Jeffrey Himpele, September 2, 2020
Post-productionThe Post-production section of Gallery 347 is for work that follows from class meetings. Your weekly posts may include lingering questions and ideas or new insights and connections about our readings and discussions. You might also write about our workshop activities: What did you learn? What problems came up and would you do differently? You may include or copy into your post images from our class activities or your work.
These brief posts should be 1-2 paragraphs (250~500 words). They are required for any 10 of our 13 weeks of class meetings and they must be made no later than 2pm on Fridays. They should be tagged under this “Post-production” category (right side of editing page), so that they appear on this page. (If they are not tagged properly, they will not appear!) To earn credit for your brief posts, they must reflect a level of engagement and a make meaningful connection to our course.
Before making your first post, be sure to edit your profile to include your first name so that it appears with your posts instead of your netID. Edit your profile by clicking on your netID at the top right of the frame and filling in the nickname field.
Cynthia Vu, November 29, 2020
Post-productionFor our group projects, I am currently going through the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the video content that we’ve decided to analyze, coronavirus PSAs. This process requires us to think about one of the questions we posed during our presentation: by what criteria are we deconstructing our media? We want to deconstruct the PSAs in a way that would allow us to dissect and display the values that the PSA producers and New York City residents hold during time. I think that can be done through the audio that accompanies the PSAs. However, one of the PSA finalists barely uses any audio and focuses on using visual video content and typography. For now, I’ve cut up the PSAs based solely on visual content.
Questions like “What is being represented?” and especially “Who is being represented?” guide our video deconstruction process. Thinking about the visual content has allowed us to begin clipping the media according to some visible identities such as age, race, and gender. However, even this process is inherently flawed, since identity traits are obscured or invisible; even gender is not always a visible identity. I watched an interview with the creators of the winning PSA, who explained that they found it important to showcase small business owners. After watching the PSA again with this new context, I think I am able to identify which people are meant to represent the small business owners. However, I am unable to explicitly confirm my assumptions.
This made me think about Rei’s discussion of her group’s inability to speak to the Tangier Island residents for their own project. By not being able to communicate firsthand with the people we are analyzing, we run into potential problems of misunderstanding and misrepresenting them. This is definitely something I will carefully keep in mind as I continue working on my project.
Maya Stepansky, November 29, 2020
Post-productionThe last week of class we had a very thoughtful set of presentations on each group’s final project. More than anything, watching presentations, really helped our group have a clearer understanding the direction we wanted to go in regarding our own project. I really liked how a few of the groups used a more metaphoric approach in how they planned the flow and analysis of their project. For example, one group (I forget who it was exactly) mentioned applying a “turtles all the way down” approach when mapping out their analysis, while another planned on a more Geertz-like presention, which included adding layers of interpretation and thick description. I thought this was particularly interesting, because not only are these groups generally analyzing their media/data and then seeing what papers can apply, but their entire project is built around, and practically through the lenses of these anthropological methods/perspectives. With that in mind, I think that it would be particularly helpful our group to adopt a similar technique, as it would help with our overall flow, organization, and would really help us in mapping out our entire project, initially. As one of our main issues has been knowing where to start, this way of thinking about the progression of our project is quite relevant and helpful. Now the question, which anthropological perspective/paper would be the most helpful in creating this project flow. My first thought is to use Mitchell’s notion of reality vs. representation to guide us in our analysis and project flow. The “representation” would be the initial showing of the PSA’s and analyzing what/who they are representing/ what they are implying about COVID culture. This can then be into conversation with the “reality”, which is presented through Johns Hopkins data regarding the pandemic.
