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In his 1942 treatise The Myth of Sisyphus, noted French philosopher Albert Camus outlines his notion of the absurd, a concept which he would later develop most forcefully in his 1951 essay The Rebel. The absurd arises when man uses reason to understand an otherwise unreasonable world (unreasonable in that it cannot be reduced to a … Continue reading
In 2013, Sarah Elizabeth Meyler filmed people at a club in Dublin under the pretense she was taking their photos instead. The resulting two minute video is entirely comprised of titivating and facial embellishments and the result, underscored by a jarring piano sonata, seems to derogate rather than celebrate this self-conscious tendency to preen for a camera. Their behaviour in the video–the strange … Continue reading
Tinder is an algorithm-based mobile dating application designed to match users based on the notion of first impressions. Drawing on key concepts from Smith and Watson’s “Virtually Me”, some of the behaviors of Tinder users can be examined. Tinder’s audience consists of singles that use mobile phones and Facebook (the two requirements for making an … Continue reading
In a recent profile, Paper Magazine writes that “social media has created a new kind of fame and Kim Kardashian is its paragon.” Dubbed by Paper as the “High Priestess of Instagram,” Kardashian celebrated 27 million followers yesterday with a selfie of her butt. She now has the highest number of followers on the site … Continue reading
Roland Barthes discusses the myth of the natural sign and its relation to photographs; his text “Rhetoric of the Image” examines exactly the manner in which meaning is able to manifest in the image. However, where Barthes mounts an analysis of an advertisement consisting of images and text, I will examine the trend of imposing … Continue reading
Rhetoric of the Digital Image 