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Censorship and the Confederate Railroad Controversy



Country rock band Confederate Railroad’s scheduled appearance at the DuQuoin State Fair is cancelled by Illinois Governor Pritzker’s office because of the band’s name and its depiction of the confederate flag. Link to news article and video of Pritzker statements:

https://www.thecentersquare.com/illinois/illinois-politics-take-center-stage-amid-state-fair-music-controversy/article_00a2dafe-a336-11e9-8cb4-e312392d8e5c.html?fbclid=IwAR3aBFVMzMGKGGBCbuKHXLvk8KBugxQ7t7Yt8EZjAhoCqs2RkakBmFvxYHk#new_tab

The really important issue here is government censorship of the arts. And in this case, despite the hyperbole from both sides, the Pritzker Administration has engaged in a selective, discriminatory censorship.

Here the censorship results from a band’s name and branding choices. Their name and logo on a circular emblem surrounds a locomotive flying a pair of tiny Confederate flags.


















 Confederate Railroad logo

Whether one approves or not, unlike the terms “Nazi” or “KKK,” the term “Confederate,” and even the Confederate flag itself do not (yet) engender a broad, universal condemnation. They are still considered by many as symbols of southern heritage and history, the negative connotations of associated slavery notwithstanding.

The counter-example submitted against the cancellation of Confederate Railroad is the booking of the rapper Snoop Dogg at the main state fair, with his album cover depicting him standing over the body of President Trump covered by an American flag in a morgue.











Snoop Dogg album cover

Despite how offensive this imagery might be for many people, the governor however, argues in the link above that it is just an example of political satire.  In no way, he claims, does it remotely compare to the transgression committed by  Confederate Railroad’s name and logo through its referencing the “treasonous” Confederacy of southern states 150 plus years ago, its support of slavery,  the ensuing civil war, and ultimately, the assassination of Illinois’ native son, President Abraham Lincoln.

The political satire claim concerning Snoop Dogg’s imagery, however, neglects the overall content of his music. If the focus shifts to content, certainly many, many people are deeply offended by the misogyny, the obscenities, the highly sexualized lyrics, the calls to attack police, and so on, that are all part and parcel of so much rap and hip-hop music as exemplified by Snoop Dogg.

In contrast, the content of the Confederate Railroad’s music appears to have been immaterial to their cancellation – it generally appears on par for the country-music genre, with the typical topics and themes that one might expect from this type of music. When content is addressed, the governor’s argument appears to diminish considerably.

All this back-and-forth argument aside, in art or music today there is little regarding names or content or look or actions that SOMEBODY isn’t going to find something offensive about. If government’s main concern is not using state resources as representatives of a whole population to sponsor content that offends some of its people in some way, then it should totally relinquish all of the programs where this might happen and give it up to private enterprise.

It would seem then, as long as government is involved in these types of programs, the best course of action for democratic governments would be to allow people themselves to decide whether something meets their approval, or is determined to be so offensive that is then rejected. This democratic choice is done through the market, where people “vote” through their pocketbooks.

Now it could be argued that in the process of choosing which bands to play, “censorship” of a sort is taking place as well. But selecting performers is a different kind of act than the official banning of a performer after the selection process has occurred, based on some moralistic viewpoint or a subjective distaste.

Making smart business decisions, performers are booked for fairs and similar events based on who are going to have the most appeal for the area’s cultural mix and generate the most receipts. Certainly the type of bookings that would work in southern Illinois might not fly in Chicago, and vice versa.

Subsequently, a moralistic viewpoint or subjective taste might be part of the selection process, but a host of other factors also come into play as well, based on the anticipated needs and circumstances of the venue and the potential audience, which performers are available for the event date, how much they charge in fees, etc.

In banning or cancelling a scheduled performance, though, in the absence of any other mitigating factors, true censorship occurs because an authoritative entity is arbitrarily deciding what is best for the general public’s artistic consumption after the fact.  A decision like this deprives the public of the aesthetic experience which they have anticipated and planned for.

 In short, their inalienable right to “the pursuit of happiness” is being denied them as citizens of a free society. And, especially when the censorship is applied to one particular instance and not others that can also similarly generate great offense or even incite hate, it becomes highly discriminatory as in the case here.

