Selection, Compositing, and Memes, Oh MY!

1. Selection, Compositing, and Memes, Oh MY! Or: The Social Importance of Funny Cat Photos

2. Manovich chapter 3 • Moves from properties of computer data (chapter 1), the human/computer interface (chapter 2), into the “layer of technology that runs on top of the interface– application software” (117). • Addresses general commands and techniques common to most software programs and our current digital mindsets • Selection • Compositing • Teleaction (which we’re not really covering)

3. The Logic of Selection • “New Media objects are rarely created completely from scratch; usually they are assembled from ready-made parts. Put differently, in computer culture, authentic creation has been replaced by selection from a menu” (124). • “Now anybody can become a creator by simply providing a new menu, that is, by making a new selection from the total corpus available.” (127). • Our first major project will highlight this fact.

4. Selection Examples • Celebrity fan sites that curate images and videos • Putting together a Facebook or social media profile • This very Powerpoint • Building a character in an RPG video game • Using Dreamweaver to build a web-site template • Your Final Project

5. Cultural Connection • “What was a set of social and economic practices and conventions is now encoded into software itself . . . Although software does not prevent . . . Creating from scratch, its design on every level makes it “natural” to follow a different logic–that of selection (129).

6. Montage versus compositing Montage brings different items together through selection but makes no attempt to blend them. The mix is clearly visible. Manovich argues that this is not the way of new media.

7. compositing Compositing attempts to make the incorporation of different elements as seamless as possible. What is behind this cultural logic of seamless blending? In other words, why does our current culture have a preference for the seamless composite over the montage?

8. Memes • Term coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) • A meme is a unit of social information • Ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another • Like biological genes, memes are subject to natural selection • Some memes fail to propagate while others spread and mutate

9. Pre-Digital memes • Catchphrases from popular television shows • The sense that something has become cliché • Popularly used metaphors, idioms, and symbols

10. Origin of internet memes • Somethingawful.com (1999): some of the first LOLcats • Fark.com (1999) • 4chan.com (2003) • YTMND.com (2003) • All of these were early (and still around) image and file sharing sites frequented by early web adopters. • The site visitors created and shared image macros

11. Annoying facebook girl

12. Philosoraptor

13. Insanity wolf

14. Condescending Wonka

15. Ryan Gossling Meme

16. Variability & modularity & automation • Image is often repeated for well-known memes • Users add own captions that fit (sometimes more cleverly than others) the intended tone of the message • http://www.quickmeme.com/memes/ • Sites exist to create these instead of using Photoshop or an image program • Bold, white, sans-serif font has emerged asthe standard aesthetic.

17. LOLcat: the granddaddy of image macros and propagation • First appear around 2002 in digital form- though funny cat photos have existed since dawn of photography

18. Variation and language LolSpeak 101

19. Motivational posters A typical use of motivational poster sarcasm (left) and a meta-motivational poster (right)

20. FAIL Note how memes will incorporate styles and associations of other memes. (Left) mimics the motivational poster style while (right) mimics the image macro style.

21. Basic operating principles • Funny image (lolcats) • (or) Familiar image • Reference to internet subculture, inside joke, or previous meme • Shock value/offense (see right) • Each selection an attempt to propagate, adapt, or remix to keep meme idea alive and spreading

22. Memes in action • The Rickroll • How to: • Send an email, message, or link to a friend. • Make it sound awesome but do not identify what it is. • Hey Brian, You won’t believe this awesome video I found. So damn cool. Check it out! • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

23. Memes spread beyond internet • Bill O’Reilly Does not Appreciate the Rickroll • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIcx_rxTstc And remix themselves back into other familiar meme forms.

24. Political Memes

25. Immediacy These appeared shortly after Clint Eastwood’s awkward “empty chair seat” address at the Republican National Convention.

26. Immediacy Started appearing minutes after Romney’s “Binders of Women” flub. The domain name of bindersofwomen.com was registered within five minutes.

27. Question • Is this all silly nonsense, or does the popularity and proliferation of meme culture itself say something about our current culture, digital composing, and the transmission of ideas/information?

28. Potential answers • They act as cultural and sub-cultural snapshots of relevance and interest • Due to virality, long standing memes suggest what a mass of people feel is an appropriate, interesting, or relevant way of expressing an idea (no matter how silly) • They effect larger cultural events/boundaries (Rick Astley at the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade) • Memes are us at our most culturally impulsive and networked. Memes are the id of our networked existance.