Hannah Vincent, The Effect of Instagram on the Art Exhibition

Hannah Vincent

The Effect of Instagram on the Art Exhibition: What Infuence Does Instagram Have on Our Experience and Agency as Viewers During an Art Exhibition?

Designing Eco-friendly

AAD Dissertation Studio 13 2020–21

Extracts from Hannah Vincent, The Effect of Instagram on the Art Exhibition: What Infuence Does Instagram Have on Our Experience and Agency as Viewers During an Art

Dissertation Studio 7 Meaningful Work Tutor: Paul Harper

School of Art, Architecture and Design London Metropolitan University 2021

CHAPTER 1

In an effort to examine the issues that arise with using Instagram in the

art space it is necessary to first establish the potential motives of its users. Via Instagram, visitors of the Tate modern were interviewed to gain this insight.

Their incentives to take photos in the gallery could be broken down into three prominent categories: i.

ii. iii.

Instagram acts as a representation of self – ‘My Instagram represents me.’

A method of recording memories – ‘It’s a memento of my visit.’

Social media being a method of sharing and viewing art

The full results of these interviews and their consequent data will be fully

analyzed in Chapter 3 however these three motives will be examined here.

Representing The Self

Can Social Images represent a person? Looking, for the majority, is the

first and primary method of explaining the world around us. In his famous essay ‘Ways of Seeing’ John Berger opens with ‘Seeing comes before words… the

relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.’ (Berger, 1972) To experience is a constant process of what is seen followed by the

naming and further understanding of it. As vision precedes language, to use

images as a method to represent oneself to others becomes understandable.

Psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan explained the challenge to marry what we

experience internally and what is presented externally in his theory The Mirror

Stage. ‘The function of the mirror stage … is to establish a relationship between

an organism and its reality…’ (Lacan, 2007). Furthermore, this desire appears to continue throughout life, ‘All sorts of things in the world behave like mirrors’

(Lacan, 2007). It is possible that Instagram is such a mirror, a space to reflect our identities and ourselves in an effort to be understood. However the use of Instagram carries certain implications that can impede this process.

The gaze has long been associated with the establishment of power.

Professor Jonathan E. Schroeder explained, ‘…to gaze implies more than to look

at – it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is

superior to the object of the gaze.’ (Schroeder, 1998) Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze discussed the patriarchal representation of women by men on screen, ‘The pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and

passive/female’ (Mulvey, 1973). Mulvey clarified, women had been reduced to

objects, primarily for voyeuristic pursuits of men to boost the patriarchal ego. To be on Instagram is to be gazed upon, but the power dynamic differs as the

individual (the object) is inviting the audience to act as voyeur, suggesting a

subversion of power. However the onlooker (the online audience) is a silent, undefined entity whose presence is neither confirmed nor guaranteed. The Instagram gaze becomes a kin to what Michael Foucault describes as ‘The

Panopticon Effect’ (Foucault, 2020) [fig. 2]. Foucault used the analogy of the

Panopticon Prison to demonstrate society's ability to maintain control over its citizens by using the uncertainty of surveillance.

‘He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes

responsibility for the constraints of power … he becomes the principle of his own subjection’ (Foucault, 2020). In this model, a person’s behavior is altered by the

potential of being watched by another and the lack of certainty found there.

Within Instagram, though the gaze of others is sought out, the ambiguity of its presence potentially means what is documented by an individual becomes

performative in an attempt to fall in line with the perceived expectations of said audience thus removing the subject from a true representation of self.

In his essay ‘The Society Of The Spectacle’ (1994) Philosopher Guy

Debord warned of the effect of mass media on a person’s ability to act with

agency. His concerns of culture’s increasing disconnect from real life experience as a result of pacifying capitalism has relevance here. ‘All that was once directly lived has become mere representation… The Spectacle is not a collection of

images, but a social relation among people, mediated by image’s’ (Debord, 1994).

Debord stated that a society saturated in the fantasy presented by mass media influences human behaviour by reducing it to a constant desire for more.

Instagram replicates this, a network of images driven by a desire to gain more

notoriety and value from others through likes, shares or comments. The act of adding a potential value to experience causes a detachment from living with

agency as actions become driven by the success in achieving said value in lieu of genuine enjoyment. As Debord explains,

‘The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated

object is expressed in the following way: The more [the spectator] contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing

himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his

own existence and desires. – Thesis 30’ (Debord, 1994)

With this in mind, the use of Instagram as a method of representing oneself and one's tastes is compromised as the content produced is under the constant

influence of others. Consequently, the use of it within the exhibition space serves as a distraction to process our own views of what we see. Instead Instagram

encourages looking at an art experience for its value as a social photo to further an online persona with expectations and interests set outside of our own.

