Showing posts with label Readings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Readings. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Marx

Section 1

Marx speaks of use-value and exchange-value of a commodity, this commodity is something that meets a human want or need. The exchange value is how the object is acquired, he uses the examples of iron and corn.  There will always be an equation for how much to exchange corn for iron. These two aspects of commodities are separate but also always connected and will always be intertwined.  The exchange value of a commodity is merely an expression of its value, this is what connects all commodities so that they can all be exchanged with each other.  Marx also explains that the value of a commodity does not remain consistent as it evolves, advances or varies in labor productivity.  But the value of the object must meet the requirement of the need for use value or the commodity will be worthless.  So as long as an object holds use vale therefore it, produced in quantity, will hold a value within society.

Section 2

There is a relationship between the labor to create the commodity and the value of it. There is a correlation between the labor and the value, so if the labor is increased to create something the value will then have to increase to meet the labor cost. Different types of labor create different kinds of use values.

Section 4

In a capitalist society the values of commodities are studied by political economists, they take information and see how much money was generated by a specific commodity. These people do not look at the value as something completely independent from the social labor that originally determined the value of the object.  This process is called fetishism, where objects are imagined to dictate the social activities that produce them. Marx compared the creation of these products as a manufacturing of something to fill a void.  These objects are seen like a deity that fulfill a desire within their lives that is not filled by a sense of community or family. It is not until commodities enter into an exchange do thy create a relation to another commodity.  Once in an exchange, commodities values are determined by the amount of the socially useful labor-time put into them.  In the reading the example of diamonds and quarts, it is harder and takes more time to mine a diamond then it does to mind quartz, so in this relationship diamonds cost more then quartz.  when the worker no longer owns the means to production they no longer have access to the knowledge of how much work was taken to produce the product.  So now the value is changed to something off of a mystical value rather then a labor related value.


Chapter 3
Section 1

There are two sides to the process of labor. On the first side is the the buyer and on the other is the worker or producer.  The buyer purchases from the worker, and the worker receives a wage for his labors.  Labor has become one in the object, the worker who has put effort to create the object had been transferred to the object, giving it value. The capitalist owns everything in the production process they are free to sell for their own profit.  The goal is not to sell only use value products but a commidity.

Surplus
The goal is to create surplus to create a  profit from the commodity.  


Monday, October 28, 2013

Chapter 8

Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

We have lost sight of the real. In disneyland and Disney World, there are replicas from around the world, cities and small towns, and this can satisfy people longing for the world.

We live in a world where most modernism, modernism and the ideas of pre modernism are all combined.  Many ideas from modernism technology, science and progress remained dominant in post modern culture.

This chapter shows how the underlying meanings of post modernism translates to postmodern styles in art, media, and advertising.

Postmodernism and its Visual Culture

Postmodernity is referring to changes in the social and economic conditions that help to produce these styles and ways of being a subject.

Appropriation, parody, pastiche, and self conscience nostalgic play are just some of the approaches associated with postmodernism.  This and the rise of remix of culture is a result of shifting postmodern sensibilities coupled with the emergence of a set of technological practices enabled by the Web and digital technology.

Addressing the Postmodern Subject

Through these films, viewers engage with simulated environments with jaded sense that we know what is to come and that our bodies may be physically malleable and changeable through technology and medicine.

Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity 

Reflectivity, in text refers to its own means of production, undermines the illusion or fantasy aspects of the narrative, encouraging the viewer to be critical thinker about the ideology conveyed by the narrative.

the surface is understood to be a crucially meaningful element of social life and not simply the illusion put over the real, like make up almost hiding a blemish underneath.

The body image in postmodernism is something that can be easily changed, through surgery, or buying of makeup and feature alterations.  Sex, eye color, skin tone and facial features are some things that are now a quick fix if someone feels the need to change themselves. This is a sharp contrast to modernity because the body was seen a stable, boundaried and fixed.

