Tedium - Reflection, In Four Parts🪞

Today in Tedium: I have to admit, my mind is kind of blown right now by the OpenAI technology Dall-E, which has gained major notice in recent days because of a site that has gone viral in recent days called Dall-E Mini. (I’ve already written about this technology elsewhere, and even started a meme account around it.) In many ways, AI-based images are something of a reflection on the world in which we live, fractured in ways that we could never truly comprehend. But that honestly makes them all the more mind-blowing if you ask me. So, in the spirit of reflection that this weird technology experiment reflects, here’s a four-part series on reflection, each part (of course) written with a time limit. — Ernie @ Tedium

Today’s GIF is Ringo Starr bopping his head while looking at his own reflection. Because duh, of course it is!

The triple self-portrait of Norman Rockwell everyone thinks of when you say “self portrait.” (Norman Rockwell Museum)

How the mirror allowed for the self-portrait

In the modern day, we take for granted the idea of the self-portrait. Our technology seems to exist to help make the case that self portraits are just a basic way of life, rather than anything out of the ordinary.

But there was a time they were, in fact, out of the ordinary. So much so that, if you know anything about art history you might wonder how they did that.

That was the question on the mind of art teacher Francis O'Neill, along with physicist Sofia Palazzo Corner, who a few years back raised this very question about Rembrandt, one of the most iconic artists of his time.

As noted by LiveScience, O’Neil came up with this concept as he himself messed with different types of projection and reflection, attempting to get an understanding of how Rembrandt’s self-portraits may have worked. At first, he used a pair of mirrors from a pharmacy with a piece of aluminum foil.

"It wasn't the best surface, but you could achieve projections," he told the outlet. "And then I got myself some copper etching plate, and from there, I was able to make bigger and better projections—and that convinced me that this was how it was done."

Rembrandt wasn’t the first to take realistic-looking self portraits using the help of optical equipment like mirrors; 15th-century Dutch painter Jan van Eyck is believed to have taken a very photorealistic portrait of himself for the time, titled ‌Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?).

It was impressive enough that it screwed with people’s brains. And in some ways, it may not have been the most mind-melting painting that he was involved with. That honor goes to ‌Arnolfini Portrait, a painting that has some impressively realistic details, including a small painting-inside-a-painting reflected by a mirror. We were still a few hundred years out from photography, but Jan van Eyck was doing trick photography long before anyone really knew the term.

Albrecht Dürer’s Selbstbildnis mit Pelzrock, dating to circa 1500.

Other artists were embracing self-portraiture during this period. Selbstbildnis mit Pelzrock (Self-Portrait with a Fur Skirt), by Albrecht Dürer, dates to around 1500, and was Dürer’s fourth and final attempt at such a portrait.

“When Albrecht Dürer signed his famous self-portrait with his imposing monogram “AD” in 1500, he did not just finish a masterwork, but set the foundation for a quite persistent cultural phenomenon: the phenomenon of self-depiction or, as we would call it today, the selfie,” psychologist and researcher Claus-Christian Carbon of the University of Bamberg wrote of Dürer’s artwork in 2017.

In many ways, the artwork shows his evolution as a person; the first portrait was detailed, but more simplistic, and they evolved from there, but by the forth portrait, he was a much more mature person, and his view was straight on, looking at the viewer of the portrait, rather than away or giving a side-eye.

“Unlike his earlier self-portraits, which were composed in the customary three-quarters view, Dürer’s self-portrait of 1500 depicts the artist faced squarely toward the viewer — a pose usually reserved at that time for images of Christ,” Open Culture noted.

There was once a time when trying to get a good self portrait of yourself required a whole lot of patience, rather than grabbing that electronic thing in your pocket.

Time limit given ⏲: 30 minutes

Time left on clock ⏲: 1 minute, 9 seconds

With this cover, did Time Magazine accidentally make us a little more like the guy from the Netflix show You?

Did Time Magazine give us too big of heads when they made us their person of the year in 2006?

So I guess that we have to save the biggest, weirdest question for last. And that question is, did Time make a mistake 15 and a half years ago, when it put a little reflective paper on its cover, make it look kind of like a screen on a computer, and suggested that we were the big stars?

In some ways, it was a mirror that planted a seed, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. It was such a mainstream cover, even if a lot of people thought it was kind of silly. But there was a method to the madness, as Lev Grossman wrote at the time.

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

This was a controversial decision in some corners, with some calling what Time did a “cop-out,” and Gawker chiming in by stating it was “the most squishy, opportunistic pick ever.” The very people being honored honestly hated it.

But it made a good, buzzy cover, and one that it might not have the opportunity to do again. In some ways, 2006 might have been the peak of “you” as a positive cultural phenomenon—maybe 2009, during the heady days of Twitter capturing planes landing in rivers.

But honestly, we’ve seen a lot of us since then, and honestly I don’t love all the “you” I’m seeing. Our divisions define us culturally in ways that suggest a reflection in the mirror that isn’t so much ugly as horribly placed.

We live in a time where “you” is a threat, the catchphrase of a Netflix serial killer, where the people that it was supposed to bring together Hands Across America-style, another togetherness concept ruined by a recent movie called Us that was directed by a Time 100 recipient and features a pivotal scene in a house of mirrors. (This is Us kind of redeems it though, I guess.)

And the cultural vibes of “you” opened the doors to exploitation, the idea that creative work has no value if it’s user-generated. Entire companies that barely existed at the time of Time’s cover, like Facebook, have since proven the darkness that “you” can carry.

In a way, I see Time’s Person of the Year cover from 2006 and I see a sign of digital optimism, that this whole internet thing would work out and get us beyond the culture wars of the past.

But when I look back at “You” winning that award, I see something missing in the reflection—all the parts of us that will never look quite so perfect in the camera lens.

Call it a time of reflection, but I think “You” was ultimately a miss.

Time limit given ⏲: 30 minutes

Time left on clock ⏲: 9 minutes, 11 seconds