#Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff

[gebergera150]

Entry #1: (Post) TV Show/Series

For my TV series selection, I chose to research and watch the 1990 sitcom "The Fresh of Bel-Air" by Andy & Susan Borowitz. The story features a 20-year-old Will Smith (at the time) as a teenager from a tough neighborhood in West Philadelphia. Will’s mother, fearing for his safety and ability to grow in an underserved black community, sends him to live in Bel-Air, California with their wealthy relatives, the Banks.

The core relationship of this show to our class is in how it challenges the societal stigma that African American culture/identity is static. It flipped that idea on its head and instead aimed to give African Americans a fluid identity. A notable quote pertaining to and promoting this idea from one of our readings is by Nicholas Mirzoeff, who states "what matters is the internal quality of difference that may be as effectively concealed as revealed by external appearance." In this, Mirzoeff is saying that a lot of what goes into what is perceived by others is invisible to the naked eye. Because of this, people grab onto the tangible reasoning they have, and race and/or ethnicity end up unjustly being that scapegoat/culprit in most cases.

To emphasize this further, there is an episode called "Papa's Got a Brand New Excuse" where Lou (Will's father) suddenly reappears into his life and then abruptly exits, which leaves Will upset and questioning why his father doesn't want to be there for him. For context, Will's father left him at the age of five after he divorced Will's Mother Vy. This type of baggage makes Will's feelings more understandable, and shows the internal struggle that we would anticipate from a person whose father decided to show up and leave quickly afterwards when they were out of their life for 14 years. It highlights an unfortunate trend in the African American community, and further proves Mirzoeff's point.

All in all, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" is one of the most notable and influential shows within the scope of U.S visual culture, and its difficult (but important) topics and messages are perfectly delivered to us through the medium of a TV sitcom. It epitomizes what Professor Gregory Jay says in one of our articles pertaining to multiculturalism, which is that "race has no significant meaning as a way of categorizing human differences."

Works Cited

Gregory Jay, "What is Multiculturalism?" (2011)

https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/smith-virtually-reunites-fresh-prince-bel-air-cast/story?id=70414308

https://lior-kz.medium.com/awards-and-unanswerable-questions-from-the-first-fresh-prince-basketball-episode-4d199f1fa0e5

https://lithub.com/how-the-fresh-prince-of-bel-air-tackled-the-topic-of-black-fatherhood/

https://www.max.com/shows/fresh-prince-of-bel-air-1990/d3f86fb1-c3d6-4715-874a-579689f5f437

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xennials/comments/19fgzz1/fresh_prince_episode_where_he_asks_uncle_phil_how/

Nicholas Mirzoeff, "The Shadow and the Substance" (2003)

[gojonanami]

Hi!

Sorry, it's the 'Visual Culture' anon here :)

The citation that I gave you, unfortunately, is erroneous. Here is the corrected version:

5. W.J.T. Mitchell,  ‘Showing Seeing: A Critique of Visual Culture’, in The Visual Culture Reader, second edition, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group: London and New York, 2002, 86–101.

I referred to a physical book as I was making this citation, but here is the PDF link to the whole book in case you or anyone else is interested:

https://monoskop.org/images/f/ff/Mirzoeff_Nicholas_ed_Visual_Culture_Reader_2nd_ed.pdf

(Also, I am super, super excited for the upcoming Prof. Geto series! ❤️❤️❤️)

hi!! omg thank you for the corrected citation and the link! i'll have professor geto update your grade ;)

ahhhh i'm so glad! i'm excited too! i'm hoping to post it tonight, probably around 8 PM EST :) you're so sweet love you <3

[frangolive]

Waiting for the gift of (sound &) vision…

MDA20009: Digital Communities

Week 9: Visual Communities and networked visualities

Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication and New York University, helps to explain the shift from print media to new modes of media engagement and what it means for our world ...

In the world of ubiquitous media imaging, immediacy is taking over our displays and archiving of photos and videos and they are now not the accessories to what we publish – they are the main story!!  Our tech and networked communications allows us to author, distribute and manage them ourselves rather than hand the task over to a professional, in the blurring of business and leisure and how we document life (Hand 2012, p.5)  Rather than funnelling our social and public images through one or two platform accounts, they can now be networked via Youtube and Vimeo, Instagram, FB and Snapchat to get the broadest reach possible (Posetti & Lo 2012).

https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/the-most-beautiful-camera-ever-made.498101/

Mind you, if you do take the happy snap of your boss ‘gifting’ his secretary at the office Christmas party, thanks to LBS (that’s location based services, not little black stilettoes) he will be able to trace the pic if he really wants to …mmm Geotagging.  Of course, you could try and disguise it with baby features and a rattle, via augmentation afforded on Snapchat and Instagram, in order to confuse timelines and publish the present as our future past (Herman 2014).  But it is not really the textual content that matters according to sociologist Nathan Jurgenson – it’s just a drop in the ocean of our fluid self, with the content standing in for an ephemoral wave or a ‘hi there’, or in your boss’s case, maybe a wink (Herman 2014).  But be wary of mixing your drinks and your modalities in combining text and imaging, it can produce new cultural languages – just ask Warnie! (Vivienne & Burgess 2013).

