Connotation of Facebook Profile Pic Album / Timeline

Mudit posted a comment in the “Severe” game storytelling post by Brian that got me thinking. Mudit said our profile pics were our avatars. This special nature of those pics justifies having a separate album of just profile photos for each person. The “profile pic” album is a history of our portrayal of ourselves. I can look back and see how I used to be a much bigger douche. I don’t currently consider myself a douche, but countless other people doubtlessly do, and my future selves may as well. The profile pic allows me to reflect on who I was… and through an act of comparison, allows me to understand who I am.

The new Facebook timeline is a stronger version of the same thing.  They’re both potential tools for personal reflection. That is pretty cool.

The denotation of the timeline is a list of dates and associated pictures. The connotation is a reflection of my life and a way to understand who I am, both as a function of my personal history and as a comparison to something (douche) that I no longer am (at least as I understand the term now).

Cultural Analysis & Interpretation of Historical Artifacts

This TED talk explains how an artifact affects our current culture.

Team: Overly Caffeinated

Behold the coffee lid – gateway to hot caffeinated energy for the drinker on-the-go.

Signifier – the text used on the lid serves as an interface between the contents of the cup and eyes of the user (coffee drinker). In this sense, the lid itself (sign) is a specifically formed hunk of plastic that simultaneously maintains temperature within the cup and prevents spilling. It is a seal, separating the contents of the cup from the outside world. It is also an interface, creating a small point of interaction between contents and the outside world for the express purpose of consuming what is inside.

Signified – The lid, as a whole, represents the contents of the cup. The text on the lid itself is representative of its contents. Although this particular lid has no marks on it, labels are present so that the coffee can be marked as decaf or regular. More broadly speaking, the lid represents the fact that the contents of the cup are something that is desirable (due to it’s ability to interface) but that also should be kept contained. The label of it as a “traveller” lid points to the fact that the contents are meant to travel. This speaks to the social context of the consumption of the contents. This is not something that should maintain a high degree of attention (to avoid spills) nor is it something that should always be enjoyed in the same place. The lack of ornament and the general cheapness of construction speaks to an item that is disposable – it serves its purpose briefly, and then can be tossed aside, only to be replaced by another just like it.

Synthesis

Monaco reading (Pg 160)

Using the above concepts, what can we say about ‘an interaction’?

The two traditions of understanding

Barnard claims that there are two intellectual traditions from which stem all understanding [of visual culture]: the “structural tradition” (fairly self-explanatory) and the “hermeneutic tradition” (understanding and meaning as the business of individuals.) I’m wondering if anyone else finds this dichotomy bizarre or troubling in any way. While I certainly won’t argue with Barnard that these may be two of the most fundamental foundations for understanding [visual culture] I feel uneasy accepting these as the only two – especially since hermeneutic seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. After all, some structural interpretation is certainly subjective to personal perspective; but then again, Barnard even specifically cites that there is overlap, methods that inhabit both traditions.

I guess my problem is that he is saying we either understand because of the structures inherent [in visual culture] or because how we as individuals bring our unique perspectives to our perceptions and understanding of cultural norms and artefacts. Now, I’m as much an interpretivist as the next girl, but is Barnard suggesting that there is no discovery way of knowing, no real “Truth” that can be known? Where does Barnard draw the line between “knowing” and “understanding?” Can we truly ever “know” what visual culture means? In that case, as scholars, how do we reconcile the need for a class such as this, for an “understanding” or interaction culture, when there is no real truth?

I don’t have answers for all of these questions, but I think they open the door to some potentially interesting questions…

 

***I forgot to update my post last night, but I realized after completing the second (Cross) reading for this class that I had read the incorrect Barnard for today. By the time I realized this and rectified that reading snafu, I had forgotten about coming and updating my blog post to be more relevant. Sorry!

IC Final Paper – Matt Edwards

Some Like It Hot: Friction in Interaction Design

Abstract: In the field of Human-Computer Interaction, onscreen digital interfaces continue to evolve as a primary means of interacting with digital artifacts. In many ways, however, the development of meaningful and compelling onscreen interactions has been sparse. In this paper, formal qualities of interactions in video games, referred to as “frictions” by Tim Rogers, will first be examined through the lens aesthetic theory for their potential to create a compelling and meaningful interaction. Afterwards, friction’s usefulness outside of the arena of video games will be considered.

Link: http://goo.gl/WYakA

Thanks for your help, everyone!

edit:

if anyone who was linked here from kotaku wants to see my other work, feel free to check it out and comment!

http://www.mattedwardsdesign.com

Thanks!

Etsy Gifts: Round 2

I want to expand on my previous post about Etsy Gifts. I’ve been thinking about this some more and I want to pose the argument that Etsy gifts is a mediocre gift suggestion system because it is based in structuralism, when the best gifts come from a phenomenological understanding of a persons lifeworld or a relationships fusion of horizons.

