Lecture 2 - Tecnology will liberate us

Technology will liberate us

Books

Digital currents, art and the age of mechanical reproduction,  art and the age of mass media.

Summary

·      Technological conditions can affect the collective consciousness

·      Technology trigger important changes in cultural development

·      Walter benjamins essay “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” significantly evaluates the role of technology through photography as an instrument of change.

A copy can either be a work in its own right or merely just a representation of the original.

Machine Age: Modernism

·      Benjeman claimed that technology is parallel and specific to new developments; a duality expressing the zeitgeist.

·      Dialectical due to the copy, reproductive nature and the role of the original

·      The aura and uniqueness of art

Its only due to technology where we have to refer to the original, encountering the original is distinct from a copy because of the uniqueness of its aura.

Photography

Photography can produce multiple viewing points…

The camera eye has a variable gaze.

 Photography had overturned the judgment seat of art a fact which the discourse of modernism found hard to repress (lovejoy pg 36)

The value of Art and Design can be distorted as soon as it reaches production. For instance if a celebrity reproduces the same doodle does it make it more valueble?

Marx persuas the effect of technology on society.

Fraud persuas the materialism with technology

Kinecticism

Explores the way we look at space time apparently….

Pre cursor to cinema photography.

Etienne-jules marey

Images used as a link into dematerialism.

With photography comes dematrialism of art and design.

With technology our images are coded ordered and styled, development of art and design merging together.

Karl Marx & technology

Associated with the term technological determinism. How technological determines economical prodction factors and affects social conditions

Dialectical issues

·      Technology drives history

·      Technology and the dicision of labour

·      Materialist view of history

·      Technology and capitalism and production

·      Social Alienation of people form aspects of their human nature as a result of capitalism

The electronic Age: Postmodernism

Post modern Post Machine

·      Many electronic works were still made with modern aesthetic

·      Mergence of information and conceptual based works

·      The computer a natural metaphor

·      A spirit of openness to industrial techniques

·      Collaborations between art and science

Rosenburg

Projects texts over photography.

Simulation and Simulacrum

·      It is the reflection of a profound reality

·      It masks and denatures a profound realiy

·      It masks the absence of a profound reality

·      It has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure simulacrum

Jean Baudrillard (1981)

A copy of a map isn’t just a copy it is an object and form in its own right. What do we call original and what do we call a copy.

John Wlaker and art and mass media; Art in the age of mass media

Art uses mass media (1990 – 2000)

Margot lovejoy; Digital currents

Digitial potential leads to multimedia productions

Technological reduction of all images so they are

Lecture 5 - The Gaze and The media

The Gaze and the Media


Vanity - the mirror is a device which shows the women is looking at herself in the mirror

Alexandre cabanel

Raises hand which party covers eyes, other slightly bend, this gesture emplys that shes just waking from sleep or just about to go to sleep. This allows you to look at her body but not have her looking back at you.

Titians venus of urbino.

She is aware of us but she is inviting. Gives us the idea that shes a wealthy women with servants in the background.

Manet - Olympia

Manet represents modernism a bit. she is a symbol of a assertive female presence, the flowers been given to her by an admirer. She looks you straight in the eyes....

Jeff Wall - Picture for women

the women has the absorbed gaze and posture of manet's barmade. The male gaze. seperates the shot in 3rd's to show the diferences between the model and the male artist.

Coward, R

The camera in contemporary media has been put to use as an extension of the male gaze at women on the streets. she poses in a way where u want to look at her body but her eyes are covered so you dont "feel bad" at stairing at her.

Eva Herzigova

shes looking down at her self and not at the viewer, the "hello boys" is an inviting piece of text allowing you to stair at her and some form of flirtation produced. Normalising putting her body on the street.

Male advertising.

reflects the male body and beuty is connected with strength and the gym, they all look you straight in the eye. "the gaze"

• 1950's cinema the male takes the active role where the women takes the passive role

Barbara Kruger

Leaves us with ambigiuous statements, she is offering us the side of her face instead of the full gaze.

Sarah Lucas

Self portrait of food on her body, this is to show that the female body is there to be consumed. 

