Final Thoughts

My life path is leading me to a place where I will be too occupied to continue this online discussion on a regular basis. For that reason, I want to make a closing statement. The profusion of tattoo in contemporary society is indeed an "ironic fad," that I believe is not going anywhere. Through my own ethnography, and my extensive literature review, I have extracted what I think to be the future of academic research, and that is the paradoxical nature of tattoo. Not only is tattoo an ironic fad, meaning that "fads" are temporal and tattoos are permanent, but also meaning behind tattoo is transient. All the energy placed on "diagnosing tattoo," has not taken into account the complex quality of the art of tattoo, that tattoo is grounded on living flesh. Tattoos become a part of a living, breathing, changing being, and although the design stays the same the meaning can and will change with its bearer. As we live in post-structuralist, post-modern times, we need to focus on the complexity of meaning, and tattoo's multifaceted character where subject and object coalesce into a non-static, unfixed entity.

Thanks for Reading-
Mandarax

Open Post

“When people see my tattoos or my piercings, the most common thing they say is, ‘That hurt didn’t it?' Or, 'I bet that hurt!’ Almost never do people ask me, ‘What does that mean to you?’ You know? People are so weird man… And I tell them, yeah, it fucking hurt.”
-D the Shop Bitch

Undeniably people are fascinated with pain, especially when it’s elective or self-inflicted. To this day, people who know me, but don’t know I have tattoos, act absolutely fascinated when they find out. They say, “Oh my god! I didn’t know you had tattoos… wow.” I think my tattoos are larger than most people expect. The first shock is that I have them. The second is how large they are. D is right; the most important and frequently asked question is how much did they hurt? The surprise towards me having tattoo has to do with a variety of things including gender, socio-economics, aesthetics and religion.

As I am a female (surprise?), it’s shocking since we are traditionally the gentler, weaker sex. As I come from an “upper-middle class” family, it’s shocking that I have this "pejorative folk-art." As I am beautiful, it’s shocking because I have mutilated my flesh. As I have Jewish heritage, it’s shocking for two reasons, the first because the old testament says not to mark thyself, but more contemporaneously, because the Nazis tattooed the Jews against their will during the Holocaust. Each of these reasons can be unpacked into full length posts of their own; however, the bottom line is they’re all problematic. Each issue is paradoxical. For example, some might think I am objectifying my female body, sexualizing it in a demeaning way, while others might feel I’m embracing my womanhood and wielding my sexuality in a strong “I am female, hear me roar” kind of way.

Tattoos are a visual expression; they are made to be seen. Like any crafted art, the seeing brings conceiving. Because of the severity of tattoo, there is increased interest. Because of the pain associated with tattoo it is exoticized, it is an “Other.” This could be a coincidence, but the word taboo is frighteningly close to word tattoo, and both evoke the same wanton fascination in most contemporary societies

Tattoo Narratives

“Images, colours (sic) and symbols reflect transitions and provide the structure
for life history. They function as reminders for their bearers’ history and
they serve as lived memories remaining on the surface of the body”
-Oksanen and Turtiainen, 2005

Traditionally the term “tattoo narrative” is used to refer to a story behind the tattoo. The story may be the reason behind getting a particular tattoo, or the events leading up to the acquisition. Tattoo narratives "re-create for both the teller and the listener not only the facts of the tattoo but the complex justifications for it . . . The narratives are dialectical in that they presuppose a questioner or listener who objects to, or at least cannot understand, the tattoo" (DeMello 2000,152). Tattoos often symbolically represent certain periods of a person’s life, either directly or retroactively, and in doing so create a visual timeline or history documented on the body. In this sense, a person’s tattoo narrative can be a dermal life history.

However, my 7 months of participant observation, and working with the artists, has inspired me to take on an imaginative approach to tattoo narratives. My approach centers on the art itself. In another essay, I will be telling the stories of individual tattoos, as though the tattoos have (fictional) life histories of their own. The purpose of my tattoo narratives is to share in the creativity of tattoo, and to give anthropological depth to the characters that live among the masses on a daily basis . After all, the characters are technically flesh and blood (and ink), and in that sense living organisms who cohabitate with their bearers. They were brought into this world painfully, they were created by the collaboration of two people, and if you prick them, will they not bleed?

