Diverse Representations
Asynchronous Session
Extended Reality in European Academic Institutions: Interdisciplinary Research in European Extended Reality Labs View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Adnan Hadzi
This paper analyses the use of Immersive Experiences (IX) within artistic research, as an interdisciplinary environment between artistic research, visual pedagogies, social and cognitive sciences. This paper discusses IX in the context of social shared spaces. It presents the European Extended Reality Labs (EXRL) interdisciplinary research. The paper discusses how EXRL combines and integrates three research strands that are part of a major, sustained artistic or scientific focus of the partnering European academic institutions. In those labs researchers, artists, film-makers investigate and create different kinds of IX. EXRL provides the opportunity to situate artistic research in the context of scientific. 1) Original development of the EXRL as being oriented towards practice-based research in Media Arts: Interdisciplinary Immersive Experiences within Media Arts. Through a multi-year development process with the VNLAB at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Filmschool Lodz, the research group has acquired considerable expertise in IX Interactive Media, with a particular focus on surround sound (ambisonics/multichannel surround sound diffusion) and interactivity. 2) Second scenario and field of expertise is established through collaborative work with the Department of Cognitive Science, University of Malta, on Interdisciplinary Immersive Experiences within Cognitive Sciences. For the researchers, the key element is that the subjective experience can be challenged using new technologies and IX media that induce perceptual bodily illusions. 3) Third scenario is the application of techniques, tools, and processes of EXRL in Interdisciplinary Immersive Experiences within Social Sciences, such as Heritage Dissemination activities and finally an outlook on envisaged IX productions within migration studies.
Overexposed and Happy: The Role of Fashion Images in the Self-presentation Practices of Young Women View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ambrogia Cereda
The 'normalizing' effect that repeated exposure to image content produces on people has mainly been related to the dangers and cruel effects of dealing with images of suffering. Little attention has been paid to the enhancement of specific gendered and stylized practices of self-presentation among users of fashion images via emotional experience evoked by fashion images as a vehicle to keep up with appearances and produce identity. In this contribution, in order to shed light on the vital role of emotional arousal and emotion management in the process of self-presentation/beautification, I tackle the relationship between emotional experience and visual representations of femininity by using an interpretive approach which combines visual methodology and in-depth interviews.
We Missed the Mark: A History of Racism and Racialization in Photography and Its Impact on Contemporary Representations of Diversity View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Laura Franz
In October 2017 Dove Soap, a company “committed to representing the beauty of diversity,” pulled a three-second ad from Facebook because an accusation of racism went viral. Dove apologized, saying they had “missed the mark” in “thoughtfully representing women of color.” The woman who drew attention to the problematic ad was, in turn, criticized for her actions —accused of being too sensitive, of looking for racism so she could complain about it. Meanwhile we (reporters, viewers, consumers, visual communication professionals) asked repeatedly, “how did this get approved?” In doing so, we lay the problem at Dove’s feet, acting as though this was an isolated incident. I combine formal analysis of both the Facebook ad and the original television ad it was associated with, historical examples of racism and racialization in photography, and the contemporary idea of “hyper-photography” to examine the situation. One implication of my research is that Dove missed the mark in thoughtfully representing diversity. They intended to communicate diversity of skin types yet stripped all aspects of diversity except race from the Facebook ad, creating an ad about race (and “cool” digital technology). Another implication is that cultural blind spots make it easier for white people (the vast majority of those working in advertising and design are white) to think racism only exists when it is overt or violent. We ignore situations in which Black people are denied subjecthood in images, leading to solutions that continue to “miss the mark.”
The Semantics of the Image in the Art Works of Omani Artists View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Najlaa Al Saadi
The image is the essence of visual arts, with its high-level dialogue and expressive language, presented to the recipient and the viewer. Whether it is a regular image, an artistic image, or a digital image, it has a role in transferring knowledge and events and spreads cultural and heritage awareness among different people. The image helps human think of thoughts in producing new concepts in order to enrich the mind with different sciences. Integrated symbols, forms, and intellectual relationships that carry experiences and events have a major role in preserving the intellectual and cultural heritage that surrounds the individual. And in light of globalization, which employs the image in the possibilities of art in its various schools, it has granted the amazing development in the connotations and symbols that the artist and photographer wish to reach the recipient in terms of cultural and cognitive thought. Through this research, we monitor the role of the Omani artist through the visual arts in communicating with the local and global community through the cultural connotations and symbols that the artist presents in his/her works through what presents a culture and legacy linked to the Omani society. Also, this research explains the role of the artistic image in consolidating material culture and the non-material in the Sultanate of Oman to the next generation and its consolidation in the mental thought through the data, indications and symbols that it provides from culture and heritage.
Featured Film and Emotional Contagion: Audiencing, Witnessing, and Performing the Lingua Franca of Compassion View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rosalie Fisher
This research project explores the impact of film and performance on individuals' perception and subsequent behavior. Utilizing a documentary film as a catalyst for a structured dialogue, this multi-tiered study examines human behavior both as a reaction to witnessing a documentary, and also within the context of the dialogue process itself. Findings indicate how the process of audiencing allows for empathy, and how interacting with others allows for embodied cognition. The combination of both has transformative power and suggests new directions for the images and archetypes we focus on in popular culture.
