Celebrity 2.0

This is the second version - if you have any suggestions or comments please let me know!

Video Script 1st draft

Video Begins with image of people in lit movie theater -
lights dim with following quote
"in the end light is always the key protaganist - light itself is glamorous" Vincent Peters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK-e9zzWw-0
show screen with image of Jean Harlow

-Voice over -
"Cult of celebrity created an atmosphere of illusion breeding a cult of cultural consumers - the audiences saw themselves as a part of a homogonous culture
para-social relationship with celebs helped cure the feelings of alienation of industrial life
Play clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQe-lVm7L4 Harlow saying in the future machinery take over everything

Transition to living room - On TV set same old images

Andy Warhol-15 minutes of fame comes on the TV

Fame became about getting your time - We were all alone but we all had a chance

show image of sleeping person with old screen stars displayed on them (Technolust if I can get permission)

Voice over "The Mood Is Changing"--back to living room change lighting-ambient lighting


Show crowds of people texting - using computers - iphone etc.

twitter interrupt sleep clip ---http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zljqn5eOUc

Image of person creating an image of self comparing to old movie star
Voice Over -We become producers of our selves - of ourselves as celebritys images
Use clips from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AxLyS4fj0E


"ego is attachment to things around 5.30 "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VDjXix6ONk

Lilly Allen on Celeb Culture - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLKhnKPgGRI

sped up video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uls7Rnq-puc

Our images desire a home
"invisible man clip asking for a room"

Clip of Hive----http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HplsGiSmnJI



Voice Over-
Our images of ourselves find home in glass houses - online we are exposed

"what gives a glass house a sense of place..."http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A18pzPVp29A
Read Chaucer House of fame poem excerpt
clip play image of dragonfly in jar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMnbu98AmqI
"its all been created as a sense of illusion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A18pzPVp29A

"Cixous - on - why talk about cities - everything needs a stage, city is a theatre first 30 sec"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDbHLMKkps4

City of Ambience plays in background

As the city changes - their is translation "continue cixous quote translation resignifies the signifier"

Lonely Girl 15 response

FAme- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTJHjuhCYos -


Anonymous appears telling us that we have a faulty foundation
"faulty foundation of the ego mock him demand his qualifications"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VDjXix6ONk


Bowie - - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpOlaLTXP4E



Can we create something new?

Ambient Intimacy
----talking about this---image of networks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PU--GqGPFk - voice "ambient intimacy - twitter greater ability to stay in touch network - cultivate loose ties form new relationships draw anaology to the village"


Currently working but will post now so can get feedback etc.




Video Clips To Used for Ideas/Video-




Quote "the light itself..." at 1 min at 1.50 protaganist is light



"isnt it enough entertaining people - i'm miserable - those people are my friends"



http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/alison_jackson_looks_at_celebrity.html

3 paragraphs

3 paragraphs for group paper 1st draft


American society is a society of immigrants, a group of people displaced from their home. This led to a mass experience of feeling lonely and displaced. Hollywood films served as the form of entertainment which created a 'cult of celebrity'. Film actors performed to an audience of the masses. Their personality was a home with only windows that looked out on the world with no door by which audiences could enter. A 'parasocial' relationship between audience and celebrity was formed through the illusion of face-to-face communication (Horton & Wohl 1956). As Walter Benjamin wrote in 1936 accompanying the cult of celebrity was the cult of audience in which individuals began to see themselves as a collective group of media consumers. Fans related with Hollywood celebrities through attempting to unveil the celeb, consuming information about their private lives and writing fan letters. (MEGAN)

"The celebrity is a person who is well known for his well-knownness" wrote Daniel Boorstin in 1962. Enter the internet age and we find a shift from media consumers to media producers, the viewer changes to user, and a shifting in mediation of self occurs. Micro-celebrity arises in the YouTube era of user-created content and viral videos. Andy Warhol stated that everyone will have 15 minutes of fame. The internet displaces celebrity from the notion of time to networks, “fame is no longer about getting 15 minutes, its about becoming famous to 15 people” (Hammock 2008). (MEGAN)

