Reality Aesthetics

Can art truthfully represent reality? As a young photographer, I often grappled with that question. I always believed photographs said something; the photographer cuts away unnecessary details and emphasises others to emphasise something aesthetically, symbolically, to communicate the image, its subjects, the context, mood, message, the meaning. I was trying to speak through my camera lens, to say something about the world, to get at some truth. But, what truth is there in the highly selective expression of photography? There is the understanding, that although the image represents a mere two dimensional fraction of the world in time and space, what presents itself on the emulsion truly existed and was there to be documented. It legitimates the photograph. Some of the most official representations of reality are in photographic form, such as passport photos. Undercover police rely on photographic evidence of consorting and offending criminals. They are accepted as accurately presenting a truth.
I wanted to present abstract truths, esoteric statements about culture, life, being, and nothingness. These things exist. They exist in the spaces we fill, the interactions between us, the structures we build. There is physical being, and there is the understood being. The physical is there to be observed, recorded. What we understand of these experiences is to be interpreted whether by the naked eye, the words we use to describe it, or the photograph that tells you what it wants you to know. The photograph also demands we be the modern scripter, to make of it what we see, bring to it our own set of mimes.
Why the artful presentation of knowledge? What purpose does it serve if the message is received differently by each observer? The dramatic commentaries on the world, idealised expressions, allow for our existential appraisal of its meaning; this is why I see myself come to life in the protagonist of my favourite novels. A good photograph will at the same time present an argument forced upon the reader, and also be completely open to the reader’s agency to interpret it (or look away) based on his/her understanding of the world, their beliefs, their rigor in scrutiny.
Becker argues that even the most thorough representations are subject to “selection and reduction.” It is trade off one makes with the tools chosen. As a sociologist, there are many stories to tell. These expressions of social theory are one’s representations of the world. It is limited by academic rigour, acceptable methods of social science research, a sociological language, a sociological imagination. It is nuanced by political, philosophical, or idealistic intent; it persuades the reader to get on board to a train of thought. The reader is free to make of it, and the world it describes, in whatever fashion they choose.
Herein lays the art of sociological writing, the creative craft of working through the medium’s rules, and modes of expression, to represent a social fact. We know no writing will ever convey the full realism of whatever it is describing, but we are empowered by the perspective that a method will give to the subject. It is the limitations of representation which make it art, and give agency to the reader. “No truth, no art.”

Kevin Kelly on the last, and next, 5000 years of the internet

photoBLOGS: Social Reproduction

"the mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value. In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the body image" ~Lacan

Photoblogs idealize the self. To experience, and to regain a record of that experience, a record shared by other participants, legitimates us within that experience. We are rearticulated in a specific place and time, re-presented in a narrative that is not the experience, but is a mere fraction of it. We need to feel real. We need to be witnessed. To be seen, or to be part of a scene.

In our desparate drive for neo-tribalism, we have taken up a technologcal path which brings us closer together. Not for the sake of a global populous, but for the desire to connect with those who share social tendencies. But how do we understand these tendencies, and what brings us together? Take fashion, for example. People who share taste, share social space, or vice versa. The point is, fashion is a language, a representation of one's imagined presentation of self. The fact that there are sub-cultural, class, race, geder based diversities, homogenous in their respective groupings, shows they speak the same language. Our clothes say look at me, this is who i want you to think i am.

Back to the photoblog. It speaks the language of look at me, I'm just like you, and does so somewhat permanently. Your simulation persists, constantly being witnessed, even when you're asleep, or physically absent. It is easy to allow representations act as filler for the large gaps in our lives. Urbanism has torn the trbe apart.... and communication brings it back together.

More thoughts later... need sleep. Dreams of a rarebit fiend....

txtmsgHELL

You feel a nauseating rumble and the telltale buzz on your person. You reach around to grasp the source, and raise the ball and chain to waist level, drop your head in slavish fashion, and peer in inquiry at your cell phone. New Message. Compelled by social structures spawn of the communication age, still so novel and alien, bizarre, that you wonder why you do it, you open the transmission and grudgingly read the contents. I am a modern man, in a democratic society, championing my individual rights, yet I am, by that same token, a man whose agency is limited by the devices that profess to free me.

The telephone may remain unanswered, mail thrown out without so much as a peek inside, yet the "text message" is unavoidable should it reach your portable device. This self-imposing mode of communication is the answer to the technological world's plea of "No Junk Mail, Please!" What a nuisance to receive contract promotions from your service provider, offers to join personal-ads communities, and in extreme cases… the Dear John.

Unwanted communication between those no longer engaged in romantic relationships may no longer be evaded. Truly it is the tool of the scorned woman insatiably seeking answers to trite questions no man could possibly answer and of the aggressive ex-boyfriend relentlessly after reunion, beating a dead horse.

In a post-industrial society, we no longer produce to fill a need. We manufacture the desire, first, in order to generate the product to sate it. Sometimes the products we sell create second order needs that require their own solutions. Marshall McLuhan exclaimed, "The Medium is the Message;" he implies how modern mediums, or vehicles of communication (radio, television, and ultimately, computers, internet, wireless), effect observers by changing the way they interpret and process the world. In essence, communication has become the most effective commodity in perpetuating the economic model we have developed for ourselves. Hence, this tradition of more and more accessible text, while on one hand has opened the floodgates of information transfer and has made our world smaller; it has also attenuated my capacity to be free of unwanted contact with the world. Take, for instance, the case of webcam whores selling their wares in the form of a request for feigned friendship on MySpace, an online imagined community that has become lucrative, of Google-like proportions, as a locus for digital self-promotion (of musicians, circles of friends, and other types of cohort).

