THE THIRD EYE OF VISUAL CULTURE: WHAT WE SEE WITH SOUND

"Throughout each day, I lose my bearing in the changing light, but at twilight, when the day is fading into a vortex and night approaches, I am reminded of fireflies and fairies and the hidden treasures that lay dormant between the flashes of light they discharge and the genuine, creative magic of believing in what is seen beyond the naked eye."

--Valerie Gaer-Sandler from her book Catching Firelies in the Twilight

In my Visual Research Methods class at grad school we were given the assignment of coming up with a 3-5 minute video essay exploring 'visual culture'. Essentially, we were to write about visual culture in video essay form. Having never attempted a video essay before, I honestly wasn't quite sure where or how to begin and the task seemed daunting at first. As with any good essay, though, I think research is crucial, so I began to read…a lot. Nicholas Mirzoeff's compilation The Visual Culture Reader which we had been reading in class, proved to be an instrumental reference as well as Jean Pierre Geuen's section on sound in his book Film Production Theory. What I found was that even though visual culture could be defined as the images, objects, and set of practices revolving around ways of seeing, the emphasis was on the literality of what was seen with our eyes. Nowhere did I find mention of the images we create within the absence of the visual being included within the scope of 'visual culture'. Thus, began my exploration.

The 'outer visual' as I like to call it, is deeply limiting and exclusionary in defining visual culture. Some would argue (like Nicholas Mirzoeff) that visual culture is not inclusive of the images that we see with our minds, or what I term the 'inner visual'. I would argue that the imagery created within this inner visual, as is produced with sound or touch, is the third eye of visual culture and something that can in no way be excluded if one is to thoroughly examine what visual culture means. This video essay is an important contribution because it provokes a re-examination of what it means to think about, write about and practice the visual. Are those of us without eyesight excluded from defining visual culture simply because we cannot see? Can visual culture exist without the visual? In her essay Studying Visual Culture, Irit Rogoff makes it a point to say that how we see is as important as what we see. I concur only to add that what we see depends on how we see it.

For this self-reflexive docu-style video essay I hoped to interview at least two people with visual impairments to find out how they would define visual culture. Jeff Senge, the Coordinator of Information & Computer Access program at Cal State Fullerton was extremely helpful and a wonderful interview, but since he'd been visually impaired since birth, he suggested I talk with a woman named Valerie Gaer-Sandler and get her perspective. Valerie, I learned, was recently transitioning into the non-seeing world after having been diagnosed with a rare disease. Valerie's interview came at the eleventh hour the night before I was to screen this project. She called to let me know she was flying in from New York and would be in Upland, California of all places visiting family. Ironically, Upland, I explained, was the town right next to Claremont (where I'm studying) and that I would be happy to come to her if I could have an hour of her time. She agreed.

Valerie and her family are truly special people. She welcomed me with open arms and spent longer than the hour I'd requested sharing her very personal experiences with me. She is a writer, a teacher and a musical artist in her own right and extremely insightful. The music track that you hear on the essay is an original composition called "Listen for the Light" which she wrote during her struggle with coming to terms with her blindness.



As a Cultural Studies major with a Media Studies concentration, I am interested in examining the deeper meanings surrounding the production of culture, in particular media culture, but my desire to develop this particular project was also a personal one. In 1996, I visited my ophthalmologist so he could examine a strange blur I had been experiencing in my right eye. Carefully, he told me that what I had been experiencing was the result of a partially detached retina and emergency surgery was necessary or else I would lose my sight in that eye. I remember the surge of confusion and fear that went through me as I was faced with my own permanent blindness. I did have surgery and although I was blind for two weeks after in order to allow my eye to heal, my vision was restored. I never, however, forgot what it was like to step into that other world and how many people live in that world today. In reflecting back, I think it was really then that I began thinking about this idea of the inner visual and what it would mean to explore it. It is my hope that we can understand that there is another dimension that needs to be included within the definitive 'visual cultural' framework.

BUCA DI BEPPO DISTURBS ME - OBJECT TO OBJECTIFY?