We’ve explored phenomenology over the course of this semester. Phenomenology as an approach to studying culture“stresses the role of the individual consciousness in understanding. Here understanding is either something that individuals do or something that happens to individuals :either way it is the product of specific, intentional, historically and spatially located individual awareness.” It “principally concerned with the elements of human experience” [1]. Barnard discusses how the interpreter as well as the artist (author) both have intentions. These intentions are the “beliefs, hopes, fears, and desires about the world and its contents an individual has at any one time.” [2]  These intentions are all different for each individual. They change and are dependent on an individual’s context. Each individual also has a lifeworld of their own; a set of horizons which are constructed through an individuals experiences.

Giving a gift is a phenomenological action because it requires the giver to interpret and understand the lifeworld of the gift receiver. This is wrapped in context, interpretation, subjective understanding of a person, and awareness of the other individual. If we related gift giving to Gadamaer’s explain of understanding in a hermeneutic perspective, it is a “mediation, a fusing of the horizons” [2].

Etsy gifts fails to take a phenomenological approach because it does not take into account that the computer doesn’t recognize the lifeworlds of me and Jeff. I am a student he is teacher. It doesn’t consider that he is male (earrings). It does not take into account that toilet paper with Obama’s face on it was not meant for someone who supports Obama. The application removes context from the item being presented, the meaning of a search term (supporting Obama vs not), and the relationship between the giver and receiver of the gift.

We’ve also discussed structuralism. Barnard discusses this in terms of the mind saying that the mind “operates in terms of categories. These categories, sets of distinctions and oppositions form structures. These structures may be used to understand the external world. Consequently, they may also be used to understand the culture that is itself using them. These categories, these structures, are not under the control of individuals. They are a product of mind, or consciousness, but they are not the products of individual minds or consciousness” [2]. Facebook uses these structures and categories to help users construct a profile or online identity of themselves. You can select if you are a part of the population that identifies themselves as a swimmer (or not), singer (or not), shopper (or not), etc.

A friend’s profile consists of terms that create an identity of themselves. What they are interested in or like, what they see as important to share and represent, etc. In a way, the actual creation of this profile is somewhat hermeneutic because they have determined what information is important to share or not. They have selected the language used to describe themselves. However, the profile itself is situated in a structuralist way through the links created by Facebook. Clicking on “swimming” will go to a swimming page which connects everyone in the “I like swimming” category. The same thing happens when an Etsy seller posts an item. They use “tags” to assign labels to each item. These tags categorize and group certain items together

 

It is this profile information that provides Etsy Gifts with the information for the gift recommendations. When Etsy Gifts gives a user recommendation, they use these categories of interests to search for items. Each interest just becomes a word or a phrase, but does not take other pieces of information into context. Barnard stated “These categories, these structures, are not under the control of individuals” but these structures have been created by developers of the Facebook API and the Etsy application. They have completely left out social context, and rather based the recommendations on word or phrases.

So, again, Etsy gifts is a mediocre gift suggestion system because it is based in structuralism, when the best gifts come from a phenomenological understanding of a persons lifeworld or a relationships fusion of horizons.

What improvements could be made to make this gifting application more phenomenological? Take context into consideration. Look not only for key search terms but also at the relationship between the friends, ages, gender, context of the terms (Obama example), etc.

 

—

[1] Dourish, Paul. (2001). Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press.

[2] Barnard, Malcolm. (2001). Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture. New York: Palgrave.

Etsy Gift Ideas and a lack of lifeworlds

Etsy recently launched “Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends“

Etsy.com describes the feature as follows:

“The Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends tool gives shopping for friends and family a new twist by connecting with Facebook to find gift ideas based on their public profile information. When you connect to Facebook using Gift Ideas, Etsy can suggest items to you related to the likes and interests of your Facebook friends.”

Great! I don’t have to work quite as hard coming up with Christmas gift ideas for Jeff! Let’s see what Etsy and Facebook suggested I get him:

Interesting, we have some nice accessories that relate to some class novels and embroidered toilet paper. Would I give any of these things to Jeff as a gift? Most likely not. This has not accomplished the task of making my Christmas shopping list easier to figure out.

Etsy Gifts, Netflix recommendations, Amazon recommendations, or other similar search and recommendation sites, all have a major issue. These features don’t have lifeworlds and can never have the context that we has humans have. These sites are built in a very structuralist way: does the key phrase “Barack Obama” appear in the title of an item on sale? Yes, put it in the results. No, don’t put it in the results. However, building search and recommendation results based on this binary opposition misses a lot of the key contexts. Someone who likes Barack Obama most likely won’t use toilet paper with his face on it — the connotations of that just don’t quite match up to real feelings about Mr. President.

Now as a shopper, I can look at these results and know that I’ve never seen Jeff in dangly earrings and he most likely won’t hang a crocheted Obama tapestry in his office as it would clash with his current decor. Because of my lifeworld and my interpretation of Jeff’s lifeworld, I can make a judgment on the appropriateness of a gift. This falls in line with the phenomenological perspective.

