Semiotics: Pop: An image may not be all it appears to be, may be much more than its appearance

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A marvellously ins+tful article by Joe Carter in his blog Evangelical Outpost analyzes under the rubric "Pop Semiotics" how advanced technics has created "A New World of Blurs" (Aug10,2k6).

Although the phrase “seeing is believing” has become a cliché, it embodies a truth about the way we interact with our surroundings. Indeed, our perception of knowledge is so closely tied to visualization that we use the metaphor “I see” as a way of saying “I understand.”

Losha.jpgBut when it comes to mechanically created imagery, what we see doesn’t always match reality. Take, for example, the [large] photo [you can see by clicking here.)]. It appears to be a picture of a lovely young woman wearing a hat. But look again. Notice anything out of the ordinary?

What is unusual about the photo is that it is not a photo at all. Rather it is a drawing, produced by the amazingly talented artist Halim Ghodbane using Adobe Illustrator. When we believed the image was a photo, we believed (albeit unconsciously) that the girl actually exists. But once we are made aware that this is just a drawing, we cannot be sure the girl exists anywhere outside of the artist’s mind.

Semiote Analytics, by Anaximaximum

UPDATE: Couric sheds 20 pounds in doctored publicity photo

In a similar way, recent controversies over manipulated images have lead us to question what is real and what is propaganda. The retouching of a photo by photographer Adnan Hajj initially raised questions about the integrity of Reuters. But once the public became aware of the deception, bloggers began to look closer and uncovered numerous examples of image manipulation by other agencies, including the Associated Press and New York Times.

This site lists a “taxonomy of fraud” that includes digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken; staging and presenting images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events; photographers staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring; and giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.

I recommend clicking up Joe's site and reading the entire blog-entry, as well as the back-and-forth mini-essays that constitute the comments section. But doing so will take you deeper into the political-ethical aspect of the phenom, as promoted by editors and jouralists of the Big Media. The advanced-technics, pop-semiotics phenom itself is much larger than what finds its way into the mass media. Named after the computer application Photoshop, pop semiotics has seen the advent of the process called photoshopping (or just plain "shopping") which is used for creating images in funny, ironic, and satirical modes. These photoshopped images can be malicious, they can be just great fun. On the latter note, see, for example, The Star Wars Photoshopping Project. On some sites devoted to exhibiting photoshopped imagery, competitions are held on themes using a specific base image, or a stated task.

Beyond photoshopping, however, there are so many technical variations of image-making already that the total can't be quantified. Flickr reports that "photo" doesn't mean what it used indicate, so the image-share bank has had to add another category for the carefully staged and crafted artworks posted to its galleries, sometimes including text, that don't meet the parameters of what Flickr, when it started, assumed a photo was. Also, you'll want to read the stunning post on ExperienceCurve [Social Media, Marketing, Customer Experience] by Karl Long, entitled "Is Flickr Trying to Screw Artists?" (Aug23,2k6)). The comments are quite informative as well. In a comment a Flickr functionary is quoted as saying:

Our Community Guidelines state that non-photographic images such as screen shots, paintings, drawings, illustrations, graphic designs, scanned images, or digital art are not allowed in public areas of the site. You may still see some, but these types of images are generally blocked from appearing in searches or the Explore pages.

An impartial person can see some wisdom in the policy from the standpoint of the "ownness" of photography, a unique art indeed that has every r+t to come into the specificity of its unique aesthetic sphere (here defined, however, by its machine technique, a camera only.

But, what about a photograph of another kind of art, other than the ones cited by the functionary? For instance, as a commenter mentions in the ExperienceCurve exchange, a photograph of a sculpture. What about photoconstructions--those half-photo, half-paste-in manual constructions that are then re-photgraphed as an ensemble?

One begins to think that perhaps Flickr's policy is more determined by the commercial interests of revenue sources like camera manufacturers than by a truly aesthetically-sensitive definition of photography in an age of exfoliating techniques, artforms, and hybridization within a given range of the arts. What about a handwritten original poem, crafted to be photographed? Such a photo is not a photo, Flickr seems to be saying.

Aesthetics: Arts/Music: His hands anticipate “shape” various chord clusters & melodic lines, "became one" with piano

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I came across an incredible snippet in Catherine Nielsen's Per caritatem that exploded into all that I had learned from Dooyeweerd, Seerveld, Langer, and Adrienne Chaplin Dengerink on ways of knowing aesthetically, including the arts. In this case, a further explcitness about how the hands do the knowing for the jazz improvizing piano-player can be enriched theoretical by reading Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge, the chapter devoted to "Lore." Each piano-player ("pianist" doesn't seem r+t here) in the improv-jazz mode has a signature way of knowing thru his hands the specific instrument he addresses.

Music > Piano & Jazz Sax

Catherine is reflecting on

David Sudnow’s work, Ways of the Hand, which is an account of a classical pianist’s struggle on the road to becoming a jazz improviser. Sudnow describes in detail how at first he felt estranged from his body, viz., his hands. That is, the connection between his hands, the rhythm and metre, and the lines he wanted to play was at best strained and often more of a dis-connect. However, over time his hands began to anticipate the “shape” of various chord clusters and melodic lines—-in short his hands "became one" with the piano, which was now in a sense an extension of his own body

[how about: his body became an extension of his hands, his brain-part of his body became an extension of his hands]

and not simply a tool to be used.

[But let's not put down tools, nor intimacy with any specific tool.]

Catherine then turns to her source on Sudnow--Jeremy Begbie, a theologian whose first book I so disliked I never got around to subsequent work of his.

As Begbie explains, “the hand would treat the keyboard as a terrain to be engaged, relating to its contours, for example, to the contours of different keys […] Knowing what the next note or next notes would sound like was more to do with hand sensations than visual inspection of the keyboard. […] From the point of view of piano improvisation, listening is as much to do with the hand as with the ear” (pp. 225).

Then along the route I'm reading in Catherine regarding Sudnow's development, I come to this gem from Begbie on Sudnow (it may be Sudnow's own statement but Catherine is so immersed in Begbie that she gives the appearance at least of assigning the thawt to the latter): “The hand ‘had ways’ with the keyboard which opened up potentialities of sound not readily discoverable in any other way” (p. 226). If Begbie had started his aesthetic theory here, instead of with all that theologistic verbiage that estranges one from a wholistic view of artful creation, even in, especially in skilled improve, he would have done better.

The hands tickle the keyboard to ticke not so much the piano-player's ears, as to ticle ours in the enrapt audience. Thanks to Cythia. Thanks to Dave Evans and Bob van der Plaats on their respective pianos. Thanks to Bill Grove, a Toronto musician, who saxed on an improv-jazz saxophone beyond all earthly pleasures (yet he was what I call "a compassionate cynic" when it came to philosophizing the world and even his own music). Now the bodily organs most instrumental on the sax are hands and fingers, lungs, cheeks and lips. That's, among all else, knowing.

-- Anaximaximum

Tags: Hand-knowing the piano

• aesthetics
• arts
• music
• musiclassical
• musicjazzimprov
• piano
• saxophone
• hands
• lungs
• cheeks
• lips

Technics: online learning: Prof guesstimates time spent teaching online vs tech activities

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Prof Ken Hermann has an anecdotal analysis of what learning technics do to the ratio of a university instructor's time spent teaching students online vs. organizing and maintaining the digital-electronic technical apparatus for that purpose. He comes up with a whopping 80% for the latter, with only 20% of his time spent on what he most wants to do: preparing his content to actually teach students. Instead his time evaporates into the technical substructure of online teaching and learning.

TechNotes, by Owlie Scowlie

Online learning is a Big Biz not just for universities who add that mode of instruction to their repertoire, but also for specialist competitive corporations like Blackboard, alto the terms "competitive" and "like" may be stretching capitalist terminology where one company now wields a "virtual monopoly" -- as Kenn say in his earlier blog-entry "Time to Call Blackboard's Bluff" (Aug6,2k6). I recommend the entirety of Kenn's entries on his category "Technology and Society."

