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END OF YEAR ESSAY

INTRODUCTION

In this essay I will be giving you my opinion/ what I have learned over the year about three topics that have peaked my creative thinking. These themes are: Identity (main focus), Cultural Capital and artificial intelligence, destructive technology as a set with AI. These themes are all linked in with identity and how our view is altered towards another human being because of our beliefs and how we have been raised to believe what is ‘wrong’ and what is ‘right’. I have learned about a lot of topics throughout the year and it has all pointed towards how people perceive one’s identity, this then leads on to how a lot people can be confined to a particular way of thinking therefore not allowing any groth in society to happen because the majority of us a narrow minded. Not that there’s anything wrong with that because it keeps everyone in check, which is what the world government wants, hense why there is such a thing as law, fines and rules to keep us from swaying from the stages we believe we need to take to have an ‘okay’ life. I want to also talk about the intensity of technology and how much it has developed over the years therefore impacting our view towards identity within social media and what could possibly happen within that. As technology improved so did the identity pressure within the internet, things such as Instagram, Facebook and twitter. As society grew so did the reputation you had to maintain, looking up to people who are famous, rich and even the royal family. The aim for my final piece to impact questions onto the viewer, to do this I’ll need to add as many subliminal images as possible. I want this discussion to impact not only myself but the people who read it so they can therefore understand the deeper meaning behind my creative process.

IDENTITY

SHARP, R. (2016). Art, Technology and Online Identity. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/11/arts/international/art-technology-and-online-identity.html [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Rob Sharp has taken a very interesting approach within Identity on the internet which really caught my eye. He quoted “I’m trying to make that relationship very explicit, and to ask us how we engage with it,” what he was referring to is the interaction we have with people online and how we perceive them just on our initial judgment.  

Identity is something that has been misinterpreted as technology has advanced, people believe that your identity is something that needs to be compared to other people on social media platforms, this will only make more stress for others because it shows how far/ low people are on social hierarchy pyramid therefore creating diversity and lack of trust. Identity is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is” but that definition is completely altered depending on what direction you apply it to... for example: Identity within social media, what position you are financially, what assets you own, how you present yourself. People have made instant judgment become one of their habits because of the 'tweets’ they have seen online or even heard in real life: “You go the new iPhone?”, “no, I can’t afford it”. As soon as these divides happen then it turns into a form of destructive technology towards their identity, it degrades what people think about your cultural capital then all this brings is negativity within one’s self. ‘It is obvious that identities do not come into being in a vacuum. Nor do they emerge first and then seek out a suitable context for themselves. Thus, societies clearly play an important causal role in creating and shaping identity.’ This is why I want to point your focus towards when the structured civilizations first started, such as the Egyptians, the Persian empire and the Roman empire. All of these civilizations had a form identity to uphold even without social media, so the divide was purely based on who had more cultural capital? As time went on this standard of control keeps order and placement, therefore keeping the divide in society and permanently identity has become a cliché that we believe today is impossible to change. Social media platforms have only made this divide even harder to make pure once again.    

Oxford Dictionaries | English. (2019). identity | Definition of identity in English by Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/identity [Accessed 1 May 2019].

CULTURAL CAPITAL

“Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that people can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence, and thus one's social status or standing in society.” Cultural capital is something that has created a cleaved process in the way we think. The reason why we judge and can form jealously is because everyone has something someone else wants, I believe Cultural Capital makes this very clear for us, especially when you apply it to your position in society. When this happens and you realise what type of cultural capital people lack, you then try your best to improve the position that you are currently in to show you can keep up with the status society expects you to be in, meaning you will never have a sense of achievement until you reach them goals in the social ladder.  

“Rage, Flower Thrower” or “Flower Bomber” by Banksy. (2015). [image] Available at: http://www.blogs.buprojects.uk/2015-2016/rachelrichardson/2015/12/30/rage-flower-thrower-or-flower-bomber-by-banksy/ [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Banksy’s “Flower Bomber” is a great example of the war within Cultural Capital ladder. In 2005 there was a gay parade in Jerusalem, which was attacked by protesters who stabbed three people and injured many more, this image is a response to those events. People think that Banksy made this piece of work to stop violence because he’s never been a fan or war, but others believe he made this to raise the awareness of the energy surrounding it, the internet wasn’t focusing on the stigma within people's views: “gay people are unacceptable”, “religion refuses to accept sinners” they was focusing on the damage it was causing to the topic. If there wasn’t judgment within Cultural capital then there wouldn’t be such a thing as “I’m better than you”.

