Multiplicity in photographs.

When speaking in the lecture about things changing within themselves and online viruses, the article

Image of Syrian boy in desert triggers sympathy – and then a backlash

which appeared in the Guardian on the 19th of February 2014 came to my mind. 

This image was twitted and many people thought the child was found by himself in an ocean of nothingness. The picture went viral on many social media, especially due to the bad situation in Syria. From this picture, it was understood the child was walking by himself from Syria to Jordan. Many people were chocked and wanted to find out more about the child and his family. It came out later that he was just separated from a much bigger group of refugees which was just in front of him, just not in the shot.

The composition of the photograph gave it another dimension to the actual situation. With another background, one in which the child is following many people, including his parents, the picture has a very different meaning. This to me illustrates perfectly the multiplicity Gilles Deleuze talks about. The second picture, where the child is at the back of a crowd, also went viral since it related to the first one. as Deleuze explains, things always change through time, and the new formations are ongoing processes. This picture also relates to Munster's idea that the more things, such as photographs, can affect people, the more likely they are to go viral. This photograph touched many people who sympathised with the child, and it has a lot of negative emotion to it. As a result it became viral, and the second photograph became viral as a resolution of the first one. Mixing this idea to Deleuze's the second photograph represents something as one and something different when put together with the first one. 

Image 1:

Malik, S & Sherwood, S 2014, Here 4 year old Marwan, who was temporarily separated from his family..., photograph taken by Andrew Harper, The Gardian, accessed 19 May 2014, 

<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/18/image-syrian-boy-desert-un-refugees-tweet>.

Image 2:

Malik, S & Sherwood, S 2014,This second image shows that the boy was straggling behind a larger group of refugees, photograph taken by Andrew Harper, The Gardian, accessed 19 May 2014, 

<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/18/image-syrian-boy-desert-un-refugees-tweet>.

How the Media Affect us

This extract of Pretty Woman reminded me of the affect art, just like other forms of media, can have on people. I could not find the extract in English, but the key is when Richard Gere says:

"People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic.

                They either love it or they hate it.

                If they love it, they will always love it.

                If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it,

                but it will never become part of their soul."

I find this to be quite relevant to how we are affected by media. Adding on to that, Richard Grusin's idea of "premediation", or how the media knows how it will affect us, plays a great role. Although an advertising can have multiple affects on different people, the designers behind an ad can have a good idea of how it will generally be received. To take the Pretty Woman example, people would be affected in either ways: love it or learn to appreciate it. We can add Anna Gibbs's concept of "affect contagion". Here, Julia Roberts's emotions also affect Richard Gere.

Lifestyle with Micropolitics.

I find Andrew Murphie's concept of micropolitics very interesting. With the Internet, the globalisation and linearisation of society, top down traditional politics are forced to change. The old hierarchical pyramid model promotes the power of an individual over a group, which is becoming more and more obsolete. Today's world is about connection, or as Castells puts it, networks. We are all realising more and more that a stronger power would come for a network of people interconnected working side by side. Communities are encouraged by new communication methods allowed by new technologies. https://www.couchsurfing.org/ is an example of a new communities of travelers, who can easily find each other through a website. 

As Andrew Murphie explained it, micropolitics promote sharing, a society of double benefits where an exchange equally gives to both (or more) parties. By creating more community networks, we are encouraged to think of new ways to communicate. In addition, it is now easy to generate niche communities who wouldn't have been able to reach each other before. Micropolitics today is just an overview of how the world will communicate tomorrow, in a more linear or networked manner, where everyone has a same weight and a same power.