Networked Media

Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?

The practitioner that was selected this week was Nam June Paik. In the 1960’s, he was one of the very first people to use televisual technologies as an artistic medium, earning him the title ‘father’ of video.

What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?) 

The title is Magnet TV and the link is: https://gagosian.com/artists/nam-june-paik/

With the photo or video, you are examining when was it produced (date)?

Magnet TV was produced in 1965 in New York.

How was the photo or video authored? 

Nam June Paik had a seventeen inch black and white TV set which had an industrial size magnet resting on top of it. This altered the television image due to the magnets interfering with the television’s broadcast signals. The result was the distortion of the broadcast image into an abstract form that changes when the magnet is moved.

This challenged the “notion of the art object as a self-contained entity and established a process of instant feedback, in which the viewer’s actions have a direct effect on the form and meaning of the work.”

Magnet TV anticipated the participatory nature of much contemporary art.

How was the photo or video published? 

The TV set and video were published in his first solo exhibition which is where the altering of the image took place. It’s hard to find if it was published anywhere else as it was something that occurred live and in the exhibition.

With a google search people are able to find a photo of the TV set with the magnet placed on top as well as a video of the alteration of images occurring.

How was the photo or video distributed? 

It was distributed in his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in the 1960’s. However, it is hard to determine whether or not it was distributed or shown in any other exhibitions, this information was hard to come by.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum held an exhibition of Nam June Paik’s work called Global Visionary. It was held from 2012-2013 in Washington. However, I am unable to determine whether or not  Magnet TV was exhibited there.

Nam June Paik: Global Visionary,  Smithsonian American Art Museum, viewed 23 April 2019

<https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/paik>

Nam June Paik, Gagosian, viewed 23 April 2019

<https://gagosian.com/artists/nam-june-paik/>

Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?

The practitioner that was being looked at this week was Henri Cartier- Bresson. He was a French photographer who was considered a master of candid photography. He was one of the first people to develop and master the genre of street photography. He passed away at the age of 94 in 2004.

What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?) 

The title of the photo that I have selected is Children in Seville, Spain, photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1933. “Children Playing in Ruins”. 

The link to the photo:

https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/henri-cartier-bresson/

With the photo or video, you are examining when was it produced (date)?

The photo was produced in 1933 in Seville.

How was the photo or video authored? 

The photo was captured in black and white using a 35mm leica camera. He was known for capturing images that were in the moment and not staging the particular shot. He believed that all edits should be done when the image was made. He did not believe in augmented images where edits had been made by enhanced light, dark room effects and cropping.  For this particular image, Cartier-Bresson painted the shiny parts of his lecia to avoid attention as he wanted the children to remain natural and not act in front of the camera.

How was the photo or video published? 

The photo was published as a gelatin silver print in 1933. The photo was published in many author’s books as a link to the horrors of war. The author Andre Breton, used the photo to illustrate the Spanish Civil War in his book Mad Love in 1937. Cartier-Bresson’s work was also published in many art galleries around the world.

The photo is now available on the internet and can be easily found with a quick search. It’s published on may websites that are stating the facts about who he was and the work he achieved.

I found it difficult to find out if any of his work was published in any newspapers at that time.

How was the photo or video distributed? 

The photo was distributed in many art galleries around the world. The ones that I could find were:

• Museum of Modern Art, New York. “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work,” September 1, 1987–November 1, 1987.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection,” May 25, 1993–July 4, 1993.
• Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland. “The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection,” August 7, 1993–October 2, 1993.
• National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. “The Waking Dream: Photography’s First Century, Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection,” June 19, 1994–September 11, 1994.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “As It Happened: Photographs from the Gilman Paper Company Collection,” May 7, 2002–August 25, 2002.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840–1940,” June 3, 2008–September 1, 2008.

The photograph is also listed on sites like paddle8 and live auctioneers where people are able to purchase the image.

Stulik, D 2013, Silver Gelatin, Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles United States 

<https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/atlas_silver_gelatin.pdf>

The Met, 2010, The Museum of Art, blog, viewed 23 April 2019,

<https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283312>

Assignment 1- Annotated Bibliography
Name: Sofia Peeke S3717940

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services

Blog reflections

Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4

Selected text 1 – Blogs

Word count: 512

Miles, A 2006, ‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’, Australian Screen, vol. 41, pp.66-69.

