I'm interested in so many aspects of the sext message photo, but I think primarily these pictures are a study in courtship through digital medium and the tension between intimacy and distance that the digital medium of text messaging provides, in sext photos as equivalent to facefook "profile pictures" in the sense that they are images that attempt to succinctly define us in one idealized photo or twitter message that define us in one or two sentences and encourages snap judgments and vice versa. Our expectation that we'll be quickly judged and so our photos are modeled to a template that will grab readers with the first sentence. Mostly, I think I'm interested in how self-conscious and insecure these images are. They're profile pictures to the nth. Sext messages are used to, hopefully, sexually arouse the recipient and there is a desperation, a kind of poignancy to them. The male-to-female images are much different than the male-to-male images are much different than the female-to-male images and so on and so forth. I'm interested in how they are miscommunicated. Where they succeed and where they fail. I'm just kind of ranting now. But I think most of my work tends to be about a sort of ubiquitous misunderstanding. Or fear of perennial miscommunication and insecurity. Blah blah blah tell me what you think. They're organized in the order that I received them, not in any other way, though it is kind of interesting that they go from really safe to more exposed.
The images are really large, well, 24 x 32 or so, so if you can, save and open them and zoom in on them to see the image quality degradation. I'm not sure if you can do that here though. Can you? I'm sure I can upload them another way if you want or something. I don't know. I thought that enlarging them to this scale and revealing the bad quality of the images played with our idea of enlarging photos expecting to get more content or information, which we of course don't get when the quality is this poor. It's maybe similar to the kind of closeness and distance provided by sexts. In a way very distant and comfortable maybe and also still exposing and revealing in its easily wielded distribution and/or reproduction. Oh, and thanks, Hunter for the .gif tip. That and a few other things did pretty much exactly what I was hoping to do.
Just had an idea, not sure if it's interesting or not, but it might be interesting if I set it up somehow so that if someone were to choose to look at the images, the images would be forwarded to a random e-mail address or uploaded to a new site on the web or something. Or even just telling potential viewers that them looking at the pictures would result in their distribution. Would that stop them? I'm totally just thinking as I type.
Oh, also if you want to participate or know anyone who would for some reason, let me know or just tell them to text me or something. I definitely have a shortage on dudes at the moment. Initially, it was quite the opposite and then all the guys bailed.
Okay, there is a lot to say. I also know that you are about to have a crit in class with this work, so I don't want to overload the situation too much.
ReplyDeleteSo we can start speaking in shorter hand, is there an actually word for sexted images? are they called sexts as well or is that just the text ones? What is the deal with that? Can we come up with a term to use or can someone enlighten me.
First. It strikes me how inaccessible these images are, in a sense. They don't feel intimate. They feel thick and opaque. They feel forced. I like the line you are walking here. These are images that are all at once revealing (literally revealing) and yet they are so controlled, so contrived, so calculated, so cliche that they don't really reveal anything other than a familiar structure. Isn't it crazy how predictable these images are? I mean that you probably could have done a google search and come up with a very similar set of images.
I was going to make the point that I think profile picture are quite different than sexts, but now I am beginning to question that. My point would have been that profile pictures are destined for a general public audience, some of whom, most of whom we don't even know personally. Where as sext images are conceivably meant for private consumption (I guess that is arguable - but in most cases that would be the intent right?). So if that is true, we would then construct these images differently, one would be very palatable and the other would be much more targeted and specific. I am beginning to question this line of thinking now that I see how similar the images that you have received are. Though, I also wonder if this is a product of people knowing it is for an art project, for you, and so in a sense they are trying to give you what they think you want - the most quintessential (and anonymous) sext image they can create. They are aiming for generic right? So, in that sense it might be interesting to find some sexts that are much more precise in their design, find the weird ones, the fetish ones, the sad ones, the anything-but-generic ones.
Okay so this leads in to the next thing that struck me - which - wait, what was our code word for this class? The safe word to use when we are calling someone out? Was it 'mango salsa'? No, what was it? Okay, if we can't remember we should come up with a new one. Space Mountain? Will that do? I'll go with Space Mountain for now.
Okays so - SPACE MOUNTAIN - do you only have hot friends? All of the people in these images could be anyone, right sure they are very anonymous images. . . but they could also all be porn stars. Is it only young hot people that sext each other? Where are the wrinkled, the stretch marked, and the flat chested? Where are all the people that don't fit in the box? I say this because it might be more interesting to see some one forced into this structure that doesn't fit there so effortlessly. That self imposed forcing and role play and awkwardness could get at rendering the structure of these images as absurd.
It will be good to see these prints in person. Conceptually I wonder about printing them so large that each pixel becomes a color block. What if each pixel were 6x6inches. Would there come a point in scale where you could only tell what the images is if you were standing 20 yards away. And could you then limit the viewers movement in the gallery so that they could not get far enough away to make sense of the image as a whole. I could also see this going the other way. What if they were printed the size of a cell phone screen. And the viewer had to use a magnifying glass to see them. In that case the viewer would really have to work to see them. Would that sort of force the awkwardness of admitting that you, as a viewer, want to see them, that you want to take a prolonged look. Would people avoid looking if they had to work for it?
ReplyDeleteI think the discussion that you raise about social media promoting a succinctness in how we present ourselves is a very interesting one, it makes more sense to me when we talk about profile pictures. I am still trying to parse out exactly how that relates to the sexts.