Chapters 5 and 6

In Chapter 5, Sturken and Cartwright examine copying and reproducing images. One particularly relevant topic in today's society is the one addressed toward the end of the chapter: digital modification of images. This issue addresses the question raised in class last week, "what constitutes a 'real' image?" When images are manipulated for seemingly benign purposes (airbrushing or otherwise improving someone's appearance on a photo in an advertisement), it may provoke criticism of creating an unrealistic beauty standard, but it rarely affects world-changing ideologies. However, when images are manipulated for political gain, the effects may be very different.

William J. Mitchel is quoted as saying that digital images should be regarded as "fragments of informatin that circulate in high-speed networks ... and can be received, transformed, and recombined like DNA to produce new intellectual structures having their own dynamics and value" (p. 219). What, then, do we make of the increasingly common instances when digital images are deliberately manipulated for news distribution? The book gives an example of a doctored photograph of the president addressing a group soliders, such that president's audience appears significantly larger than it actually was. While this is a relatively innocuous example of alteration in a source of news, there have been examples of far more mendacious images making the news in the last several years.

A striking example of this phenomenon comes from photographs taken during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The controversy involves multiple photos published by the Reuters news service depicting scenes from the conflict. The controversy began when bloggers first pointed out clear indications on the published photographs of digital manipulation, which can be seen in the image comparison below (the image on the left is altered, the image on the right is the original).


Further research showed that many of the photographs provided by freelance Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj were in fact altered, or staged. This website provides many other examples of "candid" news photo manipulation, including mis-captioning and placed objects. It also demonstrates a series of staged scenes (released in news photographs at different times) where the same woman "finds" her home destroyed by Israeli fire on three different dates, in three different locations.




Thus, although these may indeed be fragments of information that produce "new intelletual structures having their own dynamics and value," they are nevertheless regarded in the specific context of providing what viewers assume is honest, objective information. Thus, we can see that through image alteration, individuals and organizations can go far beyond promoting a political agenda; in fact, they can fully affect the perception of reality by individuals or masses of people.

It is clear that the controversy following these pictures ("Reutersgate") was warranted. After all, how could top photographic editors miss signs of alteration that did not escape internet bloggers? But here, perhaps, we are faced with one of today's realities in reporting news, which is that extreme, sensational news sells better. Therefore, is it possible that signs of alteration were overlooked (unintentionally or purposefully) because they would "sell better" (be more exciting to the public) than reality? Was the photo editor responsible partial in some way to one of the sides in the conflict, and reluctant to critically examine a photo promoting a view he believed in? And most importantly, how easy and frequent are these sorts of alteration in more common, less politicized settings? After all, when a news story is less emotionally charged, bloggers are less likely to examine accompanying photos for signs of alteration or changes.

Chapters 3 and 4

The concepts covered by Sturken and Cartwright in these chapters include power systems that define our perception of images and the images that shape our perceptions, as well as the prevalence of intrusive "gazing" into our daily lives, in the form of surveillance cameras and photographic identification, and its effect on our behavior.

The idea that people's behavior may be regulated by the mere possibility of being observed at any given moment was at the center of Jeremy Bentham's idea for designing a panopticon, a type of prison where inmates could be heard and observed at any time, but could not know whether or not they were being monitored during any given moment. This is a form of the power/knowledge relationship that Foucault writes about; Foucault argues that through photographic surveillance, citizens become "docile bodies of the moern state," participating in the ideologies of society because of a desire to fit in (p.110). The book presents examples of modern surveillance (in the form of CCTV cameras) that can also contribute to this effect on society.

The description of the panopticon brings to mind works by German photographer Andreas Gursky. Among his works are a series of photographs representing urban diversity, which includes several photographs of enormous residential buildings.



In larger versions of these images, you can actually see into many of the apartments whose shades are open. Thus, in a way, Gursky creates an intrusion into people's privacy through the creation of visual imagery (and unlike the surveillance cameras in public places, here, strangers are able to gaze into individual's homes). When I first saw these photographs, I was fascinated by the chance to look into individuals' windows; I felt curious about the variety of ways in which people arranged and decorated identical living spaces. However, the analysis of the power/knowledge concept leads me to wonder how much of my fascination was unconsciously linked to the power of gazing into unsuspecting people's homes.

context

In chapter 2 of Practices of Looking, Sturken and Cartwright talk about the meaning given to images by their viewers, and the role that contexts that work to frame viewers' perceptions. When thinking about shifts in context, one of the first things that comes to mind is an experiment performed by the Washington Post two years ago. In the experiment, Joshua Bell, one of America's greatest violinists, played his $3.5 million violin as a busker in a Washington, DC metro station during morning rush hour. Bell typically plays sold-out concerts where seats can easily cost well over $100. In this experiment, the Washington Post wanted to see how he would be perceived by the public in a completely different context, that of a musician they rush past on their way to work.

Although expectations were not that high, the experimenters were surprised by just how little attention Joshua Bell received from passers-by. Here, context plays a critical role. To quote from the article:

"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."

The article then compares this to the role of context in visual art, by quoting Mark Leithauser, senior curator at the National Gallery:

"Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"

In both cases, context plays a major role in whether people perceive a work or expression of art as being worthy of their attention (although it is also true that while people who pay for concert tickets specifically set aside time to enjoy the music, the passers-by in the metro station were rushing to work). When most people enter an art museum, they put themselves into a mindset where they are ready to perceive Art. This (along with a sometimes hefty entrance fee) means that people will generally perceive such works as Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel or Kazimir Malevich's Black Square in a very different way than they would elsewhere (in an "unframed" context.



































Still, on some level, all this is to be expected. I am on the lookout for other experiments of this sort, dealing with subtler differences in context, visual and otherwise.

a possible theme

I have been thinking all week about a theme for my sub-projects in this class. I've had many ideas, but a lot of them have been either too broad or too specific. I think I've finally settled on something, though: food and cooking.

I've had a long, fond relationship with food preparation, ranging from futzing around in the kitchen at home to being a head cook in my college co-op, where I lead a team that made dinner for 110 co-opers every week in an industrial restaurant-style kitchen. I've also had a number of friends who have worked as cooks in highly-rated restaurants (friends who made me duck confit for breakfast when I was their house guest), who've given me a glimpse into the world of professional cooking. I love working with food and talking about food, and I think it offers a lot of potential as a theme; plus, food preparation and presentation can be very rhetorical (although I think I will wait until later to get into that).

Some of my specific ideas so far:

My avatar will most likely be a chef. I have not yet decided whether he or she will be a classic, white-hat-wearing French chef or a more modern, organic-produce-cooking, creative-fusion-inventing one. I think this depends partially on how narrowly I will align my four sub-projects (will it be the same chef and the same type of cuisine involved in all four projects, or will I address different aspects of cooking in each one? I still need to think about it.)

For the digital remix, I have several ideas with a message. I could make an ad for a specific restaurant, with lots of images of the delicious food that awaits within. I could also make some sort of health education/advisory poster. Or, it could relate to some sort of extreme political food movement, such as militant veganism (conversely, it could be more of a positive food message, such as that of the Slow Food Movement).

For the film, there are also a lot of possible options. One is to do a stright forward cooking show, but that might be less exciting. I could write an action thriller or a mockumentary in which food plays a leading role. Or maybe I could make a series of short commercials for specific food products, or a longer infomercial for some sort of fictional kitchen device.

Finally, the fourth project is the one that seems most clear to me at the moment: I want to construct a restaurant. There are a lot of aesthetic possibilities for this, depending on the direction I want to take. I could make a French café, an American diner, or a fancy fusion restaurant with an open kitchen.