In this article, Miles explores the use of blogs and how they can be a useful teaching tool for students and teachers. Miles has broken the article up into different sections that each begin with subheadings, starting with ‘what is a blog?’ The article then moves into explaining why a blog should be used, how it is a useful teaching tool for students and teachers, the contribution it can make to media education and the positive benefits of using a blog as a learning tool. This all comes together to explain the point of the article which is how blogs can be used as an effective teaching tool.

Miles provides a useful rationale as to why blogging is beneficial and an effective tool that can be used by students and teachers. He begins the article with his own personal experience, listing his qualifications and thoughts about blogging. He highlights why blogs would be a useful tool and is able to support this by providing reasons such as, that is a place to keep a record of your work, it nurtures peer support and collaboration and it creates a platform where students can participate as creators rather than passive consumers. As Miles moves through the article he mentions how blog posting should be included as a teaching tool as they can allow for engagement in the course, the ideas covered in teaching to be cemented, for ideas to be expanded on outside of the teaching and allows for a sense of community because peers are able to read and reflect on each other’s posts. He concludes his article by saying that he believes blogs would “make a significant contribution to contemporary media education” (2006, p.69). Through Miles’ writing, it is able to be linked directly to the course prompt, “How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?” The definition of blogs and the points he makes are able to applied to social media. Connections between blogs and social media websites are able to be established. Facebook allows people to create a post and write about what they want, it allows for tagging and commenting on posts as well as providing a sense of community as blog posts can.

However, one possible limitation is that this article was written in 2006 and it is now 2019. Over the period of thirteen years since this was written social media has grown and therefore the article does not harness the essence of what social media is today. Additionally, Instagram is mentioned in the course prompt and that is primarily based on photos and images, whereas blogs are solely based on text so that is not included in the article.

This article is relevant as it relates to how a blog post can be a beneficial tool of learning. It has also been written in a way that the points of the article can be applied to Instagram and the course prompt.

Selected text 2 – Affordances 

Word count: 538

Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, 2nd edition, Basic Book, New York. (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter 1 pp. 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp. 81-87; (computers) pp. 177-186).

In this text cognitive psychologist and engineer Donald Norman, introduces his seminal concept of affordances. The article explores the idea of affordances and the four constraints surrounding them. According to Norman “…affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used” (1998, p.9). In order to explain the term affordances, Norman does so by specifically relating to the design of affordances. The text suggests that if there is a fault with an object or if someone is struggling on how to use something then is it the fault of designer and not of the user. Norman explains this by pointing out two case studies and applies his concept to various objects so that we can understand how it influences us with different objects. Norman makes the point that affordances provide strong clues about the operation of something so if something simple needs pictures or to be explained then the design has failed.

In conjunction with the concept of affordances Norman also explains the four constraints that go along with affordances. The four constraints are physical, semantic, cultural and logical. To explain each of these Norman applies them to the case study of a LEGO motorbike which is useful as it is being applied to real-life scenarios to demonstrate the difference between the constraints. He speaks about how the physical constraint do not allow certain parts of the lego to be put in places they’re not meant to go. For semantic, he talks about how you wouldn’t put the head of the driver on backwards because it’s based on our knowledge of the world. For cultural Norman speaks about how people are aware that red is the standard stop colour and each culture has allowed for this knowledge. And for logic Norman explains that by using logic there should be no gaps on the motorbike. The four constraints all work together and can connect to inform the way you use a product and due to the other constraints, people were able to work out logically that there would be no gaps. Norman was able to explain the meaning of constraints through this model and how the participants struggled during this experiment.

While Norman’s version that was published in 1990 called ‘The Psychology of Everyday Things’ did not touch on computer design in this version he does mention it. He touches on the history of computers and their inability to perform as well as the current usage of computers. He also successfully mentions how the concept of affordances does apply to technology despite many wondering if it did in his 1990 version.

In this reading, Norman provides an overview of affordances and does so by introducing the sub-contents of four constraints, with the purpose to provide a new way of thinking. This is relevant to the course as it explains what affordances are in a way that can be understood, provides anecdotes and scenarios that it can be applied to. The understanding of affordances is vital to the course as it is referenced in the course prompt and allows me to understand this term that I had not previously been aware of.

