My New Love: WeHeartIt

I blogged previously about visual consumption and my love affair with Tumblr (www.tumblr.com). Well, this summer I have a new love – WeHeartIt (weheartit.com). I love the wide variety of images that Tumblr brings directly to my laptop and it has been fun ‘curating’ my own Tumblr feed around various themes. But although Tumblr provides an ‘archive’ feature, it doesn’t really let me sort and store images the way I want to. Enter WeHeartIt.

I am definitely *not* the typical WeHeartIt community member – I might be female but it’s been quite a while since I could put a check mark beside the 17 to 25 years age bracket. I’m not into nail art or One Direction. But I do love having the capability that WeHeartIt offers to sort and store images in ‘collections’ of my own making. And it is really amazing how supportive the community is – in less than 2 months I have almost 1200 followers who regularly ‘heart’ the images I post to my ‘canvas’ (WeHeartIt talk for my ‘news feed’).

Clicking back through some of my image collections has reminded me of how powerful images can be. Although they are visual in nature, and thus only really perceived via one human sense, they can trigger scent memory. Can you smell the cinnamon and raisins in the apple crisp?

How about the scent of leaves that have fallen in autumn? As I'm writing this, 483 people have already hearted this image - there are lots of autumn lovers out there!

Images can also make us recall feeling warm or cold. Check out the difference between the images below:

They are both just photographic images of doors, but the first one makes me feel cold, while the second one makes me think of warm, sunny days. I find it strange that the 'cold' image has been hearted 32 times, while the warm image has only been hearted twice. Obviously there is a lot more going on when people view images than just the sense of 'feeling good' - an important reminder for all marketers.

Concordia University Anthropology professor David Howes (2005, p. 286), building on the insights of Oliver Wendell Holmes, argues that the photographic reproduction of items in our everyday world is a act of ‘active appropriation’ and further, that the photographic image can actually become more powerful and influential than the object itself. I think the popularity of sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and WeHeartIt is proof of Dr. Howes’s argument. And from a consumer behaviour perspective, these are also sites of productive consumption. As I browse images posted by others, I can 'heart' or favorite them and make them part of my own canvas, collect them according to themes that mean something to me all the while making them available for consumption and enjoyment by others.

Sources:

Howes, David. 2005. "Hyperesthesia, or, The Sensual Logic of Late Capitalism,." In Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, ed. David Howes, 281-303. Oxford and New York: Berg.

A curated life?

It's Saturday morning. The weekend, and so I've decided that despite the number of emails eagerly awaiting my attention I'm going to take a couple of hours just for me. Usually, I'd spend this morning reading the Saturday newspapers in front of the fireplace with a good, strong cup of coffee. But today I'm indulging in my latest obsession instead, curating my Tumblr blog.

Source: @EGBUDIWE

Tumblr is a god send for creative but decidedly non-artistic people like me. So much content to choose from, no need to be able to create it yourself. Just search and ye shall find. Oh, you'll find lots of stuff not suitable for family viewing as well. But in among the pornographic sites are many, many sites dedicated to beautiful images. For a visual junkie, it's a feast, perhaps even an overdose. Time becomes immaterial, to do lists vanish, all that matters is the next amazing image. Fashion, food, places I have visited and others on my 'someday' list, wine, books, music, art, romantic images of couples in love, all the things that constitute a 'good' life. You can find them on Tumblr.

At some point, actually quite early in the visual consumption feast, a desire to save the images for re-consumption later occurs. And so a blog is born. Naming is an issue; not due to lack of imagination, but because someone else got there first, so compromises have to be made. The software isn't exactly user friendly, but through persistence I trick it into doing what I want. And what is it I want? I want not only to horde images I find beautiful, memorable or thought-provoking. I want to display, to organize, to curate them into a whole. I want the mood to shift subtly, the colours to blend and merge, a narrative to emerge. Having satisfied that desire, I try inserting images which mark a sudden shift in direction through colour or subject matter - pointers to the viewer that things are about to change.

And in doing so, I realize that I am anticipating a viewer other than myself.

Source: http://vestidoslindosatelier.tumblr.com/

I am engaging in an act of consumption and production not only for my own pleasure but also for the pleasure of some unnamed other. When I think of that other, I imagine it being my closest girlfriend, who I anticipate would love the same images as I do. She may not have the same Sam Elliott fixation or love of Charles Bukowski's poetry that I do, but she would laugh gently and tell me it's "part of my charm." Beyond that, it gets kind of scary. There's a sense that you can broadcast to the world and yet remain anonymous, should you choose to do so, when you set up your Tumblr account. It's like you're curating an exhibition that will never open its doors to the public. It remains hidden, to be found only by chance or accident.

Why scary? Because curated sites like Tumblr, or the photo albums on your Facebook page, are projective devices. They allow us to say something without using words, to tell others what things really matter to us. Our subjective response to the world around us is on display for others to read and interpret.

This is one of the great changes social media has brought about. No longer are our photo albums, scrapbooks and journals intensely private things. They are now on display, and along with them our thoughts, passions and our curatorial skills. Likes, hearts, reblogs, reposts and even the odd comment tell us how well we are doing. Curating is no longer the prerogative of the highly educated and skilled; anyone can curate. And anyone can comment on the skills of the curator.

This is the argument David Balzar makes in his new book, "Curationism: How curating took over the art world and everything else." (Follow this link for an excerpt).  It's also the topic of Alexandra Molotkow's column in today's Globe and Mail. Both authors raise thought-provoking questions about the nature of consumption in everyday life. Are you 'curating' when you decide what to wear out into the world today? Do you simply place books on a shelf or stuff your clothes into whatever available space there is, or do you curate a display that says something about you and about your relationship to these objects?

Have we all become curators?

Visual Consumption?

For some time now I've been intrigued by the idea that we can consume not only with our mouths, but also with our eyes. As researcher Jonathan Schroeder (2002, p. 3) argues, "We live in a visual information culture. In no other time in history has there been such an explosion of visual images. And yet we seem to pay little attention to them, we do not always 'understand' them, and most of us are largely unaware of the power they have in our lives, in our society, and how they function to provide most of our information about the world."

With this concept of visual consumption for inspiration, I decided to conduct a simple experiment for this week's blog post. What are the iconic images of Ottawa? If strangers wanted to learn more about our city, what would they learn? I entered the phrase 'iconic images of Ottawa' into a Google search, clicked the 'images' tab and sat back to see what would happen.

The first image was a pretty traditional one featuring tulips and the the back of the Parliament buildings, which technically means it's an image taken from Gatineau, right? It's a perspective of Ottawa taken from beyond the technical city limits. Or, to push the point a little further, from 'outside.' The second image featured the War Memorial and the Chateau Laurier hotel. This is also somewhat to be expected, except that it made me wonder if perhaps it's appearance was linked to the fact that we aren't all that far away from Remembrance Day on November 11th. Could some Ottawa tourist promotions be using this image?

The third image I didn't associate with Ottawa at all - a rather nondescript looking apartment tower that could be located anywhere in the world. The fourth showed the new Convention Centre, fair enough, and the fifth? A glass of beer. Really? That's an iconic image of Ottawa? So I scrolled quickly through the first 20 or so images and recognized one of the Banff Springs Hotel. On the other side of the country. Yo, Google! What's up with that algorithm?

What else did I find? Lots of images of the Peace Tower, of course. And one of Maman, Louise Bourgeois' truly iconic sculpture in front of the National Art Gallery. That thing really creeps me out. I have yet to go within 15 feet of it, much less stand under it for the now 'mandatory' iconic tourist photo. Just looking at it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Yikes! Look at the size of that thing.

 

I noticed that almost all of the images were taken during daylight, even though the Parliament buildings look beautiful when lit with spotlights at night. What does this say about our city? Could that old saying about Ottawa really be true? Do we roll up the sidewalks at 10 p.m.?

What did I notice was missing? Well, for starters there were no images of the Central Experimental Farm. Ottawa is my hometown and I've grown up visiting and travelling through the Farm. I'm never so busy that I can't take a relaxing drive through the lane of trees with their branches forming a canopy over the road. How could it not be iconic of Ottawa? 

There were also no images of the Museum of Nature. The 'sinking museum' as we used to call it, after a rumour circulated that it was built on quick sand and was gradually, year by year, sinking. As kids that was part of the fascination, would it be gone by the next time we visited? As you can see, it is still very much here. In fact, it has a beautiful new addition. 

Notice anything else missing? Almost all of the images were taken during the summer! Is this some kind of plot to attract tourists, or are we as a group just putting our best face forward? Where's the snow? What about our so-called World's Longest Outdoor Skating Rink?? Just to even the score, I found a couple of those images to share with you. 

Ah yes, mushy snow and skating on the Canal. That's Ottawa!

But notice something else about my choice of iconic images? Finally, there are people in Ottawa! I guess we truly are a Northern people - we only come out in winter. Or at least that's what you might think if you relied on the images in Google for your information. 


Is there something to this idea of visual consumption? What do you think? If the idea intrigues you, check out Schroeder's book. It's in our library!

And, now, to leave you with one of my favorite iconic images of Ottawa. That's right people, it's all about the food! And here, in Canada, we queue up to eat the tails of our iconic national animal...

Sources:

Schroeder, Jonathan E. (2002), Visual Consumption. London and New York: Routledge.