Killa App

Fun Fun Flickr

Perusing the host of web 2.0 features that help the visually inclined has been a laboriously vexatious task. However, I have come across an abnormally user friendly tool called flickr. Lets face it, we (I) don't want to have the internet cause anymore strife than any other piece of technology (usually) would cause. Afterall, technology is meant to be the "application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes," ...thank you Apple Dictionary, you have once again assisted in my contentions.

Flickr is a tool for sharing and annotating images. Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver based company that launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively mulitplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.

Flickr enables you to share your photos with the world. But wait! It's oh so much more than that. It is a online photo management system that has two main goals: 1) To help people make their content available to the people who matter to them. 2)To enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

In regards to their first goal, Flickr has arranged for multiple ways to get photos and video in and out of the system; from the web, mobile devices, the user's home computer and whatever software their using to manage their content, and through the flickr website, rss feeds, email outside blogs... and so on.

In regards to the second goal, they want to reduce the stress of the massive amount of photos or video made possible by the digital switch. Their solution to the overwhelming nature of digital photos/videos is a collaborative sharing process. The people you choose to share with can be given permission (by you) to organize your stuff.

Let me introduce you to the "tour" of flickr: What is Flickr? Flickr is a way to get your photos and videos to the people who matter to you. And basic accounts are free! You can UPLOAD, EDIT, ORGANIZE, SHARE, MAP, MAKE STUFF, and KEEP IN TOUCH.

The founders of flicker, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake head a team of 45, and pride themselves on their good work. After all, Flickr has received worldwide recognition, and accolades from some of the most prestigious press outlets. Flickr is a Yahoo company, and is bookmarked on Delicious.

Some of Flickr's competition includes: Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Photobucket. Personally, I have used Kodak Gallery and Photobucket and although they provide a way to share photos with friends, the infrasturcture is completely different. They are not as much of sharing/organizational based sites. Oh, and Kodak Gallery is constantly pushing (trying to sell they're shit).

I have been playing with Flickr for only 2 days now, and I'm completely enamored. I have not even made myself public yet. I'm still in the first stage of the game, uploading photos, creating sets, and even dabbling in the editing. I'm satisfied with the editing capabilities, however, they offer better or more "advanced" editing for around $25 a month.Too bad.

The only reason I would order the advanced version would be to stay on par with the massive amount of professional photogs out there in flickr-land. Flickr is extremely community oriented, people are constantly posting new pictures, and what's more then that, people are constantly commenting on them. Using such photography jargon as "negative space" and "streamlines" and "contrast." It feels like a virtual photography gallery, where everybody's an expert, or at least feel entitled to their opinion. Another social phenomenon of the internet, everybody's a critic. However, I have yet to see a mean or devastating critique, one said, "i like this very much except for the small blurry spot in the background." Yee-ouch!

Like the Universe, FLickr is constantly expanding. I just checked, and with in the last MINUTE there were 5,865 uploads. Ok, and I checked again: 5,762, again: 6,243. So I think it's fair to say the site averages somewhere beteen 5 and 6 thousand uploads per minute.

Flickr provides it's own press page...

example:
The Village Voice writes: "Flickr didn't invent online picture sharing, of course, but it was the first such site to recognize itself as much more than a hosting service for personal photo albums. Tricked out with features inspired by the latest fashions in online-software design & post-Friendster social-networking tools, folksonomy-friendly image-tagging code Flickr has also won a devoted following of users hungry to explore the possibilities its Web-centric toolset opens up. It's a place not just for self-display, but for an emergent visual conversation" (24 March 2005).

Ok, so here's an example of how easily I took an unusable image and made it sharp and vibrant on Flickr!






Flickr... and You

I realized that I should probably qualify my last posting. Flickr is a tool that is perfect for tattoo enthusiasts and Visual Anthropology junkies alike. Here's why:

Two words, Organization and Sharing (I guess that's three words, but take away the and, and it just looks weird, trust me, I write a lot). Not only can you organize a "set" of tattoo photos, but you can organize multiple "sets", for instance tribal, old school, quotes, monkeys, whatever and have them all be under a "collection" titled Tattoo. You can then put that collection with in a larger Body Modification collection. You dig?

Same goes for Visual Anthropology, where categorization of images in a relatively comprehensive way is of the utmost importance. Then, there is the sharing of said collections. You can find a group of tattooists or tattooies, or people just interested in body modification in general. Just like you can find groups of people who organize their images by cultural, anthropological significance.

