Nancy’s Blog

Panel at International Visual Studies Association Conference, New York, Aug. 10-12:

New image-making and sharing technologies

Chair: Nancy Van House (School of Information, University of California, Berkeley)

New image-making and sharing technologies are transforming personal photography: digital cameras, cameraphones, and internet-based image sharing have rapidly permeated the world of personal photography. The ways in which non-expert users take up, re-interpret, and adapt new technologies (or fail to adopt them) are of interest in many fields of research: with new photography-related technologies, we have a case of widely-successful innovation. Personal photographers are using these new technologies in ways both continuous with prior purposes and practices, and in new ways. The changing technological and material bases of personal photography serve both to make visible previously taken-for-granted practices and uses of images, and to enable new ones.

On this panel, we will discuss these new technologies and such issues as: emerging uses of images; the changing (and persistent) place of personal photography in construction of identity and social relationships; the division between public and private, as private images become more public, intentionally or otherwise; the shift from individual to collective image making and use; the uses of cameraphone images; the changing nature of memory via image-making and archiving; and images in social networking, including on sites like MySpace.com and Flickr.com.

For further information or to send abstracts or completed papers please contact: Nancy Van House (School of Information, University of California, Berkeley) Email: vanhouse@sims.berkeley.edu

IVSA meets in New York City, Aug 10-12. For the complete call and list of panels, see http://www.visualsociology.org/proposals.html

From Patti Bao, who is working on a project studying Flickr with me :

I just stumbled across this site: www.isthisyou.co.uk - where the site owners have been collecting photos from booths and streets and are looking to reunite them with their owners.  Think there’s a Flickr equivalent?  So far I’ve only managed to find this ( http://www-us.flickr.com/groups/foundphotos/) and that (http://www-us.flickr.com/groups/33289933@N00/), but neither of them are quite like Is This You?…

Anybody?

I would love to do this myself — organized by Richard Chalfen.

ANNOUNCING: Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture

For the fourth year, an exciting six-week Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture will take place at the Tokyo Campus of Temple University Japan (TUJ), May 14 – June 29, 2007. This program consists of two coordinated courses: the first focusesn approaches to studying the richness and complexity of visual culture in Japan; the second allows students to develop odest visual projects (digital still, video or web) on elective topics immediately relevant to visual culture.
Instruction is in English. All course work will be supplemented with an active program of cultural events, trips
and lectures in and around Tokyo. Students live in Temple dormitories alongside Japanese students studying English at TUJ. This program grants course credits to both undergraduate and graduate students.

For additional information, see:
http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/icjs/visual_anthropology02.html
http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/programs/summer/japan/visual-anthro.html

For other descriptions, more details, and application forms, go to:
http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/Programs/TUJ-Vis.%20Anthro/tuj-vis%20anthro1.htm

Application deadline: February 16, 2007.

R. Chalfen (rchalfen@temple.edu) and L. Powell (lindseypowell@msn.com)

I’m teaching two courses in the spring that are both, in essence, special topics seminars.

One, IS212, I teach regularly, is, in essence, Science and Technoloogy Studies (STS) as applied to information systems. It has a core of STS readings, but with a lot of variability (within and in addition to STS) to accomodate who’s in the course and people’s interests. The best description is the website from the last time I taught it, 2 years ago. It’s scheduled Mon 1-4, but if the class size is what I’ve seen in last years, about 10-15, we may be able to vary that if we can come up with a time that suits everyone in the class. Students who have taken the course before may take it again as an independent study; you should check with me. Since the content varies, it’s not the same course from year to year.

The other is a new, special topics course, I290-3, New Media Meets Visual Studies, TuTh 2-3:30. I’ m still developing it. Below is the official description; there’s a longer and more recent description here. I have never taught this and have no idea who will show up. The content will depend in part on who the participants are. (If there are people interested in participating who have ideas about what they would like to see in the course, let me know; I may or may not incorporate your suggestions.)

This course takes a social science approach to new media, specifically visual media. The social sciences are concerned with visual media in two ways: as research tools, and as a topic of research. As research tools, visual media are created and analyzed in field research, and used in publication. As a research topic, visual media represent a significant form of activity and communication. People are increasingly using new technologies and media, including digital photography, cameraphones, video, and the internet, to create and use visual media for new purposes.

We will explore a variety of issues related to both these approaches. Our primary orientation is from the social sciences, not the humanities, but both are needed to understand this topic. In addition, we’ll look at the technologies involved.

This course should be of interest to students in the social sciences, computer science, and the humanities who are interested in expanding their understanding of the uses of visual media and methods of studying them. This will be a highly-participatory seminar, with students expected to contribute to the discussion from their own discipline and to learn about other disciplines’ approaches and understandings.

This is funny, but it can also be used to make a point: the French trailer for the movie March of the Penguins, which in French was March of the Emperor. Someone posted this to a visual studies mailing list: the difference between textual and visual records.