Postmodern Space, Geography, and the Built Environment

Marc Auge refers to these as non places, sites in which we are solitary, disconnected and distracted, sites that are defined in a certain sense by the lack of presence they demand from those within them.

Appropriation, pastiche, and bricolage were everywhere apparent in the design of the Vegas strip, not as international expression of a culture of critique but as means through which the postmodern subject communicated and interacted with and through its built environment.

We live in a world were there is a tension between postmodernity and modernity are always conflicting but creating an interesting dynamic in our lives.



Chapter 7

Consumer Societies

In a capitalist economy the overproduction of good is what is depended on, this means that there must be a desire to make this profitable.

It has been debated that in a consumer driven world, the idea of self image and a person's status is driven by the objects they own.  These objects seem to give meaning to their lives because they are lacking the connection to a real community.

As in the ads for body soap, no one was very aware of the need for perfumed body soap until the idea was placed in front of them, the need to fill the gap or even entice women to thinking if they buy the soap they will never be lonely.

The post war economy supported the consumer idea because the United States was in a very good place  . In this association the idea of being a citizen was then adopted to being a consumer, because a good citizen was a consumer.

Envy, Desire, and Belonging

Bourdieu identified different forms of capital, in addition to economic capital, he also expanded on social capital, symbolic capital and lastly cultural capital.

Advertising targets a group of people to appeal to either a connection between family, generation, nation, or community

It is a psychological idea to try and convince people to buy products bcause of a lack or want of something in their life.

Commodity Culture and Commodity Fetishism

Commodities are defined as things that are bought and sold in a social system of exchanges.  "commodity self" is the idea that we as a person are partially defined through our consumption of commodities.

Commodity Fetishism where massed produced goods are emptied of the meaning of their production and then reassociated with a new meaning that mystifies the product and turns it into a fetich object.

Many producers of "made in the United States" are taking parts form overseas and assembling them here.

Brands and Their Meanings

Brands are product names that have meaning attached to them through naming, packaging, advertising, and marketing.

brand meaning is usually established through repetition of a symbol or shape.

Also the replacement of a brand name as an action or object

Marketing of Coolness

Finding that a group could be marked to to be associated with "coolness".

The attachment of "coolness" to products, this would have them seen as unique, distinct and uninfluenced.

The addition of adding philanthropic ideas to ads. Like (RED) it is both pleasing aesthetically and morally makes a consumer feel good about what they are doing and spending their money on.



Sunday, October 20, 2013

Work of art in the the age of mechanical reproduction

Walter Benjamin
Born July 15, 1892- September 26, 1940

  • literary critic
  • essayist 
  • philosopher
  • social critic
  • translator
  • radio broadcaster 


The original need for replication was for pupils learning under a master trying to learn a skill or replicate their work.  The new method of mechanical reproduction is something very different.

The mass production of replication was the creation of coins, terra-cotta, and bronze.  Etching was added to wood cuts and then followed lithographs. Lithographs was transcendent from the art world to the everyday world by invading the wold of graphic arts.  This allowed large quantities of products and it was also able to be changed quickly.  The art of printing was soon passed by the use of photography. The camera allowed for an image that maybe a hand could not capture.

"even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element; its presence in time and space, its unique existance at the place where it happens to be."

Most art, its story and its existence includes the changes that it could have encountered on its travels to exhibitions, the owners it was passed to and the physical changes that could have occurred to it over time.

The more an image is reproduced the less its presence is valued.

Showing the perception of time is something that was never done, in doing this you can also see a type of social change. Aura is the special quality that comes from a person, place , or thing.  The desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially and humanly.

Photography started as a way of documenting the loved ones and the ones who had passed on, but as we step away from just documentary it starts to show the ritual value. Atget and all of his photographs of the streets of Paris.  Now the need for a caption is necessary to lead the viewer.

Film and performance art are two very different entities, the element of film is to make you see as the camera does, and the film can be manipulated to make the viewer appreciate the acting more because we as an audience do not need to interpret actions.  While a stage actor needs to be aware of how the crowd is viewing him or her as they walk across stage and act.  These people have a presence that is forgotten by the audience and the camera angles in movies are used to create this same effect.

