A complex exploration of how our communication has moved away from facts and reality to the fantasy worlds of Facebook and Twitter. Looks at social and economic causes.
Some interesting examinations of how totalitarian forces have coopted the language and gestures of the Left to counter their influence.
Some scary case studies of how Facebook and Twitter have been used by would-be dictators and extremists to control people's perception of reality, to win elections and to create riots and commit murder.
Worth rereading, as ideas are quite complex and wide-ranging.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 October 2019
Sunday, 2 March 2014
About Looking - John Berger
A collection of essays reflecting on photography, painting and the act of looking.
The first few essays are about photography. "Why Look at Animals" is a reflection on the objectification of animals in the modern world, and the disappearance of the look of recognition between living beings across the species barrier. It relates to the Winogrand book of photos about animals I read recently. p. 13 "This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units... The mechanical view of the animal's work capacity was later applied to that of workers..."
The other really dynamite essay is "Uses of Photography", reflections on Susan Sontag's book.
p. 58 " During the second half of the 20th century the judgement of history has been abandoned by all except the underprivileged and dispossessed. The industrialized, 'developed' world, terrified of the past, blind to the future, lives within an opportunism which has emptied the principle of justice of all credibility. Such opportunism turns everything - nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes, sport, sex, politics - into spectacle. And the implement used to do this - until the act becomes so habitual that the conditioned imagination may do it alone - is the camera.
- from Sontag: "Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggest that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing..."
There is another interesting essay, "Francis Bacon and Walt Disney." He argues for a basic similarity both in underlying style and ethos between the two - similar distortions of the human body, violence, colour ranges. Both explore alienation - Disney makes it funny, Bacon makes it banal, the subject of art. No moral judgement in either. Interesting idea.
Didn't get through all the essays. Some interesting ones on seminal figures in art in the first half of the 20th century. Need to have another look.
The first few essays are about photography. "Why Look at Animals" is a reflection on the objectification of animals in the modern world, and the disappearance of the look of recognition between living beings across the species barrier. It relates to the Winogrand book of photos about animals I read recently. p. 13 "This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units... The mechanical view of the animal's work capacity was later applied to that of workers..."
The other really dynamite essay is "Uses of Photography", reflections on Susan Sontag's book.
p. 58 " During the second half of the 20th century the judgement of history has been abandoned by all except the underprivileged and dispossessed. The industrialized, 'developed' world, terrified of the past, blind to the future, lives within an opportunism which has emptied the principle of justice of all credibility. Such opportunism turns everything - nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes, sport, sex, politics - into spectacle. And the implement used to do this - until the act becomes so habitual that the conditioned imagination may do it alone - is the camera.
- from Sontag: "Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggest that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing..."
There is another interesting essay, "Francis Bacon and Walt Disney." He argues for a basic similarity both in underlying style and ethos between the two - similar distortions of the human body, violence, colour ranges. Both explore alienation - Disney makes it funny, Bacon makes it banal, the subject of art. No moral judgement in either. Interesting idea.
Didn't get through all the essays. Some interesting ones on seminal figures in art in the first half of the 20th century. Need to have another look.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
Ways of Seeing - John Berger
A reread from quite a while ago.
An interesting discussion of the nature and permutations of images in the west.
Some interesting points about how text changes the perception of the image - how language turns the image into an illustration of the words, nailing down a meaning instead of being a more open extra-lingual (?) experience.
He also points out the frequent cultural referencing of classic paintings in modern advertisements. The classical images have a reference, a weight, a story, a value, that advertisers want to carry into their advert., associate with the product. As if this almost unconscious collection of classical images is a language in itself.
An interesting chapter exploring the nude in western art - inherently voyeuristic. This comes out of a larger tradition in western art, possibly because of its emphasis on realism. The painting as a metaphor of ownership, and thereby of social status. This implies an inherent awareness of the viewer, almost as if the painting is a way of speaking to the viewer. There are some interesting indian illustrations of sexual activity as a contrast. The indian images simply show - the subjects in the images show no awareness of the viewer. This is in sharp contrast to many of the classic nudes, where the subject is looking out directly at the viewer, or presented as if offered to the viewer. This is possibly a mirror of the awareness of self as individual that is so strong in western tradition since at least the Renaissance.
Is there a way to create images, and yet stay outside that tradition that has been so co-opted by the advertising industry. I still feel we have too many images loaded with subliminal fantasy messages.
An interesting discussion of the nature and permutations of images in the west.
Some interesting points about how text changes the perception of the image - how language turns the image into an illustration of the words, nailing down a meaning instead of being a more open extra-lingual (?) experience.
