PARALLEL PROGRESSION ZINE - IDEAS

Today I sat down with Sam to talk about the direction of the zine, we spoke about how he wanted the zine to look, we also spoke about the tone of voice that will be portrayed through the zine and how this all relates to his photographs. As this essay is rather confusing and goes into a lot of detail on many levels Sam helped to make it a bit simpler for me to understand. Below are the notes are taken from our meeting:

• Contemporary society 
• Technological advancements
• Post-Modern society 
• Raise awareness of visual reality 
• Information - Key (reproduction) 
• Fake reality 
• Paradox of reality 
• Unconventional (Size of book or images on pages) 
• Unfinished style (WIP) 
• Full bleed images (punching someone in the face) 
• Fold out / poster

Essay Background

Sam travelled to metropolitan locations across the United Kingdom to articulate a social commentary on the hoarding design to encapsulate the perpetuated static utopian hoarding designs; presenting the capitalist construction – the capitalist dream to symbolise the photographs position within a modern society of mediated imagery. As a reflection of reality, the preconceptions of the capitalist construction depicted on the hoarding designs naturally employ empirical interpretations through the reproduction of the image, formulating an overall commentary on the colossal amounts of information disseminated within a modern society dominated by capital production, neglecting the individual indexical representations, once presented within the modern spectacle of perception. 

Introduction: 

This essay is an exploration of the photograph and its methods of deception within a modern society. In order to understand this, it is important to question how technological evolution has democratised photography and formulated a greater dependency and desire to represent reality; eventuating in a society of mediated imagery. Also, in order to comprehend this further, there will be an examination into how a society of mediated imagery has confined and transformed the verisimilitude of the photograph to become a deceptive mechanism for capital production.

In this essay, there will be a critical analysis into how postmodernism and technological evolution has expanded the accessibility of the medium, enabling it to become engraved within normal day-to-day life; as a commodity and an essential product. Although, as the photographic medium has become more and more democratised – confining it to a predominant relation with reality – it has formulated a collective neighbourhood of mediated imagery; consumed and disseminated into a perpetuated un-geographical spectacle. In Plato’s Cave Allegory, Plato introduced the concept of empirical knowledge, which I will adapt and utilise to construct a contemporary critique of the photograph’s influence in a modern society. The relevance of Guy Debord’s 1967 concept of the spectacle ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ will be examined to adapt into a contemporary context in order to analyse the mass dissemination of information in comparison to the modern polarized spectacle. In addition, there will be an examination into the algorithmic relations of empirical knowledge and the psychological deception of social media echo-chambers; through a range of fake news case studies analysing the significant social, political, and cultural ramifications.

Furthermore, this essay will utilise the proposed theories, concepts and case studies of situations where empirical knowledge has dominated factual information to generate a contemporary examination into how social-media echo-chambers and fake news articles assisted Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. Presidential Election success.

Selection of images