By Alec<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

I am a bit skeptical of Adam Frank’s primary argument that \u201c[Emily] Dickinson’s writing \u2026 registers and theorizes experiences of looking conditioned by photographic materials\u201d, if only because I felt that he was was occasionally grasping at straws to make ties between photography and Dickinson’s life and to find references to photography in her writing. That said, I was completely onboard with and intrigued by Frank’s observation that the physical qualities of technologies mold the ways that we use and interpret them. He notes that the daguerrotype, a metallic precursor to the paper-printed photograph, was necessarily reflective and thus \u201callow[ed] the viewer to see his or her own image superimposed over the photographic one\u201d. This quality, he later argues, offered to its viewers a material hybridization of the \u201cCalvinist requirements of self-examination and witnessing with sentimental sincerity and transparency\u201d and thus supplemented the changing concept of \u201cthe self\u201d during this time period.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This notion that a technology’s physical attributes can direct us toward certain values and sentiments is a powerful one, and holds true for just about every object. It makes sense, after all, that the way we hold\/view\/use an object will probably affect how we feel about it. Letter-writing, for example, is made even more personal by envelopes that require the sender’s own saliva for the seal. A thick, printed newspaper suggests a certain standard of journalism not typically associated with blogs or websites. Red sports cars evoke a sense of speed and adventure; station wagons, not so much.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In some cases these physical attributes are an intentional effort on behalf of the designer to evoke a certain emotion or idea in its users. Red paint doesn’t make a car drive any faster, nor does it dictate how a person uses the car \u2013 but the psychological suggestions are probably enough to convince many to drive a bit faster, and for onlookers to make certain judgments about the driver’s lifestyle. In other instances, this effect seems more a product of happenstance and\/or practicality. For example, I would guess that the mirror-like quality of the daguerrotype was more a product of technical limitation than a conscious attempt at creating a print that reflected its user. In any case, I know that this topic of connecting the tangible and material qualities of an object to its immaterial, intangible qualities ones is a relatively small topic in Frank’s essay, but it’s a notion that I’m completely fascinated by, and plan to continue to look out for in other technologies we discuss in this course.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a>  <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alec I am a bit skeptical of Adam Frank’s primary argument that \u201c[Emily] Dickinson’s writing \u2026 registers and theorizes experiences of looking conditioned by photographic materials\u201d, if only because I felt that he was was occasionally grasping at straws to make ties between photography and Dickinson’s life and to find references to photography in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}