He also points out the frequent cultural referencing of classic paintings in modern advertisements. The classical images have a reference, a weight, a story, a value, that advertisers want to carry into their advert., associate with the product. As if this almost unconscious collection of classical images is a language in itself.
An interesting chapter exploring the nude in western art - inherently voyeuristic. This comes out of a larger tradition in western art, possibly because of its emphasis on realism. The painting as a metaphor of ownership, and thereby of social status. This implies an inherent awareness of the viewer, almost as if the painting is a way of speaking to the viewer. There are some interesting indian illustrations of sexual activity as a contrast. The indian images simply show - the subjects in the images show no awareness of the viewer. This is in sharp contrast to many of the classic nudes, where the subject is looking out directly at the viewer, or presented as if offered to the viewer. This is possibly a mirror of the awareness of self as individual that is so strong in western tradition since at least the Renaissance.
Is there a way to create images, and yet stay outside that tradition that has been so co-opted by the advertising industry. I still feel we have too many images loaded with subliminal fantasy messages.
Friday, 27 December 2013
More Money than Brains - Laura Penny
Full title: More Money than Brains - Why School Sucks, College is Crap and Idiots Think They're Right
A great, albeit depressing, read. One of those books that hits the nail smack on the head. She has done the scholarly research on many of the social and institutional shifts that I shake my head over and discuss when I can find someone else who is interested.
One of the great things about the book is that it cuts across partisan political lines. She talks about how both the left and the right, both the new media and the old, both the young and the not so young, both industry and your average Joe Blow have all contributed to create the new Idiocracy, as she calls it.
This book ties in with the message in the documentaries by Adam Curtis that I have been watching: All Watched Over by Loving Machines, and others.
Lots of great quotes.
Some great creative names for social trends and deformed social institutions.
Her writing style is also quite witty in general.
Tellingly, she offers no solution, no grand way out.
A book you should own.
Also a great source for further reading.
Reread January 2019
A great, albeit depressing, read. One of those books that hits the nail smack on the head. She has done the scholarly research on many of the social and institutional shifts that I shake my head over and discuss when I can find someone else who is interested.
One of the great things about the book is that it cuts across partisan political lines. She talks about how both the left and the right, both the new media and the old, both the young and the not so young, both industry and your average Joe Blow have all contributed to create the new Idiocracy, as she calls it.
This book ties in with the message in the documentaries by Adam Curtis that I have been watching: All Watched Over by Loving Machines, and others.
Lots of great quotes.
Some great creative names for social trends and deformed social institutions.
Her writing style is also quite witty in general.
Tellingly, she offers no solution, no grand way out.
A book you should own.
Also a great source for further reading.
Reread January 2019
Friday, 11 October 2013
The Brain Dead Megaphone - George Saunders 2007
A collection of essay/stories.
The title piece is a wonderfully sarcastic blow up of modern american media. Bitingly hilarious. The other pieces range over many ideas, but many of them share the same theme of laughing at/criticizing modern media in some way. There is even an essay on Huck Finn.
Saunders has other moods besides sarcasm. The Great Divider, which reads like a bizarre documentary essay on a group of militia spending a night watching for illegal immigrants in Texas, both manages to make fun of the mythology these men live by and at the same time express a gentle kind of acknowledgement of the event as, underneath it all, a bunch of guys hanging out doing stupid guy stuff like they always have.
There is also the story on his visit to Dubai, The New Mecca. There is certainly irony in various points of the story, but there is also a complex awareness of his stereotypes and prejudices about the place, and how his experience and the people he meets don't always fit in so nicely to these preconceptions. He has an honesty in his writing.
Saunders is more than a social critic - he also has some interesting things to say about world views, ways of thinking and perceiving, cultural issues and culturo-centrism. One of the more sophisticated and human authors I have read lately.
The title piece is a wonderfully sarcastic blow up of modern american media. Bitingly hilarious. The other pieces range over many ideas, but many of them share the same theme of laughing at/criticizing modern media in some way. There is even an essay on Huck Finn.
Saunders has other moods besides sarcasm. The Great Divider, which reads like a bizarre documentary essay on a group of militia spending a night watching for illegal immigrants in Texas, both manages to make fun of the mythology these men live by and at the same time express a gentle kind of acknowledgement of the event as, underneath it all, a bunch of guys hanging out doing stupid guy stuff like they always have.
There is also the story on his visit to Dubai, The New Mecca. There is certainly irony in various points of the story, but there is also a complex awareness of his stereotypes and prejudices about the place, and how his experience and the people he meets don't always fit in so nicely to these preconceptions. He has an honesty in his writing.
Saunders is more than a social critic - he also has some interesting things to say about world views, ways of thinking and perceiving, cultural issues and culturo-centrism. One of the more sophisticated and human authors I have read lately.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)