Research Bibliography

Ananiadou, S. et al. (2011) The English language in the digital age. White paper series: META-NET   

Androutsopoulos, J (2006) Introduction: Sociolinguistics and computer-mediated communication. The Journal of sociolinguistics Vol.10 No.4 pp. 419-438

Arnheim, R (1958) Film as Art Faber and Faber Ltd.: London

Banner, F (1994) Top Gun Available From < http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/banner-top-gun-t13203> [Accessed 3^rd February 2016]

Banner, F (2007) Split Nude. Available From < http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/banner-spilt-nude-t13681> [Accessed 3^rd February 2016]

Currey, M (2013) Daily Rituals Random House, INC: New York

Demos, T.J. (2005) The Art of Darkness: On Steve McQueen October 114 pp. 61-89

Ellis, S. (2000) Telling Lies. Available From < https://vimeo.com/19974262> [Accessed 3^rd February 2016]

Feineman, N (1978) Nicolas Roeg Boston: Twayne Publishers

Flyer, J.M (2015) Language Barriers Studies in Philology Vol.112 No.3 pp.415-452

Gamon, M et al. (2011) Mark My Words!: Linguistic style Accommodation in social media WWW March/April pp.1-10

Guian-illanes, A (2015) Oculus Rift: The next big leap towards virtual reality. Available From: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2015/09/15/oculus-rift-the-next-big-leap-towards-virtual-reality/ [Accessed 4^th March 2016]

Herring, S. (2007) A faceted classification scheme for computer-mediated discourse. Language @ Internet 1 pp. 1-37

Herring, S. (2011) Computer-mediated conversation: Introduction and overview. Language @ Internet 8 pp. 1-12

Krapp, P. (2011) Noise Channels: Glitch and error in digital culture. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis

Lauciute, I (2013) Social Network is aging. What’s next?  Available From: <http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2013/09/08/social-network-is-aging-whats-next/ >[Accessed 4^th March 2016].

Melvin, A (2011) Sonic Motifs, Structure and identity in Steve McQueens Hunger. The Soundtrack Vol. 4 No.1 pp. 23-32

Menkman, R (2008) In-between Manifesto. Available From < http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2008/05/30/in-between-manifesto/ > [Accessed 4^th March 2016] 

Menkman, R (2010) Glitch Studies Manifesto. Available From < http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2010/02/03/glitch-studies-manifesto/> [Accessed 4^th March 2016]

Menkman, R (2011) The Glitch Moment(um) Network Notebooks: Amsterdam

Mroczek, K & Thurlow, C (2011) Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media New York: Oxford University Press

Paik, P.Y (1999) Tarkovsky’s Apocalypse and the image of time. Religion and the Arts 3:1 pp. 41-63

Paul, C (2003) Digital Art Thames and Hudson: London

Paz, M (2014) The Tower of Babel: Human rights and the paradox of language EJIL Vol. 25 No.2 pp. 473-496  

Princenthal, N (2006) The Body of the Text. Art in America, June/July pp. 179-181.

Schiff, K (2011) The = In Art = Text = Art. Available From < http://artequalstext.aboutdrawing.org/schiff-talk/> [Accessed 3^rd February 2016]

 

Scott, M (2013) Tate Debate: When do words become art? Available From < http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/tate-debate-when-do-words-become-art> [Accessed 3^rd February 2016]

Sinyard, N (1991) The Films of Nicolas Roeg London: Charles Letts & Co Ltd

Sonnenschein, D (2001) Sound Design: The expressive power of music, voice and sound effects in cinema. Michael Wiese Productions: Studio City, CA.

Tobias-Green, K (2014) The Role of the Agreement: Art Students, Dyslexia, Reading and Writing Art, Design and communication in Higher Education Vol.13 No.2 pp.189-199

Tossell, C et al. (2012) A Longitudinal study of emoticon use in text messaging from smartphones Computers in Human Behavior No.28 pp.659-663

Trigg, D (2015) Fiona Banner: Scroll down and keep scrolling. Art Monthly, 392 pp. 22-23.

Tucker, A.B (1979) Text Processing: Algorithms, Languages and Applications New York: Academic Press, Inc.

Van Kollenburg, D (2015) Virtual Reality is here (to stay?) Available From: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2015/09/15/virtual-reality-is-here-to-stay/  [Accessed 4^th March 2016]

Walsh, M (2006) Fiona Banner: Frith Street Gallery. Art Monthly 297 pp.24-26.  

Walther, J.B and D’Addario, K.P (2001) The Impacts of emoticons on Message Interpretation in Computer-Mediated Communication. Social Science Computer Review Vol.19 No.3 pp. 324-347

What I did

1). Visuals

The visuals for this piece are made up of white text on a black background, the text will be made up of the autocorrected words from the image code of The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The reason why I have chose white text on a back background is that the board that I am projecting onto will have the code written onto it so all you will see when the video is projected is word with the code from the image inside of it. This is due to the code making up the image and I still wanted to represent the fact that even though the code has been edited and deconstructed from the image that it is still the code and the words that make up the iconic image.

