mouchette.com

This site strikes me as very peculiar and kind of disturbing. The girl seems to be a constructed identity and the site in general seems to be creepily ambiguous. The site also seems to go out of its way to touch on controversial and disturbing subject matter. Something else left ambiguous is the purpose or motivation behind the site. The space for the viewer's interaction with the site through sending e-mails or posting comments seems to be a sort of request for the viewers of the site to try and answer those ambiguities themselves through contemplation as she draws them in.

The biggest question to me is why would a person want to engage with this site? What about it draws people in? The graphics and overall design are very dated and the construction of the site is confusing and difficult in terms of navigation. This again makes me ask what is the creator of this site hoping to achieve? It does not explicitly express much about who Mouchette is, and it does also not cater to the viewer with a user friendly design. Who is the site for? And what is the audience supposed to do or think? What should we be taking away from our time at this site? Perhaps the true content of this site has little to do with Mouchette herself but is in fact these very questions. The various graphics, statements, pages, etc. are merely the medium with which the artist has worked to convey their message.

NY Times Article: "In a Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks"

Here is an interesting article about the popularity of paper textbooks in today's digital age:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/nyregion/20textbooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

My Online Identities

I would say that I have 6 total online identities. I am counting my facebook profile as two because I have different levels of privacy settings for my friends vs. say my parents. Then I have four blogs, one is sort of like a personal diary that I only share with a couple of close friends, one is public on tumblr.com that I use to post images, articles, videos, music, or thoughts that I find interesting and want to come back to later and share with others. Then I have two blogs with more specific purposes, one is for this class and the other is to document my time in Hong Kong. For my Hong Kong blog I have to be very conscious of what side of my identity I show since some of the kids who I babysit for read it. At the same time, I like to post some content that readers like my parents or family friends would be interested in so it's a mix of things that I try to make appropriate for and interesting to all audiences. One benefit is the fact that online identities allow for this type of control. Each one of my online identities represents a different aspect of the full picture that is only seen when interacting with me in real life. The other side of this though presents a risk of online identities: the fact that this sort of constructed facade can be shattered as other sides of your identity might leak through in ways that you don't want. Also sometimes I think that people express aspects of themselves online that they don't want to leak out into real life which could lead to trouble.

Research Topic: Constructing Identity online

• Key quotes (at least five)

-“In sum, the selves that we have are composed of multiple identities and contradictory experiences. In late-modern society, it is almost impossible to have a fully unified, completed and coherent ‘self’; rather, we all tend to have fleeting, multiple and contradictory selves”
(Charles Cheung “Presentations of Self on Personal Homepages”, p45)

-"The cyber space offers the unique opportunity to communicate with one another; thanks to the virtual world it creates. In the world of virtual reality, you can be what you had always wanted to be."

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/visual-art-articles/how-to-establish-a-unique-online-identity-in-the-virtual-world-995452.html#ixzz15R7sUtZZ
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

-"Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant. " (from official Personas website: http://personas.media.mit.edu/ e

-"The distinguishing character or personality of an individual" (one definition of "identity" from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) condition of being oneself or itself, and not another"

• Key Links. Add links to at least 5 good webstites/youtubes that give further information about this topic

http://www.annehelmond.nl/2010/01/21/essay-on-identity-2-0-constructing-identity-with-cultural-software/

http://www.pcmech.com/article/construct-your-online-identity-carefully/

http://www.articlesbase.com/visual-art-articles/how-to-establish-a-unique-online-identity-in-the-virtual-world-995452.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity

http://mashable.com/social-media/

• Key Books and Articles. Make a list of at least 5 books or articles that contain interesting material on the topic. Write one phrase or one sentence comment on what you think of this book or article eg "looks easy to understand", "seems to focus mainly on one digital game, Counter-Strike"

"The Presentation of Self on Personal Homepages: A new phenomenon in the post-traditional age" by Yusuf Kurniawan (http://www.slideshare.net/yusuf_k/presentation-of-self-on-personal-homepages)

"The World Wide Web as Social Hypertext" by Thomas Erickson (http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson/SocialHypertext.html)

"Writing Oneself in Cyberspace" by Daniel Chandler (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/homepgid.html)

"Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web" by Daniel Chandler (http://leahanderst.com/Composition/Personal%20Home%20Pages%20and%20the%20Construction%20of%20Identities%20on%20the%20Web.pdf)

"Essay on Identity 2,0: Constructing identity with cultural software" by Anne Helmond

"Construct Your Online Identity Carefully" by Ryan Passey

"How to Establish a Unique Online Identity in the Virtual World" (http://www.articlesbase.com/visual-art-articles/how-to-establish-a-unique-online-identity-in-the-virtual-world-995452.html)


CASE STUDY: "Personas"
http://www.jazjaz.net/2009/08/personas-art-project-visualize-your-online-identity.html
http://personas.media.mit.edu/
http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/connections/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~azinman/

• Who is the artist/maker of the artwork/website/game?

-Aaron Zinman, with help from Alex Dragulescu, Yannick Assogba and Judith Donath

• What is its name?

-Personas (http://personas.media.mit.edu/)

• When was it produced/released?

-2009 as a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab

• Describe it in detail

-In contrast to many online personas, this one does not give any power to the person being portrayed. Often the act of creating an online identity allows for some level of manipulation by the individual being identified as seen in facebook or many other examples. With “Personas” the only action the individual can take is typing in his or her first and last name and pressing enter. Personas then scans the internet for mentions of this name and sorts through the words associated with each mentioning, classifying these words into different categories like “sports,” “politics,” or “art.” In a sense, “Personas” is a way of using the internet as a mirror or maybe just a way of stepping back to see exactly how the internet sees you (or at least your name). In the end, the users of “Personas” are left with a color coded horizontal bar running across their computer screen displaying a proportioned representation of their online identities.

• For you, what is interesting/unusual/thought-provoking/aesthetically pleasing/puzzling about this artwork/website/game? [you may choose your own adjectives! These are just some suggestions]. Explain in detail.

-For me, this project is both conceptually and visually or aesthetically interesting. Most basically, I think it is great to see a compilation of our various online identities created in this sort of hands off way. Even when the “Personas” generator grabs information pertaining to a different individual by the same name, it seems to add meaning to the project, reminding us that these sorts of confusions can be made by real people running google searches as well. This also begs the question of how much more “you” is one of these quotes that you believe pertains to the real you than one that you feel is about someone else?

Aesthetically speaking, the colors and the overall layout were clearly selected by someone with a design background as they are very pleasing to the eye and complement each other well. As I watched this program generate its visual representation of my own online identity I was mesmerized by the changing colors of the words and segments of the bar. Both the process and the final product were undoubtedly visually stimulating in my opinion.

• What key issue(s) or questions does this artwork/website/game raise? Explain these thoroughly, making use of quotations and paraphrases from your readings, and other examples, as appropriate

What I found so interesting about this project is that it differs from the ideas expressed over and over again in the articles I found about online identity which stressed the concept of manufacturing an identity for yourself. It seems that the "Personas" project draws attention to the problems that might be caused when dealing with online identities by flipping the equation around and instead letting the computer show you how it perceives your online identity and now how you think you can shape it yourself.

This project addresses the troubles with authenticity when it comes to online identities, showing that many of the people identified as being you while generating your Persona are not actually you at all. It reminds us how this same sort of confusion can happen when we are attempting to analyze the identity of another person online. This project is also an excellent illustration of identity convergence, grabbing an assortment of presentations of one person from across the web and mashing them together into one color-coded bar.

Youtube in Regards to Originality and Imitation

Do video sharing sites such as Youtube enhance or worsen creative culture?

About a week ago I wrote an extra blog post about the Youtube based exhibition that the Guggenheim Museum is organizing and the organized awards being given to videos on a similar site called Vimeo just because it was something I was interested in and it seemed relevant to this course. I think that look at these two instances it disrupts the argument of those who believe sites like Youtube worsen creative culture with the absence of "cultural gatekeepers" as clearly structures are being applied to make it so that those still exist.

I agree that Youtube makes it a lot easier for us to waste a lot more time watching mindless crap, but at the same time it makes it a lot easier for more people to publish more things that might turn out to be actually really great. So many times I have talked with friends about sort of "what ifs" for example I've never tried to play the trombone, what if I was given a gift that I've never had the chance to discover and utilize as a brilliant trombone player?

As we discussed in class, before Youtube making a music video to be seen by the masses was extremely difficult and exclusive. This site invites any aspiring musicians, video artists, dancers, commentators, etc. with ease for the opportunity to be discovered by the public. An article on http://abcnews.go.com about young pop star Justin Bieber does an excellent job illustrating how important this can be.

Usher had "Star Search" to launch him out of obscurity at age 13. His new protégé, Justin Bieber, had YouTube. At 12, Bieber was posting homemade videos of himself on YouTube and industry insiders starting taking notice.

"It had a hundred views, then a thousand views, then ten thousand views, so I just kept posting more videos and more videos," Justin, now 15, says in a soft voice. "Eventually, I got found by my manager who flew me to Atlanta to meet Usher."

With "Bieber fever" sweeping the globe it is incredible to remember that this young celeb would be likely be no where without his Youtube account.

Basically, I feel that although the open nature of sites like Youtube leave us with a lot more junk to sort through they also make it possible for many more actually great things to get out there which in the end seems more important and certainly enhances creative culture.

Looking at Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone"

1. How many viewers are estimated to have watched the youtube video?
According to Chris Crocker's youtube page this video has received 34,190,488 views to date and the Wikipedia page on Crocker states that "Within the first 24 hours of its posting, the video had accumulated over 2 million views."

2. How would you rate the video?

• Is it of high quality in technical terms? Is it interesting aesthetically eg camera angles, use of light, the narrative, and so on?

In comparison to video art and film in general I would rate this video quite low in terms of really all of these issues, however looking only at other videos of this genre I would rate this one higher. Though I found it strange that Chris Crocker sits beneath a sheet for his pro-Britney rant I actually found it pretty aesthetically pleasing. It gave the video an interesting yellowish lighting and provided a neutral backdrop. Remembering the response to this video, people had much more to say about the individual who made it than Britney herself even though it's purpose was supposedly to draw attention to the unfair way she has been treated by the media. In addition to the distinctive personality displayed in this video, I wonder if this also has to do with the fact that he has framed his shot quite like a traditional portrait that we are used to seeing in the art world. Personally, I found myself being reminded of a series of portraits by the artist Catherine Opie with a similar background while watching which then prompted me to look at this as a portrait as Crocker in the same way.











“Bo” (1991). Catherine Opie vs. a still from Chris Crocker's "Leave Britney Alone"

• Does it raise interesting socio-cultural issues?

I think that this video certainly raised interesting and important socio-cultural issues, and probably more than it's creator anticipated. Primarily it addressed media attention that is often out of control and overly critical of celebrities that can be quite detrimental to the quality of their lives. But this video also raised issues beyond that like what is going on in contemporary society to make an individual feel so strongly about what is happening to a celebrity figure that he has never even met? Is his obsession just as bad as the media figures and relentless paparazzi? Also I remember much of the discussion surrounding this video having to do with Chris Crocker's effeminate persona. He himself stated in interviews that much of his passion towards Britney has to do with her role as an icon for the gay community who happens to be from the conservative south like himself.

These are all complex issues and it's fascinating to consider that such a low-tech and brief video can touch on all of them but what I think is important to remember regarding this point is that youtube is about much more than the video itself. Many of these issues and the extent to which they were expressed via this video were seen more in the response to the video than the clip itself. What seems so significant about the youtube site is not just that anyone can post their work, but that anyone can view and respond to it. With this site we see a new type of forum for discussion and a way to expose people to numerous things they otherwise might not see. It is this two way street idea that makes youtube as powerful and significant as it is.

3. Do you think it deserved the attention that it reeived from the internet community?
Though in many ways the attention that this video received seems a bit excessive (when you compare it to all of the more "serious" and "important" issues out there that could receive this level of attention instead) but at the same time I think that it is fitting. I suppose the reason that it makes sense is the fact that it received attention in a community not dissimilar to what it is discussing for example shallow pop-culture blogs like Perez Hilton's site. What I mean by this is that within this context of online entertainment, a video like this that is commenting on issues related to online entertainment seems very relevant and therefore deserving of the attention it received.