SSR for March 20 "Visual Blogs"

Captain, there’s a rift in the space-time continuum

In her essay Visual blogs, Meredith Badger makes the claim that the use of images in weblogs presents a “new aspect of visual literacy grammar, where images must be read in direct relation to the passage of time and as indivisible from the personality of the blogger themselves.” I question the notion that the use of images we see in weblogs is, in fact, new. I also submit that images in weblogs do not force an interpretation that requires a relation to time, that there are instances where the visitor can chose to alter the sequence in which images are viewed, and that this ability has been an option for viewing images long before weblogs.

In any discussion of time, one will naturally be lead to involve a discussion of space, which will lead to a discussion of place. Badger frequently uses these terms without definition, which complicates the reading of her essay. Of space, Badger says that,

“[t]he Internet feels like an intimate space. We tend to view it on our own, and up close; the computer screen is like a face, watching us as we work. The weblog format propagates this sensation; the first person narrative with its confiding tone can make us feel that we are partaking in a one-on-one exchange.”

The interchangeable use of ideas of space and place is common, but it is necessary and useful to separate these two concepts and clearly define them. If we agree with the most widely accepted notion that the idea of place is a subset of the idea of space, then we must immediately question Badger’s first statement about the intimacy of the Internet. I believe that what Badger means to say is that blogs on the Internet feel like an intimate places. The Internet itself is a public space, while any individual site on the Internet is a place, blogs become a more private place than, say, a commercial site, due to the rhetorical voice of the content usually on blog sites, what Badger describes as a “confiding tone.” While I will agree that the social networking of blog rolls and interlinking between blogs can create a sense of community or space within the larger space of the Internet, each blog is an individual place within that community and any moderate investigation into blogs will show that each blog speaks to its audience in varying rhetorical stances. This is why I argue that it is more appropriate to say that some blogs can create a sense of intimacy with their readers rather that the universal statement that blogs do create a sense of intimacy. The Internet is inherently a public space and that the blog only creates a sense of privacy in contrast to what is, by the very nature of its design, a public place. Yet, the question remains, how do some blogs create a sense of intimacy and, further, how does that complicate the separation of the public and private?

Is that your aura or are you just glad to see me?

Badger goes on to say that, “[w]hen we encounter images in weblogs, the sense of entering a private space is enhanced.” Throughout the web, sites use images; how then can we agree that the simple use of images enhances this feeling of privacy? Consider her later statement that, “images give us information about the blogger that text alone may not impart in the same way that our gestures and expressions may give away things about us not reveled by our speech.” Here we can see that Badger is pointing towards images imparting information. There is also the hint that images revel a hidden message, yet later she makes the point that when we encounter images on the web, they cannot always be trusted. She says, “[a]ll we have is the text describing the image and the images vouching for the words.” Here her claims about images producing a sense of intimacy contort and we get a sense that this intimacy can be betrayed. Badger offers a reference to Benjamin’s essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that may explain this idea further.

In his essay, Benjamin posits that as the work of art is removed from its original location by the act of reproduction, it crosses from the private to the public and hence, the lost of importance, or aura, associated with the original. The key idea here is the connection with place that creates the original. In Badger’s claim, the textual reference surrounding the image is an attempt to recreate the connection to original occurrence and hence, a reconnection to its aura. This is a very interesting idea; one I wish she had spent more time. This connection could prove to be one of the reasons why some blogs can create the sense of intimacy.

Open Internet. Insert time. Repeat until desired effect is reached.

Badger uses the example of images presented in blogs in serial progression is an example of how these blogs ask us “that the images not be viewed alone, but considered in relation to what has come before and what follows” and that “emphasis in weblogs is less on individual images and more about series.” This may be the case in some examples of weblogs, however, this is not the case in all blogs and the navigational options of the visitor to the blog site enable the viewing of images in any order the reader chooses. I believe it is important that our focus should not rest simply on the media choices of some blogs, but on the rhetorical elements we see at work in this larger area of digital composition. The idea of the representation of images as a means to re-create the original aura of the moment captured and of serial images as a attempt to re-create the original time sequence of the event is the real question these rhetorical maneuvers point towards. Blogs, like diaries and journals before them, seek to freeze time in a recoverable medium and yet, with their date stamps or serial images, show the progression of passing time. Blogs are the active production of time in the space of the Internet.

Wrap it up

Although I have made arguments to complicate Badger’s points, I do agree with her when she says that, “[t]he blog medium is one that allows disparate elements and contrasting styles to co-exist harmoniously, rubbing up against each other and influencing that way we respond to the other elements contained there.” No matter what we choose to examine in the blogging community, we must remember that blogging is an actively evolving medium as varied and complicated as the authors that compose them.