Dissertation - Design & accessibility

Dissertation

- 6000-8000 word dissertation (aim for the upper word limit)
- Broken down into 4 chapters - 4 x 1500 word essays
- Think of a theme with a series of sub-theme you wish to investigate
- Coherent, organised and critical approach
- Ensure you include as much (relevant) primary research as possible

Methodologies

- Feminist, semiotic, psychoanalytical, marxist, ecological, postcolonial, narratology etc
- Theoretical way to look at a give subject
- Different lenses on a given topic will yield different results - how will you address it?
- Uniformed methodology

Primary research

- Interviews (with designers, the public etc)
- Questionnaires (if thought through and rigorous)
- Own analysis on works of design
- TV / Film / Animation
- Archives

CHECK VLE FOR RESOURCE


Design and Accessibility

Relationship between the designer and the audience and how this manifests itself
Communication - how people negotiate meaning

A -----> B    Process / Linear model

How much does the designer consider the audience when designing?
How much does the audience understanding what the designer is trying to communicate?

The problem with process models are that they are linear / one-way
They don't understand that communication derives from both sources
Doesn't take into account the audience as a creator of meaning

A <-----> B

Be aware of the linear way of communication and semiotic theory

Communication within a social structure

Dependent on a sociopolitical context

Audience theory

- Models have emerged on the concept of semiotics that focus on audience

- Class, race, sex, gender etc

- Many of these issues are sometimes ignored by the designer

- Some designers see audience as a homogenous mass - same thoughts, ideals, aspirations

- Audience theory intends to abolish this

A, B, C1, C2, D, E - one way of 'categorising' an audience

Starts to look at social context creating communication as much as the designer

Frankfurt School

Adorno reduces society as one pliable mass of people without difference

Overestimates the power of the media

Effects model / Hypodermic syringe

Communication systems - mass media 

Hypodermic syringe that 'injects' the mass audience

Reception theory 

Similar to audience theory

Shows how meaning is created at the point of reception by the individual based on own circumstances

Meaning is not created in one source and transmitted (Shannon & Weaver)

David Morley (1980)

1) Preferred reading (dominant hegemonic)
- When you are sent a message by an advertisement, you are taking a preferred reading
- The message intended by the designer

2) Oppositional
- Opportunity for the same advert meaning something else to someone else

3) Negotiated
- Not accepting the dominant / preferred reading but don't totally oppose it either


Uses & Gratification model

- Extension on reception theory
- Emphasises that people use the media for their own ends, they are not manipulated
- Meaning of the media depends on the person - constantly shifts

THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR (Roland Barthes)




Initial idea: Semiotics & myth in relation to logo and branding in its simplest form

Dissertation Lecture

Extended written essay on one topic
In-depth critical research and analysis
6000-8000 words

HE Courses - Cross College - Level 6 Dissertation
Existing powerpoint presentations

Proposal forms online - ensure details are correct

Academic support - G23 (3 opportunities)

One next week, another in September - first come, first serve
Not about context but expression  how you communicate through your writing

The dissertation...


It is not just a descriptive piece of work
Think analytically
Be enthusiastic

It is a common mistake to choose a broad topic - it is essential the topic is relatively narrow
Choose the best topics that will inform your argument / standpoints
Start collecting information that is relevant to your particular interest
It will feed into your studio practice - needs to have relevance

Marking

Marked against a clinical mark scheme
Use a breadth of sources - they mark against this (books, magazines, journals, exhibitions, web etc)
How have you collected evidence from these sources? What is important?

Research

The collection of information is the key to a stress free project
E-mail / write letters to companies
Dissertation tutorials with supervisor

Proposal

Ensure the title is clear and explanatory
What primary sources will you use? First hand interaction
Have some sources prepared for the dissertation proposal
Don't click submit if it is not 100% correct - draft first

Final essay

Essay - Other sources

I came across the following publication when looking into semioligical systems in relation to the media as it was noted in the essay feedback tutorial that I should look at the newspaper front covers in more depth.

Hartley, J. (1982) Understanding News, London, Methuen & Co. Ltd

Some quotes:

"Speech, then, is the means by which we select and organise our experience, and it is the medium through which we learn how to behave, how to react, what to believe." p.1

"Speech isn't something over which we have individual control - it is supplied to us a ready made tool by other people." p.1. This could be applied to the section when I begin to analyse the media as a whole and its platform for social control.

"Our submission to the social control of the language-sytem is usually both voluntary and taken for granted." p.2.

"We identify strongly with certain language-systems, and seek to present ourselves in their terms." p.2.

"News comes to us as the pre-existing discourse of an impersonal social institution which is also an industry. As we get used to its codes and conventions we will become 'news-literate'." p.5.