Some actors in Russian films are not actors at all, but are regular people who perform the job on a daily bases and will be filmed to show greater accuracy in a situation.  This is very much unlike the western movie making.

Massive reproduction of art changes how the masses react to art.  The progressive reaction is characterized by the intimate visual and emotional enjoyment. Film is easier to have this reaction to next to a painting or drawing because it is relatable in the situation of things.  These we can take from our everyday life and apply them to what we see.

Dadaism wanted to create something by pictorial and literary means. They applied less importance to the sales value of their work than to its usefulness for contemplative immersion.  They made the works of art the center of scandal, their use to outrage the public.

War has set goals for mass movement on the largest scale. war is ugly but it can somehow strangely be beautiful.  The manifesto dictates the ugliness of war but it somehow brings to light the strange beauty that it contains. Fascism in rendering aesthetic while communism responds by politicizing art.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Chapter 5

Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction, and the copy

The term reproduction is a way to describe a copy of an original work. Im Marxist theory uses the term reproduction to describe the way culture practices and their forms of expression reproduce the ideologies and interests of the ruling class.

Visual Technologies 
Technology itself does not determine social change.

Technology interacts with a society and its facets, when doing so it creates changes not only in the technology but in the culture and society it is in.

Speaking about photography as a technology that was once rarely used to something that is integrated in to our everyday life.

Motion and Sequence 

The introduction of film on the late 1800's corresponded with an increased desire to visualize motion in an increasingly evolving and fast paced society in the late 19th century.

Projection machines were invented in the likeness of the camera obscura, a drum shaped object that had a light source and a strip of images that gave the illusion to a movement occurring.

Cinematic meaning is derived not from the individual film frame or take but through the linking together of images an takes into signifying chains. The combination of the two images to create a third meaning.

Image Reproduction; The Copy
The term negative was used to mean an original from which the image was struck.  A daguerreotype was the sole original if the negative was tilted slightly it can be made to reflect light to make the image appear positive

The term noeme comes from phenomenology, a branch of philosophy devoted to the study of embodied sensory experience, which is regarded as the root of being and knowledge.

In Barthes book, Camera Lucida, shows us that the photograph unlike a painting or drawing, has the ability to be copresent. It shares a place and time to which it is representing.

Even though photography was invented in 1839 it wasn't until 1902 that photographs were shown in galleries. And by the end of WWI there was a commercial use for photography.

Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin saw reproducibility as a potentially revolutionary element because it freed art from it status as a uniquely ritual artifact in traditions of the iconic reverence and exchange.

Benjamin argued that "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place it happens to be."

Authenticity can refer to seeing or structuring an image as if without the help of the technologies available to us today. It is also applied to the a quality that clings to the idea of classic type within a catagory of people or icons.

Benjamin also noted that the meaning of the original work changes when it is reproduced.

Benjamin's main arguments on reproduction still remain valit today. The meaning of the image is changed when the image is reproduced and the mechanical reproducibility of images changes their relationship to ritualsof meaning, use and value in their respective markets.

Politics of Reproductibility

The photo-collage by Heartfield allows him to make a political statement through reworking images and combining familiar images in new ways. In that sense a drawing may not be able to accomplish the same thing

The reproduction to the portrait of Che shows the relationship to revolution that the people shared with him. Also they speak of him as Che and not his last name, Guevana, this shows an emotional connection that has formed between not only the people viewing these images but also the people creating them.  The relation to reproduction is also the ability to include text, and the ability to immediately associate an image with a word or phrase is something that is extremely powerful.

Copies, Ownership, and Copyright

The term "copyright" means exactly what it says, the right to copy or reproduce an image.  This includes the right to distribute, produce, copy, display,perform, create and control derivative works based on the original.

In trying to understand the terms of copyright in relation to reproductions of a painting, the painting is a unique expression of the painters idea and not in the literal uniqueness of the object itself.