On matters of politics, big matters like war and peace, a view very different from Kenn Hermann's has been developed analytically by refWrite (Aug1,2k5), suggesting in that blog-entry a debate between him and David Horowitz.

Tags: Pando for large email attachments

• technics
• pedagogy
• onlinelearning
• companieslearning
• learningcompanies
• Blackboard
• webct
• HermannKenn

Technics: Digital file-sharing: Music industry thaws a bit to acknowledge the benefits of free downloads and P2P

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Techdirt contributor Mike hits the jackpot once again with his recent blog-entry,"Rethinking The Music Industry Business Model... Finally Going Mainstream." I've underlined his links, but not live-linked them. Click up his entry to navigate to his links, and to read the interesting comments that are already flowing in, replying to this piece. Excellent analysis, Mike! I'm interested in the whole idea of new tech-age business models he touts, convincing me at least. So, I'm looking forward to an attempt at some analysis of his thawts on that key idea. My colleague Spondent hopes to do just that over the next few days in the USE, Inc. Game series on correspondence refWrite. Heeeeeere's Techdirt Mike:

from the can't-stop-the-trend dept

For all the complaints we have about the way the RIAA conducts its business, we have always been optimistic that things would get sorted out eventually. It wasn't the music industry that was in trouble at all -- just the traditional recording labels. People often accuse us of hating the music industry, which is totally incorrect. When we discuss music industry strategies it's hoping that they recognize that these new business models have the potential to be much bigger than the old ones. This is based on a few simple ideas that really shouldn't be that hard to grasp, unless you're desperately tied to an existing business model and unwilling to change. First, treating all your customers as criminals doesn't create much loyalty or willingness to buy your product. Especially in a market where the product is based on being a fan, not filling a need. You want your fans to be happy -- not pissed off. Second, the basic economics are there. On the supply and demand curve the supply of digital goods is infinite, meaning that the trend over time will absolutely be for the price to get pushed towards zero. It's just the way the market works. That's not a bad thing if you embrace it and recognize that, rather than lost revenue, free content represents free promotion. After all, the hardest part of becoming a success in the music business is the marketing to get your product known. The third, and final, aspect of this is how new technologies have dramatically decreased the costs of every other aspect of the music business. Creation, publishing and distribution are all now much cheaper due to the onward march of technology, forcing a shift in how we think about copyright issues.

TechNotes, by Owlie Scowlie

Based on all of this, it's not hard to come up with a variety of different business models that are based on (1) using the music as a promotional good to get a lot more attention in a crowded market (2) offering customers what they want, and offering them plenty of different ways to get it and (3) building tremendous loyalty from happy customers who feel much closer to the musicians and are much more willing to spend money on secondary products (merchandise, concerts, access). Plenty of musicians have figured this out, and now it's moving further and further away from being a "fringe" idea and into the mainstream music business. Wired Magazine is running a bunch of articles about how the industry is realizing this, with two pieces that are definitely worth reading. There's an interview with Beck where he discusses continually giving fans more ways to interact with the content, and not worrying about things appearing on the internet. However, even more interesting is the article about Canadian music management and music label firm Nettwerk. You may remember that name from their announcement earlier this year that they would pay the legal fees for a teen sued for file sharing one of their own artists. The article also discusses how Nettwerk recognizes all of what we discuss above, in that it's encouraging each band on its roster to build its own label, and focus not just on how to "sell a CD," but on selling the entire experience of the music. When you look at things that way, it means you don't worry if some of the music is heard for free, because that just encourages more interest in other things the band is selling. It's also looking to try experiments similar to the recently announced Sellaband, who focuses on getting people to "invest" in a musician to help them pay for a recording, in exchange for a share of the later profits. In other words, the industry is evolving -- in many of the ways that plenty of people have been predicting all along. This is a good thing -- and one of these days the old record labels will finally recognize the mistakes they've made... or simply disappear.

Culture: Movies & TV: CSM reviews media alternatives - TV show testing, TV summer series, and 2 movies just released in DVD

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"Before TV shows air, they to survive ... The Lab," Christian Science Monitor Monitor, (Aug4,2k6) by Gloria Goodale

"Tubegazing: Three Moons over Milford," Christian Science Monitor Monitor, (Aug4,2k6) by Gloria Goodale.

Groovin' the Tube, by Anaximander

Three Moons Over Milford (ABC Family, premières Aug. 6 at 8 p.m.): Once again, cable demonstrates that summer doesn't have to be a dry spell for new shows. ABC Family's "Three Moons Over Milford" is a gently charming look at, oh, the end of the world - or not, depending on your point of view. A cosmic explosion has split the moon into three bits and nobody, including the scientists, knows what will happen next. So folks have to make their own decisions. Elizabeth McGovern stars as the mom of two teens (who are confused about whether they need to stay in school) and wife to a wealthy man who decides to chuck it all in and climb the world's seven tallest peaks while he still can. Grade: B+.

Summer Fun > TV and DVD, by Anaximander

CSM (Aug4,2k6), DVD Reviews gives two recent releases the once-over. 30 Days receives a B grade from Stephen Hamphries, while V for Vendetta gets a B- from David S. Hauck. Great pix of character Evey (Natalie Protman) by Claudio Carpi. Readers may recall the earlier meta-review I wrote up on reviews of V for Vendetta, a genre I called a 'meta-review.' You may also recall how Dr Fraud took umbrage at this way of approaching a movie, needing more as he always does to grind into his malice machine. But the meta-review is worth the re-reading.

What's interesting in CSM's focuses here are united around the theme of alternatives. Gooddale's first article above shows how the TV producers test shows for their common-denominator appeal, essentially asking what in this particular new series may turn off the widest possible audience torturing the experts dreams, or what will attract the largest audience? The latter, more positive construction of the question, has some dubious background presuppositions around theories of basic human drives like eating and sex. The industry has learned a bit that biotic-drives driven TV has problems in reaching the largest possible audience. Family-fare actually gets more viewers, tho some in each family may constitute a very different market demographic. So, more adult-themed (and I mean here action, forensic, and copware as much as eros-lacing) requires careful handling, and rules out a considerable audience. But innocuousness doesn't bring the largest possible, either. TV, including the networks, have to take more seriously production for niche-viewerships in any kind of non-documentary narrative episode TV-series. DVDs are a way of avoiding what the tube is currently offering.

Tags: Pando for large email attachments

• culture
• TV
• showtesting
• family-fare
• meta-review
• DrFraud
• DVDs
• humandrivessex&food

Culture: Movies: Gregory Baus reviews 'Superman Returns'

Gregory Baus, intrepid Calvinist blogger, reviews the other Superman movie this summer, Superman Returns. Provocative.

- Anaximaximum

Tags: Pando for large email attachments

• movies

Technics: Music file-sharing: Music overlords try to kill off LimeWire P2P music hub

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Yep, old-school greed-capitalism is still trying to dictate your choice of music and ability to share-give-to / share-get-from fellow individual music-lovers for non-commercial purposes. The pretense that the benefits of sales-only music exchange in a digital-electronic age benefits the artists has been blown sky-h+ by studies from within the music industry itself. However, it doesn't serve the private purposes of those codgers formed by the old business culture to revise, each in his/her own case, their companies' business models, and perhaps those presently in power are incapable of doings so. Perhaps only a new generation of executives at the corporations joined in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) can catch up to the study-backed proof that P2P music sharing advances the music culture and the companies that produce for it, but most of all the artists. (Altho not the mega-stars who already are awash in multmillions, awards, and stardom - but everyone else musically creative as MySpace and other new artists' webdoms based on sharing, further prove.

As one wag on the subject, posting on Slashdot properly denominates the music-industry dominants "Recording Industrialists Against Artists."