Cynthia Vu, November 13, 2020
Post-productionThe Bowe article we read this week discussed widespread excitement over the “Wash Your Lyrics” PSA project, suggesting that it “matched the virus in its virality, creating a world-wide network of conscientious hand-washers, singing in solidarity” (Bowe 8). The wonderful thing about many of the data visualizations available in the Bowe piece is that they gave their viewers a measure of control over the data or the circumstances of its presentation. Anyone could use the “Wash Your Lyrics” tool in order to create their own PSA. But the indication of this type of data visualization generated a network is particularly intriguing. As a type of data visualization, it is also a piece of media, and thus it has the capacity to inspire new trends and communities. This type of phenomenon has already been brought up by both Zack and Rei who discussed memes. Memes in general and specific types of memes are capable of generating communities of people who produce and consume them and are happy to be “in on the joke”.
In a previous post-production post, I brought up the suggestion that all media might be community-produced. Inspired by both the “Wash Your Lyrics” case and the Miller piece on Social Networking Sites, which argues suggests that people are themselves social networking sites, I began to consider that all data is community-produced. At the very least, all data interpretation is community-produced. When we kept data journals about ourselves, we were inevitably tapping into networks and communities in order to access our data. At the most local and personal level, the grocery store spreadsheet keeping track of my household’s weekly expenses is affected by and affects my household of four people. Manipulation of these data points is actually a reflection of changes in a single person’s diet and decision-making. But the formation of the data and its interpretation must be understood as a communal task. As for the other data that people looked at–through Google, social networking sites, apps that recorded sleep, etc.–these trackers were community-produced, and thus inevitably the data is community-produced or can only be understood in the context of a community. A person can independently, with pen and paper and nothing else, choose to keep track of their sleeping schedule. However, the numbers they generate mean nothing without a community of other numbers to compare them to. Although it may have been obvious, the indication that both media and data are community-produced shows how deeply intertwined these sectors are with culture.
Zack Kurtovich, November 13, 2020
Post-productionAs I examined the provided data set in preparation for this week’s class, I found myself haunted by Walker Rettberg (2020)’s “phantasmagram” and the impossible dream of perfect communication that it both projects and yearns for. In this, the “tension between context and category” is central, as the grid of the spreadsheet acts as a filter, sifting out the subject’s humanity and leaving behind “only an impression of life as lived” (Tuesday’s Lecture). Like Jose van Dijck described with his theory of “dataism”, it is easy to conflate aggregation with rational truth or objectivity when first exposed to large collections of data (Walker Rettberg, p 44). However, as Professor Himpele explained, once you begin to interrogate the margins, its shortcomings become apparent and one is able to see “where the slippage from the street to spreadsheet” is occurring (Tuesday’s Lecture). Despite the investigative capabilities of contextual analysis, most people are inundated with information, besieged by content and numbers, and thus either don’t have the time to question the supremacy of data or simply don’t share our “ethnographic inclination to dig deeper”. Consequently, numbers and data have come to serve as Durkheimian social facts, indisputable metrics that describe, define and confine our interactions with our larger cultural context. This phenomenon in itself is fascinating, as pervasive datafication was originally resisted by the public, especially with industries like insurance which was perceived as “betting against God”. Today, however, datafication is so enmeshed in our society that challenges to this conceptual framework are often met with controversy, anger, and vituperation, further underscoring its embeddedness. For example, this August, before I was able to extensively wrestle with these issues in our class, a TikTok went viral where a teenage girl elucidated the socially constructed nature of algebra, data, and numbers by essentially asking one simple, valid question: how do we know math is real? Needless to say, the video received harsh, almost evil, criticism and scrutiny to the point where she even contemplated taking her own life. I’ve included an example of some of these horrible replies below, but it represents only a tiny fraction of the innumerable comments where her appearance, intelligence and integrity were all ruthlessly attacked by thousands of people simply for asking about algebra’s origin. Although many members of the academic community came to her defense, the ultimate result was the social reinforcement of datafication, as individuals were alerted to the potential consequences of divergent thought, making this a powerful example, an indexical demonstration if you will, of the Foucauldian process of discipline and punishment that produces a docile acceptance of Jose van Dijck’s dataism in the general public. This, in turn, begs the question: how do we begin to dismantle dataism given its social integration? Is it even possible at this point? What would be some of the potential repercussions if we were successful? I’m looking forward to exploring these nuances with you all in class next week! Have a great weekend!
