#art being redefined by the medium its published in? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

creativenquiryebonycocozza · 3 years

Text

Critical Review

My work explores the concept of transformation. In the beginning it was my intention to capture the ephemeral, an idea which I had whilst on a walk. Walking had become a kind of therapy for me during the lockdown as I had been confined at home - I have been saying in jest for the past year I’m on house arrest and my walks are my yard time, but I concede that’s an over exaggeration, even if it felt like it sometimes. The act of walking was my slice of the day where I could be on autopilot; it allowed me the time to just walk and think. Being in nature, I was observing the plants and flowers and began collecting them. I wanted to preserve my collection, to shift them from ephemeral to permanent objects. I primarily used air drying clay to achieve this, which I pressed my flowers into to create moulds from which I could take a positive cast. I had spent a few months perfecting this technique and working to this process and had eventually stockpiled a collection of botanical tiles in different colours and sizes, but my concept had stagnated somewhat by this point, similarly my daily walking route which I had enjoyed had begun feeling like an obligation. The repetition became tedious and is analogous of how I was feeling during lockdown; autopilot had lost its novelty. I had realised that my daily practice was like a production line, where I was manufacturing my art in batches from a mould and repeating the process. I began thinking about the modern world and particularly how technology and mass manufacturing had played a vital role in the worldwide response to the pandemic. I was interested in where the line is drawn between functional design and a work of art and sought to explore this in my project, which saw its own transformation going forward. The everyday object reimagined as fine art has been a subject of intrigue among artists and art lovers since the early Twentieth Century. Since the ready-made’s of Marcel Duchamp, the bounds of art have been redefined. The subject expanded in the 1960’s with the emergence of the Pop Art movement, with such artists such as Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol who created whimsical replicas of common household items, transforming the functional object into ornamental sculpture. In particular, Warhol’s work was a response to consumer culture, which transformed certain household brands into art world icons synonymous with his name. By looking at Dadaism, Surrealism and Pop Art, we can see some of the varying ways in which objects have been used in the past. The object form has been used as a means of expression of self, as a form that can be metamorphosed into things created from imagination, as a technical means of expression, as a social statement on society, and as a means of creating art which questions art itself. (Hanna, 1988) Today, the everyday object as art remains a pervasive subject in contemporary art. Tokyo-based artist Makiko Azakami is one such artist who transforms everyday objects by using only paper for her lifelike sculptures; ‘through careful cutting and meticulous handcrafting, Azakami breathes new life into humdrum objects and creates pieces that are deceptively fragile and extraordinarily detail-oriented’ (Richman-Abdou, 2016). Korean artist Do Ho Suh creates lifesize object-replicas of fittings and appliances around his apartment using wire and polyester fabric netting. The use of these materials transforms the objects from functional to ornamental whilst retaining their defunct detail, reframing the domestic object, and wider domestic space, as sculpture. ‘The transparency of the fabrics…is important conceptually because I’m trying to communicate something of the permeability in the ways in which we construct ourselves’ (Suh, 2020). Other contemporary artists use found objects in their work, which serve a specific purpose that the artist abandons, choosing to elevate the mundane to the realm of fine art, and dissolve the boundaries between “high” and “low” forms of culture. (Artnet News, 2017). In my own practice, I chose to study the everyday object of the lightswitch, the idea of which was suggested to me during a presentation of my work. I had built my installation around a lightswitch on my studio wall, an unconscious choice on my part, perhaps going to show just how on autopilot I was. I was interested in replicating the lightswitches around my home using subversive materials and experimenting with installations. I began by taking clay impressions of the lightswitches around my home from which I could make positive casts. This made me think about automation; I felt that the repetition of taking casts from a mould was similar to a production line, and I was the machine, similar to Warhol’s production line process of silkscreen printing, as Bergin writes: ‘The Machine is, to the artist, a way of life, representative of a unique field of twentieth-century experience, and all of Warhol’s art is striving to express the machine in the machine’s own terms’ (Bergin, 1967). Perhaps all art has an agenda; is any art made just for the joy of it? Or is it just to fulfil some demand? I began to wonder if all art, except for the earliest cave paintings, was produced purely to be consumed. If Warhol’s brillo boxes represent the collapse of the boundary between artistic creation and mass production (Baum, 2008), then where exactly is the boundary? I came to the conclusion that any commodifiable artwork is a product, and creating art is just another form of production for consumption. When I had my finished clay tile with a porcelain effect painted finish, I installed it on my kitchen wall and it at first glance appears to be a standard lightswitch, however when examined up close the viewers expectation is subverted, as you can see that it is a handmade replica. The functional design of the lightswitch is reimagined through the materiality of natural clay, transforming the object from a functional design into an ornamental replica. I had made many clay lightswitches already, and wanted to explore other subversive materials to utilise. Inspired by Rachel Whitereads resin replicas of doors, I began making coloured resin casts from my existing silicone mould, adding a different coloured resin pigment each time. Displayed as stacked on backlit shelves, the work invites the viewer to peruse as though they were in a supermarket, highlighting that art is another form of production for consumption in the modern world. I then began thinking about scale, but this time I wanted to use the intangible material of light itself as my medium. Using my transparent coloured resin tiles and a light projector, I projected onto my studio walls. This opened up a door to working digitally, working with media such as video and photoshop. Working in this way allowed me to explore scale as freely as I liked without time or space constraints. I began thinking that digital media is an imitation of the real thing. My projections, for example, are not really lightswitches, they are replicas of lightswitches made from the material of refracted light waves. My video gifs and my photoshopped site specific work are just information converted to binary numbers and translated into pixels on a screen. I think in this way, digital and electronic media are the ultimate subversive material. Overall, my project experienced a dramatic transformation. In the beginning, lockdown had only just begun and it was a new experience. Fourteen drudgerous months later, I am not the same person I was then. The whole world has had its own dystopian transformation, where we now so heavily rely on technology to survive. We have surrendered authentic experience for a pale imitation of the real thing. Our New Normal is just a replica of the life we left behind, subversive in the way that at a superficial glance all remains the same, but on closer inspection is just a substitution. As I made my tiles I was a machine, so too have we become machine men; just pixels on a screen or voices on the end of a line, a replica of the blood and cells and sinew and breath and acne that made us really human.

Artnet News In Partnership With Cartier, (2017) ‘11 Everyday Objects Transformed Into Extraordinary Works of Art’, artnet.com. Article published May 9, 2017. Available at: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/making-art-from-mundane-materials-900188.

Baum, R (2008) ‘The Mirror of Consumption’, essay published in Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol . Available at: https://www.fitnyc.edu/files/pdfs/Baum_Warhol_Text.pdf. p.29.

Bergin, P (1967) ‘Andy Warhol: The Artist as Machine’, Art Journal XXVI, no.4. Available at: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/8274194/andy-warhol-the-artist-as-machinepdf-american-dan. p.359.

Hanna, A (1988) OBJECTS AS SUBJECT: WORKS BY CLAES OLDENBURG, JASPER JOHNS, AND JIM DINE, Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado, Spring 1988. Available at: https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/179413/STUF_1001_Hanna_Ayn_Objects.pdf?sequence=1

Richman-Abdou, K (2016) ‘Realistic Paper Sculptures of Everyday Objects Transform the Mundane Into Works of Art’ , Mymodernmet.com. Article published October 20, 2016. Available at: https://mymodernmet.com/makiko-akizami-paper-sculptures/?context=featured&scid=social67574196&adbid=794911171832901632&adbpl=tw&adbpr=63786611#.WB3vIQMclAU.pinterest.

Suh, D H (2020) HOW ARTIST DO HO SUH FULLY REIMAGINES THE IDEA OF HOME, crfashionbook.com. Article published MAY 22, 2020. Available at: https://www.crfashionbook.com/mens/a32626813/do-ho-suh-fully-artist-interview-home-korea/

1 note · View note

freestrangermaker · 3 years

Text

Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience Audiobook Torrent

Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience Audiobook Torrent 2017

Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience Audiobook Torrent Free

Book summary - flow Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow, is sorta like the Godfather of positive psychology. Hailed by researchers and positive psychologists from every corner of the globe - 'Mr. C' as I'm sure he's known as in many circles - has redefined the way we approach “a life worth living” in the modern world. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of 'optimal experience' have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow.During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience by Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly. The bestselling introduction to 'flow'-a groundbreaking psychological theory that. Flow – The Psychology of optimal experience -By Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi -Harper, 1990. This fascinating book is all about happiness and how to find it. Cziksentmihalyi is an.

!DOWNLOAD LINK: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) ebook epub electronic book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for iphone, ipad txt format version, file with page numbers Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Kindle Edition with Audio Multimedia CD Video Hardcover New or used, cheap Audiobook pric There's also other available format to download: PDF KindleePub Mobi Daisy

Product Details

File Size: 1195 KB

Print Length: 322 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; 1 edition (August 18, 2008)

Publication Date: October 13, 2009

Language: English

ASIN: B000W94FE6

Overview

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of 'optimal experience' have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance 100 % free ebook pdf kindle reader online book epub electronic conclusion of the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi total ebook review report by amazonebay collections. Kindle Model design with Music Multimedia Disc Video Hardcover principles New or perhaps used, Majority industry book. For android or mobile Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for iphone, ipadtablet txt format complete version, document with web page statistics theory, art, torrent. Learning Study old fashioned paper about [Key phrase] essay background archives shop. Where can i download Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi free ebook pdf kindle reader online book. Epub electronic summation of the e book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi whole ebook critique statement by amazonebay series. An individual write my composition standard paper type help practical, hindi, urdu, English and french, in german and Australian dialects: supported by france and italian.

Harper Perennial Modern Classics: Flow : The Psychology of.

Harper Perennial Modern Classics: Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2008, Paperback) (Paperback, Download Beowulf ebook PDF Free 20080000)

mihaly csikszentmihalyi flow - ZVAB

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Read or Download Funerals for Horses (eBook). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) Download PDF MOBi EPUBKindleDownload or Read LLC: Quickstart Beginner's Guide to Limited Liability Companies ( LLC Taxes, Limited Liability Companies Guide) ebook free pdf. Description

Cheapest copy of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal.

Buy, Download/Read Fablehaven (Fablehaven, #1-5) free pdf sell or rent Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi with

Library—Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience | Live.

This classic text by one of the pioneers of positive psychology defines the term “flow” and explores whether we can slip into this blissful state of.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper.

Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience Audiobook Torrent 2017

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics), a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow – The psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly.

Flow – The psychology of optimal experience by. The psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Harper Perennial Modern Classics Download Percy Jackson and the Olympians Boxed Set (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1-5) (eBook) PDF Free.

More ebooks:

This week, Life Training Online is reviewing Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the sixteenth of fifty-two books in the 52 Personal Development Books in 52 Weeks series.

Happiness Revisited

Happiness is not found by searching for it — the more you aim at it Mihaly says, the more you are going to miss it. It must ensue, becoming part of the side-effect of one’s own dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

In this chapter, Mihaly discusses what he’s discovered to be the source of happiness. According to him, it’s not something that simply happens, nor is it the result of some good fortune or random chance. It’s also not something that money can buy. In other words, happiness is not dependent upon outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret those events.

Despite many of us believing that these external forces determine our happiness, there are those rare times when, instead of being controlled by anonymous forces, we feel in complete control of our actions. In moments like these, we feel a sense of exhilaration and a deep sense of enjoyment that becomes imprinted in our memory for years to come. This is what Mihaly refers to as “optimal experience” or “flow”, which contrary to common belief, does not come during the calm, passive, relaxing times, but, rather when “our mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult.”

The Anatomy of Consciousness

Flow The Psychology Of Optimal Experience Audiobook Torrent Free

In cultures past, it was considered the norm to temper one’s thoughts and feelings. This is not the case in our day in age — where we are told to accept our thoughts as who we are and let our feelings play out how they will. Nowadays, those who attempt to control their thoughts and feelings are considered “uptight” or not quite “with it.” But according to Mihaly, those who take the trouble to gain mastery over their consciousness, live a happier life.

This chapter deals with understanding the workings of consciousness, without which, we would never be able to gain such mastery.

Mihaly explains that at some point in evolution, we humans developed consciousness — the ability to override our instinctual instructions and set our own independent course of action. Unlike other animals, we have developed a “gap” between stimulus and response. It is this gap that allows us to weigh what our senses are telling us and respond accordingly, as well as daydream, tell lies, write poetry, and come up with scientific theories. Most importantly, a person can make himself happy, or miserable, despite what might be happening on the “outside,” just by changing their consciousness.

In an average human’s lifetime, we process about 185 million bits of information — such as sound, visual stimuli, or nuances of emotion or thought. Therefore, the information we allow to enter our consciousness is what ultimately determines the quality and content of our lives. So how does information come into our minds? It’s through the medium of “psychic energy,” or more simply put, the focusing of our attention on that information. The mark of a person who has control over their consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will — oblivious to outside distraction — and concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and no longer.

