Wednesday 28 October 2015

SUMMARY: Ways of Seeing - Chapter 3

Ways of Seeing, chapter three, points to the ways that women are being surveyed since the very beginning and how this has effected the way in which women and nudity is employed. John Berger gathers many examples of how this is present throughout art history, and uses them as clear evidence to prove his point. One of Berger's main points of women being there "to feed an appetite, not to have any of their own" (Berger,[1972]166:55), is saying something that has an almost sarcastic tone of voice as if mocking the once common opinion. The social concepts at the time of when this was the common opinion were very different to now, yet Berger is trying to point out that "the essential way of seeing women has not changed" (Berger,[1972]166:64). Not only is Berger saying that we still think in this way, but also that women are born to always consider the way they "appear" to their "surveyor". The text is mainly focused on old traditional paintings instead of modern art, but this is likely because it was published in 1972, although it does mention a photo from a "girlie magazine". Berger also focuses a lot on the aspect of "nakedness" and "nudity" and how they may have the same definition they have been made to mean completely different things. He explains "nakedness reveals itself, nudity is placed on display" (Berger[1972]166:54), which he highlights was first introduced in the story of Adam and Eve. This is a valid point as it has been made something that brings "shame" if one is naked rather than something to celebrate.

Ways of Seeing - Chapter 3

Tone of Voice
The tone of voice I feel in this text is quite casual yet intellectual at the same time, it uses phrases and words that are more complex yet in a way that can sometimes be read quite sarcastically. The author in my opinion is in the position where he knows this is the truth yet he doesn't agree with it and desperately tries to prove how it is the definite truth with all the examples his refers to throughout history, finishing with the line 'If you have any doubt that this is so..." ect.

5 Key Points the Text Makes

  • A woman is simply treated as a sight for others
  • There is a difference between nakedness and nudity and they represent different things
  • Woman are conditioned to be this way and this can lead to being vein
  • There isn't much changed from way back when and now in this sense, they are just shown in different media
  • We like to see others naked as it reassures us that they are no different from us

Key Phrases I've Picked Out

  • "Men act and women appear"
  • "Nakedness reveals itself, nudity is placed on display"
  • "Women are there to feed an appetite, not to have their own"
  • "The essential way of seeing women has not changed"
  • "It's coherence is no longer within itself but within the experience of the painter"
  • "The 'ideal' spectator is always assumed to be male"


Analysis of A Short Vision & Duck Amuck

A Short Vision as an animation falls under the genre paradigmatic, as it works within the paradigm of a children's story. This can be seen when a non-diegetic narrator tells you the narrative as an audience in a calming voice. I feel that there is also some intertextuality in this narration technique with many children's animations such as The Clangers, this may have been an intentional choice so that people are drawn to watch it and it's more inclusive. The painting technique used is effective as at the time it was released there wasn't advanced digital technology and this might have come across as too modern to the audience, whereas I believe that the painting technique would have felt more conventional to the audience, again making it inclusive. The non-diegetic sound was something that was particularly effective as it built tension as well as giving an eerie vibe to the animation. As it was shown in 1956, it was quite relevant to what was happening in the world as in 1952 the US detonated the first hydrogen bomb; a big event in history. So, the animation really outlines the thoughts of destruction behind nuclear war and in a way is a kind of warning to people watching.  The imagery becomes slowly more and more powerful as the narrative continues and is shocking in the way that it displays childlike techniques with such a powerful message. The way that the shape of the bomb changes and is quite myserious is also a key factor that makes this animation effective as it could possibly symbolise the idea that we as an audience don't actually know much about the subject at all and that's a scary thing. This animation and the way it has been constructed is very contrasting with the message and I feel it draws in audiences of all kinds, even if they may be disinterested in the beginning it has them by the end and that is what makes it effective.

Duck Amuck is clearly a de-constructive piece of animation that uses it for a comedic effect, not only for children but also for adults and possibly other animators. As the Merrie Melodies series were designed to be shown before films in the theatres they had to be for all audiences and this one in particular has a quite intellectual humour to it. 2D animation is used and  I feel that this film was created as a form of showing off and to reveal everything about an animations construction; to show people how difficult it is. As 2D was likely to be the most popular form on animation at this time, it showed the methods behind the most recent technology in animation. I feel it really questions the whole concept of animation and deliberately dissects and slips through different paradigms, blowing every expectation of the audience. The timing is very effective in Duck Amuck as it constantly changes but not to the point where the audience is confused because of too many ideas being presented at once. In 1953, this would have been a very abstract cartoon in comparison to what audiences were used to, which is why I think it was so successful and iconic. Breaking the fourth wall was something that wasn't entirely new, but the way in which this animation used it was quite radical and used it in a way no others had as instead of just making it a gag, Chuck Jones decided to make it the whole story.