Grace Logan, November 13, 2020
Post-productionI am still thinking about our discussion of indexicality the other day, particularly the question that Ailee asked about drawing a parallel between virtual/actual and reality/representation through the lens of indexicality. Pulling from a reading (Ch. 2 of Digital ANnthropology by Horst and Miller, which we read Ch.1 of) by Tom Boellstorff that has helped me understand the concept better, he emphasizes that indexicality collapses the gap between the virtual and actual, but does not “blur” (Boellstorff uses blurring and ‘converging’ interchangeably) it. It seems to me that Boellstorff means that the virtual and actual both rely on these “constitutive gaps” to even exist, however indexicality is a way to understand how some ideas, meanings, and relationships traffic between the two. To connect this to the reality/representation discussion, I think that this way of conceptualizing indexicality would mean that there is some separation between the two in order for them to exist and that the representation, which may or may not always index the reality, can only be understood through context. The reality that it points to is the context. Considering Mitchell again, I think that this would mean that the exhibition of Cairo can only be understood because it points to a real Cairo that already exists. To bring this back to our reading and discussion this week, the images we see of tape on the ground are significant because of the context that they point back to, the pandemic.
One thing that I am still thinking about is the second half of Ailee’s comment about reality and representation “pointing back” at each other. Is indexicality a two way street? I guess I am wondering if any way the index contextualizes or adds meaning to the referent. To begin to answer my own question, Boellstorff references Daniel Miller’s work on Facebook, and explains that messages over Facebook have effects on the relationship. I am still wondering if the Orientalist view of distinct separation between reality and representation completely ignores indexicality.
Maya Stepansky, November 13, 2020
Post-productionI was very intrigued by the drawing data visualizations that were presented in the Bowe article such as the “Know the Symptoms of Coronavirus” diagram, the flowchart, and the “How is New York Changing” diagram. What particularly struck me about these diagrams, as I pointed out in class, was the personal and human aspect of them. They no longer take the all-knowing/god’s eye view/omniscient perspective. Instead, they are from the perspective of personal experience and individuality–they speak to the “self”. Possibly, because these types of visualization are more engaging and personal, people are more likely to respond and take the necessary action, as oppose to when looking at a highly scientific and impersonal bar-graph. But at the same, I can’t help wonder if these more seemingly playful and relaxed visualizations (about an in fact very stressful and serious issue) may take away emphasis on the severity of the pandemic and cause people to have a more care-free response instead. Is it possible for a data visualization to be too personal or too human? Is there some way to combine the hard-lined seriousness of a graph visualization and the playfulness of a flow chart to make a data visualization that highlights the immense gravity of an issue such the pandemic, but also has a more personal/individualistic bent that speaks to the human and is calming and socially accessible? I am trying to think if we’ve come across a visualization in our class thus far that I think has both of these qualities. Possibly photographs as data visualization are effective in this regard. By showing a representation of reality, there is an implied seriousness in that this type of data visualization shows an affect on people in their daily life, but at the same time, there is something more personal about seeing a photograph that depicts a reality that an individual can relate to.
Lauren McGrath, November 13, 2020
Post-productionToday I wanted to try to tease apart two different “categories” of data visualizations that I’ve seen in the past few months: those that try to “accurately” depict the present, and others that try to establish an alternative future/ taking the present and interpreting it in a novel context. I really started to think about the distinction here when Rei shared the link of the Washington Post article, entitled “What if all COVID19 deaths in the United States had happened in your neighborhood?” The visualization directed the audience to “find out what would happen if your neighborhood was the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.”