When censorship is not in play, if people in a particular area do find a particular band offensive in some way, they can “vote” with their money in hand and not attend. If you don’t like Confederate Railroad because of their name, don’t pay to see their concert. If you are offended by Snoop Dog’s album cover, his message and lyrics, don’t go. And, in attending a fair with its multitude of activities, no one is forced to even listen to a performance.

Censorship in any form is a dangerous, slippery slope. Once it starts, it sets a precedent to extend it in all directions and apply it to anything that people in authority and power don’t like.

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Participating in democracy through social media




SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTARY, PART II
 

In the posting prior to this one, I inveighed against the acrimony that defines our national conversation today, pointing to social media as one of the facilitators, if not instigators, of uncivil discourse. Now I would like to explore the historical context on how this came about, and, sans incivility, show how social media is fulfilling the dream of a full participatory democracy.

In the era before the Internet and social media, the national media as it was constituted – namely, television, radio, newspapers, and magazines – positioned itself as the “gatekeepers” of information. The gatekeepers tightly controlled who could contribute to the information stream, essentially making the consumers of media passive consumers, receptors of information with little option to respond to it with their own thoughts or reactions.

It wasn’t that the opinions of the general public were deliberately suppressed – it was just difficult to reach a wide audience. In the interest of public discourse, media outlets did provide a limited means for the public to comment through letters-to-the-editor, opposing viewpoint broadcast segments, and occasional public forums that might be televised or covered by the media in some way. Nevertheless, the gatekeepers still exercised total control over such input from the public.

In exchange for this lack of empowerment in the marketplace of ideas, information consumers depended upon the information provided by the gatekeepers to be objective, truthful, and reliable. Intense and fierce competition between all the media outlets forced them to toe the line in this regard. Media outlets were constantly vying with one another to be the first to “scoop” the latest big news story, but prided themselves on the accuracy and validity of such stories.

Although media outlets had their own ideological preferences, these were confined to the op/ed pages or newscasts’ commentary segments. These were areas specifically marked off as spaces where consumers would be aware that the information being presented was more subjective than objective. Nonetheless, there were still subtle ways to influence public opinion.

Meanwhile, those who wished to disseminate information they felt the public should be informed of had to resort to any means available outside of the mainstream media. For instance, those with the financial means could purchase their own radio stations, or publish their own newspapers for paid subscription or free distribution; at the lower end, people might publish handbills, tracts, mimeographed newsletters, speak in public spaces, and so forth.   

The arrival of the Digital Information Age not only cracked the walls of the old media order, it blew them apart. Talk radio, alternative cable networks, and Internet all played a role in destroying the old media empire’s monopoly on information. Behind the veil, unnoticed, underestimated, and misunderstood, was a pent-up desire on the part of individuals and groups to have their unmitigated say in the public realm or have someone speak on their behalf.

Forced into competing with new media entities, the mask fell of the old media’s ideological preferences, revealing the pretense and hollowness of its purported objectivity which had already significantly eroded as the old media’s original competition disappeared in an era of corporate mergers and takeovers of media enterprises. Under assault by new media, the old standards of politeness gave way to match the brash styles of new media’s messengers.

 Social media completed the old media’s demise. Finally, the demos – the people – have taken control of information in ways the old media never imagined, and would never approve. What we see on Facebook and Twitter is people’s manipulation and sharing of information bereft of any sort of filters or elitist gatekeeping.

On the surface, it would seem that this type of “Wild West” information freedom is not beneficial to democracy, because democracy depends on the orderly and voluntary acceptance of majority rule, not anarchy. But despite the partisan memes, the fake news links, the  hyperbole, and the over-the-top, mean-spirited comments, people are pre-empting media outlets and their stranglehold on information.

For example, mobile devices are used to capture and upload videos and pictures of events as they are happening to social media sites, or report on them through text messages. In ways such as these, the public takes charge of information streams in real time, controlling the news narratives as much, if not more, than media outlets do.

And even before the rise of “smartphones” and the like, the early Internet was already making inroads into mass media domination through the one-click mass e-mailing option.  Consequently, all these new developments have opened up a relatively closed system of information dissemination into a wide and unfettered dispersal.

It would appear that such a glut of information would be unmanageable and in the end, self-defeating as the assault of information becomes overwhelming. As a result, a follow-up criticism then points to the way in which people manage their information, by filtering out that which they disagree with or categorically reject. Instead of the gatekeepers’ purportedly feeding information out in such a way in which people would be exposed to all sides of an issue, the charge is that people are now locking themselves into cocooned echo chambers where they only hear what they want to hear.

