Thesis Chapters by Roselinde Bon
In contemporary urban environments, there are numerous types of digital screens that facilitate t... more In contemporary urban environments, there are numerous types of digital screens that facilitate the datafication of human affect by actively eliciting or passively collecting feedback from the public. The public often interfaces with such screens without being aware of the data they may be supplying. Therefore, the aim of this research project is to contribute to an improved legibility of data collection moments by analysing how networked urban screens shape the affective labour processes that enmesh the mobile and reactive body into the digital economy. Examples of affective strategies are asking consumers to personally review a service through a selection of emoji, requiring consumers to smile to confirm their payment, or monitoring which ‘demographic types’ of consumers smile at a specific advertisement. The corresponding processes that enmesh the body into the digital economy prove to be different in every case, but what lies at the core of every screen-facilitated affective labour setting is the modification of communication into a capital relation. As the exchange of affect becomes the most critical strategic asset in sustaining reputations and privileges, even love and friendship are being subordinated to the digitized capitalist circuit.
The smartphone’s digital snapshot provides a visual dimension in online sociality. These interact... more The smartphone’s digital snapshot provides a visual dimension in online sociality. These interactions take place on networks like Instagram, which enable users to instantly publish photos of their daily life. Everyday movements are captured using the smartphone as a pedestrian medium and mapped by the snapshot’s digital geotag, which refers back to the photographer’s physical trajectory through space. The digital snapshot, taken by a corporal agent, is a vital building block in the creation of another social environment online. The mobile photograph can therefore be approached in three different ways: (1) as an expression of mobility, (2) a digital testimony to embodied experience, and (3) a socially shared expression. Online interaction eliminates the necessity of a physical gallery space by allowing immediate exposure to a global audience. This screen-based interaction occurs through the photographer’s instantly mediated presence. Considering these changes in experiential and communicative dimensions, this research project examines how digital snapshots on image-based social media platforms reshape traditional notions of time and space in photography. This is explored through an analysis of elements of mobility, embodiment, and sociality in three Instagram posts by three different users. The result of this analysis reveals how the mobile nature of everyday snapshots within the digital stream allows past, present, and future to flexibly connect in a state of flux. Mobile photographs communicate temporary moments in-between departure and destination, but are also meaningful as autonomous moments of active creativity within an entangled locale of both offline and online dimensions. Here, photographer and audience temporally share online space, though never occupying the same physical space. Whereas the photograph was traditionally viewed from posterior perspective as a frozen moment from the past, the mobile photograph imbedded within the stream should always be understood as part of a dynamic flow.
Uploads
Thesis Chapters by Roselinde Bon