I feel like this Washington Post visualization, in comparison to the logarithmic-scaled COVID19 line graph that we discussed in class yesterday, attempts to dissect the unevenness that gets hidden by aggregation. Some of the irregularities that have been exposed by the COVID19 pandemic is that United States residents are unequally affected by the pandemic; some have lost many relatives and loved ones, while some remain “untouched.” I felt like the Washington Post visualization dismantled aggregation by transferring the “dots” that represent COVID19 deaths into your neighbor’s identities. I’ve included some images that resulted from my walk-through of the simulation, but the emotional effect that I experienced with this visualization is drastically different from the bar charts shown on my local news stations. By looking at my own neighborhood, I could point at dots and say “that’s Trisha” or “that’s my best friend and her family.” This almost felt like a journey of how COVID19 “pixelations” of people become whole again, by incorporating my neighborhood context and the memories that come along with it. Like Ailee was saying yesterday with indexical landscapes, this visualization makes the pandemic not only visible, but relevant to people by using their own backyard.
This makes me question whether the goal of COVID19 data visualizations should be to “accurately” depict the pandemic, or to increase the pandemic’s relevance to everyone. In Pittsburgh, I’ve been experiencing the idea where people are “over” the pandemic, which is contrary to the daily reported data of PA and Allegheny county continuing to set new records of daily positive cases. I think some of the problems in this lie in the data visualizations like the logarithmic one, because without a deep analysis and understanding of scale, the audience doesn’t visually experience the exponential growth of the pandemic and the vast difference between the US and other countries. Do visualizations like this provide a “false reality” or sense of security because they aren’t as “accessible” in terms of immediate comprehension of the data?
Emily Yu, November 13, 2020
Post-productionThis week’s reading really made me question what the bounds of what we can consider a data visualization. Initially coming in, my concept of a data visualization had three qualities:
- The source of the data must be capable of being transformed into something numerical, or categorical.
- The visualization itself requires some sort of translation between the data source to the final product that results in abstraction.
- It is the final product, the visualization (the representation of a story) that holds the greatest value because it can give us new insights into the data
One example that made me question my assumption was the use of photos as data visualizations. The example used was photos as a means to reveal how the virus has changed our social landscapes. Looking back to my three qualities: the source of data, the changes in social landscapes, are being transformed and translated into RGB values when they are captured as images, and it is indeed the final image that holds some insight into the data we captured. The assumption that photographs makes me question is if data visualizations necessarily have to be abstractions of the data itself? Photographs take away this layer of abstraction (to graphs, lines, etc.) and quite literally capture capture all data points as photos of light. And if photographs can be considered data visualizations, then would all other types of images (i.e. drawings) also be considered data visualizations? Or is what makes a data visualization not necessarily the medium through which it is captured but rather the data itself and what can be interpreted from it? Thus, what forms or kinds of data are and are not capable of being turned into visualizations; or are all individual pieces of data, both qualitative and quantitative capable of being turned into visualizations once they are aggregated and put into relationship with other data points?
Another example I was thinking about was with data visualization activity “Mapping Ourselves,” where individuals used data visualizations as forms of reflection on their networks of care. It’s with this example that I question the value of a visualization beyond just insights into the data itself. Here, the value and purpose of creating data visualizations is not necessarily the visualization itself but being able to use the process of visualization as vehicle for their own “data processing.” Participating in these data visualizations also allows individuals to be part of the “imagined communities,” which is crucial during these periods of isolation; it reminded me of the example of the Datafication of Health where individuals on the Quantified Self used their own data as not just a means of empowerment but also community formation.
Matthew Gancayco, November 12, 2020
Post-productionFor this week’s post I wanted to expand on the question of the existing relationship of models and their influence on behavior. I am comfortable with the concept of a model shaping policy and action that fulfills the model. My concern is that there are many people who observe a model and deny it’s validity, therefore resulting in opposing behavior to the policies put in place. Professor Himpele addressed this conundrum by acknowledging that there is a constant tension between opposing models that are influencing behavior. The question that I still have is in regards to a model predicting an outcome and those who discredit them. For example, when the Covid pandemic began there were many people who denied the bell curve model that was proposed early in the year. Is the lack of preventative action by these groups a contributor to fulfilling the model, or is it something that has to be accounted for in a different model? Should we be aware of the possible effects a model has on the behavior of those who distrust it? I imagine that this effect is equal to the outcome of a model not existing. It is entirely feasible to infer that the actions of those who are skeptic of a model would act the same as they would if the model didn’t exist.