These may be valid criticisms. However, we must look at the positive side as well. People from all over the nation – and the world, as well – are able to interact through social media and become exposed to other’s ideas, customs, and traditions. Regionalism disappears through such interactions and dialog, and time zones get erased.

The contention and discord that is stirred up pales in comparison to the fact that the democratic “conversation” on the commons has never been so robust or all-encompassing. Everyone, from the young to the old, can get in on the discussions. The topics are endless, whether memes, pithy comments and tweets, or lengthy essays, while the emotions run the gamut from the sad to the happy.

Practically every commercial, religious, government, institutional, or social entity has a presence on the web tied into social media. Although the cacophony is deafening and sometimes fatiguing (every now and then someone announces they have to drop out of the wired-in Facebook virtual world to recharge their batteries), the affective experience of being “connected” is rich and satisfying, if not very addictive.

Cultural Marxists are sure to find fault with this latest manifestation of so-called capitalist manipulation. No doubt they will claim that virtual worlds are just a modern reiteration of the “alienation” from one’s true being that stultifying assembly-line labor likewise produced in the heyday of the Industrial Revolution.

But modernity has its own rewards, far different from the bucolic community life of the past. I would argue that being fully engaged with the world at large is hardly a form of alienation; rather, it is a giant step forward for humankind, one presaged by every evolutionary development in communications since the invention of the telegraph. Digital divides notwithstanding, we are witnessing the full bloom of participatory democracy through digital virtual worlds and social media.    

    
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Pulling back from the brink



SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTARY, PART I

Recently, some of my Facebook friends began a thread expressing their consternation, if not revulsion, at the extent of the hateful and poisonous discourse consuming social media. Admittedly, it’s not just social media that’s fallen to this low – all of media and regrettably, conversation of any kind, has degenerated into an “incivility which dominates all public discourse.” [1]

And the rancor isn’t confined to politics – it seems that any topic whatsoever is liable to generate some sneering negative comment.

For many people, the situation has bubbled over into a growing realization that at some point along the line, if we are to continue to call ourselves civilized in the original sense of the word (that is, being civil towards one another), we’ve got to start exercising some restraint.
Recent Facebook meme calling for a return to civility
When looking over the wreckage of normal relationships – “normal” relationships, that is, whatever that term implies in the new virtual worlds of social media – people are wondering if the arguments, the hostility, the unresolved back-and-forth sniping, and ultimately the un-friending, is worth it.

I think people are not only ashamed of themselves, they are also getting frightened at what they see themselves turning into.

 (By no means do I exclude myself from such behavior. Like many others, it is only in half-jest that I regard my ripostes as the epitome of derisive and sarcastic wit, indicative of a brilliance far superior to the dunderheads who posted the meme or post I attack with such savagery. Ha.)  

One of the most fundamental questions I see arising here, is that deep down inside, have we always been this way, i.e., mean as hell, with social media simply the catalyst that has now brought it to the fore?

Or, is social media, through its machinations and its carrot-and-stick prods and incentives to respond to this and like that, somehow bringing out the worst in us – a “worst” that we indeed are capable of, but which is not intrinsically a part of our better nature. (A better nature, moreover, we instinctively realize what truly makes us human in distinction from the rest of the animal world.)

Early in 2016, (See "Trump and the politics of new media" post on this site) I predicted a Trump electoral victory solely on the basis of his mastering the core foundations of social media activity. Trump’s bombastic tweets show this mastery, and reveal social media’s ability to bypass normal discursive practice and immediately tap into primal instincts and their communication channels through memes and over-heated rhetoric.

Social media relies on the “boom!” The meme’s combination of text and imagery has an instantaneous message that bypasses the frontal lobe, so to speak. The 140-character limit on tweets forces them to be pithy, and directly to the point. Facebook’s “like” system provides an affective reinforcement of one’s thoughts. Like the drug addict who needs an increasing amount of drug to get a satisfying fix, social media users have to find additional ways to amplify their voices in order to generate more and more affective response.

Typing in caps doesn’t work, even though it’s perceived as “shouting” in virtual reality – that’s why lower case was developed centuries ago, when printers realized that all upper case tended to be unreadable as  individual words on a page disappeared into a blur of uniformity. Boldface is not part of the Facebook font, and only very recently has Facebook given users the option of a colored background for personal commentary.

So what’s left for the social media user to get noticed? Hyperbole is one option – its exaggerations are deliberately intended to draw attention to the issue at hand. Heightened emotional states – especially anger, implying and generating such anger through sarcasm, snarkiness and sniping  – is an another attention-getter, but then fosters a counter-reaction of anger in response. As a result, the memes and the rhetoric get racheted up.

And what’s worse, as people engage in this type of communication, with time and usage we become accustomed to it. An example of this is the “f-bomb,” once only used in the coarsest circles in my parents’ time, but which now has become a meaningless, commonplace adjective in this one. Make no mistake, when culture corrodes, so do the niceties and politeness that once defined it.
Humorous meme illustrating both the incivility of discourse and the corrosion of culture.

The old cautionary adage “you are what you think” is more true than we are prepared to admit sometimes. People do mentally reinforce what they repeat to themselves into believability. In this way, fake news becomes “true” news. How many times have I advised friends that a certain meme being circulated was false, only to hear the response, “Well, if it isn’t true, it could be.”

So, if a meme suggests that Obama had been planning a coup d’etat to declare himself president for life, or Trump is putting a harem together in the Lincoln Bedroom, even though false in fact, as long as these actions (according to their respective opponents) are in the realm of possibilities at all, the memes have credence.

 To be sure, politics and religion have never been neutral subjects for discussion. Even in the days before social media, many families and friendships did not weather the storms these topics are capable of producing. But for the most part, in face-to-face relationships, people learned that for the good of a civil society as a whole, it was best to put these kind of discussions on the back burner on a low setting, if not to avoid them altogether. Political campaign season notwithstanding, politics and religion used to be one’s own private affair, and even if disagreed with, at least respected.
 
So, yes, we can point to social media (and media as a whole through its feedback loop of acrimony) in bearing much of the blame here for instigating the caustic atmosphere we have seen gradually erupt into a divisiveness almost unparalleled in American history.

At the same time, however, we must acknowledge that a strident advocacy of causes that have the potential to affect other people’s lives in a significant fashion is necessarily going to generate strident opposition. In this sense, social media is only reflecting what is happening in the current social, cultural, and political scenes. (I will explore this further in Part II of this essay.)

In analyzing how social media works, asynchronous textual communication has its analog in face-to-face communication, but it is not a facsimile thereof. The rectangular screen of the computer or mobile device mediates the communication process, its virtual world flattening out relationships into the pixels of the screen itself.

Behind these screen-walls of silence and invisibility, people’s masks of restraint fall off. Free reign is then given to unleashing those suppressed feelings or emotions that people usually adroitly control – impulses of confrontation and hostility incited by the barbarous self that is not a part of everyday existence for most people (or at least, what most people like to avoid in their everyday existence!)

When Western author Louis L’Amour stated that “civilization is a thin veneer,” (one of my favorite quotes I often cite) he was referencing the forces of barbarianism that lie just beneath the surface of susceptible people for whom self-restraint is a weak force. Hobbes, too, subscribed to this view, in his belief that in the absence of strong government, a rapacious anarchy would necessarily result.

But government is only part of the order that civilization entails. Civilization, and the civil behavior that constitutes it, is a more natural and preferable human instinct than barbarianism, simply because barbarianism is so destructive. Humans innately recognize it as such and are repelled by it.

Just the fact that we see people starting to pull back, instinctively aware that something is going awry here, shows us that being civil – whether in person or online -  is a preferred trait over incivility. Consequently, to avoid going down this dangerous road with any number of equally catastrophic outcomes, “Think before you post,” would be a good first-step guideline for social media commentary.

 Now, after this lengthy diatribe, will I be able to heed my own advice, short of completely disengaging from social media? As an educator with a background in philosophy, I feel a responsibility to instill and promote critical thinking.

So the answer is, probably not, if an issue crops up that I feel is completely lacking in critical thought. The citizen of a democratic civil society has multiple responsibilities: promoting civil discourse is one, but pushing back against the always-present mob mentality is one equally as important.    


* * * * *
Notes:

[1] Quote about incivility from “Shift in education underway,” by Gene A. Budig and Alan Heaps, Guest Commentary in (Champaign IL) News-Gazette, January 22, 2017, p. C-2.
 

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We're all in this together (guest commentary by Barry C. Dillon)



If one plies the result of this election [2016 US Presidential] directly to the distance Obama attempted to move the country to the Left (through the actions of actual voters), then the backwash from Trump's win may recede in only four years, instead of the typical eight it normally takes (at least in recent times) for the nation to tire of the distance the opposite (winning) side is indicating it will travel in response to the most recent administration.
I still believe, we, as a nation, cannot discount and discard nearly one-half of our citizens - from either side - and make it work for all

 We are ALL in this together, and it will take us ALL to make it work.

 The inherent result of the shrinking middle class, leaves only two classes: the upper and the lower, and their incompatibility is leveraged and exploited against the other despite the fact that one cannot survive without the other; for our economy requires the additive quantity of citizens from both sides to prosper. Economic prosperity requires All citizens to spend!

 Unfortunately, it's a doomsday model. Apparently, our desired economic model is based on perpetual growth, and this cannot be sustained without perpetual population increase; because a flat economy is not desirable.

 One aspect I have heard from some economists is that one of the main reasons our economy grows is, in fact, due to immigration, e.g., the influx of new consumers. Because, apparently, Americans with our continued rise in the standard of living over the past seventy years, has, inherently, caused our birthrate to decline to around 1.8 children per household, which does not lend itself to the growing population/economic formula.

 Trump promised that millions of jobs will definitely be created under his administration - which is good, but only if those jobs pay a living wage otherwise, the rich get richer, and poor get poorer.
But there is another fly in the ointment. That being that the profit margin of, especially, manufacturing companies. - January 21, 2017

 We all are aware of the dichotomy of the profit-to-overhead in terms of wages. And in the near future, it certainly looks as if machines will be supplanting we expensive humans. But this 'fix' will further degrade our prosperity because the ultimate result of business shouldn't be based on the largest profit possible, but to be profitable enough to keep all of our citizens employed and contributing to our economy! Any other goal is self-defeating, because if our citizens don't earn enough to purchase the goods they're manufacturing, then it's all for naught.
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Wikileaks and the Empire



What Wikileaks is doing is unmasking the "Empire," a global collusion between corrupt businesses and corrupt governments. These two enterprises enrich and support each other not through legitimate capitalist market transactions, but through sweetheart deals that subvert the open competitive market and fleece taxpayers through higher taxes and higher prices for everything.

Eisenhower warned against the "military-industrial complex" which was what he termed the "Empire" as it developed after WW2. The net effect is that governments no longer exist for the benefit of the people, and in our case, no longer to "secure the blessings of liberty."

So governments start wars, help set up unsustainable businesses that go bankrupt, funnel money in certain directions, create regulations that benefit certain interests, all sorts of things we call "crony capitalism." All the while delegitimizing traditional citizenship and restricting liberty to maintain power

So, yes, if elected, Hillary will be the "Empress." Her leaked e-mails, the “pay to-play” “donations” to the Clinton Foundation, and her Wall St. speech  payola show who the empire is and how it works. The Republican establishment who didn't get one of their own empire candidates and now in effect are supporting Hillary. GOP leaders like the Bushes, McConnells, Ryans, Kascich, George Will, etc. - reveal that they are completely in bed with and a part of the empire and their ideological differences with Democrats have largely been a charade all along.

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Sunset Boulevard (re)photographic series: Image captures from Google Street View



A new form of landscape photography has emerged in the Era of Google, one in which I would term “screen-shot” or “virtual” (re)photography. It involves capturing imagery that has already previously been captured (or created) and is now available for viewing on a digital-generated screen surface.

Here the process is unpacked specifically in regards to Google Maps Street View. Google maps and its API’s (Application Program Interface) have permeated our visually-dominated culture in a myriad of ways on the web, on mobile devices, and in GPS navigation units, with storehouses of real-time accessible information catering to practically every interest and inquiry. Using this eponymous mapping application which combines GPS satellite and street mapping with the geographical imagery associated with the map, landscape or urban-scape photography has never been easier. [1]

For one thing, it is no longer necessary to be physically present at a location in order to capture an image of a particular place. True, when capturing Google imagery through screen shots, the image capture is going to be dated to the time of the initial Google photographic event - the moment when the Google photographing team drove (or walked by) with their special 360 degree cameras taking photos. These images will eventually be processed, stitched together, and then linked to their respective GPS locations for display on the Google maps site. So, in some places the images may be several years old.

