Assignment 5 – Peer feedback

After my little lenticular and overlay experiment I wanted to see what reaction it might garner. In fact after sleeping on it I decided that the overlays really were not working and If I wanted to add text I could look to a different style of presentation.

I am really excited by the lenticular idea however I hadn’t planned for it so my images are not quite right for the final outcome. Perhaps it should be a simpler portrait which is then over edited rather than a cliché pout?

Overall I think I am going to return to choosing one of my original images but perhaps consider the idea of a rework using the lenticular idea. I just need to think about how I could present it for assessment?

The feedback can be seen here:

https://discuss.oca-student.com/t/c-n-assignment-5/7504

Selfie – How the West became self-obsessed

I purchased this book by Will Storr as it looked like it might add to my research on Selfies.

What a fascinating read, I started dog-earing pages of interest until I realised that I was dog-earing the majority of the book! In short the book chronicles the human self from ancient history to the present day and its connections in time with psychology, economics and culture.

Interestingly it seems that according to this book our Westernised Self can be traced back to the early Greeks and Romans. The closest thing that the Greeks had to heaven was Elysium, invitations to Elysium were based on status and not self worth. They saw themselves as individuals rather than part of a connected whole much as we do today. We are tribal and we have a sense of working towards our own personal goals, there is hierarchy and as Aristotle believed it is natural to be competitive and it is natural to move towards perfection.

In the East however they are moulded from the era of Confucius, the belief being that the superior man has nothing to compete for, he is not boastful but conceals his virtue. The superior man allows for equilibrium and group harmony to exist in perfection. Confucius expected people to do the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do, not for award or praise.

Interestingly the book points out how much of these ancient beginnings are still evident today, and how differently the East and West think about the world around them. The book mentions showing Westerners and Easterners pictures for 3 seconds, the Westerners would look at the main object and only occasionally drift out to the context. The Chinese looked constantly back and forth between object and context. In another study they looked as news reports of mass murderers, the Western press would blame flaws in the killers character whereas the Chinese press focused on contributing external factors.

There is also no word for individualism in the Chinese language, the closet to it would translate to selfishness.

Our Western selves have hero’s and villains, we have happy endings to our stories but in easterner stories known as kishotenketsu you are meant to find harmony in the story and the ending is left open for you to ponder, you have to find the answers for yourself.

I found this difference , an East /West divide interesting. Suicide was another statistic explored and again there is a difference in that suicide in the western world is more about the individual whereas suicide in the Eastern world is to protect others or the group, to bring harmony.

I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am – Charles Horton Cooley (Sociologist)

From the age of 2 we start interacting with others and forming groups, to participate you need a sense of self, you start developing prejudices and biases, you develop hierarchies in your groups.

if others believe we are fancy and great, our looking-glass self interprets that as evidence that we ARE fancy and great. We’re self-conscious. we use clues from out there to tell us who we are in here.

We crave good reputation and feeling good, we are motivated by positive feelings and avoid the negative. We work to earn a living, to satisfy our basic needs of food and shelter but after this we need validation and self-worth. We continually adapt and change depending on the people that surround us or the situations we are in so we are not truly ‘one’ person but a fluid individual.

The Western Self  moved on through the ages, through the Christians struggle with the inner self, Freud and many others all leaving their mark on who we are today. The period of ‘Self-Esteem’ which  meant that no one fails, there were no winners in school races and the dreaded red pen used by teachers was replaced with a more placid green.

The current stage we are in is the age of Perfectionism, we have gone full circle back to out ancient Greeks. We tend to judge people more including ourselves, we are strong yet sensitive at the core. suicide rates are rising as more people fail to achieve their sense or perfect. Money and status are important and consumer consumption may be at the heart of it.

We live in an age of information, it is everywhere; in the shops, on tv, in the papers telling us we can loss weight, have nicer smiles, drive fancy cars, help ourselves to succeed in life… does this all really stem from the Ancient Greeks? Is it really because they believed that being physically beautiful equated to being ethically good and being physically ugly was the same as being bad, the word for this is kalokagathia (Kalos means beautiful, Kai means ‘and’, and agathos means good)?

