http://give6477.wix.com/gianna
Poetics
I divided my portrait into three parts. The first was my public profile self which consists of of posts and pictures that I have posted or pinned on my public profiles in order to portray myself through a certain lens. I used pictures of events and people who are important to me to represent my life in the present by putting them in the bubbles in the the middle of my page descending from present to past vertically. The second section I chose to include was my interaction page. This page consists of posts and a video that other people have sent me or posted on my profiles. I used this page to represent how other people see me. My third section was a little more abstract. I choose to call it “private” because I used media that I do not put onto the internet for other people to see.. I used pictures that represent something that is important to me or a certain experience that I had by myself that helped me grow as a person. I made my sections very simple and deliberate because I like the idea of a timeline when “telling a story” about a person’s life. I din’t use many quotes or words because I wanted the reader to “feel” the pictures, especially the puppy ones because I love puppy shopping. I would rather look at pictures and experience second hand what someone else has already experienced rather than read about it and try to imagine it in my head. This brings me to electricy, and why it is important when illustrating my story for an audience.
I also used meme’s in order to convey emotions that I didn’t necessarily know how to make my reader feel. I think pictures with words that can evoke a feeling in a reader have more of an impact on them. Not only can they identify with them because they are more familiar with memes than they are with my personal pictures, but they also create a feeling that relates the author to the reader making them feel like they have something in common. Usually memes used preconceived notions or stereotypes in order to convey a message which is frowned upon, but I think they help to bond people because they are able to cross over boundaries that people otherwise would have never spoken about out loud. Memes are a sort of code language where people can laugh at something with out feeling guilty because they weren’t the ones who came up with the idea.
Reflection
I realized that my pictures represent how I want to be viewed by others. It seemed like an obvious move to only put pictures that I thought I looked good in or that I enjoyed looking at because I want my audience to see me and my experiences through a certain lens or perspective. I like to think of it as my own little world that I can give others a glimpse into but they can only see what I want them to see. I ended up using a lot of pictures that I already have on either Facebook or Instagram because they were already pre-approved by me. Every picture on my website is posed, even the candid looking ones, and I think it is important to note that every aspect of this project, though it seemed creative, was very intentional and constructed in order to give off a certain impression. Electracy also comes in in terms of point of view. I use electracy to communicate through technology which also means that my intended audience will likely be younger or well educated because they have access to the internet and the technological training to understand the memes I used and why I used the pictures that I did.
I also found that I vetted each of my pictures to make sure that they were appropriate or represented me in the best light because I know other people would potentially see it and even the most trivial quote can sometimes offend people. I also found that I felt weird adding so many pictures from my private Pinterest page because most people don’t know how obsessed with disney princesses and puppies I am. This is an example of Apparatus theory because I constructed a paradigm rhetoric that consisted of appropriate things that I decided I wanted my audience to see and molded them into something that I deemed significant. My aesthetic mode was very simple because I only have a few things that I make public knowledge, I keep a lot to myself and I thought my website should reflect that. I like having profiles because I get to control what other people see and therefore most of what they think of me which is pretty much the opposite of real life. I can also gauge how they feel about me through the pictures I post and the replies or comments that I receive back that I can then use as critiques for other posts. Each picture has a purpose, including the memes, either to make the audience feel something or think something and to give them a glimpse into my friendships through media. I also think that it is important to note that I used a video, not because I liked it but because my roommate plays the song non-stop and it has become the theme song of my last semester through no effort of my own. I enjoyed this project because it helped me understand what my worldview is and how I want to be perceived by others through the mode of technology. I did not really think about technology as a foundation for language but it is more powerful in different contexts and I think media today is the most effective because of all of the multimedia that people can use to their advantage.
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