Tuesday 17 November 2015

Lecture Notes - Print Culture & Distribution

Mass Image Culture
New Royal Academy - first formal art school and the school or the royals and elites of society, people who went here were taught that there was a particular idea of the fine arts, a hierarchy of the artistic disciplines. (Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry)
The Making of the English Working Class (1963) - the side effect of the city and urbanisation, for the first time in England you had a condensation of people forced together, condensed cultures and a noticeable separation between the classes. Because of their separation from the galleries and Royal academies, people started to make and write their own art and culture for the people. The working people also started to then create their own political culture.
John Martin (1820) Belshazzar’s Feast - managed to beat the system as he took this painting and sold reproductions of his painting and made lots of money off it. Because of the new print culture the everyday man would now be able to own great pieces of art, which they wouldn't have ever been able to before.


Culture VS Popular Culture
Culture: ‘the best that has been thought & said in the world’, study of perfection, attained through disinterested reading, writing and thinking, the pursuit of culture, seeks ’to minister the diseased spirit of the times’ What he meant was that all of the print culture was a threat to Englishness and that this new direction is a bad route to go down and it was fine as it was. (Matthew Arnold - 1867) ‘Culture and Anarchy’


Leavism - F.R Leavis & Q.D. Leavis -
  • Still forms a kind of repressed, common sense attitude to popular culture in this country
  • For Leavis - C20th sees a cultural decline, standardisation and levelling down


Opinions of culture are always political
  • Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass democracy (anarchy)
  • Nostalgia for an era when the masses exhibited an unquestioning deference to (cultural) authority
It's not made with a rule book and it's a radical movement that is revolutionary.


School of Design (1836) - forefathers of our art schools, they had a specific role to train people for industry and had a political role of teaching print culture, institutions that celebrate traditional culture alongside mass culture


‘Aura’ and the Politics of Print
(Creativity, Genius, Eternal Value, Tradition, Authority, Authenticity, Autonomy, Distance, Mystery), Aura is all of these things and more and the impression that you get when you look at a piece of art and are amazed by the talent. It's people talking about paintings in fancy words to describe how amazing they are and making art more special than it is. This is all down to you believing that someone is better than you, more talented than you and this way of thinking makes fascism possible as it creates a culture where people are happy to be lead and dominated.


Once you can take that image and mass print it, it takes away the aura that surrounds pieces of art and you can make it into anything you like. Introduced the capacity to write their own culture and is not only the culture of the people but also introduced the opportunity for people to fight back against authority, this is the weapon. Behind this is the construction of the people where they don't blindly listen to what others tell them any more.


Contemporary Print Culture
The Panorama - People set up these images of the city and urban space, people could view these godly images and art becomes more like a experience.
Th invention of the photograph created the idea of being immortalised forever in a photograph available for everyone and the need for painted portraits became redundant.


Once you grasp the idea of political, historic possibilities it can be used as a weapon.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

What is Research? - Lecture Notes

Studio practice < reflection > PPP
COP < analysis > Studio Practice
COP < evaluation > PPP


EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING


Knowledge - The learner recalls or recognises info
Analysis - The learner separates info into component parts
Comprehension - The learner changes info into a different form, format or media
Application - The learner solves problems by using appropriate knowledge and generalisations
Evaluation - The learner makes quantitative and qualitative judgements relating to established media
Synthesis - The learner solves problems by combining info through original and creative thinking (compose, establish)


‘Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.’ - An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth


Creativity isn't just about explaining the world, it's looking at the world and saying how do we start to explore that world, it's about asking what if?


‘If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?’ - Albert Einstein


Ideas are at the core of our practice, we are driven by ideas


Stimulated approach - the is a conscious or subconscious search for inspiration from an external repertoire: in the surroundings, media, in discussion, libraries, etc. The main concern here is the development of analogies and associative approaches, which are then further  individual solutions.


Systematic approach - this is based on systematic collection and modification of components, characteristics and means of expressions. Trying things again and moving it around in deferent ways to see what works better or worse.


Intuitive approach - the development of thought process, which is primarily based on internalised  perceptions and knowledge, that is to say an internal repertoire.


What is research? - the process of finding facts, these facts will lead to in knowledge. Research is done by using what is already known, it involves collecting information about a subject from a variety of sources including books, journals and the Internet. Or by carrying out experiments or talking to people and the analysis of this information. It is about asking questions, ‘how?’ ‘Why?’ ‘What if?’


Types of Research


Primary Research - developed and collected for a specific use, usually generated to help solve a problem and involves the collection of data that does not yet exist.


Secondary Research - published or recorded data that have already been collected for some purpose other than the current study, the analysis of research that has been collected at an earlier time (for reasons unrelated to the current project)


Quantitative Research - Deals with facts, figures, and measurements, and produces data which can be readily analysed. Measurable data is gathered from a wide range of sources, and it is the analysis and interpretation of the relationships across the data. (Generates numerical data, the gathering and analysing of measurable data, it is objective and relies on statistical analysis)


Qualitative Research - explores and tries to understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and interactions. It generates non-numerical data. A way to study people or systems by interacting with and observing the subject regularly. Research that is involved with quality. It can describe things without the use of numerical data.


What is information?


  • Is the result of processing, manipulating and organising data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the person receiving it.
  • Data that been processed to create meaning and hopefully knowledge for the person who receives it. Information is the output of information systems.
  • Information to be useful it should be sufficient, competent, relevant.
  • It can take many forms but as long as it's useful.


A brief mention of methodologies:


Phase 1 Assimilation
  • The accumulation and ordering of general information and information specifically related to the problem in hand


Phase 2 General Study
  • The investigation of possible solutions or means of solution
  • The investigation of the nature of the problem


Phase 3 Development
  • The development and refinement of one or more of the tentative solutions isolated during phase 2


Phase 4 Communication
  • Communicated your ideas to someone else


Analysis


  • What is the problem/brief/question about?
  • What do I need to know more about?
  • What already exists?
  • What are the specification, materials, functions, client preferences that are a fixed part of the brief?
Do not attempt to invent solutions at this stage, just background information and parameters


Research


  • How many ideas occur in response to you analysis?
  • Ask yourself ‘what happens if…
  • Feedback is a significant part of the reach process
  • Use lateral thinking and word association to spur originality
  • Find the extremes (simplest to over the top/bizarre)
  • Use mechanical trial and error and find out where things fit together
  • Try out likely materials and find their limitations
  • Go for lots of possibilities rather than one precious solution
  • Prepare to go back to ‘analysis’


Evaluation


  • Which fulfils the brief?
  • Which looks best?
  • What does the client/audience/viewer prefer?
  • How does it fit the current ethos/values/trends?


Solution


  • Usually a compromise between what you want to do, what can be afforded, and what is feasible
  • Be sure this is accepted by getting feedback on all the possibilities before you reach this stage
  • Be prepared to go back again, it is not a linear process so START ANYWHERE!!


‘Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing’