>>Good morning and welcome to Global Perspectives.

I'm David Dumke.

Today we are joined by Dr. Zeynep Arda who is an associate professor and former chair of the Visual Communication Design Department at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Arda.

>>Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

>>So looking at your work, you've done a lot of work looking at art and identity.

I want to talk with some of the identity work you've done that goes back to your original thesis on social media and how identitys used.

Explain that in a nutshell to our audience and we'll go from there.

>>I'll try.

I usually work interdisciplinary because that's my background.

I'm originally a city planner, and then I did graphic design, interaction design, and I my Ph.D. was on communication studies, so trying to put it together.

My concern about identity and technology started with cyberspace when the Internet was new in our lives.

And at the time, actually, what we were talking about was communication behind the screen everything was invisible to us and communicating, and that invisibility was something different.

You could be anything you wanted to be.

But then came social media in the beginning of 2000, 2004.

It was when Facebook started and it changed our perception of communication online completely because from invisibility of the cyberspace, we actually went to the super visibility of social media.

When you look at it, it doesn't seem very impressive.

Like if you don't look at it from an academic perspective.

But the share button did change our lives drastically, and everything about social media changed the way that we construct and we expose our identities.

>>You work talking earlier when when we were discussing this little about how everyone's become a mini celebrity.

Explain the phenomenon.

>>Exactly.

This is like before on the media.

Professionals have the possibilities of broadcasting.

No.

But when we started having Facebook, YouTube, everybody became prosumers, let's say.

Instead of consuming what was produced for them, everybody started producing content.

And even if your audience is just your family and your friends in the neighborhood, whatever.

Everybody started feeling a bit bigger than themselves in that case, or broadcasting their lives, sharing even the morning coffee and, you know, everything like that.

That sort of changed our perception about how we present ourselves.

>>So also, when someone's presenting themselves with this identity that they're that's may or may not be themselves, I mean, who are they trying to get us to reach as an audience or is.

Is it an accurate reflection of who they really are?

Do you become an image or are you is an image something totally contrived?

>>That was actually the title of my thesis.

“Image becomes identity ” because I think inherently this is the capitalistic race that is pushing our hand and making us try to show ourselves in a better light whatever is the case.

No, you don't see people with their makeup run down or their hair messy in the social media.

Well, now maybe you do, but in the beginning it was much more pristine, like everybody was showing themselves in the best possible light.

I think that's mainly because of what the capitalistic race is pushing us to do now.

We need to do things better all the time, improve like increase our income, whatever.

So we need to get better jobs, better social lives and the social media and how we present ourselves pushes us for upward, upward social comparison.

Now we think everybody else is always partying or everybody has a better life than we do, which increases the push towards showing yourself better again in the end.

So practically, that's I don't think social media shows anybody the way that they are, which is not also possible because it's something metonymic.

Now, if you post one photo that day that just shows one second of your day.

But people complete it into an image, and that's why your image becomes identity, because metonymically they generalize it to cover all your aspects, all your characteristics, and all your life.

>>Is this is this a global phenomenon or is it concentrated in European countries or the United States?

I know you're doing your study in in Turkey primarily, but where does this affect or is it everywhere?

>>Well, I think it's everywhere.

Of course, it started with the states and expanded to cover the rest of the world.

But I think it's about the show-off effect because when I was studying this phenomena, it was the end of 2010.

And United States had the most had the highest number of users on Facebook.

Brazil was second, Turkey was third, which, if you are not familiar with, the Turkish culture, may come as surprising.

But if you are a bit familiar, it's not that surprising.

After all, we have, how can I put it?

We have we strongly believe in the value of show-off which was the perfect grounds for the Turkish society.

I think that says.

>>Well, I should I should note, of course, the recent earthquakes in Turkey and we express our condolences to your your fellow countrymen who have suffered so, so mightily by this devastating earthquake.

In Turkey you also have an election this year.

How does image play into political and cultural life in a place like Turkey?

>>Great question.

This time I'm not going to answer it's only on the basis of Turkey.

I think it applies everywhere, because now that we are living in a post-truth era and there is no way to confirm information practically.

So we have a lot of disinformation.

We have a lot of fake news.

And we know I mean, previously from ever since Cambridge Analytica.

And then we know that it has a huge impact also on politics.

So I don't think there's a way to control it any longer.

But because it has a lot of impact on people and how they decide there should be media literacy at least should increase so that people can have a better way of protecting themselves.

I guess.

>>The reason I was asking the Turkish context, especially given the earthquake there is of course, as as there are in all corners of the globe, when there's a devastating disaster of one kind or another, you have people looking for the government for responses.

And often if the response isn't what the what they're expecting doesn't meet expectations, you have anger, add to it electoral politics and some of the other trends you're getting.

You have the heavy potential of creating a false images from whether it's a pro-government narrative or just a concerned citizen narrative or wherever it's coming from.

How do you monitor this?

Do you think there's going to be a growing problem going forward?

>>I think it will be a huge problem, how to put it.

I don't see myself really talking about politics much, but from an image point of view, I think they've done a terrible crisis management, not to mention that they've done the terrible crisis management in terms of the earthquake.

I think a lot of things could have been prevented a lot of the deaths, which is very saddening, of course.

And in terms of saving the image, saving face, let's say they also did a terrible job because we see instead of someone that's trying to soothe the pain of people at the moment, we see someone that is scorning the public, scorning everyone, scorning the rescue teams, which is not very tolerable.

And I don't think it's going to reflect positively on the elections for the ruling party.

>>And I'm not asking here to be an electoral prognosticator, but but it is it is important, given given your work in terms of image, these trends you were talking about, how did how did the COVID era affect the use of image in social media and otherwise?

Did it make people want to become part of a group that may be kind of an artificial image, more so because of isolation or.

Or how did it how did it play play out?

Or do you suspect it played out?

I imagine people are going to be looking at this for quite a long time.

>>I think people were hit more psychologically with COVID than in any other way.

But of course, having to live your life pretty much always on the screen affected people largely.

Again, everybody tried to play up like showed themselves in a better light as usual.

But in that case, it was much less possible.

I think it really got to all of us COVID and its effects.

I think that's pretty much it.

But in terms of affecting image, I think technology plays a bigger role.

I mean, we got we got used to Zoom conferences and everything, but now we have artificial intelligence.

Before, of course, we had computer generated images as well.

So we can actually touch up anything.

We can create any image that doesn't exist and not in terms of the image of a person, but any visual can be created from scratch.

Just from the example of the earthquake, there was this one image that is very moving, actually, because it showed a rescue team members that came to help the victims of the earthquake from Greece.

So we see this this team member, the rescue team member with the beret on his face and with the apparent flag of Greece.

And he's holding a child with his with a Turkish flag on the arm.

Well, even I'm pretty sure that scenes like this were lived in the southeast of Turkey in the past weeks after the earthquake because all of the countries came to help, which was really moving.

But this image is not real.

This image was just an artificial intelligence generated image, which is positive.

I mean, it is it is meant for good.

No, it is for creating a good feeling, a kind of solidarity and friendship feeling between Greece and Turkey, which is great.

But having this image circulated by even the most educated people and with great appreciation for this image is actually highlighting danger for us because this image is not real and anybody can make any image that is not real.

And we can circulate it and we can get any effect out of it.

So that's the scary part, I think.

And do we really have any way of protecting ourselves from this or protecting us ourselves from the effects of it on anything on politics or public life, public space?

We don't.

>>And when you look at this and we're talking, of course, about the Internet and social media, and this is relatively you know, we're talking about the last couple of decades primarily, but you you have studied a lot of visual art in different forms over the years.

How has image been used in the past through different medium?

Social media is one thing, and that's instantaneous, but artists have always portrayed things as they want to see them rather than perhaps what they really are.

Is this really any different?

>>Well I think here maybe a clarification of what art is, what the line is would be good because currently we consider design as commissioned work and we expect design to fulfill certain functions.

But before the artists were commissioned to create the images so they weren't actually very free to draw and paint and create images just as they please.

No, they were paid by the patrons to create these images.

So maybe they were the actual designers creating image for the owners at that point, which is actually John Berger's theory, not mine.

What artworks did to show the power and the wealth of the ruling classes at that time is now expanded to everybody with social media.

We may just just to put it in a nutshell, oversimplifying what we're talking about.

That would be it.

I guess.

>>You've also done a lot of work looking at artists in exile.

Could you explain some of some of that work?

>>That's actually what I call the artist migrant parasol now.

And maybe I need to explain why I do this.

It's basically a - design today is not something dealing only with the aesthetics, dealing with the cosmetic end of the decision making process, let's say.

But it is inherent in many problems solving processes for people and as the norm.

And one of my favorite theorists in this field would say a designer in the 21st century should be a generalist that can actually see the bigger picture.

And I come from a series of very interdisciplinary fields.

So there's no way that I don't try to see the bigger picture in everything.

I try to see the dynamics mostly, and I focused on the artists and their migration experiences, particularly because artists are the ones that put together different cultures.

They are, I call them cultural pollinators, as we call them in biology.

Normally call butterflies and insects as cultural pollinators and biology.

But in terms of culture, they actually work with cultures all the time.

So they are the ones that have the potential in terms of, I'm going to say, overcoming the problems.

But that's not really what I mean, because I think migration has also possibilities instead of creating problems.

And I see the artist's role crucial in that in trying to turn migration into something that we benefits from because it creates it puts together different cultures instead of trying to look at it as the problems of a culture nation or a cultural adaptation.

In terms of migration, I, I try to see the potential in it.

That's why I work with the artists and try to understand their immigration experiences.

>>So where are some examples of some of the artists your work you're working with now and looking at.

>>The names of the artists.

>>The names, or the locations or kind of some of them >>Well I did this as part of a European Union project, so I cannot disclose the names of the participants.

But I've I've traveled to many different cities to interview artists.

I did some in Havana, in Cuba, in Paris, France, here in Orlando as well, and in Valencia, Spain, Berlin, Germany, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Palermo, Italy.

So many different cities, many different artists.

>>Different cities and different artists from different places.

What are some of the common characteristics you use?

>>Okay, I'll try not to talk too much about >>No, no, please.

>>Because I have a lot of things I think the good thing about taking the artists experiences is that they share the humanistic values and they have the tendency to look at people with differences as a curiosity instead of defining somebody as the other, they run to the differences to figure out.

Because I think because of the job, the professional attitude is that they are open minded already because there is no other way that you can be an artist or a designer if you don't act this way.

So this allows them to open up easily.

They are open to communication, open to getting to know other people.

They are keen on the differences and not labeling people, but opening up the ways to communicate allows them to really create this bridge between different cultures and I think that is where it starts.

>>Do you do you see that there that they the artists themselves are right, are doing their art, the subject of their art being the places they have moved to or their original homes?

Or is it a combination?

>>I keep asking them how they define home and I get all kinds of replies, but I think nobody leaves their home culture completely at any point.

But the thing about is it is that they don't focus on the, let's say, the culture specific parts of their home culture.

No, they don't try to keep the symbols and histories and the ethnicities, let's say, but they focus on the parts that are actually universal, which makes it easier for them to create these bridges, I think.

>>Is this been been a new phenomenon with - with artists?

I mean, you're talking about artists who are still active, but is this something that history keeps repeating itself?

>>I think so.

I think we've seen a lot of generations of artists leaving their home countries and moving to other cultures and not being assimilated by the cultures, because that was the way we looked at migration back then.

But they always put these two things together in their work.

They always told stories of their home culture and allowed it to be something that penetrates their society as well.

So.