"The way news is produced, what it concentrates on, how its stories are put together and who takes an interest in it, all depend to some extent on the habits and conventions - not to mention technology - which were developed in a previous historical period." p.8.

"The news is a social institution and a cultural discourse which exists and has meaning only in relation to other institutions and discourses operating at the same time." p.9.

"The corporations and capitalists who own the means of news production can mount campaigns, of exposure and investigation, or of war-mongering and witch-hunts, which help to alter the political or social direction of a country." p.9.

Task 5 - The Gaze

‘According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972, 45, 47)

Discuss this quote with reference to one work of art and one work from the contemporary media.

Hans Memling (1485) Vanity

Hans Memling 'Vanity' is used by Berger in particular as an example of the exploitation of the male gaze. An exposition on the female nude was prevalent during this time (1485) as it was predominantly a patriarchal society; men were in control through means of visual production. The majority of artists throughout this era were men, commissioned to paint pieces of nude women purely for pleasure; highlighting this sense of objectification. Men were seen to have a superior constraint over the depiction of women in art and due to their power and stance through society, the male gaze was deemed the norm - as a result, it altered how women ultimately viewed themselves. 

Berger suggests that women are ‘depicted in a different way to men - because the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’ (Berger, 64)

The subject is looking into a mirror therefore there is no reciprocity; as the gaze is never challenged, the painting provides justification for the viewers gaze - this in turn distracts from the fact the artist painted his subject through enjoyment. Vanity, indicated by the use of the mirror - and in the title of the piece itself - is seen to legitimise the gaze as it is believed this is how the subject wants to be viewed. Berger insinuates that conventions through masculine discourses of art history indicate that women watch or allow themselves being looked at whereas men look (gaze) upon women. The subject acknowledges our presence through the manipulation of where she is looking; conversely, if she were to be looking at the viewer, she is aware of the viewers presence and therefore challenges and opposes the gaze.

The gaze is also prominent through contemporary society and consumerism advertisements. The advert above, for Opium, features model Sophie Dahl, lying naked against a dark backdrop. Due to the provocative nature of the photograph and its overt use of nudity, the ad received hundreds of complaints as it was deemed too 'degrading' to women - it was subsequently withdrawn in its entirety.

'Christopher Graham, ASA director general, said the poster was sexually suggestive and likely to cause "serious or widespread offence" thereby breaking the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion.'

As with Memlings 'Vanity', the subject is looking away from the viewer, indicating no reciprocity or challenge of the gaze. The primary focus of the advertisement is the model due to the stark contrast between the subject and the backdrop. The advert was later re-released, however, simply with an alternate orientation; the emphasis now being on the subjects face as opposed to her body. Although this advert implies a male point of view, due to the suggestive nature of the photograph, the intended viewer is female. The women viewing these advertisements are seen to 'identify both with the person being viewed and with an implicit, opposite-sex viewer' (Berger, 44)

The theory of the gaze, particularly the male gaze, is still prevalent in contemporary society and form part of social conventions. Ideals and these notions are pre-installed within us but are ultimately controlled by society as a whole; we therefore deem these aforementioned conventions as the norm.

Sources

Berger, J (1974) Ways of Seeing, Viking Press, New York

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1077165.stm

Task 4 - Hyperreality

Hyperreality is the simulation of reality - where the real has been replaced by the simulacra. Every day, we are subject to an onslaught of images as governed by the media; images that we take for granted, as 'real'. The media ultimately has a controlling stance on what we perceive as reality and therefore provides constructs and foundations within society which we accept as real. Photographic imagery featured on magazine covers, for example, are largely fabricated and are not necessarily a true representation of the real. However, as a society we deem this acceptable - or at least perceive this as the norm - therefore we rarely challenge or deconstruct what we see. Hyperreality can be applied to many mundane 'objects' however, that as aforementioned, we deem the norm.

It is a Christmas tradition to put up a christmas tree in the living room. In contemporary society is becoming common practice to use an artificial tree as we perceive this to be a better alternative to the real. However, we still refer to this as a 'christmas tree' due to its resemblance despite not being a tree at all - it is a fabrication of one, a copy. The image below references this theory in a more exaggerated form. Several books have been arranged in such a way to resemble a christmas tree yet a real tree could easily have been used - is this perceived to be a better alternative? Despite attempting to replicate the original? This replication of reality becomes the new original.

The over-commercialisation of christmas is often associated with the TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965). The idea of hyperreality is reinforced within the plot of this programme. The protagonist, Charlie Brown, ignored requests to get a 'big, shiny aluminium tree' and instead purchases a smaller, less aesthetically pleasing 'real' tree. However, in comparison, the replication of the original seemed much more desirable, hence why Aluminium trees became more popular in the 1960's. Artificial trees have soon become the norm in contemporary society as we believe an artificial replication is better than the original.

