The cave pt.2

The second iteration of the cave, instillation piece, also the use of moth balls to create a repelling odor.

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

Heather Ramsdale

She is a sculptor who's art is focusing on the domestic aspects of life, and our connection to the objects that may inhabit the space.

• "Fall From Grace" 2009
• "Quarrelfuck" 2009
• These pieces had to do with the objects that we find in our homes, mainly tables, but they were taken rearranged and repurposed. In a way that they would have never been used. 
• "24 Hours" 2009 
• This is find one of her most interesting works that documented her movement throughout her apartment in 24 hours.  Showing the "dead spaces" of where she lived.

Breaking away from where she lived to places that become a surrogate home, the automobile.

• "Backseat dreams" 2009
• This was the beginning of her exploration of the framework and chassie of cars.
• "Wolf Car" 2010
• "Real-Fake-Believe-Make-Travel-Machine" 2009
• Lights hooked up to a car battery under a constructed chassie.
• "Separate Time Alone" 
• The full experience and forced but voluntary reaction and interaction with the piece.  Chanting playing through the tailpipe as you lay under the lights.

I really enjoy looking at her work and her basic ideas of shape and form are intriguing and engaging. Her concepts of the domestic life and what we cherish that may show status and wealth, and what keeps us attached to these things over something that would truly be precious.  The objects that were placed in the bay windows of the brick-row houses in Philly.  

• "Black Thunder" 2011
• "White Lightneing" 2011
• Using a display and having objects interacting with a base and not just put something on. taking the pedestal to the next level.

Using found objects. 

Synthetic matherials to make us feel better 

OBJECT ATTACHMENT= SYNTHETIC EMOTION

Over all I found her inspiring and her work to be creative and thought provoking. 

Some of my pieces

sequence of production. still more shading in the next few days but I'm close to completion

Chapter 1 Review

Images, Power, and Politics

• The world we live in is so saturated with images that have a variety of purpose and intended effects.  These images can produce in us a wide array of emotions and reactions.
• one single image can have multiple purposes and appear in many different settings in order to get different reactions from different types of people.

Arthur Fellig (Weegee) - He was a photographer who's main goal was to take images of things we normally would never think to look at or even want to look at.  The depictions of violent crime scenes in New York, which he later developed on site.

• "The First Murder" - the camera has the capability of capturing an enormous amount of energy and emotion.
• Emmett Till- The gruesome murder of a young man because of hate and racism. His mother had his casket open at the funeral so that everyone would see what had happened.  The picture was published in Jet magazine.

Representation 

Representation- the use of language and image to create meaning about the world around us.

• still lifes had representational meaning by the food they used or objects that symbolized peasant life.
• these paintings produce meanings through the ways that they are composed and rendered and not just in the choices of objects depicted.
• intentionally altering object to give them new meaning

Rene Magritte- "This is Not a Pipe"

• breaking the rules of various systems of representation and to push the boundaries of definition and representation.
• "This is Not a Pipe" is just a painting, or representation of a real pipe.

The Myth of Photographic Truth

• The art of photography is usually associated with realism
• Photographs, unlike drawing, offers and unprecedented parallel between what is here now and what was there then. 

Positivism- a philosophy that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, holds that scientific knowledge is the only authentic knowledge and concerns itself with truths about the world

• photographic camera, in the context of positivism  could be understood as a scientific tool for registering reality more accurately.
• there is a dividing line between what an image denotes and what it connotes
• connotative meanings can change with changes in social context and over time
• it can be argued that all meanings and messages are culturally informed, that there us no such thing as a purely denotative image.

Images and Ideology

• ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures. 
• Photographs were used for documentation purposes, police, mental institutions , prisons  and public health and safety used photography to take documentation of what was going on and what needed to be addressed.

How We Negotiate Meaning of Images

• what symbols do we associate with products, religions, cultures.
• Neutral elements such as tone and color can take on cultural meanings, like the O.J. Simpson mugshot.
• The smile signifies happieness
• Image/sound/word= signifier
• Meaning= Signified
• The production of a sign is dependent on the social, historical and cultural context.

The Value of Images

• why is a Van Gogh worth so much money?
• because it is believed to be among the best examples of the innovative modern style
• the same goes for Pollock, he was a force in the 20th century. The innovation and the awe of something new makes them people who changed how we look at art today.
• But because of how easy it is to reproduce a digital image the price for many items has dropped.

Image Icons

• An icon is an image that refers to something outside if its individual components, something(or someone) that has great symbolic meaning for many people.
• They are of then used to represent universal concepts, emotions and meanings.
• The reference to mother and child.  How now many artists reference this in their art work.

Progress so far

So far I have about 1/2 of my project resolved still more to add and shade and what not but I'm loving the outcome