Curation: Symbols of my Life on Pinterest
As part of the curation experiment, I chose Pinterest to use as a curation tool because, while I had not used the platform before in the past, I had seen it used by other people and thus I was curious as to what its particular appeal was as a photo-gathering service, for people to invest significant amounts of their time using.
When creating a board on Pinterest, I decided to, rather than selecting a random assortment of images, to focus it around the specific theme of TV shows that have inspired me over the years, something which I outlined in the board’s description: the “TV shows that have shaped me”.
When choosing my photos, I searched individually for my favourite TV shows, namely Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers and Father Ted, to name but a few, and selected a number of images based on each.
Many of the images I selected consisted of famous quotes from each of the TV series — many of which I have previous memorised or use as a source of inspiration or humour in my everyday life, hence they did not need any direct context to clarify them.
Upon selecting my images, I began arranging them thematically, with the Doctor Who images placed separately to the comedy images and I ‘culled’ (McAdams, 2008) some of the images that when arranged systematically, did not fit with the overall theme of the board.
I also ensured that the quotes that were most pertinent to me were placed at the top of the board for increased prominence. Furthermore, the comedy images I chose not to order chronologically, as I believe this symbolises my wide-ranging comedy tastes as a whole.
Overall, however, Pinterest’s facilities conform closely to the definition of Curation as a whole, as it involved the “selection, ordering and presentation of a collection of artefacts” — something which I have managed to do in a short space of time without direct consideration.
Thus, representing the arguably natural innateness of curation as an activity, particularly from the perspective of a media producer.
Having used Pinterest as a media curation tool for the first time, I have learned, first and foremost, how simple and straightforward it is to curate a number of images once a common theme is established, namely my TV show inspirations.
Moreover, for one of the first times since beginning this module, creating this board has enabled me to, most accurately, “show, not tell” with regards to exemplifying the TV shows that have shaped me as an individual.
By images taking the place of words, the audience or individual viewing my photo board could evoke a mimetic response as, without having to have watched the TV show in question, they should be able to, based on British popular culture, identify the show or genre that interests and inspires me. Hence, this should give an indication as to my personality and characteristics as an individual based on these images.
Thus, this represents how images can be used in the place of words to offer a synonymous description and how sites such as Pinterest can be used to achieve such creative intentions, particularly for budding media producers.
References
McAdams, M. (2008) ‘’Curation’, and journalists as curators’, Teaching Online Journalism. 3 December. Available at: https://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2008/curation-and-journalists-as-curators/ [Accessed: 19 November 2019].