Sources

Trees made of tinsel (Online) Available at: http://abcnews.go.com/US/ChristmasCountdown/story?id=1414607 [Accessed 25th March 2012] Originally sourced from Wikipedia

Tree of books http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/n864k/my_kind_of_christmas_tree/

Task 2 - Benjamin & Mechanical Reproduction

Read the Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Write a 300 word analysis of one work of Graphic Design, that you think relates to the themes of the text, and employing quotes, concepts and terminology from the text.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

I came across this video a few weeks back and thought it would be greatly applicable to this task. The 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster was a propaganda tool commissioned by the British Government during the second world war among 2 other designs. Utilising a uniform design combining just 2 colours for a large print run and a graphic of a crown, the posters were devised to incite reassurance and raise morale. Although the 2 other posters were heavily publicised, the Keep Calm and Carry on design was never officially issued but later found in Barter Book store in 2000 - 61 years after it was commissioned. 

A crown copyright (used on artworks created by the UK government) lasts just 50 years therefore the design immediately outsourced to the public domain allowing free usage and interpretation. Due to its prominence and rise in popularity, many designs emerged, reproducing, altering or replicating the design. Berger introduces the theory of the original and the copy in his essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. Berger believes the 'authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning'; in other words, the 'orignal' has an 'aura' surrounding it; its history defines it and it defines history. The copy removes any remaining sense of aura and authority; its authenticity is stripped though some may see a copy as a work in itself that occupies new meaning.

The economic substructure has changed substantially and society is rapidly changing due to advancing and emerging technology. People have immediate access to artwork through the internet and ultimately have more say in the creation of media, redefining sub-culture; the meaning of the artwork is authored from below. 'Technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.' The multiplicity of copies that emerged (and still emerging) from the Keep Calm and Carry on poster, however, lose much resonance of the original, that of reassurance to the British public during difficult and troubled times. Conversely, people may see that the message is retained through its associations and is still applicable to the modern day; its communication is embedded and it is the stylistic aesthetics that seem to resonate.                                                                                         

Lecture 11 - The production & Critique of Institutions

Aim / Objectives

- To examine the historical development of practices of institution critique in relation to the corresponding development of the modern art gallery
- To demonstrate the importance of the art museum to the rise of the bourgeois public sphere in the 19th century
- To analyse Peter burger's theorisation of the twin development of aestheticism (formalist) art practice, and critical avant-gardism in the first three decades of the 20th century
- To consider the postwar cirque of the convention of the white cube through attention to Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube, and Michael Asher's 1974 Claire Copley Gallery installation

Ideology

- Ideology for Marx - Form of social mystification
- Mans failure to comprehend his own alienation
- We are not free to think for ourselves regarding our position in the world
- The voice we have is a construct - an amalgamation of different voices

- Systems of beliefs, images, values, techniques of representation
- Social classes in conflict with one another attempt to naturalise their place in history
- Our life circumstances are rooted in our material situation
- Socially constructed in relation to many voices that all express thoughts and feelings
- Institutions such as schools and churches have an important role in ideology

France

Hubert Robert, Design for the Grande Galerie in the Louvre, Oil on canvas (1796)
- Neutral space of artistic display
- Specific political function - promoting values of the new regime

Michael Asher, Untitled (1974), (Installation view, Claire Copley Gallery, Los Angeles)

Lecture 10 - Deleuze and Guattari and Creativity

Aim & Objectives

To examine how Deleuze and Guattari draw emphasis to the constructed and contingent nature of social reality

(1) To contrast their model of creative, "rhizomatic" thought with traditional 'tree-like' models of thought based in sequential argumentation
(2) To examine Deleuze and Guattari's interpretations of processes of social change and development
(3) To consider how they propose individual people might transform themselves
(4) To contextualise these theories of change and development in relation to the concepts 'the virtual' and 'the actual' (central to their thinking)


Deleuze and Guattari

- Influencial in numerous fields - Architecture, music, geography, sociology, literature etc
- Collaboration developed against the student and worker protests in Paris
- Directly challenged the French state
- Let to the reassessment of the role of the activist in society

A Thousand Plateaus

- Tried to rethink social change
- Change was ongoing and incremental
- Revolt against the traditional modes of thought, represented by a tree-like structure
- Trunk - central thesis, branch - argumentation
- One line of arguments must sequentially lead to another
- Still continues to have resonance
- They suggested the reader takes in information in the same way you would listen to a record

Rhizomatic Thinking

- Drew idea from plant forms
- Underground stem that grows horizontally and draws up horizontal shoots
- Unforeseen configurations
- Provides an alternative mode of thought against the traditional 'tree-like' structure of thinking
- Linked through leaps of association - seemingly unconnected ideas
- Emphasised that ideas need to be invented - they are not 'waiting'