Well this book has curtained made me understand more about the evolution of our ‘Self’ as well as understanding the differences between the East and West self.

 

 

The Theory of Lacking

Reading around the subject of semiotics I came across a paragraph which was looking at signs in magazines. Images in magazine attempt to show us our future ‘selves’ , we would look better in this, happier if we owned this. It centres around the nation that we are lacking something and we desire to be more perfect selves. A French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that a human child is born into a lack in being, a wanting to be. Throughout that child’s life they attempt to overcome this lack, this apparently stems from when the child was connected to the mother and it lacked nothing. Once the child was born it would continue to replace this feeling of something lacking. Lacan described this by giving an account of early child development.

A child thinks of themselves as an individual between the ages of 6-18 months, at a point known as the ‘mirror stage’. When a child sees themselves in a mirror image, the image in the mirror feels more whole than they themselves feel. The child is narcissistic ; admiring themselves and desiring to be the better more coordinated self in the mirror. once the child realises that they can be an image that can be seen. This theory is supposed to then also explain why we identify with pictures of other people, like magazine images of models. the images represent the better self which we desire to become.

Basically in short this theory of  Lack gives rise to desire.

So when we take selfies  at contorted angles and then edit and filter them are we simply replacing what id lacking in our self-image? Are we striving to ‘be’ desired?

More research papers on Selfies

(Kramer NC, Feurstein M, Kluck JP, Meier Y, Rother M and Winter S (2017) Beware of Selfies: The impact of photo type on impression formation based on social networking profiles) accessed 15.04.18

This article states:

Although producers of selfies typically aim to create a positive impression, selfies may also be regarded as narcissistic and therefore fail to achieve the intended goal.

There is the term narcissistic again! The article considers the selfie as a growing form of self-presentation and self-promotion, they are creating a positive image by expressing happiness or a positive physical appearance.

The distrust in selfie takers presumably comes from the notion that selfies can be manipulated, yet although we perceive them as negative they still generate a high number of likes on social media. Interestingly gender again strikes a difference with male selfie takers rated higher on narcissism and dishonesty than female counterparts.

INSTAFAME

(Instafame:Luxury Selfies in the attention economy: Alice E Marwick) accessed 15.04.2018

https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/27/1%20(75)/137/31071/Instafame-Luxury-Selfies-in-the-Attention-Economy

‘Attention economy’ is an interesting term and  I think in such a visually saturated marketplace and appropriate term.

Instagram is a social platform that relies on images with only a few hashtags attached,

‘value is assigned according to somethings capacity to attract eyeballs’ in a media , information rich world’ (Fairchild 2007)

Gaining likes and followers is a form of consumerism, using self-presentation and self-branding and selling your image to others Anyone can achieve instafame in a similar fashion to many ordinary people who have become YouTube megastars from the comfort of their own home. Likes and shares now act as a social currency and provide social reinforcement.

An except taken from the article:

While self-portraiture in art is not new, its prevalence as a genre of photograph is. José van Dijck (2008: 58) suggests that the primary purpose of analog personal photography was to create memory aids, to remember the way things were. Most snapshots featured people other than the photographer; Amparo Lasén and Edgar Gómez-Cruz (2009) mention a large compilation of one hundred thousand family photos taken during the 1960s, of which fewer than a hundred were self-portraits. Today, however, online, self-portraits are omnipresent. Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that 92 percent of teenagers who use Facebook upload pictures of themselves (Madden et al. 2013). Selfies are so popular with young people that they have become a genre unto themselves, with their own visual conventions and clichés. The “MySpace angle,” for instance, is the practice of taking a selfie from above, which is said to make the subject look thinner. Social media users learn and teach one another canned poses, flattering camera angles, and facial expressions, such as the pursed lips known colloquially as “duckface,” which can be seen throughout photo-sharing sites like Facebook and Instagram. As Ori Schwarz (2010: 165) writes in his study of the Israeli social network Shox, “We are witnessing a shift from photographing others for self-consumption to documentation of the self for consumption by others.” While photographs have always been able to show perspective and identity, we now use them more than ever before to display ourselves (Winston 2013: 4–5).