http://oceanup.com/2016/05/24/ed-sheehan-takes-his-new-bong-straight-to-the-head/ed-sheeran-new-bong-shane-warne-head-photo/

Once we augment, filter and manipulate a base level image and send it out into the ether, the semantics of it can vary due to our competencies with tech, language and culture(s).  If someone sends an image with bunny ears, does it mean they want to work at a huge high roller’s mansion surrounded by variations on a theme of themselves, that its Easter Sunday everyday or they are perhaps ready to procreate 😊? (Mizuko 2008, p.2).  It’s a resource intensive approach that lets account ‘produsers’ remake and redistribute content to tailor to the more niche audiences in terms of cultural mores such as art, politics, social recreations and affiliations (Lange 2009, p.71).  With so many networked visuality platforms, it can be challenging to manage what is retweeted and what becomes that afternoon’s gif of the boss yawning in front of Santa (Posetti & Lo 2012).

In fact, Patricia Lange tells us that one of the greatest gifts you can give anyone is your time, and attention should be valued as a gift rather than a measure of human capital in the realms of socionomics (Lange 2009, p.70).  In this way audiences generate a social negotiation with videos they feel affinity for and that determines our attention to them and in what circumstances or context.  Lange also advises there is relational value in videos of affinity or affiliation in that they are perceived in a largely binary way, in the aesthetics of professional videos and amateur video production.  Affinity to both styles, based on attraction to people, their ideas or products can garner their own niche markets and audiences and like pledges made at a work Christmas function can vary in levels of sincerity (Lange 2009, p.71).

These videos form part of an ‘imaging community’ that reflects modes of labour, creativity and intimacy, affording structures to configure and interact amongst imagined communities (Hjorth 2011, p.51).  My Moonage Daydreams Tumblr site is a platform for the ‘imagined community’ of MDA20009, Group 01-2018, that I have never met in person but are very much part of my real world and evidence the duality of digital publics and networked visualities (Herman 2014).  Another point Lange (2009) makes is that ‘Videos of Affinity’ are contemporary, they don’t say “this is what we did in the past”, they say “this is what we are doing now and hope to do in dreams of the future”.

Two moons hoax: Mars won't be as big as the moon on August 27; ignore those social media messages - News18

https://www.news18.com/news/india/two-moons-hoax-mars-wont-be-as-big-as-the-moon-on-august-27-ignore-those-social-media-messages-709753.html

With this in mind, I am a glaring example of Videos of Affinity and true contemporary, amateur modality, in that last week I published a video of montaged images for what students were doing in the present and like a stonkered boss at a party, what they potentially might be avoiding in the future.

It was totally not engaged with in anyway by the audience platform it was presented to and under the premise Lange (2009) makes that it was not professional and not selling or advertising any product, was considered insincere and not relational enough.

I am sincerely taking this as a compliment 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/177610779030869172/

Mizuko’s (2008) remaking and redistributing of a networked text ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541162/Rickrolled-Student-pranks-physics-teacher-inserting-lyrics-Rick-Astley-s-Never-Going-Give-You-Up-paper-quantum-mechanics.html 

REFERENCES:

Hand, M 2012, Ubiquitous Photography, Polity Press, Cambridge

Herrman, J 2014, ‘Meet the Man Who Got Inside Snapchat’s Head’, BuzzFeed, 28 January, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#3dlvjg2>.

Hjorth, L 2011, ‘Mobile spectres of intimacy: the gendered role of mobile technologies in love – past, present and future’, in R, Ling & S, Campbell (eds) The Mobile Communication Research Series: Volume II, Mobile Communication: Bringing Us Together or Tearing Us Apart? Transaction Books Edison, NJ , pp. 37-60.

Lange, P 2009, ‘Videos of Affinity on YouTube’, in P, Snickars & P, Vonderau (eds), The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp. 70-88.

Mizuko, I 2008 ‘Introduction’, in K, Vamelis, ed. Networked Publics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1-14.

Posetti, J & Lo, P 2012, The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39

Trinity College Dublin 2010, Professor Nicholas Mirzoeff, Trinity Week Lecture, [video], viewed 22.5.18,< https://youtu.be/LiEK4fJ_I9M>

[yesvac]

Podcasting Dungeons & Dragons: How “The Adventure Zone” is Reviving Oral Storytelling

Topic: Podcasts, oral storytelling, “The Adventure Zone”

Date: 14 October 2019

Read time: 10 minutes

When I was young and visited my grandma’s house, I always asked her to read me Go, Dog. Go! by Dr. Seuss before I went to sleep. This was a reasonable request when I was little, but when I began to grow older, regularly reading chapter books on my own, I would still ask my grandma to read me Go Dog. Go! at the end of the night. It was something about how she sat at the side of my bed, squishing me up against the wall, and said those words that had been repeated many times before. And I am not alone in my fond memories of repeated oral story. People love repeated stories, ones told over and over: myths, narratives, family tales. We love these stories not only for their themes and the multitudes of love they contain, but because oral storytelling is a deeply human instinct: in 1998, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin described that “oral tradition… becomes story as it is retold, resung.” So where do podcasts of the modern age factor in? Podcasts are a medium of oral storytelling, and I plan to explore that idea through exploring the podcast “The Adventure Zone.” “The Adventure Zone’s” specific medium of storytelling and its enjoyed popularity teaches lessons about methods and mediums of story, and how they impact storytelling.

