360Photography

A few nice visual art images I found:

Art & Design degree shows 2012

Image by University of Salford
Our MediaCityUK building is the venue for the Art & Design degree shows from 13-17 June 2012.

Silent Cosplay Mimicing the Visual Vs. Impersonations Mimicing the Voice

Image by timtak
Image by Hatsune Miku in Bangkok by Colodio (who retains copyright) isolated, only the right and side, rather badly by me.

Cosplay refers to wearing a COStume to play or mimic a cartoon (anime) or comic (manga) character. It is particularly popular in Japan where there are large events held periodically where costumed people like the lady above, get together. Cosplayers can also be seen in the Harajuku area of Tokyo, and all over Asia, and now the world, since Cosplay has spread out from Japan. In Japan it is far from being a widespread phenomena. It is the sort of thing that like dancing, the Japanese would not want to do badly. Cosplayers will go to considerable lengths to get their clothes, hair, make up and poses just right.

Cosplay is doubly visual. Cosplayers rarely speak but rather just pose, often for photographs. Their mimicry is a visual art. Further more the object of their mimicry – the cartoon and comic characters – are particularly visual existences. I will argue that Japanese comics are more visual, hyper-visual when compared with Western cartoons and graphic novels in another post but here I want to suggest that cosplay is the predominantly visual mimicry of the predominantly visual.

These Japanese are strange eh? I can feel "conformist," tripping off readers lips, because isn’t copying always conformism. Perhpas, but no, the Japanese are not, Asians are not, particularly conformist. Does this lady look conformist to you? She may do because she is not speaking. Without speech it may seem as if she has less personality than an endless loop tape recorder (see previous post) but, that is because Westerners are logocentrist.

And performing a Nacalian transformation the Japanese Cosplayer in the imaginary is equivalent to the Western voice player, more commonly refered to as the impersonator, .

Back when I lived in the UK I used to mimic vocally a purerly vocal existence: "Mr. Angry" of the "Steve Wright in the afternoon" radio show. I was the UK equivalent of a Japanese Cosplayer. I was as conformist, but probably not as good. I would not have done it had I thought my mimicry would not be recognised however. My voice (like the appearance of the Japanese) is not something that one plays with lightly.

It seems to me that Western impersonators are Nacalianly transformed Cosplayers because they predominantly mimic vocally predominantly vocal existences. This is not to say that Japanese Cosplayers say nothing, or the Western impersonators do not change their appearance at all, but there is a strong difference in emphasis. The being, the personality, the self that is mimiced and does the mimicing is felt to reside in the face and appearance in Japan, and the words and voice in the West.

Please have a look at some impersonators on Youtube. You will see that not only do they not change their appearance all that much, but that they choose particularly characteristic voices to impersonate. For that reason, Christopher Walken, and Al Pachino are comon favourites. Cosplayers choose characters that are easily visually recognisable such as Hatsune Mikku above. While the days of radio – such as the Goon show – are gone, and all characters these days have visual and verbal aspects, those characters that are impersonated in the West are defined, as Westerners are defined, above all by our narrative and voice.

Finally it should be noted that to a degree Westeners are all impersonations, and the Japanese are all cosplayers, because the self is nothibng more or less than self mimicry, there is not self, no individual other than in this attempt at duplication.

This post was inspired by a kind question from Mudakun.