Reality TV

Passively consuming somehting which isnt reality TV, the directors cut out the bits which will get most views and produce their bais view on what they show the people.

Panopticism Seminar

Institutional Gaze – visibility/invisibility, produces self discipline/self regulating

Isolated – allows you to experiment, individaulising the experience

Panopticon – is a machine to produce productive people

Under surveillance,

Change of physical to mental discipline. Modern disciplinary society.

Physcaitry – emerges as a discipline to find out why people have gone insane to help correct and train people to work.

Binary Division -  Madness and sanity, should not be through of as opposites, both still people functioning.

Media – advertising keeps presenting us with images of what we should look like and how we should leed your life.

Docile body – fitter, more productive body, someone who is easily trained, controlled.

Power – an individual only has power other another if they let them be controlled. Relationship between power and resistance.

Panopiticism Control’s the controlled and the controller. 

Lecture 1 Panopticism Lecture

Panopticism

Institutions and institutional power

Lecture aims

·      Understand the principles of the panopticon

·      Understand michel foucaults concept of disciplinary society

·      Consider the idea that disciplinary society is a way of making individuals productive and useful

·      Understand foucalts idea of techniques of the body and docile bodies

The Panopticon

As a building it has the same principles of control as society does.

Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984)

·      Madness & civilisation

·      Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison

Both books reference surveys the rise of asylum and psychiatry, doctors.

Surveys the rise of the prison.

Madness & Civilisation

1600’s

The insane were thought of leading a relatively easy life, they were tolerated and accepted into society. “village idiot” entertaining society.

“The houses of correction” to curb unemployment and idleness. Anyone who didn’t operate how society didn’t want them to were thrown in. In these houses people were put to work and made to work. Forced them to be productive with the threat of violence.

The houses of correction managed to corrupt people even more and made the situation worse, this was the birth of the asylum. This gave birth to knowledge specialists which were qualified to then categorise people who had something wrong with them or not.

Inside the asylum

They were treated like minors and if they did well the were treated well. They realised that there were a better way to control citizens other then physical violence.

This new mental form of social control represents is a shift from someone else being in control to you being in control of internal responsibility.

Punishment

The point of the pillory was not to stop them doing it but more to make a public humiliation to society to stop them doing anything.

The Guillotine – holding up the head afterwards was a sign of “I have control over you”

They didn’t want to correct punishment but to make a point of it.

Disciplinary society and disciplinary power

In modern society its more about controlling your thoughts and behaviours, making us useful in society instead of just killing people.

The Panopticon

Its uses could be a prison, asylum, school.

It was special to faulcult, he described it as

Each prisoner in the cell can see the tower and they know theyre being watched but they cant see the other prisoners. But they don’t know if theyre always being watched as the prisoners were lit but the tower wasn’t. This had a peculiar effect as knowing your being always being watched but not sure if your really are.

It internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched.

Eventually people start controlling themselves mentally. Eventaully the tower didn’t even need gaurds as the prisoners started to build up the idea their constantly being watched.

Perfect mechanism for control

“Hence the major effect of the panopticon: to induce the inmate
ADD QAUTE.

Its also is a laboratory it allows scrutiny, supervisor experiments on subjects and its main aims were to make them more productive.

·      Reforms

·      Treat

·      Instruct school children

·      Helps confine but also study the insane

·      Helps supervise workers

·      Helps put beggers and idlers work

The panopticon is a model of how modern society organises its knowledge, its power, its surveillance of bodies and training of bodies.

The open plan office

It allows the boss to constantly see what his workers are doing, this stops people being idle as they have the constant feeling of being watched, this makes people work harder.

Panopticism in modern society

CCTV, Google Maps.

Were constantly reminded in various ways that our lives are being recorded, this starts to build a fear in us of being caught out, which leeds to the idea that we leed more socially productive lives as citizens.

The register is a panoptic sign that everyday is been monitored, you can be measured against other people depending on attendance.

The idea is not to catch people out but to make them aware they are being watched in order to them to control themselves.

Relationship between power, knowledge and the body.