The question of consent is also a big factor when coming into the idea of copyright.  The right to privacy and informed consent.  Because of the film Titicut Follies, which showed life a Massachusetts correctional facility for the criminally insane. The other factors are the consent of the people being filmed and their understanding out how that material obtained will be used.

Reproduction and the Digital Image

Because a digital image has no negative, no original storage medium from which copies are made. Analog images are different from those of a digital image in how they look, generated, stored and distributed.

The digital image is also based on instant pleasure, like the invention of the Polaroid camera invented in the 1960's. The instant image is something that analog cannot do.

The manipulation of digital images is not what revolutionized it, it's the availability of this software to the middle class consumer and their ability to create on a scale that was never possible in the existence of photography.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Food For Thought

How is collage affected by the industrial advancements, technological advancements and the evolution of literature and education?

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Greenberg: Collage

The use of the world "reality" when used in the context of art is something that needs to be addressed within the confines of abstraction.  Even though the term reality would not even come close to trying to describe cubist works. At first the cubist works were taking three demential objects and creating them in a to demential plane.  The imitation of printing was the key to Braques' cubist pieces to give them depth.  The way that the letters are placed they changed planes, because of the tension between surface and depth the eyes are tricked.Cubist paintings started to transform with the help of artists adding different substances to paint.  In doing so the texture was calling attention to the surface of the painting.  This texture contrasted with the printing on the paintings but because of the texture there was only room for the text on the surface.  With the telescoping effect the need to keep concentrating the surface was something of a necessity. Picasso says to have made his first collage in 1911. Braque was using simulated textures, typography and had begun the broaden and simplify the facet-planes in 1910.  Literal flatness is something that is always present, now instead of representing it, a piece of pasted paper becomes that plane. By placing layers on top of drawings and then adding other elements it starts to push back the space and make it seem what is layered in the back is in a visual space reseeding away.  Picasso and Braque opped for the re-representation of space and objects, this is where analytical cubism came to and end, and synthetic cubism started.  "Drawing in space was Picasso's way of taking something flat and reconstructing it out of pieces of paper to inhabit a three demential space. Braque and Picasso never returned to collage after 1914. Gris would start out with abstracted shapes and then place pictures overtop that were recognizable.  Grist uses the juxtaposition to create space and tension even with out fully sketching out depth in his collages.  Gris was the one artist to really stick to synthetic cubism and collage and master it.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Cut and Paste

The use of collage is something that is rare, but the impact of the images creates an interesting dynamic.  The weight of the images correlating with the dialog it is trying to have with it's viewer.  This is something that I had never been exposed to before, I had known of making it look aesthetically pleasing but there was never the connection to how much was on the page to the weight of the message it is trying to convey.

The use of collage is a modernist idea, to turn to as a new way of rethinking, reworking and repositioning media.

From the 60's on we have to begin looking at the art of collage as a consumer- as- creator genealogy.  As the launch of digital editing software, the use of digital media increased the popularity of collage and also the easy access to its creation.

The problem with the easy access of digital media to be formed into collage is the honesty of the picture, and its authenticity. Like the problem with a picture of Bert in a Bin laden propaganda poster, which sparked outrage amongst Americans. but in the end they found the image to have been created by a third party. So the need to know that some images are "fake" need to also be understood.

Introduction of Polyvore; it turns its users into customers. Think of the walls of a teenage girl, the pictures of celebrities, clothing, places, and just things that appeal to that age group. Polyvore take this stand point of what a person, factoring in age, likes. This will be a collage generator that is in mass production, using pictures that are all over the internet.  This is actually an in-genius idea.

