DOCSLIB.ORG

Jean Burgess Thesis

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Jean Burgess Thesis VERNACULAR CREATIVITY AND NEW MEDIA Jean Burgess B.Mus (Hons), B.Arts (Hons), M.Phil, University of Queensland A dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2007 Keywords vernacular creativity new media technology cultural studies cultural citizenship literacy photography personal computing Flickr Digital Storytelling Web 2.0 ii Abstract This study takes a cultural studies approach to investigating the ways in which the articulation of vernacular creativity with digital technologies and the networked cultural public sphere might constitute sites of cultural citizenship. In the thesis, the concept of ‘vernacular creativity’ describes the everyday practices of material and symbolic creativity, such as storytelling and photography, that both predate digital culture and are remediated by it in particular ways. The first part of thesis, covering Chapters 2 and 3, develops a theoretical framework and cultural history of vernacular creativity in new media contexts. Chapter 2 introduces the idea of vernacular creativity and connects it to cultural studies approaches to participatory media and cultural citizenship. Chapter 3 theorises and historicises the relationships among vernacular creativity, technological innovation and new media literacy, drawing on social constructionist approaches to technology, and discussing concrete examples. The first of these examples is the mass amateurisation of photography in the first half of the twentieth century, as represented by the monopoly of popular photography by Kodak in the United States and beyond. The second is the domestication of personal computing in the second half of the twentieth century, culminating in a discussion of the Apple brand and the construction of an ideal ‘creative consumer’. The second part of the thesis, covering Chapters 4 and 5, is devoted to the investigation of two major case studies drawn from contemporary new media contexts. The first of these case studies is the photosharing network flickr.com, and the second is the Digital Storytelling movement, structured around collaborative iii offline workshops in which participants create short multimedia works based on their biographies and personal images. These case studies are used to explore the ways vernacular creativity is being remediated in contemporary new media contexts, the socio-technical shaping of participation in digital culture, and the implications for cultural citizenship. In Chapter 6, the thesis concludes by suggesting some further implications of the research findings for cultural and media studies approaches to the relations of cultural production and the politics of popular culture. iv Table of Contents Title Page ..................................................................................................................... i Keywords ................................................................................................................... ii Abstract ..................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... v List of Figures .......................................................................................................... vii List of Tables .......................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... ix Statement of Original Authorship ............................................................................ x Chapter 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1. Overview ........................................................................................................... 1 2. Context of the Study .......................................................................................... 2 3. Research Design .............................................................................................. 19 Chapter 2 Vernacular Creativity, Cultural Studies and Cultural Citizenship .. 28 1. The Idea of Vernacular Creativity ................................................................... 28 2. Cultural Studies and the Politics of Popular Culture ...................................... 40 3. Cultural Citizenship and The Networked Public Sphere ................................ 54 4. Conclusions ..................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 3 Vernacular Creativity and Technological Change ............................. 74 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 74 2. Approaches to Culture and Technology .......................................................... 77 3. The Socio-Technical Construction of New Media Literacy ........................... 85 4. Kodak and the Mass Popularisation of Photography ...................................... 92 5. Personal Computing, Apple and the ‘Creative Consumer’ ........................... 103 6. Conclusions ................................................................................................... 124 Chapter 4 Case Study: The Flickr Photosharing Network ................................ 127 1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 127 2. Overview ....................................................................................................... 129 3. Participation as Play ...................................................................................... 135 4. Users and Uses .............................................................................................. 141 5. Technologies and Literacies .......................................................................... 153 6. Creativity and Aesthetics .............................................................................. 168 7. Cultural Citizenship and the Local ................................................................ 182 8. Discussion ..................................................................................................... 186 Chapter 5 Case Study: The Digital Storytelling Movement............................... 192 1. Introduction ................................................................................................... 192 2. Overview ....................................................................................................... 