500 Word Summary - No.3

I have been able to be put in contact with Professor Ben Light, who has sent me over a draft copy of his book ‘Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites’ to read through in order to help further my research. I’m finding the research I’m doing at the minute to be really formative and am quickly developing a strong sense of the issues I am talking about. So far, a lot of my research has revolved around self-presentation and developing interpersonal relationships, forming a stronger foundation for my chosen essay question which I’ve decided will be:

- To what extent do Social Networking Sites impact our ability to form interpersonal relationships.

I feel that my research is informing my practice in the sense of how human experience and emotion can inform imagery. I’m very much enjoying working around quotes I’ve found and conversations that people have had online. I have also started to collect the results from my questionnaire, although I could still do with a few more, so will be holding off on pushing that any further and instead developing my written work more whilst waiting for more results to come in.

I have begun analyzing and dissecting my case studies which I’ve chosen to be Victoria Vincents’ two animations, ‘Find True Love’, and ‘kittykat96’. These two animations explore different strands of online culture, looking at communication, self-disclosure and presentation of self specifically. These are both things that impact the development of interpersonal relationships and I feel align with me wanting to look at the individual experience people have online rather than looking at society as a whole. I’ve also found some interviews with Vincent online that allow her to explain her reasoning behind the work and her motives behind her making, I’m hoping to use some quotes from these in my essay.

At the minute, I’m happy with the progress I’m making, despite having an extended period of time away from uni, which I believe has impacted this module in some ways. I’m happy with how my body of research is coming along and think I’m in a position to begin writing now. The practical work is developing a little slower but I am confident in my abilities to get it done. My next steps will be:

- Begin Context and Themes Chapter of Essay
- Compile research from questionnaire
- Develop practical work
- Further research

Case Studies - Victoria Vincent

Find true love from victoria vincent on Vimeo.

Victoria Vincent's short animated film titled 'Find True Love' depicts a characters failings at online dating and captures the pitfalls of the search for love online. Vincent describes this video as a way of portraying 'this kind of strange emotional connection we have with the internet in a light-hearted movie'.

"Despite the anonymity that the internet grants it's users, there is still anxiety that comes with trying to connect with people online. We google questions we dont know how to ask other people and face anxiety over sending/recieving messages. It's something that I think every internet user can relate to." - Victoria Vincent for It's Nice That

Throughout the video, we see the protagonist battle with his anxieties over contacting this girl that he's found via a tinder-esque platform. Overlapping shots of text boxes and action represent the inner turmoil faced when trying to figure out how to correctly message this girl, and this turmoil is further heightened when she doesn't reaply, with humorous google searches leaving the protagonist wondering if he's destined for a life in solitude. The animation ends with him being blocked by said girl. In a way, this shows how disconnected interactions online actually are. Somebody has the power to completley cut off a point of communication in what could be seen as quite a cold-hearted way. There is no consideration for the recipricant of the 'block', furthing showing the emotional disocnnection we face whilst using online services.


kittykat96 from victoria vincent on Vimeo.

Inspired by the world of vlogging and Youtube stars, Vincents newest animation "kittykat96" documents the life of an 'internet famous girl' whose online persona comes to life as a seperate entity to her physical self. The two entities are further blurred and tensions is heightened, despite the protagonists use of keyboard commands such as undo, delete and escape to rid herself of this physical manifestation of her online self. The film questions our obsessions with the internet and how our online personas are just curated versions of ourselves.

"I wanted to think of a way to show how the protagonist would see that she couldnt live entirley as her internet persona or entirley without it" - Victoria Vincent for It's Nice That

This animation brings to light the idea of true self vs real self vs hoped for self, an idea proposed by Sherry Turkle in her book 'Alone Together'. Through use of different social media platforms, we purposley curate our accounts to portray an appealing side to us. Everyday life is filtered through to a highlight reel, showing only the impressive or positive parts of our lives, where as the more negative and dull parts will be filtered out. We are never truly ourselves. The different versions of ourselves we portray must come together to give an over-arching image of who we really are as a person.

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/victoria-vincent-kittykat96-animation-121017
https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/victoria-vincent-find-true-love-260916

Start of Practical Responses

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While I've been waiting to collect responses to the survey I thought it best to start some simple visual responses to my research so far. These images are made to be intended to be posted on Social Networking Sites in order to get people to think about how much time they spend online and how this may impact their actual relationships, with themselves and with others. I've been enjoying just drawing around this theme alot, and picking out bits of my research to focus in on. I'm looking to expand on this kind of imagery a little more later in the project.

