Jayne Goethe’s Final Project, titled “My Body Full of Sound”

Statement:

“My Body, Full of Sound” is an art piece created to illustrate and expand    
upon the possibilities resulting from a transition from human to posthuman    
realities. Inspired by the work in posthuman theory by Tim Lenoir and    
N. Katherine Hayles, the piece analyzes the role of contemporary music,    
particularly contemporary techno and pop genres, as a reflection and    
generator of posthuman sensibilities. Hayles contends that our path to    
becoming posthuman will be through the process she terms “intermediation,”    
in which a series of integrated feedback loops  between us and our    
technological devices, media, texts, and immersions will prepare and guide    
us towards a new all-digital future (Lenoir 3). Hayles argues further that it    
is through metaphor, narrative, and “other interpretive linguistic modes”    
that we will be conditioned for and directed towards this new world, as these   
modes are considered primary tools for understanding and imagining the world    
surrounding us (3). Through a multimedia approach, “My Body, Full of Sound”    
aims to illustrate and support Hayles' concept of intermediation, considering   
contemporary music a narrative-based “interpretive linguistic mode” that is    
anticipatory of, if not influential in, the transition to a posthuman world.   
VIDEO CLIP IMAGES: 
The video flashes behind and within the character's heads transforming the   
still frames into animated video. The flash and distortion of the images   
reeled to the music reference the simultaneous and endless bombardment of   
information received  in a pervasive computing environment like the one we   
live in today—an interconnected environment of GPS systems, smart phones,   
and the internet—and the ones of the future being imagined and developed by   
the scientists mentioned in Lenoir's article, in which mechanical interfaces   
are erased altogether (20).   

COVER ART:   
Visuals gives face and color to the characters in the musical  narrative.   
Each of the eight models was photographed twice—one full body shot and one  
headshot—assuming a blank, uninvolved pose. Such a pose is intended to convey  
the potentially emotionally neutralizing impact constant interaction and  
integration within an “environment of ubiquitous computing technology” may  
cause (15). Additionally, each model is wearing the same headphones, a  
symbolic indication that all characters are plugged into a singular  
digital-sonic realm. 

POEM:

[Crash] an interlude   
My body, its sound carries   
as I crawl into the space[s]   
fight tight all the screens   
[life tearing at the seams]   
I am listening   
my name is Listening.   

The character first describes her connection with sound as an embodied  
experience—it is her body that emanates and “carries” sound. A screen    
interface of some sort is then introduced, the character compelled to    
“fight” this screen, an attempt to withhold the body from the convoluting   
force of the technological interface. The poem suggests that it is the    
destiny and power of technology to tear life “at the seams,” executing the    
separation and distillation of the physical body into its purely digital    
form, posthuman at last. Hence, listening is transferred from an embodied   
act—“I am listening”—to a disembodied state, the name “Listening.”    

Michael Evans' Final Project: "Floating Lotus"  

IMAGE:  
STATEMENT:  
‘Floating Lotus’ is a demonstration of the potential technology  
has of expanding not only physical and mental capabilities, but also spiritual 
capabilities. Transhumanism only acknowledges the breadth of human potential 
by viewing technology as a prosthetic for the human body and mind.   
‘Breadth’ is herein defined as the range of capabilities of the human   
experience such as enhanced motor skills, memory, knowledge, and intellect.
On the other hand, ‘depth’ can be defined as everything  
intrinsic to that human experience such as subjective consciousness and  
profound  religious experience. The artwork manifests James Hughes’ argument  
that technologies can be adopted to enhance human spirituality. In one of 
his lectures, he states, “Transhumanism appears to be especially compatible 
with religious traditions that emphasize human agency and evolution to a   
transcendent state, such as  Buddhism, or that have incorporated Enlightenment 
values, such as liberal Christianity.” This ‘trans-spirituality’ that Hughes   
claims is in line with the argument that technologies suitably enhance or 
have the potential to  enhance the depth of the human psyche...  