I want to take this one step further: how do we construct the identity of a person through applications like this? Jeff did his part by making a publicly available list of things he likes or is interests him:

This isn’t a holistic view of Jeff, but it is one that he constructed as a way to represent himself. This profile screen shot is only a fragment of Jeff. Etsy.com/gifts takes a fraction of this fragment by only displaying 11 of his many interests listed.

In modernism, the self is seen as static and unified where as in post-modernism the self is fragmented and is continually being constructed through remediation, appropriation, and construction of fragments. Initially, computers were designed for efficiency, and unity but as they become more ubiquitous, they have become “universal media machines” (Manovich) where information is fragmented and we must use them and our knowledge of culture to construct our understandings.

When one constructs an online profile, they pick fragments of who they are and post them online. There is a disconnect between who they are in a profile and who they are in real life. What I see on Etsy.com/gifts for Jeff does not do an accurate job of portraying the Jeff Bardzell that I know. Sharon Turkle wrote :

As we stand on the boundary between the real and the virtual, our experience recalls what the anthropologist Victor Turner termed a liminal moment, a moment of passage when new cultural symbols and meanings can emerge. Liminal moment are times of tension, extreme reactions, and great opportunity.

I don’t feel like etsy.com/gifts is using this liminal moment of self-identify as an opportunity. It isn’t exploiting the possibilities because it is stuck in its code, where ones identity, although initially constructed by themselves on facebook, has been distorted and reduced to a point where it doesn’t really grasp who a person is, what their interests are, or how to shop for them. Etsy.com/gifts doesn’t know that I am Jeff’s student, that I’ve never seen him with dangle earrings, and doesn’t know the connotations of toilet paper with someones face on it. It doesn’t know who Jeff is as a whole, or who I am as a whole, or any of that. Sure, it’s fun to play around with, but it doesn’t accomplish its intended  goal of finding gifts for someone.

Special thanks to Christian Briggs and his i310 material from Fall 2008, I hope I didn’t butcher it too much

Art without a frame!

Joshua Bell!
Born in good ol’ Bloomington, Indiana.
This grammy winning violinist is a world renown artist.

In 2007, The Washington Post arranged a little social experiment – “an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

Here is the gist of it – Bell appeared incognito at the L’Enfant Plaza Metros station and played 6 classical pieces for 43 minutes on a Monday morning at 7:30 am. 1,097 people passed by. 7 people stopped for about a minute to listen to him. 27 people gave him some change which amounted to a grand total of $32.17.

Here is the full article .

If we skim past the usual we’re-too-busy-to-watch-the-sunrise drone, the article makes some very interesting points that I believe are VERY relevant to what we have been talking in the class. Here are a few excerpts. (The article, IMO, is scholarly for a post!)

“IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?”

“Before he began, Bell hadn’t known what to expect. What he does know is that, for some reason, he was nervous.
“It wasn’t exactly stage fright, but there were butterflies,” he says. “I was stressing a little.”
Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?
“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 . . .”
He was, in short, art without a frame.“

The last line in particular struck a chord with me – art without a frame . It is easier to simply brush this off by simply naming the passer-by’s as uncouth or preach about the values of slowing down or adopt a defensive stance about the fact that it was 7:30 am on a Monday morning. I think there lies a much more valuable observation for us to make, specifically in the context of this class.

Is there ever a right frame for art? Can art ever be without a frame? Is art in itself a frame?

Thoughts/comments welcome!

What is Style?

In our class yesterday Jeff was talking about different definitions of style. I thought it would be useful for my paper to go through our book, Barnard’s Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture, to gather different definitions.

Meyer Schapiro defines style as

“constant form – sometimes the constant element, qualities, and expression in art of an individual or group” (Barnard, p. 173)

Barnard himself uses Schapiro’s definition to inform his own definition of style as

“the consistency in the way an individual or group treats the formal elements of art or visual culture” (Barnard, p. 173)

Hebdige, in the chapter on Formalism and Structuralism defines style as

“intentional communication, as homology and a signifying practice” (Barnard, p. 187)

In the chapter on Marxism Hadjinicolaou says that style

“stems from the society which produces it.” He goes on to say that style is “both form and content” and that it “belongs to a class or section of a class” (Barnard, p. 122-123)

Hadjinicolaou then agrees with Antal’s definition of style as

“a specific combination of the elements of subject and form” (Barnard, p. 123)

I think it’s clear that these notions and definitions of style all vary in some way, which makes style a bit hard to clearly define. Are there other definitions of style that might inform my paper?

Further on, Barnard talks about Hadjinicolauo’s definition of visual ideology which I find interesting. Hadjinicolauo defines visual ideology as

“a specific combination of the formal and thematic elements of a practice through which people express the way they relate their lives to the conditions of their existence.” (Barnard, p. 123)