Second Life Avatar

When creating my avatar in Second Life, I decided to create an avatar that resembled myself. Therefore, I started off with my avatar's name... Hillary. When looking for a last name, there coincidentally happened to be a last name very similar to mine, Portal (instead of Porter). Therefore, since I was going to create my avatar's appearance based off mine, I might as well make the name as close as possible too. Not to mention, for my first avatar, it would be easier to remember my avatar's name since it was almost like my name.

For appearance, I decided to choose the avatar that resembled me as much as possible. Therefore I chose the brunette girl in the pink polka dot dress. After figuring some controls out, I began shifting her facial and body characteristics around. Although I changed almost everything on her, it was not a drastic change. I figured I would just get used to changing things around little by little before I did anything too drastic (even though I know I can always change anything).

Chapter Three

Chapter three talks a great deal about modernity. This is associated with the belief that industrialization, human technological intervention in nature, mass democracy, and the introduction of a market economy are the hallmarks of social progress. Modernity reached its height in the late nineteenth century when more people began moving towards the city and away from the rural areas. In modernity, technological advances were seen as a way of progress. However, if technology had not gotten as far as it has, would scientists still believe that we were in modernity? As society progresses we always believe we have made great advances, whether we have changed a lot or not. Therefore, isn't modernity always happening?

Penopticon means to be able to have authority without communication. The examples the text gives us is the Penopticon Penitentiary. This is where the prison is built a certain way so that the prisoners will always believe that a guard is watching them, whether one is there or not. This innate sense of always being watched will then make the prisoners behavior better and under control, and easier for the watchmen and guards. This is also like how surveillance cameras have become a part of society. We do not even notice most of them anymore. However, whenever they are needed, they are always there.

This chapter also talks about the gaze. According to Lacan, the gaze is a property of the object and not the subject who looks. It is a process in which the object functions to make the subject look, making the subject appear to himself or herself as lacking. This means that whenever something catches our eye or whenever we are interested in something we look at, the person who is gazing focuses on and puts all of their thoughts into that object, ignoring everything around it.

Gender also plays a role in gazing. For example, Laura Mulvey criticizes Hollywood and the cinema because her theory is that they depict women as passive and only there to be gazed at  - "to be looked-at-ness". However, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window proves this theory wrong. In the movie, Jeffries is injured, and to keep from going insane in his apartment, he gazes out his window at all of his neighbors all day. He comes to learn their "lives" and habits by doing so, but also reveals one of his neighbors is a murderer. His girlfriend, Lisa, would be the "looked at" subject that Mulvey talks about. However, Lisa is not the typical woman that is just gazed upon. Instead, Lisa is active and does all of the investigating. In the end, it is Lisa that provides the evidence that Thorvald, the neighbor, murdered his wife, proving Mulvey's theory wrong.

Chapter Two

Throughout this chapter, I found myself getting lost in the text a lot. I would read something and understand the general explanation, but specific there would be specific, important things that would confuse me when it was defined. For example, the term interpellation means to interrupt something so one can question it. According to the text, to be interpellated by an image “is to know that the image is meant for me to understand.” Therefore does this mean that whenever viewers interpellate an image they must question it to come up with what the artist was trying to convey to them specifically?

In the part of the chapter that talks about producers’ intended meanings, I found it interesting when the text talked about how advertisers must really focus on the audience in order to convey the message they want to express. I had always thought of that being common sense, but when I read it, it made me realize how much work has to be done to communicate the correct message to viewers since everyone thinks differently. For example, there is a Gatorade commercial that I think the producer of the commercial did not do a good job showing that the commercial is for Gatorade. In most Gatorade commercials there will be athletes (usually either famous athletes, or people in the process of playing the sport to over emphasize that they are athletes) in black and white, working hard, sweating Gatorade (which is usually in a bright color to show emphasis) or drinking Gatorade, showing how the beverage replenishes your body after losing nutrients your body needs, and can help your performance. However, in this specific Gatorade commercial, it is all black and white, and the camera is panning over people standing there (some making a facial expression or a hand gesture of some sort to express themselves). The camera goes down the line, showing people who I have no idea who most of them are, and a voice is describing “G” by using words that start with “g”. I recognize some athletes and celebrities, but only very few. Then at the end, it shows a big, white, “G”. The producer assumes that the viewer will understand that this message will be obvious as Gatorade. However, considering most of the people are unknown, there is no brightly colored Gatorade splashing around, and even the “G” does not have the usual bright orange coloring, there is too much left to be assumed in this commercial. This left me to ask if artists should always think about their audience first, or should they go ahead with their own expression and assume/hope the viewers will understand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGKAVAAHdWc

 

Another part of the chapter talks about aesthetics and taste. I also found this portion interesting. I had always considered one’s taste based on the individual’s opinion. However, while reading, I am leaning more towards taste being caused by culture and history (time period). You see people’s clothing taste based on their culture of where they live, whether it is styles that differ between the east and west coast, or if it is due to geographical reasons, dressing according to weather. Through culture we learn that celebrities have a high quality taste, purchasing clothing that most average people cannot afford and can only hear about and see these brands and styles by watching television. The book also uses an example of a comic book considered as a children’s book since it is made up of pictures with the only text being dialogue from the characters. This is appealing to children because pictures are fun to look at and less text is less intimidating and time consuming. However, today there are college students who read graphic novels, such as Watchmen. This shows that taste does not have to be limited to a certain time period. On the other hand, specific tastes are very popular, go out of style, and then come back later in time and are popular again. One example of this is the lava lamp, as the book mentions. Therefore, is taste caused more by cultural aspects, time period, or even the combination of both? 

Chapter One

One of the topics in the first chapter in The Practices of Looking is The Myth of Photographic Truth. One quote that interested me from this section states "All camera-generated images, be they photographic, cinematic, electronic, or digital, bear the cultural legacy of still photography..." (Sturken/Cartwright, pg. 16-17). This made me think about how photography, movies, and especially cartoons are based off of the main message/action being conveyed and the rest forms around it. For example, storyboarding for cartoons or animated films. Another sentence that caught my attention says "we invest deep emotional content" (pg. 18) into photographs. I am one of those people that feels empty without my camera whenever I go somewhere. I take a lot of pictures so I can look back and remember places I went or people I was with. However, when I look back at these pictures, they are not only visual memories, but emotional ones as well because being able to look at something that already happened makes me remember what happened before and after that picture and how I was feeling at the time.

Another topic is How We Negotiate the Meaning of Images. Most images we see we interpret their meaning without even having to think about it anymore because it seems like common sense. For instance, when driving on highway 123 to Clemson, there are tiger paws painted on the road. Instead of wondering whether or not there is a zoo nearby, we automatically know that those tiger paws mean that Clemson is close because we are so accustomed to associating the image of the orange tiger paw with Clemson.

A third topic that is closely related to the previous one is The Value of Images. This section discusses how we can know the importance or value of something or someone because of how it is presented. For example, a celebrity could be walking down the street with bodyguards. Although you may have no idea who the celebrity is, you automatically assume it is someone well known or someone of importance because they are being protected.