196 3. The BBC Capture Wales Model ................................................................... 199 4. QUT Digital Storytelling Projects ................................................................. 220 5. Discussion ..................................................................................................... 241 v Chapter 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................ 248 1. Significance of the Study .............................................................................. 248 2. Discussion of Findings .................................................................................. 249 3. Further Implications and Emerging Questions ............................................. 256 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 259 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Ross Mayfield’s ‘Power Law of Participation’ .......................................... 12 Figure 2: Bradley Horowitz’s Social Media Pyramid ................................................ 15 Figure 3: Flickr—All time most popular tags .......................................................... 133 Figure 4: Flickr—Explore page ............................................................................... 135 Figure 5: ‘Green is Beautiful’ by Cyron .................................................................. 144 Figure 6: David de Groot’s computer room ............................................................. 145 Figure 7: ‘Shell on the Beach’ by David de Groot .................................................. 146 Figure 8: ‘Duck and Zoingo Boingo together’ by Louise ........................................ 147 Figure 9: ‘When I Look’ by Melanie Cook ............................................................. 148 Figure 10: ‘Gatecrashed Drain’ by Mr Magoo ICU................................................. 150 Figure 11: ‘Once was a Window’ by Shanrosen ...................................................... 151 Figure 12: ‘Straightened Perspective’ by Yinyang .................................................. 152 Figure 13: KGUV Sharing Stories Workshop 2004 ................................................ 229 Figure 14: KGUV Sharing Stories Workshop 2006 ................................................ 232 vii List of Tables Table 1: Flickr Users Interviewed ............................................................................ 142 Table 2: Sample Workshop Schedule ...................................................................... 198 Table 3: Participants at first KGUV Sharing Stories workshop .............................. 227 Table 4: Participants at second KGUV Sharing Stories workshop.........................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Download Download
    REPORTS 155 The “Local Culture and Diversity on the Prairies” Project (1) Nadya Foty and Andriy Nahachewsky University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Introduction The Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore at the University of Alberta is in the process of concluding a project with several partners to record some 900 hours involving 2,000 interviews with people who remember life on the Canadian prairies prior to 1939. The project is called “Local Culture and Diversity on the Prairies” At the time of this writing, most of the interviews have been conducted but the compilation, coding, analysis and description of findings are still underway. For this reason, this essay takes the form of a personal perspective of the project, description of issues influencing project design, and a statement of aspirations rather than an authoritative reporting of its results. The aim of the project has been to document everyday life, ethnic identity and regional variation among people of Ukrainian, French, German and English heritage.(2) How did people from diverse backgrounds interact, adapt and become “prairie Canadians” in the first half of the twentieth century? What was the relationship between cultural inheritance and local community participation? How did they express their various identities on the local community level? What factors affected regional variation in these communities? The project is designed to generate a great deal of documentary information and primary archival resources for further research in many aspects of these people’s lives. Ethnographic research about ethnicity, integration and Canadianiza- tion as social processes in a given period is perhaps best conducted indirectly.
    [Show full text]
  • Definition of Culture
    AP Human Geography Unit III. Cultural Patterns & Processes Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which statement about culture is true? A) Culture is the traditions and beliefs of a group of people. B) Culture is learned behavior that is passed from one generation to the next. C) Cultures are dynamic and always changing. D) Cultural traits are a reflection of a group‟s values. E) All of the above. 2. Which statement concerning the globalization of Western culture is true? A) Many foreign cultures have adopted Western traits like clothing and religion. B) Some areas of the world have actively resisted Western culture traits. C) Backlash against Western culture has resulted in violence in some areas. D) Western culture is often spread through movies and other media. E) All of these are true. 3. The idea that an environment influences, but does not strictly determine, how a culture interacts with the environment is known as A) environmental determinism. B) environmental possibilism. C) cultural ecology. D) cultural environmentalism. E) cultural possibilism. 4. Which of the following cultural traits is important to Americans? A) A focus on social order over individual rights. B) A strong state religion. C) Ancestor veneration and worship. D) A sense of equality and fairness. E) All of the above. 5. A single attribute of culture is called a A) culture complex. B) culture realm. C) culture landscape. D) culture hearth. E) culture trait. 6. A group of related cultural traits is a A) culture complex. B) culture realm. C) culture landscape. D) culture hearth. E) culture region. 7. The theory that the physical environment causes social and cultural development is called A) environmental ecology.