“Power relations have an immediate hold upon it, they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs”

Disciplinary society produces what Foucault calls: Docile Bodies

·      Self monitoring

·      Self correcting

·      Obedient bodies

Foucault and Power

·      His definition is not a top down model as with Marxism

·      Power is not a thing or capacity people have it is a relation between different individuals and groups, and only exists when it is being exercised.

·      The exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted

·      Where there is power there is resistance.

“Advertising doesn’t sell things; all advertising does is change the way people think or feel” (Jeremy Bullmore).

In today’s society advertisement is unavoidable it can be found everywhere; on billboards, posters, television. This essay will discuss the idea of adverts in the 1970’s portraying women as domestic providers and their roles being limited to the domestic sphere only cooking food for their husbands and looking after the children. I will also look into how adverts try and persuade us to buy products we don’t need in today’s commodity culture. Some adverts also use a series of signs, which work as signifiers for things with deeper meaning for example using celebrity’s status to sell products or persuade people to want to buy their products.

In John O’Shaughnessy’s book “persuasion in advertising” he goes on to explain the different methods of advertisements he stated that “Effective advertising is, almost always, persuasive advertising; and advertising that does not seek to persuade is really missing an opportunity”.

In john Berger’s ways of seeing he describes advertisement as something we cant escape, images which are everywhere showing us an alternative way of life he goes on to say that we might not necessarily be influenced by them but for a moment we take in the adverts and are stimulated by them causing us to potentially think or feel differently about them. In Guy Cooks book “The Discourse of advertisement” Cook (2001: 1) goes on to say, “Despite all the care and skill in their creation, ads are flicked past, put in the bin. Advertisement is everywhere but nowhere”, this shows that not all adverts out there are interesting enough or influence us enough to make us stop and be persuaded to buy their products this could potentially mean that adverts no matter how interesting and funny don’t always catch our attention.

John Berger stated that, “Publicity plays upon the fear of not being desirable” (Ways of Seeing – Advertisement). This statement shows that adverts try and sell us glamour through publicity and they give us the idea if we purchase their products we will become enviable to others, Berger also stated that. “A man’s ability to consume is directly related to his sexual validity” (Ways of seeing – Advertisement) this means that the adverts play upon men’s fears of not being sexually desirable by the opposite sex if we don’t buy the products which are being advertised. Stewart Ewen backs this up by saying “In commodity culture we construct our identities through the consumer products that inhabit our lives”, this shows that adverts try and sell you a lifestyle and if you don’t buy their products you run the risk of being undesirable, Stewart called this the “commodity self” where were selling ourselves to commodities and materialistic values to fit in with society.

John Berger goes on to say, “A publicity pictures suggests if we buy what it is offering our life will be different from what it is” (Ways of seeing – Advertisement), this statement shows that adverts suggest that we are inadequate and that they are trying to sell us an alternative lifestyle which will be better than our current lifestyle, therefore adverts don’t necessarily try and sell you products but they play upon our emotions and fears to try and persuade us to purchase their products in order to be accepted into society.

A lot of advertisements use symbolic association to interest people in their products, the advert symbolically associates itself with the models sociability, youth, and sophistication, multiracial, popularity this unisex fragrance is selling itself to be suitable for anyone no matter who you are. The products themselves are perceived as being cool, sexy and sophisticated. Guy Cook (2001: 2) stated that: “Advertising can be seen as urging people to consume more by making them feel dissatisfied or inadequate, by appealing to greed, worry and ambition…” This adverts symbolic associations with sex plays upon the fear of not being desirable to the opposite sex if we don’t spend forty pounds on perfume, we will run the risk of being inadequate. This advert builds upon the idea of a dream, an idyllic view of what your life could be if you bought this product, It is trying to convince us that we will have a better quality life buy buying it. John Berger’s stated that: “adverts try to enforce the fact that all our relationships will become radiant because of our new possessions and we can only achieve such radiance if we have money” (Ways of seeing – Advertisement). This quote in forces the idea that adverts try and sell us a new lifestyle to try and improve our lives, by doing this it is makes you are a lesser being if you do not own the products they try and sell. This advert is also trying to trigger an emotional response to capture its audience into persuading them to buy this cool and sophisticated fragrance O’Shaughnessy (2004:27) stated that, “In the grip of an emotion, a person not only feels differently, but tends to think differently. Advertising that resonates emotionally stands more chance of inducing a change in beliefs and values/motives/wants/desires than one based on logic alone.” In reality we don’t need these expensive products to improve our lives, or to aspire to them. The products that they sell create false needs, we can be happy in our lives without them.