Saussure's model

Concept (signified)  <--->  Sound-image (Signifier)

- Concepts we use in thought and reading gain meaning from repetitive contextualisation
- Agreement of meaning through society
- Entirely constructed by a pattern of usage
- The Rhizo links objects, places, ideas
- Produced intentionally and unintentionally
- Become creative forces that create new configurations

Isa Genzken, Hospital (Ground Zero), 2008

- Represents chaos of urban landscape
- Manual production
- Held together in provisional ways
- Made of materials found in a shop, or even on the street
- Brought together in a configuration
- Takes on the form of an assemblage

The Assemblage

- Processes of arranging, organising
- Emphasise the convergence of food, furniture, people and so on in recognisable structures
- A dinner party or a school are examples of an assemblage
- Home is a place where we express comfort
- How places become meaningful
- Assemblages can be rooted / embedded in society

Language

- Language is not just about the transmission of messages
- Simple language use imposes a role upon the language user
- Value, power, prejudice

Zaha Hadid for MAXXI, national Museum of XX1 Century Arts

- Designed by Hadid as an assemblage
- Architecture flows around and in-between surround buildings
- Mutating in relation to people through the space

Subjectivation

- Deleuze and Guattari believed this is how we are constructed
- Our sense of identity is always under construction
- The subjects recognition is an afterthought
- The word 'I' is empty and can only be appropriated to different bodies
- Used as a self reference

Ideology

- Ideology shapes how we view ourselves and our shape in the world
- Circulate in any given society at any given time but some are able to dominate
- Those who get the means of productions 'shout the loudest'
- Privileged status of politicians and the media within society

The working day

- 'Shocked out of dream fantasies'
- Commuter -> Labourer etc
- Unique demands upon the individual - how we ought to 'behave'
- Roles defined by their context

Psycho-analysis

- Individuals reconfigure their own subjectivities
- Guattari's psychiatric practice
- Re-negotiated the role of the analyst
- The patient and analyst would take on roles
- Sets a process of change and development

Body without organs

- Initially developed by a play writer in the 1920s
- We are a structure
- Francis Bacon, Study of George Dyer, 1969

Seminar - Gaze in the Media

Berger

'Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at' - Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972

- Being objectified is being the target of someones gaze

- Panopticon - Objectified by an institutional gaze

- Gaze theory emerges specifically in the 1970's

- Grows with the emergence of Marxism and feminism

- Our society is one panopticon for women

Hans Memling, Vanity, 1485

- We are looking at the subject but she is looking into the mirror - no reciprocity

- The gaze is never challenged therefore we are 'allowed' to look

- When a gaze is returned, we are forced to interact

- 'Vanity' legitimises the gaze

- All art was created by men and those who bought into art were men

- Our society had always been patriarchal

- Structures - Religion, art, law, ways of thinking about the world

- Culture emerges that reflects this patriarchal dominance of men

- Unfairness in the 'base'

- Can trace this function through culture

- Mens fantasy of domination of women - an excuse, legitimisation

- Gaze = power

Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus, 1863 & Manet, Olympia, 1863

- To be an artist in the 1863, you had to exhibit your work in the Salon (Paris)

- In 'Olympia', the subject returns the gaze with a challenging look; in the other, the gaze is averted

- Venus is the goddess of love, surrounding by cupids - a fantasy scene

- Olympia - modern goddess of love, the reality - the subject is a prostitute

- The 'disgust' masks over the reality

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538 & & Manet, Olympia, 1863

- Manet used a similar composition in his piece

- The gaze is met implying a certain intimacy

- Domestic setting / experience, less assertive

- Dog on the foot of the bed (cat in 'Olympia') - dogs are deemed as loyal 

- Ideologies and male fantasies played out - male domination

- Fantasies of female subservience to men

Ingres, Le Grand Odalisque, 1814

- Contradictory

- Childlike facial expression

Marx, Panopticism, Gaze

- Culture becomes a giant panopticon

- Giving women instructions to act a certain way, dress a certain way and so on

- Becomes a self-regulatory society

- Gaze from an entire culture

Seminar - Jean Baudrillard and Hyperreality

Plato's allegory of the cave

- Used as a metaphor on how society operates
- Prisoners kept in the deepest part of a cave by slavemasters, shackled and bound
- Generations after generations born into slavery
- Unable to see much aside from shadows cast by their captors onto the walls of the cave
- Deliberate attempts by the captors
- Prisoners interpret these images as reality

21st century

- This allegory can be applied to the modern day
- These shadows relate to the media and advertising we are bombarded with
- The media has a controlling hand on what we see as reality