The discipline of Visual Anthropology is about culture through visual mediums such as photography and film. The field can be looked at in two ways, 1) How culture represents itself visually, ie. through art, architecture, fashion, body modification, etc. and 2) How the anthropologists visually represent the culture they are studying, ie. through film and photographs mostly.

Although the most popular route for a Visual Anthropologist is through ethnographic (mostly documentary) film, photo essays are another form of project. Flickr is an online space to create and exhibit photo essays. Not only can the editing and organizing of the photographs be done in a relatively easy way, but in the same space, a person can label and provide context, narrative or explanation for each photograph and set/collection. What is more, the anthropologist can then share his or her photo essay with the world.

Having reflected on this post, I realized that the discipline of Visual Anthropology could use a site like flickr, only more specialized. Meaning, I anticipate Flickr to create susidiaries they can sell to artistic, journalistic or scientific associations. For example, associations such as the AAA American Anthropological Association. This open forum would be much more useful than tools like Photobucket or Kodak Gallery, two tools I feel are best for ameteur photographers wanting to share their photos with friends and family.

As I previously displayed, I am new to Flickr, so I have yet to become public, but, here is a screen shot of my "sets":



Contextualizing Flickr

Using a neat tool called Prezi, I have made a "prezi"ntation about FLickr that might be useful...

flickr prezi

In my original posting, I provided links to the Flickr tour, here is a summary:

Uploads can be made from your desktop, by email, or by your cameraphone ; "via the Flickr Uploadr (available for both PC and Mac), iPhoto, Aperture, or Windows XP plugins our upload web page, email, various free third-party desktop programs."

Editing your photos is easy with their partner, Picnik. "Get rid of red eye, crop a photo or get creative with loads of different effects!" After you've authorized Picnik, you can edit your photo as much as you wish.

Organizing is made comprehensive with their sets and collections grouping options. "The Organizr" is where both Collections and Sets are created. It also allows you to perform common tasks on large batches of photos and videos, such as tagging, changing permissions, or editing timestamps.

Sharing can be done in groups, a way for people to come together around a common interest. "Groups can either be public, public (invite only), or completely private." Every group has a pool for sharing photos and videos and a discussion board for talking. Privacy is easy to control, you can set your own privacy level, usage license, content type and safety level. What's REALLY neat, to me anyways, is you can, like, sticky note on the photos! Don't worry, they only appear when they've been scrolled over by a mouse. Otherwise, that would be lame.

Mapping is cool. It's a way to "map" out photos by place! "Drag-and-drop your photos and videos onto a map (using the Organizr) to show where you took them, or browse a world map to see where other people have been and what they saw."

Making stuff like photo books, calendars, cards, etc. Basically, anything with an image is possible.

Keeping in touch via Flickr means building relationships in an online community. Using the "Contacts page", you can have contacts of friends and/or family. You can even give "guest passes" for non-Flickr members to see your collections.


I hope you enjoyed my "prezi"ntation... Happy Flickring everyone!

Literature Review

Pain as a subject matter has a plethora of theoretical literature (Coakley and Kauffman, Favazza, Hewitt, Scarry,). Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the Word, discusses communicative roles, or the lack there of, during the confrontation of physical pain. She begins her book claiming pain’s inexpressibility; “not only is it difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language”(Scarry 1987, 4). She notes that pain reduces its sufferers to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry’s research is on a wide range of sources, including medical case histories and documents on torture, all instances of involuntary pain. Even though I’m interested in elective pain, Scarry’s analysis provides a useful resource in understanding how people cope with pain.

The tattoo process is essentially mutilation of the skin; tattooing is inserting pigment into punctures in the epidermis, commonly with a needle, to produce a permanent design. The action involves displacement of flesh and profusion of blood with ink. The procedure is painful, and every so often risky. Armando Favazza’s Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry and Kim Hewitt’s Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink provide psychological discourses of elective pain. Favazza defines self-mutilation in his preface as, “the deliberate destruction or alteration of one’s body tissue without conscious suicidal attempt” (Favazza 1996, xix). Favazza is the founder of cultural psychiatry, and approaches the vagueness of self-mutilation within the overarching web of culture. He divides self-mutilative behaviors into two groups, culturally sanctioned and deviant. To him, tattoo exists in the former category.

