A imagem técnico-memética no Facebook

Abstract

Having the phenomenological model of cultural history proposed by the media philosopher Vilém Flusser as a starting point, as he grasps the mediation of the world by the alternation between image, text and technical image as the dominant code of each age, we take the latter, as well as its telematic potentialities, in order to comprehend the hypermemetic culture plaguing our current times through its highest expression, namely, the image macro, a figure that combines image and text in a single frame. Interfacing Flusserian thought and these memes, we conclude that they are technical-memetic images, which embody the playful and dialogic power emanating from the images produced by apparatuses through various themes explored along this dissertation, such as, socio-technical agency, (collective) creativity, networks as a model for the spread of information, dialogue and interaction via pictorial surfaces; most importantly, they characterize the dialectical merging of the two codes that have been transcoded throughout Western history, i.e. image and text. Aiming to analyze the hybrid form of the image macro regarding its relation image-text, we choose as object of analysis the most shared memes from the memetic Facebook fan page Suricate seboso , which produces their impressive montages through the creative combination of imagery compositions made with meerkats allied with the transcription of the oral language of Ceará, a state with its own Portuguese dialect; as a result of our case study, we defined these three regularities concerning the manners such imbrication of both codes occurs: image < text; image > text; image = text. Moreover, given the specifics of Brazilian memesphere, our choice for Facebook is due to its hegemony as the greatest national hub of memes; in such a social networking website, the macros became one of its languages in a way it does not only encapsulate the utopia of a dialogue with and through images but also becomes a telememetic network in which communicative and emotional potential of memes are materialized by forms of interaction as likes, comments and shares. Eventually, we have become networked players in the process of (re)production of these creative unities that create links and dialogues between nodes at the same time they change the way we imagine and conceptualize as we increasingly express ourselves through their dialectical language