We only have to scroll briefly on Instagram to see the flattering camera angles and duck face pouts mentioned above,and yet another interesting thought…

“We are witnessing a shift from photographing others for self-consumption to documentation of the self for consumption by others.”(Ori Schwarz (2010: 165)

 

Editorial: Understanding Selfies – Composition

In an Editorial: Understanding Selfies ( Bruno N, Pisanski K, Sorokowska A and Sorokowski P (2018)  it mentions of a data set of selfies posted on Tinder which was exploited by Sedgewick et al to explore their composition.  Whether a selfie shows the face seen from above or below, the results revealed a difference between men and women. 50% of selfies were a neutral frontal view and of the rest men were more than twice as likely to take their selfie from below the face, whereas women preferred taking the image from above, there also appears to be a left cheek bias.

Further studies by others went on to explore the fact that the poses that were preferred were then used consistently,  and they effected the ratings of features such as facial attractiveness, helpfulness, sympathy, dominance, distinctiveness and intelligence.

Kramer et al examined how viewers perceive selfies in comparison to regular portraits, it was discovered that selfie takers were rated as less trust worthy, less socially attractive, less open to new experiences, more narcissistic, more extroverted in comparison to the same individuals when featured in a regular photo.

Interesting how the term narcissistic appears yet again!

Research papers on ‘Selfies’

I set out to find some research conducted around ‘Selfies’ and as expected it appears to be a commonly researched subject. Most of the research or studies focus on the psychology surrounding selfies.

In fact I found one article which relates to photography and art and references the old masters and the Greek gods which i have been considering.

‘Phenomenology for the Selfie’ is an essay by Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness,in it they ask ‘What is a selfie?’ The essay states:

The selfie is framed as the genealogical descendent of the photographic self-portrait and of self portraiture in painting. What is depicted with the frame of the image remains unchanged despite technological change;they are all images of a self (a self-reflexive act of recording ones own image)

The essay goes on to point out that the selfie is different and does bring something new, because of the use of ones own body to contort and hold the camera / phone and the use of mirrors we now see alongside the image of the self , the tools of production. The mirror, the arms the hands and sometimes the phone or camera. It captures the performance of the art and it is the performance that can be more importance than the object.

 

I previously looked at the old masters, specifically painting of Venus or Aphrodite, but this essay gives an example of a selfie by an old master.

This self portrait painting of Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola , known as Parmigianino, shows the use of a mirror, the distortion appears convex as though we are looking at him staring at himself not at us the viewer. His hand at the front of the image is enlarged due to the distortion of the mirror  and the surface is slightly hazy and the window and ceiling in the background are also distorted.

This makes me consider today’s selfies, we often see them taken in front of a mirror, the subject of importance being themselves. In this case there is often no regard for the background if the main focus is of the self, however this changes when the selfie is to show where we are or what we have done in the world such as taking a selfie with the background as the predominant feature.

The essay goes on to explore the theories surrounding narcissism,

Thus, the selfie, as does the mirror, invokes the spectre of narcissism. It requires the self reflective examination of ones own body, in which sensation is distributed outward and reflected back.

Interestingly the name Narcissus comes from the Greek word narcosis, meaning numbness.

‘As though unaware that we are looking at ourselves, we become numb to our self portraits and produce many different versions of ourselves’ (Brooke Wendt 2017:7)

The essay looks to a tragedy in which 304 people died in a ferry that capsized in South Korea in 2014, the sinking of the MV Sewol. Most of the people that died were school students and as the ferry took several hours to sink they took photos and videos sending them to loved ones. These images went on to not only comfort their families but were used to bring charges against those held responsible.

At the time of taking these images, they were selfies of ‘the moment’ but once the moment had passed and the tragedy culminated in their deaths they became documents. Many of the images and videos showed smiling students making peace signs juxtaposed with other students crying in terror. In the videos some of the students seem to suggest that they will be OK. The essay offers an explanation :

Cumiskey and Hjorth explain this disjunction, claiming that these selfies were not about narcissism as obsessive self-love “but about the numbness and misrecognition that trauma can bring with it” following McLuhans understanding of narcissism as a technically informed narcosis….

By focusing on themselves via a selfie, these students were turning the tragedy happening around them into background. making the shock and trauma of it disappear not only for themselves but for the loved ones they knew would eventually receive these photos, messages and videos. they were able to mediate the experience through their mobile devices, perhaps because they were numb from shock, but perhaps owing to a purposeful decision to become numb to avoid said shock, in a way that would also be directed outward to those who would eventually see their videos – not as images of horror, of sadness, or of desperation, but as images that could, perhaps, comfort despite a background that seems as if it could never fully disappear.

Selfies are a form of self amputation, a numbing of feelings, a numbness to aid our existence. A selfie does not show the self, it does not document it, it MAKES the self, It is an invention of our ‘self’.

The full essay can be seen here:

https://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article-abstract/13/2/156/129359/Phenomenology-for-the-Selfie?redirectedFrom=PDF

 

 

Colour Psychology

As I have already considered poses that replicate art and props in the style of Vanitas I thought I should take a look at colour psychology.

The most interesting colour for me to consider is Orange:

Orange is the colour of social communication and optimism. From a negative colour meaning it is also a sign of pessimism and superficiality.

How apt is this definition in fact there were a few colours that I could consider, Red is the colour of passion and determination as well as sexual energy.

Yellow is both optimistic and cowardly and I expected green to represent jealousy yet it actually represents balance and growth? Indigo is another interesting colour as it signifies realistic and addictive behaviour and brown can be a sign of materialism.

Black is also extremely interesting :

Teenagers often have a psychological need to wear black during the stage of transition from the innocence of childhood to the sophistication of adulthood. It signifies the ending of one part of their life and the beginning of another, allowing them to hide from the world while they discover their own unique identity. It is important they go through this stage but a worry when it continues on into adult years if they continue to wear black to the exclusion of other colours.

Black is a secretive colour, we use it to hide things, hence the its use when you want to look a little slimmer!

I think I will see if I can bring in the use of Orange, Indigo and Black to my image, this image is building in my mind’s eye yet I still have not found how or where I can can position furniture to take the image my mind can see!

Vanitas

Whilst considering staging my final image in the style of the old masters I also wanted to consider the props and symbolism I might use, hence looking at mirrors.

Following on from this I wanted to also look at Vanitas and the use of objects to represent something,

From my research on Venus and Aphrodite I discovered the symbolism of the cowry shell, the clam shell, myrtle and doves to name a few but Vanitas painting hold many more symbols, I have marked in bold the items which I could consider as props in my image:

The skull is a reminder that we will all die, it is a reflection of a living being and shows how fragile life is.

Fruits symbolise fertility and wealth whereas rotten fruit signifies ageing , even different fruits have meaning associated to them; figs, plums, cherries, apples or peaches are considered erotic.

Flowers: Rose as we saw before is the flower of Venus and therefore represents love and beauty, it is also linked to vanity. The poppy signifies sin and laziness and the tulip stands for foolish, Myrtle is associated with fertility whist Ivy is a sign of life and birth.

Shells as mentioned previously are signs of sex and lust.

A candle represents the soul and bubbles are signs of sudden death, aka the bubble bursting.

Many Vanitas paintings show cards and dice etc , signs of living a sinful life and vices. Armour is a sign of power and keys signify the power of the wife.

Mirrors obviously are a symbol of vanity and a carnival mask reveals a lack of a person ‘inside’.

A  knife is a reminder of  mortality. It is also a phallic symbol and the image of male sexuality.

Broken dishes,  symbolise death and fragility, white china standing for purity. The pestle & mortar are symbols of male and female sexuality, The bottle is a symbol of sin.

clocks show the passing of time, Hourglass is of vanity and the transience of life.

 

Coin purses, jewellery boxes, jewellery and cosmetics are linked with the vanity, narcissism and the mortal sin of arrogance. They also signal of their owners’ absence.

