Media Maker Mischief

We map out everything. It’s how we arrive somewhere or arrive to something. We map out we’re going for the day and what errands we need to run. We map out vacations and trips. We map out our possible plans for the future or we look at past maps and see where we took that wrong turn. So, using that logic, we create our reality. And as the creator of a document or story or piece of artwork, such as reality, I can decide what I want to include and what I want to omit. For example, the video we watched in class about Greg Packer. As we discussed in class, the video portrayed Greg as a very normal guy with a quirky hobby. This was due to dialogue used, angles and shots used, and the background music played in the video. The creator only included this certain aspects to influence our perceptions of Greg. In reality, Greg could’ve been really creepy or dark, but we would never know because we only saw what the creator wanted us to see. But because something isn’t included, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s probably archived somewhere, produced, recorded, and left. By doing this, creators can manipulate the way their audience feels about what is being read or seen. But being the creator of something, one is able to say, “include this, don’t put that in there. I want this emotion felt”. And that’s truly the beauty of creation.

 

The one thing I continually think about after reading those articles is how certain information is either including or excluding. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. It’s done when stories are told to seem less boring or mundane, to make them more interesting. But I can’t help but to think about all the history lost about certain cultures and peoples and it’s really unfortunate. It leads our society today to have a biased view towards history and inclination to approve of certain people and mistreat others. Our feelings and perceptions are heavily influenced by the information we’re given and it’s important that it be correct and unbiased. In most recent events, the tragedy of Michael Brown and Ferguson. What information is missing there? Which media outlet is telling the unbiased version of this story? I won’t write a whole essay about this, because I can. But what aren’t we getting from the story?

 

This leads to me wonder: is it fair? Is it fair that certain information is omitted to manipulate the viewers’ sentiments towards a certain subject matter? If that’s done, are we truly living in reality or just subset of it?

Archivists: Recording and Producing Memories

At a first glance at the three quotes or excerpts from Erika Larsen, Derrida, and Dennis Wood I could see their relation to one another, but I did not immediately see a strong connection until I really started thinking about what each one meant. In a way, they all talk about a private moment that only some people experience, something that the rest of the world is kept out of until it is recorded. Once we record these moments, Larsen recognizes that we personally become a part of these moments and invite others to do the same. As a photographer, documentarian, writer, or other archivist, we take something that is invisible to the rest of the world and make it visible, as Wood describes it. He goes as far as to say that “archives give us a reality that exceeds our vision”. As Derrida explains, recording something private is producing something for everyone to experience forever. Derrida also says, “The methods for transmitting information shape the nature of the knowledge that can be produced” (p. 12). Derrida references Freud and how more advanced technologies would have changed what was archived and preserved by the early practitioners of psychoanalysis. New technologies change the ways we archive and how we view the information that we archive. Larsen suggests that the pictures she archives changes her and the people or events she documents. Intimate moments, or even moments in history, would be unknown or seen entirely differently to the public without these advanced forms of technology. As a result, we produce public memories or stories that can exist forever. I think it is very interesting that Larsen decided not to produce the moment of the man in his daughter’s room. Instead, she chose to keep that moment private. Where’s the line of when we should produce something for the world to experience versus when that moment should be kept private? We live in a society where people choose to share very personal information on social medias. When is something too personal, and does society benefit from receiving highly personal information? I respect Larsen’s decision to let this man grieve in private, and I believe it is the archivist’s responsibility to know when to produce and when to keep a moment to himself or herself.

The Photographer’s Role in the Archive

Derrida’s statement that “archivization produces as much as it records the event” (23), is exemplified in Erika Larsen’s Photograph Not Taken.  At first I began thinking of how computers, cameras, and other photography equipment have changed the way we archive images, but then I realized none of this technology had any effect on the situation.  In this instance, Larsen is the only factor effecting this particular archivization.  In other words, I think the photographer is far more influential on the archive than equipment or technology.

Denis Wood’s quote on the process of archiving is very broad.  To me, it seems the goal of most art forms is to take something unreal (an idea, image, story) and make it real.  It helped me to think of this in terms of writing fiction.  An author comes up with an idea or story that is entirely in his/her head, or entirely invisible and unnattainable, and translates this onto a medium which makes it real.  (For now I will not debate whether fictional stories are real or not).  The photographer’s role is not much different from the fiction writer’s in the sense that they are both trying to ‘narrate’ some event for other people to experience.

