Colour Theory Lecture Notes

What do we mean by colour?

Physical → Physiological → Psychological

Spectral colour is a colour that is evoked by a single wavelength of light within a visible spectrum. A single wavelength, or a narrow band of wavelengths generates a monochromatic light.

Rods - Conveys shades of black, white ands gray.

Cones - Allows the brain to perceive colour. (When a single cone is stimulated, the brain receives the corresponding colour)

Joseph Albers (1888-1976) - Interaction of Colour

Johannesburg Itten (1888-1967) - The Art of Colour

Primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

Subtractive colour, subtracting the colour as you start to mix it, film and prints. (CMY)

Additive colour, adding colour as you start mix it, CRT monitors. (RGB)

Colour has dimensions, it has a range of different qualities and values.

Chromatic Value = Hue + Tone + Saturation

Make it darker = Shades

Make it lighter = Tints

Combination of both = Tone

The meaning of colour is presented by the way we see the other colours around it, it will affect how we perceive the colour.

Post-Modernism Lecture Notes

Modernism: initially born out of optimism, an inspirational reaction to WW1, with a view of embracing new technology and building the future.

Post-modernism: an attitude toward modernism, a rejection, exhaustion and pessimism, accepting that we can't know everything so what's the point in trying.

They somewhat overlap…

• Modernism - expression of modern life/technology/new materials/communication
• Post-modernism - a reaction to modern life/technology/new materials/communication

Origins of Post-modernism

• 1917: German writer Rudolph Pannwitz, spoke of ‘nihilistic, amoral, postmodern men’
• 1964: Leslie Fielder described a ‘post’ culture

Pop-Art (First post-modern art movement)

• Used found images and blew them up and printed them on a large scale

High-art / low art divide

• Andy Warhol - reveals the flaws in technology and he was anti-art, said it was ‘meaningless’

Modernism Lecture Notes

Modernity & Modernism

Terms - ‘modern’, & ‘modernity’

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Modernity - industrialisation, urbanisation, the city

1900 - Urbanisation, life is shifted into the clock of the factory and created a rationalised form of existence and things began to be invented to create leisure such as the cinema.

Railways started to come about and places were more accessible and there became a world time that everyone had to agree on.

Enlightenment - Period in late 18th century when scientific /philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds.

Human ditches God in favour of the modern and the new

The City - It almost becomes the major figure of modernity, modern is unapologetic and overtakes the historic.

The word modern makes things nowadays seem better and if that label is on something it's looked at in a different light.

Modern artists’ response to the city

Paris - Haussmann (city architect) redesigns Paris, created large boulevards in favour of narrow streets and this made it easier to police, a form of social control. The centre becomes an upper class zone as the dangerous elements of the working classes are moved away from the centre. A city design the accommodate the modern but also for control.

Caillebotte & Manet - art shows how life is becoming isolated and explores the alienation from the world and being overwhelmed.

The Flaneur - Wore their fancy modern clothes and walked round the city just to be seen

Modern art and photography

Kaiserpanorama (1883) - viewing machine, why would someone pay to see the world instead of going and seeing it themselves, technology takes over our senses and the idea of a reliance on technology.

Max Nordau - Degeneration (1892), (anti-modernist) and predicted his worries of the modern world.

If we think about subjective experience (the experience of the individual in the modern world) we start to understand modern art and the experience of modernity.

Modernism in design

• Anti-historicism
• Truth to materials
• Form follows function
• Technology
• Internationalism

Study Task 4

TRIANGULATION
Different authors have considered the idea of the modern world has been consumed by the advertising industry and this is having an impact on culture and society. Garland, (1964), Adbusters (2000) and Kalman (1998) have all discussed the fact due to this creatives in the world are having their talents exploited or wasted by corporation and advertising business. For example, Kalman in Fuck Committees (1998) writing in his account of individuals with 'jagged passion' facing the corporate world points out that 'creatives are now working for the bottom line'. This points to the idea that as the  corporate world gets larger and richer, it causes other parts of the industry lose creativity and individuality in order to use 'corporate strategies' and serve to make the riches richer (Kalman, 1998:1).

