Evolving Experiences
Rebel Selfies and Utopian Queer Imagery on Social Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dawn Woolley
This paper examines selfies as a space for challenging normative gender and beauty ideals. It will draw on my research into selfie taking practices and participatory research projects around queering the gender binary (Bois of Isolation and #Rebel Selves) to identify methods of producing creative selfies that disrupt normative languages of gender and gesture in selfies, and imagine a new visual language for queer selfies. Research on selfies finds that negative feedback in comments and the currency of likes reinforce and police dominant feminine or masculine beauty ideals. Binary gender ideals can also be reproduced in selfies. For example, Döring et al. revealed that gender stereotypical behaviours found in adverts are repeated in selfies, and that some of the behaviours featured in selfies more frequently than in magazine adverts. Despite these well documented negative impacts, selfies are an important mode of self-presentation. Research on queer selfies has highlighted their role in enhancing visibility, raising awareness of oppression and challenging stereotypes. In research with trans and gender-fluid Tumblr users, Vivienne (2017) found positive comments on selfies helped promote body acceptance and that users viewed trans and gender-fluid selfies as defying industries that promote binary beauty ideals and capitalise on consumer’s insecurities. I suggest creative approaches that enable selfie-takers to avoid the negative aspects of selfie cultures. #Rebel Selves explores creative methods that could be used to challenge normative heteronormative gender expectations in selfies and portraiture and imagine other possible aesthetics through ideas of entanglement, camouflage and parade.
Prompt Culture: Crafting Images with Words
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Eran Fisher, Norma Musih
AI-generated images feature an unprecedented event in the history of image creation: images made with words. From the early days of cave painting to the rise of digital photography, image making has always involved material devices and media. Given the material aspects of image creation, this process entailed considerable experimentation, particularly at the early stages of development, when technology is “new”. For example, early photography was characterized by frenzied experimentations with different substances and devices. AI image generators, however, bypass this traditional process by inputting text prompts. Image creation through natural language presumably takes out an important element of materiality and craftsmanship from the creative process. We argue, however, that materiality in fact shifts to language, and experimentations with language take center stage. We refer to prompt culture as the discourse, practices, actors, institutions, and devices which are geared towards understanding, defining and refining, training and experimenting with crafting language for Image generators. We focus on three case-studies: 1. Promotional videos of Dall-E (showing a historical trend by which the app encourages users to move from commending to communicating); 2. Social media groups of AI-professionals (following linguistic experimentations in creative industries; and 3. Dedicated AI devices (focusing on Paragraphica, “a context-to-image camera that uses location data and artificial intelligence to visualize a ‘photo’ of a specific place and moment.” Analyzing these sites, we argue that prompt-culture not only creates new images but also a new language through which humans and machines can communicate.
Codeless: The Encoding of Lyrics and Language in Pearl Jam's "No Code"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Sell
In “Image - Music - Text,” Roland Barthes posited that images and text often (or always) work in tandem, but result in differing messages. Proper context and coding of language is required for a reader’s understanding of meaning, but, according to Barthes, photographs have a “special status” as “message[s] without a code.” In this age of artificial intelligence, memes, and the image feed, the pairing of photographs and text is ubiquitous, and within every image we encounter, perception dictates a multitude of codes. In 1996, the rock band Pearl Jam released “No Code,” an album that featured a collage grid of Polaroid images as well as individual Polaroids within its packaging. Each image represented a song on the album, and the backs of the faux Polaroids were littered with text. “No Code” was a precursor to the media cycles and image saturation of contemporary culture and presents a fascinating case study of the combination of language and image in a literal compact package. My paper utilizes Barthe’s theories as well as those of Jacques Lacan and C.S. Peirce to dissect the pairing of text and image within “No Code” and the greater relationship between song lyrics and photography throughout music history.