Larsen says, “…the photographs not taken are the photographs not given.”  This seems to fit in with Wood’s idea that we strive to make the invisible or unreal into reality.  The photograph Larsen didn’t take was “not given”, or not shared or experienced by anybody else.  In my opinion, this would make it unreal in a sense, because only she experienced it.

This brings me to my question for the class, because all of us actually did experience this moment that Larsen didn’t capture with a camera.  We experienced it through her story.  Is that perfect moment for a photograph that she imagined completely gone?  Is there some sort of redemption because of the story she wrote?  Do we want the image?  Or the story?  Or both?

The Photographer’s/Writer’s Role in the Archive

Derrida’s statement that “archivization produces as much as it records the event” (23), is exemplified in Erika Larsen’s Photograph Not Taken.  At first I began thinking of how computers, cameras, and other photography equipment have changed the way we archive images, but then I realized none of this technology had any effect on the situation.  In this instance, Larsen is the only factor effecting this particular archivization.  In other words, I think the photographer is far more influential on the archive than equipment or technology.

Denis Wood’s quote on the process of archiving is very broad.  To me, it seems the goal of most art forms is to take something unreal (an idea, image, story) and make it real.  It helped me to think of this in terms of writing fiction.  An author comes up with an idea or story that is entirely in his/her head, or entirely invisible and unnattainable, and translates this onto a medium which makes it real.  (For now I will not debate whether fictional stories are real or not).  The photographer’s role is not much different from the fiction writer’s in the sense that they are both trying to ‘narrate’ some event for other people to experience.

Larsen says, “…the photographs not taken are the photographs not given.”  This seems to fit in with Wood’s idea that we strive to make the invisible or unreal into reality.  The photograph Larsen didn’t take was “not given”, or not shared or experienced by anybody else.  In my opinion, this would make it unreal in a sense, because only she experienced it.

This brings me to my question for the class, because all of us actually did experience this moment that Larsen didn’t capture with a camera.  We experienced it through her story.  Is that perfect moment for a photograph that she imagined completely gone?  Is there some sort of redemption because of the story she wrote?  Do we want the image?  Or the story?  Or both?

Forever Alive

The word “archive” has multiple functions as a word. It is a noun meaning a place in which records and files are saved and organized, digital or physical. It is a verb, as in performing the action of saving and organizing records and files. In Derrida’s Archive Fever, “archive” is the fear of reality. The reality that one day we will be gone and the fear that we will be forgotten. We live knowing that we will one day die and we don’t want to forget what our lives were once like. So we preserve and save and hold on. We capture and save memories because when we’re gone, our memories disappear with us. It’s because we live like this the death drive and pleasure principle work in conjunction. “Another economy is thus at work, the transaction between this death drive and pleasure principle, between Thantos and Eros, but also between the death drive and this apparent dual opposition of principles, of arkhai, for example the reality principle and the pleasure principle” (p. 12). But part of the reality of life is that it isn’t always good; there is suffering and sadness, but do we want to archive those experiences? Derrida says, “We do not like to be reminded, Freud notes, of the undeniable existence of evil which seems to contradict the sovereign goodness of God… evil for evil’s sake, diabolical evil, the existence of the Devil can serve as an excuse…” (p. 13). In Misty Keasler’s uncaptured moment, why didn’t she capture it? It was a moment that “made her heart ache”. Derrida also compares archiving to circumcision, which is an odd but valid comparison. “Again inscribing inscription, it commemorates in its way, effectively, a circumcision. A very singular monument, it is also the document of an archive. In a reiterated manner, it leaves the trace of an incision right on the skin: more than one skin, at more than one age” (p. 20). It’s possible that Keasler did not want a wound to commemorate that particular moment because it can open once again at any time.

Technology has made the archive transfer to a different medium. Instead of physical, everything has become digital or virtual. Instead of sifting through mail, we sift through our inbox. Instead searching through dozens of old pictures, we crtl+f to file name of the picture or pull out our smartphones and look through our camera roll. Our photo albums have become digital and we’re able to share them with the click of a button. In my personal life, I used to have the habit of taking multiple pictures of the same thing as if it was going to disappear. A waste of time and space. I screenshot bills paid or conversations had like I’ll need to refer to them in the future. The way we archive and the material we archive today almost seem trivial. It’s very different from the past; only documenting what was important and helpful for the future. For example sciences, a subject like future sciences depend on archivization because it requires past information, studies, and results to improve on the science as it exists today. 

Do we archive too much in our society today? Do we tend to gloss over what’s really important or is everything worthy of being archived in its own merit? What has our society archived that will be beneficial to future societies?