Baudrillard

- The gap between a representation of things and the reality of things
- How unreality masks reality
- Commodity culture and the apparatus that surrounds this (capitalism) create alternative realities which makes reality impossible to access
- Corporate / commercial images (those that surround commodities) disguise or change the nature of our understanding of the world around us

Coca Cola

- Haddon Sundblom was employed by Coca Cola in the 1930's to devise a christmas / festive campaign
- Coca Cola wanted the Santa Clause character to reflect their brand image - red and white was chosen
- They use this image as an annual advertising campaign
- Out of a multitude of different stories, Coca Cola chose this image
- This copy has replaced the 'reality' of Santa Clause - it has become almost impossible to trace its origin
- The reproduction has masked its historical roots

- Our investment in these images created by commodity culture (brand / advertising images) affect us as people - how these images affect us physically and emotionally
- Reality is replaced by images of reality which subsequently makes us forget about reality itself

Branding

- Something that is 'unreal' has an effect on the 'real'
- Blind taste test of Coca Cola and Pepsi under a brain scanner
- Subjects had similar brain activity when the brand was unbeknown to them
- When the subjects knew what brand of cola they were drinking, Coca Cola had a more obvious reaction
- We taste 'brands' as opposed to taste itself

Post-structuralism

- Baudrillard emerges alongside Barthes, Foucault, Cixous, Derrida, Delueuze etc
- Guy Debord - Author of the 'Society of the Spectacle'
- Maintained that commodity society had become an 'immense accumulation of spectacles'
- 'The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images'
- People who live through these 'things' rather than forming direct relations with these 'things'
- People become increasingly distanced form each other
- Investing in 'fake' realities

Baudrillard & Marxism

- Baudrillard is deemed a Marxist as he was analysing commodity culture
- Marx - Commodity = Use value (usefulness) & exchange value
- Baudrillard - Commodity = Use value, exchange value & sign value


- In a post modern society, the sign value has become an absolute - a key aspect
- Sign value - what various things connote

- Advertising companies try to add sign value to their commodities
- Consumers invest / buy into the sign value of these things
- Society develops a culture that is more 'fantastical' - one that is further away from the real
- We are dependent on the images of things as opposed to the reality of things

Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

- According to Baudrillard, simulacra are copies either of the thing they are intended to represent or stand in for or - in recent history - are merely copies of other copies
- A copy which 'supersedes' the original
- Hyperreal - simulacra after simulacra after simulacra
- It becomes impossible to access reality

- The copy is not produced by something 'real', they are produced by other copies
- Copies start to affect reality in concrete terms as society becomes more developed
- Simulacra had distinct phases in relation to historical phases of society
- It becomes impossible to distinguish the copy from the original

Disneyland

- Sleeping Beauty's castle became the Disney logo
- Walt Disney drew inspiration from a real castle but added an extra aesthetic
- This copy is informing peoples experience of the real world
- The original castle in Prague is visited by tourists due to its association to Disney

Christmas markets

- Designed to publicise tourism for Frankfurt in Germany
- Became a simulacra of German markets
- The Leeds christmas market is a copy of the one located in Birmingham
- The Birmingham market is now much larger than the original it had copied
- The link back to its reality is lost

New York Manhattan skyline

- Every film based on New York is a simulacra of New York itself
- Its romanticism is created by these copies through media and film

Reality

- The unreality causes new changes in the real
- Images replace reality and cause new reality

Lecture 9 - Censorship and 'Truth'

Objectives

• Notions of censorship and truth
• The indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
• Photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
• Censorship in advertising
• Censorship in art and photography

How things are censored from us, what we are prevented from seeing
Notions of truth - we as public ought to have the right to know about
We don't have a choice as to what we see

Analogue & Digital

• Analogue photography becomes the original, unedited
• Reproductions = copies
• Manipulation in terms of digital photography - seen as a given, to 'improve' an image
• Digital photography is a code that 'exists'
• We believe there is much truth in an analogue photograph than a digital one

Ansel Adams


Moonrise Hernandes New Mexico, c. 1941-2

Photography captures a scene - 'the camera never lies' though it can

Surrounding mythology

Moon over Half Dome, 1960
Black and white photography
Is it the way he composed this that gives it the quality or is it as much in the printing?

Aspens
Made countless reproductions using the same negative
Uses different lighting, shades, exposure times and was able to suggest completely different times of day
Deliberate and conscious decision to print more than one image
Truth in photograph is not new that comes with digital photography
It is something people have been practising for many years through film

Stalin

Stalin with, and without, Nikolai Yezhov (around 1925)
Stalin with, and without, Trotsky

• Doctoring of imagery
• What is published to us is not necessarily the truth
• Sinister - political agenda
• Is the government only allowing us to see a certain 'truth'

Airbrushing

Kate Winslet on cover of GQ magazine, with legs elongated in photoshop

• We take airbrushing for granted, as the norm
• This example caused a scandal at the time
• Notions of truth - is it really affecting anyones world?
• Photography in newspapers - documenting the truth
• We read and believe it, though is it less frivolous than airbrushing in magazines?