The 'illusion of intimacy' formed through parasocietal relationships between audience and actor changes to 'ambient intimacy' in the age of Web 2.0. The mood shifts and now the user creates themselves as celebrities. Through creating personas on facebook, twitter, avatars in second life individuals create images of themselves experiencing themselves as celebrities. This leads to a sense of ambience, a feeling associated with the particularity of a place. A feeling of being at home in the unfamiliar world of instant communication. This happens through following others, one gains a sense of ambient awareness as Thompson (2008) writes creates a feeling of being physically near someone, picking up on their moods through a sense of presence. (MEGAN)

Benjamin, Walter. (2008). The Work of Art in the age of its technological reproductibility and other writings on media.
. Jennings, M. and dohertty, B. and Levin, T. (Eds. Jephcott, Lingstone, Eiland (trans). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Boorstin, D. (1962). The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream. New York: Atheneum.

Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, 'Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance', Psychiatry 19: 215-29, 1956

Whispering Ambient Intimacies

I Want To Be Famous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
According to Wikipedia-A celebrity is a widely-recognized or notable person who commands a high degree of public and media attention. The word stems from the Latin verb "celebrare" but one may not become a celebrity unless public and mass media interest is piqued.

With the rise of the internet a new breed of celebrity has arisen. Hammock of CNN writes,
"The Internet is setting a new standard for celebrity. Fame is no longer about getting "15 minutes"; it's about becoming famous to 15 people." With previous communication technologies, books, TV, newspapers, film, an editor - owner - creator - saw an opportunity in somebody - this little glimmer was quickly mass produced and sold to the masses. Fans faithfully ate their daily dinner of a dream life that they could not touch. The CNN article focuses on David Weinberger;

Before, fame was about scarcity, with only a few people reaching the status of celebrity. But Weinberger points out that the fame of the Internet is about abundance.

what we see now is a world full of users creating their own culture----instead of a bunch of lonely isolated people who have no place in the medium that defines their culture outside the clicker and the pocket book -(and the reality TV vagrants)-----

As a community, we help bestow it, and as individuals, any of us can achieve it, given the right circumstances. Weinberger said, "Fame is becoming ours; we are making it ours, as we are doing so much else in our culture. Fame now reflects us."

Microfame - Internet Celebrity - Micro-Celeb- Z-lebrity- Whatever you want to call it is a reflection of the difference between TV & Internet in terms of the medium. As McLuhan said the medium is the message - McKenna comments on this captured by YouTube - that people who dispute over the content of TV are missing the point - the TV as a medium effects us differently than a book, differently than the radio, etc. -
The internet is exciting in that it allows viewer to create themselves and their communities (click, create, blog, twitter, browse, igoogle, youtube, flickr) instead of sitting in the living room and having their identity and community sold to them through the boobtube.
Want to be famous? Rex Sorgatz outlines the hard road to being a micro-celeb in his NY Magazine article. Self-publish like Adam Bahner's (aka Tay Zonday) -"Chocolate Rain" YouTube hit that made the 25 year old polisci student a multi-millionaire.

"microfame is its own distinct species of celebrity, one in which both the subject and the "fans" participate directly in the celebrity's creation. Microfame extends beyond a creator's body of work to include a community that leaves comments, publishes reaction videos, sends e-mails, and builds Internet reputations with links."


**Tweet***Tweet**Heard of Twitter - The --hottest thing-- since sliced bread. Twitter is a service where members make small announcements that are updated instantly to all of their followers-

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter is not only satisfying INSTINCTIVE impulses (i.e. the selfishness of being famous, the greed of wanting instant results, the need to speak and be heard, the freedom and equality in being able to take part in a conversation no matter your economic or social status) but Twitter is making each and every person who uses the medium to feel IMPORTANT.



So as I am reading about MicroFame I decided to make a tumblr account - Seems like a sweet website, like the email in from your phone, and even call in to leave an audio message. Unfortunatly I can only follow one friend from my google contacts - I guess its not as hot as Twitter - even though I only had like 8 friends on Twitter. But my FB account is off the hook and I have over 800 'friends'.
Thus the problem with some of these other sites that lack the user network already developed on larger sites like Facebook. To the average non-famous twitter seems like another unessary addition to their web surfing- but its advantage is its asynchronous nature. This is great for celebs who have followers but dont want to follow their fans updates.
FB and Twitter are at war right now (kind of).

FB is introducing new interface changes to allow for more twitter like micro-blogs istead of the original status update - FB attempted to buy out Twitter for $500 million...Evan Williams, Twitter's founder is no twitwad and most likely he has some tweetable ideas up his sleeve -
Next advantage - instant communication - word of mouth/text/ideas/too much info @ speed of super Now. Social movements are using social networking sites to spread their message
technologies to communicate for instant gatherings and to spread info such as the New Zealand Internet Blackout.

Twitter is a pencil. Facebook, on the other hand, is Photoshop.
Battelle's pencil/photoshop metaphor is close to cute - but misses the point - Yes Facebook is prepackaged space in which users can share easily but Twitter is something else. Clive Thompson's sees its true value, @ a tool for reporting your real-time location to friends — is cumulative."

The power of Micro Fame has created a psychological feeling of presence on Twitter.

Clive Thompson's article in the New York Times describes this feeling as ambient intimacy. It is like ESP - Ambient Awareness is "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye" - excessive amounts of information - ideas - words - tweets - micro-celeb wannabes - the speed of now is at the fingertips - I see it all coming quickly - searching faster - live time - and I feel close with those who are also sharing my idea - my tweet - my click right NoW- Users, (perhaps cluckers is a better term - because people are clicking not just using)

The term is catchy - and it brings the human back to the discussion which often lacks human terms - Network - Hyper-Connectivity - Post-Human Subjectivity
Leisa Reichelt prefers ambient intimacy because it combines, "the human ‘ickyness’ of ‘intimacy’ with the distributed and non-directional nature of ‘ambiance’."
Reichelt thinks Tweeter like communication is good for phatic expression, language for sharing social information not necessarily ideas or information. For Reichelt ambient intimacy is the village green of the global village - But she is missing something uncanny at work - Ambient intimacy is better thought of in terms of a pattern of movement than a spatial metaphor. As McLuhan later moved from global village to global theatre - Ambient Intimacy is the movement of the actor who channels the performance - who performs catharsis for their society - It is the drama on stage - and we are all acting in this play. But the intimacy is a relation - it is the feeling between actor and audience - that brings tears to both eyes - more accuratly it may be the actors process of giving up self - to channel the social - to give birth - to the character - that relates - but it is all caught up in the movements.
Kathersis/Catharsis was the aim of Greek tragedy - Brecht critiqued this in the early 19th century - arguing that such a view of drama that did not aim to make the audience get on stage - to think - but only to reaffirm themselves as who they already were (audience) members - only a theatre that moved beyond Aristotilian catharis where the audience gains something from the play. Brecht also disliked the temporal fixation - as if the actor's emotion was in one moment - one time - that stage - one person - Brecht streches Catharsis to only being complete when the audience integrates the emotions into themselves - a goal to be achieved by the use of what Brecht calls the Verfremdungseffekt: the Alienation or Estrangement effect.
Instead of drama Brecht calls for Epic Theatre - He attempts to make the audience see things in a new way through the V effect - where by the audience is not simply blindly emphathisizing with the actor but rather holds a certain distance - but still familiar (Kiralyfalvi 90).


Brecht's method of alienation was confrontational - the actor would refer to themself in the 2nd or 3rd person - saying he did this - she went there -

Similar to status updates or twitter updates :

What are you doing?

Cyborg Deva is Blogging.
The computer is a strange stage for performing the self -

Hmmm--A blogger describes her performances of her breakup online -

" learned this lesson the hard way. I blogged about my breakup that started in February 2007....Blogging was cathartic for me... If I had to blog, he wanted to know, why did I have to blog there and not where my friends were?...Then came Twitter, which, thanks to its ambient intimacy, made staying involved in my friend’s lives a lot easier. Even though we were, in some cases, separated by 2,100+ miles and three time zones, we still had this wonderful sense of connection...what’s expressed publicly and tagged with my name? That’s big. And brave. And Google-able. And cache-able. It’s a huge leap of faith in our friends, our acquaintances, and most of all, in whatever this is between us"

Brenda Laurel writes an interesting article by which she sees human-computer interaction as a theatre - the computer is a performance - what users (audiences care about) is according to her not the tools, graphics, but the feeling of being there - Being in the moment -

Back to the Blogger --------Blogging was a release of emotion - Aristotilian notion of catharasis perhaps - Twitter was not a space to release - not a stage - but a means of communication. A whisper that escapes the lips and takes on a pattern of its own - It is now - instead of there, before, his, hers, etc.