Not until the mid 1990's that collage found a new artistic possibility. Larry Clarks' book was the first contemporary step forward in the art of collage. After him many artists followed in the scrapbook styled works.  They were taking popular art and mashing it with classical forms of collage.

then came Jeff Koons. I am not a fan of his work but his referencing to the pop culture and pop art is resonating in his collage 

Collage even if we don't notice it, it is a surrounding art that we experience everyday

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Chapter 4

REALISM AND PERSPECTIVE

What are the conventions between realism and abstract?
            How do we deem something to look realistic and another to be abstract?
                        -to be held by ideals to be looking like the actual object.

Pectoral images appear to have served as form of symbolic communications and expression among members of different religions when it was the time of persecutions, these symbols were a way for them to hide the true meaning from outsiders.

In the Renaissance the practice of artists changed because they labored to reproduce the appearance of a scene, as the eye of an observer would see it.
            This does not mean it became more scientific but the space as a replica of what embodied eye would see took on greater symbolic, spiritual and philosophical meaning.

Reproductability in images is not just about the capacity of art works and images to be copied but also the aim to copy, or reproduce, the real.

Cubism- the art of making an object in its simplest form and then these simple shapes are shifted in space due to multiple viewpoints.

VISUAL CODES AND HISTORICAL MEANING

Today an old image is viewed from a different perspective then it was when it was first created.

We take context clues about the style and technique to determine time period.

Neoclassical - art that aims to reproduce aspects of classical fine art.

The Pre-Raphaelite- they were a group of artists who were driven to create non-conventional art in the Victorian era to reference the medieval painter and sculptor.

QUESTIONS OF REALISM

Noticing changes in aesthetics and styles of naturalist or realist images over time, we do more then simply chart taste or progress in the history of art. We also follow the development of different ways of seeing, and different views about value and meaning.

The term realism refers to a set of conventional belief or a style of art or representation. At a given point in a historical moment to accurately represent nature or the real or to convey and interpret accurate or universal meanings about people, objects, and events in the world.
What do the different approaches to realism tell us about the cultural and politics of a given social context. There is no universal standard for realism, and the idea about that constitutes realism can vary drastically.

Soviet Constructivist Realism Manifesto of the 1930s.  The government was telling artists that they must depict art in a specific way be cause that is the “right way” . Limiting the freedom of artists.  Any artist that was outside of the realist style was deemed degenerate.  In 1974 abstract painters Oscar Rabine and Evgeny Rukhin had a public display of unofficial abstract art made by artists who defied the mandate.


Michel Foucault, in his book “The Order of Things”, used the term episteme to describe the way that and inquiry into truth is organized on a given era. An episteme is an accepted dominant mode of acquiring and organizing knowledge in a given period of history.

HISTORY OF PERSPECTIVE

The representation of objects in a space as if seen by an observer through a window or frame. In perspective, the size and detail of the objects depicted corresponds to their relative distance from the m=imaged position of the observer.

The Enlightenment promised the power of human reason would overcome superstition, end ignorance through the development of scientific knowledge, bring prosperity through the technical mastery of nature, and introduce justice and order to human affairs.

The system introduced by Brunelleschi involved the concept of regarding the picture as kind of a mirror or window frame through which one sees the world.

Architectural drawing relies on the precision of a representational system that emphasizes the measurability of basic structures of forms in space

PERSPECTIVE AND THE BODY

Mantegna adjusted the drawing so it most important feature, the head, would not look too tiny. The compression makes Christ’s feet and chest cage loom and his face appears squished.

Durer, realism is achieved by making a composite of views and parts from a varety of observed forms. Realism in this case, is achieved not by seeing one scene from the fixed perspective of an imagines spectator but by combining parts views sketched at different times of different bodies in different places and merging them into composite whole.

Da Vinci’s technique is called perspective anamorphous.

THE CAMERA OBSCURA

Today, perspective is recognized as one among a number of possible means of realism among others; it no longer characterizes our era’s episteme in a totalizing way.

CHALLENGES TO PERSPECTIVE

Perspective in its traditional forms has remained tied to the idea of an objective depiction of reality.

Impressionism was an art movement of the late 19th century that featured work that used visible brushstrokes and impressionistic depictions of light to capture a sense of human vision differently.

