This document discusses self-representation in digital media through three modalities: written, visual, and quantitative. It explores how individuals represent themselves through diaries, selfies, data from fitness trackers and other quantified self-tools. It also examines the templates and norms that influence digital self-representation and how cultural factors shape the tools and formats people use to document their lives.

1. Parmigianino:
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524)
Digitale!
selvrepresentasjoner
Jill Walker Rettberg!
Professor i digital kultur, Universitetet i Bergen!
(og litt om metoder for stordata og
visualisering i tekstforskning)

2. Tre selvrepresenterende modaliteter:
Skriftlig
Billedlig
Kvantitativt
Diary: (CC) Ellen Thompson http://www.flickr.com/photos/eethompson/2142754337
Selfie: (CC) TempusVolut http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrmorodo/11230014075
Nicholas Fultron: The Fultron Annual Report, 2007. http://feltron.com/ar07_01.html

3. Personal media are the
opposite of mass media.
Lüders, Marika (2008)
‘Conceptualizing Personal Media’.
New Media and Society 10 (6):
683-702.

5. Photo: Jeff Hitchcock (“Arbron”) (CC)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arbron/65785552/

6. Benjamin Franklin’s
virtues:Temperance,
Silence, Order,
Resolution, Frugality,
Industry, Sincerity,
Justice, Moderation,
Cleanliness, Chastity,
Tranquility, Humility

7. Hvem kan skape selv-representasjoner?
Hvilke ferdigheter
og utstyr trenges?

8. To photograph is to appropriate
the thing photographed. It means
putting oneself into a certain
relation to the world that feels like
knowledge—and, therefore, like
power.
Susan Sontag: On Photography (1977)
Image (c) Chris Felver http://www.chrisfelver.com/portraits/writers2.html

9. Germaine
Krull:
Self-Portrait
with Cigarette
and Camera
(1925)

10. Look at the
intimacy of the
selfie; the
outstretched
arm embracing
the viewer.
Katie Warfield
(http://www.makingselfiesmakingself.com)

11. The photobooth - the
first mass market
selfie technology

12. The mirror on my phone

13. Filters can be
technological.
Filters can be
cultural.

14. From Damon Winter: Life as a Grunt
http://www.poyi.org/68/17/third_04.php
It’s not the photographer who has
communicated the emotion into the images.
It’s not the pain, the suffering or the horror
that is showing through. It’s the work of an
app designer in Palo Alto who decided that a
nice shallow focus and dark faded border
would bring out the best in the image.
!
– news photographer Nick Stern, qtd by Meryl Alper
Alper, Meryl. "War on Instagram: Framing conflict photojournalism
with mobile photography apps." New Media & Society (2013):
1461444813504265.
Filtered Realities

15. Miles Hochstein: A Documented Life
http://www.documentedlife.com

16. Eleanor Antin: Carving, 1972.

17. Noah Kalina, 2006:

18. http://www.everyday.noahkalina.com/

19. People love it – and
make their own
versions

20. Dailybooth.com

21. Tehching
Hsieh,
1980-1981
Thanks to Mark
Jeffery for telling me
about this. ( )

22. We follow
cultural
templates both
in living and
documenting
our lives.
(CC) Carlos Mendoza
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotodisenocm/385028368/

24. Preformatted baby journals are
examples of normative discursive
strategies that either implicitly or
explicitly structure our agencies.
Van Dijck, José (2007) Mediated
Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford,
CA: Stanford UP.