Robert Capa, Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936

• Capa was photographing during the Spanish Civil War
• It has long been questioned whether this photograph was authentic
• Does it matter? Is it indicative of what is happening in war?

"At that time (WW2), I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair-minded and trusting"
Elliot Aronson

Does accompanying text alter the way we interpret a photograph? And does this alter the 'truth'?
Does it project a certain way of thinking that is different to the 'truth'?

'A deliberate and successful attempt by one person to get another person by appeals for reason to freely accept beliefs, attitudes, values, intentions, or actions'
Tom L. Beauchamp, Manipulate Advertising, 1984

Baudrillard & The Gulf War 

'Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin'...'whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum'

'It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image'

• Baudrillard believes the war was largely undocumented
• 'The Gulf War did not take place'
• Manipulated representation not the war

Peter Turnley

• Peter Turnley was a photojournalist working in the Gulf War in 1991
• Digital processes at this time was relatively new
• An image can be exposed to millions of people via the internet instantaneously 

'Most of the photographs I made of this scene have never been published anywhere and this has always troubled me'...'I feel that is a part of my role as aphothournalist to offer the viewer the opportunity to draw from as much information as possible'.

• Disturbing, graphic photographs
• Do we need to be shown these in order to understand the real 'truth'
• Does colour make a photograph more 'real'

An-My Le

Fine Art photographer who documented world events
Is there a place for tho or is Turnely's work more 'valid'?
Does it demonstrate the harshness of war?


Censorship

Censorship - 'The practice or policy of censoring films, letters, or publications'
Censor - 'A person authorised to examine films, letters, or publications, in order to ban anything obscene of objectionable'

'Everybody everywhere wants to modify, transform, embellish, enrich, and reconstruct the world around him - to introduce into an otherwise harsh or bland existence some sort of purposeful and distorting alleviation'
Theodore Levitt, The Morality of Advertising, 1970

A meaning says more about the observer than it does the picture
Is it indicative of the viewer?


Benetton

• Oliviero Toscani who has built a career on his use of photography that does intend to shock
• United Colors of Benetton - somewhat shocking and controversial imagery
• Challenges society perceptions of race, sex, sexuality etc
• Clothing is secondary to the imagery itself
• 'No such thing as bad publicity'

The ASA deemed this 1991 poster to be a poor reflection on the advertising industry and ordered the advertisers not to repeat the approach. If people are complaining about these images, is censorship required?


Amy Adler - The Follow of defining 'serious' art

• Professor of Law at NY University
• 'an irreconcilable conflict between legal rules and artistic practice'
• The requirement that protected artworks have 'serious artistic value' is the very thing contemporary and postmodernism itself attempt to defy

The Miller Test, 1973

Asks three questions to dermic whether a given work should be labelled 'obscene'

1. Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
2. Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law
3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989

• Much of her work revolved around her family, particularly her young children
• Is it going against the moral standards a mother should have?
• Does the fact that she is her child alter the way we interpret the photograph?

Tierney Gearon

'I think that the pictures are incredible innocent and totally unsexual. I don't crop them, I don't retch them and the shots are never staged.'

Final thoughts

• Just how much should we believe the 'truth' represented in the media?
• And should we be protected from it?
• Is the manipulation of the truth fair game in a  Capitalist, consumer society?
• Should art sit outside of censorship laws exercised in other disciplines?
• Who should be protected, artist, viewer, or subject?

Lecture 8 - Baudrillard & Postmodernism

Aim / Objectives

• To examine and contextualise Jean Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality
• To foreground Baudrillard's position, by showing how it develops out of a Marxist critique of capitalism
• To examine how Baudrillard's analysis of advertising led him to argue that consumer's engagements with commodities had begun to function like a language
• To explore how Baudrillard extended this analysis into a fully blown theory of postmodernism.