Enjoyment and the Quality of Life

In our culture, wealth, power, and status have become powerful symbols of happiness. When we see those who are rich, famous, or good looking, we automatically assume that they are experiencing a rewarding life. However, as the news headlines often report, wealth, power, or good looks are not always synonyms with happiness. Far too many of these seemingly endowed people are miserable. And why? Because to improve ones life one must improve — not just the quality of their environment — but more importantly the quality of experience.

This is obviously not saying that money, fame, and physical fitness are irrelevant. They are definite blessings, but should not be taken as the answer to our unhappy lives. It’s better to find out how everyday life can be made more satisfying instead of simply dedicated to the pursuit of symbolic goals which in and of itself will not bring true happiness. According to Mihaly, it’s the search for enjoyment, not pleasure, that spawns happiness.

In his research, Mihaly was able to find the common elements that make up any enjoyable activity:

First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

The key to take out of this, however, is that flow experiences are generally not natural; they demand that you invest an initial effort that at first you may be reluctant to make. But afterwards, as you become engrossed in the activity, and you’re receiving regular feedback from it, the activity will take on a life of its own, becoming rewarding in itself.

Flow is the sixteenth of fifty-two books in Life Training – Online’s series 52 Personal Development Books in 52 Weeks.

If you found this article helpful, feel free to leave a donation, subscribe, or bookmark it for others to enjoy!:

0 notes

tristanleggett · 5 years

Text

How Does a 100% Remote Tech Business Develop First-Rate IT Projects?

Working 100% remotely and having Slack as a virtual office, SoftwareMill has a 10-year history of developing IT projects (just like Polidea or 10Clouds).

Listed in Top 10 Polish Custom Software Development Firms by Clutch, SoftwareMill is now moving towards building its own products and embracing blockchain. While they are developing one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Europe, one of their pillar blockchain products is blockchain agnostic transaction monitoring tool - CryptoHarvester.

In 2018, for the second time in a row, SoftwareMill was among the winners of the biggest stationary hackathon in the world, HackYeah! The challenge was...a blockchain project. I wonder why? :))

Besides Blockchain and Crypto, they are Scala evangelists, being very much involved in the Scala community.

They even organize a conference around it!

So we’ve got the community, we’ve got passion...what else for SoftwareMill?

You’ll just have to find out next in our analysis where we let all secrets aside and investigate the strategies that brought SoftwareMill on the verge of success.

SoftwareMill’s Marketing Strategies Reverse Engineered

B2B marketing is going through a revolution, with a number of trends completely redefining what it will take to be a market leader over the next five years.

Shifting loyalties, savvier customers, automation tools, advanced analytics are transforming marketing from art to science.

Is SoftwareMill aligning with the new trends?

This is what we’re trying to find out next. We’ll reverse engineer the marketing and branding strategies to see what is fueling the SoftwareMill growth.

So, let’s move!

TABLE OF CONTENT

SoftwareMill - From Outsourced IT Projects to Building Own Products

Brand Awareness at SoftwareMill

SoftwareMill’s Social Media Presence

Community Building at SoftwareMill

Employer Branding and Hiring

SoftwareMill’s Website

SoftwareMill’s Traffic Acquisition

Content Marketing

Summing Up

SoftwareMill - From Outsourced IT Projects to Building Own Products

From Big Data, web and mobile apps, UX/UI design to consulting, SoftwareMill seems to know it all.

Is it really so? Let’s dive our noses into what former clients have to say about how SoftwareMill delivers IT projects. It seems they are:

Proactive and passionate

Communicating really well

Highly skilled in project management

Delivering quality results at affordable rates

Committed and proving to be great at customer care

From startups to enterprises, SoftwareMill projects are various: FinTech, telecom, e-commerce, energy, and logistics.

Now, SoftwareMill fell in love with blockchain and building its own products.

Check these out:

A ground station software for PW Sat 2 satellite built by Students’ Space Association

The aforementioned blockchain agnostic transaction monitoring tool - CryptoHarvester

Cry

Lawyer firms marketplace platform

PoC of their own real-time indoor location tracking system - or how to turn an IT project into an innovative product http://indoor.softwaremill.com/

It takes some courage to move beyond the outsourcing stereotype. But this is a eat or be eaten game. Time will tell who will last until the end.

Now, the floating question is: how do you market services, products and most of all - a brand? How can you make your voice heard in a fiercely competitive market?

Well, we’re just gonna have to find out, won’t we?

We’ll drill into SoftwareMill’s digital marketing strategies, analyze the social media presence and branding building.

Before jumping into the analysis I want to give you some hints about what’s coming up next.

We’ll find out which are the main SoftwareMill assets in the new era of IT outsourcing:

Conferences, meetups, workshops, hackathons, open-source contributions: SoftwareMill is everywhere, no wonder 50% of their website traffic is direct

Building the proper employer brand

Using Medium as a blogging platform can open up doors for your business

Follow me for more.

Brand Awareness at SoftwareMill

Today, digitalization is forcing companies to take a closer look at their brands so they can consistently cover the digital touchpoints. In a digital age, brands can be stronger than ever or more vulnerable than ever.

Now, news travel with the speed of light and if you don’t do well conflict management, customer care, you’re kinda screwed. Because it’s all being broadcasted live in the social media channels.

But enough with the chit-chat and let’s analyze the SoftwareMill branding efforts.

SoftwareMill’s Awards

SoftwareMill ranks:

5th in Top Custom Software development companies in Poland, by Clutch. It’s Warsaw peer 10Clouds sits on the 4th place.

12th in Top 50 Blockchain Companies by The Manifest

among the top 5% of all teams screened by Digital Knights experts, a tech due diligence company that assesses the quality and performance of tech teams worldwide.

SoftwareMill’s Social Media Presence

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the social media’s super-powers is that it’s really useful in building the business brand or the employer brand.

On the other hand, it can also open Pandora’s box, when things are not done ok.

So, what about SoftwareMill, how does it build its social media presence?

Facebook

Facebook is very much used to build employer branding. Posts are related to the company culture, events they organize or attend.

They emphasize a lot on the fact that they are a 100% remote company.

Jobs are being posted on the Facebook page. From what we’ve seen so far, this is natural for software houses. It would be weird not to see this pattern.

Their Medium content is shared to prove that they are really knowledgeable in the field. They want to establish themselves as Scala and Blockchain experts.

Twitter

The Twitter profile also goes two ways: employer branding and proving expertise in Scala or Blockchain.

Lots of events are promoted, from workshops, meetups to the Scalar Conference they organize annually. They have a different Twitter account dedicated to the Scalar Conference.

lar

And the blog articles are not left out either.

The LinkedIn account is really focused on building employer branding, community building and sharing knowledge. Client acquisition is not in the spotlight, unlike the case of the other software houses.

Blog articles are featured here, in an attempt to prove expertise in the field.

IT Projects are featured in order to prove they are really skilled.

SoftwareMill is also highly involved in open source. They contribute and host plenty of projects, such as: sttp, MacWire, Quicklens, and Tapir.

SoftwareMill is portraying a company culture where they learn together, share knowledge, celebrate success, get involved in the community.

Community Building at SoftwareMill

Engaging stakeholders customers in an honest and candid dialogue is becoming the cornerstone of marketing.

SoftwareMill truly understands this and lives by this mission.

And because they are really passionate about community involvement and Scala (the language embraced by Netflix, Amazon, LinkedIn, Walmart or Coursera) they began organizing the Scalar Conference in Warsaw.

Some of the videos from the conference can be found on their Youtube account.

Next, we’ve got meetups they sponsor or organize, hackathons they attend, conferences they partner with....really really busy guys.

Events

SoftwareMill partnered with students from Politechnika Warszawska to launch in space the 4th Polish artificial satellite! They contributed to this project by developing the PW-Sat2 Ground Station web app to communicate with the satellite!

Now, remember when I said SoftwareMill is turning 10 this year?

They are celebrating big time (they even have a dedicated subdomain to promote the anniversary).

How do they celebrate?

Through sharing knowledge. Yeah, they stand by their mission: webinars and meetups.

Employer Branding and Hiring

Today, people are increasingly mobile, able to easily switch from one job to another. There’s a hunt for talent, especially in the tech landscape.

Finding the magic formula for attracting and retaining employees is daunting. So, employer branding is critical these days, but how does SoftwareMill cope with the challenge?

Using social media, SoftwareMill is portraying a picture where employees have fun, have lots of learning opportunities, and feel like a big happy family.

They’re experimenting also with the transparency and management structure, check this out:

“In fact, a well-organized team, mutual trust and a sense of responsibility, as well as confidence in success, have made SoftwareMill operate as a teal organization from 2013. It introduced a flat management structure, full transparency — both decision making and financial. Oh, and everybody became a CEO overnight!”

They encourage learning a lot, be it technical knowledge or not.

This is why they’re holding reading club meetings and internal keynotes about the newest things someone has just discovered. They take their never-stop-learning-approach outside the company.

You can spot them attending numerous meetups and sharing the things their recently learned in a form of a blog post series: “TMWL - This Month at SoftwareMill We’ve Learned., where team members answer questions about what programming discoveries they made during the past month: see here Aug.

More about their culture on their blog.

Moving on to career opportunities, SoftwareMill is looking to hire developers and engineers.

The salaries and perks are transparent. They’re the only ones, so far, calculating the salary per day, net.

For hiring, SoftwareMill makes use of Facebook video ads:

As SoftwareMill is 100% remote company, they are serious about having a remote-first work environment and helping their newcomers onboard in a distributed workplace smoothly.

Recently they published the SoftwareMill’s Handbook for New Employees which describes 101 on how the work at SoftwareMill looks like and what to expect on your first days. Plus some tips on organizing an effective remote work for yourself.

Also, they have created a Slack channel where they can interact with potential employees, might they have any questions.

SoftwareMill’s Website

The layout of the website is simple and easy to navigate.

The menu is self-explanatory.

How is trust built on the website? Through testimonials.

And the portfolio page.

How can a prospect get in touch with them? A contact form, email, Skype.

In terms of conversion rate tools, according to Similartech, SoftwareMill is using Hotjar for heatmaps and session recordings.

SoftwareMill’s Traffic Acquisition

80%+ of the desktop website traffic comes from direct and search sources (according to Semrush).

In terms of direct traffic, I’m assuming the 27%+ (one of the highest seen so far for software development companies) is due to:

Community events (meetups, conferences) where they promote their website

No UTM tracking added to their links

Sales activities: cold sales emails, events networking (they have at least 3 team members in charge of business development)

The main market is the US, where mobile traffic is also the most significant.

The organic traffic has reached its tipping point at the beginning of 2018 and went all the way to 5800+ visitors in November 2019 - on the US market only.

Content Marketing

I’ll analyze the content strategy from the reach and act points of view (see RACE framework)

REACH

Organic traffic is a very important traffic source for SoftwareMill. And most of all that traffic comes to the blog. The blog is an important awareness touchpoint for all the tech companies we’ve analyzed so far.

The blog is updated about 2 or 3 times a week. They praise in having 80 blog articles written in 2018.

The topics covered are mostly technical, and some of them also deal with business-related subjects.

80% of the team members get involved in content writing (engineers included)! SoftwareMill’s Tech Blog is updated 2-3 times per week, mostly with blog posts written by developers, for developers.

Blogging on Medium

The blog is hosted on Medium, where the engagement looks really good. SoftwareMill and 10Clouds really understand the power of Medium.

Medium’s readers skew a lot towards topic categories such as tech, design, marketing, startups, business.

So, it’s an audience these software houses need. And let’s not forget that Medium gets an estimate of 110M+ monthly visits (as per Sermrush). Also, through having a 94 domain authority, Medium content can show up in SERP, on really competitive keywords. The same post on a lower-authority domain would probably get buried.

So, take a look at these interactions:

And take a look at that! They managed to rank one of their articles in the “Popular on Medium” list. Good job! This got them a do-follow backlink (on the short term) from Medium.

One of the most important Medium contributors for SoftwareMill is Adam Warski, one of SoftwareMill's co-founders. He's also really involved in the community they are building around the company. A personal brand is shaping nicely.

Check this out: social media traction for the Medium blog articles: Reddit, Facebook or Twitter, the average engagement being 62/article (higher than what we’ve analyzed so far). It’s all because of the new audiences they got access to.

Regarding the top pages, the blog pages get most of the traffic, as expected.

Organic Traffic Data

The keywords that rank organically on the first page are technical: cassandra, elastic search, scala...

The number of organic keywords began ramping up since spring 2018.

But in order to land on the first page of organic results good original content ain’t enough. Good quality links are one of the most important ranking factors. A combination of the two would create authority in the eyes of Google.

SoftwareMill is receiving some strong do-follow backlinks. They link both to the website and the blog.

Other Types of Content

Moving on from the blog, we have case studies of their IT projects and presentations. All with a mindset of proving knowledge and educating the audience.

People can discover SoftwareMill also on Slideshare, a lot of content gets repurposed there.

ACT

At the act (interact) level, we look at content that drives action from the audience, from ebook downloads to newsletter signups and more.