What I want to bring your focus onto now is the stigma around how people judge one another just because of their objectified state online. The objectified state is one of the three categories that filter down cultural capital, it’s the objects (assets) you own that symbolise where you are in society financially compared to other people. It’s how they can judge you solely off of that notion. I wanted to include this because the objectified state is a form of your identity based off of the cultural capital concept and will play a part in the 3 final pieces that I have made.  

Lisa Cole, N. (2019). All About Cultural Capital. [online] ThoughtCo. Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cultural-capital-do-i-have-it-3026374 [Accessed 15 Jan. 2019].

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Artificial intelligence is software that allows computer science to create intelligent machines that can work and react the same or better than humans.  

Harrington, L. (2017). 5 Disruptive Technologies Shaping Our Future. [online] IoT For All. Available at: https://www.iotforall.com/5-disruptive-technologies-shaping-our-future/amp/ [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Vincent, J. (2019). ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com uses AI to generate endless fake faces. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/2/15/18226005/ai-generated-fake-people-portraits-thispersondoesnotexist-stylegan [Accessed 2 May 2019].

This image is a perfect example of how AI is one of the main sources of destructive technology within the internet, all of these faces are fake people’s identity. Philip Wang made this AI system and he strongly believes that Artificial intelligence will be making up the majority of images on the internet in the near future. Not only they will be generating single images but whole life's that consist of the same faces and all this does is allow fake identity to infect the internet therefore increasing the negativity around cultural capital within the society. It’s a possibility that eventually the internet will be a platform that people can go on to become a catfish, create their alter egos and maybe even disappear.  

The more we develop through technology the more we are becoming reliant on it and it is making creatives very narrow-minded because they are getting use to the “I'll google it” mindset. They aren't taking an avant-garde approach therefore limiting their abilities. The same goes for everyone on the internet, instead of upgrading their cultural capital value they are updating their timeline and wasting time becoming entranced within a screen.  

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, everything that I have covered today I wanted to link towards how identity is altered massively by the influence of the internet. We have been raised to believe what is right and what is wrong, this then leads us to a narrow-minded community that won’t have the courage to go outside the boundaries and explore what is ‘impossible’. This means we cannot evolve past what we know and we are going backwards in evolution, if we can’t do the thinking ourselves therefore making alternative solutions to do it for us, such as AI. Taking all of this into consideration you need to think how it is going to affect how we perceive identity and what cultural capital is going to turn into. Identity will then become a very serious ordeal because if we continue our course, we are going to make fake identity online a norm therefore getting rid of all fear of judgment within your cultural capital. Then what price does true identity become? Priceless or worthless?  

This was my main message in my final artefacts, the distortion of identity through the distortion of the internet.

           By Joseph Reilly  

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DESTRUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY // 6

What is Artificial intelligence? 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning, reasoning and self-correction.

There are categorised into two sets: weak and strong AI. Weak AI are things such as: Siri, Self drive and all of the other things we ‘are allowed to use’  in our day to day life. Strong AI are things that can communicate through their own way and sometimes even talk to one another through coding that they have just came up with, when humans try to encrypt this code it is too advanced for us to understand. So... what now? We just let AI take over to a point where humans aren’t needed anymore in society? We just become the beverages being consumed by the internet... 

I like to believe that we are, even now are falling into the addictive hole of social media and being caught up in the latest news or the latest tweet, instagram and facebook post. For what? To see what people are up to... to show a fake identity which people then miss out all that bad you may be having in your lifetime. ‘Timeline’ is your lie to tell your social.  

To an extent I think that we heavily rely on our destructive technology to get through our day to day life, for example, smart phones. These tools (if you want to call it) help us literally do anything within the power of the internet. mSo yet again it does restrict you but to a point where you have so much freedom on your phone you’re forgetting how much you can do outside that screen. Personally technology is a restriction to real creativity, it is a brainwash machine to limit yourself to the point where you don’t feel trapped. Sometimes it comfits people to a point were the NEED to rely on it.   

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Pressure, pain, absorption.

Revaluation, Realisation, Aggression. 

Pushing Emotion into a superfluous creation. 

Creativity isn’t about what you see, it’s about the feel. To perhaps make up what is lost.  

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REAL AESTHETICS COMPARED TO ‘ONLINE AESTHETICS’ // 5

'Aesthetics' is defined as a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art. Historically its applied to objects of fine art to describe the effect of the undescribable effect of ‘great works’. 

Recently the term has been used popularly to refer as a sense of style, people recognise lots of different and coherent aesthetics, impressionists and cyberpunk, and even Pokémon. Certain images online are labeled to be aesthetic, some great examples of these are: instagram, tumblr and Pintrest. To summerise they are platforms to make you say “i like this”... “This is MY style”. ‘Aesthetic is frequently stylised, even the text itself becomes aestheticised. 

Many may consider implicitly the aesthetic process of the appreciation of beauty is difficult or impossible to have online, that unlike museums, the internet can’t fully host aesthetics because... screens are filters, there are no originals, no ones not really there, the internet is not real. We can laugh, agree, or be confused online, but maybe we can’t really appreciate beauty. REAL aesthetic can only be seen in real time. 

These images shows you what aesthetics are according to google:

This is what aesthetics are according to Pintrest: 

Can you see the false claims led by the internets perception onto what an aesthetic actually is? These pastel subtle colours lead you to believe “ahh this is nice, this must be aesthetic”. To me, aesthetic is something that can be simple yet impactful. 

This is one of my ‘so called’ aesthetic pieces of work:

   When you compare my image with the images you see online, they are both very different forms of art/ photography. I understand now that everyones perception of aesthetic is altered by the things that they have been through and perceived throughout their life-time, their idea of natural beauty may be completely different to the opposed person. This brings me back to my point of how authenticity is stylised, it is stylised online because the billions of people who use the internet all have a different creative viewpoint onto what Aesthetic is. 

To summarise Authentic aesthetic is refashioned around the idea of social media and the altercations of peoples opinions. 

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Zzz

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CULTURAL CAPITAL // 4

Pierre Bourdieu presented the idea of ‘Cultural Capital’ to explain the diversity among the levels of performance and academic achievement of children in the school system of France in the 1960′s.

From my knowledge ‘Cultural Capital’ is a concept that explains the segregation between the poor and the rich and how much their capital can change depending on their upbringing (culture). 

Cultural Capital is split up in three categories (I have done this research one wiki and youtube videos further explaining what Cultural Capital is): 

The ‘Embodied State’. This is a key step into what capital you will fall under. It is the form of knowledge the resides within you and what knowledge you get surrounded in to help you with your cultural capital when you grow older. For example if you grew up in a poor household you will tend to be taught to read at a later time compared to someone who has a good/rich upbringing within that household therefore they are obtaining the already existing Cultural Capital from the people surrounding them. This type of capital is the type of knowledge that we choose to seek out on our own or we get guided Capital from the parents. If the person from the poor upbringing has to work and worry about their Capital Income rather than their studies then their Embodied State Capital will recede back further compared to the more ‘better off’ kids family, they will then have better focus on their personal Cultural Capital.

‘The Objectified State’ is more focused on the objects that we have to indicate our social class within society. We as humans always want physical things, sometimes not to show off but for sentimental value and for their reasons, these thing show how we are place within our social capital. For example if someone owned the newest iPhone and the person with a lower Objectified State had a flip phone then they will be idolised by their Cultural Capital within society. 

Lastly the ‘Institutionalised State’. This last state of Cultural Capital is where i personally think is most accurate: If someone has a doctorate degree (what even is that) it will outrank a masters degree... a masters degree will outrank a normal degree, and so on. You are valued on paper and on what you have achieved this is what i believe is Institutionalised State-system works.   