Rise of postmodernism transformed the structure of marketing and advertising

System of Objects 1988 - promotion and advertising

Hyperreal world which we called reality was grounded in simulacra 

No link to a pre-existing reality

Simulacra became a dominant form of image production in the post modern society

Evident in Ridley scott's 'Bladerunner' and Matrix in 1999

Matrix

Dystopian story about Neo who questions the world he inhabits

He leads the renegades into the 'Matrix' and fights the machines that created it

Reality has been reduced to a blank, white spance filled with constructed images

Baudrillard

Pure constructions

No reality outside of themselves

Developed ideas out of capitalism and the rise of promotion and advertising

These became an integral part of our lives

Grounded in the works of Marxism - shaped Baudrillard's investigations

Labour

Our involvement in the world is determined through labour

How we shape our environment through our industry - what we make and do

Our own experiences are rooted in the environment

We become removed / alienated from this condition

We can't act directly in the world

Defined labour as the metabolic condition between man and nature

Mans relation with the environment determines his character

Becomes a product of his layout

Commodities

Generates products as external objects - useful as they satisfy human needs

Products to commodities (quantitive relation between commodities)

Each commodity can be weighed against any other commodity as they are quantitive as opposed to qualitative

In their equality, they are equitable to money

This exchange relation is explained through the abstraction of use value

Once we start exchanging with each other, our contact with the physical world becomes transformed

The objects around us are forced to conceptualise in relation to all other objects

Our relation to the world becomes indirect

Alienation

Under capitalism a workers labour becomes a commodity

The labour you engage with you have to exchange for money (salary)

We have to sell ourselves in order to survive

Separates worker from labour (Marx's idea of alienation)

Marx's summary

When people produce goods for the market the value of goods is not set by its usefulness but its ability to exchange for different things

The labour embodied with these goods is valued for its ability to exchange

Peoples labour becomes a commodity to be bought and sold for a labour which is subsequently exchanged for physical commodities

A simple object such as a table becomes a commodity

We are continually engaged with not only using commodities, but comparing it to all other commodities

Baudrillard & capitalism

The transformation of production and consumption can be rooted in the rationalisation of capitalism 

Advocated the breakdown of labour processes

In 1911, Frederick Taylor believed we could make production more efficient through innovations such as an assembly line

Pre-cursor of mass production

Ford

Ford separated the production process into separate tasks

Each worker fashioned or attached a particular part of a car in a synchronised process

Required cooperation of multiple workers

Each contributed to the production of individual cars

$5, 8 hour day

Gave workers sufficient income and leisure time to consume the products of mass production

Demand

In the post war period, there was a boom in manufacturing

Assembly lines became the way we produced all forms of consumer items

Resulted in a rise of demand which needed to remain consistent

Advertising

A corresponding industry developed - publicity and advertising

Advertisements became a ubiquitous phenomenon

Competing advertisements sat alongside each other

In publicity, choices are offered between two similar products

Publicity as a system only makes a single proposal 

It proposed we transform ourselves and our lives by buying something more

Every advert, in effect, is saying the same thing to us

Judith Williamson

Advertisements seek to address consumers desires as opposed to showing how the products are useful to us

'Translates statements from the world of 'things' into a form that means something in terms of people'

Based on use value (facts and statistics)

Translation of 'thing' statements to 'human' statements

A car, for example, can take on human characteristics

Commodities are equatable to aspirations and desires

The language of publicity becomes a way in how we comprehend the world around us and how we might find fulfilment

Codes

Baudrillard believed advertising codes products through symbols that differentiate them from products

Fits the object into a 'series'

Transforms its meaning to the individual consumer

Dependent on focus groups that determine the advertisements

Mad Men

Two rooms 

One for consumers where they are made to feel relaxed and open in order to divulge their opinions

The other for a team of advertising creatives who are looking at the consumers feelings

How can they construct adverts around them?

Focus groups

One of the fundamental tasks of advertising is to permit the consumer to freely enjoy life and surround himself with products that enrich his experience and make him happy

Focus groups become a common aspect

Advertisements were specifically designed to address something particular

Baudrillard argues that we need to re-conceptualise what happens at the point of sale

Emotional associations generated through advertising

Pre-conditioned activity

Baudrillard

Mass production requires a constant demand of consumer goods

Demand needs to be kept consistent

People need to be persuaded to keep buying the same 'things'

Advertising takes on a language

Needs disappear into a prod

Store fronts / interior

Primary landscape of affluence / abundance

The consumer desire for abundance is found in the layout of department stores

Products are arranged in stacks / displays which the consumer distinguishes from each other

Saussure

Baudrillard extends his analysis and understand that products arranged in this manner takes on the manner of a linguistic sign under Saussure's idea

Statement of signs in a wider language structure

Words were only meaningful in a wider language

Made up of a sound and an image (signifier) and a concept (signified)

He believes the linguistic sign is an arbitrary construct 

He called this system of signs, 'langue' which he differentiated from parole (individual speech act)

Semiotics in consumer society

Structured by relations of difference

Described advertising as a system and a language

Creates a form of interaction with a product

Continual consumer exposure constitutes a system of signification that constructs consumer desire

Relation between image and reality 

Experience becomes saturated with media imagery

Shapes the way we interpret reality

In hyperreality, images take on lives of their own and become templates of new reality