Other liberties  taken by the artist include the decision to give the work 
a ‘retro’ or ‘steam-punk’ feel by utilizing black and white as well as 
the ENIAC computer.  This computer was a landmark in digital computing as 
well as a spark of the modern information age. The exposed wires and 
interconnectedness of the computer emphasizes the symbiotic relationship 
between man and machine. By happenstance, the image created the shape of 
a light bulb at the top, suggesting the boy achieved enlightenment while 
demonstrating the older metaphor humans had of seeing their bodies as 
electrical machines.    

Thomas Campbell, "Rhetoric of the Comic Body" 

STATEMENT: 
From Superman and Spider-man to the Sunday funnies comics  
historically have been a form interested in the human body. The bodies  
that live within the panels of comics however play by their own rules.  
The form can at once be celebratory of the human form and transforming  
it into something that few would  call human. A good comic can come to  
life on the page and stretch the limits of what is considered real. 

This Jason page shows how using animal characters matted on a human form can lessen the bodily affect tied to the characters’ more extreme actions–in this case violence. This sequence would read as horrific, if it were rendered realistically with a human doing the same action. Jason’s deadpan delivery also plays up the fact that it isn’t to be taken gravely.

The comics medium emphasizes a certain elasticity of the human form; a  
freedom from the constrains of realism. The cartoonist is able to use the  
human body as a spring board for their figures, at times to create creatures 
that are simultaneously identifiable and foreign...The human form is  
frequently at the forefront of comics story telling, but the nature of the  
medium allows the  human form to become something not seen is everyday life.  
The body can become a symbol for action or emotion. It can be a stand me for  
one's self or another. In a medium where as much happens in what is seen as  
in what is not seen, the  possibilities are limitless; and the definition of  
the body is ever changing.  

PROJECT SLIDES: See images and descriptions in 
the comments line:   Thomas Campbell Comics Slide Show

“I hope this thing becomes more than another dog to sniff us or fetch the paper for us,” he said. “Yeah, then it will just be a dog without the dog,” I said. We laughed.

After our meeting, I went back to my office to plan a lesson, and I was thinking about one of the readings by Dr. Tim Lenoir that I assigned for the coming week. In “Contemplating Singularity,” Lenoir considers the effect of new representations on human development.

He states, “[N. Katherine] Hayles’ theory of intermediation alerts us to the need to understand how the complex transactions between bodies and our inscription practices might take place and how to understand the ‘entanglement’ she describes of media with the formation of human subjects. How can we think beyond the notion of virtual creatures as rhetorical devices and explore instead how the embodied human subject is being shaped by a techno-scientific world?… In this perspective, media machines are not just prosthetic extensions of the body, they are evolving assemblages capable of being absorbed into the body and reconfiguring the subject” (3-4).

Amy Caron’s Neuro Art – The Thalamus

But how do we explore this “entanglement” on the local level, say, when engaging something so small (although novel) as a new computing environment powered through hacked consumer devices? To what extent do these representations of our bodies transform our behaviors, our cognitive patterns, our sense of living in the world? Can we know? Will ubiquitous, context-aware computing make us the first witnesses (or guinea pigs) to broad-scale shifts in the human subject, or will these technologies only be a link in the continuation of human-technic co-development at a snail’s pace?

I’m not sure… but if Lenoir is right (and by extension Terrence Deacon and Donald Merlin) then perhaps the biggest alterations to human capabilities have happened exterior to the body before interior mutations. Such is the need to pay attention to our environment.

Of course, I don’t necessarily require advanced cognitive science to interpret all of my own local adjustments to these new technologies. I straightened up my posture when I saw the skeletal representation of my body sitting in a chair in Dr. Rieder’s office. I looked “slouchy.” At that moment, I experienced a real-time self-awareness of my physical body that could’ve been provided by a video camera but which arrived somewhat differently when the background was subtracted out and when my person became unidentifiable except through the body’s outline. I am sitting straight against the back of my chair at the moment.