In this advert for kitchen extension phones by Bell telephone uses the stereotypical 1960’s housewife and the mythical idea that women are always gossiping over the phone with their friends to illustrate the need for a phone in the kitchen. The ad states that having an extension phone in the kitchen will mean that the women wont forget about her food in the oven or need a reason to even leave the kitchen. This ad indicates that women have been portrayed as domestic providers who do not make significant decisions and that they are dependent on men to protect them or to provide them with money. The ad illustrates notion of sexism with the idea that men are superior over women and that the women’s main role is at home in the kitchen. This advert make out that men only regard women as sex objects who are there to provide them with food and children.

The advert persuades you to buy into the lifestyle it is selling, the “American Dream” where the women is at home and happy making food for her husband and looking after the children, the ad also sells the idea of successfulness, if you can afford a second phone in the kitchen for your wife. John Berger stated, “If we buy what is offering our life will be different” (Ways of seeing – Advertisement). In this advert it offers you the perfect stereotype lifestyle.

The advert for Chanel nr 5 is another example of women being used to advertise products in 1978, unlike the previous advert this one is promoting its products in a much different way, this advert uses the face of Catherine Deneuve, a well known French Actress and celebrity. Judith Williamson decoded this advert and pointed out that this advert works with semiotics. Chanel Nr 5 is printed out across the bottom of Catherine’s face, which is a part of a system of signs; her face is the signified, which represents elegance and sophistication. This then represents the fragrance as being elegant and sophisticated to the public. This type of advert persuades us that we can gain some of this elegance by using Chanel nr 5 and that our lives will be improved. Nowhere in this advert does it tell us to buy the fragrance but instead with a set of signs it subtly persuades us that our lives will be more glamorous and sophisticated if we buy this product, like Catherine Deneuve a celebrity and actress.

This Chanel advert is persuading that you can obtain something of Judith Williamson by buying this fragrance, John O’Shaughnessy (2004:83) stated in his book that, “People seek social approval from all others, but it is more valued when it comes from those higher up the social scale since it is less likely to be self-serving and is considered more perceptive”.

In conclusion adverts don’t directly try and get people to buy there products, they work much more subtle. Referring back to the title of  “Advertising doesn’t sell things; all advertising does is change the way people think or feel”, we can clearly see after investigating the three adverts that they all persuade the public in slightly different ways. The first advert makes us think or feel that we are inadequate and that we need to buy the products to improve our lives and to let them become radiant with all our new possessions, the advert also makes us think that we need to fulfil all the false needs it proposes to us for instance buying a 40 pound bottle of perfume we done need. The second advert uses the idea of the perfect household by using stereotypes and makes you think that you need to obtain this and the only way you can is by buying the advertised products, which will improve your lifestyle. The third advert persuades us that we can become as elegant and sophisticated as celebrities by buying their products; this makes us think that we are inadequate. To conclude advertising does change the way people think or feel and it uses this to persuade us that we need to buy their products to belong within their set society.

Bibliography

Books:

Cook, G. 2001. “The discourse of Advertising”. 2^nd ed. London: Routledge.

O’Shaughnessy, J. “Persuasion in advertising”. London: Routledge.

E – Books:

Advertising Association President’s Lecture, 1998. “Advertising and its Audience”. London: WPP Group. Available at: < http://www.wpp.com/NR/rdonlyres/ED5FD8FF-F951-4C77-8ADA-FB5E61C85587/0/advertising_and_its_audience.pdf> [Accessed on 12/01/2011].

Youtube:

Manwithaplan, (n.d.). Ways of seeing (final episode – advertising) ¼. Available at: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmgGT3th_oI> [accessed 14/01/2011].

Manwithaplan, (n.d.). Ways of seeing (final episode – advertising) 2/4. Available at: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q0JvXiZw7o&feature=related> [accessed 14/01/2011].

