All the EDC blog posts

The latter half of week 4 has been taken up with the posting of and commenting on our visual artefacts. What has become clear, if it wasn’t before, is just how much a visual representation of any kind is not, as Kress (2005) suggested, a specific symbol, but has as much interpretation involved in its ‘reading’ as do written texts (if not more). As Rose (2007) convincingly argues, the images of the world that are rendered visually are ‘never innocent. These images are never transparent windows onto the world’ (2).  The use of the word windows is an interesting one, I think, as it makes me think of the way in which our eyes/minds are considered as receivers of images, with all the implications of perception running from, for example, a physical, and passive, reception of images via the eye (Locke et al) to that which we see as constructs of the mind (Berkeley). As with previous weeks on this course, the themes of relation between the signifier and signified (whether word or image) and of authenticity are raised by considering perception. What is the relation between how we see and how we think? Rose’s paper (2007) provides a really good framework at least for starting to think of how images are produced and viewed and reinforces that intention, interpretation and cultural/social contexts and constructions all combine to inform how we view an image. I particularly like Rose’s categories of ‘the site of production’, ‘the site of the image’ and ‘the site of audiencing’ alongside the three modalities of ‘technological’, ‘compositional’ and ‘social’. To a certain extent this systematic approach reminds me of how I might consider a written text and that made me think about whether we ‘read’ pictures, or rather ‘rede’ (to interpret or explain). Looking at all our visual artefacts, we all brought different comments to the discussion, so does that mean that ‘the modern connection between seeing and knowledge is stretched to breaking point in postmodernity’ (Rose, 2007, 4)? I think no more than in any other area of interpretation but that is part of the relativist project that has arisen from postmodernity. At some point though we do interpret and that interpretation has to be based on a critical foundation, as Rose provides.

            I am now finding the process of the Lifestream has become, not easy, but a process that I enjoy – particularly true of this and last week’s visual theme. One of the things I find with the internet is that, often there is really good stuff out there but finding it is happy coincidence or recommendation (the latter, a particularly good part of this course I’ve found). What I think I haven’t done so seamlessly (and obviously with the tardiness of this week 4 summary) is coordinate my Lifestream with the writing of my weekly post. There has been some slippage between weeks and, often my blog has been left in the slipstream of my lifestream .

I tossed around ideas for my visual artifact for most of the week.  I went from playing with PowerPoint, and Xtranormal, to doing a photo mash-up.  The technology wasn’t the issue, but the focus of the artifact was.  I couldn’t decide what to do.  I got hung up on the idea of a haunted classroom, and students as ghosts, but I couldn’t work out how to create the visual for it.  Should I try to take images of students and make them look ghostly, or should I find students with blank stares and leave it to the viewer to infer.  How literal should I be?

I decided to re-read my blog postings, and search for inspiration.  I kept coming back to the questions I asked in my Week 2 Summary:  “Why is it a recurring theme in science fiction that android’s want to be more human, or the perfect human?”  I decided to do a play on that, and I Googled (is that a word now? If so, it hasn’t made it into the spell check yet) androids and variations of the theme of wanting to be human, and came up with lots of possibilities.

I wish I could remember which combination of parameters in a Google search originally led me to the following image…

It was easy enough to find again for this post using Wizard of Oz as the keywords and searching through images, but I remember finding it while searching android as a keyword.  Serves me right for not taking better notes.

In any case, it was this image that my twisted brain turned into a relationship between androids and wanting to find fulfillment, and completion in their search for humanness, and the Wizard of Oz.  It just seemed fitting to replace the characters on the yellow brick road with some familiar robots.

There were a lot to choose from, but I discounted the Robin Williams character in Bicentennial Man, the Sonny character in i, Robot, and the various Blade Runner characters.  I tried somehow to bring in Darth Vader, but then wondered how I would differentiate between cyborgs and androids, so I decided against using him.

In the end, I chose the child robot from A.I., David, who would represent the Dorothy character, with the little robot dog as TOTO.  (I honestly didn’t think much about the dog at the time,  I just wanted a little dog, and I wanted it to be mechanical.  Looking back now, if an android were to have pet, would it choose a robot dog?)  I chose the David character because like Dorothy who sought to return to the love of her family and friends, he just wanted to be loved.

DATA I envisioned as the Scarecrow since the Scarecrow seeks a brain, but is already unknowingly the “wisest man in Oz.”  DATA seeks to become human, but as is inferred in many episodes, is perhaps the most human of them all.

Johnny 5 is the most robotic looking character I chose, and I used him to represent the Tin Man.  Johnny 5 gains sentience through an accident and spends the film learning about life and shying away from his destructive military programming.  I felt it was an interesting correlation to gaining respect for life and finding a heart.

Finally, Marvin from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seemed perfect as the Cowardly Lion.  Both characters are so over the top and dramatic that they just seemed to fit.

I found the images through Google and used Microsoft Paint and Word to bring them together.  I suppose that I could have used Photoshop to make it more polished, but the result I achieved through Word suited my needs, so I went with it.

I loved reading the comments, and I think in many ways my view of the piece that I created has now changed after reading the viewpoints of others.  I can see what they see, and am surprised by what others have found or inferred that was beyond my original intent.  It makes me wonder how I am perceiving other people’s works, and how my perception differs from the intent of the author.  Do any of us ever really see the original author’s point, when we look at things with our own life goggles…