The vernacular of photobombing The aesthetics of transgression

This image taken in Wales in c.1853 is possibly the earliest example of a photobomb. By Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales from Wales/Cymru - Sally and Mrs Reed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38812616

The banal imaging of ourselves and our environments has led to new aesthetic modes where the conventions of imaging, subject–object relationships and what is pleasurable or popular often draw on the ludic, the unexpected or the surprise element. One such image genre is photobombing, where a transgressive object or entity within a conventional image setting subverts it, adding popular appeal through its ability to reconfigure its aesthetic conventions, opening it up for public pleasure and consumption and inscribing it with a possibility of going viral. Photobombing as an image genre online reflects our aesthetic modes and the age of distraction, where the unexpected remains a mode of ocular appeal underscoring the convergence of popular culture and the fluidity of Web 2.0’s convergence architecture. As such, people’s aesthetic modes of the popular can be invented, renewed and subverted with new formats. The phenomenon of photobombing equally affirms the spectacular as a liminal site where pleasure is experienced with the breaking down of norms and the conjoining of a communal gaze through the aesthetics of transgression.

Convergence, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517743666

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856517743666?journalCode=cona

Revisiting Rousseau’s amour propre: Self-love and digital living

 Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication
Volume 8 Number 1, doi: 10.1386/ejpc.8.1.115_1




Abstract; 

By Maurice Leloir - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3913/3913-h/3913-h.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8745969

The digital culture of the Internet and the emergence of social networking sites online have made identity construction a salient aspect of this economy. It also signifies a ‘narcissistic turn’ with increasing emphasis on self-construction and self-love from social profiles, self-representations, self-search to ‘selfies’. The construction of ‘self’ online is mediated through the gaze of the others, this being an important validation in the construction of self. By drawing on Rousseau’s ‘amour propre’ the article examines how this concept is relevant in today’s digital culture and self narration online through everyday communication including imaging, uploading, tagging and ‘liking’ making others’ validation of us an important element of self-esteem. Rousseau’s notion of self-love has both constructive and destructive configurations and the article argues that these can take different manifestations online in today’scontemporary digital culture.