Let’s see what is SoftwareMill up to in order to get leads.

As blockchain is one of their core services and area of expertise and especially in this field there is a need for raising awareness, so the right problem is addressed with the right technology, they published the “Blockchain Adoption Kit eBook” addressed to businesses looking for answers on blockchain adoption. The ebook includes a perspective on a Blockchain future from 8 Blockchain and Crypto experts.

They also curate content in newsletters:

Ok, now I’m considering SoftwareMill as a potential partner, what now? I am not ready yet for a full purchase. There you go: a free trial. Just take us for a 2 weeks ride!

This means we’ve got three touchpoints with a purpose of lead generation: ebook, newsletter, free trial.

Summing Up

So, which are today’s takeaways?

It seems that for SoftwareMill the ingredients of success are about:

Having excellent software development and project management know-how and sharing it openly

Innovating with the organizational structure - don’t be afraid to experiment, from 100% remote to bottom-up organizational structure

Building its own products - this is the new and natural step for IT outsourcing companies. When you build your own product you also achieve a monthly recurring revenue, which can make a company more financially stable

Building a community around the company: events, events, events, make your voice heard! Pick your weapon: participate, sponsor, organize, speak.

Be where your audience is, Medium is an opportunity to take advantage of

Creating content that’s valuable in the community, that comes up with solutions for the pains of your stakeholders (buyer persona, employees, partners...)

Our growth journey took us to Poznan, Wroclaw, and now, Warsaw.

Man, so many stories to learn from!

Stories of growth, of opening up to opportunities, of breaking down barriers and stereotypes.

The show must go on in the Central and Eastern European IT outsourcing playgrounds.

And we’re here to watch and learn.

Each month we go live on our blog with a new growth story. But, for those of you who are very eager to spy on the successful tech companies in Poland, then, this is for you: The Growth Marketing Secrets of Top European Software Houses - Poland Edition 2019.

if(window.strchfSettings === undefined) window.strchfSettings = {}; window.strchfSettings.stats = {url: "https://man-digital.storychief.io/it-projects?id=1338532231&type=12",title: "How Does a 100% Remote Tech Business Develop First-Rate IT Projects?",id: "4f08255c-5e51-436c-99aa-71482a308009"}; (function(d, s, id) { var js, sjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) {window.strchf.update(); return;} js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://d37oebn0w9ir6a.cloudfront.net/scripts/v0/strchf.js"; js.async = true; sjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, sjs); }(document, 'script', 'storychief-jssdk')) from Digital Marketing Automation Consulting | MAN Digital https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/2019/11/how-does-100-remote-tech-business.html via https://mandigitalblog.blogspot.com/ Read more on our blog MAN Digital MAN Digital Blogger

#Digital Marketing Automation Consulting | MAN Digital

0 notes

joibittle · 7 years

Photo

NEW RELEASE for summer 2017 !

I’m thrilled to have a conversation text with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster published by Palais de Tokyo and Flammarion Editions for their recent catalogue Dioramas Contemporains (with a selection of our images).

http://editions.flammarion.com/Catalogue/hors-collection/art/dioramas

Also, the catalogue includes a segment by my colleague and friend Stephen C. Quinn from the American Museum of Natural History as well as essays by Marcel Duchamp, Louis Daguerre and many others.

OUR CONVERSATION (English translation below) ... on the real, the non real, clock-work-time-machines, painting on walls, transformations, Ballard and the others...

DGF: The first time I saw the diorama halls at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, like many visitors, I was mesmerized by this incredible display of landscapes. They connected so directly with Duchamp's «Etant Donné», pre-cinema panoramas, and multiple other 19-century exhibition devices which had been slowly replaced by cinema and more conceptual or abstract ways to exhibit objects, informations, beings, places and stories. Thinking of exhibition as a medium that encloses all parameters – from title, to lighting, to sound, audience, and time – has always been an important part of my artistic research and practice. I have always been more interested in immersive artworks than autonomous objects and fascinated by 1:1 scale, period rooms and staged moments.

So when I was invited by Lynne Cook at Dia to imagine a project for the newly re-opened Hispanic Society (which has a fantastic library but only until early 20th-century), I thought it would be exciting to imagine a new annex with 20th-century books that would appear in a completely different way and exist in landscapes almost like living species. Instead of animals or humans, one would see books in a desertic, tropical or atlantic landscape. I really wanted the dioramas to look like the ones at the American Museum of Natural History and not a superficial interpretation so we contacted the museum and I had a first meeting with Joi Bittle.

JB: When I got the call to work with Dominique and Dia, I was just completing a background painting for an exhibition at AMNH, where I was applying the traditional painting techniques of James Perry Wilson. A senior colleague recommended me for the project, explaining to me – with some bewilderment – that it was intended to be contemporary art. Now, nearly ten years later, Dominique and I have pushed our conversation beyond traditional diorama techniques, as we explore environments, art history, architecture, film and literature. So far, we have created three deserts, one jungle, one swamp, an underwater scene and a tree top canopy, all site-specific and human size.

Both in the field and during the painting process itself, I'm hungry for knowledge and for pushing physical limits. With that, science fiction stories and our talks about supernatural- strange things have become essential to visualizing these landscapes with Dominique. An important part of then constructing the diorama for me is to physically enter the actual landscape, and then, I stay a while. I create a private “mapping” of geologic history, personal explorations in the field, observations of animal life, and scientific studies of ecology. I'm interested in how time, humans and non-humans have impacted a place.

In the end, though, our dioramas are not illustrations of a landscape for the purpose of education as they are in the context of a natural history museum.

DGF: The process to elaborate these «landscapes with books», or places somehow containing their own bibliography, mainly novels but also some essays specially in the new «Mangrovama» is a long one. The first step is to define the landscape, which emerges as a combination of visions, places and typologies that I have in mind combined with Joi’s own investigations and research on different real sites/fields.

So each landscape contains a very precise, dense and real amount of geology and plants, but also a lot of thinking about time, like when is this landscape happening on a longer timeline? But also at which hour of the day are we encountering this moment? The shadows play an important part... Time becomes an interesting question, too, in relation to the time necessary to elaborate the landscapes in advance, and then to make them exist on site. They require several weeks to install, far beyond the usual amount of time planned for an exhibition installation, which forces museum schedules to adapt. It almost seems then that the realization of the diorama becomes like a clock for the rest of the exhibition.

From the construction of the curved walls until the closing of the window(s), and the separation but also conservation of the landscape, there is a long and impressive sequence of moments that become invisible to the viewer but give a presence and a density that would

be impossible to obtain otherwise.

JB: Yes, people often react with surprise when they learn the diorama is built on-site up to the opening of the exhibition, like a clockwork-time-machine of sorts! Our dioramas are a kind of speculation, assembled from fragments of what was, what is, and what could be. They evolve by being worked on, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But it's a puzzle without a key to tell us how it should look in the end, and we have to discover that. This part is very exciting, as the surroundings of the curved-walls demand a focused discovery of the difference between the literal and illusionistic spaces. Then, the physical movement of the body must navigate that difference and guide the painting process for me each day.

Since I was once a student of the traditional techniques, I can now develop 2-D with 3-D and derail from the rules. The first step is to create an illusion of deep space on a blank white wall, with only a piece of charcoal, a ladder and a calendar of days pinned up nearby. The horizon line grid, a color temperature and a mental narrative directs the work from there, while we always remain open to chance.

For humans, the appeal of a diorama is its ability to deliver a sense of wonder in multiple dimensions, by transporting us somewhere else, by tapping into our own “reality” and presenting a virtual biodiversity for our senses. With this comes the problem of setting a piece of the natural world into architecture and making the non-real, real, or maybe that's the other way around?

DGF: Since an exhibition is also a kind of philosophical device to increase consciousness and awareness in our relation to art, narrative, existence, space and time, it's deeply interesting to explore this tension between what is existing inside and outside, what feels artificial or real, what is represented, imported, staged and how we react to that. How much we accept to be affected by what we see or feel and what kind of memories it produces. I have never been so much into autonomous objects and artworks because I’m totally fascinated by the limits (existing, invisible or not) rather than the center.

The blurred zone which exists between life-size environments/installations like dioramas, rooms or other type of spaces and the rest of the exhibition/context is a zone to research. The spatial and visual paratext composed by the full exhibition, the exhibition space, the city, the landscape around and even the audience is an important dimension which is somehow redefined, «transplaced» and channeled in an incredible way by the diorama. There is a kind of magic mirror situation of two spaces looking at each other. The books – inside the landscape – act for the viewers like in the beautiful Fahrenheit 451 scene in Francois Truffaut’s film in which humans have to become living books in the forest in order to keep literature alive – or the way people become/are called books like in the 1973 film Soylent Green. One of the books appearing underwater in the «Mangrovama» swamp is a graphic novel by Richard McGuire which beautifully shows the superposition and stratification of different moments/periods/situation in one place.

With Joi and J.G. Ballard I learned a lot about all the different landscapes contained in one and how going through these landscapes can transform us and affect our psychogeography. Sometime we can even identify completely with a landscape or a biotope like in the «Swamp Thing».

JB: The creature swamp thing was a blessing in disguise for us and began emerging under our skin together! We started talking about it when building Desertic the year before. His curious obsession of seeking through chemistry and environment end up accidentally transforming and revealing the invisible self.

Working with Dominique awakens this spirit! Quickly, we cross reference these connections, taking us into a garden of forking paths.

Artists and scientists together have the chance to push the boundaries, or ignore them completely. As an artist, this setting continues to help me learn and unlearn all the time. As with Ballard, the fundamental principles of science run deep through his vision, and this no doubt has led him into a mix of both logical and invented worlds, producing a knowledge through story telling.

Consider Mangrovama – a synthetic carpet is laid down outside the interior of the diorama. During construction, I know the carpet will be placed there in the end, but it has no significance for me in the moment. However, for us, this is not unlike getting a fossil mold or light fixture to fit just right, thus making the landscape a single unit.

Split by glass, the real moss sculpted by hand and the moss-like carpet evoke a strange reoccurring memory for me. The space brings me to my childhood bedroom where I made drawings and played with plastic dinosaurs on a comfortable floor, imagining far off worlds to come. Here, the real and non-real elements together in our dioramas aid in a deeper sense of dreaming, and these dreams could be our most important guides to another new reality.

DGF: As one diorama leads to the next, and while we were processing «Mangrovama»,I was also reading Leigh Brackett’s beautiful romantic description of planet Mars, which, like Hubert Robert’s paintings, integrates a fantastic sense of ruins and gone ancient cultures. Mixed with the present, with nature and desert, an idea also appears in Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles strongly critical of the human way to colonize new landscapes and planets without any questions or doubts about possible destructions – and definitive loss – of other possibilities. The new dream/diorama might be about another planet and about these questions. We have now collaborated for almost 10 years and I hope there is a lot more to come until 2058 ...

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Joianne Bittle

2017

#dioramas #palaisdetokyo #joibittlestudio #joiannebittle #dominique gonzalez foerster #mangrovama #centre pompidou #painting #sculpture #art #nature #science #museums #science fiction

4 notes · View notes

tiaraklowery · 7 years

Text

The Note-Taking Clique

Muji pens, Kanken backpacks, pastel Zebra highlighters, and bullet journals are only some of the motifs and symbols that make up the hidden world of the Studyblr digital discourse. The Studyblr community on Tumblr and Instagram is a community that prides itself on being neat, orderly, and productive while crafting a community that is open, accepting, and filled with room for improvement. It is filled with members that post photos of their note taking endeavors in order to keep accountability of themselves while also showing others ways that one can be productive too. In addition to this, there are also postings of products that enhance the studying “aesthetic” that the community has curated from the bottom up.

By curating a new “aesthetic” within a process that typically does not involve beauty, the studyblr community is redefining what it can possibly mean to take notes. In this way, it is as though the desire for beauty supersedes the original intentions of note taking, which is to have well articulated notes. However, that is not to say that these glamorized notes do not have information organized well within them, but it is to say that it is now more of a priority to have aesthetically pleasing notes. Furthermore, if the online aspect did not exist, then maybe it could be assumed that the beautifying is merely just for the note-taker, but by publishing these eloquent papers online, it almost appears that these notes are done-up like this for the approval of others rather than just oneself.

While this goes on, there are also members that prefer to gaze upon the ability that such people have to turn their “boring” school notes into works of art. There are also a variety of “challenges” for users to adhere to in order to show off their progress and to spread the pleasures of an act that on the surface appears to be unpleasurable. These challenges range from showing off one’s supplies, to showing off a photo of one’s to-do list, to even showing off their handwriting. Mundane challenges such as these that fans commit to only round out the group and even serve to indirectly spread knowledge on what may be effective to enhance school life, but in some ways, this sort of emphasis could cause an opposite effect; the studyblr way of life could deploy feelings of inadequacy and cause a pressure on users for how one takes notes, and might even decrease their desire to attempt to live up to such standards.