Originally I proposed to take photographs and make them into the visual part of this piece but I started to rethink the idea as the focus was on words and language whereas the images would focus on my own interpretation rather than what was actually shown. This is feel was a good aesthetic choice as the end product seems to work fine with just the words and reinforces the subject matter that I am covering in this work.

2). Sound

Finally, there shall be a piece of music/sound to accompany the whole piece, this will be made of notes A, B, C, D, E, F and G and ordered to as they appear in order of the text. The notes will be in the C major scale as none of the letters have flats or sharps within the text.

I begin by printing out and highlighting every letter in the scale as they appear within the images code, using logic pro I begin to enter the notes into a new project. the scale for the keyboard is six octaves long so I have a full range to work with, it is important that I set parameters for this section in order to structure the piece and make sure that is has a melody and range rather than the same section of notes. This will give the sound element a more musical nature and be not too jarring for the listeners/audience.

The sound part of the piece is a crucial element to this work as music/soundtrack is often seen as the non-verbal language in filmmaking, as Sonnenschein states ‘Music not only plays the obvious role of scoring for film soundtracks, but also is a nonverbal language that can reveal many insights.’ (Sonnenschein 2001:101) he goes on to say ‘the essence of all music is communication, whether it is personal expression, spiritual messages, political persuasion or commercial appeal.’ (Sonnenschein 2001:101) This idea of music being another form of communication, that makes reference to the Babel parable and the themes explored in this work.

The outcome of the music was reminiscent of Avant-Garde musician John Cage’s dice works, where he used the roll of a dice to compose his works. This I feel is rather fitting with what I have done by making the computer choose the music; I set the parameters but allowed the image code to compose the music.

The code has composed the visual and audio elements of this piece, even though this does not follow traditional Glitch art styles I feel that this is still a piece of Glitch art as I have created a new piece of work from editing the code of the image much in the way that a glitch artist edits the image code in order to create a new distorted version of the original.  

As this piece is the fourth piece I have made involving Glitch art techniques I have come to the conclusion that this is my area of practice, as much as I am a filmmaker I also have a passion for Glitch art and the techniques used to create new and distorted versions of works.

3). Board

Initially I decided that the code should be printed onto the 114cm by 155cm board for the film to be projected on, but I have since decided that I shall paste the code printed out on paper onto the board for the projection. I began by getting in touch with a local carpenter who gave me a piece of wooden board that was the precise measurements of the original Tower of Babel painting that was done by Pieter Bruegel, I was lucky that a person at my works partner is a carpenter so I could easily go a pick it up from him as he was working near by to where I live.

Once the wooden board was at home I could begin working on ways of getting the images code onto it, I began by printing out the image code on paper and blu tacked the pages to the board to see what would work best.   

After taking some time off from working on the piece I decided to take some inspiration from Fiona Banner’s work and hand write the code onto the board with a marker pen. I started on one side of the wood and noticed that my writing was beginning to slant, which took too much away from the code and began to look like handwritten gibberish rather than lines of code, however I noticed that the other side of the wood had clearly defined panels and was already painted white so that the code would not only stand out more but also will be more uniform and there would be clear and distinct lines of written code.

Conclusion 

This project began with a lot of promise; I was really excited about where it would go and where my work could be shown. However due to an ongoing mental health issue this project did not reach it’s full potential, this was not put together in time to be shown in an exhibition space or with the film projected onto it.

The work that I have done for this will still be an important part of my practice and I have learned what type and what areas of the Art world I want to look at in the future, but I cant help but feel that I have let myself down on this work and I have let other factors get the better of me, which is something that over time and constant work shall not affect my future projects. This while being a difficult time for me, has had a negative impact on this project, however I do not see this as any less of a piece than anything else that I have done in the past. I still managed to put something together for the unit and am happy with what I have done.

Babel Language and Social media

For this project I will be reinterpreting Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting “Tower of Babel”. This image represents the fable of people building a tower to get closer to god. God seeing this then destroys the tower and splits the peoples unified language in to many others, this was used to describe to mainly children why people around the world have different languages, and answers the questions that if we where all created by God in his own image why is it that we speak different languages.

Growing up in a very strict religious household I was always surrounded my religious iconography and was my first encounter with religious artwork. As I have grown older and given up my religion in favour of science, I have often wondered why is it that religion still has a big part in our society when so many people are atheists. This work will be my reinterpretation of this religious painting by looking at social media as the new religion.

The work will consist of a wooden panel 114cm x 155cm (size of the original tower of babel) and digitally printed onto that will be the code of the digital image from a major website where most people get their information from (WIKIPEDIA), the code will also have words that have been corrected by MS word to make up the text of the image. It is this text that I will be focusing on for this piece, as it is the new digital language.

Digital language is becoming the new standard as we now use social networking sites and handheld devices as platforms to communicate with one another. Ananiadou states, “In 2010, 30.1 million adults in the UK (approximately 60%) used the Internet almost daily, which is almost double the estimate of 2006.” (Ananiadou et al. 2011:13)

The words that appear in the text will be visually represented in moving image form as a video made from images associated with the words will be projected onto the panel.

The reason I have chosen to use the words themselves from the autocorrected text rather than images that represent them is to represent the last of the social networking sites that rely on text rather than image, for example sites like FaceBook have now become increasingly less popular due to people preferring to convey an idea or emotion or status or even reflect their virtual selves through images and image dominated social networking sites such as Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest to name a few.

Social Networking sites have always been a place to project oneself in a digital realm or a virtual reality. The profiles that we create on these sites are only snapshots of our lives, and ourselves they show very little about who a person is or what experiences they have had in order to make them who they are. It is this snapshot of someone that has already become a part of Virtual Reality so it is only natural for people to immerse themselves fully using devices such as Google Cardboard or Oculus Rift. Social Networking sites where a way of communicating with others via CMC (Computer-mediated Communication) we interact and message friends, family and co-workers in this way.  

CMC come with its own language we as a people have created shortcuts and abbreviations for words for texting and instant messaging that have become a part of our everyday vernacular for example, LOL (laugh out loud), M8 (mate), GTG (got to go) and B4 (before) to name a few. It is this integration of ‘text speak’ into our everyday conversations that have become a form of communication accommodation, Gamon describes this accommodation is his report as ‘the general observation that in conversations people tend to non-consciously converge to one another’s communicative behavior.’ (Gamon 2011) and goes on to state that ‘Linguistic style is also known to be, for the most part, generated and processed non-consciously’. (Gamon 2011)

This would imply that this accommodation is a subconscious reaction to our current communication styles for example Gamon’s study was based around Twitter users as he states that ‘Twitter is a fertile ground for dyadic interactions.’ (Gamon 2011) and goes on to state ‘[The] conversations are not face-to-face and do not happen in real-time.’ (Gamon 2011)

This would lead me to believe that the lack of face-to-face interactions has helped cement this accommodation as CMC across the whole Internet as the new language, where English is the most commonly written language.

In another study Ananiadou found that ‘19.1 million UK households (73%) had an Internet connection. It was found that Internet use is linked to various socio-economic and demographic indicators. For example, 60% of users aged 65 or over had never accessed the Internet, compared to 1% of those aged 16 to 24.’ (Ananiadou et al. 2011:13) and goes on to confirm the numbers of written English online by stating ‘The English Internet the most used in the world – only the Chinese Internet comes anywhere close, with 445 million users. The third most popular language on the Internet is Spanish, with about 153 million users.’ (Ananiadou et al. 2011:14) This report confirms that fact that the written English language online has become it’s own unique form of CMC where text speak is the common tongue.

As mentioned previously it is social media that I feel plays the biggest part of this new language and I feel that it creates a division between generations much in the way that the Tower of Babel collapsed and created linguistic divisions, social media has created linguistic division amongst generations of people.

The future of social interactions and dialogue between people communicating via social networking sites is uncertain as the popularity for sites like Twitter and Facebook fall out of favor with younger generations due to their main focus being on written conversation rather than imagery as Lauciute writes ‘the original idea of Facebook was to enable users to share visual content, but somehow the focus turned towards typed communication.’ (Lauciute
 2013) and goes on to confirm the younger generations preference to visual communication by stating ‘Stimulation through images is just easier [for them] to access.’ (Lauciute
 2013)

Facebook has tried to combat this mass exodus from younger generations by investing in VR (Virtual Reality) technologies as they predict that this will become the new platform for CMC, Guian-illanes confirms this by stating ‘Facebook has actually invested $2B in the Oculus Rift project, an amount that begins to demonstrate how essential this new addition to virtual reality technology might be in the future of social media.’ (Guian-illanes 2015) and goes on to confirm this idea that VR will be used for CMC by stating ‘Individuals will have an even more compelling way to entertain themselves and stay in contact with one another. (Guian-illanes 2015)

Image From: http://www.tubefilter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/facebook-vr.jpg

This new form of CMC created through VR means that generations will no longer communicate through face-to-face interactions, Guian-illanes posits this idea by stating ‘The lack of physical embodiment in virtual settings simulates feedback without limitations. This increasing blur between the virtual and the real is redefining the way individual humans adapt to act on a social level.’ (Guian-illanes 2015) this means that this will fundamentally change the way in which people interact socially with each other as well as how we shall communicate.