Blog 3 Textures

Blog 8

Blog 8

A woman in a car is recording a living nightmare via her iPhone as her boyfriend lies dying next to her, bleeding from his arm as a terrified cop points the gun at the bleeding man, shaking, screaming from fear and frustration. The woman is calm and doesn’t help the bleeding man. She is explaining that he reached for his wallet and was then shot. A toddler peers down at the phone from the back seat, also calm and collected, seemingly numbed to the horrifying situation. The woman would rather sully the name of the police officer and record the death than back up and head to a hospital or compress the gaping gunshot wound.

The kind of numbness she exhibited, while openly also a bit upset, is what one might get after being behind a lens. It almost acts like a veil. The woman wanted to document the video to rouse up hatred for the police officer more than help put pressure on the dying man’s wound. Her initial reaction is like some of our initial reaction – take out the camera phone.

Officers now use that video in some places as training on how adrenaline might take over. The officers were told to learn to act as if they are camera 24/7. This new age that we live in is such a world that job descriptions must be altered for the sake of the police officer, teacher, or even daycare worker. It’s about impossible to “slip up” or act inappropriate in front of the general public any more without a Vine, Hashtag, or YouTube video being made about it along with several news articles to burn the perpetrators at the proverbial stake.

 I see the usefulness in capturing the life of you and others around you to preserve out of faulty memory. Although “it’s important to remember that taking a picture is not an act of documentation as much as it is a way of enhancing one’s focus on an event (Is A Picture Always Worth A Thousand Words?)”, that is not true for everyone behind the lens. I have so much trouble remembering events and emotions, pictures make way to a mental capacity that would otherwise be impossible for me to keep. The camera can be the portal towards or away from one’s emotions. In saying this, I mean that it can go both ways when it comes to separating ourselves from the moment by using the camera. Cameras and digital manipulation programs are truly revolutionary. We can adjust the image, let’s say, a sunny warm day into a stark, cold, and isolated scene. It’s beguiling but then again so is art in general. The emotions one might feel from art might not always be “good”. They aren’t supposed to always be positive feelings. That notion is the same with living life. It is absolutely childish to think that pictures should be banned from the internet. There is a time and place for most things, and we must weigh the good compared to the bad outcomes of our own decisions.

As for the statement that, “These [photos and videos] must not be seen. They must not be transmitted”, in an ideal world no such thing (the disturbing image or video) would exist, but in seeing such things, we learn. It might not be as comfortable as those used to comfort like it to be, but learning still happens when we comprehend a gory image with a gory story. We have the right, just as those that post things that are more related to the DarkWeb have the right, to post what we will. If we didn’t we might as well have the rights of speech as those in China do. They heavily limit what citizens can see on the internet, therefore impairing what they learn, know about, the world around them.

Being in the moment instead of being behind or in front of the phone can be seen in different lights. Maryanne Garry might say “that people are giving away being in the moment” when it comes to children’s/friend’s memories that are also sharing the moment, but as I sit here and type this out I look at my photo album sitting next to a collection of books with a calm fondness at all the memories shared between my fiancé and I and think, “I wish I had a camera instead of a cell phone…but I am so happy my cell phone was present and charged.” My fiancé will tell me about so many stories about being on the road touring with the breakdance group/production company he was picked up by while he had been away from home at a very vulnerable age. His stories are so colorful that I wish I could have seen pictures of him dancing, legs spinning in the air, or him and his friends that had so many wild times together. I have also been in settings where a camera, or even raising a camera phone up as if I was about to take a picture, was taboo. Everyone ducks as if I was holding a loaded gun. Why? Because illegal things were being done and no matter how much fun one might have been having, pictures were not allowed. It’s as if some of those crazy times never happened. I didn’t write about them. I didn’t take pictures. It’s really a shame because, for different purposes, I’d like to be reminded of where I was and how I felt. How the moment was to ME personally. There is a time and place for everything though. You only live once and life can be so fragile, having those memories preserved is so very important in the end.

The 15 minutes of fame prediction by Andy Warhol is coming to fruition.

Blog 5 A Scanner (not so) Darkly: Mini-digital collages

Scanner 1 "Ladies Revolt"

Scanner 2 "Leave, GO"

3/5/18

Project 1 Visual Pun Fun

VISUAL PUNS  by Bee
"Anarchist's Cookbook and Ground Beef"