This sort of hidden unhappiness from such a cheery community is shown within posts made by popular studyblr muses that show off their perfectly handwritten notes with color schemes being utilized that would not typically be cared about when it comes to school notes. Some users go as far as to even draw banners or other art motifs to beautify their notes. Vanguards of the niche that go to these lengths put out community posts every now and then in order to remind other users that one does not have to adhere to a sort of perfection that one may think that their notes have to conform to, because at the end of the day, the Studyblr community comes with no rules.

Although this is great in theory, there’s also the self consciousness that some users have about various aspects of their own personal Studyblr posts. This is due to the fact that no matter what the community or trend may be, and no matter how mainstream or underground it may be, there are still negative effects that the media can cause its consumers. As noted by Makayla Carney in her article Unrealistic Expectations In Media, “Representation matters. Be it physical, religious, sexuality, or any number of things, seeing someone like yourself portrayed in media is a beautiful thing. Because otherwise we are left grasping at straws. And not the best straws at that.” This realization matters greatly, because it displays the ways in which the smallest ideas, communities, and even facets of life can damage the self esteem of others. Sometimes it’s the lack of high quality photos that brings on discouragement. Other times it’s the inability to afford non-related school items, such as the expensive mustard toned Kanken backpacks, that bring on this idea of merely being mediocre in comparison to every other notetaker.

The other issue with this though, is that the painstakingly unbelievable and beautiful notes are the ones that thrive and prosper in the community. A quick Instagram or Tumblr search of the hashtag “Studyblr” will reveal beautiful posts with hundreds, if not thousands, of likes or “notes”. On the other hand, more regular looking notes may not even reach half of that amount. It can be assumed that less users want to see the plain and typical notes that could actually be created in a classroom setting, and this is a pattern that almost seems to disqualify the belief that the community values less than going above and beyond. Plus, when considering the questions one should ask when thinking of their audience, as noted by Alex Reid, this assumption becomes even more apparent and truthful. His blog post Introducing Composition Students to Blogging notes that one should ask, “Who is my audience? What do they expect from me? What do they already know about the subject of the text I am composing? How will they react to my message?” Without an audience existing to appreciate their contributions, how will fellow bloggers feel as though their work and “lesser” form of art is appreciated if there is no one there to appreciate it?

Then, the community online is somewhat not personal. Although Tumblr is a fairly social website, it does not allow for the easiest access to view the comments that one has received on a post. However, it is fairly easy to see how many people have shared your post onto their blog. This means that the standard that users gain validation from the most is how much their content is shared, and that is displayed by a number. If that number does not surge fairly quickly within the first day-or-so of posting, the creator may find themselves not as happy about the lack of traction received. This is how bloggers can see themselves as “lesser” as opposed to other, more established studyblr users that quickly gain surges of shares due to their over the top notes and high follower counts.

Despite publicity not being the main purpose of posting such notes and experiences online, it does instill a sort of encouragement to its participants to continue to charge towards their studying and organizational goals. If a community member is not able to attain publicity, then that could only serve to decrease their desire to participate both in curating their own posts, and continuing to follow the posts of others. Without the important audience aspect behind less flashy users, there could be a dwindling diversity of what sorts of notes exist in the note taking world of the Studyblr users. So in a way, looking at the Studyblr community from this angle redefines the purpose of this internet genre to one based more around publicity than truly helping one another. The publicity gained from having others examine one’s artistic endeavours through an unconventional medium provides a validation that cannot be gained if the audience does not enjoy one’s works.

#WRT205

5 notes · View notes

digital-literature · 7 years

Text

Homestuck as Digital Age Literature

Literature evolves. There can be no denying it as we march our way through the 21st century with constant technological developments in almost every aspect of life. It is no surprise, then, that the same change should happen to literature. Historically, literature has been written on paper (or another solid material like clay tablets or papyrus rolls), held physically in our hands as we manually turn the pages, and all the information contained within those pages. But technological advancements have now allowed traditional literature to be read digitally. Though its medium has changed, the literature itself has remained largely static. If you were to read The Great Gatsby on a digital device, you experience the same story you find in a physical book. This use of technology creates an easier access to traditional literature, but the literature itself has not changed. The technology is not being used to its full potential for reinventing what literature can be. What might literature evolve into were it to use the full scope of today’s technology? I would argue that literature would evolve into new types of literature of the digital age, a pioneer being Homestuck, an unconventional webcomic that supplements literary and pictorial basics with sound, motion, and interactivity. By using media such as videos, music, and interactive games to tell its story, Homestuck redefines and invigorates literature with the new technologies our age can deliver.

What is Homestuck? Homestuck is a unique webcomic, so much so that it hardly feels like a traditional comic. Much like literature, traditional comics have a history of transitioning from the early (cave paintings) to the traditional (being printed) to the new (being digital). Many webcomics generally look and feel similar to a printed comic that was simply published online, but comic creator Scott McCloud believes that webcomics can work in conjunction with other forms of media to add sound, motion, and interactivity to the basics of comics (McCloud, 208). Homestuck is a perfect example of how a webcomic can go beyond the standard idea of what a webcomic is by taking a multimedia approach and experimenting with style, format, and content.

Homestuck’s author, Andrew Hussie, identifies Homestuck and his other works on his website as “adventures” despite their being considered webcomics. The term adventures originates from what these stories are inspired by and what they mock. Hussie states that his stories exist as “mock games” of text-based adventure games: “You advance through the pages of the story by clicking links which sound like commands you would type in a text prompt to get a character to do something. Generally, the character will respond to that command on the following page” (Hussie “New Reader?”). The idea of a “mock game” is the foundation for Homestuck and the way its story is told. Alongside this foundation is the important multimedia aspect that adds sound, motion, and interactivity to the story. The resulting “comic” is what Hussie has described as “an unusual media hybrid. Something that reads like a heavily illustrated novel, frequently interrupted by cinematic Flash sequences, and sometimes even interactive games” (Hussie "What Is Homestuck?"). In short, Homestuck is a webcomic, a “mock game,” and a “media hybrid.”

Homestuck is also however, primarily a work of literature that subordinates other media, which is why I will refer to the participants of it as readers even if they are watching, listening, or playing. Homestuck may rely heavily on visuals, but with a total word count of 817,925, the webcomic also requires a critical amount of reading and interpretation on the reader’s part. Homestuck is not the same experience as sitting back and watching a movie unfold, despite its incorporating video segments every now and then. A mark of Homestuck being literature of the digital age is the required technology it takes to experience the story. You cannot read Homestuck without a digital device and internet connection, and the story would be incomprehensible without the additional media of videos, music, and interactive games. These different media are equally important for Homestuck, and they each help recreate the possibilities of what literature can be.

Homestuck, being a technologically modern work of literature, adds movement and sound to its story with animated videos. The comic is interspersed with a variety of animations made in Flash, some being indistinguishable from a short gif (a moving image) and others ending an act with more than ten minutes of animated storyline. These animations are often accompanied by music or sound effects but never voice acting, which still leaves a crucial amount of room for reader interpretation and imagination. For the readers of Homestuck, videos allow them to “experience important moments alongside the characters that are depicted in a real time fashion” (Litwhiler 48). Readers can experience the story in motion when words and static pictures cannot adequately describe the events of Homestuck. Alternatively, sometimes a video is juxtaposed to text, which enhances the narrative. We can see this exemplified in what is arguably the first video of Homestuck, in which the main character, John, stands outside of his home and gazes up at the sky where the comic’s title appears next to a stylized sun. During this animation, a looping sound effect of wind blowing through wind chimes plays, which continues to play after the animation ends. Underneath the video is the narrative, which reads: “The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune” (MSPA ?s=6&p=001982). The resulting effect of this text alongside the video is a profound feeling of loneliness and insignificance. Combined with the text and sound, the animation of John looking to the sky and the camera’s outward zoom create a cohesive narrative.[1] This is just one example of Homestuck using the media of videos to invigorate and enhance text, thus creating a new expression of literature.

Usually combined with videos are sound and music, which is extremely common in today’s digital world. For the videos of Homestuck and many other video-based media, music serves as a backdrop. In terms of music as a separate entity though, Homestuck stands apart from other media. Not only can all of the official and original music used in Homestuck’s videos be found on its bandcamp page, all of the music created for, but not explicitly used, in Homestuck is there as well. Whether or not the songs on each of the albums were officially used, they are all an equal, albeit optional, part of Homestuck’s story as a whole. These songs can depict almost anything from the comic, from a character, to a relationship, to an event, enriching the reader’s understanding of these characters and events that might not have been explicitly addressed or given enough screen time. An example of displaying an event that was not showcased in the comic but certainly happened is the song “Bargaining with the Beast.” This song depicts how one of the characters makes a deal with a Denizen (i.e. boss monster). Though there are no words to read, this song still adequately conveys the setting, emotion, and pace of the scene. The celestial choir and soaring instrumentals build a sense of how important this deal was, and readers can understand by the positive sound of the song how this scene played out. If they wish to, readers can further engage with the story here by listening and interpreting not just this song, but also any of Homestuck’s songs.

Interactivity—one of the most important aspect of Homestuck’s narrative—is best achieved through the comic’s interactive games. These games are moments in the comic when the reader is granted playable access to a character. The reader advances through the story now not by reading or watching but by actually being a character, exploring the environment, solving puzzles, and talking to other characters. Usually, there is an end goal to reach with each game, so the reader has some sense of direction. We can experience playing the narrative in one of Homestuck’s many games. In act 6 of the story for instance, after a short piece of animation, the reader is able to be one of the characters, Meenah, as she, or rather the reader, explores the afterlife and speaks with her friends there. In traditional literature, we would merely observe this part of the story, but by being Meenah, gaining narrative agency, and having her experiences of the afterlife be the readers’ experiences, readers immerse themselves into the story. Compared to traditional literature, in which the reader must create the events of the narrative inside their head from what information the text has given them, Homestuck provides the reader with a chance to be an actual part of the literature (Litwhiler 61-62).

There is something to gain and lose with every advancement in technology, and this is true for literature’s evolution as well. With Homestuck’s use of videos, music, and interactive games, we gain new ways of imagining and interpreting literature, but we also lose some of the original imagination that comes with traditional literature. With traditional literature, we have only the information displayed in the text. We must exert out imaginations to create what the world and characters look like, how the characters move, how off screen action unfolds. In some ways, it is exciting that we can shed this toll on our imagining, because with Homestuck, we receive certain details of information we previously had to invent. Of course, it can also be argued that this is detrimental to the imagination and the art of reading literature. But with Homestuck, we are still reading text, still imagining and interpreting at certain points, and it is still literature when we watch a video, when we listen to a song, when we play a game because the media is there to serve the text and enhance it. It is as if you were to receive letters from a friend. Before modern technology, before the internet, all you would have to know how your friend is doing is the text itself. Now, you can supplement other forms of media such as videos to the written letters and share a deeper experience with the friend, but you still have to have the written letters as a base for those other types of media.

What is in store for the future of digital literature? We can’t be sure, but it’s a strong possibility that creators will follow in Homestuck’s footsteps and integrate other media to enhance their literature. We already have one webcomic, Neokosmos, that is explicitly inspired by the style of Homestuck and its use of multimedia with its text and pictures. It is also possible with the ever-growing popular industry of videogames, that creators will produce more literature in the form of playable games. Many readers’ favorite segments of Homestuck seem to be the playable parts, and this is no surprise considering role-playing games are one of the most popular genres of video games. Out of 16.5 billion dollars’ worth of video games sold in 2015, 11.6% of it was attributed to role-playing games (Statista 2016). In the simplest of words, being part of a narrative, playing out a story, is fun, and I believe we can take that fun from traditional role-playing videogames and integrate it with literature, subordinating the video game dimension to the literary just as Homestuck does (Andrews 2). Homestuck is a pioneer in what could be an exciting new future for literature’s evolution.

[1] Though this analysis was independently concluded before further research, Austin Litwhiler made a similar but drastically deeper observation about this example video in his thesis, “From Pulp to Webpage: Homestuck and Postmodern Digital Narrative.”

Works Cited

"Computer and video game sales in the United States from 2009 to 2015, by category (in billion U.S. dollars)." Statista. Apr. 2016. Web.

"Genre breakdown of video game sales in the United States in 2015." Statista. Apr. 2016. Web.

Andrews, Jim. "Videogames as Literary Devices." Videogames and Art (2007): 1-6. Vispo. University of Chicago Press, Oct. 2015. Web. <http://www.vispo.com/writings/essays/VideogamesAsLiteraryDevices.pdf>.

Hussie, Andrew. "Homestuck." MS Paint Adventures. What Pumpkin, 2007. Web.

---. ”New Reader?” MS Paint Adventures. Web.

---. "What Is Homestuck?" MS Paint Adventures. Web. <http://mspaintadventures.com/scraps2/homestuckKS.html>.

Litwhiler, Austin Gunner. "From Pulp to Webpage: Homestuck and Postmodern Digital Narrative." Thesis. University at Albany, 2013. Web. <www.albany.edu/honorscollege/files/Litwhiler_Thesis.docx>.

McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form. New York: Perennial, 2000. Print.

#Homestuck #homestuck analysis

1 note · View note

tarragon-hq · 4 years

Text

This morning over breakfast I completed, the largely autobiographical, memoir of Julia Child’s My Life in France. This book was warm, inspiring, and an overall joy to read. Writing this review helped me understand how Julia was inspired, the ways in which she navigated her life to position herself for future success, and why in general she’s such an icon. It’s both an analysis and a summary of the parts of the book that stood out to me most.

Julia’s journey started with loving food at baseline. Her move to France catalyzed a number of changes that defined the trajectory of her later life. Her first meal in France was life changing and led to an insatiable curiosity and love for food. From the inspiration of this meal she wanted to learn how to recreate this experience, which led her to enroll in Le Cordon Bleu school. I found it interesting that Julia mentioned how all of her fellow students (male) wanted to learn to cook professionally, but not a single one was an artist. It’s not nearly enough to enroll and complete schooling, it’s the art in which you apply it that’s important. Julia went on to not only learn the techniques of traditional French cooking, but also how to navigate the marketplace. What is the best cut of meat, what cheeses pair best with seasonal produce, how to tell what produce is the freshest, etc. The only way to truly know the answers to these questions was to ask the grocers themselves, whose primary concerns deal with the most intimate minutiae of their wares. On learning from others, a golden quote from Julia’s teacher: “it is important not to rush, push too hard, or take people’s goodwill for granted.” Taking the time to listen and learn from French farmers, fishers, butchers, and other artisans, was absolutely essential in her future endeavors as an author, television phenomenon, and expert on French food for the American audience. These actions and learnings over the course of many years were not motivated by future profit or fame, but rather a deep interest, love, and appreciation for understanding cooking from the ground up.

The middle of the book lags a bit, as it becomes a catalogue of places traveled, food eaten, and people met that all played a part in Julia’s understanding and inspiration of French culture and food. A huge theme in the book was her experience writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking with her co-author Simca (and Louisette). Julia’s writing and “cookbookery” process is nothing short of exhaustive. She would have made an excellent scientist with her extensive attention to detail, obsession with understanding each part of the whole, and how everything dances in synergy. Interestingly, Julia attributes Simca to be the creative mastermind behind invention of most of the recipes. Julia’s personal expertise was taking these unfinished, yet brilliant ideas, experimenting until they were perfect, and translating them for an American audience. It is important to note that translation is not only language translation, but more importantly, food translation. For example, American flour has a much higher gluten content than French flour, and the rest of the recipe needs to be altered to account for this. Additionally, many ingredients common to French marketplaces are not available in American supermarkets, making many traditional French recipes inaccessible elsewhere without thoughtful consideration and adjustments. Only in understanding how each individual ingredient contributes to the final whole, was she able to substitute other ingredients for the same effect. Incredible mastery.

The publishing journey was quite difficult, as was well depicted in the movie. It’s a shame that the depth of knowledge and attention to detail was to their detriment for a lot of publishers, who argued they were selling cookbooks to 1) Americans, who aren’t interested in spending time making elaborate dishes or learning a multitude of new techniques and 2) women, who would be too intimidated by anything too complicated. Luckily, Julia had a small cohort of very dedicated friends who helped connect her to the right people for expansion of this dedicated network to see the masterpiece through to publication.

From here, the book shifts its focus from publication to television. At the time her cookbook was rising in popularity, television was a brand new medium and no one knew what was going to catch on. There were a few cooking shows starring popular chefs in the United States, but none had been very popular. Picking up Julia was a bit a risk and they piloted three, 30-minute shows to assess reception. Luckily her three pilots were met with mostly positive reviews, and her contact was renewed for 10-20 more episodes, all highlighting recipes or techniques from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. One of the most impressive bits throughout this book, but particularly emphasized in the sections on broadcasting, was Julia’s humility and constant desire to become better. After watching herself on television for the first time, Julia recounts, “I saw plenty of room for improvement, and figured that I might begin to have an inkling of what I was supposed to do after I’d shot twenty more TV shows. But it had been fun.”

The development of the second season of her show was monumental and encapsulates to me, a lot of why she is an icon. In addition to showcasing recipes and French cooking techniques (in color!), Julia wanted to film in various locations of France to show viewers how different ingredients are prepared and what it’s like to shop in the French marketplaces. Given that film was in its infancy, and the romantics of French cuisine and its marketplaces were a dying art, there was a precious window of opportunity to capture these experiences before they were gone forever. Here, the time and care Julia took to get to know the local merchants of France was absolutely imperative. For the most part (very few exceptions), the artisans in France that she had gotten to know closely were open and willing to having their process and lifestyle shared on television and preserved on film. They trusted Julia and wanted to help her when they could. France is not known for their openness to sharing, especially with outsiders, so the fact Julia was able to march through with a crew of American cameras is incredible to me. The factors in order for this to play out as they did were far too complex for someone to plan outright. Time and patience truly led to the fantastical outcome of Julia being able to preserve French culture and share it with the greater population, many of whom could only dream of exploring the local delights of France.

The book closes with an epilogue that is a bit grim. It lists a number of people very dear to Julia passing away in their late 60’s to 70’s, usually from heart attacks, cancer, or comorbidities of just being old (i.e. pneumonia). In addition to these deaths, Julia describes leaving her long-time summer home in France after her husband fell ill and was no longer able to travel with her. She recounts a surprising lack of sadness leaving their beloved home because its sentiments and memories were tied to the people she shared the home with (who had largely passed at this point). Additionally, the France she had known and fallen in love with was fading away. The famous marketplaces were being replaced by large supermarkets, prices were inflating, and the once sprawling natural landscapes were being overtaken by tourists and rows upon rows of houses.

One of the last insights into the inner workings of Julia is in a closing section of the book where Paul becomes very sick and needs to be hospitalized. On staying sane during difficult times, she shares, “As always, my work gave my life form, forced me to be productive, and helped me to keep a good balance. I was very lucky indeed. Without a challenging project like a cookbook (From Julia Child’s Kitchen) to work on, I could well have gone cuckoo in those dark months of Paul’s hospitalization.” The book ultimately ends just prior to Paul’s death which is clearly a narrative point. The introduction, written by Julia’s nephew who wrote this book with her, described the writing process difficult at times because Julia was a very private person, especially in personal matters. Despite being a fairly comprehensive memoir, I do see the privacy reflected in the omission of dealing with the grief of losing a soulmate, and any discussion of the inability to have children (which was alluded to in the movie). I respect this decision made by Julia to keep to her boundaries and clutching her most emotional experiences tight to the chest.

If it isn’t already apparent, I loved this book and what it represents as a personal account of someone who lived truly and with great spice and flair. Julia undoubtedly had the secret sauce, which is less about innate talent and all about having the luck to find something you’re passionate about and the commitment to spend your time and energy mastering it. Layered on top of this hard-won expertise was the ability to see beyond the limits of the status quo to redefine and expand what is possible.

-hcw

#byhcw

0 notes

roboticprocessautomationrpa-blog · 5 years

Link

The Drum has published a special one-off supplement dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the marketing world, and was also banging the drum loudly at The Drum Arms in Austin at SXSW talking AI and automation. There is little doubt that AI and automation are transforming businesses and the world that we live in. What that means is we also need to be focused on the ethical side, the human side of the story.

Industry insiders consider the top AI and automation trends for 2019.

The Drum Network asked its members: ”What do you think are the top AI and automation trends for 2019?”

Alex Hamilton, head of innovation, Isobar

In 2019, AI will play a role in redefining our relationship with technology and how we source information. UI designers and developers are in the process of creating new interface systems that are responsive to skills people use in their everyday lives. This means interfaces powered by voice, images, gestures and even the human brain. Advances in machine learning are improving computers’ ability to recognise human speech, allowing us to communicate along more natural lines. I only see voice-powered interfaces becoming more relevant as we become increasingly limited by the bandwidth in our fingers – a person can type 50 words per minute, or say 150 words per minute. This trend is evident in how search is changing. More people are using voice-powered devices to search for information, with some grand predictions stating that 50% of all searches will be via voice by 2020. The number of search queries launch by images – known as visual search – is also forecast to grow in 2019. The world’s biggest technology companies have all launched visual search tools. As better algorithms drive improvements in accuracy and relevancy, I expect these tools to post solid gains in visual search volume. This shift in how we interface with technology has relevance for brands and retailers as the majority of current touch points are text based. This shift away from a screen-dominated, point and click era will of course take time, but we’ll see the seeds of this trend planted in 2019.

Sarah Whitfield, CMO, Buzzoole

The right creator or influencer can make or break a campaign. They need to be authentic, have a real and engaged audience and align with a brands target demographic. This is the minimum bar set by most marketers and as you can imagine, it’s not always easy to achieve when purely reliant on manual/human selection. At Buzzoole, we use proprietary technology to match brands with the best Creators through NLU and visual recognition in order to determine their brand affinity. By putting this data together with first party performance data (engagement rates, impressions etc) our intelligent system keeps improving and thus is able to provide marketers with Influencers better suited to their campaigns. That isn't to say that automation will take over the management of Influencer Marketing in the future, but it will help provide better-performing solutions. A good example of this is in our work with Eloquii, a plus size women's fashion company and a still relatively small, but growing fashion space. Eloquii had been using Influencers for four to five years and had worked in a labour-intensive manual way i.e. it required a manual/visual review of all Influencers. Since Eloquii already had Influencers that they knew were plus-size, we were able to take these Influencers and retrain our AI. It required more than 20,000 images to do so, but we were able to do it with certainty and bring down the still necessary, but hugely reduced human element.

Daniel Todaro, managing director, Gekko

AI, in probably its simplest form as voice recognition technology, sits in millions of homes globally in various guises such as Google Assistant and Alexa and for Generation Z and Alpha is the norm. Speaking to an AI device is almost innate for these generations, whether it is through your Sky Q remote or any voice enabled device. Link this to search and the advertising medium becomes increasingly more relevant to marketing, shifting traditional ATL spend into the AI sphere as a subliminal form of media which is perceived as being helpful rather than as intrusive. Voice search enables more convenient and enhanced access not only to shopping but also to services such as restaurant bookings, delivery, train, cinema or theatre bookings when required or when prompted through smart AI advertising which entices you to explore more. Adverts, sponsorship and traditional ATL will encourage you to search and spend via AI, making transactions relatively seamless and hassle free. AI voice assistants will increasingly become an integral to every brands marketing budget. Having an AI assistant may mean you never need to leave your home, just as things were depicted in The Machine Stops by EM Forster which is becoming increasingly more a reality than fiction."

Steve Todd, technical director, Mashbo

In the marketing world there is so much buzz around the more shiny, engaging iterations of AI - driverless cars and robot chefs, image recognition and conversational AI in the form of chatbots and virtual assistants. However, working in a software development consultancy that uses AI to help improve businesses across the globe, the biggest trends we have seen so far in 2019 are less exciting, yet still completely transformational. We’ve seen a marked increase in businesses seeking solutions that streamline day-to-day processes, in particular around administrative tasks. For this AI offers process automation, where computers are used to deliver processes faster and more accurately than human counterparts, and rule-based systems, which can be used to create software that will provide an answer to a problem in place of a human expert. We believe these are the most useful - and most common - broad implementations of AI that we have right now. They have the potential to transform every sector, in businesses of every size. Yes, they will render certain types of jobs redundant, but in turn it will also create new and exciting roles in the field itself. What’s more, in those businesses already employing automation to take over day-to-day administrative and auditing tasks, we are seeing a trend that many did not expect. A need to take on morestaff. Take, for example, one of our own clients, a busy student lettings agency in Liverpool. Since partnering with us to create automated property management software, PropertyCloud, it has seen its portfolio grow. Freed from endless admin and mountains and paperwork, its team is focused on more enjoyable and profitable tasks. They are working shorter hours, have more ability to work flexibly and morale has been given a huge boost. The outcome? Happier, more productive teams getting better results and contributing to business growth.

Arnold Ma, CEO, Qumin

I still remember my first computer, at the age of 10 in 1996: it took about 30 minutes to download a single MP3 song. Fast-forward just 23 years, Gigabit internet is readily available to many homes across the UK, it’s almost 35,000 times faster than my “state of the art” 28.8k modem back in 1996.

Now, imagine that rate of progression on “intelligent agents” that have the potential to exponentially improve their ability to mimic “cognitive functions”. Should we be afraid to embrace these new developments in tech for fear of being outwitted and made redundant? I can empathise with critics in many sectors such as manufacturing, production, and so on, because these are mainly driven by “cognitive AI” – Analytical AI that uses past experience to inform future decisions, which is already widely available. The other two types, human-inspired AI and humanised AI, driven by emotional and social intelligence respectively, are what create the most controversy. Emotional AI is the understanding of human emotions as well as cognitive intelligence. Humanised AI adds social intelligence and self-awareness to the list.

