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Can we locate punctum in a live performance? Above&Beyond, a UK trance trio, bet the cathartic climax of their concert tour on it. This post considers how the act inventively deploys the meme form to incite an emotional response in the context of performance. But first – Roland Barthes’ punctum refers to the element of … Continue reading
In Villi’s 2014 chapter Distance as the New Punctum, he points out the influence of digital networks, highlighting the new meaning of time and distance. He brings us back to Barthes’ “punctum” and extends his theory by suggesting distance as the new punctum. (48) Villi notes Barthes work Rhetoric of the Image which I will … Continue reading
In ‘The (Im)mobile Life of Digital Photographs: the Case of Tourist Photography”, Jonas Larsen examines how digital cameras and digital methods of dissemination have radically altered photo-tourism. One of the central changes affected by this technologically motivated increase in speed is the photographer’s connection to his or her photographs. Unlike the delayed gratification offered by the development … Continue reading
Attempting to establish – while acknowledging the paradox of – an eidetic science of (P)hotography, Barthes recounts an “ontological desire” that informs his critical framework (3, my emphasis). That is to say, Barthes introduces affect into structural modes of analysis. Camera Lucida reconciles historical, philosophical criticism with a subjective, experiential phenomenology. Barthes details the difficulty … Continue reading
On the nature of the studium: In his subjective examination of multiple photographs, Barthes describes the duality created by the “co-presence” of the studium and the punctum. The studium is coded, and can be understood as the rhetorical meaning of the photograph. On the nature of the punctum The punctum is a sudden ‘prick’ when … 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 