VISUAL ANALYSIS/SYNTHESIS - Starbucks Coffee Perfection
Here is an example of a stop motion animation that has been created for Starbucks Coffee. Ken Garland might say that the animators here have 'flogged their talent' and as it is so perfectly created this could possibly be the case. Each scene effortlessly flows into the next and makes use of the coffee cups as materials for the animation itself. The narrative is done by an american man who has a friendly voice, possibly a 'hidden persuader' and this could suggest the brands motif and message of being a company that audiences can trust. The colour theme is very in keeping with the brand and this is another way the animation is extremely branded and relative to the product it is promoting. I have also found that the characters involved in this animation are faceless, which could have been done so that the audience can put themselves in their place and it's easy to do so. Overall, I feel that this animation has been created very cleverly and doesn't include a single other suggestion of any other brand, focusing the audience on one thing; the coffee. 

Starbucks Coffee Perfection from Rogier Wieland on Vimeo.



EVALUATION
Adbusters' manifesto 'First Things First' (2000), explores the issues that surround the world of advertising and demonstrates the idea that artistic talents are being wasted on this consumerist industry where pointless garbage is pushed out each day, but we together should challenge this. In doing so Adbusters can help us to see the ways that sitting back and allowing this happen is actually making the situation worst and we as designers should looking for 'other things more worth using our skills and experience on' (Adbusters, 2000:1). The weakness in Adbusters' argument in that they fail to account for movements where people are trying to make differences and explain that 'designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits' (Adbusters, 2000:1). It is possible however, when exploring Kalman's (1998) argument on the ways that designers are being swept up into corporate committees that he accounts that it is 'only 99 percent true' (Kalman, 1998:1). This develops Adbusters argument on the generalisation of designers in the industry as other authors such as Kalman (1998) believe that it is almost entirely true as a judgement. 

PARAPHRASING & ANALYSING

Writing in The Guardian (1964), Garland claimed that consumerist culture was only concerned with the buying and selling of things and that design as a whole is not something that's course should be laid out for you by education, practice and industry. Garland also aims to demonstrate how important it is to not overlook the relationship between advertising and design and the need for 'reversal of priorities'. He does this by bringing a long list of examples to the readers attention including 'dog biscuits', 'diamonds' and 'butt toners' (Garland, 1964:1).

LINKS

http://www.manifestoproject.it/ken-garland/

http://www.manifestoproject.it/adbusters/

http://www.manifestoproject.it/fuck-committees/

Harvard Referencing Notes

ORDER: 
Surname, Initial., (Date), 'Title', Place, Publishers

Example: Miles, R., (2015), 'Reference', Leeds, LCA Publishers

IN-TEXT CITATIONS
'Quote' (Surname, Date: Page number)

Example: 'I argue against this point as..' (Miles, 2015: 7)

INTERNET SOURCES
Adding Onto Reference: [Internet] Available <www.linkgoeshere.com> [Accessed 10/12/15].
Add a page if necessary. P.57.

REFERENCING A FILM OR ANIMATION
Title, (Date), Dir NAME [type of media], Place, Company, Run-time.

Example: Frozen, (2013), Dir Wes Craven, [Animation], USA, Disney, 1hr 52mins.

NOTES:

• If you cannot find the author you can put whoever published the information
• It doesn't matter about the style you choose, just pick one and stick to it
• BE CONSISTENT
• If there is no author completely, then put 'anon'
• A Bibliography has to be alphabetically ordered, and it's a good idea to section it into types
• If there is multiple authors put: Miles, R. and Smith, J.
• If there is a collection of authors put Miles, R., etal
• If you can't find a date on a webpage, put the date at the bottom of the page
• If you really cannot find any date put (n.d) - no date

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.

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’