To understand how a podcast can do that, it’s important to know what “The Adventure Zone” is. “The Adventure Zone” is a series of publicized recordings (or, a podcast) created and recorded by the McElroy brothers (Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy), podcast-artists and comedians, with their dad. In it, they participate in and play a Dungeons & Dragons campaign they call “Balance.” “The Adventure Zone: Balance” has 69 episodes, and seven story arcs, amounting to over 75 hours. During the podcasts, the players not only play Dungeons & Dragons and fight monsters, but also develop each of their characters, and Griffin, the Dungeon Master of the game (for those who aren’t intimately familiar with D&D: he crafts the story and moderates the game), creates a web of story and plot throughout the 75-hour runtime of the campaign. There’s no way to tell how many people listen to “The Adventure Zone Podcast,” because there are dozens of podcast-streaming websites and no publicly posted number of listeners or listens; however, in the past few years, the show has enjoyed a boost of popularity and a geniune “following” of listeners. But why? What compels people spend dozens of hours listening to four men play Dungeons & Dragons? 

As I mentioned previously, podcasts are one of the newest and most explosive forms of oral storytelling. While not many of the younger generation watch news on the television (or watch television at all), almost all of them listen to public radio or podcasts through an app. As Nicholas Mirzoeff discusses in his piece “How to See the World,” the newly created “global network” has allowed us to “create, send and view images of all kinds, from photographs to video, comics, art, and animation.” Podcasting is an aspect of this new global network and may be counted as an image shared through it. Most people own technology that gives them access to podcasts through the internet, and consuming their shared images is easier now than ever. 

Through the medium of podcast, there is a certain shared experience akin to the shared experience of intimate oral storytelling. It harkens back to the days of shared story through oral connections, over a fire with friends or a family story not recorded in a written format but passed along through generations. As Juliette de Maeyer recognizes in her article “Podcasting Is the New Talk-Radio,” podcasts “bring you to places you’ve never been… give you the impression of sharing an animated kitchen-table banter... with a couple of friends. In that regard, podcasts are a “sensational” medium.” In “The Adventure Zone,” during long monologues by Griffin, the Dungeon Master, there’s often background music that recalls the musical theme used before in the campaign or arc, while Griffin narrates a story with meaningful themes of death, family, love, loss and loneliness. Certainly, “The Adventure Zone” is a sensational medium when it uses repeated music to elicit an emotional response. Additionally, this concept relates to Thomas Turino’s idea of artistic connections in his piece “Why Art Matters,” when he claimed that “the connections expressed through art flow from and create a deeper sense and a different type of understanding.” By using the repeated artistic expression of music in the podcast, the creators tap into a deeper level of understanding of the listeners. Many podcast creators do. 

What comes from this emotional response and formed connection is an imagined community by the podcast-listeners. In “How to See the World,” Mirzoeff discusses Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities: that all communities are imagined, because people in it have not truly formed a connection with all of the other members. Anderson describes imagined communities of nations, which often result in patriotism, or imagined communities of readers of newspapers, who feel connections with the readers of the same newspaper. In that case, listeners to podcasts are certainly members of an imagined community, both with the podcast artists (those who record podcasts), in the case that they feel an intimate connection through the oral tradition of storytelling, and with the other fans, in “fandom.” Two fans of the same podcast who have never met can form bonds across boundaries of nation and language because they have an imagined community of being two people who both really, really like this podcast.

But let us rewind a bit, and understand more about the oral medium of storytelling. I want to talk about the oral medium in general and why it’s so persuasive now in 2019. It’s clear that the younger generation of people are less interested in big media the way previous generations have been -- big media meaning CNN, ABC, Fox News and CBS. Even big news outlets like The Atlantic and Washington Post and The NY Times enjoy less recognition and popularity from Millenials and Gen-Z readers. Most people in this age group do not watch the news but instead listen to NPR on their favorite podcasting platform, or any other podcast and talk-radio medium recordings. There is good reason for this. As a Maeyer describes “big news” in 2019, it’s often clouded with “hateful trolls, hysterical fake news outlets, a news agenda led by Russian hackers, and a never-ending spiral of conspiracy theories.” The oft-repeated mantra of “fake news” has led to the younger generation’s rejection of big news outlets with a lack of trust, and it could also explain the younger generation’s attraction to podcasting and oral storytelling as a way to strip the spread of information down to individual voices and intimately shared connections. 

If I allowed myself a paragraph to nerd out about “The Adventure Zone” in my article about “The Adventure Zone,” it’d go a bit like this: That’s not to discredit the importance of the creativity and outstanding qualities of “The Adventure Zone.” For my argument, it’s just one example of a podcast, when there are thousands of podcasts in the world, that connects to its listeners through the format of oral storytelling. But this podcast is the real deal for an example of how revolutionary podcasting can be as a contributer to storytelling. What other form of storytelling requires its consumers to listen and pay attention for almost 100 hours -- and they do it, quite willingly? And it’s not a bore -- “The Adventure Zone” podcast is carefully organized into seven different arcs, all with unique characters, different settings, connected through a complicated non-chronological plot. It’s an intricately woven story with fully developed and realized characters and relationships between them: romantic relationships, friendships, fully-developed and realistic portrayals of family. And one of the reasons why I think its portrayal of these relationships is so popular is because it is created by a family. This podcast is created by three brothers and a dad.  They know what sibling relationships look like. They know what familial loss looks like. And the result of it is something that is so rarely created: a collaboration between a family. And, when it comes down to it, it’s also just a really funny podcast. 

Justin: Uh, I’m, I’m playing, uh, a wizard.

Griffin: ‘Kay.

Justin: His name is spelled “T-A-A-K-O”.

Travis: So like “tay… tay-ko?”

Griffin: So like “tayko…”

Justin: “Tahk”… Well, I mean, the… It’s two “a”s so…

Griffin: Is your wizard named… Are you naming your goddamn wizard “Taco”?

Methods of communication and mediums of storytelling (or, more simply, the ways to tell a story) develop along with the rapidly changing world around us. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Podcasts are widely available to any person with an internet connection and a device to listen on. Creating friends and sharing connections with people who also love the same media is a beautiful thing, regardless of how empty the promise of an imagined community is. Also, one of the reasons I study humanities is because of its focus on humans and their stories. And from what I’ve seen, the shift from bigger, more corrupt and corporate-influenced outlets and big news to individual voices has simply resulted in more intimate storytelling, and a focus on stories from people.

[brandongmd1]

CTS 6th November

Given a question and research activity do complete throughout the week in aim to :

 self introduce our selves to the higher education research field

to be more familiar with contextual research terms

comfortably use the UAL Library database

and then get receive mass feedback from Andrew on our answers

Question 1 : What is primary research?

Primary research is one of the ways to gain knowledge of a dilemma no one has ever solved before by acquiring information through surveys, observation, and experimental research.

Question 1 Feedback from Andrew. All of you have been able to answer the question successfully. Primary research is where you are gathering information/data first-hand. Some of you gave examples such as questionnaires, surveys, interviews. Also some of you mentioned ethnographic field work, where you observe, take notes, photograph, record sound, either about a place, or person or group of people. You may also gather information from museums and galleries by sketching, photography, note-taking, as some of you suggested. I feel confident that of the 107 of you who answered the question, you understand what is meant by primary research. 

Question 2 : What is secondary research?

Secondary research is one of many methods to acquire information about something you want to know more about in terms of history/objective/subjective founded by previous researcher or a photo taken from another photographer.

Question 2 Feedback from Andrew Based on the 104 responses you have all successfully agreed that this type of research already exists and has been published, broadcast or transmitted by other authors. You would engage with secondary sources because you want to know what other researchers have said/written about your research field/subject/question. To be confident in using secondary research you should always try to use material that you find in published books and journals (that's why we have a library search 

Question 3 : Do you need to do primary research on a BA (Hons) course?

I personally do not think it is necessary however by doing primary research it can help you as an individual and on your course due to exploring different areas of research on your own which can help you develop new ideas or help inspire someone else. 

Question 3 Feedback from Andrew Overwhelmingly, 98.9% of 94 students answered yes to this question. I am going to mention Bethany  Martin (hope you don't mind Bethany), who wrote the following response: 'Perhaps not in every instance, but I do believe that some of your own primary research is crucial. It’s a great way to show how you’ve delved into your work and really explored every option and seen the result first-hand. You’re not just taking someone else’s word for it on a Wikipedia page. In other instances primary research might be too involved, or perhaps your results might not be as accurate as some of the reliable articles online, or books in the library, so it’s important to explore primary research when you know your results will be accurate and conclusive.' 

Question 4 : What is a research methodology?

A systematic way to carry out a research plan on a certain interest using the right intention and appropriate results in order to gain what you were looking for.

Question 4 Feedback from Andrew There is a clear sense from the 93 replies that we understand a methodology is about how we go about the research in terms of a 'technique' or 'techniques'. I consider that those techniques can be determined as two ways of generating and presenting 'data' or 'information', they are:   Quantitative and/or Qualitative quantity = numbers quality = words

Question 5 : What is a research method?

A way to collect/acquire information through analysis/reading/collection or experimentation. Question 5 Feedback from Andrew I think all 85 responses have understood the basic idea that a research method is the tool you use to gather the information/data. I think Juan Poza summarised it well: research methods are: 'the process used when collecting data in order to discover new information to deepen our understanding of a topic. There are different research methods we can use such as interviews, surveys, experiment, case studies etc.

Question 6 : How did you go about answering these five questions?  

I had a balance of intuitive thoughts and secondary/primary research options on the internet to create my 5 answers.

Feedback on previous question It doesn't come as a surprise that the main method for substantiating  your prior knowledge and experience is to search the internet.   The most  interesting aspect of reading your answers to questions 1-6 is the absence of referencing sources. What has come through loud and clear is that you are able to assert your opinions, but in academic writing, we need you to support these opinions with reference to research that has been done in the field. For example one way of supporting your own views on any of these questions would have been to  find a book on research methods via the library search and then referencing the material. In the activities that follow these questions, I specifically asked you to engage with the library search so that, if you were to answer these five questions again, you would hopefully now reference material from a book or journal article.