But, the possibility that these people could act in spite of the model also exists. There are many that will choose to do the opposite of suggestions, especially when the suggestions are coming from people of opposite political/social views. I’m not sure if it is possible to measure the effects of this phenomenon, but I believe this effect does significantly shape the behavior of certain groups.
Rei Zhang, November 12, 2020
Post-productionThe section of the Bowes article about humor (page 7) reminded me of a form of messaging and data conveyance that I think deserves more attention: memes. Like Zach, I think memes are a really interesting lens to view culture through, and the way they convey information, create community, and reinforce relationships is more important than ever now that we spend so much time online.
More often now, I learn more about current news events through memes; for example, I first heard about the Four Seasons hotel/landscaping mix-up through jokes, rather than the NYT or other “traditional” news source. The way memes spread, to echo Bowes, has a virality that mimics the way COVID spreads – slowly, then all at once, creating a global community that transcends other boundaries.
Many of the examples given in the Bowes article (to echo Ailee) attempt to bring the body back into the data and attempt to reengage people with their physical environment – the EPA guidelines that push people to interact with the world around them, the photographs index physical space, the drawings depict symptoms experienced by real people and present images of the body. Memes, I think, interact with its users and the physical in a different way. Instead of privileging the physical, they reinforce engagement with the online environment, encouraging further submersion in a community so that you can always be “in on” the joke.
However, they also have a different way of bringing the body in, through humor, the physical reaction or laugh.
Zack Kurtovich, November 6, 2020
Post-production
For this week’s post, I’d like to briefly address some observations and connections that emerged when I was preparing for our discussions on data “exhaust trails” and electoral data visualizations. While conducting some extracurricular research to further inform my analysis of Greenfield (2016)’s “pixelated person”, I stumbled across an Eric Snowden interview from earlier this year in which he described the unique circumstances that enabled him to identify the American government’s unconstitutional surveillance against their own citizens. According to Snowden, the CIA’s internal management system typically maintains a high level of insulation between its employees through heavy encryption, compartmentalization, and the continuous distribution of temporary personal passcodes, meaning that access to information is severely restricted across departments. As a contractor in the CIA’s Office of Information Sharing, Snowden served as the system’s sole auditor, enabling him to inspect the federal government’s data and examine these capillary structures from an outside perspective. It was only through this privileged access that Snowden was able to recognize and distinguish the Foucauldian controls limiting other individuals’ understanding, which in turn led to his discovery of the infamous “Stellarwind” documents. I found this to be a surprisingly appropriate analogy for our study of data and a powerful encapsulation of what we have been attempting to accomplish anthropologically over the course of the semester. Although I understand that it is not a perfect metaphor, I thought it really captured the importance of accounting for context while underscoring the value of embracing an external positionality.
Memes are also a good example of the importance of recognizing one’s context and the confounding influence of situationality on an individual’s interpretation of their environment. As I briefly mentioned in class, I’ve recently become intrigued by the purpose and function of memes in larger society. Memes are traveling allegories, a means of interpreting one’s surroundings and establishing solidarity through satire. Accordingly, operating under Rettberg (2020)’s broad definition of data visualizations as “a form of communication that emphasizes data”, I decided to examine the role of memes in the presidential election as partial preparation for Thursday’s class (p 44). Despite their negative cultural association, many of these memes demonstrated a shocking complexity and sophistication in terms of their messaging. For example, the meme I provided emphasizes the contextuality of the individual not only through its explicit content, but also through the medium itself. In this, the meme is not only directly referring to the subliminal, restrictive effect contextualization can have on one’s understanding, but it is also unintentionally demonstrating the phenomenon to its audience. Stripped of contextualization and rationalization, these memes evolve and take on new meaning. Thus, someone a year, month or even a week from now might have a very different interpretation, as they imbue their own values, perceived knowledge and convictions into their analysis. In many ways, this is reflective of the socially imbedded nature of media, which in turn helps elucidate the Geertzian web of culture we are inextricably immersed in. As such, memes are valuable, yet limited, sources of insight into the nuances of current public discourse. I truly believe that an anthropological study of memes would be significant and interesting, and I hope that more members of the academic community will begin to recognize the merit of their analysis. Thanks guys! Looking forward to seeing you all next week!
