its ‘straight-from-the-scene authenticity’ (Horsfield 2006, p.3), in opposition to the government and corporate controlled television of the time. Still, it was considered ‘alternative media, using television-based technology to record images of their own choosing’ (Horsfield 2006, p.2). However, video practice evolved along with, or perhaps in demand of, new technologies. With smartphones and their ability to record, display and distribute video effortlessly and at no cost, video has become ‘the vernacular form of the era – it is the common and everyday way that people communicate’ (Sherman 2008, p.161). It functions almost like a new visual language as sometimes entire online conversations can be had using only short video clips like GIFs. Video practice has grown to encompass a culture of participation, from the pre-YouTube videoblogging to modern Instagram and Snapchat stories. Interestingly enough, where video practice once rebelled against the corporate and commercial, now, as it becomes more ingrained in our culture, we are witnessing ‘a shift in digital video consumption from amateur to professional, often corporate sponsored, content’ (Berry 2018, p.9), evident in the sponsorship of popular Instagrammers.

3. What differences and similarities did you discover between the way legacy and online photos are authored, published and distributed?

Legacy photography was often authored with extreme care and concern, as film was expensive and the amount of shots available were limited. It was an art reserved for the rich and technologically savvy. Post production editing, like that done by Jerry Uelsmann, was also time-consuming and difficult. In online photography, ‘we take for granted the seemingly unlimited storage aspects for photo and video’ (Berry 2018, p.8) and hence the authoring of online photos requires less care in the actual act of capturing. Even so, the idea of capturing a snapshot of life continues to prevail. Unlike legacy photography, the ubiquity of smartphones and their attached cameras lowers the entry barrier for online photography, allowing a wider variety of authors. In both types, the authoring process is in some way affected by commercial potential, either in a future gallery or Instagram sponsorship.

The avenues for publication of online photography are much wider and more abundant than they were during legacy photography. Legacy photos were often displayed in print, either in books or galleries. Online photos can be published on the very same device that took them through a multitude of apps and platforms.

In terms of distribution, online photography dissolves any delay between them. People can be notified the instant a photo is posted and they can immediately hold a digital copy on their iPhones, as opposed to legacy photos, displayed in galleries that people have to physically transport themselves to.

Though there are many differences between legacy and online photos, one similarity is their intimacy and tactility. Where legacy photography had physical prints and photo albums, the iPhone, with its touchscreen display has reinvented this tactility and has become ‘a miniature photo album that can be passed around the dinner table with friends’ (Palmer 2014, p.248).

4. What differences and similarities did you discover between the way legacy and online videos are authored, published and distributed?

Authoring legacy video required a huge amount of equipment and expertise, elevating the entry barriers significantly. With smartphones, nearly everyone can author online video. However, where legacy video was mostly concerned with subverting the commercial and corporate, now, online video has become a major avenue for sponsorship and native advertising. Both types provide a method for challenging the dominant cultural canons (Horsfield 2006). In terms of editing, where legacy video required designated equipment and often the help of a specialist, the smartphone and its apps afford editing on the same device that took the video.

Like legacy photography, legacy video was often treated like art and hence it was often published through galleries in the form of exhibitions. In online video, because the camera and communication device are combined, videos can be published immediately after being taken and to a variety of platforms.

Legacy video’s gallery exhibitions were often limited to a few months, much like art, and required a viewer to physically transport themselves to a designated place of viewing, or, in the case of films, own a physical copy on bulky VHS or DVD. In online video, distribution is instantaneous and people can view a copy of the video with only a smartphone. Also, due to the vast storage space available today, online videos published can stay on platforms of distribution for years to come, allowing people to discover it years after publication. However, both legacy and online video ‘depend entirely on physical technology both during production, distribution and consumption’ (Berry 2018, p.19). Legacy video required rolls of film, projectors, and galleries but even online videos require hard drives and smartphones.

_______________

References

Horsfield, K 2006, Busting the Tube: A Brief History of Video Art, Video Data Bank, School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Palmer, D 2014, “Mobile Media Photography”, The Routledge Companion to Mobile Media, pp.245-255.

Sherman, T 2008, “Vernacular Video”, Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, pp.161-168.

Wells, L 2015, Photography: A Critical Introduction, 5th ed, Routledge, New York.

Zylinska, J 2016, ‘Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinska’, Photomediations: A Reader, Open Humanities Press, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/photomediations/.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-andfacilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services.

 

Blog Posts

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

 

Annotated Bibliography

Miles, A 2006, ‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’, Australian Screen, vol. 41, pp.66-69.

In this article, Miles identifies the qualities of a blog that differentiate it from other publications, particularly print, and emphasise its role as a ‘post-print literacy.’ He discusses the usefulness of blogs as a teaching tool, ways blogging can be implemented in the classroom, and the resulting benefits.

Miles draws off his own teaching experience using blogs with university students and his general observations of them. His writing is fluid, academic enough to provide rich detail and information on this subject, but colloquial enough to be read by a modern media-oriented audience. The article is organised with subheadings like ‘What is a blog?’ and ‘Teaching Strategies’ for easy signposting and navigation. Majority of the article is written text, with page 68 being devoted to a screenshot of Miles’s own blog, which in itself is text-based.

In terms of the course prompt, relating to the affordances of Instagram, this article provides a solid foundation on the pitfalls and benefits of posting online, such as the care and caution required in creating a piece of media intended for public audience and the ability of a blog to allow exploration of online identity. These are issues no more prevalent than in 2018, when the network is centralised and online image potentially more impactful than real life image. Though this article focuses on blogging, the points he raises are equally applicable to posting on 2018 social media platforms like Instagram. Such points include the sense of community that forms when a group of people post the same kind of media and how this can create an interwoven classroom where communication can thrive and learning is enriched by reading the contributions of others. This is relevant to the prompt as it reflects the benefits that can arise from modern centralised social media bringing together people of similar interests, for example, fan communities around Club Penguin, and how their knowledge grows from the sharing of information within the online community. Miles also highlights how the blog can be a place where writers can ‘express doubt and insecurity’ and be a powerful tool for reflection, both of which are qualities that can be found in modern social media platforms. Though this article is addressed to teachers of media education however, as a student, his information still feels relevant.

One potential limitation to this article’s relevance to my study is its age. Because the article was written twelve years ago, it lacks an awareness of the 2018 social media landscape and hence there are nuances of modern social media, like the ever-growing commercialism, that this article fails to encompass. Additionally, it identifies the internet as ‘decentralized’, which twelve years later, is not quite the case. All data used in this article is qualitative, drawn from Miles’s personal research or experience, and though he provides links to other sites at the end of his article, they don’t appear to be referenced, at least not by name, throughout the article. This article deals primarily with blogs and in particular, the text-based element of them. Though his information on the benefits of posting online is relevant, Instagram is a primarily visual-based platform so these elements are left unaddressed by this article.

 

Miles, A 2012, ‘Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge’, Soft Cinematic Hypertext (Other Literacies), RMIT University, pp.201-208.

In this article, Miles outlines the concept of network literacy, using the well-known concept of print literacy as a framework for understanding. He relates the implicit knowledge of the workings and elements of a book and a library, to implicit knowledge of the inner workings of the network. He goes on to lay a foundation of knowledge on protocols to underpin the interactions between the network and the network-literate.

Like his other article, Miles draws off his personal experiences as an academic in the field of online media, including anecdotes of his academic work day. His writing is accessible and descriptive, with an extended juxtaposition of books/libraries and the network to bring the foreign topic into familiar ground. As the sections of this article are lengthy, Miles prefaces each section with a subheading such as ‘Network Literacy’. At the end of the article, Miles also includes a reference list and a glossary of terms like CiteULike and RSS to ensure readers do not feel alienated or confused.

