School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemParticipatory media: visual culture in real time( 2004-07)This thesis argues that contemporary visual media culture is characterised by unique forms that enable and increasingly demand qualitatively distinct viewing relations. I offer historical and theoretical explorations of various media technologies and genres, and propose that todays visual culture may be described as participatory, primarily in the sense that its modes of address function to blur the line between the production and consumption of imagery. Furthermore, I suggest that these participatory relations, underpinned by real time media, are productive of performative subjects composed, under the prevailing media imaginary, of increasingly individualised exchanges. Thus, I argue that the phenomenon of media participation must be considered in relation to defining characteristics of contemporary capitalism namely its user-focused, customised and individuated orientation. Organised in terms of historical, theoretical and generic sections, two opening chapters establish, respectively, the technological and theoretical context of the inquiry, preparing for four subsequent chapters concerned with media genres. Chapter 1 argues that contemporary media are home to new image forms that are, as a result of their participatory and networked character, more performative than merely representational. Chapter 2 introduces the concept of indivisualisation referring to participatory visual environments in which the performance of the individual viewing subject is crucial to the nature of the viewing relationship. Drawing on a wide range of media theorists including Jonathan Crary, Margaret Morse, Lev Manovich and Manuel Castells, as well as contemporary sociologists Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman, I make a connection between the personalised address and coextensive temporal performances characteristic of participatory media and a pervasive social demand for compulsory, ongoing self-transformation. Performative subjectivity, I argue, is the logical counterpart to real-time