Workshop 2: method
The evidence from this analysis suggests that the preponderance of information available through digital media has complicated the development and understanding of self identity in popular culture. Georg Simmel describes the concept of self as something unique and independent, but based on the desire for inclusion in society (1) . In the contemporary digital age, the internet has fostered the creation of a new virtual society; we must evaluate how identity is formed and manipulated in this arena and consider the corresponding effects this might have on our physical engagement with society.
The internet is a limitless reservoir of information which also provides a platform for users to publicly and privately communicate. It is used both as resource for news and research and also as a ‘space’ for social networking and interaction. However, the abundance of information and the ability of anyone to contribute this information makes different scenarios of ‘truth’ plausible; “details can be reconfigured, reinstalled in settings to produce any number of virtual realities. Statistics can be offered to support most anything we like” (2).
Compounding this issue is the ability of social networking applications to leverage user profiles and established patterns to provide them with similar types of information. While this creates an ease and immediacy to acquiring information that most online users enjoy, it perpetuates a reflexive process of information gathering which effectively narrows the construction of our identities. While the internet promises a wealth of information, the manner in which we access that information might be leading us down a more homogenous road.
This consideration is relevant to architecture because the virtual world of cyberspace is increasingly shaping our identity and how we engage with society at large. What effect does virtual space have on how we negotiate physical space? If the virtual society is one of ease and immediacy and self-reinforcing, how can the physical environment slow down our movement and allow for diversity? How can the built environment challenge us to critically examine the mediated world from which we gather information?
1. Georg Simmel, “How is Society Possible.” American Journal of Sociology 16 (1910-1911).
2. Jodi Dean, “Uncertainty, Conspiracy, Abduction” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002), 304.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Reality TV
Reality TV is increasingly inspiring the fusion of news and entertainment, blurring the lines between factual events and stylized narratives. News programs mix politics with entertainment to make it more appealing to mass audiences in an age of hyper proliferation of information. Viewers transform an “environment of information into learning experiences… this is an understanding of learning as personal and social action… the value of factual television as a resource for learning is especially apparent when information can be gathered from a variety of media and non-media sources” (Hill 2005, 169-170). Kevin Robins describes the sociological and political perspectives of reality TV as pointing
“to an increasing compartmentalization of society in which we build up “safe environments” where we no longer need to share physical space with the underpriviledged, where the more problematic aspects of reality are locked out. With its focus on rescuing us from nature and technology gone awry and protecting us from criminals, reality TV could easily be interpreted as converging an ideology tailored to such a development... It might express a longing for a lost touch with reality, prompted by the undermining and problematizing of indexicality… it also is obsessed with conveying a sense of connectedness, of contact with the world” (Fetveit, 131-132).
He continues to describe the security and safety we have in watching the news and other
‘reality’ TV from the comfortable confines of our home.
“The powerful urge for a sense of contact with the real is inscribed in much of the reality TV footage… it comes with a unique promise of contact with reality, but at the same time it promises a secure distance. Too much reality is easily dispensed with by a touch on the remote control. [There is a] tendency to replace the world around us with an alternative space of simulation” (qtd in Fetveit, 130).
Virtual reality (to which reality TV anticipates) “is inspired by the dream of an alternative and compensatory reality… so attractive because it combines entertainment and thrills with comfort and security” (qtd in Fetveit, 130).
Since reality TV arrived arrived on the television screen in earnest in the 1980’s, the genre has morphed and hybridized with other entertainment formats. Popular factual television is often regarded as a the populist dumbing down of the more elitist and prestigious documentaries. While the reality TV genre draws its cast from ‘everyday ordinary’ people, increasingly, “these real people are always necessarily ‘scripted’ by producer treatments and ‘clues’ announced on screen… So the most authentic direct-cinema mode – following a group of real people through their daily lives as a microcosm of some bigger truth – becomes a stylized testament that such persons are actually in someone else’s fictive test tube, in this case, the producers… it is a producer’s artifice” (Caldwell, 273). While the reality TV audience continues to grow and follow the cast and characters of programs through a variety of media, they are also aware of the heightened entertainment aspect of the programming and question the validity of their truthfulness. “The more emphasis is placed on spectacle and style, the more audiences look for authenticity in people’s behavior, emotions and the settings for representations of reality” (Hill 2005, 16). The spectacle/performance paradigm asserts that media is constitutive of everyday life. “Contemporary society is performative, spectacular, and focused on the self and individual identities” (Hill 2005, 20). Television is a major source of ‘people watching’ for comparison and possible evaluation” (qtd in Hill 2005, 200).