Monet examined the process of looking by painting different works of the same scene to show subtle changes due to shifting light and color over time

In 1907 two painters, Braque and Picasso, became interested in depicting objects from several different points of view simultaneously.

Cubism was a style that deliberately challenged the dominant model of perspective through an analytic system that broke up the perspectival space of the conventional painterly style

Action painting drew from the surrealist interest in automatism, a technique of writing, drawing, and painting in which the producer marks the surface with spontaneous gestures, giving little or no attention to the aesthetic from that results.  It is an uncensored release of the inner feelings of the artist and that the marks on the canvas would express these feelings without direct pictorial symbolism










Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Alan Brooks

Professor at TCNJ

Brief Bio

  • first place in an art contest
  • SVA- School of VIsual arts, high school never gave him a lot of direction
    • he was at first intimidated, but stuck through and was named best graphic design student
    • advertising, not a fan, but he didn't know why.  Then he found graphic design, because it was art and not just business sketches.
    • not just creating a concept
  • all marker drawn.
  • envelopes 
CBS TV
  • typographic titles
  • age 22 using all different services
  • vendors were then catering to his needs. Lots of staff when working for a big company
  • Movie ads, only a few hours to complete.
  • training to work on your toes, work faster.

SHOWTIME

  • literally the art department
  • freedom and open to his ideas
  • left after a short time, quit
FREELANCE WORK

  • networking with other channels and old bosses
  • took an office in mid town, with a person from showtime and a person from CBS
BROOKS CHAMPION INC.

  • dont have 3 designers start a business, needed more diversity i.e. accounting or business
  • computers were beginning to come into play
  • Transition to the first macintosh 
  • tutortials for his computer to learn how to use software.
  • TV shows 
MOVES TO NJ
  • Princeton NJ
  • Allen Brooks Design
  • different cliental 
  • Transition to corporate, get in the middle so it looks different and not like ever other pharmaceutical annual report 
  • Expand the business- partner who knows marketing and sales
    • VERGE180
    • every company is on the verge of something, failure, success, change. Help these people see the new marketing and advertising ideas.
    • never to specialize in any area of design or any industry- because he never wanted to be pigeonholed.
    • Branding Company
      • What is a brand identity? Outward impression of the brand

register the brands and logos that we see everyday

When logos change.. the branding changes

CASE STUDY

  • Tower Water Management
    • new logo
    • protects pipes and heating and cooling infrastructure through proper treatment of water
    • Cut out management.. first
    • every competitor uses blue
    • Pipes and water make the best element
    • not just the logo, give it an environment 
    • 3- 6 logo designs
CREATIVE PROCESS
  • Laborers 55
    • green materials for old homes
  • sketch 
  • keep sketching because the ideas come out and just keep going. there is a lot of nothing but the more you work it out the better ideas can come
  • look at references
  • sketch more
  • then hang on a wall and do further development
  • you need a sense of where you want to go
DISCOVERY
  • Do your research
    • the project almost designs itself, so you learn what they like and what they dont want
  • MESSAGE?
  • BENEFITS?
  • AUDIENCE?
  • PERSONALITY?
McGraw- HIll Federal Credit Union
  • Credit union, like a bank 
  • financial services
  • most ambitious of their logo

How do you build your cliental?
  • word of moth or referrals, weekly networking group. events.
  • cold calls- least effective 
  • Linkedin- effective but tedious 
How to rework a logo without totally changing it, keep it new but referencing the old?
  •  present it in a way that everyone is on the same page, then you expose it to the customers 
  • nothing bad happened, its not that things are changed just an upgrade.





Friday, September 20, 2013

Uncanny

The theory of uncanny is based on a feeling, an uneasy and fearful feeling.  It is not just the aesthetics of beauty.

What excites fear; how to use these fears to put people into this state of feeling. using peoples experiences and memories (using what it familiar) to excite a feeling.

But we want to move past the notion of the uncanny as unfamiliar, because in a definition stand point; it is seen as gloomy, scary, ghastly, daemonic, or gruesome. These things are something that is visible and known to us.

Manifestation of insanity

We know from psycho-analytic experience, however, that the fear of damaging or losing one’s eyes is a terrible one in children. Many adults retain their apprehensiveness in this respect, and no physical injury is so much dreaded by them as an injury to the eye. We are accustomed to say, too, that we will treasure a thing as the apple of our eye. A study of dreams, phantasies and myths has taught us that anxiety about one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated. 

The notion of the double, the fascination with another. A shadow, mirrors, with guardian spirits, the soul.

The double has become a thing of terror, the notion of gods being turned into demons.

Uncanny- the feeling of helplessness experienced in dream states, like nightmares or repetitive dreams, you know what is going to happen but you cannot stop it.

Superstitions make us have the feeling of uncanny because we have been taught to know how coincidences could have negative connotation. Like repetition, of a number or name or event.

The fairy tales, how wishes could become true. or if they are just a coincidences. How magic is viewed, how is it translated? Is it baised off of belief that just believing in something and it happens, so then its magic? How does reality play a role in this happening.

Something familiar that has been repressed

The evil eye- the feeling of not only being watched but being disliked and despised and looked down upon for some reason.

Something that should have remained hidden but had come to light, like a myth or legend. Speaking of evil brings about evil?

Humans will never be free from this feeling

Modernity

The gaze- the look of affection, awe, wonder, or fascination.  How do artists use this in their works to draw the viewer into a dialog with the piece.

The gaze plays a central role in theories of looking and spectatorship in modernity

The Subject in Modernity

Modernity- historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions related to the Enlightenment; the rise of industrial society and scientific rationalism; and to the idea of controlling nature through technology science and rationalism.

Each culture has its own ideology when it comes to progress in economy, the United States views it much differently then someone in Russia or someone in China.

Marx speaking out against industrial capitalism and exploitation of and social alienation of workers.

There were major changes made in the early twentieth century, radical political and technological change began to generate significant cultural anxiety.

Spectatorship


  1. The roles of the unconscious and desire in viewing practices.
  2. the role of looking in the formation of the human subject as such
  3. the ways that looking is always a relational activity and not simply a mental activity engaged in by someone who forms internal mental representation that stand for a passive image object "out there"
Meaning of the individual human subject is not universal but is both historically and culturally contingent.

When we describe the gaze as a field rather then an individual act of looking.

Discourse and Power

Foucault's concept of discourse is helpful to understanding how power systems work to define how things are understood and spoken about( and, by implication, represented in images) in a given society.

Discourse- usually used to talk about passages of writing or speech, the act of talking about something.

Foucault was interested in the rules and practices that produce meaningful statements and regulate what can be spoken in different historical periods

Discourse is a body of knowledge that both defines and limits what can be said about something.

The relation of image and power: panopticism (everything visible in one view), power/knowledge, and biopower (A term originally coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault to refer to the practice of modern states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations).

The Gaze and the Other

The gaze helps establish relationships of power.  the act of looking is awarding more power to the person who is looking then to who is the object of the look.

All function to varying degrees to represent codes of dominance and subjection, difference and otherness.

the appropriation of the figure to fit into new contexts of today, in an ad, and also by the Guerilla Girls.

The Gaze in Psychoanalysis

There are fantasy structures that are set up when viewing a movie. The camera position to the actors and how the audience views them in the situation, this creates a relationship. 

the concept of the unconscious is crucial in the theories of cinematic spectatorship.

Gender and the Gaze

The understanding of the female nude as the project and possession by the male artist. 

  • the woman is posed as objects of an active or "male" gaze.
"Rear Window" (1954)- is a movie that focuses on the gaze and how the possession of the gaze is valuable.