Regarding the course prompt of the affordances of Instagram and the authoring, publishing and distributing of photos and videos, this article was relevant to the latter part. Miles defines the concept of network literacy as the ability to participate in the network as a peer. This is relevant to Instagram because it helps explain why immersion in all parts of the platform—authoring, publishing and distributing—and hence sound network literacy, is imperative to successful Instagram usage. Another concept Miles uncaps is the idea of consumption as creation which is relevant to the fact that Instagram fulfils the social, entertainment and even business needs, all in one platform. Hence, this article is relevant as it helps to inform the notion that to make ample use of the affordances of Instagram, one must interact with the platform both as a user and a creator, consumer and advertiser. Miles’s observation that in the network, writing is a form of social collaboration is relevant to the authoring of any online media, from fanfictions and book reviews to the photos and videos that characterise Instagram. His point that the centralisation of the network blurs the line between consumer and creator, supported by the observation that publications can be created by weaving together content from disparate locations is also relevant to the authoring of photos and videos. It helps explain how postmodernist media such as the remix and the meme is enabled by the network, explaining why they are such iconic visual mediums in the 2010s, where the network has become more and more centralised. Overall, Miles provides a solid foundation for network literacy and its relevance to the interwoven interactions of modern networks and its platforms like Instagram.

Miles’s analysis of network literacy rings true to the centralised network of 2018, potentially because the article it more recent, only six years old. A potential limitation of this study could be the amount of references. Miles’s reference list includes only three sources, which could potentially suggest a limited scope, considering most of the article is written from personal knowledge and experience.

 

Siapera, E 2013, Understanding New Media, SAGE Publications, London.

In this book, Siapera illuminates the term ‘new media’ and in particular, the attributes afforded by the naming ‘new media’ as opposed to other names such as ‘digital media’ or ‘online media’. Additionally, she analyses how new media interacts with people and society through examination of the work of four authors: McLuhan, Kittler, Stiegler and Castells.

Siapera uses a wide range of sources, referencing four different authors and their works. These are analysed in detail with ample quotes and referencing, with attention drawn to both their strengths and their limitations. The writing can be dense at times, but through it exists a smooth flow between the terms, the theories and the implications. The sections are lengthy, but they are divided with subheadings like ‘Why New Media?’ with sub-subheadings like ‘Digital Media’ (Siapera 2013, p.3)

In terms of this course’s prompt about Instagram, its affordances, and the authoring, publishing and distributing of photos and videos, Siapera’s text is relevant in its discussion of the constant evolution of new media, the externalisation of human memory, and the social implications of the network. Siapera defines new media as constantly evolving and dynamic, which is relevant to the growing affordances of Instagram and how they keep the platform afloat. Another concept Siapera discusses is the externalisation of human memory, how we are beginning to rely on devices controlled by others for this memory. This is relevant to Instagram’s rise to popularity, as photos and videos become the preferred format for the preservation of memory. This concept of human memory stored in external devices helps illuminate the business side of Instagram, as users can manipulate this external memory to form a new persona for their lives or businesses, and even through the following of trends, set an ideal image of what lives we should be living. An interesting concept analysed by Siapera is the idea of the network replacing social organisation and the idea that we are entering a new era in which time and space become less important. To the prompt, this is relevant to the way Instagram adds features or affordances to their platform to become more than just a place to share photos, to become a centre of modern socialisation.

This article is the most recent of all on this bibliography as it was written in 2013 and hence Siapera is able to draw on many other authors and their studies on media. By analysing the etymology of the term ‘new media’, Siapera demonstrates an awareness of the importance of image to the landscape of the network. The analysis of multiple theories and authors situates the text in the dialogue with other studies on new media, and Siapera’s keen analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each theory provide rich and informed context upon which my study of Instagram and new media can sit. However, one potential limitation is the fact that this text doesn’t include many specifics on photos and videos in particular, rather new media as a collective.