Please reflect on the following questions in your journal:
1. How did social media change people's daily lives, including your own life?
2. How do you feel about living in a digital visual cultural environment?
3. How may you orient yourself to adapt to digital visual culture? Please provide personal example(s).
4. List two questions that you have after contemplating the influences of digital visual culture
1. Social media changed people’s daily lives by allowing photography/video and virtual communication to become a primary activity. The way people view others and themselves, their world view is heavily influenced by the visual culture on social media. It brought the daily, the mundane to the forefront, and blurred the lines of public and private life. I don’t have most forms of social media, the only one I use is YouTube. I very often have a video playing in the background of my daily activities. Many people are constantly seeing new things, and they don’t spend much time away from their phones.
2. On one hand, I think the digital visual cultural environment is amazing, we are exposed to a wide variety of tools, perspectives, and ideas: there are so many videos for learning things and people are able to share the things they are passionate about with online communities. However, I think that some people spend too much time on social media staging their lives and interacting with others negatively. We are also so knee deep in images that things can get lost, and become homogenous within the daily bombardment of images: it can lose meaning and importance.
3. I watch YouTube almost daily, and I feel like my understanding of art processes, politics, and different perspectives has increased because I love learning about different techniques, events, and people. I use it as a learning tool, but I also like watching videos where people share their opinions on books/films I enjoyed, and videos of art YouTubers making work. One channel I follow is Royalty Soaps: I didn’t know anything about artisan soap making as a form of expression, but through her videos I also learned about the chemistry behind soap. I’m not really interested in posting videos or images online, but it is a unique method of entertainment because anyone can share their skills, business, and perspectives.
4. Do you think that the effects of digital visual culture are beneficial or detrimental (or perhaps a mix of both) to society? Does “trending” and the relevancy of imagery filter what we are seeing even though we should theoretically be exposed to more ideologies and viewpoints?
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