But in that sense, all photography is dated from the instant the image is taken. It is a window into a slice of the Real World of a certain place at a certain time, one that can never be exactly (re)produced again simply because of the passage of time that can cause the scene to change ever so slightly even in a couple seconds.

Admittedly, when working with Google Street View, one is restricted to only capturing imagery that Google has made available.(Additionally, there is the downside of the images overlaid with Google’s little information boxes and symbols.) Many sites not covered yet or currently inaccessible to Google’s ground-based photographic technology haven’t been photographed and thus cannot be (re)captured. Google compensates for this somewhat by allowing independent photographic uploads with GPS locations to be pinpointed on the Google maps.

Even though the professional or amateur photographer who goes on location has more leeway to veer off the beaten path than Google’s on-the-payroll photographic teams fulfilling their assignments, one’s own financial, physical, and time limitations  also restrict one’s ability to capture the imagery one might like. Moreover, on streets and roads with heavy traffic one might not want to risk darting out into the traffic long enough to take the street shots that the Google team has taken driving along, which can be (re)captured as high-quality still shots. Of course, then you have all the people taking cruising videos on many major and even minor thoroughfares riding from one point to another and then uploading them to YouTube or Vimeo - but those videos still can’t match Google in allowing a (re)photographer to carefully arrange framed still shots along the route.

According to Denis Dutton, our affinity for landscape imagery may be embedded into our genes as evolutionary adaptations. [2] Our Pleistocene ancestors gazed upon distant verdant vistas as potential sources of sustenance or/and habitat, sizing them up through various prior experiences as advantageous or disadvantageous. In the long term, this connection to the landscape became embedded into our psyches as part of humanity’s general outlook. As a result (in Dutton’s theory), we still harbor great longing to be a part of the landscape scenes we admire and gaze upon with affection – hence, if you care to believe it, the popularity of landscape imagery in calendar art. For those of us growing up in the modern urban streetscape, however, the streets may induce the same sort of affections in a primitive sort of way, as we size up the (sub)urban surroundings in similar terms of either danger, or the affective results it can provide us through experiences such as shopping, entertainment, or various services we need.   

Google Street View offers the screen-shot or “virtual” photographer similar choices to if the photographer was actually at the location with image capturing device in tow, i.e.. digital camera, mobile device, etc. There is the ability to alter perspective, zoom and pan, and select a portion of the image to capture. Of course like any digital imagery, it is easy to call up any of the available image processing apps to enhance or distort the image at will with all sorts of effects.

Sharing images is linked to the human desire to share experiences. We experience something that affects us in some way, and we like others to experience that feeling, too. As the lyrics in the 70s rocker Peter Frampton song go, “Do you feel like we do.” The human hunger for, and entrancement with, imagery gave rise to the full-blown Age of Photography early in the 20th century. As our grandparents and great-grandparents browsed through photo albums or presented 35mm slide shows and 8mm home movies on a Saturday night to family members and friends, so we upload our photos and videos to social media for others to see and enjoy as well.

But there’s also a subversive side to (re)photographing a scene. And it relates to the social media phenomenon of posting photos online not only as a means of sharing experiences – certainly one of the motivating drivers of social media – but also as “proof” of one’s being in a certain place, and the subsequent underlying prestige that being “there” in person produces.

Traveling outside one’s usual environs has always had an exotic appeal relating to the change in one’s usually fixed geospatial location, even if one travels only a short distance (“short” being relative to the people involved and their social, cultural, and historical context). Without a doubt, however, the farther one travels from one’s “home” location, and especially to places of noteworthy holiday excursion, the more the cachet attached to the trip.

By (re)photographing a scene without actually physically being there challenges and undermines this cachet of the whole notion that travel somehow elevates one’s status in some fashion or another. Why should it matter that I’m not “there” when I take a picture – or capture an image - of a scene that I like in some respect or want to retain for whatever reason I have in mind, even if on a purely curatorial basis?

Appropriation has been an integral and noted part of postmodern artistic practice. Long before Sherri Levine’s photographs of famous photographs, Robert Rauschenberg was incorporating bits and pieces of the visual ephemera of modern life into his combines and photomontages. On the Internet, the ubiquity of images and the ease of downloading and copying them has made the repositioning of images from their original contexts into one’s own personal usage and presentation almost effortless. Images now freely float half in the Real World and half in Virtual Reality untethered to any fixed reference point.

The indexical quality that photographs in the pre-digital era were purported to possess – that a photograph points to something in the Real World as truthful image of whatever was recorded on film – has for all intents and purposes, vanished in the digital era. Since images can be conjured up and altered at will, their veracity has also disappeared, and are now called into question at every turn.

However, the greater lesson to be learned, and perhaps more easily apprehended in virtual photography, is that photography is, and never was, neutral or objective in its image capture. The subjective decisions made by the photographer either beforehand or on the spot embed any image taken with all of the personal worldview of the photographer. For example, in my series of “Sunset Boulevard” screen captures (from Google Maps Street View along Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles) I concentrate on the grittier side of the street, so to speak.

The scenes I have chosen in this series deliberately reflect or intend to create an emotional state or even promote a political or ideological position, whatever that may be. But on another level, I can also be giving false image of place through my selection decisions. I illustrate this by presenting an alternative set of images from the Sunset Blvd. series, which show glitzier and upscale portions of the strip that I deliberately omitted from the first set.

I can also, and do try to, inject an aesthetic consideration into my subject matter in the way that I adjust the framing and focus and extent of the capture through whatever tools are available to me on my screen capture device. The intentionality, then, becomes the means by which my image captures steer the imagery into the realm of art. [3]

Moreover, a grouping of scenes performs an additive function in creating the statement (if there is one) that an artist wishes to make. And groupings are in line with the mass of images that social media users blithely upload at once from recent experiences. This not saying that the carefully composed singular shot still can’t have great impact, just that opposed to the analog era where film itself and film processing was relatively expensive, multiple image shots are the norm in the digital world for even the most casual user.  

For instance, as a multimedia artist working in traditional artmarking, digital photography, and video I have hard drives, various media types, and cloud storage for thousands of personal and art-related images. I have heard of others who have many, many more – who knows, perhaps as much as 100,000 or even greater in some cases. Only professional photographers, with their own darkrooms and photographic developing equipment, would have been storing that many images back in the analog days. Images today are ubiquitous and cheap and instances of them proliferate like weeds across the web.

As a result, the digital world is just brimming with potential to provide the means to spawn not only variations of traditional imagery but totally new kinds as well. New media artists are already engaged in this direction, imagining, experimenting and transforming the visual landscape in ways we will hardly recognize in the decades to come.     




  
Reference:

[1] Understanding Google Street View:
http://maps.google.com/maps/streetview/understand/

[2] Dutton, Denis. (2009). The art instinct: Beauty, pleasure, and human evolution. New York: Bloomsbury Press.

[3] Some aestheticians, such as Monroe Beardsley, dispute artist’s intentionality as a factor in judging the success of a work of art. Ibid., pp. 167 -8.


Completed August 13, 2016
©2016 Daniel John Bornt



Street View Imagery:

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Down Every Road


Merle Haggard took us on a ride. It was an exhilarating ride, because it was a ride across America, with people of all stripes who were living with the past, with pain, and with memories of times gone by when life was simpler - but knowing full well the ‘simple life’ wasn’t all that nostalgia made it out to be.


Merle spoke about and told the stories of folks who never quite got anything out of life except the hands they were dealt. These were people at the edges of society marginalized and swept under the rug, knowing that for them success was an always an illusion dancing in front of them they hadn’t the slightest chance of catching.

Haggard’s ‘prison’ songs could be seen as metaphors for the entrapping loneliness of modern life, people feeling trapped in their lives and caught up in forces beyond their control. “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” his first number one single, echoed this theme: “Down every road, there’s always one more city; I’m on the run, the highway is my home.” In just over a dozen words, Merle captured the rootlessness, the restlessness, the angst of America of the 60s.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejmDQp13YII


And so the course was set for the all the wonderful songs that followed, people living with and trying to deal with the mental and physical constraints of weaknesses, addictions, and heartbreak. Merle lived them all, and crafted those existential situations into tunes and melodies that all of us could relate to. ‪#‎merlehaggard‬ ‪#‎thehag‬ (more to come)
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