Deconstructing consciousness in contemporary hyperrality: the multiphrenic self and identity

This study is a practice-led research that visually examines how the sense of self and identity are experienced within the complexity and multiplicity of selves in a technologically saturated culture. This dissertation, “Deconstructing consciousness in contemporary hyperreality: The multiphrenic self and identity”, is the theoretical component of this research which underpins and discusses the visual works that comprise of three multimedia installations that focus on images of the fractured self, the re-imagining of faces behind facial recognition programmes, and the embodiment of space and aesthetic significance within re-appropriation of images within social media platforms. The practical component falls within multi-media art often associated with video art and installation art within contemporary art. By recognising postmodern identity theories, this study investigates the postmodern subject’s concept of self and identity formation within a world that is influenced by the constant glare of technology and viral1 media exposure. How the development and proliferation of technology in the contemporary world, shapes one’s sense of self and identity. The fragmented postmodern subject exists within this context of “viral media” that describes the endless parasitism and dominance of media, where information is perpetuated as part of representation. Due to the perpetual state of virtual re-invention of the “self” within this realm, a digital footprint of identity and traces of personal information are available to others publicly and globally. This context generates a fractured postmodern self that globally exists within a perpetual sense of the present. This research visually and theoretically reflects on the concepts of postmodern schizophrenia and the multiphrenic self, in relation to identity and how participation on social media platforms can enhance a feeling of fragmented self. To address the main argument, it is the contention of the research to deliberate that identity formation is continually and compulsively shaped and reshaped through adapting to specific social environments. The study further argues that the multitude of digital networks (and the everyday practices occurring within and between them) form a different kind of platform and space that affects identity formation.Art History, Visual Arts and Musicolog

Research Methods for the Digital Humanities

In holistic Digital Humanities studies of information infrastructure, we cannot rely solely on the selection of any given techniques from various disciplines. In addition to selecting our research methods pragmatically, for their relative efficacy at answering a part of a research question, we must also attend to the way in which those methods complement or contradict one another. In my study on West African network backbone infrastructure, I use the tools of different humanities, social-sciences, and computer science disciplines depending not only on the type of information that they help glean, but also on how they can build upon one another as I move through the phases of the study. Just as the architecture of information infrastructure includes discrete “layers” of machines, processes, human activity, and concepts, so too does the study of that architecture allow for multiple layers of abstraction and assumption, each a useful part of a unified, interdisciplinary approach

Reading Mediated Identities: Auto/biographical Agency in the Material Book, Museum Space, Social Media Platforms, and Archives

Ph.D

The film of tomorrow: a cultural history of videoblogging

Videoblogging is a form of cultural production that emerged in the early 2000s as a result of the increasing availability of cheap digital recording equipment, new videoediting software, video website hosting and innovative distribution networks across the internet. This thesis explores the close entanglement of culture and technology in this early and under-examined area of media production – most notably in the self-definition and development of a specific community around video practices and technologies between 2004-2009. These videobloggers’ digital works are presented as an original case study of material digital culture on the internet, which also produced a distinctive aesthetic style. The thesis traces the discourses and technological infrastructures that were developed both within and around the community of videobloggers and that created the important pre-conditions for the video artefacts they produced. Through an ethnographically-informed cultural history of the practices and technologies of videoblogging, this thesis engages with the way in which new forms of cultural and technical hybrids have emerged in an increasingly digital age. The ethnographic research is informed by histories of film and video, which contribute to the theoretical understanding and contextualisation of videoblogging – as an early digital community – which has been somewhat neglected in favour of research on mainstream online video websites, such as YouTube. The thesis also contributes to scholarly understanding of contemporary digital video practices, and explores how the history of earlier amateur and semi-professional film and video has been influential on the practices, technologies and aesthetic styles of the videobloggers. It is also shown how their aesthetic has been drawn on and amplified in network culture, mainstream media, and contemporary media and cultural production. Through a critical mapping of the socio-technical structures of videoblogging, the thesis argues that the trajectories of future media and cultural production draws heavily from the practices and aesthetics of these early hybrid networked cultural-technical communities

Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self

Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy “a face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated ‘selfie’ as a social practice. The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized ‘icon’ and idealized ‘symbol’ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003). The selfie is arguably ‘a sui generis,’ whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice). The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and its’ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or “self-sexualisation” (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive. In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like ‘Reality TV’ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debord’s (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction

Oral Literature in the Digital Age

Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilized as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers—ethical, practical and conceptual—in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature in the Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions