Response to "A Piece of the Action..."

In the reading, Judith Williamson talks about how people interpret images of people, women specifically, in relation to appearance and presentation. In images specifically, how a person presents themselves - how he or she dresses, for example – can falsely determine the identity of the person pictured. In support of this argument, I give the above example of current vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Much of the campaigning by her, or for her benefit, has been specifically meant to create a pleasing “image” of her to potential voters. From her inception as a vice-presidential candidate, an image of her as a tough, everyday “Hockey Mom” has been presented to voters to appeal, in part, to their apparent need for a “real” candidate in tune with small-town values and ideals. Even the above picture had a caption reading, “Tough as nails. That’s Putin, the bear.”

However, that “image” has been threatened by the recent revelation of her arguably expensive, not-so-small-town wardrobe. Ed Rollins, a Republican political consultant who ran former President Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984 said, "It just undercuts Palin's whole image as a hockey mom, a 'one-of-us' kind of candidate." That coupled with recent misconceptions by Palin of actual vice-presidential duties seem to fit Williamson’s statements of exclusive image representation; what is pictured is not necessarily representative of who is pictured.

Response to "What is Performance?"

In Marvin Carlson’s essay, he describes three different concepts or categories of performance: a skilled or talented professional performing for an audience, the conscious way one acts or behaves socially, and how a person or object functions in contrast to a defined set of standards. A commonality that one could draw between these various definitions of performance is that they all invite critique because, as Carlson states, “performance is always performance for someone.” A musician is rated on his/her prowess with an instrument along with the quality of the performance. Someone who makes a conscious effort to act a certain way socially may judge him or herself on, for example, the successfulness of interpersonal communication (An external party may even draw critiquing comparisons of how that person acts collectively versus privately). Furthermore, a computer may be evaluated on its circuitry, features, and ease of use or even simply on aesthetics.

Take the dog food ad above as another example of the complexity of word “performance.” The ad implies the “powerful performance” of the food, contrasting the seemingly healthy dog and the bodybuilder. One could evaluate not only the quality of the dog food, but the models pictured and the effectiveness of the ad as well.

Response to "Composing with Images: Lynn Hershman’s Photography"

In Composing with Images: Lynn Hershman’s Photography, Glenn Kurtz speaks of how the “computer has rendered the old conflict between ‘straight’ photography and image manipulation moot.” I tend to agree with this statement because, with the worldwide adoption of digital photography and photographic editing, even “straight” photographs which are the “impartial representation of facts,” would cease to be ‘factual’ with even a simple modification such as red-eye removal. This fits in with his belief that “digital technology already treats photographs as raw material.” The readiness and ease of digital photograph manipulation has been, in my opinion, one of the leading draws of the digital medium – The ability to clean up or even add to an image instead of having to make due simply with what you captured.

Take the above picture, for example. The image is of Korean actress Song Hye Kyo – While this picture appears to be, in every way, a factual depiction of this actress, in reality it is a completely fabricated, constructed image. Indonesian CG artist Max Edwin Wahyudi took numerous existing photographs of the actual actress and made a stunningly accurate three-dimensional digital rendering. In a way, it is similar to how Hershman created the character of ‘Roberta Breitmore’ by photographing real staged scenes and accompanying them with false documentation of her existence, except in the case of Song Hye Kyo, her existence is real but the image is forged. Examples like this make audiences question what is truly definable as “real.”