History of Type - Lecture Notes


  • Chronologies - Understanding where things come from is essential for us to take control of our practice, challenges our work and mind. It effects the process as we are move forward and build an understanding on the basic principles.
  • Typography is what language looks like 
  • Getting things right in type is a modernist obsession
  • 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia (originated) - looking at the occidental view of the history of type
  • Type is based on an understanding of language and can only exist when there is a shared understanding that one symbol can stand for a meaning
  • Letters are just symbols (the pictures for sounds)
  • The symbols can now be manipulated in order to express emotion and create meaning and tone of voice
  • Definition of Typography - the art and technique of printing with moveable type
  • 1450: Johannes Gutenberg - Changed the face of how we approached type by creating a wood block printing press, which he used to print a bible, this shows how type has an impact from the social and cultural
  • Type Classificatio - To classify a whole range of type forms based on what they look like
  • 1870: William Forster - Had the biggest influence of the demand and need for type as he introduced the education act and made education compulsory
  • 1919: Walter Gropius - Started to consider mass production of literature and looked at the form and function of type
  • The Baushaus (1919-1933) - Here they started to form a definition for the function of type and a group of people were brought together from the creative and the industrial, which they had to do because of the new demand for type and everyone could now read. This was the paradyme shift that effects our basis of typography now
  • 1957: Max Miedinger - Famous for his typeface creation: Helvetica. With this creation there started to form principles and typefaces were being built for commercial use in this new consumer society
  • 1982: Arial came out for Microsoft's computer operating systems which was very, very similar to Helvetica
  • 1990: Steve Jobs came out with the Macintosh Classic and this came with the first mouse at a reasonable price where it was an accessible computer, this was the birth of type design on a digital level
  • Type can now be seen as an image or an object and this has been driven by a whole range of social, cultural and political reasons.
  • We as a generation consume more type now than ever before
  • Even though type is very modernised now, it is still based on the simple fact of wanting to communicate to each other
  • It is about the other and not the designer
  • 1994: Vincent Connare - Created Comic Sans MS, worked for Microsoft
  • There is no single approach in a post-modern world that typography follows rules that apply to everything

Wednesday 14 October 2015

A 20,000 Year Non-Linear History of the Image

LECTURE NOTES

Looking at a wide contextual rang of artists and image making.

LASCAUX CAVES - Th earliest known form of visual communication to Western scholars (17,300 years ago) These are mystical images, not just a recording of animals, they are images of power and almost are there to be feared.

"RED EARTH CIRCLE" - This is trying to say that something is similar between the ancient art and the modern art and that there is some primal, deep, human connection to image making.

ROTHKO CHAPEL - People seem to have an emotional response such as crying when they look at these famous pieces of work, and it has been said that looking at them feels like you are falling into the void. Although, we question that maybe they are feeling this way because they know they're expected to?

BASILICA OF SAN FRANCESCO, D'ASSI, ITALY - The images have a sense of other-worldliness and people go to a gallery or a place like this as a form of pilgrimage. These images were commissioned by the church to show their might and make you feel lesser when viewing them, whether this be poorer or less spiritual.

MONA LISA - Is this a famous image because culture tells you it is? People feel the need to queue for hours to see it so that they can get a photograph of it for themselves, people now feel the need to document and record everything in their lives on a digital format. This may be because the form of image making is again something primal to us and something that is very important.

BERGER (1972) WAYS OF SEEING - Thinking about what happens when people are able to reproduce an image and say put it on a t-shirt. This is when images start to be re-contextualized and it's now in the hands of everyone who can interpret in their own way instead of being told what it is meant by the hierarchy, in fact it is a challenge to cultural hierarchy.

BANKSY, GRAFFITI ART - This has always been about taking art outside of the galleries, which are only for the elite and a particular type of people, and putting it where everyone can see it. On the other hand, the strange part is that graffiti art such as Banksy's is now being drilled from the wall and put in galleries and sold for thousands, when does the cycle end?

JACKSON POLLOCK - Represents how people can fall into the myth of the hero and their artwork is more than what it looks like, in fact its records of the psyche and their unconscious flowing out of them, but does this just make the artist seem more important than what they really are?

ROY LICHTENSTEIN, RED PAINTING (1965) - This is a piece where Lichtenstein has made an attack using pop-culture against the high culture. The point he's questioning is does a splash of red paint really mean anything and if you think it is then you are falling under the myth of what others are telling you the image means.

SOCIALIST REALISM - Very popular in socialist cultures, Joseph Stalin limited artwork that was created to be only how his vision of how things should be, this was culturally limiting for Russia. The red flag was an iconic image in socialist realism as it signified the blood of the martyrs.

ALBERTO KORDA ( 1960) GUERRILLERO HEROICO - The image of Che Guevara was made more than just a guerilla and now has been re-contextualised into an image of style instead of revolution. But. does doing this make him timeless, does image make a human timeless?

SHEPARD FAIREY (2008/2011) HOPE - This artist made the campaign for Barack Obama but then re-contextualised his own image to a movement of faceless anarchy.

STEVE BELL (2015) - Shows how image can be made as a response to the power, you can use visual communication as a political weapon if you want to.

DUCK IN NUTZILAND, DISNEY (1943) - Sometimes communicating very plainly, like done in this animation, can get to a wider audience. This animation was meant for children and the animators had the power to manipulate and doctor what were world views. (Images are nothing without context)

NICK UT (1972) - This catalysed the counter culture and the moderate culture with just a shocking image, it had the power to make change and to also rewrite history. Without images like these it would possibly be forgotten the horrors of the war and simply be focused on the successes of it.