Micheal Atkinson’s Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art regards psychological analysis of tattoo to be biased, in that the lens itself only allows for a depreciatory interpretation. In laymen’s terms, psychoanalysis is designed to find out what is wrong with its subjects, not to celebrate what is right with them. Nikki Sullivan takes the argument a step further, dedicating an entire chapter to the mistakes made by the theoretical analyses of the past. In Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics and Pleasure, Sullivan puts psychological discourse on tattoo in the same category as criminological discourse of the last century and a half. Specifically, she examines the work of Lombroso; his brilliant theory was determining the criminal by his physical traits.

The atavistic nature of tattoo is displayed with the utmost fortitude in the Unites States through a group that call themselves “modern primitives”. In their world the book by Vivian Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives, is a tattoo and body modification bible, and Fakir Musafar is the guru philosopher, or founding father of the movement. Their intensity and fascination with the ritualistic aspects of tattoo/body modification provides a fixed theory that works for their worldview as to the subject of pain. Essentially, through pain they transcend their bodies to attain a level of spirituality equal to shamanistic or ritualistic rites of the past.
The subject of pain leading up to the acquisition of tattoo is the theme of Judith Sarnecki’s essay Trauma and Tattoo. This is an ethnographically informed analysis of tattoo and the traumatic events and motivations that might lead up to the decision to get tattooed. Sarnecki believes trauma and tattoo to be linked under most circumstances.

In Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture, an essay by Tu Weiming speaks of the Confusion philosophy of pain and the body. The Confucian idea of humanity is buren, a common expression in Chinese medical books explaining the paralysis of the arms and legs, which literally means the absence of humanity. “In this view, the sensation of pain is an essential feature of being human; an inability to feel pain is considered a major deficiency not only in terms of health but also morality. It is human to feel pain, while an inability to do so is detrimental to our humanity” (Coakley and Kaufman 2007, 221). My research will be examining tattoo pain from the perspectives of the interface of biology and culture, and the performance of ritual on the body.

What's at Stake?

I'm currently working on an essay, tentatively titled "Tattoo and Pain". The thesis is roughly, pain is undeniably apart of the tattoo process, what does pain have to do with tattoo? There is a history of deviance being associated with tattoo, and pain indeed plays a part in that line of thought. The psychological analyses on the subject of tattoo has cast the ritual in a pejorative light. The essay seeks to employ post-structuralist and postmodern approaches to the subject of pain's association with tattoo. What is at stake? First, problematizing psychology as a discipline, and second, leading the reader into a non-definitive space. I will draw on my own personal ethnographic research as well as existing literature broaching the subjects of pain, of tattoo, and of pain and tattoo. I will not be posting the actual essay simply because it reveals too much about me, and I am a fiercely private person. However, I will be posting a literature review.

As to the Topoi

I want to briefly mention something here about the"fun resource flakes" topoi widget I had mentioned in my "tour of pageflake" posting. If you haven't heard of it, the Topoi is an antiquated method for thinking. It was invented by Aristotle, and refers to place, like places in your brain, or even places your brain goes when thinking about certain topics. Even more to the point, the topoi mimics how we think of things.

The topoi widget provides a list for analysis:
• change
• contrast
• cause/effect
• form/structure
• values
⁃ morality/ethics
⁃ pragmatic
⁃ social
⁃ spiritual/metaphysical
⁃ political

The topoi is a tool to help you develop your hypothesis. To use different perspectives and stretch out ideas.

It is hard to look at this list and see how this could possibly be helpful, it is better to put the topoi to practice. So here:

Hypothesis:
As tattoo is becoming popularized, does it run the risk of changing from a subcultural practice to an ordinary, mainstream, or even banal convention?

Morality
Tattoo and deviance have historically been impenetrably linked, the question then becomes will deviant behavior become a mainstream convention?

Spiritual
In the Judeo-Christian belief, there is doctrine that explicitly states "thou shalt not mark thyself". As the United States is primarily a Christian oriented nation, what does the profusion of tattoo say about people in regards to their beliefs and practices?

Cause/Effect
As popular culture is in a constant state of ebb and flow, and traditionally subcultural practices that have filtered into mainstream society leaves impressions for generations that follow, how will the future perceive this moment in time when tattoo was an ever-present cultural custom?

The topoi layers on another framework of categorical or systematic ways in which you can model your argument. From one hypothesis, I now have three theses to work off of and expand into entire essays.