>>So I want to ask about artists and social media, because you've studied both these fields in different ways.

How are artists adjusting to social media and is that a good medium to get there, their work out to the public, or are they just putting an image out there of who they want to project themselves as an artist?

>>I think it's very difficult project an image of being an artist.

I mean, either you show your work and accept what comes with it, but I think even artists are considered invisible if they're not on Instagram anymore, but then they also have these complicated feelings about it.

Not everybody wants to show everything all the time and receive all the critics or whatever, so it's a bit of a dark area.

I think everybody wants to be visible because of course, artists also want to be appreciated.

They also want their art to impact because it's not only about impressing people with the visuals.

I don't think art is art today if it doesn't react to what's happening in the society.

So they're also online, let's say, or they're also on social media in terms of their work in activism, maybe in one sense.

>>But you know, the social media phenomenon is so many things whether pictures or comments or, you know, writings or rantings, depending on how you look at it, all seem very temporary.

This is stuff that's up one day, and by the next day, there's a million more tweets put out or postings put up on Instagram, whatever, whatever social media you're using when art has always been prided itself on being a lasting phenomenon.

So are these in contradiction with each other, in your opinion?

>>I don't think so.

First of all, nothing about social media is temporary.

I mean, you may erase a tweet, but it may come back to haunt you in 20 years or so.

So actually, social media means that everything that we didn't record before is recorded and is kept digitally.

We may discuss whether it's remains or not or whether it's a significant or not.

But imagine you're running up for politics and you tweeted something ten years ago and you've changed your mind, but this will come back and haunt you.

So on the permanency of the social media, I think there is that.

And on the permanency of art, on art being forever, I'm not the person to judge that, but depends on the impact that it had.

I think not all art is going to be remembered forever.

Also, for one more thing about it is the NFT issue.

Not like everybody ran to NFT and also a lot of people want to invest in art.

So it kind of created an area where investors and artists can come together and it's also created the sense that if they didn't have digital work to create an NFT, they were out of it.

Not like sort of the fear of missing out issue, but I don't think that is the case.

First of all, not all of the art that is sold with NFT, not the most popular thing is the best art.

There's no such thing, and I'm not sure if it's going to be permanent.

Maybe a lot of people that invest in NFTs are going to be disappointed that maybe in a decade, I don't know.

>>We won't.

We won't know for a few years, I would imagine.

And that.

>>I think so.

>>What we just have just just another minute or two and I want to ask, how do you go from becoming a city planner to looking at these these issues that are very complex?

>>Um, well, I think it's the interdisciplinarity at the core of it all this I first, I didn't want to be a city planner.

I was trying to get to the faculty of Architecture to be an architect.

But when I figured out how it was, I wanted to stay forever because it gives you on one side, there's all the design and aesthetic components, the art series, architecture and everything.

On the other hand, there's socio technology, of course, the infrastructure, the dynamics of cities and everything.

So it fascinated me.

And I did work as a city planner for a while, but my focus was more on the design side of it.

But always keeping what's going on with the city as the base map of everything else.

So I think that gave me a way to pinpoint the things as they happen and to put them in a bigger perspective, to be able to evaluate them with regards to many different criteria.

Um, but then I also focused on graphic design, interaction design and communication studies, which gives me, I think, the ability to scale things and allow me talk about the design of their logo.

For example, we talk about it being huge on the wall, but also tiny on the business cards or on the screen, just a tiny logo or an icon, whatever.

So we talk about its need to be legible and have its impact on both scales.

So what I do practically is I think look at things on different scales all the time through the perspective of design to the perspective of city planning or communication studies.

Um, I don't know if I'm really very successful at doing that, but that's what I try to do.

I try to put things in perspective in different scales.

>>So very complex subjects really amazing things to think about.

And I admire your work and wish you the best of luck.

>>Thank you so much.

Thank you for your interview as well.

>>And thank you for joining us.

We'll see you again next week on another episode of Global Perspectives.