    [Show full text]
  • Fast Knocks and Nags
    Copyright © Museum Tusculanums Press Fast Knocks and Nags The Stolen Car in the Urban Vernacular Culture of Cork1 Stiofán Cadhla Cadhla, Stiofán 2001: Fast Knocks and Nags. The Stolen Car in the Urban Vernacular Culture of Cork. – Ethnologia Europaea 31:2 77–94. In spite of, or due to, its centrality to everyday life the car is a much neglected aspect of contemporary material and symbolic culture. Its presence has until very recently manifested itself largely in epic national industrial histories or in overtly critical environmentalist accounts and social histories. The phenomenon of joyrid- ing has received even less academic attention. This may be due to its problematic positioning in the liminal zones of many disciplines, in an epistemological vacuum. This article foregrounds the cultural aspect of joyriding in a particular context. It questions the more obvious interpretative tendencies like “youth culture” or “subculture” as the result of an agist or sedentary hierarchy articulated from within an exclusionary and normative discourse. It is argued that this is better understood as a variant of a more general protean cultural process through which the very sign of modernity and consumerism (with all its assumptions of alienation and assimilation) becomes part of a forceful vernacular or lived-in urban culture. Stiofán Cadhla, Dr. Department of Béaloideas, Folklore and Ethnology, (1 Elderwood, College Road), National University of Ireland, Cork, Ireland. E-mail: [email protected] “Joyriding has become a form of entertainment tion into discourse. Cars are moralistic, respect- in Cork’s Northside,” able, executive or recreational, the second-hand [Evening Echo, 17.6.87] car salesman is immoral, the new car salesman is respectable, he wears a collar and tie.
    [Show full text]
  • African American and Caribbean Routes of World Literature
    Caribbean Studies ISSN: 0008-6533 [email protected] Instituto de Estudios del Caribe Puerto Rico Kuwabong, Dannabang Jason Frydman. 2014. Sounding the Break: African American and Caribbean Routes of World Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN: 978-0-8139-3573-7. Pp. i- viii; 1-184. Caribbean Studies, vol. 43, núm. 2, julio-diciembre, 2015, pp. 300-303 Instituto de Estudios del Caribe San Juan, Puerto Rico Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=39249077016 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative 300 Jason Frydman. 2014. Sounding the Break: African American and Caribbean Routes of World Literature . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN: 978-0-8139-3573-7. Pp. i- v iii; 1-184. Dannabang Kuwabong English Department-Faculty of Humanities University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus San Juan, PR 00931 [email protected] ason Frydman’s Sounding the Break African American and Carib- Jbean Routes of World Literature is a fresh intervention in the often absolutist Eurocentric genealogy of world literature grafted on the clas- sical periods in Greece and Rome. He questions absence of pre-Greco- Roman civilizations of Africa from which these classical Greco-Roman civilizations, were offshoots. Citing the arguments of African diaspora philosophers such as Samuel R. Delany, W.E.B. Du Bois, among others, Frydman advances an alternative reading of the evolution, growth and spread of world literature from palimpsestic, rhizomatic, and symbiotic perspectives.
    [Show full text]
  • The Critique of Vernacular Discourse
    THE CRITIQUE OF VERNACULAR DISCOURSE KENT A. ONO AND JOHN M. SLOOP Critical rhetoricians should, by criticizing vernacular discourse, follow the path of those who have discussed the rhetoric of the oppressed. The critique of powerful discourse has broad "historical" impact and therefore has been the primary mode of critique within rhetorical criticism. In addition to the critique of widely disseminated texts, critics should examine texts that profoundly influence vernacular communities and communitas. We conceptualize how a study of vernacular discourse could be carried out by defining vernacular, describing the critique of vernacular discourse, explaining the purpose of such criticism, and illustrating our approach through a brief study of one example of vernacular discourse: World War II representations of women in the Pacific Citizen, a Japanese American newspaper. f one thing has remained a consistent practice in rhetorical criticism at least I since Kenneth Burke's (1957) "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle,' " it is a critical focus on the discourse of the empowered, discourse of those who control, design, and create the public space. Burke did not study what homosexuals and Jews in the United States were saying about the Nazi movement in Germany. He did not look at the discourse of those in Germany who resisted or protested Hitler's rule. Burke's study is compelling because it indicts Hitler's rhetoric; it challenges the voice of oppression, villainy, martyrdom, and demagoguery in Mein Kampf Burke was interested in rhetoric of the inhuman, the brutal, and the obsessed. His focus on Hitler's rhetoric is what makes his essay exemplary rhetorical criticism.
    [Show full text]
  • Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film As Vernacular Culture
    Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2007 Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture Sharon R. Sherman Mikel J. Koven Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the American Film Studies Commons, and the Folklore Commons Recommended Citation Sherman, S. R., & Koven, M. J. (2007). Folklore / cinema: Popular film as vernacular culture. Logan: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FOLKLORE / CINEMA Popular Film as Vernacular Culture FOLKLORE / CINEMA Popular Film as Vernacular Culture Edited by Sharon R. Sherman and Mikel J.Koven Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright ©2007 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322–7200 Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on recycled, acid-free paper ISBN: 978–0–87421–673-8 (hardback) ISBN: 978–0–87421–675-2 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Folklore/cinema : popular film as vernacular culture / edited by Sharon R. Sherman and Mikel J. Koven. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-87421-673-8 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-87421-675-2 (e-book) 1. Motion pictures. 2. Folklore in motion pictures. 3. Culture in motion pictures. I. Sherman, Sharon R., 1943- II. Koven, Mikel J. PN1994.F545 2007 791.43--dc22 2007029969 Contents Introduction: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture 1 I.
    [Show full text]
  • Architecture As a Social Process: Evidences from Design-Build Studios in Southern Mexico
    Architecture as a Social Process: Evidences from Design-Build Studios in Southern Mexico Inspired by the Praktikumsseminar Mexiko of the TU-Berlin, Archintorno has pro- moted three projects in the last nine years, which involved international groups of students, indigenous communities of the Oaxaca State, Italian and Mexican NGO and cooperatives. In Santa Cruz Tepetotutla and San Pedro Tlatepusco, the com- munities’ request was to build two casas comunitarias (community houses), to sup- port a local development program focusing on ecotourism and the enhancement of local cultural and natural resources; while in Pensamiento Liberal Mexicano, the Sociedad Cooperativa Grupo Mixto de Rio Pluma asked for the realization of a “micro-regional center for technology innovation”, to develop different activities aimed at improving the housing and living conditions within the community and at supporting local development. INTRODUCTION ALESSANDRA BASILE Vernacular settlement patterns and architecture evolved over millennia, and still Archintorno, Naples, Italy represents the majority of the built environment among many cultures. This can be seen when considering the indigenous communities in Southern Mexico. An effec- ROBERTA NICCHIA tive definition of vernacular architecture has been given by Paul Oliver in its “ency- Archintorno, Naples, Italy clopedia”— “Vernacular architecture comprises the dwellings and all other buildings of the people. Related to their environmental contexts and available resources, they ANDREA TULISI are customarily owner—or community—built, utilizing traditional technologies. All Archintorno, Naples, Italy forms of vernacular architecture are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of life of the cultures that produce them”. 1 According to this definition, the focus shifts from individual architects and individual buildings to “architecture as a social process”, in which many are involved, guided by common values.
    [Show full text]
  • CHAPTER 2 43 MANY WORLDS Geographies of Cultural Difference
    CHAPTER reproduction CHAPTER unauthorized No 2014. Freeman H. W. 2 © What can this scene tell us about nature–culture relations in North American popular culture? Enjoying nature in a national park campground. (Courtesy of Roderick Neumann.) Go to “Seeing Geography” on page 89 to learn more about this image. 43 MANY WORLDS Geographies of Cultural Difference o matter where we live, if you look carefully, you will see how important cultural identity Nis to our daily lives. Cultural difference is evident everywhere—not only in reproductionthe geographic distribution of different cultures but also in the way that difference is created or reinforced by geography. For example, in the United States, the historical legacy of segregating “Whites” from “Blacks” has been important in establishing and maintaining cultural differences between these groups (Figure 2.1). In Chapter 1, we noted that human geographers are interestedunauthorized in studying the geographic differences both among and within cultures. For example, using the conceptNo of formal region (a region inhabited by people who have one or more cultural traits in common), we can identify and map differences among cultures. This sort of analysis is usually done on a very large geographic scale, such as a continent or even the entire world. But, 2014. geographers are also interested in analyses at smaller scales. When we look more closely at a formal culture region, we begin to see that differences appear along racial, LEARNING OBJECTIVES religious, gender-related, and other lines of distinction. Freeman Sometimes groups within a dominant culture become Explain the role of cultural difference in H.
    [Show full text]
  • Reviewing the Role of Culture on Formation of Vernacular Architecture
    European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences 2014; www.european-science.com Vol.3, No.4 Special Issue on Architecture, Urbanism, and Civil Engineering ISSN 1805-3602 Reviewing the Role of Culture on Formation of Vernacular Architecture Mohammad Hadi Zare, Farhad Kazemian Department of Architecture, Kish International Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kish, Iran *E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Architecture and culture are two fine and subtle concepts that represent the identification of the society. The grandeur of architecture can define any civilization and introduce itself as an iconic and cultural concept for recognizing the cultural values of the society. Unfortunately, focusing just on technology and formalistic point of view produces unfamiliar buildings that are known as architecture but it is important to know these buildings because they can damage the cultural identification of the society and cannot establish a proper base for forming the architecture related to social and cultural values of each society based on these values. People can improve themselves and help architecture play its essential role for building the society. Undoubtedly, the lack of culture in Iran’s modern architecture in a long term can threaten the treasure of Iranian architecture. Therefore, architects are obliged to consider the cultural features of Iran’s architecture and combine it with vernacular architecture in order to revive the hidden characteristics in Persian architecture and meanwhile they have to remember the indefinable role of culture in making the connection between people and architecture. Keywords: Vernacular, Culture, Climatic architecture, Sustainability Introduction In the contemporary time, according to replacement of materialistic culture, the framework of vernacular architecture collapsed and ignored deliberately by builders, investors and architects.
