Quiz: Is your online profile helping or hindering your employment prospects?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

iPhone 5 "promo" video

Here's a hilarious parody video about the soon-to-be-released iPhone 5. Definitely supports the idea that people use image sharing to construct a version of themselves that could be very different from reality.

Meme wha-?

MEMES. 
What's the deal with memes??

So in case you are still not familiar with the concept of a "meme", it's pretty much a picture with a witty caption used to construct or add to a cultural paradigm. In this case, it's Big Brother. Ever since the meme generation burst through our social-media doors, even television reality shows like BB have their own Facebook pages, Instagram sites, just posting memes. In short, memes are a new adaptation in visual media.

Now I chose the above example, because I think it perfectly exemplifies the purpose of a meme. Obviously the picture is poking fun at a Big Brother contestant, saying she looks like a hooker. As I explained in my last post, much of the power of a photo comes from its polysemic nature. It can be interpreted in a million and one ways... And our generation is very clever. Using digital technology and social networking distribution, we have capitalised on this interpretive nature of photos, and have used words to give them meaning. And to sway the opinions of our audience. So rather than letting a picture speak for itself, the power is now in captions.

That in mind, I wonder: Is the visual web as powerful as we think it to be? What is a photo without words? What are words without a photo? Which has greater weight?

xx Nicola

Instagramation Part 3

Whatsup Bloggers?

So I had an epiphany. An Instagram epiphany. An Instiphany, if you will.

YES we use visual media as a way of constructing ourselves, as a way of constructing a representation of ourselves, in the minds of our "perceivers". But what if our photos are saying something we don't want them to say?

Today, I was looking through my sister's Instagram, and through my best friend's Instagram, two people that I have known pretty much my whole life. And I realised that this is something which we haven't really touched on in group research. I realised this limitation.

 My best friend was posting pictures of her trip to Hawaii earlier this year, and a lot of the photos were the very abstract-deep-and-meaningful-picture-of-a-cocktail-by-the-Waikiki-surf kind of thing. I know why she was posting those photos, because they were a representation of her deepest passion: to travel. Preferably to places that have a little ocean :P. But the comments that followed didn't mimick her intentions... in particular, a photo of her in a glamorous rooftop hotel pool had people tagging her as "rich rich b*tch" and "If only my dad could afford to send me to those places".... All meant as jokes, of course, but not the image she wanted to portray.

It's all well and good to want to communicate your own, constructed self-identity over the web. But the limitation of visual media is a lack of words. A lack of explanation. Isn't that crucial to constructing an image?

What if we're all just getting the wrong idea?

xx Nicola

Birth to 10. A photo a day.

This is a video of parents who took regular photos of their daughter growing up from birth to 10.
I wonder what the original goal was in taking a photo each day, and then the decision to post in a video. Now that it's on YouTube and on the internet, what impact does it have on the girl featured? Is it something we should be concerned with?

How iPhoto works and has become more accessible

Hey guys, 

This is my final post for now. Just a couple of cool articles that give some great insight into why iPhoto is so accessible and how it is really not difficult to use at all. 

Anyone can present their personal memories in their own way if they want to. 

New York Times on "ambitious photo tools".

iPhoto is also accessible for people that only own iPad and not a MacBook product, and this form of iPhoto may be even easier to use and shape a different perception of memories and culture with than ever before...

Check out a review of how it works here. 

Paul x