  • when he gets caught looking he becomes vulnerable and trapped; the murder comes looking for him. Clearly, male looking is not without limitations and its consequences 
Changing Concepts of the Gaze

Changing the traditional gender codes

changing the way the masculinity is viewed in consumer culture




 

Friday, September 13, 2013

Viewers Make Meaning

Much of the social context and cultural influences make up the meaning that we associate with art.
  1. codes and conventions that structure the image and that cannot be separated from the content of the image.
  2. the viewer and how they interpret or experience the image
  3. the context in which an image is exhibited and viewed.

the viewer is an individual who looks, and audience is a collection of lookers.

is the image private or public.

to interpellate, in traditional usage of this concept, is to interrupt a procedure in order to question someone or something formally, as in a legal or governmental setting.

Louis Althusser- believed and said that the subject of the image reaches a wider audiance and the viewers understand it is not intended "just for me"

By focusing on the viewer, it shows how emphasizing the practices through which images and media texts reach out and make a connection.

Producers Intended Meanings

Produce can refurr to the individual maker, artist, or many people from production to display, or a corporate conglomerate engaged in parts of an ad.

Sometimes "producer function" tells us that "authorship" is not just one who creates but sometimes

Many if not all advertisements and pictures have one preferred meaning by the producer. but many time there are different interpretations and ideas that can go along with cultural and social difference.

Even though the maker or producer has an intended meaning, this doesn't man that everyone who comes into contact with the piece will have the same reaction.

Aesthetics and Taste

All images are judged on their quality and their capacity to impact an viewer and audience.

Taste- how a viewers informed experiences i.e., social class, cultural background education and other aspects of identity, help them interpret images. It is how people understand something in context with their lives.

"Good Taste" is the  notion of middle to upperclass notions of what is pleasing even if they are not in these social perimeters.

Kitsch- is iconic of a historical moment in which everyday life is over saturated with cheesiness.

Social wants of art differ as the regions change. Americans favor landscapes, wild animals and George Washington. While Russia's taste is more religious.  It does not mean one is wrong they just see things differently, and favor different aspects of culture.

Most favor realism over abstract

It used to be High Culture was fine art, classical music, opera and ballet, while working class, or low class, was comic strips, television, and the cinema.

Popular Cultural is something that is now studies because there is now a belief that we cannot understand a culture without analyzing its production and consumption of all forms of culture, from high to low.

Collecting, Display and Institutional Critique

"Art-culture system" - shows how the movement of objects through the collecting practices of museums, scholars and connoisseurs effect transitions in the meaning and the value of works from not art to art and authentic to inauthentic.

When art is not being shown or objects not being used the become "dead" and keeping them out in the publics eye and in interaction with viewers they keep their vitality.

Fred Wilson- use of juxtaposition objects created and interesting dialog.  He went through the archives of the museum and took out many objects that were not being shown and gave them a new home, he also gave lectures to a tour on why he chose specific objects and positions.

Reading Images as Ideological Subjects.

Karl Marx- both the roll of economics in the progress of history and the way that capitalism works in terms of class relations. Those that own the means to production are also in control of the ideas and viewpoints produced and circulated in a society's venues. whom ever is dominant is what will be portrayed because of the dominant social class that controls it.

hegemony- power is not wielded by one class over another, but rather it is negotiated among all classes of all people.

Relationships are constantly changing, so once dominant ideologies have to be often reaffirmed because now people can work against them

Encoding and Decoding

Stuart Hall

  1. Dominant- hegemonic reading. what the majority of people are meant to decipher
  2. Negotiated reading. you understand the meaning but negate it also
  3. Oppositional reading. they listen but they don't agree 
 negotiation invokes the process of trade

interpretation is a mental process of acceptance and rejection of the meaning that are assigned to the image given the dominant ideologies that surround it.

Reception and the Audience

Reception theory has for the most part looked at the practices of individual viewers in the interpretation and making meaning from watching and consuming cultural products

Bricolage is taking things and using them in ways they were not intended as to separate them from their normal or expected context.

Appropriation and Cultural Production

appropriation- taking something for oneself without consent.

textual poaching- changing the original idea