Research Activity 1 Using the library search (click on image above) SEARCH CATALOGUE for 'How To See The World' then answer the following questions based on the result of the search (you will need to click on the title of the book)

Who is Nicholas Mirzoeff?

What is the book's focus?

What is the Dewey Decimal number of the book (where the book is 'shelved' in the library)?

What is the research field that this book is catalogued under (tip: the Dewey number reveals this)?

Answers

1. Nicholas Mirzoeff is a professor within the department of media, culture, and communication at New York University as well as writer, publishing: How to See the World (London: Pelican, 2015). 

2. The focus of Nicholas' book is to convey the transformation and visual culture has impacted our lives through visual material in the past to the present. 

3. 306.47

4.MIR

Feedback on Research Activity 1 A fantastic 141 responses to this activity. All of you did well with answering questions 1-3. However for question 4, no one mentioned the specific research field that the Dewey classification system reveals which is: 300-399 Social Sciences Please search for the Dewey system and familiarise yourselves with the categories that the system uses to classify.

Research Activity 2 Using the library search (click on image above) SEARCH ARTICLES PLUS for 'How To See The World' (see also additional resources for research activity) in the tabbed folder ' in week 3 on Moodle.

On the left of the screen there are two tabs 'narrow search' and 'visual' click on visual and then select one of the coloured segments. Repeat this process until you arrrive at one source. Click on that source and then comment on this post with the following information from your source:

Title

Author

Publication

Keywords

Answers

1.Life in a Post-Pandemic World: Reading the Tea Leaves. 

2. David Moin and Rosemary Feitelberg 

3.Women's Wear Daily (WWD). 

4. Growth, New York, Economic crisis, organisation.

Feedback on Research Activity 2 The 98 of you that posted have managed to successfully use the Articles Plus search. Please remember that this search facility is going to be fundamental to your research in CTS in all three years fo your course.

Research Activity 3 Using the library search (click on image above) SEARCH ARTICLES PLUS for 'Nicholas Mirzoeff' (see also additional resources for research activity) in the tabbed folder ' in week 3 on Moodle.

On the left of the screen there are two tabs 'narrow search' and 'visual' click on visual and then select one of the coloured segments (these segments show you the research fields he is active in and written about). Repeat this process until you arrrive at one source. Click on that source and then comment on this post with the following information from your source:

Title

Author

What is the connection to Nicholas Mirzoeff (if he is not the author)

Publication

Keywords

Name of database where source is located

Answers

1. War Is Culture: Global Counterinsurgency, Visuality, and the Petraeus Doctrine. 

2. Nicholas Mirzoeff. 

4. PMLAVol. 124, No. 5, Special Topic: War (Oct., 2009). 

5. War, Peace, Politics, Cultural War. 

6. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “War Is Culture: Global Counterinsurgency, Visuality, and the Petraeus Doctrine.” PMLA, vol. 124, no. 5, 2009, pp. 1737–1746. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25614398. Accessed 6 Nov. 2020.

Feedback on Research Activity 3 It would be really useful to look at all the responses that your peers have posted, to determine the fields that Nicholas Mirzoeff has researched.  Well done for using the visual aspect of the articles plus search, as you will have seen, the filtering process makes finding results more specific and manageable. 

Research Activity 4 Go to > Library Search (click on image above) > 'Subject Guides' > 'Images'. Select an image database and search for 'Blue Marble' (an image that is referenced by Nicholas Mirzoeff). Each database will have it's own interpretation of this title.

Download the image from the database and create a new post for the image with your name and the reference for the image as the caption.

If the database search does not have a 'blue marble' image, then state this in your comment below (tell us which database you were using). Try searching for keywords related to blue marble (such as earth, planet etc.) to see what results are revealed.

Feedback on image search Well done to those of you who used keywords to search the library image databases. As you can see when you scroll through, some images are repeated, which is to be expected, as the limitations are going to be present in these searches. The benefit of using the library image databases for your research is that they are rights managed for education, so you don't have to worry about copyright. Also the reference (image credits) are supplied so you can copy and paste this next to the image in your essay.

[sporadicducklove]

The Butler

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRrnfcqGygU9KE4RhVyJL6-516VgxXCp6D1nQ&usqp=CAU

          Lee Daniels movie The Butler is a 2013 historical drama that recounts the life of an African American butler named Cecil Gaines during the civil rights movements. Gaines was raised on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia, with his mother and father. When Gaines was seven years old, he witnessed his mother raped and his father killed by the white plantation owner. Out of guilt for his father's slaying, one of the other white plantation owners moved Gaines out of the cotton fields and into the house to train as a house servant. At the age of 18, Cecil leaves the plantation and starts working at a hotel pastry shop where he learns advanced serving and communication skills. The white house then hired Cecil as a butler, where he remained working through eight presidents' terms. During his time working as a butler for the white house, Cecil observes the white house's inner workings during times of intense racism, protest, and war. While observing the white house's inner workings, Cecil also experiences the other side of things through his son's life, who was a freedom writer with ties to Martin Luther King Jr and the Black Panthers. Towards the end of the movie, Cecil resigns from the white house after witnessing President Reagan's refusal to support economic sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. After resigning, Cecil meets his son to protest the South African apartheid regime before being arrested.     

 https://www.google.com/search?q=the+butler+images&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=Qh_vx_n966a-gM%252C5aVPW_q2mcDIiM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQkZKMljMPsUV0lx9mUXKsbl1p2eg&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN2qHYvZvsAhVRZc0KHRcAChEQ9QF6BAgKEEc#imgrc=Qh_vx_n966a-gM

     The film highlights important historical movements during the civil rights movement and calls into question the United States government's role in reaching racial equality. In our course, we have talked about race, the depiction of race through photography and white privilege, all concepts that can be viewed in the film through scenes of segregated dinners, and the appalled response of white individuals when the African American people take a stand. 