CONSTABLE (1821) THE HAYWAIN - A depiction of England and is this now what people think England is or was like? People may feel this represents the soul of England when actually it is a fictional image and very subjective. Artists who have created images through time have commonly been commissioned to pant or worked to briefs, so a lot of the time the images may be of false pretences. This painting for example, was actually painted during a time where there was a class war ongoing and now this painting is of lies, yet people believe it is the truth.

GAINSBOROUGH (c1750) 'MR & MRS ANDREWS' - Again, paintings were commissioned a lot of the time to show power and wealth and not about feelings and truths. This painting was to show others how much they had in comparison to you, it was an image about power.

D&G (2015) - Advertising in the modern day image displays a perfect life and that wee are incomplete without this life and the was to that is through consumption.

OLIVERO TOSCANI (1982-96) - Blood stained clothes, animals suffering from oil spills and a man on his death bed, all images used purely for shock but to sell clothes? But, are these images purely used for the sake of gaining custom, or is that wrong to say. Perhaps they were pushing the limit of visual communication and were instead sending a message.

VICTORIAN POST MORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY - People believed that this was a great way to cheat death in a way, as after they had died they still lived on through this image.

MY LAI MASSACRE - The image is powerful in the fact that a photograph such as this one can record something that may have been forgotten, it recorded this murder and the people that were murdered lived again through this image. The photographer explains that taking the photograph was his form of activism.




COP Seminar 1 - Animation Categories

In our first seminar we looked at different animations that were quite strange but fitted into the different categories of animation. I learnt that animations can fit into categories but it's not particularly right to categorise things as everything slips in and out of these boundaries. The categories we looked at were: Formal, deconstructive, politics, abstract, re-narration paradigmatic, primal and intertextuality. Formal meant that it followed a structured pattern (eg- Road Runner) and every episode usually sticks to the same layout and although some things are repeated they can have different meanings each time and start to form different reactions. Deconstructive is an animation that makes you physically aware you are watching an animation and the audience are aware that it is not real life. Politics is self explanatory as it is an animation that aspires to have politics or is made as a result of political events or as a political message. Animation that is abstract doesn't usually have any human elements and uses lines, colours to convey it's message and does something quite different to the rest of the categories. When an animation falls under re-narration it's where it has the power to retell a story but only in the way that animation can, e.g- a full life-cycle in the space of five seconds. Paradigmatic is where animations work in dimensions and rules, they can either work within existing paradigms  or start to create their own and this is where they can start to rip paradigms apart and play with the ideas of them. If an animation falls under primal then it usually explores or shows what it is like to be inside the human essence e.g- inside the bood, the body, the brain ect. which is quite unique as only animation can explore this. Finally, intertextuality is where animations naturally slip into the different categories and cannot be set in just one.

Friday 9 October 2015

Visual Literacy - The Language of Design

LECTURE NOTES
  • It is our job to communicate/solve problems through it and we need to be able to effectively communicate to different audiences in a range of contexts.
  • VISUAL COMMUNICATION: The process of sending and receiving; it is based on a shared understanding, affected by audience, context, media and method of distribution.
  • VISUAL LITERACY: The ability to construct meaning from image/motion, interpreting images of present, past and different cultures and producing images to communicate a message to an audience.
  • The ability to interpret, negotiate, make meaning.
  • Once we understand the basics of these things we can start to change the meaning. (bring humour to it)
  • Visual language is based on the idea of images that can be read, although there has to be an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another for it to be a global language.
  • Being visually literate requires an awareness of the relationship between Visual Syntax and Visual Semantics.
  • VISUAL SYNTAX: The building block of an image relating to how we create logical meaning (pictorial structure & visual organisation)
  • More can be interpreted from an image than a word as the meaning is undefined.
  • Our job is to control the image so that people can interpret it how we want them to.
  • VISUAL SEMANTICS: The way an image fits into a cultural process of communication, we cannot change or interfere with this, only consider it. (Cultural references, social ideals)
  • This includes a relationship between form and meaning.
  • SEMIOTICS - The study of signs and processes, indicate, designation, likeness, symbolism - closely related to the field of linguistics, which studies the structure and meaning of language.
  • It also studies non-linguistic sign systems, visual language and visual literacy. (Symbol, Sign, Metaphor)
  • SYMBOL: What it symbolises (example used Apple)
  • IDENTITY: It becomes a sign for apple products and the company
  • BRAND: What it signifies (In this case: quality, innovation)
  • The 'Big Apple' could symbolise NY and new meaning can come to symbols.
  • VISUAL SYNECDOCHE: When a part is used to represent the whole, or vice versa. The main subject is simply substituted.
  • VISUAL METONYM: A symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning, two images bare a close relationship.
  • VISUAL METAPHOR: It is used to transfer the meaning from one image to another, conveys an impression about something unfamiliar, comparing or associating it with something familiar.
  • "WORK THE METAPHOR"
  • Work on what things can mean, say or stand for.
  • You can start to control visual communication and work visual literacy this way.