The discussion offers a renewed awareness about the ways that food practices can reify nationalist discourses and stabilize subjectivities. In other words, the book asks us to examine connections between our eating habits and our identities; it disrupts our cultural conceptions of “good taste;” it makes us think twice about those smells that comfort us and make us feel at home. I’ll write more on this later, as I am currently crafting a formal book review.

Reading Antidiets led me to explore some contemporary artists working with food. I found several fascinating people, but I’d like to share two with you right now.

The first is James Reynolds. His series, entitled “Last Suppers,” documents the last meals of prisoners formerly on Death Row.

The austere photographs unsettle as they visualize a tension between the pleasure of food (ideas about what is desirable), the torture of deprivation, and the inevitability of death.

The second is John Rubin. Like the artists from the neo-avant-garde movement of the 1960s and 1970s, he opened a restaurant designed to disturb and force political reflection through the ingestion of food. His restaurant in Pittsburgh, named “Conflict Cafe,” only serves meals from countries that the United States situates as dangerous and as potential arenas of conflict.

Here, the ingestion of “foreign foods,” which literally give life to the body and then comprise the body’s materiality, serve to undermine, from the very first bite, the “Othering” of the people of these nations and the perception that their cultures are lethal.

Here’s an article that explains my research and provides a link to my poster presentation:

http://www.ncsu.edu/grad/stories/gruber.html

“Facebook, Myspace Confront Privacy Loophole” By Emily Steel and Jessica E. Vascellaro at The Wall Street Journal, May 21

“Busted: Facebook Gave Advertisers Names and Ages of People Who Clicked On Ads” By Nicolas Carlson at BusinessInsider, May 21

“Facebook shared personal data with advertisers without users’ consent” By Sam Gustin of Daily Finance, May 21

“Group sets May 31st as ‘Quit Facebook Day’” By Doug Gross at CNN

“World’s Largest Social Network: The Open Web [on Facebook and the open web]“ By Randall Stross at The NY Times

“Exposure and Facebook as Public Utility” (a response to Dana Boyd) By Alex Reid, May 16

“Why I Left Facebook” By Matthew Gold at The Lapland Chronicles Blog, May 15

“Facebook privacy: a bewildering tangle of options” – NY Times (visualization)

“Facebook Privacy and the Treacherous Middle Ground” By Fred Wilson at BusinessInsider.com, May 15

“New Site Reveals Facebook’s Shortcomings” By Gillian Shaw at The Vancouver Sun, May 15

“Facebook is Toast” By Valdis Krebs at TheNetworkThinker.com, May 14

“Facebook Exodus Planned for May 31: Will you Quit?” By Jennifer Van Grove at Mashable, May 14

“Facebook instant personalization = instant ire” By San Fran Chronicle, May 14

“Tech Biggies Quit Facebook Over Privacy Flap: Will Others Follow?” By Ki Mae Heussner at ABC News, May 14

“EU Criticizes Facebook Privacy Changes” at Telegraph.co.uk, May 14

Facebook and “radical transparency” by Dana Boyd, May 14

“The big game, Zuckerberg and overplaying your hand” by Jason Calacanis, May 12

“The evolution of privacy on Facebook” by Matt McKeon (visualization)

“Much ado about privacy on Facebook (I wish Facebook were more OPEN)” by Robert Scoble, May 8

“Confusing *a* public with *the* public” by Jeff Jarvis, May 8

“Facebook’s gone rouge: it’s time for an open alternative” by Ryan Singel at Wired Magazine, May 7

“Facebook in Dying- Social is Not” by Ryan Baekdal, May 5

“Top Ten Reasons You Should Leave Facebook” By Soham at TheDigiWorld.wordpress.com, May 5

“Decentralize the web with Diaspora” by Maxwell Salzberg, May

“Contemplating Facebook Hara-Kiri” By Jason Perlow, May 3

“Facebook’s Eroding Privacy: a timeline” by Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 28

“The fun’s over with Facebook Community Pages” by Pixelrage.net, April 12

“Facebook’s Zukerberg says the age of privacy is over” by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Readwriteweb.com

My goal will be to produce a documentary-style video that will raise public awareness about the work of social media monitoring and management as well as explore the impact of brand management on participatory discourse online.

measuring threat level / source: visibletechnologies.com

This project (as well as reading for my doctoral exams) will occupy much of my summer. Wish me luck. And I’ll keep you posted.