Meaningful Memories

The recording of memories via photographs is a customary practice. A

social image is a photograph. However, if the agency of Instagram users can be

questioned so can the success of its ability to record our experiences accurately.

If Instagram creates a distorted representation of a person then a social photo serving as a memento is unable to act as a genuine representation also. This is particularly poignant in cases where visitors choose to include themselves

prominently in the photos – a selfie. A 2020 study by psychologist Erin Koterba and colleagues looked into the incentives of individuals taking selfies. During interviews with the open-ended questions it was discovered that of the 276

students, only 5.7% stated they used selfies to document memories against the 29.5% who admitted more narcissistic drives such as ‘I look good so I’ll take a

photo’ (Koterba, 2020). This suggests in the case of the art exhibition, the selfie

prioritizes the memory of wanting to be viewed by others above seeing the art - especially as it usually involves the individuals back to whatever they are claiming to remember!

Even in cases where someone else is taking the photo or they are not

directly including themselves, the uploading of these images and the quantity of which they are created has influence on their value. As previously mentioned,

due to the ease to capture social photos (Jurgenson, 2019) Instagram’s millions

of users upload millions of photos on a daily basis. To take so many photos must be dealt with caution as photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson said,

‘We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and

without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.’

(Cartier-Bresson, 1997)

By moving through a gallery while taking constant photos, a person risks recalling the process of taking them above the memory of looking. The

result is an overwhelming amount of images that will constantly need to be deciphered into something that has meaning.

French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard explained the issues of losing

ourselves in superfluous data. ‘We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning’ (Baudrillard, 1994). He

rationalized that modern society had gained access to so much information it was impossible to process it all. Because of this, the media chooses to

simplify the things it presents to us subsequently dictating what to make

real. The result is the creation of a ‘Hyper reality’ (Baudrillard, 1994) that society increasingly depends on and embodies therefore becoming

progressively removed from the truth. Society is then no longer focused on reality but a distorted utopia called a ‘Simulacra’ (Baudrillard, 1994).

Instagram is a Simulacra; the breaking down and simplification of our

experience to be represented via social photos, placed in a collective of

millions just like it. By depending on these as our source of memories we

become further removed from recalling the reality of experiences, just it’s

representation. Consequently we then gain more pleasure in manufactured utopias and false memories and lose interest in the complexity of real life.

The obsession with the forgery takes president, as Italian philosopher Umberto Eco wrote,

‘To speak of things that one wants to connote as real, these things must seem real. The ‘completely real’ becomes identified with ‘completely

fake’. Absolute unreality is offered as real presence…the sign aims to be the thing, to abolish the distinction of the reference, the mechanism of

replacement…’

(Eco, 1990)

Art experiences remembered via Instagram are then fashioned through the distortion of a utopian model not by an authentic genuine response

The Art World Online

A person is now able to see galleries from all over the world thanks to

modern technology. As of April 1st 2021 the hashtag #artexibition offers

2,930,003 art images. When compared to The Louvre which holds 35,000

artworks (Museums.eu) Instagram’s digital exhibition space seems a valid option to gain better access to the artworld. During the Covid-19 Global Pandemic,

Instagram became one of the easiest ways in which collections could still be

viewed. However, the ease of which it is accessed can be weighed up against the quality of experience.

The invention of the camera had an overwhelming effect on society's

relationship with art, ‘…Photography gave rise to a new relationship to reality

and its representation’ (De Font- Reaulx, 2012). The development meant works

of art could be seen outside of the gallery space. To be captured and reproduced

meant art was no longer for the elite and opened up visual culture to the masses.

But the theorist debated what happened to the experience of art when you photograph it. In his famous essay ‘The Art World In A Mechanical Age Of

Reproduction’ Walter Benjamin examined the implications on the art-object in the wake of the changing technology that was able to reproduce it. “Even the

most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be''

(Benjamin 2008). The reproduction, he explains, misses the aura (Benjamin

2008) found in the original and lacks the authority. To take a photo of a work of

art is to turn it into something else, though it acts as a surrogate to the original it can never be the same thing. As Susan Sontag said ‘Photography makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.’ (Sontag, 2019) to depend on social photos to look at art is not equal to the real thing.

The medium of Instagram has additional consequences to the image. In

1964 Canadian Theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote ‘The Medium is the message’ (McLuhan, 2005) as a response to the developing technologies and this can be said of the art exhibition online. He explained,

‘….This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

(McLuhan 2005)

For McLuhan, the form that the information was delivered (ie Television, Radio, Magazine) had far greater sociological, philosophical repercussions than the message itself. The medium has a profound effect on how we evaluate and

experience what is presented to us. To view any piece of art (the message) on

Instagram (the medium) means the viewer’s perception of the art-work and the impression it makes on them is lost in implications caused by social media. The

medium of Instagram includes many elements: photography, digital images, the Internet etc. and each one of these removes us further and further from the original experience.

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