The discourse around recontextualization
This week's readings were at first glance an odd set of texts to read in succession: there seems to be very little commonality between the verbiage and the age of the Barthes essay and the web blogs around memes and their commercialization. However, as far as the connection between subject matter goes, I think it is equally simple to draw very natural links between them:
I accidentally became a meme: In this video series by Buzzfeed, people behind viral memes are invited to share the stories of their lives before and after their images or videos were uploaded to the internet and became popular as memes. In the particular video shared, Drew Scanlon mentions two specific things which I was drawn to. First, he talks about the delta of time between the actual work being created (when the original video of his reaction was filmed) and when the video finally reached its 'critical mass' on the internet. Next, he also mentions that at one point the popularity of the meme "...felt out of my control". In the context of The Death of The Author, the creator of the video is akin to the author. Just like the author has very little control over the contextualization and appropriation of their work by the readers, Drew has no control over how a global online audience is choosing to repurpose his reaction and amalgamate it with their own content. Similarly, there is no end to the relevance of the creation: it simply has its highs and lows.
Can't Help Myself: In this blog post, the author talks about the her feelings about a post her friend shared, which itself was an observation of the robotic art installation in the Guggenheim titled 'Can't Help Myself'. Objectively, this robot arm performs specific movements and clears up liquid that is spreading around it using sensors. The art installation was exhibited more than once, and recently gained a lot of traction on social media, especially Instagram and TikTok. Interestingly enough, the artists themselves have very different description about their initial ideas, but viewers have projected a human character onto the machine, creating their own powerful story. This blogpost is an excellent timeline documenting how a creation can slowly but surely divorce itself from the creator and exist solely as a figment of the audience's experience.