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQs25_Sy67SdXgnxMpRpDD9SSy7wUkKLr0PAg&usqp=CAU  

     At the time of this movie's release, it was one of the few films to showcase the racial violence of the 1960s accurately. According to Dr. Peniel Joseph, a scholar of the civil rights movement, he reports that Daniels does a great job illustrating the harsh realities of Jim Crow, but he states that the Black Panthers are portrayed more as radical than the most important group of revolutionaries in America (2013). This inaccurate portrayal reminds me of the shadow archives mentioned in Nicholas Mirzoeff's article, The Shadow and The Substance. The shadow archives are a collection of pictures that continue the oppression of individuals who are not of the white race. In ways, Daniels' inaccurate portrayal of the Black Panthers as a radical group continues the oppression of this group by showcasing them in a more negative light than they truly are. Being in the mainstream media can lead to many viewers believing that these individuals were wrong and bad. This negative belief will lead to the continued suppression of the group and the African Americans who populate it because they appear as a danger to society.

Joseph, Peniel E. “A Civil Rights Professor Reviews 'Lee Daniels' The Butler'.” IndieWire, IndieWire, 16 Sept. 2013, www.indiewire.com/2013/09/a-civil-rights-professor-reviews-lee-daniels-the-butler-34974/. 

[deutscheshausnyu]

Interview with DAAD Visiting Scholar, Andreas Bernard

Andreas Bernard is Professor for Cultural Studies and co-speaker of the Centre for Digital Cultures. He studied Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies in Munich and wrote his dissertation on the History of the Elevator at Bauhaus University Weimar (2005). He was a Scientific Assistant in Weimar (2002-2005) and at University of Constance (2007-2010). In 2012, he was a Fellow at Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) in Berlin. Between 1995 and 2014, he has been an editor and author of Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. Since 2014, he is an author of Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. His books include “Lifted: A Cultural History of the Elevator” (NYUP, 2014), “Kinder machen: Neue Reproduktionstechnologien und die Ordnung der Familie. Samenspender, Leihmütter, Künstliche Befruchtung” (2014), “Persons of Interest: The Status of the Self in Digital Cultures” (S. Fischer Verlag, 2017), and “Theory of the Hashtag” (Polity, 2019).

On the occasion of his role as a DAAD visiting scholar, Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation between Andreas Bernard and Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University about Bernard’s book “Theory of the Hashtag,” as well as digital activism and the role the hashtag continues to play in shaping and transforming discursive culture. Please join us for this event on Friday, October 11, 6:00pm at Deutsches Haus at NYU.

Is this your first trip to New York? What about this city, if anything, inspires you and your research? How does New York compare with the cities in Germany where you’ve resided and worked?

No, I’ve been in New York in the past. For example, I wrote parts of my dissertation on the history of the elevator here, back in 2003. In a way, it was the natural environment here to write about the elevator. Of course, New York differs from all German (and European) cities in terms of its speed and density. Most of the times this is good for the energy of the own writing.

Your most recent publication, Theory of the Hashtag, is about the hashtag symbol and its role in digital activism. Why did you decide to focus your research on this ubiquitous symbol?

I think the hashtag is ubiquitous today in organizing public discourse, but so far there hasn’t been almost any mediatheoretical analysis on the ways how this little sign exactly shapes the rules and limits of what can be said in digital culture. This analysis I wanted to do.

Are the two primary functions of the hashtag symbol, activism and marketing, mutually exclusive? Do you believe that it could be possible to have one working in tandem with the other? Can a company use hashtag activism as a method of marketing or use their products as a way to promote an ideal?

When I started my research, I was surprised that political activism and marketing seem to be the two absolutely dominant spheres of using the hashtag. On first sight, these two spheres don’t seem to have much in common, they even represent opposite mentalities and ideologies. But in using the hashtag as an organizer of statements, they converge.  

Your writings have focused on the history of elevators, the status of the self in digital cultures, modern reproductive technologies, and the power of the hashtag. What ties these subject matters and your fascination with them together?

I think there isn’t necessarily a relation in terms of content. There’s more a relation in terms of method. I try to work on subjects and problems which are of contemporary interest, but then go back in time and try to write something like the prehistory of these subjects, e.g. the history of the profile in criminology, the “biography” of the sign # in older media technologies or the imaginations of procreate children outside the female body since the 18th century. By using this method, which you could call a genealogy of knowledge, I think the present can be understood better.  

Your work in the last couple years has been focused primarily on digital culture. What about digital culture appeals to you as a focus of research?