Crowns and sceptres  are signs domination but Like masks, symbolise the absence of those who wore them.

Selfie’s

Taken from Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie (accessed 12.05.18)

A selfie (/sɛlfiː/)^[1] is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a smartphone which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often shared on social networking services such as Facebook, Instagramand Snapchat. They are for vanity, usually flattering, and are casual in nature (or made to appear casual). “Selfie” typically refers to self-portrait photos taken with the camera held at arm’s length, as opposed to those taken by using a self-timer or remote. A selfie, however, need not include a sole individual. “Selfies” may include multiple subjects as long as the picture is actually being taken by one of the subjects featured in the photo.

 

Posting intentionally unattractive selfies has also become common in the early 2010s—in part for their humor value, but in some cases also to explore issues of body image or as a reaction against the perceived narcissism or over-sexualization of typical selfies.^[46]

The practice of taking selfies has been criticised not only for being narcissistic, preventing assessment and appreciation of what is happening in the present, but also for being mindlessly conformist behaviour, when everyone does what everyone else is doing, “like that scene in The Life of Brian – where the crowd gathers outside Brian’s window and enthusiastically chants in unison: ‘Yes, we’re all individuals! … Yes, we are all different!’ “^[47]

Selfitis

Another event that may have given rise to the term “selfitis” was when Danny Bowman, a 19 year old, attempted suicide after being obsessed with selfies. Reports had shown that he took up to 200 photos of himself every day^[92] The original article also claimed that there were three behavioral levels to the condition selfitis. These were defined as borderline (taking a selfie at least three times a day, but not sharing the selfie on any social media), acute (taking a selfie at least three times a day and sharing to on social media, or chronic (having an uncontrollable urge to take a selfie and sharing those photos on social media at least six times a day).^[90]

The classification of selfitis was found to be a hoax, but did gain commercial popularity and has been empirically studied as a mental disorder. Although there have been studies done on obsessive selfie taking, it is currently not listed as a mental disorder in the DSM-5^[93

Mirrors

Definition of mirror

1: a polished or smooth surface (as of glass) that forms images by reflection 

• She looked at herself in the mirror.

2a : something that gives a true representation

• the press as a mirror of public opinion
•  —C. G. Bowers

b : an exemplary model 

• She is the mirror of feminine beauty.

Interesting that the definition of a mirror is to give a true representation, if we consider that photography should also capture the truth then where does the selfie belong? Even a passport or driving licence photo does not feel like a true reflection of ourselves and the now infamous pouting lips of a selfie does not represent reality.

In ancient times mirrors , and smooth reflective surfaces, were used for divination, magic and repelling evil.they were also feared for their power to steal the soul.

Mirrors have also been used as tools in psychic development to increase clairvoyance and to gain knowledge of past lives.

Magic mirrors have been popular since medevil times, they have been used by magicians, witches and sorcerers. Today when we think of magic mirrors we think of the distorting mirrors used at funfairs.

In many tribal groups the reflection is believed to be the soul. Exposing the soul in a mirror makes the soul vulnerable.

Going back to ancient Greece and the story of Narcissus it is a belief that a person who sees his or her own reflection will soon die. The ancient Greeks also believed that dreaming of seeing ones own reflection was an omen of death. It is a custom to remove mirrors from sick rooms so that the mirror does not draw out the soul of the weakened person.

Mirrors are associated with evil, The plate used to serve the host during mass is said to be reflective so that if there is no reflection then a demon can be spotted, only angels have reflections. Witches and Vampires are also said to have no reflections , Russian folklore suggests they are the creation of the Devil and are used to draw out souls.

strangely mirrors can also protect against evil, reflecting the evil eye and breaking a mirror can lead to seven years of bad luck!

Mirrors used in art are painted in such a way that it is impossible to be a true reflection, this is called the Venus effect. People are led to think they are looking at a person gazing into a mirror but the reflection ‘we’ see is not the one that should exist. The only replicate the experience of looking into a mirror as if we in fact are the subject.