Update-Project Changing

Greetings from St. Marks coffee shop in Denver, CO where I have been spending my day thesising and research-cha-ching for digital ethnography. Work - Work - Work.
Ok - So my project is changing. I am now focusing on 'ambient intimacy' and micro-celebrity. This is an area our project was lacking and something that is necessary to understanding identity online. Anonymous is a response to this micro-celebrity phenomenon caused by facebook etc. Doing this project is a good focus for me - a few years ago when I was a senior at UVM I did a proect for my gender and race in the media class on micro-celebrity. This class was taught by the lovely Helen Morgan-Parmett my former debate coach - and friend.
Click here to check out the project I did back in my groovy UVM days.

More coming soon - In the form of a literature review - ..............

Ambient Intimacy - Deva's Thoughts

Reading Response - Clive Thompson on Ambient Intimacy

This article outlines Facebook's rise from an idea that Zuckerberg had - to what the article deems the de facto public commons:
"Facebook became the de facto public commons — the way students found out what everyone around them was like and what he or she was doing."
Noticing that Facebook required too much browsing to keep updated on friends status Zuckerberg introduced the news feed which at first caused panic. Users were afraid that Facebook would become the big brother of the internet - Zuckerberg was suprised and added a privacy function but suspected that quickly people would realize they liked the news feed feature. And he was correct - after the initial response people found that they enjoyed using the omnipresent info at their fingerprints.
They had felt
""ambient awareness." It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye."

The rise of online networking is a response to social isolation that Robert Putnam identifies in Bowling Alone. As we have become increasingly isolated with the rise of industrialism - post-industrialism - with nuclear familys and laptops etc. the individual begins to see themselves as seperate from their community ---
---"This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting."
At first sites like Twitter and Facebook seem to give an overwhelming amount of trivial information - but this information is actually connecting people. Unlike emails these small updates do not require 100% of your attention and thus you can pursue them - forming loose but important social networks. Knowing that your teacher or your 'friend' across the world is sick - you might extend yourself in a way that has became impossible without knowing this information.
Dunbar an anthropologist is famous for saying that 150 is the top number of contacts humans can have and still know who they are. But this number is increasing - sort of. The number of loose ties is increasing but your closest friends does not necessarily change. This helps people solve problems - I know this personally I needed to get to an appointment and my phone was dead as well as my car. I changed my facebook status to need a ride ASAP - within 30 seconds I was instant messaged by a former member of the debate team and given a ride to my appointment. These connections are making clear the potential of joining with social networks to get things done - while the most successful have always known this - it is becoming undeniable in the internet age. Everyone is only 6 clicks, 6 friends, 6 twitters away from you.
But not all is cheery - while increased loose networks can help solve problems it can also cause a loss of intimate relationships - due to 'parasocial' relationships. We become more involved in fictional TV Show characters or Celebrities than with people in our own lives. We get more tied into our weekly TV shows than our friends - but this is why the internet to me offers exciting possibilities that TV did not. TV was not interactive - it was harder to 'be the media' but now its all a click away - if we engage our creativity we can form networks of our own that encourage creativity and the causes we care about.
So it appears we are not entering an unknown world where we know everyone's business but instead returning to small town lifestyle - you cant hide anything - and that might not be so bad. We are going to have to start caring about people for who they truly are - who we all truly are. A little bad, A little good, A lot of human - The constant updating - CyborgDeva is tying her shoes, doing her homework, walking through a door way is what Thompson refers to as a highly philosophical questioning. I am reminded of practices taught in a book about the 1970's Shaman/Cultural Guru/Lucid Dreamer Carlos Castenada that said one practice to become awake in life - and in dreams was to write down what you thought every time you walked through a door way. This causes a sense of realizing what you are doing - not just walking through life on robotic autopilot but really wondering- what am I doing?
For all the cynics out there I strongly reccomend you read this article - it raised some important questions for me, and as the article implies - perhaps what we are realizing in the increased anonymity of the internet is not a loss of identity but a much stronger self-awareness.