Blog Post #8: Photo Inferences

When searching for a picture to write about our first project I wanted to find one that I could connect with and a topic that I knew something about. After going through dozens of pictures I finally stumbled across this one when I wasn’t even really looking. This picture comes from the Invisible Children website. Invisible Children is an advocacy organization supporting and promoting change for the people of Africa, specifically those living in Uganda, Sudan, Darfur, and Rwanda.

This particular photograph was taken at a displacement camp in Uganda. It shows three boys looking over the displacement camp. The three boys could be brothers, or best friends. They are standing close together and seem to have some sort of connection, suggesting that they are not simply strangers at the same place at the same time. Though we cannot see their faces, we can gain a great deal of knowledge about what they are thinking or feeling by the way they are standing. They are somewhat slouched and their gazes are focused downward, not up and out as you might see with pride or excitement. But then again, they are looking over the homes that they, and people like them, have been forced into, not a childhood home, or tight-knit village, so there isn’t much I could imagine much they would have to be happy or excited about.

The boys in the photo probably live in the displacement camp they are looking over as area rebel groups and government agencies forced “more than 1.8 million people – or 80 percent of the population in northern Uganda – to flee their homes and instead live in squalid displacement camps in which an estimated 1,000 individuals die each week.” (Northern Uganda Crisis) They probably live very difficult lives. Aside from the miserable conditions that they have been forced to live in, they most likely live in fear of being recruited or kidnapped to become child soldiers for the LRA, (Lord’s Resistance Army) a rebel force in Uganda and Sudan lead by Joseph Kony, who often train young boys to become killing machines for their cause.

Aside from the fear that they could possibly at any time be taken from their family and forced to kill, the boys’ lives in the displacement camps, like the one they are looking over, is dismal and very difficult to say the very least. The homes are made of straw, sticks, dirt or cloth and are all very close together, causing conditions to be unsanitary and the spread of disease to be rapid. There are never enough resources. Even basic human needs, such as food and water, are scarce. The activities that occur in the displacement camps are ones that promote survival. There aren’t extra resources or space for other entertainment or fun. All of their energies are typically spent trying to get through to the next day. The boys have probably already seen and understand things far beyond their years and taken on great responsibility to help their family and community survive.

Blog Post #7: Photography Experience

I have always had an interest in photography. When I was five my family went a trip to Lake Okoboji, Iowa and my mom gave me my own disposable camera. I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world and I came back with some very interesting pictures. Now, keep in mind that I was only five, so most of the pictures were of ducks, squirrels, birds, trees, the lake, and several of our hotel room. But I also took some that were actually worthwhile. One evening my dad decided that he was going to try to fish, a bad decision since my father has no innate fishing skills what so ever. So I sat with my camera on the dock with him for hour after fish-less hour. Finally he thought that he caught something and spent the better part of five minutes trying to reel it in. When he finally brought his catch to the surface, it wasn’t fish at all… it was seaweed. I had wanted to take a picture of the “fish” my dad caught, so as soon as the hook surfaced I snapped a picture. The result was a profile shot of my father’s incredibly shocked face and a fishing pole hooked onto a whole lot of seaweed. It perfectly captured the moment, and anyone looking at the picture could clearly understand what had happened. This remains one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.

Since that time, I have had many more disposable cameras, and my love of photography has continued to grow. I don’t claim to be the best photographer, but I honestly believe that part of my problem may be that I have never had the right tools.

I have had digital cameras, but the quality hasn’t been anywhere near professional and they have all basically been a flash or no flash, line it up, point and shoot kind of situation. I did take a photography class in high school and learned a little about the basics of photography and got to use the school’s professional cameras. So that helped to give me some confidence and knowledge. But despite my lack of the tools to take great pictures, I feel that I am ableto compensate by being able to capture a moment, as well finding good subjects and subject matter. Two of my best photography experiences were trips that I took. One was to Washington D.C. my senior year of high school, and the other was to London my sophomore year. Aside from having amazing subject matter to shoot, I feel like I was able to take some more artistic shots as well as the more “touristy” ones that you take just to remember what places looked like and that have you and your friends in them to prove you were actually there, and you were there together.

I have always loved looking at and taking pictures. Whether or not I am actually any good at evaluating photography or shooting it is still yet to be determined! The two images posted here are pictures that I took during my trip to London. The first is of London's Tower Bridge, and the second is of Stonehenge.

Blog Post #5: Pathos And Context Analysis

In the video for their song, “Not Ready To Make Nice," the Dixie Chicks create a viewing experience with many rhetorical appeals. While both ethos and logos are used in the video and are very important in their own right, it is the use of pathos that really sets this video apart.

The video itself is an effort to evoke a feeling of compassion for the Dixie Chicks. After their London concert in which lead singer Natalie Maines said that she was “ashamed” to be from the same state as then President George W. Bush, there was a great backlash. Radio stations began boycotting their music, stores pulled their albums from the shelves, and many fans disassociated themselves. This video was created to appeal to their audiences’ emotions and elicit, or attempt to elicit, a feeling of sympathy. Their use of pathos and cry for empathy is very evident even in the song’s lyrics: “And how in the world can the words that I said/ Send somebody so over the edge/ That they’d write me a letter/ Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing/ Or my life will be over.” This is not only an attempt go obtain a sympathetic response where the listener might feel bad for the ridicule endured by the band, but to force the listener to think about what they would feel like if someone told you to “shut up and sing” or they would kill you.

