User:Laura Macchini/thesisOutline

Thesis Outline

description of my graduation project

My graduation project revolves around confessional youtube videos. It consists in a collage/mashup of videos, directly streaming from YouTube, projected in a room; the video(s) are going to be influenced by the behaviour of the audience. while there is no one watching, the video shows an idle scene, pieces of video in which a person stares at the camera, waiting for an audience. As soon as visitors enter the installation space, the video gradually changes into scenes in which the vloggers are revealing more and more intimate details about their life; the level of intimacy and the content of the confessions/revelations is related to factors three factors so far, the number of people present, the distance between the spectator/s and the projection, the level of noise recorded.

fil rouge : index

1. Introduction / Abstract: Why Confessional Youtube Videos (graduation project,word count = 300)
2. History of the concept of celebrity through TV, Realtity TV and Web 2.0 (Henderson, Amy. "Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture.",word count = 300)
   1. Appearing on TV means becoming a celebrity (videocracy,word count = 400)
   2. Participation in Talk Shows and Reality TV Series (Reality Tv the work of being watched,word count = 300)
   3. Judge Judy, Oprah, Dr.Phil, Jerry Springer (Better Living through reality tv,word count = 200)
3. Post Reality TV: Imitating the professional entertainment Industry ("The Relationship between Traditional Mass Media and "Social Media": Reality Television as a Model for Social Network Site Behavior.",word count = 400)
   1. (Difference between being on tv and having videos online,?count = 200)
   2. Popularity & Attention Seeking(Grown Up Digital,word count = 200)
   3. Performing for an Audience(Perform or Else,word count = 400)
   4. Reaching out: a new concept of Community(Beyond Privacy,word count = 300)
4. Production and Consumption of Entertainment(Video Vortex Reader II - Lev Manovich,word count = 200)
5. the Eternal Praising of User Generated Content(The Cult of the Amateur,word count = 400)
   1. In the interests of Companies that produce Electronics (Cameras, Videocameras, Camcorders-Webcams)(Lev Manovich,word count = 200)
   2. In the interests of SocialNetworks that host the content (Flickr,Youtube,Vimeo,Facebook..)(Lev Manovich,word count = 200)
6. Why is it so important for the market that user keep generating content? (my own brilliant mind,word count = 400)

Expanded Items

Introduction / Abstract: Why Confessional Youtube Videos

Confessional Culture and confessional videoblogging is the central focus of my graduation project. The focus of my/this thesis on the other hand, will be to shed some light on why confessional videoblogging exists in the first place, also identify and explain some of the reasons why people would decide to talk publicly about their private life; in conclusion I will trace a connection between interests that the users and the consumerist society have for user-generated content to be constantly produced and updated.

The goal of this text is to explore the source of the need to be exposed, the collapse of personal privacy that is especially prominent in confessional culture.

history of the concept of celebrity through TV, Realtity TV and Web 2.0

With the assumption that things like Reality TV and Personal Videoblogs exist because there is an audience, then the question becomes: when did we become so interested in the personal lives of others? Celebrities seem the the first and most obvious example of personal lives that become object of interest. "In an early quest for self-definition, Americans of the Revolutionary republic sought to derive a mythic national character by focusing on military heroes, romantic fictional protagonists, and eminent statesmen who embodied the ideals of virtue and self-reliance. By mid-twentieth century, the pedestal belonged not to politicians and generals but to baseball players and movie stars" [Amy Henderson] A celebrity used to be defined by her extraordinary qualities: it might have been an actor, musician, politician, professional sportsman; at some time in history a transformation started: from traditional values-ridden heroes to icons and "celebrity-personalities", as Daniel Boorstin defined them, only known for their "well-knownness". The interest in personal lives of famous people can be observed as early as the 1870s, when the first mass publications appeared, and the public demanded the first articles about them [Amy H.]. In the same years the change in America from a mainly producing to a consuming society, the culture "tilted inward, away from character and toward personality, and self-realization rather than selfless public virtue". [A.H.]

//The arrival of Reality TV allowed everybody, even the most common and boring person, to become, in a way, a celebrity - or at least, their personal lives became object of interest.//

The phenomenon was, at least partially, contained, for producers and tv companies could still decide who was to appear on TV; Social Media on the other hand completely destroyed this last barrier, the only qualification necessary is to have an internet connection.

Appearing on TV means becoming a celebrity

Some people would do pretty much anything to appear on tv (...). As a direct consequence of the Pre-Reality celebrity culture, appearing on TV corresponds to being famous, someone that matters, someone that won't be forgotten. As the image of you is recorded and broadcasted it symbolizes proof of your existance, it makes you "immortal" (something about Poets afraid of death that saw their opus as a way to be remembered after death - Foscolo ,D'Annunzio)

Participation in Talk Shows and Reality TV Series

stuff about Daytime shows (not necessarily reality) and MTV's first attempt at reality (The real world) targeted at younger people

Judge Judy, Oprah, Dr.Phil, Jerry Springer

Tv's way of telling you how you should be

Post Reality TV: Imitating the professional entertainment Industry

Blogs and Social Network services have allowed internet users to publish their mediated selves online through pictures, videos, texts, in a ritual confession fantastically similar to the one employed in Reality TV contexts. Rather than just being passive spectators, internet users can be protatonists of social narratives, just as carefully planned as the ones of famous people. The strategies employed for mediating are the same (photoshop, editing biographies, deciding what to reveal and what to withhold)

Difference between being on tv and having videos online

clearly the audience!?

Popularity & Attention Seeking

In a capitalist world self realization becomes more important than mere qualities, public virtue, sincerity; fame paves the road to success. Narcissistic personalities or not, who wants to be a loser?

Performing for an Audience

- Creating and mantaining an audience - performance in its double meaning (quality/theater)

Reaching out: a new concept of Community

What in ancient times was the task of the local community, looking out for each other, now it's necessarily entrusted in a different, more abstract, entity: the Online community. For some people, knowing that someone they trust, knows every detail of their lives, provides a sense of security.

bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

• Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin - Listening Post
• Geert Mul - Match of the Day
• Lernert & Sander - I Love Alaska
• Ondi Timoner - We Live in Public
• Laurie Ouellette & James Hay - Better Living through Reality TV
• David Shields - Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
• Jon McKenzie - Perform or Else
• Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes - Because We Are Visual
• Erving Goffman - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Jorinde Seijdel, Liesbeth Melis - Open 19: Beyond Privacy: New Perspectives on the Public and Private Domains
• Geert Lovink, Rachel Somers Miles - Video Vortex Reader II
• Geert Lovink, Sabine Niederer - Video Vortex Reader I
• Andrew Keen - The Cult of the Amateur
• Don Trapscott - Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation Is Changing Your World
• Amy Henderson - Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture.
• Stefanone, M., Lackaff, D. & Rosen, D. - The Relationship between Traditional Mass Media and “Social Media”
• Calvert, Clay - Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in modern culture

Thesis Plan (and Timetable)

• selecting and examining the sources of each item of my index
• writing a brief synopsis for each item
• expanding on the synopsis of the items
• ?

8000 words long thesis
budget every chapter / paragraphs
isolating the source
making a wordcount