You know, Mel, there are different kinds of elites that can also be persistent dickheads. Just thought I’d put it to you. Lighten up. Experience life your own way. Live and let live so to speak. I dont think this is what Joan was talking about.

Oh, and I liked your lecture on new media and workspaces. Looking forward to next week and blogging

So I started to go, “Why don’t people mind?” and that’s when I considered the culture of, not exactly self-promotion, but self-validation through online image sharing. I didn’t have the room for it, but I also wanted to make a point about how the ‘official’ media are increasingly reliant on the existence of people willing to waive their ethical right to privacy: ie, people who tacitly consent to any media representation and commentary by making their images public. It’s the thin end of the “user-generated content” wedge.

Another issue I’d wanted to cover, but didn’t have space for, was the idea that a photograph is a more personal and intimate kind of public record and thus its misuse is more likely to make someone feel violated than, say, mocking or misrepresenting their writing.

Mel: It would be so hard to quantify that. Perhaps you could cross-reference ownership of 3G phones with MySpace and Flickr membership?!? I just discovered another one of these photo services today, can’t remember what it’s called though.

Mel, just saw your piece which is great. ‘Life caching’ - that’s it. Although these Splendour hipsters are something else too. They don’t strike me as the types that want to be famous or online. They’ve already got the friends, they’re living the life, they show it but they don’t need to publicise it.

I’d love to see some data on how many people actually do *anything* with all the photos they take at these things.

Mel C: I’m interested in the relationship between your emphasis on self-publicity in the “15 minutes of fame” notion, and what I’m interpreting as the wider point you’ve made about the need for new ethical negotiations by various “publics” in the more general circulation of vernacular media (i.e. stuff that’s not necessarily directly self-initiated for the prospect of fame), and way this might interface with more official media.

Here in Hong Kong, we’ve had the Bus Uncle phenomenon, which became the most viewed clip on YouTube in May. The Bus Uncle himself, who did not plan his mass exposure, but whose outrageous behaviour was caught on cameraphone, has since accrued a kind of dubious, sleazy celebrity — he’s been paid by a magazine to obnoxiously visit hostess-bars in China and sexually harass the workers there, and has inspired all sorts of riffs in commercial and non-commercial pop-culture.

The director of the new media arts organisation at which I’m based in HK was recently interviewed as part of a current affairs TV piece on vernacular media and the Bus Uncle. (I’m featured in the background, reading blogs! Ha! I’m famous!) He made the rather sensible point that rather than getting caught up in the caricatured, hierarchical panic about cameraphones (whether “for” or “against” their “appropriate” or “inappropriate” uses), “the public” should be taking these kinds of events as opportunities for developing ways to ethically read. But upon reflection, I’m wondering whether his point is itself a form of displaced crypto-panic — can’t we read it (uncharitably) as a nice way of saying, “we don’t want the proles to be tabloid-reading trashbags or shocked wowsers — we must educate them to be responsible, enlightened and informed citizen-consumers!”? People’s own media production also fades into obscurity here. But setting aside “the people” for a sec: what about magazines sexually harassing women by proxy? How does that fit into the whole “responsible consumption” ethic? Hmmm…

Actually, what annoys me most about Australian festivalgoers is precisely the pretension of soulful “authenticity” that circulates in the history of local crowds’ appreciations of, say, Ben Harper and his ilk. (Sorry, my reference points are rather dated.) Those “chilled”, inoffensive middle class white fans who are “feeling the vibe” are really just looking for a cushion on which to park their own relative comfort and privilege, and can just fuck off and die, I say.

In the meantime, I don’t get your your reading of Benjamin on authenticity. Sure, his perverse thrill at the withering of the aura is only tenable for someone with an investment already in it, but you have to at least take his substantive argument seriously: the ways in which authenticity has been degraded by developments in the mode of production helpfully “brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery — concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense” (Preface, “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility”). I can’t speak for Benjamin’s personal, affective experiences of appreciating musical performances, but surely your longing to bask in the sublime power of an artist’s presence is exactly what he was (at least programmatically) against when he proposed distraction (over concentration) as the most interesting mode of contemporary aesthetic engagement?