giorgiaaiello.bsky.social
Professor of Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Milan. Visual cultures, digital media, cities.
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Last but not least, we had a great international advisory group, including, among others who are not on BlueSky, @merbroussard.bsky.social, @karinwahlj.bsky.social, @profgillian.bsky.social, @theboysmithy.ft.com, @jwyg.bsky.social, @clairemiller.bsky.social, @fullfact.org. Thanks to all! 12/
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And here's another open-access journal article related to the visual analysis strand of the Generic Visuals in the News project: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 11/
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Here is a link to the first project idea and data sprint that led to the development of this project: www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/TakingSt... 10/
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The Generic Visuals in the News project was first conceived in 2017, was funded by a UK AHRC grant from 2020 to 2023, and this part of our research took a long time from the data collection to the final revision stage. This project was prescient vis-a-vis the 'publicness' of visual generative AI. 9/
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This paper is timely in relation to debates about AI images. With the increasing uptake of synthetic visuals across factual and fictional media, it is important to know more about how audiences engage with generic visuals: not so much w/r/t their indexicality but through an (inter)personal lens. 8/
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"As such, generic visuals do, in fact, function as public images, connecting and engaging audiences in public life and foregrounding the role of the personal in engagements with the social issues portrayed in the news." 7/
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"We argue that generic visuals in the news are resources with which people make sense of their everyday lives and that people’s everyday lives are resources with which they make sense of generic news visuals." 6/
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"In these cases, participants moved beyond dominant narratives, as generic visuals activated emotions, experiences and participants’ different identities." 5/
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"We found that while UK-based news audiences mobilized dominant narratives when talking about stock photos and simple data visualizations in general terms, this did not happen in specific engagements with particular generic visuals." 4/
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"Such narratives suggest that generic visuals have limited capacity to function as public images – that is, as visual media for social thought and civic spectatorship. Findings from our research contradict this." 3/
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"Generic visuals like stock photos and simple data visualizations circulate in the news with increasing frequency, and so do dominant narratives about them. Stock photos are clichéd and inauthentic, data visualizations represent facts, so the narratives go." 2/
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I mean, yes, they’re all scary as hell!
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I see this stuff everywhere now! @bildoperationen.bsky.social @profgillian.bsky.social
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A great specimen indeed!
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Thanks and yes, you can obvs start from my own work (much of my writing is available online), but you also most definitely need to read @profgillian.bsky.social’s many publications on urban aesthetics and atmospheres.
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Thanks for the repost, Roland! @bildoperationen.bsky.social
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True, hence why it’s ambient imagery, which I think still sets the ‘mood’ of our surrounding environment even if we don’t pay attention to it.
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So, what are the experiential and sensorial encounters that will set apart a city when AI images become its ambient imagery? What kinds of 'mood', 'atmosphere' and 'embodiment' will these encounters promote, and how will these contribute to transforming our approaches to urban living and 'being'?
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"At the same time, this ambient imagery personally invites us into the spaces it occupies in ways that may enable us to start imagining what life in the city could be like in a more sensuous, embodied manner."
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"In doing so, however, these encounters also promote individualized – or dare we say, neoliberal – approaches to living with others in cities."
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"This is a mood that feeds on encounters with familiar and flexible subjects which may make us feel close to these sites and surfaces, and also good about ourselves as we traverse the city."
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"[S]tock photography’s ambient qualities are centred on aesthetic choices that may make urban sites and surfaces that are often unremarkable and utilitarian if not downright precarious and alienating more engaging and even comforting."
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The piece, "Perfect Strangers in the City: Stock
Photography as Ambient Imagery", outlines how the unremarkable but also familiar and flexible aesthetics of 'generic images' works to animate precarious urban spaces and add sensorial/textural qualities to alienating 'landscapes of capital'.
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As a gentle reminder, a couple years ago I wrote an open-access piece about generic images/stock photos as ambient imagery setting the 'mood' of everyday life in the city for this volume edited by @profgillian.bsky.social: www.aup.nl/en/book/9789...
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Ponyo!
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Here’s my and Theo’s article on Pastoureau’s work and approach from a social semiotic perspective: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Even more so now, we must pursue media and communication scholarship from "a cultural studies and/or critical perspective" as advocated by this journal, so please consider submitting your cultural/critical work on the media at this crucial time in contemporary society, culture and politics.
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Me!
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People don't understand that shows can have GOOD politics but anything that is the result of a massive corporation funding millions of dollars in budget and produced via a corporate pipeline of approval and edits can't be RADICAL, it just ain't how it works