Poster Session
Asynchronous Session
Homography: Liminal Space View Digital Media
Poster Session John Post
Homography describes the motion created from the projection of points mapping one image from one space to another. It is a collineation from one plane of sight to a secondary plane in which the focal range is directed forwards, with the morphology from the point of origination being equal to that of the progenitor. Thinking about this photographically, it is a concept in which is useful in illustrating the liminal space created by the point of origin, the camera and subject, and the destination, the viewer and material. The visual mapping or morphology of the image may be equal at both points but its movement through time and space leaves it susceptible to transformation from intersecting factors existing simultaneously within that space. The word homography, also acting here as a portmanteau of the word’s homosexual and photography, describes an intersection, or collision point between homosexuality and the medium, both being pivotal elements to the shaping and representation of gay identities within modernity. What transformative powers then do the photograph and the gay man have upon each other, and by extension have over the world in which it is positioned within? This enquiry plays a core theme towards my PhD research and is centred around how the image, the mode of capture, and the identity it presents both mediate and disrupt the relational dynamics of power and affect towards gay representation.
The Metaphorical Dehumanization of Political Actors in Cartoons View Digital Media
Poster Session Damian Rivers
Political cartoons are semiotic meaning systems that attempt to diagnose the reality of culture as it is. Among various other social functions, political cartoons seek to highlight human actions within the political domain and to visually depict them within an accessible framework of communal knowledge, one linked to an idealized social imperative as configured by the cartoonist, a process which is ideological in conception and realization. This poster presentation showcases how political cartoons within the new media landscape delegitimize human targets through animalistic dehumanization, a process in which a human target is depicted as a nonhuman animal thereby facilitating the metaphorical transference of culturally bound traits and characteristics. The animalistic dehumanization of political actors is an area of research which demands attention for various reasons including the ongoing philosophical discussions concerning the distinction between humans and nonhuman animals, the complexity of relationships between humans and nonhuman animals, and the intricate schematic mappings that humans have constructed for political actors in relation to different kinds of nonhuman animals. Based on 35 examples of animalistic dehumanization extracted from a corpus of 241 political cartoons, the presentation frames the analysis in relation to the rhetorical imperatives outlined by Morris (1993) as underpinning the visual rhetoric used within political cartoons in addition to Bar-Tal’s (1990, p. 65) delegitimization framework. The study shows how dehumanization as a delegitimization strategy concerns the denial of full humanness to political actors within the new media landscape and its respective systems of exploitation.
