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Autobiographical Narratives and Body Art in Digital Media. Digital Media Foundations - MD4004 . Autobiographical documentaries. 2010, by Chico Colvard, exploring a history of abuse that had gone on inside his family, as a child.
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Autobiographical Narratives and Body Art in Digital Media Digital Media Foundations - MD4004
Autobiographical documentaries 2010, by Chico Colvard, exploring a history of abuse that had gone on inside his family, as a child 2011. A personal crisis Kim went through, sparked by an incident during the filming of his previous film, Dream, where the lead actress nearly died by hanging. A 2008 British documentary film directed by Chris Waitt who also starred as the main character and composed some of the music
Selfies: A brief history 2005: The term "selfie" is first used by Richard Krause in a "how-to" photography guide. Feb 2007: A user of the photo-sharing site Flickr creates a group called "selfie shots", defining selfie as: "A photograph of oneself in an arm-extended posture.” June 2010: Apple releases the iPhone 4 featuring a front-facing camera, allows users to frame their self-portraits. Oct 2010: Instagramis launched, reaching more than 100 million active users by April 2012. June 2012 : Selfiejoins the OED's watchlist of words for possible inclusion. Dec 2012: Selfieappears in Time magazine's top buzzwords of 2012. "Selfies are often snapped at odd angles with smartphones and include part of the photographer's arm," Jan 2013: Obamas' daughters, Malia and Sasha, are pictured taking a selfie at their father's presidential inauguration. March 2013: The Daily Mail publishes its first moral panic piece about selfies, headlined: "The craze for pouting pictures I fear my daughters will end up regretting." The writer adds: "It's as though a whole generation has lost the ability to smile naturally.” June 2013: Instagramlaunches the fourth version of its software, the app's new 15-second video feature, Introducing the age of the selfie …
Personal/autobiographical narratives in digital art http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IX6aGvPTZ8I
Individualisation = me-centredness • instrumentalisation of social relationships to personal gain • Worrying flow of private interests (oikos) into public space (ecclesia) and public space of discussion/negotiation (agora). Trivialisation of public space and reduction of citizens to consumers (Bauman 2000). • From close-knit communal forms to me-centred networks (Castells 2001). • Andrew Keen (2007): Uninformed citizenships and narcissistic culture.
Narcissus Georg Pencz, Superbia (Pride) (1539) Caravaggio, Narcissus 1597–1599 Oilon canvas Woman holding a mirror. Attic red-figure pyxis, ca. 430 BC.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, 1919 “when this stage [Primary Narcissism] has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having once been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinder of death.” (Ibid., p. 142) Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1860) How They Met Themselves.
“From that moment our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze at its trivial image on a scrap of metal. A madness, an extraordinary fanaticism took possession of all these new sun-worshippers.” (Baudelaire, 1859, p. 123-124) Cultural Narcissisms A society characterised by a very weak sense of self requiring constant external validation.
Untitled (Blood Sign #1) - Ana Mendieta Performance, 1974 Lyle Ashton Harris (1987-8) Americas (Triptych) [Miss Girl; Kym, Lyle & Crinoline; Miss America], 1987-88 Hannah Wilke (1978-9)
Russian Grand Duchess AnastasiaNikolaevnauses a mirror and a Kodak Brownie boxcamera to take a self-portrait on October1914
Self-reflexivity • New technologies and exploration of new languages • Challenging existing languages • E.g. postmodernism/post-structuralism and challenging reality, objectivity/ objective truths, linearity, authorship, etc… ‘Your attention, as reader, is now completely concentrated on the woman, already for several pages you have been circling around her, I have – no, the author has – been circling around the feminine presence, …’ • Calvino, 1979, p. 21.
Rosalind Kraus on self-reflexivity: ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’ • “[Most] of the video work produced over the very short span of video art’s existence has used the human body as its central instrument. In the case of work on tape this has most often been the body of the artist-practitioner. In the case of video installations it has usually been the body of the responding viewer. And no matter whose body has been selected for the occasion, there is a further condition that is always present. Unlike the other visual arts, video is capable of recording and transmitting at the same time – producing instant feedback”. (Krauss, 1978, p. 181) • E.g. Vito Acconci (1971) Centres http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIZOIoklszI • Vito Acconci (1973) Air Time
Stelarc (1996)Ping Body • During the Ping Body performances, the body's muscles are stimulated not by its internal nervous system but by flow of data. • http:/www.artelectronicmedia.com/document/stelarc-ping-body
Sousveilance HasanElahi says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list. To convince of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. http://elahi.umd.edu/
Works encouraging self-reference… ‘Telepresence’ Telepresence is a key area for young people living and working in the 21st century connecting daily through the use of online chat, skype, video conferencing and other virtual interfaces. People can now transmit, receive and respond through gesture communication, and they can play, dance and chat with friends and colleagues who are thousands of miles away, using these full body/voice interfaces. http://www.bodydataspace.net/what-we-do/telepresenc/
- New activities crossing boundaries between public and private, indicating tastes and practices of users, and deeper structures and dynamics of everyday life • Suggests suspension of traditional forms of government and control, both in the way it is made, and the subject it deals with. • - The internet and places like UBU web constitute potential sites for “new virtual communities and […] an ‘electronic agora’” (Gane and Beer, 2008, p. 78)
Bibliography • Baudelaire, C. (1981 [1859]) ‘The Salon of 1859’. Photography in Print. Vicky Goldberg (ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 123-7. • Bauman, Z. (2001) The Individualised Society. Cambridge: Polity. • Calvino, I. (1979) If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. London: Picador. • Castells, M. (2001) The Internet Galaxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Freud, Sigmund (1919) ‘The Uncanny’, in The Uncanny, Adam Phillips (ed.), David McLintock (trans.), London: Penguin Classics, 2003. • Gane, N and Beer, D. (2008) New Media: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. • Krauss, R. (1978) ‘Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism’, in Video Culture: a Critical Investigation, John Hanhardt (ed.). New York: Visual Studies Workshop Press. • Lasch, C. (1979) Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, New York: WW Norton and Co. • Keen, A. (2007) The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy. Boston and London; Nicholas Brealey.