I have no qualms with the technology; believe me, I have been among the rest of you pioneers, employing the convenience of cell phones, PDAs, iPODs, and alas texting too. However, I fear what its implications will be on the literate world. Can the signs and symbols of our time (J, LOL, BRB) usher us in the right direction? You must have noticed the deterioration of the formal letter-writing style in your daily emails. Is wordsmithing a dying methodology of only novelists and pedant academics? Is there a prosperous future awaiting us when we know only to express ourselves with such onomatopoeias as "MUAH (kiss)" and oratory spacers such as the word like? It doesn't help that these new tools of document dissemination have input methodologies that discourage free speech, in that they make it very difficult to express oneself with full sentences, proper grammar, and devoid of abbreviations. Why is it the skill of Conrad Black with the English language that is lauded as exceptional rather than expected to be common place. "Hello," since the invention of the telephone, has been a greeting, when it once was an expression of puzzlement. Not surprisingly, the telephone is also a vehicle for spineless slithering solicitors to enter your home.

People make sense of their experiences in their respective worlds by using their cultural tradition as a filter. This culture is made up of signs, symbols, and hence words, sentences, speech, script, the documents of our lives are the "decoder rings" of our everyday lives. Documents are now all things that have the capacity to speak to you (Weinberger): a Word file, a receipt, even a text message; no longer an ink-on-paper piece of evidence. Should we really move away from a reliance on the great texts of western society? This notion would make Allan Bloom turn in his grave. We came from an oral society, and seem to be moving again towards a new orality (Barthes). Text is becoming so informal now that it will soon be as ephemeral as speech. We have already begun writing as colloquially as we speak.

I urge you to take caution. Please text thoughtfully. Send a sonnet, dispatch a dissertation. It is all too easy to reduce your vocabulary to a cache akin to street thugs, don't allow the technology to rob you of your agency. Your freedom to make sense of the world relies on your ability to shed imbedded structures of the new world order.

Multi-Locality

Falling asleep reading about crime and sentencing. Meanwhile, a friend boards a plane to Europe, her Macbook in hand. Another friend saunters into work, alas Mumbai hasn't taken all our call centres.

I wake up on the couch. Textbook across the chest... my surf rock playlist still churning it out; I think it's Death Tube by Dick Dale. Throw open my laptop to find my friend logged into facebook, on layover for an hour (a typical trans-atlantic experience). We exchange pleasantries, chit chat from different timezones; She convinces me she is contacting me from the future. All of a sudden, my other friend pops on, it is 5am mind you. He is on a call with an irrate french customer, and we chat about this and that. I relate to friend (b) what friend (a) is up to. Friend (a) has other mutli-national conversations on the go. All of us, enjoying several different media all the while.

My shaved apedness can't wrap its head around it. Though I understand and accept it. I'm tricked into believing they are just next door, or around the corner. Perhaps this is what the first users of telephones felt.

Living the Hyper-Real

The concept of space has much meaning for most people. There is public and private space. We inhabit spaces shared by others; whether a square, park, mall, or party, the social drive to share space creates feelings of togetherness and community. In private spaces, we enjoy our personal space, social interactions with family, roommates, and friends. Spaces can be locales of identity: Boys Town for a gay identity, Yorkville for an upper class identity, and quite popularly, Jane & Finch espousing a welfare identity and a racialized criminal identity. So space is so far geo-spatial, but space is also virtual. Sometimes representing physical landscapes like Second Life, and sometimes space is articulated in the exchange of communication and media through internet social networks like Facebook.

Are online communities fulfilling our social needs? Facebook allows us to look, to see one another in the ebbs and flows of daily life, with the control of constructing that representation in whatever way we choose. Myspace, once a location of static presentation of self, has become a billboardland for naive artists going pro on page hits, ranging from musicians (Lilly Allen) to porn stars (Tia Tequila). The blogsphere has given voice to millions. Blogs are used to discuss culture in as many ways as there are cultural perspectives to mention; textual cache that adds to the fabric of being. mp3s and music downloads, pirate or legitamate, have changed the way we interact with music. YouTube replaces MTV, iTunes replaces HMV.

Our neo-tribes are globalising. Gaining strength in numbers. Sharing experiences. Closing Gaps. An emerging artist from Toronto transmits to Berlin, Paris, London, Japan in days; goes viral; a band is born. F2M and M2F transformations captured on video diaries, shared experiences normalize, reify.

I want to go out tonight. I log on to Facebook. Check my events. Who's attending? Cool. You go out. Twelve hours later, the experience is logged in a series of images, and news feed items. Photoblogs capture the scene and create a record of who did what, where. Tagged images, comments, wall posts add to the story. Our lives re-presented. Representations inform us on our experience... the nuanced and idealized story. It tells us who we are, what we did, how we feel about it, until the next. There is a auto-feedback loop forming between our lives in the flesh and our lives in the virtual.

How do virtual space and "real" space relate? How does our used of the virtual change the way we represent the self? Do these representations change the way we see ourselves? Is the virtual satisfying some neo-tribal social need? A turn to the Dyonesian? Or to hyperspiritualism? These are a few of the questions this blog seeks to treat. Stay tuned.