Manwithaplan, (n.d.). Ways of seeing (final episode – advertising) 3/4. Available at:<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbebPdXv70w&playnext=1&list=PL872405DBCBDFF922&index=14> [accessed 14/01/2011].

Manwithaplan, (n.d.). Ways of seeing (final episode – advertising) 4/4. Available at:< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAJovNjXMTs&feature=related> [accessed 14/01/2011].

Websites:

The Gender Ad’s project. Available at: < http://www.ltcconline.net/lukas/gender/pages/roles.htm> [Accessed 18/01/2011].

Graphic design & deconstruction

The main block of text called the body contains most of the content this can also be called the running text which can flow from page to column or box. This allows text to be viewed as a thing a sound or a sturdy object. Designers are able to break up the text into pieces offering shortcuts through the masses of information. Typography also helps the reader to navigate the flow of content to allow them to find specific information quickly. 

 Handwritten documents were riddled with mistakes and they weren't easy to correct but after the invention of printing corrections were made much easier and it allowed the text to be changed in the future as well. 

Spacing is a important factor for a typographer not only is he concerned with the positive grain but also the negative, for every space is constructed by a physical object. We take breaks between words but spoken language is perceived as being a continues flow with no gaps, without spacings between words written language would be illegible.

Traditional text pages have all been supported by navigational features of a book like page numbers, headings, index, appendix... these are all features which make it easier for the reader to navigate and understand the text. In the modern era convergence of typography and moving image help distract the audience from the disclosure of ownership and authorship.

Deconstruction in typography has to do with a spatial, non-linear process. "Communication for the deconstructivist is no longer linear, but involves instead the provision of many entry and exit points for the increasingly over stimulated read." (Cahalan 1994, p.1). The idea that text is no longer suppose to be just read from left to right but instead the reader perceives the text in their own way, you can start reading the text from anywhere however it suits you. The reader is suppose to "feel" the text rather then to just "read" it in the conventional way.

This is a poster produced by Allen Hori, the posters title is "typography as discourse" which means typography as speech or communication through words. The idea behind this poster was that pictures can be read as words and words can be objects. Allen Hori was a student at Cranbrook and this was produced as a project by Katherine Mcoy to try prove that by laying and juxtaposing words and text designers can force the reader to interpret the poster themselves. There is no clear grid for the text and the layout of the type makes is borderline illegible. 

When you first look at the poster there is no clear start point to read and no clear heading. It has been left for the reader to decided which parts of the poster to analyse and in what way to interpret the type and image. The type works as image and is laid out in a way to make the reader have to analyse it to read it. The spacings in the text are random as well which makes it harder to read or to understand a word.

The text layouts are irrational and spontaneous this makes most of it very hard to interpret, the spacings make this even harder for example the word "read" has been written backwards without random spacings between the a and d this makes you have to conscious think and then construct the word yourself instead of it just being laid out in its conventional manor which is straight forward and understandable.

In conclusion i think that this poster is a piece of deconstruction work, it doesn't follow any of the conventional type rules which makes it very hard to interpret. Theres text where you wouldn't expect to find it and the text is broken up in a manor which makes it incredibly hard to read. The text also works as an image.

Deconstruction in Graphic Design

This is a front cover from the ray gun magazine which david carson was the art director of. Ray Gun was known for its cutting edge graphics and numerous typo's. The magazines layout has no clear order and no grids, its in complete disorder.

This is a piece done by david carson as well where he basically states dont mistake legibility for communication. The entire image is made out of just type laid over each other. It goes against any clear grids or legibility.

This is a piece done by Marinetti he has used his poetry in a deconstructive way where the words actually represent an expression or a dialogue. The abstract composition forces you to read the poem in a specific way.

This is a Wolfgang Weingart poster, the poster is loaded with so much information and its up to the reader how they interpret it and how they read the poster. You can interpret this poster in the conventional way by reading it left to right you have to read the bits you are drawn to first may that be because the point size is bigger and it grabs your attention first.

This is a poster done by Spriegfried Odermatt for a jazz festival, all the rules for type has been thrown out of the window for this poster, theres no clear structure, text is overlaid over other text and theres no clear area to start reading.