The digital infrastructures and devices have become so omnipresent and pervasive today that they are often and by most of the people taken for granted. The rhetoric and promises of the tech industry also shape a very powerful narrative of the advantages and necessities of “connection”, “networking”, “sharing” etc.  As a researcher in cultural and media studies, I think it’s important to lay out a counter narrative which is more aware of the discontinuities and historical constellations of our digital present.

 Would you say that digital culture is an entirely unprecedented phenomenon that emerged from the development of digital technology or can we find historical trends and examples similar to digital culture from which we can draw insight and lessons?

Of course, a historiographical perspective generally helps to find relations and similarities towards contemporary developments. Concerning digital culture, it’s useful, for instance, to study the early history of the letterpress in the 15th century, which marked a similar threshold in media history.

Could you explain your research process? Where do you begin - do you start with a topic already in mind or does the topic emerge from research you’ve conducted in previous projects?

This has been different from project to project, but what’s always the case is, that the final book never resembles very much the first ideas and exposés about the project. I could never understand researchers who start by writing a table of contents and then continuing chapter by chapter just as they planned it. I’ve rather made the experience that the structure of a book changes constantly in the act of writing.

You have worked as a journalist for most of your career, and continue to do so in addition to your work as a Professor of cultural studies. How do these two professions inform each other and influence your thinking?

I think these are two very different forms of work, the one very material-based, the other rather fast and more focused on the writing itself, with far less material at hand. Sometimes that change of rhythm in writing is very interesting.  

If we may ask, what are you currently working on?

Currently, I’m trying to finish a book on pinball machines. But it’s not a scholarly book, but rather a memoir, the attempt to narrate a biography as a series of pinball experiences.

[murgansenol]

Visual Activism

By

Nicholas Mirzoeff

Nicholas Mirzoeff is a Media, Culture, and Communication professor at New York University. He is also ‘a visual activist, working at the intersection of politics and global/digital visual culture’.  Furthermore, Prof Mirzoeff ‘is considered to be one of the founders of the academic discipline of visual culture’, with his books such as ‘An Introduction to Visual Culture (1999/2009) and The Visual Culture Reader (1998/2002/2012).

The publisher of Visual Activism is Taylor & Francis Group, which specialises in publishing works from leading scientists and researchers in the areas of ‘Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Science, Technology, and Medicine sectors’.

Visual activism graph - Visual Activism

Visual Activism is a chapter within Mirzoeff’s book, ‘How to See the World’. Mirzoeff defines Visual activism as “the interaction of pixels and actions to make change”. As pixels in computers are the visual source, from which words and images are formed. Hence, with these pixelated cultural forms we are able to take action to make changes, whether ‘from a direct political action, in everyday life, or in a theatre’. Mirzoeff also mentions the birth of alternative visual vocabulary within visual activist projects that have emerged from ‘collective and collaborative means of containing archiving, networking, researching, and mapping tools, all in the service of a vision of making change’.

Nicholas Mirzoeff presents this with the case of Michael Brown’s shooting by Officer Darren Wilson. The ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ meme that became viral is a representation of the above, “it makes visible what was done even though it was perpetrated out of sight of any media depiction or representation”.

Moreover, South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s portrait, which resonates with Samuel Fosso’s is used as an example among others to show the “visible tensions between freedoms offered by the South African constitution and the realities of homophobic violence encountered by LGBTQI people every day.

Muholi, Self-Portrait - Visual Activism

In a key note speech in San Francisco, entitled ‘Visual Activism’, Muholi asks; “What does it mean to be seen to be a citizen in a global era? Who represents us at local and national levels in a globalised society? If the state cannot back up its own declarations with actions”.  

Mirzoeff states that visual culture is a way to create forms of change for those who see themselves as visual activists. Mass and popular culture through visual and media representation around the 1990s facilitated visual culture to become a word of focus for study. For instance, to understand ‘issues concerning visual culture we can say it was about the Barbie doll, the Star Trek series and everything concerning Madonna’. Certainly, when we hear the three mentioned, they are among a handful that remind us of the 90s and early 2000s.

Arab Spring: Egypt’s Silent Protest – Reuters.

Despite being mentioned in the text, I had recalled the slogan “they do not represent us” during the Arab Spring which took place in several Middle Eastern nations. Particularly the protests in which masses of people in Egypt protested against the leadership of their leaders; it was an outcry of not only the political direction the country was being taken in, but also the long lasting social affects. The use of slogans, placards, photographs and with the aid of the social media, activists were able to form a resistance against the powers they opposed.  

Question:

How does visual culture affect modern politics?

What examples of visual activism can be found in politics of the past?

  Information on Nicholas Mirzoeff: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty/Nicholas_Mirzoeff

Information on Taylor and Francis: https://taylorandfrancis.com/

Arab Spring: Egypt’s Silent Protest – Reuters:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/arab-spring-egypt-silent-protest-160124101244868.html

[symposiumseries-blog]

How to See the World

Nicholas Mirzoeff is a visual culture theorist and professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is best known for his work developing the field of visual culture and for his many books on the subject. Mirzoeff holds a BA degree from Oxford University and studied for his PhD at the University of Warwick.

In the texts “Changing the World” and “Visual Activism” from the book “How to See the World”, Mirzoeff centres the discussion around the dominant presence of visual activism within the age of globalism or globalization. It presents a cyclical exchange of Pixels and Actions which work in conjunction with one another. From Tunisia’s Burning Man to Turkey’s Woman In Red, there are many case studies held within these texts however we shall explore a few in deph.

“Changing the World” begins on the subject of ‘hactivism’ and its reactionary effect within government when the system is disrupted. On 1st January 1994, a left-wing revolutionary political and militant group the Zapatista rebel army of national liberation, was founded 1994 in Chiapas. They issued a series of ‘Declarations from the Lacandon Jungle’ online as a way of concentrating on civil, rather than armed resistance. Most importantly, the Zapatistas and their allies then undertook a virtual sit-in on the Mexican government’s website on 18th June 1999.

It is therefore evident that the use of participatory representation via the digital medium is immediate by removing the political filter from A to B. An quick method held within a representational system whereby distrusted politicians are elected, only to serve higher interests.

The author elaborates on Argentina in 1983, whereby the government took “extensive loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)”. In the 1990s the IMF introduced an austerity regime and by November 2001, “the government converted people’s personal money into an asset that could be used to repay the international loans.” This meant that there was a restriction to withdrawals on a daily basis. As a result, in 2001 Buenos Aires revolted in its millions calling out ‘Enough’. They forced five consecutive governments to resign within the space of a month brandishing the slogan 'They do not represent us'. Social media platforms have allowed this slogan to be exported from Latin America to the rest of the world. As we have seen in recent years, countries such as Portugal, Spain, Ireland and most notably Greece have descended into austerity at the hands of the European Union and the Eurozone. Despite large protests, globalism seems to perpetrate its deception in an effort to establish a one-world government.

This brings me onto ‘culture jamming’. In 2011 Canadian magazine Adbusters launched a call to ‘Occupy Wall Street’. It began as a non-profit movement to repurpose advertisements, using skilled designers to create different meanings form photographs. On 17th September 2011, two thousand people gathered in Zucotti Park, at which point the movement had now claimed to be self-governing. It mainly consisted of activists calling themselves collectively as the 99% against the 1% being the wealthiest. Their argument being that 35 years ago, it was 33% to 12% therefore, being considerably less disproportionate. One may say, this is a reaction to corporatism (often conflated with capitalism) whereby corporations lobby governments to impose regulations which serve their interests. This is known as a clandestine collusion, which in turn seeks to retain an elite super class and then ‘everyone else’.

V for Vendetta, Issue 1

To conclude, when viewing the significant influence of comics on digital activism, DC Comics’ V for Vendetta (1998) is a prime example. The Guy Fawkes mask is was a symbol that was later popularised in the 2005 film and eventually became the symbol for Anonymous.

Questions: 

1. Is visual activism socialist or anti-establishment in nature?

2. Is digital protesting a convenience which removes bodily interactions or risk?

[ankar93]

Changing The World

Nicholas Mirzoeff, is a professor of Media culture and communication at New York University. He is known for his work in developing the field in the visual culture and for his many books on the subject. In the book he is analyzing the relationship between visual culture and activist practices.

Today people are making use of the media far more than before in an attempt to empower other people to govern themselves." With the need to read and view images in seconds, the use of  design in social media platforms play an important role in transforming the information. Looking back from North Africa to North America we can identify examples of movements that are making use of social media in an attempt to create visual thinking about representation and social change.

Societies like Tunisia and Egypt found a way to express their political opinion and made the revolution possible. Artists started to tackle social problems by creating messages and try to form a new visual identity. For instance, French self styled artist "JR" organized a series of portraits depicting people that participated in the revolution in an attempt to transform Tunisians visual culture. Consumers best respond to the first impression that an graphic image provides. When graphics are used consistently in media platforms the higher the chances of making a positive impact. Social media played a huge role in the Egyptian revolution. Most of the people under the age of 30 used Facebook as a key tool to communicate dates of action. Over 90.000 people "liked" the page and enable the movement to make a huge impact that led to produce new forms of visual thinking, from: street art, graffiti to video collectives. Grafitty artist "Mohamed Fahmy " used social media like this to archive and  promote his work by showing where and when his work was posted. Archiving documents is a key tool in creating new means of engagement. Many people are visual learners, and learn something when they see it instead of reading. Mosireen channel document the revolution in Egypt and thanks to YouTube was able to share to the people what was really happening in Egypt. In New York Adbusters a nonprofit movement used Tumblr to call for action people that overlooked  by  Wall Street such as young unemployed people. They create: "We are the 99%" a visual though that enable young people to share their stories throughout the web. At first the OWS made little impact to public, but It was the police violence that went viral that helped the protest take off. The Use of media meme where used by people  as a way to reinforced events. This set of effects from protest to social media and back to protest was an indication of how visual culture activism had involved in creating, performing and publishing memes across all social media in order to create political subject.

Today, we use visual culture to create self images and new ways to experience the world using visual materials and actions. Design plays a huge role in transforming  this information into visuals that will make positive impact to people.

Questions

- How does design address social problems in our society?

- What can designers learn from cultural activism ?