It also just so happens that I was reading Bolter and Grusin’s classic text “Remediation” this week. In the first two chapters, they dutifully tried to distinguish between hypermediacy and immediacy, stating that “hypermediacy leads us to becomes aware of the medium” whereas immediacy offers (or attempts to offer) an “immediate or authentic experience” (19). What the Viewmaster taught me about this discussion was just how “immediacy depends on hypermediacy” (6) and just how hypermediated even the most immediate experiences can so easily become. In short, the Viewmaster reveals the distinction between hypermediacy and immediacy to be, at best, a fragile one.

First, let’s talk about the Viewmaster. This is how it works: You pick it up. You hold it against your face. You look inside. Suddenly, you will see an image. Actually, you will be seeing two images, one for each eye. Since each eye will see the same image from a slightly different point of view, a 3-dimensional illusion will be created. And then you will feel happy because you will be experiencing one of the first mechanical face-mounted virtual reality systems ever created. You will feel and look like these people…

Source: http://www.thethriftshopper.com/sections/magazine/2007/

Viewmasters are basically stereoscopes. You can read more about stereoscopes here: http://cnx.org/content/m13784/latest/. According to Bolter and Grusin, stereoscopes are “characterized by multiple images, moving images, or sometimes moving observers.” What’s interesting about them is that they “incorporated transparent immediacy within hypermediacy” (37). In other words, the person using a stereoscope or a Viewmaster becomes quite conscious of the medium; however, the goal is to achieve immediacy. And it often does achieve a sense of the immediate, because like some virtual reality systems of the 1990s, it totally engulfs your field of vision. Further, the image has a “real-life” 3-D appearance. (It’s so cool!) Like perspective painting or VR that establishes a space with depth, it “tricks” you and makes you feel like you’re really there. Using my Viewmaster, I often travel to the Hawaiian Islands. I feel like I’m really there. It’s fantastic.

Now here’s what I’ve learned: a medium can achieve both immediacy and hypermediacy at the same time, or at almost the same time. Further, an object can call attention to itself when experienced at one time from one point of view and achieve invisibility when experienced at a different time from a different point of view. In short, hypermediacy and immediacy are fluid, and the hypermediated or immediate experience is something that we have to construct for ourselves. Immediacy has to be something that we are convinced of, and hypermediacy has to be something that we are steered toward. The means of convincing or steering changes over time. Thus, a medium that seems at one time invisible, may at another time call attention to itself. The film The Great Train Robbery, from 1903, quickly makes the point. When audiences first saw the cowboy point his gun at the camera, they screamed. That horrifying scream spoke to the film’s immediacy. Yet, nobody would scream if they watched the film today. Audiences of today would be too distracted; they would notice the film itself, the grainy surface, the over-the-top piano accompaniment that sounds so obviously divided from the film track. You can watch the famous “threatening gun shot scene” here: http://www.westernclassicmovies.com/movie_feature/great_train_robbery.html.

If we can so easily jump back and forth between immediacy and hypermediacy, then how valuable is the distinction? Let’s consider the Viewmaster again. At any point, I might realize that I am holding this device up to my face. And I will eventually, usually within a second or two, be distracted by the medium itself. Then, I could go back to staring at the image again and be captivated. It will take some concentration, but I can forget about the medium. Of course, sadly, I’ll eventually realize that I’m not actually in Hawaii at a Hula BBQ. So making the distinction between hypermediacy and immediacy is not very useful for me in this case. But even if artificial or transitory, upholding the distinction might serve a purpose; namely, the distinction can give us terms for thinking about how our attention mechanism sways between noticing and not noticing that we are being persuaded by a medium. Further, the terms can help remind us that immediacy is fragile and that, in the presence of a hypermediacy consciousness, immediacy will always disperse. It will always collapse under the weight of hypermediacy.

Perhaps, the only immediate experiences are mediated through our bodies. The body is the ultimate and unbeatable medium for immediacy. However, this is not to say that new technologies cannot and will not combine with the body to create entirely “new” (never before experienced) experiences right inside of the body; and this is not to say that certain technologies do not already convince the body to see or feel immediate sensations. I am only arguing here that we have not yet found a media that can make immediacy last. And I mean really last.

But heck, immediacy doesn’t always matter anymore, does it? It was Erkki Huhtamo (1995) who pointed out, “There is no need to make it transparent any longer, simply because it is not felt to be in contradiction to the ‘authenticity’ of experience (from pg 42 of “Remediation” taken from pg 171 of Huhtamo’s “Encapsulated Bodies in Motion”). His point is well taken. Many people today can watch an important event (say, Obama’s Inauguration) through their digital cameras and be fully aware of the medium yet feel entirely in-the-moment. The problem is, hypermediacy only offers an “authentic” experience with certain technologies. And unfortunately, my Viewmaster isn’t one of them.

Oh well. I don’t need the Viewmaster to give me an “authentic” Hawaiian experience. In fact, I don’t need it to achieve immediacy either. I only need it to spark my imagination. And that’s pretty good. In fact, maybe the goal of new technologies shouldn’t be immediacy, at least not all the time. For that matter, maybe the goal shouldn’t be hypermediacy either. Maybe sometimes the goal should simply be the imagination, at whatever cost; immediate or hypermediate, sometimes we just need to be encouraged to dream.

For me, the Viewmaster finds that shifting, liquid middle ground between hypermediacy and immediacy–in the end, it’s not noticing the medium nor is it invisibility that matters the most. It’s whether I am led to extend my mind and imagine.

source; http://www.luxurylaunches.com/buildings...php

According to http://www.dubaitowersdubai.com/, The Dubai Towers are meant to “metaphorically represent the movement of candlelight.” This statement presents the viewer with a fire and ice paradox. The cool metal and glass exterior, flashing silver and blue reflections in the daylight (seen below), subverts the fire imagery. The burning candles become frozen icicles or, perhaps, streams of water. What does, in fact, look like it could be a campfire in the middle of the Dubai desert transforms into an ice or water fountain, a vertical reflection of the surrounding lagoons. Consequently, what is meant as beacons of candlelight becomes an ethereal ice castle in a dream world, a manufactured utopia that dismisses or subverts the realities of the harsh, arid, dry desert. What might have reminded visitors to Dubai of a nomadic journey through the desert, of the tough and frugal life in the hot, sacred center of the Middle East, ends up making visitors wonder just how far Dubai has strayed from its cultural roots and its commitment to the land.

source: http://hawtaction.com/2008/06/16/DubaiTowers2.jpg

For me, the buildings transform into fingers of water moving up from the ground, flowing gently into the air, curving like suspended rivers that disappear off into the sky. What I see is the quick evaporation of water. The buildings underscore just how much this new Utopian metropolis will pull resources out of the ground in a land that should be so sacred. Although trying to imply an oasis of a metropolis, The Dubai Towers gesture as if to announce they are actually robbing nature of its glory.

According to the designers, the towers are meant to serve as a model of “the new enlightenment of the region” (DubaiTowersDubai.com). However, if enlightenment is at all a natural phenomenon, then the towers proclaim themselves as a model of pseudo enlightenment or one brought about by human engineering. The long, “natural-looking” curvature of the buildings, like Baladay scimitars jutting up from the ground, ultimately subvert whatever natural impulse might have been infused in the design as the edged rigidity of the structures stiffly mimic the fluid curvature of nature. The teeth-like sharpness of the design tears up through the ground and, to me at least, reveals the danger and power of new Middle Eastern wealth unencumbered by old ethical stances against raging Western materialism and the Capitalist sensibility.

The glimmering metallic points, standing in stark contrast to the long flat, natural landscape stretched out in the background, reinforces the spectacle and shows the strangeness of the structure in this location. What we have here, essentially, is a Vegas-style health-spa– showmanship reminiscent of American audacity, which, again, reinforces an uneasy artificiality that transforms the photo into something like a neo-surrealist creation by George Grie. The angular reflections on the water further announce the man-made (perfectly drawn) lagoons below. The longer I look, the harder it becomes to forget about the massive brown desert lying just beyond the buildings’ reflective reach and, conveniently, just out of view in the photo.

This visual overplay—the tall shine of the buildings against the flat matted desert—is what might be called a reversibility effect, where the strong presentation of one object unintentionally emphasizes its negation, similar to the way an observer cannot help but notice the empty black space surrounding the tiny blue marble that is Earth. In short, it becomes difficult not to forget that The Dubai Towers are the material manifestation of a dream world for the corporate elite who do not live, and in fact, who apparently refuse to live, in the real hot world of Dubai where thousands of migrants labor in the desert sun to work for their own dream of having a bite to eat. But, if we do forget about the desert workers and the reality of the arid sand, then we would be missing the point of this enterprise. Buildings like these are supposed to emphasize the stunning power of their luxury, the privilege of being above the working masses, and the glamour of being able to build and inhabit a new Garden of Eden in the heart of the Middle East.

Ironically, however, as the metaphorical flickering flame of The Dubai Towers burns, the natural resources supporting them will also be consumed, the real desert sand will ever so slowly invade more holy land, the water will disappear off into the air, and the buildings themselves may signal their own demise. They have surely signaled the demise of an upper class that longs to preserve humility and austerity, traits that might otherwise seem inherent to a culture that still requires women to wear body coverings.

When I brought it home, I discovered it’s worth between 100-200. I’m happy to see the old writing machines hold their value. But I didn’t buy it to make money. I bought it because of its look, its presence, its place in history. I love it.

These old typewriters facilitated mass production (slow by today’s standards) of written work for the individual writer. They were part of the glorification, the sheer mystique, the myth of the lone American writer-hero. Think Steinbeck. Hemingway.

They have a pleasing aesthetic as a machine, one that is also (now) sentimentalist. Owning one and touching it, cleaning it, is like owning a 1952 Chevy and touching it and cleaning it. It’s sleek, yet designed to look powerful and practical.

This particular machine has glass pane windows on the sides to show off the smooth, interlocking internal components–”hey, look how modern and amazing this mechanism is!”

And best of all… there’s the sound, Click CLACKing away. It’s the sound of progress mechanized. You’re not moving any more than you would be moving when typing at a computer, but you feel like you’re moving, like you’re going somewhere, like that sound is moving, like it’s taking you somewhere. Progress. Machine. Ideas. The self is being extended, maybe pursued, maybe glorified. The machine is doing it’s job.

source: http://sevenels.net/typewriters/royals.htm

AESTHETIC VALUE AND DIGITAL IMAGES

(can we make it better?)

Researchers at Penn State recently created a computer system that offers an aesthetic rating of any digital image. (ACQUINE: Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine, http://live.psu.edu/story/39575) It is cool. No doubt.

But if one goal of ACQUINE is to correlate human emotions to certain visual features in digital images and to predict how humans will react to images, then I suspect that the project may fail unless it finds a way to take into account contextual factors that shift human emotions and, thus, alter human seeing.

In short, the way humans “see” images is inextricably tied to the human emotions and neither (sight nor emotions) are objective or stable, but ever-shifting. In short, aesthetic quality (which seems to be defined in the article as a pleasing visuality) does not emerge from visual components alone, but all seeing is framed/affected by context. I would argue that all seeing is fluid and recursively constructed over time through a changing personal and cultural context.

To attempt to prove my point, I ran some popular images through the ACQUINE system and examined the subsequent ratings. I wanted to see if the ratings would line-up with my aesthetic feelings, to see if ACQUINE might be outlining some universal (more likely Western) notion of “aesthetic quality” (probably a modernist enterprise in the first place). Come to find out… the ACQUINE ratings seemed to be somewhat out of balance with (my Western, privileged, US-centric) feelings about these images. Here are my results:

ACQUINE Rating: 4.6/100 – H1N1 virus photo released by the CDC on May 2nd

ACQUINE Rating: 5.4/100 – Iconic “Kent State University Massacre” photo by John Filo

ACQUINE Rating: 16/100 –Blue Butterfly or “Beautiful flower open” from wikimedia commons

ACQUINE Rating: 21.6/100 – Demi Moore on the August 1991 cover of Vanity Fair

ACQUINE Rating: 26.2/100 – AP photo of George Bush “Mission Accomplished” on the USS Lincoln, May, 1st 2003.

According to ACQUINE, this image of George Bush came out on top as having the highest aesthetic quality. But is this GWB photo worthy of being deemed more aesthetically “good” or “pleasing” than the Demi Moore cover or the blue butterfly? (Not in my book.) Further, what does the low ACQUINE rating say about the Kent State image? Does the low rating imply that the most powerful “iconic” photos (as defined by Robert Hariman & John Louis Lucaites http://www.nocaptionneeded.com) fail to adhere to basic cultural standards of aesthetic quality?

Okay, so this experiment of mine was not (at all) a scientific evaluation of ACQUINE, but the resulting disjunction between an individual’s feelings and the ratings given to these fairly random and odd collection of images underscores the constructed and contextual nature of seeing.

Then again, ACQUINE is an awesome system. So maybe ACQUINE works better than I am admitting. In fact, it does rate what I would call “beautiful” pictures quite highly, most of the time. The famous National Geographic “Afgan Girl” photo by Steve McCurry rated a 64.1/100. That’s a pretty decent rating. And this is a beautiful and highly impactful photograph.

Then again, it seems that ACQUINE is simply not programmed (yet) to rate those photos that capture the other emotions: horror, repulsion, fear, anger.

Consider this World War I photo of Japanese soldiers killing Chinese soldiers at Nanking. The low rating (17.6) reveals to me that this photo should not (and probably cannot) be taken as a prediction of how strongly people will or should react to a photo. This Nanking photo is not, to be sure, visually pleasing (it’s not sharp or colorful), so it likely would not receive a high ACQUINE rating. However, the photo is, I would argue, balanced, aesthetically interesting, impactful, and, of course, harsh (see the strong B&W contrast in the image and the ghostly black facelessness of the actors); it is also disgusting, brutal, and disturbing (the crowd watches like passive, prayerful, or approving witnesses as bayonets rage and bodies crumple).

The ACQUINE rating given to this photo makes me wonder what exactly the phrase “aesthetic value of an image” means (see Penn State article) and just what kind of emotional reaction the computer is measuring here. But, then again, maybe we should all wonder what “aesthetic value” means and how “visually pleasing” images are constructed. Wondering why some images grab us by the throat and others pass beneath our gaze completely unnoticed may help us to be more aware of how we see and how our culture/s help to inscribe our sight.

Since ACQUINE dives into the conversation and conducts experiments on visual culture and the meaning of aesthetics, it deserves praise.

Still, I think that my informal experiment here argues that the ACQUINE system can be improved. Perhaps, the concepts presented in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design by Kress & Van Leeuwen (http://books.google.com/books?id=wprZmJFXUXIC&dq=kress+%26+van+leeuwen&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=Ax6ujYoyuj&sig=hOJiBGyEWUQlF58vFjJ75ANCLy4&hl=en&ei=q7MNSozXKMGGtgfLspiBCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7) can be used as a first step toward making the ACQUINE system more complex.

All in all, I wonder if maybe the ACQUINE system can produce more accurate results if connected to some measure/s of cultural sentiment (search engine ratings & social media sites?) about the topic/concept that an image presents.