Selected text 3- Social Media

Word count: 502

Siapera, E 2013, Understanding New Media, 2nd edition, SAGE Publications, London, UK, pp. 1-16.

In this book, Siapera’s main point she makes is about ‘new media’. She goes on to explain what it means, how it is to be understood and why it is the best term to be used. Siapera then goes on to state the difference between the terms ‘digital’ and ‘online media’ and why the term ‘new media’ should be used as opposed to them. She explains how ‘online and digital media’ both have limitations in their definition and don’t include other forms of media. ‘New media’ combines these two definitions and they converge into being under the category of ‘new media’. Siapera also looks at four other key theorists: McLuhan, Kittler, Stiegler and Castells and their views on new media. These are broken into four paragraphs about each other and their works highlighting the strengths and limitations about the term, new media.

The text provides a useful rationale in explaining the phrase ‘new media’. Siapera highlights that even though ‘new media’ is the favourable term it still has limitations in its definition. Siapera acknowledges the fact that it can be confusing to understand the difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. However, this allows for attributes of ‘digital’ and ‘online media’ to be included in the definition of ‘new media’ “without limiting or prioritising any single one”. Siapera also mentions that ‘new media’ is constantly evolving and constantly changing. This means that any form of media can be included in the definition of ‘new media’ as long as they are constantly evolving. This is relevant to social media and what is being studied in the course prompt, Instagram as the platform is always changing. Siapera is able to explain her arguments clearly and succinctly and this is further backed up by the work of four key theorists. They all come to similar conclusions about ‘new media’, technology and society. The text clearly explains how ‘online’ and ‘digital media’ come together to provide the definition of ‘new media’, background information, an understanding of the concept and this is then further supported by the work of four other theorists.

A potential limitation of this book is the fact that each theorist have their own section to discuss their views and beliefs but it does not seem vital to the understanding of ‘new media’. While they help aid the point Siapera is trying to convey about ‘new media’ there seems to be some unnecessary background information that is not completely relevant. Additionally, it lacked any specific information on photos and videos which is highly relevant to what is being studied with Instagram being in the course prompt.

This text is relevant as it helps aid my understanding about the concept of ‘new media’ and how it is to be applied to technology and society. This then aids my understanding of ‘new media’ in relation to Instagram and social media.

For some reason, I found this weeks readings harder to understand than the previous ones. But I think I’ve been able to separate in my head the difference between ‘digital media’, ‘online media’ and ‘new media’.

So it is my understanding from reading Siapera’s book Understanding New Media that ‘digital media’focuses more on the logistical side of media and therefore more on the coding of something, like the words being encoded on a kindle. ‘Online media’ refers to the internet and how they connect with other media such as mobile phones. My understanding is that because ‘digital’ and ‘online media’ both have limitations in their definitions that new media was introduced as the new overarching term and ‘online’ and ‘digital media’ would stem from it. As Elaine said in her lecture by calling it new media it allows for ‘digital’ and ‘online media’ to come together instead of being exclusive terms. ‘New media’ is often online and accessible on demand which is relating to ‘online media’. ‘New media’ is often digital and encoded by binary sequence like a digital image which is referring to ‘digital media’.

Another point that Siapera raised was how ‘new media’ is always evolving. When she was talking about ‘online media’ and the immediate access we have to Youtube and websites, which made me think of how far it is developed. Years ago when it was still relatively new, everything took longer to load. There was no such thing as Netflix because it simply couldn’t handle that advancement yet. We are able to download things on demand whereas before you couldn’t do that. I think that would have driven me crazy, not being able to download or stream something straight away. In terms of digital media USB’s can now hold up to a terabyte of information and are a lot faster when downloading information then they were 10 years ago. That is due to the fact that technology is advancing and ‘new media’ is constantly evolving allowing for ‘digital and online media’ to come under the term ‘new media’ today.

I like that these terms have come together and fall under the category of ‘new media’, even though ‘digital’ and ‘online media’ are seperate they still link together and create the term ‘new media’ that we use today.

Affordances, I actually found this really interesting. I’d never come across this term prior to this week and I liked that it made sense to me.

