Online Posters
Poster sessions present preliminary results of works in progress or projects that lend themselves to visual displays and representations.
Changes in Portrait Photography Due to Social Media Domination: A Comparison of the Portraits of Famous Personas Before and After Social Media
Online Poster Ioannis Skopeteas, Eirini Sofroniadi
Based on the measurement tools of digital popularity, the most popular photo of the most popular American President in the social media era, Obama, is a selfie-style photograph of him next to a United States citizen. This is definitely not the kind of regular presidential photography we expect from a President, according to our experience of the famous first-page photos printed in 20th century media. What changes in communication, culture and technology have occurred in the social media era that led to this kind of photographic portrayal? The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical overview of the evolution of portrait in the era of social networking, and define the role of the latter in terms of techniques and style and modes of expression. Simultaneously, to study the evolutionary course of photographic portrait in the social media, mainly Instagram, and to analyze the way in which the form and content of photography has been shaped in the last decade based on the taste of the viewers. The most famous portraits of politicians and other VIPs before and after the advent of social media will be used as case studies; that is, portraits in magazines, and advertising campaigns before 2004, the launch of first major social networks, and portraits in social networks after 2004. Their visual elements will be analyzed on the basis of the theory of image multimodality by Kress and Leeuwen. Then, a sociocultural analysis will be developed, as an explanation to the differences revealed.
Context, Interpretation, and Content in Multimodal Texts: Seeing Process as Reconstruction
Online Poster Catherine Winters
Literature and art have been playing with notions of authorship and authority for decades and forcing viewers and readers to consider subjectivity. In part, the nature of literature and art, which acknowledges its connection to individual perception, allows space to play with our notions of understanding. By making the process of creating a part of the work, whether visually in the final piece or the perception of how meaning is made by a character, it becomes clear the work itself is the result of choice and interpretation over observation. While there is space for the reader to question the truth in light of the instability presented in contemporary works, ultimately these narratives encourage skepticism towards the claim of objectivity and the obvious in favor of attention to every media production as a combination of interpretation and choice. Multimodal literature in particular tutors the reader in the processes of interpretation and creation by embracing visual and spatial elements. This poster will consider how multimodal texts play with images, language, and space to show the interplay of context, interpretation, and content in the reconstructive era in four texts: Newspaper Blackout by Austin Kleon, A Little White Shadow by Mary Ruefle, VAS: An Opera in Flatland by Steve Tomasula and Stephen Farrell, and A Girl Imagined by Chance by Lance Olsen.
Miao Imagery in Chinese Ethnic Tourism : Harsh Realities and Happy Minorities
Online Poster Mary Louise Buley Meissner, Vincent Her
We focus on how “Miao” imagery is used in Chinese ethnic tourism to promote Miao people as a model “happy minority,” whose identity is inseparable from the ability to entertain urban Chinese through “authentic” cultural performances of song and dance. Interpretation of this imagery necessarily is political: tourism works hand in hand with current campaigns to maintain a national narrative of ethnic harmony. As a counter-narrative, we describe our encounters with the complex identities of Miao people (particularly the Hmong subgroup) and the daunting challenges they face in modern society. Chinese tourists from big cities are drawn to Guizhou (the poorest province), where they can view not only the “timeless” realm of mountains and lamp-lit villages, but also the “purity” of the Miao, who welcome outsiders with open arms. Chinese documentaries present the Miao as simple, close to the land and unchanging in their culture. Tourists and viewers are told they can see the Miao in their “original” state, far removed from modern society's complications. However, confronting high rates of poverty and low rates of education, Miao people need more than audience applause at the end of their shows. Moreover, while Miao people are being praised for their “authentic” performances, they are losing the very culture which they are assumed to embody: Han Chinese are deciding what Miao will perform; villages are being turned into tourism showcases, and families are breaking up as youth leave the countryside for jobs in big cities (with tourism profits going to outside contractors).
Between the Averted Gaze and the Male Gaze: Asghar Farhadi’s Women in the Context of Feminist World Cinema
Online Poster Dilyana Mincheva, Niloofar Hooman
Asghar Farhadi’s complex female characters pose an immediate challenge for the Western viewer. His women are positioned as culturally and socially specific discursive agents of the complexities and internal divisions of Islamic feminism. On the one hand, Farhadi presents us with a set of women who are caught up in a dominant and suffocating patriarchal society, from which they constantly attempt to break through constructing a phantasy of escape either through actively seeking immigration or through engaging in public practices of female empowerment. On the other hand, Farhadi consciously portrays another set of women who are reluctant to follow in the footsteps of their Westernized and liberated sisters. These are the women who operate within an Islamic system of relationships, which Hamid Nafisy describes as the "averted gaze," and which signals the Iranian establishment’s effort to create a desexualized presence of women in postrevolutionary Iranian cinema. The argument that we propose in this paper is that Farhadi masterfully navigates the encounters of the female characters within the cinematic space of his films by presenting a polysomic and infinitely open to negotiation space of female agency, which transcends and decenters the traditional conventions of both Western and Islamic feminisms.
Strategies for Performative Walks
Online Poster Patrick Ford, Nina Yiu Lai Lei
Walking can be thought of as a medium just like painting, printmaking or sculpture so the crucial question is: What happens once the walk commences? There would usually be a strategy employed when approaching the walk unless the plan is to deliberately dispense with strategies. The strategy can involve observations and responses to the location the walk takes place within or, alternatively, can relate to discussions with fellow walkers or even communication with other participants walking simultaneously in remote locations. These communications, along with observations of the locale, can be transmitted and/or recorded to form an archive of the activity or even the basis for a future, related piece of work. This poster outlines six strategies for approaching performative walks.
Preventing Gender-based Violence through the Development and Evaluation of Pro-social Games
Online Poster Anna C Powell, Cumming Roslyn, Ryan Greene, Zaneta Edey
Since its conception in 2016 the Global None In Three Research Centre (so-called because its aim is to reduce to none in three the statistic that one in three women across the globe will, in their lifetime, experience some form of violence) has been working with victims and perpetrators of gender-based violence to collect real stories about their personal experiences of gender-based violence (GBV). Led by a team of experts in qualitative data collection and psychology, these real-life experiences have been used to inform the development of a serious, pro-social computer game whose narrative is based around this empirical data. The games function as educational tools for use by school-age individuals, with the purpose of changing attitudes and behaviours relating to gender-based violence. The games use a choice-based system in which players are able to make decisions within its different situations which, in turn, direct the games’ characters to take certain actions, and ultimately determine their outcomes. This poster presents images from the games and the key messages they communicate, drawing on their interactive approach to techno-storytelling as developed through their engagement with the past and present; with survivors and perpetrators of gender-based violence, and with the aim to change, for the future, the one in three statistic to none in three.