In this sense, the genre becomes a bridge between formulations of cultural and individual identity, both reflexively influencing the other. Reality TV programs translate the emotions and experience of its ‘real’ participants into entertainment, while viewers utilize this entertainment to formulate their own emotions and experience. In discussing the genres of factuality of programs “viewers process this generic material, making existing and new associations, adding personal meaning to the material, and in doing so are playing a part in the transformation of factuality” (Hill 2005, 95). Reality TV viewing is like a ‘mad dream’ “between fact and fiction, and public and private, viewers are caught in intermediate space,” between consciousness and unconsciousness, which can create a powerful self-reflexive experience (qtd in Hill 2005, 108).
Bollas describes this space as similar to the consciousness between waking and dreaming - when we are dreaming but ‘awake’ enough to see ourself dreaming and reflect on it. “We are always working on our psyche and we never fully make sense of our self-experiences… we explore the messages from factual content and experiences in order to continually reinterpret and make sense of ourselves” (Hill 2005, 89). We witness TV but also witness ourselves as viewers. With ‘factual’ programming we are always working through what is and isn’t real. “The intermediate space of factual genres is transformative, and at times we will personally connect with something in a program, reflecting on what that person or real event means to us, creating a powerful self-reflexive space. The intermediate space of factual genres can also be troubling, a negative experience that challenges viewers to address their personal motivations for watching different kinds of factual content” (Hill 2007, 89).
There is often a ‘troubling side’ to watching reality TV, a dark side that causes viewers to be self critical of themselves. This ‘dark side’ is similar to Carl Jung’s discussion of the “shadow as the dark side of the human psyche. The shadow is the hidden part of the unconscious, something we try to ignore but which is a powerful aspect of ourselves. To be conscious of the dark side of the psyche is important for self-development” (Hill 2005, 108). “Reality TV viewers describe themselves as looking in a mirror and not liking what they see” (Hill 2005, 111). The audience often classify ‘performers’/participants as weird and in comparison the viewer feels he is normal, placing himself in a superior position. This has precedent throughout history, weird people being entertainment for the masses… ie. Traveling fairs of the Renaissance, Roman gladiatorial games, Victorian freakshows (Hill 2007, 207).
As the distinction between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred, the traditional boundaries between the public and private spheres are reorienting themselves. “There has been a breakdown of the boundaries between the public and popular, a focus on spectacle, emotion and personality, a new aesthetics of the real. There is an understanding that reality TV has become so bloated and extreme that it has instigated its own relocation into light entertainment and drama. One of the outcomes of the restyling of factuality is a move back to reality, away from the spectacle of reality entertainment” (Hill 2005, 214).
Works Cited
Caldwell, John. “Prime Time Fiction Theorizes the Docu-Real” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002). 259-292.
Fetveit, Arild. “Reality TV in the digital Era: A Paradox in Visual Culture?” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002). 119-137.
Hill, Annette. Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. New York: Routledge (2005).
Hill, Annette. Restyling factual TV: audiences and news, documentary and reality genres. New York: Routledge (2007).
“to an increasing compartmentalization of society in which we build up “safe environments” where we no longer need to share physical space with the underpriviledged, where the more problematic aspects of reality are locked out. With its focus on rescuing us from nature and technology gone awry and protecting us from criminals, reality TV could easily be interpreted as converging an ideology tailored to such a development... It might express a longing for a lost touch with reality, prompted by the undermining and problematizing of indexicality… it also is obsessed with conveying a sense of connectedness, of contact with the world” (Fetveit, 131-132).
He continues to describe the security and safety we have in watching the news and other
‘reality’ TV from the comfortable confines of our home.
“The powerful urge for a sense of contact with the real is inscribed in much of the reality TV footage… it comes with a unique promise of contact with reality, but at the same time it promises a secure distance. Too much reality is easily dispensed with by a touch on the remote control. [There is a] tendency to replace the world around us with an alternative space of simulation” (qtd in Fetveit, 130).