We should focus on understanding how and where AI can help in certain industries. In marketing terms, AI is essentially “human learning abilities on steroids”, so think about the channels and tasks that are based on logic, rather than creativity. Channels such as Paid Search. However, without emotional and social intelligence, AI cannot be spontaneous or creative like humans. The human mind conjures up weird and wonderful things. We create and share things that evoke emotions, that we think others will find amusing, interesting, cute, sad. We have spent so much time trying to understand and keep up with data driven marketing and digital media, that we’ve forgotten what really matters: people, cultures and ideas.

Paul Vallois, managing director, nimbletank

The big trend in AI in 2019 will be its position within the business. We expect an increasing number of businesses to progress, at pace, through the AI maturity index. For the last few years we’ve seen a proliferation of AI on the periphery of business. It’s been the domain of innovation, data science or digital teams. The focus, rightly so, has been on developing use cases for pilots and experimentation but the results are often not fully socialised within the business. In 2019 we expect to see more businesses rolling out AI solutions in an increasingly connected and integrated way. More aligned to the business’s future growth strategy and increasingly powering their products and services. With this will come the need to take employees on a journey, explain the impacts and opportunities that AI will create – the tasks it will remove but the roles it will create. The need to imbed a culture of continuous learning within the business and the consideration that will need to be given to defining and sharing the organisation’s ethical approach to AI. Employees need to know that there is governance in place. With this increased level of maturity will come a more connected customer experience. Rather than just implementing the entry level, chatbot functionality, businesses will be exploring how highly contextual product personalisation, visual search, facial recognition and conversational AI can provide a much richer, multi-channel experience for the customer. We also expect AI to be further imbedded in products as opposed to acting as a supporting service to the product. The rise of ‘robo advisors’ managing our finances, personalisation engines curating our watch/play lists, automated healthcare professionals supporting our wellbeing and an increase in robot interaction in our everyday lives. At the same time, expect businesses to continue to automate back office services at scale, with repetitive and functional tasks being assessed and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) becoming common place. The one constant will be talent and the scarcity of it. As businesses look to scale these solutions there will be increasing pressure on the current talent pool and on business and government to address this.

Gareth Owen, managing director, Roast

I expect the upcoming AI and automation trends to be two-fold. Firstly, I expect the conversation surrounding AI to become more informed and less sensationalist. People are always keen to throw “AI” into their pitch patter because it conjures a cool image of something out of Terminator 2. This has to change. As this area becomes better understood, clients will eventually start calling their agency’s bluff and AI will be re-framed as a useful tool rather than some kind of magic marketing wand. Secondly, I think it’s going to get easier to merge different streams of AI in order to create something truly valuable. For example, merging Facial recognition, Optical Character Recognition, and Voice Recognition could help us develop reliable biometrics, potentially having huge ramifications for the world of Market Research. AI will only ever be as powerful as the thought that goes into its development and, subsequently, its deployment.

Jim Bowes, CEO, Manifesto

One term we’ll be hearing a lot more of in 2019 is Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, where software trained by human workers takes over mundane, repetitive tasks which involve transferring data from one system to another. It used to be that you’d have to very carefully specify a set of steps for the software to carry out to, say, copy loan application details from a scanned document into a database. But AI’s can learn just by watching a person do it a sufficient number of times, lowering the barrier to entry. The pace at which successful RPA implementations are proceeding is picking up and it’s expanding beyond the traditionally paper-based industries like banking, insurance and law, into the automation of many more office tasks. The leading RPA companies like BluePrism, UiPath and Thoughtonomy, already large companies, will become much better known as RPA goes mainstream. This year will also be the year where all the talk about AI as something that’s just over the horizon dies down and we start to see a lot more AI actually being put into practice. AI is about to get a lot less glamorous as conjecture over superintelligences and hypothetical debates about ethics gives way to discussions about platforms, frameworks and best practices. AI strategists will become much more common as businesses get to grips with the technicalities involved and the long, arduous process of putting their data into a format that can actually be used to power machine learning applications and predictive analytics.

Sam Watson, head of mobile, Brass

I think the key trend this year will be test and learn. Although everyone talks about AI, and I’m sure there are experts in house and at agencies alike, there will still be a resistance from brands to take the big jump in to it. Much like mobile development (the iPhone is 12 years old now) brands and companies still tread lightly into the unknown as they don’t know what it will bring in terms of cost or impact to the business. AI and Automation will be the same. Brands should be looking at what data they want to understand better that they can’t already, think about the data sets they have access to and then trial some small under the radar tests to see what data they get back. It’s not a magic pill that suits everyone so the real proof will be what happens this time next year!

Statistical machine learning is the most used commonly used and effective type of AI already used by marketers and it is set to grow in the future, as data collection, enabled by Internet infrastructure increases. More data will make it easier to improve the performance of this technology, that is to say that its performance and accuracy will be greatly improved. As the role of AI across many sectors has become crucial for informed decision making, it is interesting to look at what role it plays in an emerging industry such as Influencer Marketing.

#rpa #robotic process uaotmation #roboticprocessautomation

0 notes

news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

Text

Roll your eyes all you like, but Instagram poets are redefining the genre for millennials

We millennials like our poetry typed out in neat fonts on rustic pastel backgrounds, centred in a tiny square on a small screen. We read short, simple, and relatable poems which may strike a chord with us for a second before we scroll on to the next Timothée Chalamet appreciation post or #brunch pic.

I'm talking, of course, about poetry native to Instagram. A budding genre scoffed by the literary community but loved by millions of young readers.

SEE ALSO: This Instagram poet is rewriting fairy tales with modern gender roles

This Insta-friendly verse, with its distinct tone and aesthetic, is serving sincerity and feeling in the place we need it the most: the ever ironic, cynical internet. It’s this vulnerability on a platform that’s more-often-than-not replete with inauthenticity and polished veneers that makes it so striking.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by R. M. Drake (@rmdrk) on Aug 6, 2018 at 3:29pm PDT

Roll your eyes all you like, but Instagram poets are defining the genre for the millennial generation with a radical democratisation and push for diversity in the poetry world. Their work is accessible in more than one sense of the word, and while the critics may not always like it, their work is now being celebrated as "gateway poetry" — and that can only be a good thing.

Household names in the Instagram poetry realm are now also recognised names in bookstores and the literary world in general. The most famous poet of Instagram is 25-year-old Rupi Kaur, whose poetry has — apart from securing seven-figure sales numbers — reached the level of popularity and recognisability where it is now a (frankly hilarious) meme. R.M. Drake, or Robert Macias, is perhaps best known for being reposted by the Kardashians, but he is also the author of several bestsellers. British poets Charly Cox (read her poem about kale) and queer poet Yrsa Daley Ward are making strides in Europe. Not to mention Nayyirah Waheed (read up on her plagiarism dispute with Kaur for real-life Insta poet drama), Tyler Knott Gregson, Amanda Lovelace, and Lang Leav.

View this post on Instagram

poem. from salt. by nayyirah waheed. 2013. . . . . . . . #salt #nejma #literature #nayyirahwaheed

A post shared by @ nayyirah.waheed on Aug 8, 2018 at 9:05am PDT

This is a diverse group of poets, many of whom have long since graduated from Instagram to print poetry, causing some to argue that the term"Instagram poet" is a lazy one, that their medium is the least interesting thing about them. But these poets do have more in common than their platform of choice, poetry experts say. The Instagram poets have given birth to a genre of their own.

"What the poets of Instagram tend to have in common is what I would call emotional relatability or accessibility, and a tone and vocabulary that is reminiscent of the self-help or self-improvement movement — many read like motivational quotes," says Dr Eleanor Spencer-Regan, digital director of the Institute of Poetry and Poetics at Durham University.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tyler Knott Gregson (@tylerknott) on Jul 16, 2018 at 5:24pm PDT

It is precisely this relatability that makes Instagram poetry so resonant among millennials. Rather than alienating a young audience with convoluted language or complicated form, the ultimate goal of the Insta poets is always to connect directly with their audience.

Judith Palmer, Director of the Poetry Society, says that one of the defining characteristics of Instagram poetry is that it's less about flexing your linguistic muscles and more about gaining instant understanding from readers. "The language isn’t often being pushed and I don’t see a complex vocabulary," says Palmer. "It is not really about complex language, it is more about easily translatable universal emotions."

While short form diary-style writing has been an internet culture staple pretty much since the days of LiveJournal, Insta poets are breaking new ground by insisting that their writing is poetry and demanding it be viewed and respected as such.

According to Martha Sprackland, Associate Editor at Poetry London, that's one of the things that sets high profile Insta poets apart from your average inspirational quote account.

"There has long been light verse, slogans, inspirational quotes, whatever else; what's more recent is their determination to be included in the bounds of 'poetry,'" Sprackland tells Mashable. Per Sprackland, their dedication to belonging in the poetry genre is part of what has helped them gather an eager young audience around poetry. "I know that the rise of Instagram poetry has changed the perception of 'poetry' as a whole for large numbers of young people," says Sprackland.

While Instagram poets have achieved great mainstream commercial success, literary critics have unsparingly criticised them and their supposedly "amateur" writing. With their style and medium of choice, they are leading a commercialisation of the poetry genre and diluting the quality of poetry, a once high-brow literary genre.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by rupi kaur (@rupikaur_) on Dec 10, 2017 at 1:10pm PST

Poet Rebecca Watts argues in the poetry journal PN Review that Instagram poets are ruining poetry as an art form. "In the redefinition of poetry as ‘short-form communication’ the floodgates have been opened, writes Watts. "The reader is dead: long live consumer-driven content and the 'instant gratification' this affords," Watts writes in the piece entitled 'The Cult of the Noble Amateur.'

Watts wants the literary community to "stop celebrating amateurism and ignorance in our poetry, " and insists that the size of one's following says nothing of the quality of the writing (Watts even goes as far as to make a comparison to Donald Trump).

There is of course some truth to the point that a massive following does not ensure quality, as one trickster poet attempted to prove when he obtained thousands of followers writing four word poems on Instagram.

But, according to the poetry experts, we're looking at emerging poetry the wrong way. The exposure that Instagram has brought to the genre is a good thing, despite the fact that they're taking the genre in a direction that the critics might not like.

"What are those critics doing over there?" Sprackland asks. "It's not for them. It's a different genre, and it's daft to try and approach it bristling with all the usual tools of the 'contemporary page poetry' critic," Sprackland says. "It's not a case of merit, but of misfiling, of mislabelling, and then a wilful refusal to admit that mislabelling for fear of either causing offence or appearing snobbish.”

But, this critical snobbery to newcomers to a genre isn't exactly a new thing. Spencer-Regan points out that frowning upon art in a new more accessible medium it is "definitely not a new response."

"The emergence of this new kind of poetry can really make us question what poetry is and what makes it good. But these poets do reach large audiences, and their work clearly resonates with a lot of people — though it may not be to the personal taste of many academics and literary critics,” says Spencer-Regan.

Spencer-Regan argues that the Instagram poets have, in fact, succeeded at securing more diversity in a genre traditionally perceived to be dominated by white, straight people (both when it comes to both readers and writers). Spencer-Regan argues that these poets and their strategic use of social platforms have in fact reinvigorated and democratised the poetry world.

"This is a radically democratic method of publishing that is giving opportunities to many women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people who publicly disclose mental illnesses," says Spencer-Regan. "These people are rejecting the old rules of a literary world that they feel may have rejected them."

According to Palmer of The Poetry Society, the Insta poets have successfully managed to bring poetry into people’s everyday life. Many poems deal with topics found in all sorts of Instagram content, such as body image, sexuality and gender.

"What we’re seeing is contemporary life reflected and that is the big appeal. People have for too long had this idea that poetry is a small world, and that poetry is one thing. This is an unnecessary narrowing," says Palmer.

And, like it or not, Instagram poetry has introduced young people to a genre that, in the recent years, hasn't had much of a hold on them.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Yrsa Daley-Ward (@yrsadaleyward) on Oct 14, 2018 at 7:20pm PDT

The poetry of Instagram may not be to the critics' likings, or the likings of some adult readers, but that shouldn't make us write it off as meaningless, trivial diary scribbles.

"You could argue that some of the poetry is trite, clichéd, bland or derivative. But we're coming to it as more mature, more sophisticated readers," says Spencer-Regan. "I can imagine being 14 and then finding these pages — they would speak to me in a whole other way, giving voice to feelings and experiences that I perhaps couldn't have articulated for myself at that age."

Spencer-Regan sees Instagram poetry as a harnessing of the power of social media to get young people excited about verse.

"We talk about Harry Potter as a 'gateway' book, and I suspect that these poems can work in the same way — to make young people curious about poe," Spencer-Regan says. "Poetry will no longer be something remote or intimidating, but an art form that these young readers feel they can claim as their own."

Whether you like or dislike the poetry in your feed, or you relate to the minimalist relatability of the Insta poets, their influence must be acknowledged. After all, if you have haters, you must be doing something right.