When we were in the tutorial discussing affordances in more detail and in particular, in relation to Instagram – suddenly a whole lot of things made sense. When we were talking about how link sharing is not that easy on Instagram as they want people to stay on the app and not have the traffic leave and go onto another website, I remember thinking huh yeah that does make sense. I was conscious that if you ever clicked on another link in Instagram it would bring that link up in the app but I never really thought about it enough to understand why they would do that. They’ve obviously designed it like that to make money and also make it this privilege for influencers to share links. This then led me to think of Donald Norman’s concept, DOET. Before learning about what this was and affordances, I would never have given the link sharing much thought but now I do find myself critiquing the design of Instagram.

This quote by Norman “When we first see an object we have never seen before, how do we know how to 
use it?” prompted me to think about just that, well how do we know how to use it? There has to be feedback, the design must explain itself, there has to be an “act of communication between the designer and user”, affordances, constraints and also observation. It made me think of the kettle on the front page of the reading, well how would someone who had never seen a kettle before know that it usually is not designed like that. And it’s because of the constraints surrounding the product that you would work out that you can’t use it with the handle. The semantic constraint literally being that you can’t pour the kettle with the handle without it spilling. The constraints inform you on how to use the object.

Instagram quite literally does allow me to post what I want people to see. It affords me to show the kind of content that I want people to see. When Norman talks about “the power of observation” I think that is one of the many things that really influence how I use Instagram and what I let people see.

To begin this blog post I thought it could revolve around the evolution of the Internet.

It’s actually very strange to me to think that once, people didn’t really understand the internet or believed it to be this big, bad and dangerous thing. I’ve grown up surrounded by evolving technology and social media for my whole life. It amazed me to see how over the period of 10 years, the peak market phone changed from a flip-phone, a blackberry, a touch-screen phone and then quite literally a pocket computer. During 2006, the period of time with the old iPods, myspace and msn, I wasn’t really old enough to understand it and I feel like in that period of time was when it was rapidly developing. So to me it’s very weird that my parents didn’t even grow up with it. Something so normal to me was once something people didn’t understand and feared because it was new and not easily accessible. Things that are so easy to do now were not that long ago – like professionally editing a photo.

Now, the internet is everywhere. I don’t think there would be many people who don’t have access to it in some way. Digital media has become so prevalent in our lives. The fact that it is so much cheaper and more accessible makes it a platform that everyone is surprisingly familiar with.

The fact that the Internet is so widespread, accessible and affordable allows for so many people to post freely. It has created a platform for people to make money and in the process of doing so become known as influencers. One of the most well known influencers would be none other than Kylie Jenner – who in the process of posting a snapchat caused Snapchat to lose billions of dollars. Something that is so easy and accessible for her to use was the thing that cost a company billions of dollars. It really does highlight the mass influence she has and the extent of her audience. Without social media, influencers, and therefore the majority of the popularity esteemed by the Kardashians would cease to exist.

Entering the world of blogging was daunting. I’ve never blogged before and the idea of writing down my thoughts and views on topics felt strange as I don’t typically do this even on social media. When Adrian Miles’ article “Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning” mentioned that blogging is not something to be mastered in one class or a week, but instead something to get better at progressively, which is something that I believe in.

One thing I did find interesting in Sabine’s research was how massive the shift from text to image has been. It has obviously changed the way information is conveyed to its audience. I didn’t process how researchers would have had to study images to understand what worked with audiences and the way they should be used. The different approaches to platforms was something that also stood out to me. Each social media platform is slightly different in what they portray. For instance, Instagram is solely about images, where there is only a small space for a caption – yet what will be grabbing the viewer’s eye is the photo. Whereas on Facebook, text is something that can be used a lot more. You still see people posting only with text. I find that people who are not trying to promote anything will usually only use text, whereas companies will focus on an image, meme or video to grab the attention of the reader.

When companies are trying to grab your attention there will be a photo or video taking up the majority of the post to get you to click on the article. For example, news articles will usually have a video at the top of the article so that people do not have to read the article. I think it demonstrates how images and videos have taken over text and people would rather watch a video or photo then read the article.

I find it interesting how prevalent visual images are in our lives now and are a normal way of communication to audiences when it used to be based solely on text with a little image. However, now the image can be the main focus point and only a small amount of text. Over time it has switched.