25. http://corriehaffly.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/do-it-yourself-pregnancy-and-baby-journal/

26. What happens when these
narrative patterns aren’t
hand-crafted but are
automatically generated?
Image: (CC) Terren in Virginia
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8136496@N05/2196367188/

27. Mass cultural production
follows templates set up by the
professional entertainment
industry. Are we even more
firmly colonized by commercial
media today than in the 20th
century?
Manovich, Lev (2009) ‘The Practice of
Everyday (Media) Life: From Mass
Consumption to Mass Cultural
Production.’ Critical Inquiry 35 (2):
319-31.
Image:http://www.bijt.org/wordpress/2005/11/

28. trixietracker.com

29. Sunday at home with the kids.
Monday at work.
Tuesday - walked to work, used
standing desk, more aware of not
just sitting still.
Fitbit
as
diary

30. The Shine Misfit
uses badges to
represent your
activity through the
day.
(the moment the
Shine first
detected
movement - i.e.
was picked up -
becomes read as
my wakeup time)

31. Chronos: Find your
time. See how you are
spending your time
without lifting a
finger. chronos runs in
the background on
your phone and
automatically captures
every moment.

32. “Numerical narratives”
— Roberto Simanowski in his
keynote to Remediating the
Social, Edinburgh 2012.

33. Vi bruker også
litterære former
for å organisere
våre egne
historier

34. 709. Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died.
710. Hard winter and deficient in crops.
711.
712. Flood everywhere.
713.
714. Pippin, mayor of the palace, died.
715.
716.
717.
718. Charles devestated the Saxons with great destruction.
719.
720. Charles fought against the Saxons.
721. Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
722. Great crops.
723.
724.
725. Saracens came for the first time.
The Annals of St Gall

37. The wonderful
thing about digital
media is you can
measure it.
Social media marketing strategist for Findus Fish at
Bergen Chamber of Commerce, Nov 28, 2013

38. She meant Facebook results. But measuring is
also increasingly a way we see ourselves - and
others.

39. How academic positions are decided at the
Humanities Faculty at the University of Bergen
(Excerpt from faculty board meeting papers Nov 2013)

40. We bring up our children to
expect detailed tracking
http://youtub.blogg.no/1253879937_anmerkninger_ordfrern.html

42. Sproutling ankle band
Nestlé formula tracker
Withings baby growth tracker

44. In the early twentieth century, the technology of public schooling was designed to
regulate children to work in factories: children were trained to respond to bells, walk in
lines, and perform repetitive tasks. (..) Web 2.0 technologies function similarly, teaching
their users to be good corporate citizens in the postindustrial, post-union world by
harnessing marketing techniques to boost attention and visibility.
Marwick, Status Update, page 12.

45. “You need to measure
everything, make
adjustments, measure
again.”
Social media marketing strategist for Findus at
Bergen Chamber of Commerce, Nov 28, 2013

46. But what about the things you can’t measure?

47. Measurements don’t give the
whole picture? Then measure
more. Put up more weather
stations. Get more data to create
a more complete picture.
Anders Brenna (@abrenna) to Bergen Chamber of Commerce, 28 Nov 2013.

48. So what should we add?

49. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/former-card-counters-new-start-up-helps-count-productivity/?_r=0

50. The more
automated
the better.

51. Our technologies track us in many ways we don’t even
consider.

52. There are no digital natives but the
devices themselves; no digital
immigrants but the devices too. They
are a diaspora, tentatively reaching out
into the world to understand it and
themselves, and across the network to
find and touch one another. This
mapping is a byproduct, part of the
process by which any of us, separate
and indistinct so long, find a place in
the world.
James Bridle
http://booktwo.org/notebook/where-the-f-k-was-i/
Machine vision - new aesthetics

53. And of course, often we can’t see the data
about us. But others can.

54. My interests according to Google,
Action Figures
Animated Films
Arts & Entertainment
Autos & Vehicles
Babies & Toddlers
Banking
Bicycles & Accessories
Billiards
Building Toys
Business & Industrial
Cats
Celebrities & Entertainment News
Computer & Video Games
Computers & Electronics
Consumer Electronics
Consumer Resources
Custom & Performance Vehicles
Die-cast & Toy Vehicles
Dodge
Interest
Apartments & Residential Rentals
Baby Care & Hygiene
Baby Food & Formula
Chicago
Clip Art & Animated GIFs
Computers & Electronics
Dictionaries & Encyclopedias
Education
Fitness
Games
Mobile Phones
Movies
Music & Audio
News
Office Supplies
Online Video
Parenting
Photo & Image Sharing
Photographic & Digital Arts
based on my searches
based on websites I visit