Have you ever noticed the pictures hanging on the walls at the Buca di Beppo in Claremont, CA?  Last Friday evening a friend and I opted to endure a ridiculous hour-long wait and make Buca our restaurant of choice (I must have really had a craving for homogenized Italian food and clamorous environments).

Once we were seated, we waited for what seemed like another hour for our food.  This, however, was actually a good thing.  It gave me a little time to observe.  In the midst of my eyes glazing over from low blood sugar, I began to look around to admire the schlocky Italian décor and the splattering of pictures that adorned the walls.  Upon further examination, I could see that most all of them were classic reproductions of female Italian sex symbols scantily clad in some sort of compromising position.  To my left was a picture of a naked woman holding two large watermelon halves in front of her breasts.  To my right was Sophia Loren in all her cleavaged glory while Gina Lollobrigida bent over to reveal hers.  These were just a few.  The walls were covered with similar content.  But, the most disturbing picture (and ironically the largest) was the one blaring right in front of me.  In this picture, a slick, dark-haired man and a voluptuous woman are sharing an enormous plate of spaghetti (paralleling the portion sizes touted at the restaurant, I'm guessing).  She is looking away in disgust as he is putting a piece of spaghetti down the middle of her cleavage.  She clearly is not embracing his act as a sensual one, but seemingly much more violative.  

As I absorbed the atmosphere, I was reminded of the pervasion of female objectification and it disturbed me.  Nowhere could I find any pictures of men in compromising positions being ogled (or groped).  It wasn't like I could conveniently change the channel either, my food had arrived and I was committed.  Sure, I could have gotten up and walked out, but then I would have missed observing others observe these pictures (or their pretend or real oblivion to them for that matter).  I won't be going back, however, unless to interview people on what they think of them.  

I know Buca is supposed to represent an Italian authenticity.  If promoting the prevalence of patriarchal dominion in Italian culture and elsewhere is their objective, then they are effective. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the deluge of these pictures speak volumes about the beholder.

CONFESSIONS OF A VIRGIN BLOGGER

I feel awkward and resistant.  The vortex of information overwhelms and alienates, yet intrigues me when I give in.  In this rapidly advancing digital age of flips, blips, twits and microchips, I am still new and inexperienced.  The fear of not knowing how, where or why to blog has kept me from it for far too long.  What do I say?  How do I say it? Why?  My mother ingrained in me the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all," mantra so my life has consisted of saying nice things but thinking not so nice things. Talking for the sake of talking is pointless and wasted space and saying nice things is a lie unless you really mean them.  My point here is that maybe I've been a little too precious in formulating my words for fear of not formulating them the right way or not making them nice enough.  Classic chick rhetoric.  Ahh…the perfectionist strikes again.  Yuk. 

 I am a young blogger, embarrassed by my lack of both experience and desire to share my voice with the world through a medium that feels so impersonal.  Up until now (and by now, I mean my present state as a fully-fledged grad student knee-deep in the rigors of academia), I've regarded blogging not as a way to share and create a sense of community, but as a self-serving false attempt at superficial connection.  Does anyone truly represent themselves authentically on-line when it is so easy to hit the delete key and create the self you want others to see?  For a very long time I resisted the notion that any type of truly deep, meaningful personal connection could happen by using anything electronic as a substitute.  I want to look into someone's eyes, study their gestures and hear the sounds they make.  No matter what the ads say, I can't reach out and touch someone through a computer screen.  I'm antiquated in my desire, I know, but I don't think I'm crazy for wanting real human connection and feeling deprived by trying to get it from clicking a button.  I don't want to break up with someone via text and I don't want this done to me (she says, reflecting on her recent past).  There should be a 10 Commandments of Technology and this should be one of them.  "Text unto others as you would have text'd unto you…"  Okay, you get my point.

Because of this new technology one may argue that it's easier than ever to communicate that we should embrace the fact that it makes our lives so much simpler.  I don't think it's made our lives simpler (at least mine anyway), just faster.  The human connection that once existed is becoming void and replaced with the pretense of human-to-human interaction.  Ludite?  Perhaps.  

This blogger's not a virgin anymore.