WATCH: Saint Hoax's addictive Instagram account puts a wicked twist on pop culture

#_author:Laura Byager #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_uuid:74ed55a1-834a-32da-aad0-b58981cc2395 #_revsp:news.mashable

0 notes

lukeonofriomills-blog · 6 years

Text

Contextual Module

Eddie Adams

Eddie Adams was an American photographer and photojournalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for “Saigon Execution” in 1969. He became famous for his portraits of celebrities and politicians, however this photograph from 1968 put him on the map and had one of the biggest impacts on the photography landscape. His photographs from the Vietnam war captured the raw brutality of war and the impact it had on all those involved! This is a form of documentation photography.

“You can see the gun, you can see the expression on the man’s face as the bullet enters his head, and you see the soldier on the left who is wincing at the thing that has happened,” -Hal Buell

Documentary Photographers

Documentary photography is a form of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in coverage pieces to record moments in history. During this 20th century the tradition of documentary photography was redefined. Various artists saw the camera as a tool for social change, using it to reveal any injustice, inequality and the side-lined aspects of society and the larger world. However, social documentary photography is often a subjective art and not all photographers in this category intend their images to aid the bettering of society, some use it to shed light on bigger issues that otherwise would’ve gone unnoticeable!

Photography on the Streets - Louis Daguerre 1839

Louis Daguerre’s ground-breaking image of a man and his customer is the first known photograph to capture human beings! Before Daguerre, people had only been represented in paintings and other pieces of art; that changed when Daguerre fixed his lens on a Paris street one day and then exposed a silver-plated sheet of copper for several minutes, afterwards he developed and fixed the image using chemicals. The result was the first mirror-image photograph. It’s remarkable to think that this photograph captured humans for the first in a medium other than traditional art, the casualness of this photo set the ground work for street photography.

Photography as Evidence of the Supernatural

Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) became interested in the supernatural and eventually became a spiritualist. Ada Dean, who was a spiritual photographer took a picture of Arthur with an apparent apparition. Doyle, who was interested in photography attempted to capture spirits in his book the wanderings of the spiritualist. Death was rife amongst society, mourning rituals became complicated in the Victorian era, they believed spirits lingered on. Photography could capture the abstract substance that evoked energy such as ectoplasm. Photography was used to document a lot of religious and spiritual aspects of society and culture, there was a lot of superstition during this period, many people believed in the supernatural and thus capturing them in photographs was a big deal as it aided everyone’s curiosity regarding the supernatural!

Futurism

The Futurists were a group of Italian artists and writers who were interested in forcefulness and energy, they documented people who rioted, people who were in an aggressive format. There art was abstract and displayed energy in their work. They were fascists and thugs, they dressed like gentleman but were an aggressive force when necessary. They were fascinated by warfare and other conflicts. They involved themselves in the first world war, this modern war fascinated them from the machinery to the killing. Marinetti was a writer and a futurist, he did a report on the Balkan War published in 1914. His cover invokes the sound go weaponry through the cover design, the first world war fed into the energy they longed for. Some pieces depicted people on their way to fight, they also showed the internal flux of their psychological experience as well as their psychical movement. They had millions of manifestos. They also did a lot of performances, however their performances involved them getting people angry but using vulgar words, they did this intentionally as it fed into their fascination. Marinetti actively pursued the idea of Italy participating in World War I, himself and the other founding member were quick to sign up for military service. But the war didn’t hold the redemption that Futurism sought.

World War II

Adolf Hitler established a structure of power, his rise to power came after their defeat during the first world war, Germany needed a leader and Hitler filled that role perfectly, interestingly Hitler wanted to be an artist during his youth. Nazi Race Scientists Germany would classify people, by race, religion and sexuality. Yellow Stars established in Poland in 1939 and in other countries in 1941. Different stars indicted different religious beliefs, such as Jews or gypsies etc. It was a way of categorizing the hundreds of prisoners. During the war, The Nazi’s burned all of the books in Germany in the year 1933 as to suppress knowledge and the sense of freedom. They relied on fear tactics in order to remain in power and dominate over the whole of Germany. Concentration camps grouped people, women on one side, children on the other, men were spared to work the factories. Shaving peoples head, having them wear the same uniform, all looking the same, dehumanizing them. Camps were modernist, they were efficient in their purpose. The Nazis tried to destroy evidence by burning bodies when the Americans began liberating these camps as they believed doing so would make them seen innocent. A lot of prisoners were rescued from these camps but were processed again at Rehabilitation Administrations, this caused a lot of distress as prisoners were processed in the worst way possible at the concentration camps and had to go through it again. Camps were set up to treat prisoners of war from disease and trauma and to get back a sense of normality following the end of WWII. Rhoda Dawson, a photographer documented the process of this Rehabilitation centre. Many photographers formed groups to document these changes.

Postmodernism & Blade Runner

Postmodernism was a reaction against moderism. Modernism was based on idealism and a utopian and perfectible vision of human life and society and a belief in progress of mankind. It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those formulated by religion or science could be used to understand or explain our reality. Modernist artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on subjects, believing they could find a way of purely reflecting the modern world in an artistic manner. Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century and advocated that individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles. A good comparison to Postmodernism would be the movie ‘Bladerunner’ the director Ridley Scott stated, “a production of mainstream cinema only films with an independent sensibility are able to fully represent the disturbing post human this is because the ideals of romantic love are central to patriarchal society’s needs” In the films form, content and ideological centre, Blade Runner explores and utilities the strategies of quotation, recycling, pastiche, hyper reality and identity crisis. All of which are affiliated with Postmodernism, this film explores the philosphies behind postmodernism, its definitely worth watching to gain a further understanding of the postmodernism period!

In this blog post I have discussed some of the contextual information behind photography and looked at some of the topics associated with it. The information was extracted from online resources as well as pre-existing journals, books and movies. However, I wanted to touch upon the notion of futurism and the idea behind their existing an art movement that was ruthless and forthcoming in their agendas and longtime goals. The idea that a self-proclaimed art movement could resort to aggravation and promote the idea of war and violence is mind baffling considering that art should be used to educate us and help us appreciate the world in a way that betters our understanding of life. It’s an interesting juxtaposition from the traditional artist methods of that time period, the Futurists packed their artwork with raw energy which originated from their own perspective of the world and their longing of war and seeing the repercussions of such a devasting act; it is fascinating to think that they drew inspiration from violence and weapons of mass destruction but that fueled their artistic outlooks. When the first world War kicked off they revelled at the fact that these countries were waging war, they encouraged many young Italians to join. On a psychological level, these Futurists wanted nothing more than to witness this madness up close and personal which is why they immediately enlisted when given the opportunity. Italy’s losses in World War I morphed into a myth of “mutilated victory” in the popular imagination, creating a political atmosphere that Benito Mussolini would later manipulate so that Italian citizens accepted two decades of Fascist dictatorship. Futurism and fascism shared many rhetorical similarities (the glorification of war and violence, the primacy of Italian identity) It could be argued that Futurists could be considered the ‘terrorists’ of the art world as they would relish off violence and hate and when given the chance would intentionally create scenarios which would in turn result in violence, this allowed them to witness the change in humans when at boiling point and they were heavily amused by this energy emanating from people and channelled it into their artwork, they feed of peoples anger like vampires.

#photography #contextualresearch

1 note · View note

cryptochurp · 6 years

Text

What Big Tech’s Ban Might Mean for Cryptocurrency Advertising

Following Facebook’s lead, Google has announced it will ban all cryptocurrency advertising on its platforms by June 2018. This restriction applies to all Google-owned platforms including YouTube and any websites where Google sells digital ad space. On Sunday, March 18, 2018, Sky News reported Twitter will ban a range of cryptocurrency advertising by April 2018, including advertising for initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency wallets and some cryptocurrency exchanges. Twitter has not publicly communicated the ban nor has it denied the report.

As Matthew Frankel with the Motley Fool suggests, the main purpose of Google’s ban could be to protect investors without harming those already currently involved in the industry for the sake of positive development of the blockchain technology business ecosystem as a whole. Still, the reasoning and repercussions of this ban are worth investigating further.

While straightforward in delivery, the announcement itself has far-reaching implications for advertisers in the cryptocurrency space. The instance also leaves others with one more example to gauge Google’s position of power, responsibility and liability over online communication.

The news came as part of Google Adwords’ annual “trust and safety” report in the form of a new policy “to restrict the advertisement of Contracts of Difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting” — all speculative high-risk methods for generating greater amounts of profit in the short term with a low barrier of entry.

Because cryptocurrency has always been associated with financial volatility and has more recently become a hot-button topic in finance and technology in general, understanding why Google has banned these other financial products might indicate a more rational consideration for the ban.

Specifically, the update stated that advertisements for “cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice) will no longer be served.” While the statement goes on to say that certain Contracts of Difference, rolling spot forex and financial spread betting can be authorized to advertise through Adwords in certain countries based on Google’s certification, there is no mention of cryptocurrencies. Finally, “Advertisers can request certification with Google starting March 2018 when the application form is published.”

Blanket Approach

Bitcoin Magazine spoke with Rick Hanna, a digital strategist with BTC Inc, to better understand the situation. According to Hanna, setting the update (bans are not typical) ahead of time, for June 2018, is typical of Google Adwords updates and changes. “It gives their developers and end users time to implement and adjust for the changes. And a lot of cryptocurrency advertisers will be using Google and Facebook for the time being until it closes.”

For Hanna, based on past behavior, the most atypical thing about Facebook and Google’s announcements is the “blanket approach” which bans all cryptocurrency advertising:

“Blanket approach raises eyebrows because you recognize how much they act as gatekeepers. A blanket ban seems a bit heavy-handed to squash a few bad eggs.”

Hanna recognized that other social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Medium and Reddit will be used more often unless they follow suit.

Reasons and Repercussions

Tatiana Moroz is the founder of Crypto Media Hub, a consultancy specializing in advertising, PR, marketing and events for the cryptocurrency space since 2015, with clients like Vaultoro, Blockfinity and Zencash. While her company targets mainly publisher advertising, whether that be through website banner ads and original content or on events, rather than on Google or Facebook, Moroz helped to articulate big tech’s thinking for the ban as well as potential repercussions for companies who rely on various advertising platforms to get their message across.

“This is not intended to sound conspiratorial in any way, but I think that Facebook and Google are very large corporations embedded in the establishment system,” Moroz told Bitcoin Magazine. “They get a lot of benefit from that system. That has been proven with the way they censor their users and the way they exploit their users by incorrectly selling their information. When I look at their policy on cryptocurrency, I think that it’s a disruptive technology that could potentially eat their lunch.”

On the other hand, Moroz also admitted that these same corporations have valid concern with regard to liability: “The SEC regulation around cryptocurrency has been somewhat unclear in an ever-evolving landscape, so, by allowing cryptocurrency advertisements, they might be opening themselves up to legal liability without necessarily knowing it.”

Separating the Wheat From the Chaff

Even for media and marketing companies that specialize in cryptocurrency, filtering potential clients through a vetting process that weeds out scams or potential pump-and-dump projects can be a difficult process that must constantly be redefined. From this perspective, the prospect of laying down a blanket approach to banning all cryptocurrency advertisements may be the easiest way to save time, while eliminating liability and mitigating the responsibility of imposing an evaluation framework that could stunt the industry or appear in any way, shape or form as collusion.

However, the reality of the power which both Facebook and Google hold over the digital world means that even if they are attempting to mitigate their responsibility for something as new and unpredictable as cryptocurrency, banning cryptocurrency advertising is still a method by which they are able to choose the players who can (or cannot) grow their businesses through digital advertising. According to an eMarketer article from last year, together, Google and Facebook were expected to control 63.1 percent of U.S. digital ad investment by the end of 2017.

Art, Not Science

“As a marketing company, it’s very difficult to choose which projects to work on,” admitted Moroz. “It can be an intimidating process for everyone, but I do believe that there needs to be some way to figure out whether a company is real. On the other hand, I am not a venture capitalist or lawyer so I can’t necessarily gauge each [project’s] ability to be successful.”

“We try to be selective with who we work with, but knowing about legitimacy is an ongoing problem within this space. I don’t think Google is in any position to be able to gauge that better, so, on a case-by-case basis, that may be difficult for people at this time.”

It should be noted that when considering how to separate legitimate cryptocurrency companies from scams, it is not often so black and white — most companies fall somewhere in the middle. As a result, it may not always be easy to distinguish illegal activity from mere mediocrity or incompetence.

Cryptocurrency Advertising in a Post-Google and Facebook World

Assuming that Google, Twitter and Facebook’s cryptocurrency advertising ban is here to stay, cryptocurrency and, to an extent, blockchain technology companies in general will be facing new challenges when it comes to promoting their brands and getting customers without the help of three of the internet’s largest corporations.

“I definitely expect to see some blowback from the crypto-community since social media has become the primary channel for communications in this very new market,” said Swan Burrus, a strategist with OgilvyOne Worldwide. Burrus also speculated as to whether further restrictions on these same platforms could be placed on bounty programs which incentivize support and promotion for specific cryptocurrencies.

Moroz, on the other hand, believes filling the space left by the absence of advertising on search engine and social media platforms will result in higher quality interactions through community involvement and relationship building.

I think it is going to become even more focused on relationships and finding trusted partners who can help them navigate the space. If you can’t necessarily afford an agency to do that, it would be worthwhile to at least do research or talk to people who have gone through that process. Projects can always go to different communities or cryptocurrency publishers that they trust for advertising.

Though going through the internet’s biggest online players will likely present advertisers the largest opportunity to receive the most impressions per ad, other organizations who work for cryptocurrency companies have found that it is not always best.

According to Shane Jordan, vice president of strategic insights at Spark Public Relations, Google and Facebook play a much more peripheral role than one would first think:

In our experience and data results, the Google and Facebook ad networks have not proved to be a significant driver of conversion and, thus, in past campaigns we have only included Google and FB ads as a very small percentage of the advertising media mix.

With the understanding that advertisers who use data will build ad campaigns around those places on the internet where performance measures highest, Jordan said his team works more often with publishers. “We've found that the best performing channels have been direct display advertising on targeted websites where we know crypto-investors get their news and market insights — and this is where we will continue to focus our efforts."

At the industry’s early stage, there is still clear disconnect or misconception between where advertising should place ads and where their customers want to see them.

Joking on the complicated yet fascinating dynamic of the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology space on an episode of his podcast, Cointalk, writer Jay Kang aptly summarizes an ideal future for cryptocurrency that many will continue to work toward:

What we really want is an atmosphere where you can make a good faith investment in a project because you think that the project has merit and potential for whatever reason. And that it is not going to be overrun by scammers, that theses shady things will not happen to them, that the exchange where they keep their money will not get hacked. And we’ll eventually get there.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2pqiso4 via IFTTT

#BTC #HODL #ETH #CryptoChurp.com

0 notes

emilygcaplan · 6 years

Video

vimeo

RESEARCH // DOLL HOSPITAL

4.2.2018

BRIEF THREE.

Doll Hospital is a bi-annual art and literature printed journal that focuses on the conversation of mental health. It has an interesting outlook on mental health, compared to the other two magazines that I have talked about - as it draws upon the history of mental health and its ties with race, class, gender equality, sexuality, colonialism, chronic illnesses and disabilities. They aim to offer an alternative to the limited stories that are focused on through mainstream media, and to provide a platform for those who experience mental health firsthand in their own words, and on their own terms.

"We are a doll hospital. We explore notions of growth, trauma, chronic illness and childhood, and identify how this lives in conversation with mental health. Constructs of white girlhood continue to exclude and alienate women of colour, particularly black women. This is unacceptable. We are interested in reclaiming these spaces, redefining innocence, and standing, unapologetically, in our trauma.” // “We don’t care about ‘success stories’, we care about surviving”

In 2014, Bethany Rose Lamont tweeter “I’d love to make a zine about mental health in relation to feminism/queer stuff - would that be something u nice ppl would like to submit to?”. Following on from this tweet Bethany got an amazing response, and on October 1st she launched the first zine via Kickstarter. The first issue was a huge success, being shared and mentioned by others on their social media pages - as well as it being the topic of conversation for talks at Oxford University. At the end of 2014 Bethany managed to reach her goal on Kickstarter, and this meant she was able to produce the magazine as a whole. now Doll Hospital is onto its fourth issue, and is doing incredibly well!

PRESS FEEDBACK.

“The defiant mental health zine made by and for survivors. There’s nothing much out there like Doll Hospital. It’s an art and literature mental health journal which encourages an intersectional focus. Rooted in self-advocacy, it centres the voices of those who are largely unheard in the mainstream narrative of mental health. It aims to be an alternative and does an excellent job of it. It takes submission from anyone who has experienced mental health illness firsthand and wants to talk about it in their own words and on their own terms.”

Dazed and Confused

“I especially want our readers to know that you don’t need to have a corny head shot and a blue tick on your Twitter to talk about your experiences; you don’t need to be “over” your mental illness to talk about your mental illness. You don’t need a PhD in psychology to speak with authority. You don’t need to sound like some Better Call Saul style Ted Talk dude for your voice to matter. It already does. And we’re listening.”

Interview with our Editor-In-Chied by Lydia for Germ Magazine

“No matter where you come from, mental health is the one thing that affects us all. But most of us are sick of only seeing the typical tortured male eccentric and white manic pixie dream girl. Doll Hospital aims to move past these stereotypes, giving a voice to those who have felt silenced. Combining touching comics and literary mediums, Bethany Rose Lamont’s journal has shed some light on far-reaching mental health topics in the realms of women’s prisons, Muslim society and disability.”

Too Radical for WHSmith: Seven Awesome Indie Zines You Need to Know Right Now

THE NAME.

The creator of the magazine, Bethany, was herself struggling with anorexia and her mental health, and was told by her friends to stop posting about her suicidal thoughts on Twitter, which encouraged her to kickstart her zine. She feels passionate about the fact that you do not have to be a celebrity, or be verified on social media to be able to talk about your mental health. She also explains how the name for her magazine came from the 2012 Spring Summer issue of AnOther Magazine, where they published the quote...

“The doll hospital in Paris is piled high with disembodied limbs Henry Launay has repaired over thirty thousand dolls. They’re sick, they’re broken and I give them new life.”

Bethany explained that this stuck with her, as it gave off notions of deconstructed childhood, painful growth periods and disembodied trauma.

EXTRA NOTES.

“I’m tired of romanticized notions of the young mentally ill white women as a static figure of divine inspiration.”

- This comment made by Bethany has resonated with me, especially after previously discussing ideas about how I felt Ladybeard magazine was romanticising the idea of mental health.

- A beautiful feature of the magazine is also that there is a ‘pay as you wish’ option, so that users can access the magazine for as little or as much as they would like to pay. There is also the option to read the magazine online. Copies of the magazine are also donated to rape crisis centres, and mental health words. Bethany expresses that as the journal grows she would like this to be the central mode of distribution.

I love it this magazine!

http://www.dollhospitaljournal.com

http://www.germmagazine.com/doll-hospital-an-art-and-literary-journal-on-mental-health/

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/4wbpqn/doll-hospital-journal-mental-health-729

#MAJOR STUDY #BRIEF THREE #MAGAZINE #RESEARCH #DOLL HOSPITAL #MENTAL HEALTH

0 notes

harvard-narravitas · 7 years

Text

Finding Susan Sontag: Her Work, Metaphors, and Legacy; by Jonathan Galla

When I began thinking about how to write around the idea of Narrative Medicine, I couldn’t help but turn back to what brought me here: to this field of illness, of narratives, of where the disease meets the written page as easily as it meets the patient’s body. I immediately thought of Susan Sontag, that tour de force writer-critic who redefined how we think about the mythologies of illness. In finding Susan Sontag, we see how life and literature do not have simple barriers. This essay explores how narrative medicine has grown from its initial understandings, through the lens of one of its prolific inspirations, and the legacy of her writing and activism.

Perhaps, a proper introduction to the practice of narrative medicine comes not from a clinician, or a student, but an outsider: one who does not have intimacy with the medical system or its hierarchies, a person who instead captures the experience of illness itself. Thus, I introduce Susan Sontag, author of Illness as Metaphor, “The Way We Live Now,” and many other groundbreaking texts on the relationship between illness, language, and experience. She was not just a writer, but also a figure who has heavily influenced activism and medical practice after her death. A truly international figure, she wrote not only in the US, but dabbled considerably in Parisian intellectual circles and was widely read and translated around the world. As an activist, Sontag spent a significant time writing and practicing her activism in Sarajevo, where she directed a production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot amid the constant threat of snipers during the civil war (1). Certainly, one could point to the many aspects of her legacy in the present humanities, but one that has often gone overlooked is how she challenged our understandings of illness through her own experiences: most notably, that of cancer.

Cancer was no stranger to Sontag: she was diagnosed once in the 1970s and again in the early 2000s, culminating in a ruthless struggle that took her life (2). This journey, as individualized as it was in her suffering, was one she ultimately chose to share. Her partner, the famous photographer Annie Leibovitz, graphically documented the final moments of her battle with cancer. One can easily find the images online, if not in her large folio-sized autobiographical photobook: Annie Leibovitz, A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. I leave you not with the ominous images themselves, but their resonances: just as Sontag famously wrote On Photography without images, so illness transcends the written page, the photograph, or any medium that circumscribes its wrath.

Pre-cancer shot: Susan is lying comfortably on a sofa in their long island house, looking in health with black hair and an intense stare.

Shot one: her long hair with the signature white lock is gone; in place is a jet-white barber’s cut.

Shot two: bedridden, Susan is loaded from the tarmac onto a charter plane headed for New York, her final resting place.

Final shot: a handsewn panorama of the no longer living. She is laid out next to the hearth, arms folded but the marks of a violent death left untouched. Her arms are bruised, and the body looks cold and pale in the light. No one is left untouched by death, the photograph whispers with its art of intimation.

To those familiar with Sontag’s work, her choice to allow these images to proliferate bear no discrepancy with her life’s work to understand, document, and humanize pain. As a public intellectual, she sought to bring the common experience of illness into critical or literary analysis, most notably in her book Illness as Metaphor, published shortly after her first bout of breast cancer. In Illness as Metaphor, Sontag describes the intimate connection between illness and everyday language. Sontag writes of the banality of comparison everyday life to the disease, slowly losing its weight in the imagination with overuse and misapplication. Most importantly, she described not the experience of illness--an experience we all come to know--but how illness metaphors have been appropriated into society: the ‘cancers on our society,’ the ‘plague’ of annoyances. She wrote, “My subject is not physical illness itself but the uses of illness as a figure or metaphor. My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking” (3). For Sontag, metaphoric thinking is not the antidote, but the very poison to experience.

What Sontag ultimately argued was that disease, as metaphor, inherently takes on a moral context through its equivocations. The phenomenon she traces is not only a moral dilemma, but harmful to how illness is interpreted and understood. Indeed, humanity has a capacity to trace illness with superstition, from the ‘miraculous starvation’ of female saints in the middle ages to relatively recent hypothesis of a ‘cancer-prone’ personality. Yet this appropriation of the illness metaphor weakens the gravitas of illness experiences, depriving them of their proper significance at best, stigmatizing and demeaning the ill at worst. These ‘ills of society,’ rather than defining social problems, cast judgment on those individuals who are ill, leaving greater questions unresolved.

Sontag’s line of thinking has started a legacy in how we think about disease and its languages. When someone is ‘battling’ cancer, why do we use that word, and what are the implications of the exchange in meaning between disease and war? Certainly, when one ‘loses’ their battle against a disease, it is hard not to wonder if those who won have any superiority, be it due to their genetic hand of cards or biological chance, or something more sinister: their ability to pay for the latest and greatest life-extending treatment, the environmental variables (read: pollution, geography, living in the ‘right’ neighborhood) that lead to the disease being a worse.

Of course, the debate continues, and still I have no answer as to why someone ‘loses’ and another ‘wins,’ dichotomies notwithstanding. But medicine is not about winning or losing--it’s about healing, the easing of the body and spirit. When metaphor dances a dangerous dance with illness, morality soon creeps into the picture. Without an impartiality of language, nobody wins from the inequity that follows.

Today, Narrative Medicine (capitalization intended) does not exist merely as an edgy experiment by writers like Sontag, nor is it a rebellion against the medical establishment, psychiatric institutions, or the common past suspects of indignity of the medical system. It is an everyday approach to best understanding a patient’s chief complaint, an economic alternative to the standardization of charts, Electronic Medical Records, and the endless quantification of the patient’s condition.

Are we returning to the past? An era in which a country doc writes out notes in a dusty workbook and pulls an aspirin out of a mason jar? Not quite. Comical as it could be, narrative medicine exists in a contemporary field of medicine, and importantly, a contemporary understanding of what narratives are--how they exert themselves not only in the medical world, but also our lives and society more broadly. As a future physician, I constantly ask myself what kind of doctor I hope I will become, and who else will work around me. In essence, this marriage of medicine and narratology seeks to acknowledge the limits of diagnostic tools: the chart, the physical exam, the narrative of illness.

Sontag left an indelible impression on the field, and indeed, there is something to be said for how clinicians and researchers think about language in their practice. What does it mean to understand someone’s story when their language is not the same as your own, coming through the translation of an interpreter? What if someone lacks the knowledge base to use that very language? How do clinicians work with marginalized communities to not only aid their understanding, but empower community health by acknowledging their language and narratives? Narrative Medicine, in its wide reaching arc across disciplines, certainly has learned and continues to learn from the ability of language to mediate and transform our understanding of disease, care, and the human condition.

Burns, John. “To Sarajevo, Writer Brings Good Will and ‘Godot.’” The New York Times. August 19, 1993.

Wasserman, Steve. “Author Susan Sontag Dies.” Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2004.

Sontag, Susan. “Illness as Metaphor.” The New York Review of Books. Jan 26. 1978.

#narrative medicine #sontag #illness #metaphor

0 notes