Overall my opinion after researching Cultural Capital is that it’s just a fancy word for segregation within the financial social capital and it just explains it in a more in depth manner on how it effects each group of wealth. It’s very eye opening though... The fact that we are judged instinctively because of how good our objectified state is at the time is very overwhelming. I believe that no matter what ‘class’ you are in it is up to you onto where you are classed in the Cultural Capital pyramid. It is annoying because the class i am in, ive always had to option to go uni... but at my own risk of money. I cannot say how a class that struggles more financially might have a completely different opinion apposed to my “I believe that no matter what ‘class’ you are in it is up to you onto where you are classed in the Cultural Capital pyramid” comment.     

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Simplicity and complexity are opposite to the other 

When they work together

Then you get Creative Tranquillity.     

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Trying to learn how to cut shapes.

This is how I actually look like

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SEX // AT WHAT POINT DOES NUDITY BECOME PORNOGRAPHY? // 3

Sex is being used and has been used in the past when you apply it to advertisement techniques, people link it back onto how passionate it can be then companies use this as a marketing technique to reel people into their product/ design (especially in perfumes and aftershaves). An example of this is Tom Ford’s for men:  

What Tom Ford are doing is using a womans sex appeal to attract the males attention, therefore making them look at the ad longer and putting the thought in their head that this fragrance attracts women like magnets: they will literally open their legs for you if you buy the latest Tom Ford Aftershave... 

I believe that this is a smart tactic for the selling/marketing point of view but ill tell you this, why can’t you apply this technique to condoms and sex toys. It then becomes too inappropriate and then banned? Then why not food? Alcohol? 

Sex, At what point does sex and Nudity become Porn in The art industry? 

There are a lot of different ways I can approach this question but i’ll like to keep our focus on the symbolisation and concept of the art piece, this is an important aspect to find out the diversity in the answer to our question.  

When looking at art and how it has been developed through time you can see how a lot of nude art is still considered as art and not porn.

I’d like to point out a lot of how art is viewed differently depending on the process, the repetition and the story behind it.

Michelangelo is a great example:

Michelangelo’s ‘David’ when it was first made wasn’t appreciated or looked at like how it’s looked at today at all. It was made in 1501- 1504 and the development and eventual dominance of Christianity in late antiquity profoundly changed the needs of patrons and the output of artists. This is why after looking into the history of ‘David’ i’m starting to realise why there is a line to when art becomes pornography and the borderlines on how you can apply that to the acceptance of how sex is the first self-expressive form of art. The line only occurs when there is no deeper meaning on to what you want to call art. I applied the history of ‘David’ because I wanted to make it clear that art is viewed very differently depending on what age/timeline we are based in. We surround ourselves in ideologies as people and don’t allow our minds open up to what the future might look like.

Sex and nudity is the oldest form of self-expression, when you apply it to art a lot of people fail to understand that. Indeed, thanks to poaching by advertising, theatre and movie directors, and even contemporary artists, many Surrealist images (Magritte's bowler-hatted men, for example) have by now been reworked to the point of cliché. 

To conclude, Nudity and sex in art have been altered by the way we perceive sex itself, some people think its horrid, some people believe it’s the only thing thats important in life but at the end of the day, when it’s used in art it’s either looked don upon or praised.

Personal preference i guess.   

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Me dodging dez deadlines.  

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Me and my bro have 7 years apart from our age. 

We both LOVED football but he was in a team and 17. 

I was 10. 

When this song was played I LITERALLY turned into Ronaldinho. 

That’s the first time i beat my big bro at something.  

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IDENTITY // RACIAL IDENTITY WITHIN THE SOCIAL INDUSTRIES AND HOW THAY ACT TOWARDS ETHNICITY // 2

Who exactly are you when it comes down to it? Are you identified based on your: Gender, Interests, Passport, Occupation, Age or even your friends? What is ‘Identity’ and how is it these thing make up who you are and you don’t? 

Identity (in my opinion) is a very touchy subject because you can apply it to identity Politics. I’m a Irish/Turk, cultural appropriation happens around me all the time because the Irish in me almost hides the fact I am Turkish. For example I was good friends with someone at work called Dan, as soon as he found out I was Turkish he was shocked. A month later he made kebab jokes etc. just because I don’t look my ethnicity doesn't make it any less impactful. My identity and his perception of me changed in Dans point of view because of his beliefs and what he has been taught. 

If someone says to me they are German, that doesn't mean they are loud and love hitler. 

If someone says they are American, that doesn’t mean they love guns and adore trump. 

Our perception of identity changes depending on where they are from? I personally don’t think so but as I said before. Some people think it’s appropriate to apply cultural history to their identity so it makes more sense to them.     

I’ve found a perfect example of how identity has been used in a cultural appropriation manner: 

This ad announcing Slim-Fast's availability in Russia was nominated in the "Best Press Ad" category. What does that say about how we view culture? 

Weight loss is a negative subject and Slim-fast (a Russian brand) applied a  Russian doll to act as the identity of the poster shows and amplifies the social stigma around the culture. 

This only further supports what we are lead to believe within the identity stigmas.

Can ‘Identity’ be changed? 

In my thought process, Identity is measured by your beliefs and what you have been through. Its your appearance and what you show people that give them an idea of what you could be like as a person... your identity. Your identity could also be on you social profile, what you have built people to believe what you are like, a false identity but an identity you prefer people to see. It could also be in your artwork, professional documentation, photography. Expression is a form of identity to an extent. If you don’t reveal your actual identity and make people perceive a face and persona based on your artwork that’s where it turns into a facade? Identity is has changed throughout time. 

Identity in the beginning: What you see is what you get. 

Now: What you see is now is a lie until you get to know them, even then people are on edge to maybe protect their identity? 

Magritte's bowler: The son of man 

This is one of my favourite paintings, it shows the hidden identity as well as discovery and observation. 

Magritte said:

“At least it hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

This art-piece enhances my point of a facade identity approach to our social capital today. We are all hidden behind a screen, documented papers and Passports. It’s a choice we have all been forced into. So what now? 

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My GIF says it all. 

‘67′ is permanently on my body. It chose me. 

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1st blog down. 

5 to go. 

Finding yourself is the best kind of realisation there is.

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SEMIOTICS // 1

Semiotics is an investigation onto how we perceive things differently compared to what they could actually mean. 

We have this idea in our heads called “The thalamus” and it’s located in the somatic sensory cortex, and the motor cortex is in the frontal lobe. The visual cortex delivers data to the sensory cortex telling it what our eyes are perceiving, and the sensory cortex interprets it. But, if there is not image for our eyes to process what it is then the sensory cortex cannot process an image, so we naturally create an image in our heads to fill in that gap that it’s missing. (I’ve only just read up on this so bear with me). I believe that through us growing up (depending on what era/area you grew up) different ‘symbols’ in semiotics mean different things to different people so when you apply semiotics in advertisements, branding and other platforms. You need to be careful... 

This advertisement by ‘The Frontier Post’ shows a metaphor using semiotic tactics. This ad was made to show how impactful driving save is compared to gun crime and in my opinion they done a very good job. They scared a lot of people because of the message behind it. The semiotic tactic as you can see is the car keys appearing to look like a gun.    

Animators and illustrators also need semiotics to understand how their work will be interpreted by audiences. While some depictions of emotions are based on natural and universal facial expressions, others are symbolic, and only make sense to certain audiences. This became clear when emoji, originally developed for a Japanese phone messaging service, were introduced to the west. This new audience used their own experiences with western comics and cartoons to interpret emoji, often in ways the original designers had not intended. For example, an angry character may blow steam from their nose or ears, so western audiences interpret this emoji as angry, while the original intention was to depict a person exhaling in triumph after accomplishing a goal. Understanding how different cultures view certain symbols is of utmost importance in today’s world of global media. That’s why website designers need to carful when they are choosing particular icons and images to depict what they are trying to show within the website because it could mean something completely different compared to the target audience. 

When i was creating ‘Recovery’ I had to make sure the symbols i were using applied to the target audience accordingly. For example ‘the burger menu’ has developed through time to mean ‘menu’ but before people wasn’t too sure onto what it meant... same with the floppy disk meaning the ‘save’ option. as time goes on symbols mean different things. You need to keep in mind (depending on the generation) on what logos or symbols to use. The ‘thalamus’ will tell particular people otherwise if you do not make it clear.    

To conclude. Tred carefully when designing or making advertising or marketing, times are changing and people’s ideas of symbols are changing because we are advancing mechanically and our ideologies are changing with it.