Social Software

Posts Tagged ‘#week2’

exersise 2- me in my bathroom

This week I created an Instagram blog called @Duchomp, posting unconventional videos and conceptual photos to breach the basic uses of the application that I commonly see. I didn’t post any (attractive) selfies or food or use any filters. A couple times I use the Sharpen effect. In addition to uncanny iPhotography and Vlogs, the captions featured meme-like yet poetic descriptions of how I was feeling at the time of the photo being (taken and immediately) posted. I only followed about 7 friends to start and made it up to 22 followers. This experiment is a common performance I may test on my own on any given day so the first 7 followers (IRL friends) were not radically surprised with my behavior. It started out as a blog called “Me in my bathroom” as I commonly film most video art projects and shoot photos/ selfies in my Apartment bathroom. Duchomp broke out of the bathroom when I got bored with the concept. I also think toilet blogs have been done already (??).

I chose Instagram because it is probably the easiest way for me to gain followers. It is also the most pleasing form of Text+photo+video to me, I really enjoy sharing all 3 to get my point across. The text captions turned my social media account to my Medium. Without the descriptions of the disruptive untraditional Instagram photos, they were truly vulnerable to the exact moment of the port. They were very important to the medium as an art piece and I hope they were read but I am not sure. It wasn’t meant to be a comical account, it displayed many sentimental moments to me. (but it definitely has some comical posts)… As far as likes and comments go, many of my followers didn’t give more attention to any specific type of post. Many enjoyed the aesthetic. The excersize illustrated that I didn’t receive much attention for any type of emotion and I may just in fact have a stupid following of anti-artist friends…

Here’s the link to Duchomp

duchomp – http://instagram.com/duchomp

and a Webs page with some of my (normal?) other instagram account post contrasted to it

duchomps concept explanation – http://duchomp.webs.com

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Assessment 1: Exercise 2: Over Sharing

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For my glitch social network experiment I decided to take on one of breaches described from socialmediacollective.org. The glitch I decided to do was the oversharer. For 24 hours I was to message someone everything I was doing. For this project to get the best results it had to be someone who I hardly knew or didn’t know at all. Luckily for me I had received a friend request on Friday from this woman from the Philippines who I had never met in my life. I then decided to message her a majority of what I did from 5pm on Friday to around 6pm on Saturday night. I let this woman know everything I was doing.
The results I got from this experiment were just a few replies. When I started to send the messages to her she initially didn’t reply to any of them. After sending five messages she then replied with a thumbs up and said, “ Sorry but I’m not asking what ur doing.” I didn’t reply to that with an answer and I continued to share with her what I was doing at that moment. She didn’t respond to me again until I told he I was brushing my teeth. She then replied by saying “Okay U may brush ur teeth.” I then let her know that I was at my internship, then leaving my internship and then said that I was back home. At that point the 24-hour period was up and I had no intention of messaging her again. Then to my surprise on Sunday morning she replied to me with a Good Morning picture.
I classify this as breaking the space in which messaging on social media is typically pertained to. People normally use the messaging system to talk and get to know someone. It’s designed to be a space for conversation online. If someone were to actually let the others know what they were doing on Facebook all day they would most likely just leave a post and maybe tag some friends if they really wanted them to see it. I used this space as if I was posting. I was taking the actions of what one normally does when sharing some information, but instead I shared almost everything I was doing in a space normally used for conversations.
This exercise has made me realize that there are certain social guidelines we follow when using parts of social networks. A social network like Facebook has many ways of using it. The messaging area of the social network is to get to know someone or keep in touch with those you already talk to on a daily basis. It’s meant for having a conversation privately and not constantly telling the other person what you are doing. I think direct messaging has a type of experience attached to whoever uses it and using it for reasons other than messaging seems weird and unwelcome.
By looking at the first chapter of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, this exercise helped me realize how our social interactions are determined by the ways in which they work. This reading helped me comprehend the usage of our online social experiences, while also thinking about the ways in which these situations can be used in other ways.