Alondra Magallanes

Engl 419
Erin Brock Carlson
Starry Night Iconographic Tracking Report

Introduction

Inspiration materialized through art is a wonder to many. Vincent Van Gogh’s most acclaimed

work, “Starry Night” is one of the West’s most recognizable works of art. As an artist who was

always plagued in life with his work going unnoticed, he makes up for it by having a significant

impact on artists today. Most notably, young artists who explore new mediums and forms of

expression. This report outlines the research and results of a project focused on Van Gogh’s

“Starry Night”. Using Laura Gries’ iconographic tracking methods, I was able to identify the

impact of “Starry Night” on a younger generation through social media. Understanding how an

artifact is interpreted and reproduced is significant because it allows room for understanding

remix as an important factor in cultural environments. The goals of this study are to identify

specifically what forms and remixes of the artifact create a larger level of engagement through

likes, reblogs, and replies on the microblogging and social media site Tumblr (tumblr.com).

Below, I detail the research methods used as well as the results of my study. Lastly, I will discuss

the results in the context of virality and remix.

Methods

This study was conducted using Laura Gries’ iconographic tracking method. Iconographic

tracking is described by Gries as “ a digital research method used to track the circulation and

rhetorical transformation of viral images.” The first step was to collect my data using different

sources. I searched google images, pinterest, twitter, and tumblr. I found the most interesting

artifacts came from tumblr and used images exclusively from that site. Since my evaluation of

the impact would be measured based on social media engagement, I wanted to keep the data

consistent with one social media site. Google images do not have this kind of engagement and

twitter and pinterest engagement holds a different weight from each other.

The search terms used within tumblr were as follows:

● Starry Night

● Van Gogh

● Starry Night Art

● Vincent Van Gogh

● Starry Night Painting

From there, I categorized the images by tagging through phrases and themes. With 50 images I

started with 20 different tags but eventually narrowed it down to 14. Because my focus is on how

Starry Night has impacted a younger generation, my tags are centered around the different forms

and techniques the remixes have. There is crossover with the images and the tags are the

following:

● Body

● Tattoo

● DIY
 ● Photography

● Aesthetic

● Painting

● Embroidery

● Crossover

● Merchandise

● Pop Culture

● Edible

● Double Exposure

● Drawing

● Text

After tagging each image, the artifacts were sorted on Google Slides. I chose to organize the

images according to “notes” on tumblr. Each tumblr post has a note number which is the sum of

a posts likes, reblogs (shares), and replies. I chose tumblr as my site for data hoarding

specifically because of the way they measure engagement through one number, allowing for an

easy to understand basis for impact. It is important to note there is one limitation to this research

method. Social media engagement is dependent on many factors including time of posting,

number of followers from original poster, number of followers from people reposting, etc. While

I cannot evaluate artifacts from users with similar followers and posting schedules, I did make

sure to collect artifacts from a wide variety of users throughout all of the tags. From here, I

analyzed the numbers of engagement separated by the tags I established. This allowed me to

identify the forms of remix that are reaching more people.

Results
The results of my research included the most represented tags within the images as well as the

most engaged with tagged images on tumblr through reblogs, likes, and replies. The graph below

depicts the impact of the images in each tag based on the amount of notes those images collected.

The most popular/engaged with are in the tags:

Body: This refers to any image that depicts a remix or reproduction of Starry Night on

some part of the body. This includes permanent and non permanent.

Tattoo: The tattoo category represents any image that depicts a tattoo inspired by Starry

Night.

DIY: In this category, DIY, stands for do-it-yourself. This includes any type of craft like

representation in the artifact based on Starry Night.

Of the 50 images, the most represented tags were Aesthetic (48%), Painting (44%), Photography

(40%), DIY (30%), and Body (30%).

Discussion
From these results, I found that Starry Night has crossed genres from a widely appreciated oil

painting from Van Gogh to a prevalent theme and source of inspiration in tumblr’s creative

community. As a user of the site, I always noticed the painting come up in various different

forms which sparked my interest in using this as the subject of this project. It is like this work of

art became famous all over again. Virality when the painting was first put in the Museum of

Modern art in 1941, was different. It was defined by the movement of people to the work of art,

not the other way around. According to Kristen Seas, virality functions within the “cultural

phenomena that constitute the networked social landscape.” In this case the social landscape is

depicted by tumblr.com and the virality of Starry Night takes on in the form of new mediums.

Most notably are tattoos and body art, two popular things among a young generation (ages 18-

27) who primarily use the site. The most significant part of this research to me was the shape

these remixes have taken. They range from paintings on shoes, leaves, bodies, pottery, and

almost any type of surface that can support the strokes of a brush or even needle. This shows the

importance of remix in cultural environments and the impact a new interpretation of great works

has.
References
Gries, Laurie. Mapping Obama Hope: A Data Visualization Project for Visual Rhetorics. 2016.
kairos.technorhetoric.net/21.2/topoi/gries/. Accessed 23 March. 2018

Seas, K. & Dobrin, S. I. (2011). Ecology, Writing Theory, and New Media. : Taylor and Francis.
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