How do we place these two within the history of art?
How are the goals of *chan-style Photoshopping like/unlike collage? Does Dali's L.H.O.O.Q. anticipate Photoshopping, or are they both derived from the same psychological source?
What about the transient nature of image boards? Are those who ceaselessly save every image appearing on the boards missing the point? And can anyone think of a true historical antecedent? Because I can't think of any, too busy masturbating to My Little Pony.
This is an awesome topic and it needs a whole lot more replies, but I can find nothing to say!
>How are the goals of *chan-style Photoshopping like/unlike collage?
>Are those who ceaselessly save every image appearing on the boards missing the point?
Ok, I figured something out. The way that *chan "memes" are portrayed and perpetuated is really similar to the early Christian tradition of "icons."
(Disclaimer: I haven't looked into meme stuff so much. So when I refer to meme, I mean only the kind appearing on the *chans, and only the pictoral kind.)
Icons were small two-dimensional portraits of holy figures like Mary, Jesus, and different apostles and saints. Once a portrait-type was conceived, it would be REPEATED, other artists making copies of the original, with only slight changes throughout the centuries.
You can see the similarity: *chan memes originate with one pictorial idea, which is then cut-and-pasted over and over again into different situations, with the main idea remaining the same. I'm thinking of the meme where you have the basic picture of Pedobear, or Happy Negro, or the comic with the excited and unexcited guys: types that people who frequent *chans recognize instantly upon seeing; I guess ascii pictures also fall into this category. (There also seems to be another category of *chan meme, which I really don't feel like defining, or even know how to define, but OS-tans and the pip-pip dog are examples of this.)
However, iconic depictions of holy figures were seen as coming directly from God, which is supposedly why artists were loath to change them. We are reluctant to change meme imagery even now--there seems to be something psychologically in common with our reluctance and that of the early Christian artists.
Also, the iconic figures that were most successful in perpetuating themselves were those that aided the meditation of a person holding the icon in their hands, staring at the image. So iconic figural qualities included full-frontality, a focus of the figure on the viewer, etc... anything that would draw the viewer into the picture.
So nowadays, the memes that are perpetuated for long periods of time probably have certain qualities in common with each other. What are these qualities?
I'm done haha
>There also seems to be another category of *chan meme, which I really don't feel like defining, or even know how to define, but OS-tans and the pip-pip dog are examples of this.
>We are reluctant to change meme imagery even now
>So nowadays, the memes that are perpetuated for long periods of time probably have certain qualities in common with each other. What are these qualities?
>And can anyone think of a true historical antecedent?
One thing that comes to mind now is those blackboards you sometimes see in train station scenes. I've heard they're for public use, to leave messages for others. But that's probably more related to anonymous message boards in general than image boards.
>And can anyone think of a true historical antecedent?
Actually, one just sprung to mind when i was reading this. When I was in school (many years ago) we used old fashioned wooden desks. It was common practice to write grafitti etc on them, but since it was often the same people sitting at any particular desk (we would only be in one classroom/desk for 1hr or so at a time) you would often get things like conversations, join authored poems, strange doodles etc. You could literally spend hours tracing the pouring over the desks in a classroom finding intersting 'posts' as it were..
The desks in my school were more like News4VIP.
Damn, if only I were at UC Santa Cruz or somewhere more flaky than where I am, I'd have an MA thesis topic.
;p
>>8
You could probably also say that about bathroom or outdoor graffiti. On a somewhat related note, there's been a rash of people tagging "Val Kilmer" around my city. It became so well known others hopped on the bandwagon or tried to start their own running gags, or even scrawled pithy comments on the walls deriding the whole idea. Reminds me of a failed forced meme in /b.
I would place them along the lines of the defamatory pamphlets that rose to great circulation during reformation/restoration. They often involved wood-cuts of well-known portraits, with the faces exchanged with the likenesses of animals (Jean Calvin as a Pig, the Pope as a Wolf) and often gave way to swathes of humorous permutations, which often became popular in-jokes with locals. Furthermore, they were equally easy (and shoddy) to produce and spread quite quickly.
btw, "*chan" within a 1000 word range of "art" is a pretty disturbing thing.
>>13
I think you'll find "art" on the whole is rather permissive. Need proof of how simple or "pop" art can get? Go look on the street or listen to some music.
That ain't art, that's mass commercialism masking itself with a lot of ironic but meaningless label interchanging.
>>15
That's exactly my point. That's what passes for "art" nowadays.
Ever heard of Andy Warhol? I won't get started on Pop Art. Any other takers?
No point. It's social commentary, pretty self explanatory.
"And airline food! WHAT IS THE DEAL!?"
yes, there was prior art using an "imagechat" for conversational art.
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>>21
Man, I thought that was a troll, until I noticed the urls.