The Internet Is Not The Answer - Andrew Keen

"But today, as the internet expands to connect almost every-one and everything on the planet, it's becoming evident that this is a false promise." (preface)

" 'Instagram is focused on capturing the worlds moments,' System likes to say. But thats fiction - just like Instagram itself" (pg.104)

"Advertisements for Myself" - Norman Mailer - 1959

"Indeed, the only thing more retro than Instagrams filters is the pre-Copernican belief, encouraged by social networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, that the new digital universe somehow revolves around us. Fuzzy technology leads to an even fuzzier sense of our place in the cosmos." (pg.105)

"In the Valley, the rich and famous claim to be failures; on social networks like Instagram, millions of failures claim to be rich and famous." (pg.105)

"The truth about networks like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook is that their easy-to-use, free tools delude us into thinking we are celebrities." (pg.105) narcissism

"epidemic of narcissism and voyeurism" (pg.106)

"our contemporary obsession with public self-expression has complex cultural, technological and psychological origins that can't be exclusively traced to the digital revolution" (pg.106)

Twenge and Campbell - Narcissism Epidemic

"Instagram is a useful symbol of everything that has gone wrong with our digital culture over the last quarter of a century. "I update, therefore I am," I once wrote, half jokingly, about the existential dilemma created by our obsession with social media. Unfortunately, however, the idea that our existence is proven by our tweets or our Instagram moments is no longer very funny." (pg.107)

"if we have no thought to Tweet or photo to post, we basically cease to exist" (pg.107)

"the shameless self portrait has emerged as a dominant mode of expression, perhaps even the proof of  our existence, in the digital age." (pg.107)

"The real myth is that we are communicating at all. The truth, of course, is that we are mostly just talking to ourselves on these supposedly 'social' networks" (pg.109)

Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites - Ben Light

- Concerned with disconnection as something that we do in conjuction with connection
- Theory of Disconnective Practice
- Agree with Boyd (idea of networked publics)
- SNS's are a space where we interact with each other - intimatley interwoven
- 'SNS's are engaged as a space in their own right and some people may never connect the relationships that they develop in those spaces with those in the physical world'

Proffessor Ben Light agrees with boyd's idea of networked publics and states that 'SNSs are engaged as a space in their own right' (Light, 2014). Light further comments on how the relationships and connections found within these spaces may never be developed in the physical world, instead remaining online.

Communication and Cyberspace - Creating Paradoxes for the Ecology of Self - Sue Barnes

"In traditional physical environments, a concept of self is developed through face-to-face encounters with other people and objects. In contrast, cyberspace interaction takes place symbolically in a media-generated space." (pg.230)

"The self that exists as a unified mind and body in a physical space becomes a seperate and distributed digital self. This new digital self encounters paradoxical situations in cyberspace that could threaten the ecological self that inhabits a natural world." (pg.230)

"It is a 'non-space', a hyperdimensional realm that we enter through technology." (pg.231)

"An individual self is established by organizing the attitudes of other individuals toward the self and toward one another through participation in social interaction." (pg.240)

"Thus, by understanding the role of others, we can develop our own individual roles and consequently a sense of self." (pg.240)

"Monist theories of self argue that the physical body is an integral part of self-development. Touching, feeling, and having access to all five senses is essential to interacting with objects and people. According to this perspective, a separation of mind and body in cyberspace will inhibit self-growth. Therefore, integrating the physical body with the digital representation of self in cyberspace would be essential for developing self-identity." (pg.240)

"On the one hand, eliminating the body makes us more equal because we no longer have access to the visual information of sex, age, or race. But on the other hand, the quality of human relationships narrows, because unlike face-to-face communication, we do not have a full range of visual and verbal sensory information" (pg.247)

"People can now communicate and develop relationships without ever meeting each other in a face-to-face situation" (pg.247)

"The formation of symbolic or virtual communities raises the issue of how people will develop a self-identity when they communicate through electronic media instead of face-to-face interaction" (pg.247)

"electronic media is fragmenting self-conceptions. In electronic media "the self is decentered, dispersed, and multiplied in continuous instability" (Poster, 1960, pg 6). Gergen (1991) describes this condition as the "saturated self": "the evening at home once quiet, relaxed and settling, is now - by dint of telephone, automobile, television and the like - a parade of faces, information and intrusion" (pg.248)

"Additionally, a myriad of electronic relationships can invite 'us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of an 'authentic self' with knowable characteristics recedes from view" (Gergen, 1991, pg 7)" (pg.248)

"The lack of personal visual information in network exchanges allows people to test new personalities and even create totally fictitious ones." (pg.248)

"To summarize, Poster (1990) states when computer communication replaces face-to-face communication the subject is affected in the following ways: (a) new possibilites for playing with identities is possible, (b) gender cues are removed, (c) existing hierachies in relationships are destablized, and (d) the subject is dispersed and dislocated in space and time." (pg.249)


Additional references:
Gibson, W. (1991). Academy leader. In M. BEnedikt (Ed.) Cyberspace: First steps (pp.27-29). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Poster, M (1990). The mode of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966) The social construction of reality. New York: Anchor Books.