Virtual reality (to which reality TV anticipates) “is inspired by the dream of an alternative and compensatory reality… so attractive because it combines entertainment and thrills with comfort and security” (qtd in Fetveit, 130).
Since reality TV arrived arrived on the television screen in earnest in the 1980’s, the genre has morphed and hybridized with other entertainment formats. Popular factual television is often regarded as a the populist dumbing down of the more elitist and prestigious documentaries. While the reality TV genre draws its cast from ‘everyday ordinary’ people, increasingly, “these real people are always necessarily ‘scripted’ by producer treatments and ‘clues’ announced on screen… So the most authentic direct-cinema mode – following a group of real people through their daily lives as a microcosm of some bigger truth – becomes a stylized testament that such persons are actually in someone else’s fictive test tube, in this case, the producers… it is a producer’s artifice” (Caldwell, 273). While the reality TV audience continues to grow and follow the cast and characters of programs through a variety of media, they are also aware of the heightened entertainment aspect of the programming and question the validity of their truthfulness. “The more emphasis is placed on spectacle and style, the more audiences look for authenticity in people’s behavior, emotions and the settings for representations of reality” (Hill 2005, 16). The spectacle/performance paradigm asserts that media is constitutive of everyday life. “Contemporary society is performative, spectacular, and focused on the self and individual identities” (Hill 2005, 20). Television is a major source of ‘people watching’ for comparison and possible evaluation” (qtd in Hill 2005, 200).
In this sense, the genre becomes a bridge between formulations of cultural and individual identity, both reflexively influencing the other. Reality TV programs translate the emotions and experience of its ‘real’ participants into entertainment, while viewers utilize this entertainment to formulate their own emotions and experience. In discussing the genres of factuality of programs “viewers process this generic material, making existing and new associations, adding personal meaning to the material, and in doing so are playing a part in the transformation of factuality” (Hill 2005, 95). Reality TV viewing is like a ‘mad dream’ “between fact and fiction, and public and private, viewers are caught in intermediate space,” between consciousness and unconsciousness, which can create a powerful self-reflexive experience (qtd in Hill 2005, 108).
Bollas describes this space as similar to the consciousness between waking and dreaming - when we are dreaming but ‘awake’ enough to see ourself dreaming and reflect on it. “We are always working on our psyche and we never fully make sense of our self-experiences… we explore the messages from factual content and experiences in order to continually reinterpret and make sense of ourselves” (Hill 2005, 89). We witness TV but also witness ourselves as viewers. With ‘factual’ programming we are always working through what is and isn’t real. “The intermediate space of factual genres is transformative, and at times we will personally connect with something in a program, reflecting on what that person or real event means to us, creating a powerful self-reflexive space. The intermediate space of factual genres can also be troubling, a negative experience that challenges viewers to address their personal motivations for watching different kinds of factual content” (Hill 2007, 89).
There is often a ‘troubling side’ to watching reality TV, a dark side that causes viewers to be self critical of themselves. This ‘dark side’ is similar to Carl Jung’s discussion of the “shadow as the dark side of the human psyche. The shadow is the hidden part of the unconscious, something we try to ignore but which is a powerful aspect of ourselves. To be conscious of the dark side of the psyche is important for self-development” (Hill 2005, 108). “Reality TV viewers describe themselves as looking in a mirror and not liking what they see” (Hill 2005, 111). The audience often classify ‘performers’/participants as weird and in comparison the viewer feels he is normal, placing himself in a superior position. This has precedent throughout history, weird people being entertainment for the masses… ie. Traveling fairs of the Renaissance, Roman gladiatorial games, Victorian freakshows (Hill 2007, 207).
As the distinction between fact and fiction become increasingly blurred, the traditional boundaries between the public and private spheres are reorienting themselves. “There has been a breakdown of the boundaries between the public and popular, a focus on spectacle, emotion and personality, a new aesthetics of the real. There is an understanding that reality TV has become so bloated and extreme that it has instigated its own relocation into light entertainment and drama. One of the outcomes of the restyling of factuality is a move back to reality, away from the spectacle of reality entertainment” (Hill 2005, 214).