    [Show full text]
  • Vernacular E
    'er.nac'u.Iar (ver.nak'ti.ler), adj. 1. Belonging to, develope and spoken or used by, the people of a particular place, regio country; native; ind· • as, English is our ve 11 the native or indigen asopposedtothellle poetry; vernacular e 2. Of persons, that usCAROLINA DWELLINGlib language of a place; as vernacular poets; ve&t~&m 3. Characteristic of a locality; local; as, CAROLINA DWELLING :be Student Publication of the School of De ign: olurn -J"orth Carolina State University :laude McKinney, Dean )hun Kanda, Project Director ( \. Towards Preservation of Place: In Celebration of the North Carolina Vernacular Landscape Edited by Doug Swaim Copynght 1 7 by The Student Publication library of Congres Caral This publication ha be.,n fun the 1allonal Endowm n or 1 The nature of building is letting dwell. ... Only if we are capable of dwelling, only th en can we build. Let us think for a while of a farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some two hundred years ago by the dwelling of peasants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and heaven, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things, ordered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it the w1de overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and which, reaching deer down, shields the chambers against the storms o the long winter nights. It did not forget the altar comer behind the community table; it made room in its chamber for the hallowed places of childbed and the 'tree of the dead' .
    [Show full text]
  • Vernacular Assets: Planning for Local
    VERNACULAR ASSETS: PLANNING FOR LOCAL CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN TEXAS by RACHEL E. ROBERTS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON December 2008 Copyright © by Rachel E. Roberts 2008 All Rights Reserved DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my family: Mom, Dad, Chris, Jennifer, my Wilks grandparents, and my Roberts grandparents. My family—and their love, encouragement, and support—made this paper possible, as did their sometimes bothersome refusal to believe that I could fail. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my professors from SUPA who have challenged me, piqued my interests, and occasionally changed my mind. I also offer my thanks to the members of my thesis committee: Dr. Carl Grodach, Dr. Enid Arvidson, and Dr. Jeff Howard. Finally, I would like to thank Wal-Mart, who bulldozed my favorite hill and made me so angry that I decided to try to change the world. November 25, 2008 iv ABSTRACT VERNACULAR ASSETS: PLANNING FOR LOCAL CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN TEXAS Rachel Roberts, MCRP The University of Texas at Arlington, 2008 Supervising Professor: Carl Grodach This paper examines how fast-growing cities in Texas with populations over 100,000 plan for local cultural and environmental resources. In the face of globalization, cities in the United States attempt to craft unique identities for themselves in order to attract tourists, residents, and footloose capital, but plans are often borrowed from work in other cities or are forms of Disneyfication and lead to increasing homogenization among cities.
    [Show full text]
  • Excerpted from José David Saldívar, Trans-Americanity
    Excerpted from , Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=45740. © Duke University Press, 2012. ∏ k The Outernational Origins of Chicano/a Literature: Paredes’s Asian-Pacific Routes and Hinojosa’s Cuban Casa de las Américas Roots What does Asia have to do with Américo [Paredes], and with the U.S. Mexico borderlands, the crossing of which represents such a volatile issue in the contemporary cultural politics of the U.S.? What is the Asian connec- tion to the U.S. borderlands? To race and gender on the border? To matters of class structures in the U.S.? I claim that the history of Asian immigration and American interventions in the Asia Pacific global region is related to each of these questions and to the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but not in simple-minded ways.—ramón saldívar, ‘‘Asian Américo: Paredes in Asia and the Borderlands’’ It is always risky to try to account for the canonical success of U.S. minoritized writers. In my previous work on Américo Paredes and Rolando Hinojosa as figures of trans-American literary and cultural studies, I tried to focus on the intriguing examples of Paredes’s and Hinojosa’s extraordinary history writing of Greater Mexico in their subaltern texts.∞ So far, I have chosen to concentrate on their outpour- ing of minor novels, short stories, poetry, and criticism as a way to rethink a potential divide between their early literary successes and prizes and the later (middle-age) so-called lapses, flaws, and fail- ures.
    [Show full text]