Matthew Gancayco, November 6, 2020
Post-productionThe concept of proxies and their validity when attempting to study an immeasurable statistic was interesting to me. Data visualizations are meant to give the person consuming the information an objective, omniscient feeling. Proxies in their definition are subjective in that they are a correlation but rarely if ever provide a causation. The example provided in Ways of Knowing was the use of facial expressions for emotions. Facial expressions are supported to be useful tools for measuring this, but although this may be one of the most productive ways of measurement, I am not sold on it’s fruitfulness. How can one say that a proxy is accurate when the intended data is subjective? Emotion is a feeling unique to each person. One person’s maximum sadness or anger will be different from another persons. Also, their physical expressions will differ from others. Should there be parameters on what can and can’t be proxied? It seems that it is not up to the audience to decide this, as a data visualization assumes validity and accuracy to readers. Is it imperative that researchers be held ethically responsible for proxy use in data visualizations?
In a way I feel that these questions are futile because proxies will always be used because they are often the most effective way of knowing. Perhaps the best course of action would be to treat proxies in the same way we do representation. A proxy is a reference and not a reality.
Grace Logan, October 30, 2020
Post-productionOne point that Miller makes about how Facebook does not immediately demand attention, as posts are semi-public not aimed at specific individuals (p. 151) is outdated. As was mentioned in class, the prevalence of mobile devices has changed how sites that have remained this long are used. Since you can receive direct messages, group messages, notifications, and even video calls through Facebook, it is demanding of your immediate attention. What is interesting to me is how Facebook seems to continue to accommodate public and private interactions, and of course ones that cannot be strictly defined as either. In addition to enabling more forms of and more instantaneous interpersonal (and frequently one on one) interactions, the more public side of Facebook has also grown. In class we briefly mentioned Facebook’s role as a news source, and I’d like to add that recently political/social engagement has also been enabled by Facebook’s “Giving Funds” feature. As Miller notes, comparative anthropology on SNS is not very insightful to only compare dominant forms of SNS, but rather to look at the usage on one SNS across regions (p. 151). What I alluded to above, is that looking at variation in usage and even the platform itself across time can be insightful as well. As Miller notes the digital allows for rapid social change and transformation (p. 146), at a speed unlike what we have seen before. So I think that it is important to contextualize, and even historicize if you want to think about it that way, SNS in their previous iterations and original intended uses.
Miller’s insistence that SNS resemble something more similar to kinship studies is at odds with other conceptualizations that try to emphasize the dichotomy between “Net and Self” and “online and offline” (p. 147). I would have to agree with this, as I don’t think these dichotomies accurately describe how people use and understand SNS and other technologies. Personally, I have found myself to become increasingly reliant on digital technology as well as SNS, even before the pandemic. As Kimberly Hassel explained, in Japan the word (which I am forgetting at the moment) for mobile devices translates to something that describes this technology as something more intimate and personal. I wonder if it is understood or conceptualized as an extension of the self, as I often think about my mobile devices. To expand on that, I think the amount of personal data and the communication and other functions that a mobile device enables makes it seem like an extension of the self.
Jeffrey Himpele
Comments
Cynthia, these are terrific questions to pry open and critique these videos. Of course, your own analysis always already comes from your group’s range of positions – both personal and anthropological – as we have established since reading Mitchell on looking relations. In addition to the editing that is planned, how can you make visible or annotate the concepts and abstract dimension of your analysis? Also, to ask the Media Worlds/ethnographic question: how can your group’s depictions go beyond the texts of the PSA’s themselves?