This thesis is focusing on a visual culture within Instagram where women display traditional western femininity through aesthetically pleasing images of homes and interiors. When observing this culture from a critical perspective, questions on normativity, gender and home representation together with the complexity of personal narratives comes up. In an attempt to begin understanding the mechanisms and pleasures behind the use of Instagram this way, a small number of user interviews were made and analyzed towards representation, identity and feminist theory, and ideas around roles of photography, femininity, digital communities and material culture. As a result of the study it could be claimed that images of interiors and homes are used as frameworks for a feminine culture where participants are creating a safe space in relation to other social network cultures. The space is used for remembering moments, being creative, developing skills and engaging in undisturbed social practice. Photography, interior design and the materiality of the home can also be seen as visual tools used to reflect on and create identities, at the same time as they are used for social positioning. Though faced with contradicting feelings, frustration about superficiality and concerns around privacy, it can be concluded that this refined practice of taking and sharing images, engaging socially and being creative is pleasurable enough for the users not to stop participating.

Naryškin Romanas, Socialinis portretas Lietuvos fotografijoje, fotografijų ciklas „Nebūtini“: Audiovizualinio meno studijų bakalauro baigiamasis darbas / vadovas A. Uogintas; Šiaulių Universitetas, Menų fakultetas, Dailės katedra. Šiauliai, 2014 m. 43 p. Bakalauro darbe nagrinėjamas socialinis portretas fotografijoje pirmiausiai aptariant dokumentinę, tuomet – socialinę dokumentinę fotografiją, kalbama apie jos ištakas Lietuvoje remiantis Margaritos Matulytės teorine ţiūra. Kūrybiniam darbui išskiriama konkreti socialinės atskirties grupė – benamiai-elgetos, apibrėţiama benamystė kaip socialinė problema, trumpai apţvelgiama jos raida. Pirmame skyriuje apibrėţiama dokumentinė ir socialinė dokumentinė fotografija. Šių dviejų teorinių apybraiţų pagalba yra apibrėţiama socialinio portreto sąvoka, kadangi socialinis portretas iš esmės yra neatskiriama socialinės dokumentinės, o todėl ir dokumentinės fotografijos dalis. Išskiriami socialinio portreto bruoţai remiantis ankstyvaisiais socialinės dokumentinės fotografijos kūrėjų darbais. Antrame skyriuje aptariamas socialinis portretas pasirinkto socialinės dokumentinės fotografijos atstovo, Antano Sutkaus, kūryboje. Nagrinėjamas šio autoriaus portretų psichologiškumas bei braiţas, taip pat tokį braiţą įtakoję veiksniai, paminėti pirmąjame skyriuje. Trečiame skyriuje kalbama apie kūrybinį darba, fotografijų serija „Nebūtini“. Pirmiausiai aptariamos ir pagrįstai sugretinamos benamio ir elgetos sąvokos šio darbo kontekste, tuomet... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Naryškin Romanas, Social portrait in Lithuanian photography, photographic series „The Unnecessary“. Closing Bachelor„s work of multimedia art studies / lecturer A. Uogintas; Šiauliai University, Faculty of Arts, Art Department. Šiauliai 2014, 43 pages. In this Bachelor„s work the author is looking into social portrait photography by first of all discussing documentary photography, and then social-documentary photography as social portraiture is an inseparable part of these two similar genres. Further on the origins of social documentary photography is discussed based on M. Matulytė„s theoretical work on the subject. For the creative part of the work, a specific group of social isolation is chosen (homeless people) and its relevance as that of a social problem is explained with a short overview of the development of the said social problem. The first part touches the suject of both documentary and social documentary photography as a context for the theory on social portraiture, definition of which is then based on the mentioned genres. The similarities and differences between the genres are pointed out. The second part contains an overview of social-psichological portraiture in the works of Antanas Sutkus with detailed analysis of the psichological aspect of his portraits as well as general features peviously described in the social portrait definition. The third part is dedicated to the creative project of the Bachelor„s work. Choice of subject is explained through short... [to full text]

GAYME is a transmedia story-telling world that I have created to conceptually explore the dynamics of queering game design through the development of varying game prototypes. The final iteration of GAYME is @deadquarewalking'. It is a documentary game and a performance art installation that documents a carless, gay/queer/quare man's journey on Halloween to get to and from one of Orlando's most well-known gay clubs - the Parliament House Resort. "The art of cruising" city streets to seek out queer/quare companionship particularly amongst gay, male culture(s) is well-documented in densely, populated cities like New York, San Francisco and London, but not so much in car-centric, urban environments like Orlando that are less oriented towards pedestrians. Cruising has been and continues to be risky even in pedestrian-friendly cities but in Orlando cruising takes on a whole other dimension of danger. In 2011-2012, The Advocate magazine named Orlando one of the gayest cities in America (Breen, 2012). Transportation for America (2011) also named the Orlando metropolitan region the most dangerous city in the country for pedestrians. Living in Orlando without a car can be deadly as well as a significant barrier to connecting with other people, especially queer/quare people, because of Orlando's car-centric design. In Orlando, cars are sexy. At the same time, the increasing prevalence in gay, male culture(s) of geo-social, mobile phone applications using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and location aware services, such as Grindr (Grindr, LLC., 2009) and even FourSquare (Crowley and Selvadurai, 2009) and Instagram (Systrom and Krieger, 2010), is shifting the way gay/queer/quare Orlandoans co-create social and sexual networks both online and offline. Urban and sub-urban landscapes have transformed into hybrid "techno-scapes" overlaying "the electronic, the emotional and the social with the geographic and the physical" (Hjorth, 2011). With or without a car, gay men can still geo-socially cruise Orlando's car-centric, street life with mobile devices. As such emerging media has become more pervasive, it has created new opportunities to quarely visualize Orlando's "technoscape" through phone photography and hashtag metadata while also blurring lines between the artist and the curator, the player and the game designer. This project particularly has evolved to employ game design as an exhibition tool for the visualization of geo-social photography through hashtag play. Using hashtags as a game mechanic generates metadata that potentially identifies patterns of play and "ways of seeing" across player experiences as they attempt to make meaning of the images they encounter in the game. @deadquarewalking also demonstrates the potential of game design and geo-social, photo-sharing applications to illuminate new ways of documenting and witnessing the urban landscapes that we both collectively and uniquely inhabit. 'In Irish culture, "quare" can mean "very" or "extremely" or it can be a spelling of the rural or Southern pronunciation of the word "queer." Living in the American Southeast, I personally relate more to the term "quare" versus "queer." Cultural theorist E. Patrick Johnson (2001) also argues for "quareness" as a way to question the subjective bias of whiteness in queer studies that risks discounting the lived experiences and material realities of people of color. Though I do not identify as a person of color and would be categorized as white or European American, "quareness" has an important critical application for considering how Orlando's urban design is intersectionally racialized, gendered and classed.