Lecture 6 - 18.02.13

READING IMAGES in a Tech Savvy Society

What is visual literacy? - Being able to read images and make sense of what we see.

Run Lola Run (1998) looks at 3 alternative endings.

READING IMAGES. READING CULTURES:

People nowadays are all equipped with gadgets that allow us to photograph and document all that we see around us. When we go to museums, rather than watching the image, we are more concerned about taking photo of that as proof that we were there. Thus the value of the image is lost, and the orginality also destroyed by the camera.

The crowd around the Mona Lisa

What counts as reality may be very blur. Example - The clown fish is now only known as memo. (In terms of reading narrative language used to describe images)

The cottingley fairies, 1917 - manipulation of photography - the images are actually fake and not authentic (New Media). 

How does technology shape the way we see images? Who sees it and who is authorized to see?

Technology can be viewed as an activity that changes culture. Technology is situated in different contexts.

It is only about power in the social, cultural, political, economic aspects.

Issues of age, wealth, race, education, region. gender etc are the different factors to be considered.

Idea of new technology - everyone asks about what the new technology will do? instead of what it will undo. Who are thw winners and losers in this new technology?

WAYS OF SEEING, WAYS OF BEING:

The role of Facebook, how information is disseminated today, the idea of communities.

New media and cyber culture transforms certain aspects of life and the way people think and act.

"Disasters lie in wait for writers on new media". Ideas are written, but become outdated very soon and does not remain new. This is because of the rapid pace of new ideas coming up everyday. So, what is NEW media?

Cyberspace as a disruptive technology.

William Gibson says "The future's already here. Its just not evenly distributed" (idea of privilege and access) 

Does Virtual space recreates the same dominant (powerful) ideas or creates a different idea?

Cao Fei - her work reflects a world in which cultures have been mixed and diverged as result of rapid evolution. Online is more intense than the real world.

Lynn Hershman, Lorna (1970) - First video work to release on laser disks - Ideas of identity in consumerism, capitalism - Idea of privacy - Relationship between real and virtual world .

We are not shocked by what we see. Every view is obsolete because new views come up. So what now? is what we often ask.

T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death - what do we hope to achieve when we are looking at pictures.

Do we have the patience to just stare at any image for 10 minutes?
I have realized from observing people around me, that the public is like a child. They do not have a large attention span of staring at an image which they pass by. One glance is good enough to register in their minds and they move on. Images are hence manipulated in a way to catch the audience's attention. If they like any image, they photograph it in their smartphones or cameras and move on. Nobody has the want to just stare at an image for 10 minutes and appreciate the beauty of it/ understand the meaning behind it. The value of artworks & images have changed by the years and have been viewed by the audience differently in modern day.