55. Hva er et kunstverk, om ikke
blikket til et annet menneske?
Ikke over oss, og heller ikke
under oss, men akkurat i
høyde med vårt eget blikk.
Karl Ove Knausgård, Min Kamp 1, 332

57. Nøkkelord (tags)
Kort beskrivelse av verket på engelsk og
originalspråket (norsk)
Disse tekstene diskuterer dette verket
Verket er del av denne forskningssamlingen
Bibliografiske data

58. “distant reading”

59. Tags som beskriver elektronisk litteratur utstilt på
2002 ELO State of the Arts-utstillingen.

60. 2008 ELO Media Arts show

61. ELO 2010 Creative Works

67. it seems evident that various web/net/code
artists are more likely to be accepted into an
academic reification circuit/traditional art
market if they produce works that reflect a
traditional craft-worker positioning. This
"craft" orientation [producing skilled/
practically inclined output, rather than
placing adequate emphasis on the conceptual
or ephemeral aspects of a networked, or
code/software-based, medium] is embraced
and replicated by artists who create finished,
marketable, tangible objects; read: work that
slots nicely into a capitalistic framework
where products/objects are commodified
and hence equated with substantiated worth.
(Breeze 2003)

69. Tags
Abstract in
English and
original
language.
Metadata
References to
creative
works

72. Tags and keywords
1976-2001 2003-2007 2008-2013

73. Export nodes......and edges

74. Diversity:
341 creative works cited.
6%
17%
78%
Cited by only one dissertation
Cited by two dissertations
Cited by three or more dissertations

75. Key people in the American Revolution - an edge
indicates shared membership in a group (Kieran Healy)
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/)

77. One-mode network of the same cluster

80. Electronic literature seen through
Amazon’s API (related books)
Berry, Borra, Helmond, Plantin & Rettberg, forthcoming. “The Data Sprint
Approach: Exploring the Field of Digital Humanities through Amazon’s
Application Programming Interface”
Creative works
Game studies
Digital humanities
Conceptual writing
New media studies

81. Archive - from arkhe
a tension between custodianship and
authority, as Kirschenbaum glosses Derrida
Kirschenbaum,
Matthew.
2013.
“The
.txtual
Condition:
Digital
Humanities,
Born-­‐Digital
Archives,
and
the
Future
Literary”
Digital
Humanities
Quarterly
7(1).
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/
dhq/vol/7/1/000151/000151.html

82. “If a document or a database doesn't
seem to have a point of view, that's
like meeting a person who doesn't
seem to have an accent. The person,
or the document, has the same accent
or point of view that you do, so it's
invisible.” (Ted Nelson 1999)

83. These questions are not new to the digital:
“What comes under theory or under private
correspondence, for example? What comes under system?
under biography or autobiography? under personal or
intellectual anamnesis? In works said to be theoretical,what
is worthy of this name and what is not? Should one rely
on what Freud says about this to classify his works?
Should one for example take him at his word when he
presents his Moses as a"historical novel"? In each of
these cases, the limits, the borders, and the distinctions
have been shaken by an earthquake from which no
classificational concept and no implementation of the
archive can be sheltered. Order is no longer assured.”
Jacques Derrida. 1998. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.
University of Chicago Press. Page 5.

84. ... but they can be particularly insidious in the digital

85. Doing and making vs scholarly reflection...

87. Our ideas of electronic literature
change
1976-2001 2003-2007 2008-2013

88. Text
jilltxt
on Twitter
jilltxt.net Blogging
(Polity Press, 2013)
Read more:
AND CHECK OUT MY BOOK! (IT’S OPEN ACCESS)
Rettberg, Jill Walker. Seeing Ourselves Through
Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable
Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. Forthcoming,
Palgrave, October 2014.