The use of pathos to elicit an emotional response in this video is also evident in the use of common institutions we all must deal with every day and the often-detrimental effects they have on individuals and society. The used of the schoolroom setting is a prime example of this. In most people this would evoke a negative emotion about a childhood school experience in which they were made to feel a fool for stating their opinion or when they were unjustly punished.

There are many instances both in lyric and aesthetic in the Dixie Chicks song “Not Ready To Make Nice,” that are meant to elicit a strong emotional response from the audience. From the lyric of the song to the scenes depicted in the video, there is no doubt that pathos is hard at work here.

Blog Post #4: Context Analysis

When viewing and determining the contexts of this video, “Not Ready To Make Nice,” by the Dixie Chicks, it is very important to first understand the context in which it was created. The 2006 song, though powerful and very unrepentant, was written to, for lack a better phrase, “make nice” with the American public after the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer, Natalie Maines, made off-the-cuff remarks at a London concert about how she was "ashamed"to be from the same state as then President George W. Bush. The uproar and outrage about her comments surged through the relatively country music community and drove their songs and albums off the charts. For the next three years the Dixie Chicks all but disappeared. But in 2006 they resurfaced with a new album and were “mad as hell.” Thus, “Not Ready To Make Nice,” was born.

There are many other contexts in which to view the video for “Not Ready To Make Nice.” One important context is an aesthetic context. All of the choices made in the video were deliberate and significant. The dark setting and strategic lighting set up the mood and feeling for the video. The girls dressed in white, innocent and pure, are smeared with black paint, representing the way that their names were smeared and tainted. Also, the black paint stained on their hands that they are unable to wipe off is an aesthetic decision and visual representation of the words spoken that you can never take back, can never wipe away. The black and white color scheme chosen for the video is also an aesthetic decision representing the stark nature of our world and how things are either one way or the other, that they are black or white, no grey. Also, another important aesthetic aspect of the video is the pained and anguished looks that cover the faces of all the people in the video. This is seemingly genuine pain displayed metaphorically by the women of the Dixie Chicks as a visual representation of the turbulence and persecution weathered by the group in the years following Maines’s comments.

It is also pertinent to view this video in an institutional context. For example, when the women are sitting in the schoolroom setting and Natalie is called up to write on the board, “To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.” This plays on the notion of how students are punished in schools and forced to write out sentences stating what they did wrong over and over again. And that is seemingly what happened to the Dixie Chicks. They were treated like children, incapable of individual thinking and forced to admit what they had done over and over again as a form of "punishment." Another prime example best viewed from an institutional context is the scene in which they appear to be in a doctor’s office or operating room. Two of the women are trying to hold the other down. This is suggestive of how little choice is often given in institutional systems and repressive they can be. Both the educational and medical examples when viewed in an institutional context seem to take on a contextual meaning of repression and that it would be in your best interest to stick with the status-quo, because if you don’t there will be consequences and the blood, or in this case, ink, will be on your hands.

Blog Post #2: Web 2.0 Video

Our world is constant and ever changing. There are new leaps in technology and science every single day. This video, created by Michel Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, is a prime example of that change. It demonstrates how stagnant paper and pencil writing is, and how fluid and malleable the web and technology have become.

This video is an example of how far humans have come in terms of communication and suggests where we might be headed in the future. It shows sharp contrast between how we have communicated in the past, the pencil writing, and not only how we communicate now, but also how we will continue evolve communication in the future. It suggests that because of all of the evolutions in technology we must rethink copyrights, authorship, ethics, identity, and ourselves.

The video begins slowly, showing simple writing with pencil and paper, and then typing and erasing, copying and pasting, and then turns into a flurry of activity as it begins to show html coding, hyper linking, websites, blogs, video, and all of the hundreds of ways we have taught computers to help us communicate with one another. While there is no way to understand all of the information shown in the video, there is a very definite purpose to that decision. The purpose is to visually explain to the viewer that although they use most of these types of communication every day, they actually understand very little about how all of it works.

The creator’s use of logos throughout the video is very effective. Not only does the video introduce many different ideas and suggestions about technology, it demonstrates the argument in real time. Reason and rationality are used throughout the video to support each claim made as well as examples provided for each different idea.

My reaction to the video was that it was an excellent example of a medium addressing another medium. It is a video about Web 2.0 using Web 2.0. I felt that gave it great credibility, as the video is the suggested answer to the arguments that it itself presents. I think this video really makes you stop and think about all of the ways that we use technology and communication. It is easy to jump on to your Facebook page, check your Twitter account, update your blog, and watch a video on YouTube without thinking about all that has gone into making them, how they were developed or considering how they have changed our world. This video really made me think not only about how we use technology, but how it has affected our society. Our world is ever changing, and because of leaps in technology, such as Web 2.0, we must rethink ourselves.