readings

Brilliant Portraiture chapter 2

Halle Inside Culture chapter 3

LifeLines: Visualizing Personal Histories

assignment:

1. Read the chapters in Portraiture and Inside Culture. Think about issues of purpose and control in the creation of the representation of a person. The subject, the artist, and the audience each have different goals with which they approach the portrait, and the balance that is achieved among them shapes the portrait. How does this tension play out in the representation of people in an online forum? Who is the audience - and what are their goals? Who are the subjects - and their goals? Who is the artist? How might different system designs change the balance among these entities? For instance, what if participants in the forum could modify their own representations? What if they could modify that of other people?

Looking more specifically about the online world, what are some examples of portraits online. Think beyond the traditional image-of-someone's-head - how can, say, a history of interactions become a portrait? What about a google search? a credit card trail? Read the Lifelines paper as an example of a detailed but non-facial portrait. Think about it in relation to the questions of control and authorship.

2. Write a short discussion of these issues and post it online.

3. Sketch a portrait of someone based on either the history of their interactions in an online discussion or the result of a google search. As the artist, what have you emphasized, altered, etc. in creating this piece? What does it bring out about the subject?

This assignnt is due Tuesday. Please submit your work online.