Works Cited
Caldwell, John. “Prime Time Fiction Theorizes the Docu-Real” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002). 259-292.
Fetveit, Arild. “Reality TV in the digital Era: A Paradox in Visual Culture?” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002). 119-137.
Hill, Annette. Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. New York: Routledge (2005).
Hill, Annette. Restyling factual TV: audiences and news, documentary and reality genres. New York: Routledge (2007).
General Thesis Statement
This thesis aims to critique contemporary formulations of identity and societal engagement in an age increasingly dominated by the proliferation of electronic information and interaction, through the proposition of an architecture which fosters critical awareness of the (re)presentations of actuality in digital media and directs critical engagement in new, virtual ideas of the public sphere. Citizens of the digital media era must learn to critique the ease with which one can construct and proliferate fictive identities in contemporary society and re-engage the affects of tactile interactions, which digital technology increasingly allows us to avoid.
The Global Village
Marshal Mcluhan discusses digital technology’s ability to greatly expand the reach of individuals across the globe and how this could foster collective activity and engagement in society. According to Jean Baudrillard however, the ease and immediacy with which one can acquire information, is directing a corresponding withdrawal from tactile engagement: “All the horizons have already been traversed, you have already confronted all the elsewheres, and all that remains is for you to become ecstatic over, or to withdraw from, this inhuman extrapolation” (1). “The masses plunge into an ecstatic indifference, into the pornography of information, and place themselves at the heart of the system” (2). The individual’s passive withdrawal from society is facilitated by popular culture’s corresponding lack of critical engagement with both the media relaying the massive amounts of information and the content of the information itself.
Public Sphere
In today’s society “individual organizations and political parties engage in public relations so as to validate their actions and improve their image rather than to encourage or engage the public in a rational critical debate involving the issues at hand” (3). If we consider the media as part of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere, it offers unconstrained access to information which might foster critical discussion and the formulation of social and political views. In many instances, however, it is difficult for the mass audience to decipher fact from fiction because of the preponderance of information. Furthermore, because of this preponderance of information, people can often track down the ‘answers’ they are looking for, correct or not.
The boundaries between public and private have disappeared – people can engage in public activity regardless of their location. Many scholars claim digital media has democratized public space, but this ignores economic factors, which preclude the lower classes from acquiring equal access to the digital networks. Thus, while digital media has expanded our notions of traditional public space and provides us with an abundance of information, the accessibility of new technologies exacerbate the marginalization of the lower classes while the mass audience often fails to critically engage this information it desires.
Identity
The preponderance of information available through digital media has complicated the development and understanding of self-identity in popular culture. Consumers demand the latest digital technologies and products without considering implications of how the structure of these technologies might inherently limit interaction within society. Digital media allows everyone to be anyone at anytime, but always within the confines of the medium itself. It blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, real and virtual, private and public. And while individuals have the ability to construct fictive identities at will, collectively, society is homogenizing because of its lack of depth and critical awareness.
Jonathan Bignell describes the internet as a "spectacular hall of mirrors, for the attraction of a hall of mirrors is to see oneself differently, as a virtual mirror image, but also to allow this distorted image to be seen by others in a public space" (4). We construct narratives of the self, and the media helps us to formulate these narratives. We are at any given moment how we would like to appear to others (5). Contemporary society is filled with anxiety around truth and trust because of the “fugitivity of truth in the information age. Details can be reconfigured, reinstalled in settings to produce any number of virtual realities. Statistics can be offered to support most anything we like. Preoccupation with evidence marks our insecurity, our search for answers that elude us because our very search fills up the files” (6).
1. Jean Baudrillard. The Ecstasy of Communication. New York: Semiotext(e) (1988), 42.
2. Ibid, 86.
3. James Friedman. “Attraction to Distraction: Live Television and the Public Sphere” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002), 149.
4. Jonathan, Bignell. Postmodern Media Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2000), 215.
5. Annette Hill. Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television. New York: Routledge (2005), 90.
6. Jodi Dean. “Uncertainty, Conspiracy, Abduction” in Reality Squared: Televisual Discourses on the Real, ed. James Friedman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (2002), 304.
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