TechNotes, by Owlie Scowlie

The companies behind the new lawsuit against Lime Group which operates the LimeWire music P2P file-sharers hub) are Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Britain's EMI Music -- companies which are so top-heavy with overpaid tiers of executives that they should all be banked out, ruptured. But, lol. They'll win and will decimate the last standing major P2P noncommercial file-sharing music hub, because they are intent upon determining how the Internet works -- so that it works only for them and their kind and their shoddy products and megalomaniacal overpaid top-stars.

Techdirt has the most analytic, incisive write-up that I've seen so far:

As has been widely expected, the RIAA has officially gone after Limewire today. Following the Supreme Court Grokster decision that didn't actually say Grokster was guilty of copyright infringement (just that they could be liable if they were found to have "induced" copyright infringement), the RIAA simply pretended that the ruling meant all file sharing apps were illegal and sent out warning letters to a bunch of them. Many shut down or tried to come up with other business models, while most users simply moved on to whatever else there was (and there were plenty of options). It looks like popular file sharing app Limewire continued to resist -- so now the RIAA is suing. What will be interesting is to see how far this case goes. If history is any indication, the RIAA will do its best to make the case as expensive as possible for Limewire, so they feel compelled to settle or just disappear completely. However, the firm does have a defense: they just need to show that they were not actively "inducing" copyright infringement -- even if that's what their software was often used for. They might want to take notes on Torrentspy's case against the MPAA. - Contributed by Mike with 35 comments to date on Techdirt

MPAA? That's the Motion Picture Association of America which is trying to prevent the sharing of digital-electronic movies via the Internet. Both industry orgs use decrepit old business models as tho they were written in stone, when in fact they are part of the recent failures of both industries, including exorbitant pricings and shoddy products from which consumers of cultural products have turned away in thousands upon thousands of droves.

Where have consumers gone? To P2P. That's person-to-person or peer-to-peer file-sharing and new artists who give away their creations for the very purpose of being picked up consumers who enjoy digitally certain few of the free downloads, and then go out and buy. This gives consumers of culture a real element of choice in what products become significant culturally, outside of RIAA and MPAA dictation and marketing games.

In the past this TechNotes column (see Siderbar for new Columns Index) has carried two synopses from a major statement by Dr. Michael Geist on the case for P2P file-sharing and other pro-consumer features of the Internet that the oligopolies of the culture and communications industry have tried to repress.

By the way, Techdirt carries a Google Ads ad-link for LimeWire™: Free Music. Which observation ties into a little matter of full disclosure. I have subscribed to and downloaded music from LimeWire in the past, and still have some songs from that source I would imagine. A practice which fell into neglect since it took me too long to download sufficient numbers of copies of any given song or spoken poem, from time to time, to get that special copy that wasn't scratchy. Plus, the practice tends to build up large files of songs to which I rarely if ever listened.

In Canada, non-commercial copying and file-sharing is not illegal, as long as the receiver in the sharing doesn't make any commercial use of the song/s. Now, I have been viciously attacked by the usual, Dr Fraud (aka Fred Pluthero), who is Canadian and pretends to be informed about everything, but apparently doesn't know Canadian law and morality in regard to noncommercial file-sharing P2P. As a Christian, I have also reflected on my P2P music file-sharing practice in M.D. Stalfleu's protestant philosophical-ethical system of theoretical frameworks, and have no problem with the practice within the parameters outlined. Dr Fraud however keeps braying no matter what level of moral and ethical responsiblity I have undertaken, which only raises questions about his motives. I bore you, dear readers, no further with the fraudster who has been keeping company with Dr Moriarty of late in the vicinity of dank tombs, it's said.

Futher Resources:

Dr Michael Geist on P2P, etc - Part I
Dr Michael Geist on P2P, etc - Part II

Tags: LimeWire targetted for P2P filesharing 'inducement' by Big Music

• aesthetics
• music
• filesharing
• p2p
• noncommercialuse
• musicindustry
• musicorporations
• RIAA
• MPAA