Simulacra colonises reality and shapes the manner in how we interpret and respond to our environment

Disneyland

Considers Disneyland as a primary example of hyperreality

Play on illusions and fantasy

Overtly fantastical environment to distract attention from 'corrupt' reality

Politics

Simulacra invades political policies
Opinion polls closely monitored by politics
Politicians are aware of the media and how we interpret them and their views
This influences their decisions

Essay - First draft

Essay - Quotes

Some of the quotes and sources I will possibly incorporate into my essay:

1) 'Semiology takes in any system of signs whatever the content or limits of the system. Images, sounds, gestures and objects are all part of systems which have semiotic meanings'.

Carson, D 'Visible Signs' 2003 p56

2) 'Myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p109

3) 'Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p109

4) 'Mythical speech is made of materials which have already been worked on so as to make it suitable for communication.'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p110

5) A photograph will be a kind of speech for us in the same way as a newspaper article…'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p111

6) 'It can be seen that in myth there are two semiological systems , of which is staggered in relation to the other: a linguistic system, the language (...), which I shall call the language-object, because it is the language which myth gets hold of in order to build its own system; and myth itself, which I shall call metalanguage because it is a second language, in which one speaks about the first'.

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p115

7) 'As a total of linguistic signs, the meaning of the myth has its own value, it belongs to a history'

Barthes, R 'Mythologies' 1954-56 p117

8) 'Denotation can be seen as no more of a natural meaning than is connotation but rather as a process of naturalisation.'

Chander, D 'The Basics of Semiotics' 2007 (2nd edition)

9) (He sees the newspaper as) '...a complex of concurrent messages with the photograph as centre and surrounds constituted by the text, the title, the caption, the lay-out and...by the very name of the paper.'

Barthes, R 'The Photographic Message' p15

10) 'Myths can function to hide the ideological function of signs. The power of such myths is that they 'go without saying' and so appear not to need to be deciphered, interpreted or demystified'

Chander, D 'The Basics of Semiotics' 2007 (2nd edition) p145

11) 'Literature is a prime example of a second-orde signifying system since it builds upon language.'

Silverman, K ' The Subject of Semiotics' 1983

Lecture 7 - Identity

Summary

• Historical conceptions of identity
• Foucault's discourse methodology
• Place and critique contemporary practice within these frameworks
• Postmodern theories of identity as 'fluid and 'constructed'
• Identity today, especially in the digital domain

Theories of identity

(Modern period - modernity and industrial revolution)

• Essentialism (traditional approach - inner essence)
• Our biological make up makes us who we are
• We all have an inner essence that makes us who we are
• Post modern theories disagree and are anti-essentialist

Phrenology

• No underlying theory
• These parts of the brain 'formulate' who you are
• The 'balance' of your personality

Cesare Lombroso (1835 - 1909), an Italian thinker,  was the founder of Positivist Criminology, the notion that criminal tendencies are inherited and passed through genetics. He suggests that facial characteristics, for example, define who we are.

Physiognomy

Facial characteristics 'equate' level of intelligence
'Legitimising' racism, suggests there is evidence to support it
Gives the impression that the white middle class are racially superior

Art work

Hieronymous Bosch (1450 - 1616) Christ carrying the Cross
The majority of characters appear grotesque with exaggerated facial features
Jesus Christ and a female follower appear 'normal' in comparison

Chris Ofili (1996) Holy Virgin Mary
Paints the Virgin Mary as a black woman in relation to his African origin
Used elephant dung to demonstrate his black origins

Historial phases of identity

• Pre modern identity - personal identity is stable and defined by long standing roles. What your father does influences your path within society.
• Modern identity (1750) - modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. There is a possibility to start 'choosing' your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to 'worry' about who they are. People began to move from the country to the cities which results in the rise of the working class.
• Post modern identity - accepts a 'fragmented self' (many assets). Identity is constructed.

Pre-modern identity

Institutions within society determined your identity and maintained patriarchy - marriage, the church, monarchy, government, the state, work (given most women never worked).

'Secure' identities

• Farm worker - Landed gentry
• Soldier - The state
• Factory worker - Industrial capitalism
• Housewife / gentleman - Patriarchy
• Husband / wife - Marriage / church

Modern identity

19th and early 20th centuries

Charles Baudelaire (1863) The Painter of Modern Life

Introduces concept of the 'flaneur' (gentleman-stroller - any word that ends in -eur is male orientated)

Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 94)  Le Pont de l'Europe (1876)

Thorstein Veblen (1899) Theory of the Leisure Class

German theorist. 'Leisure class' - those who do not have to go to work.  Defined by fashion and the clothes you wear - something which people aspired to. 'Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman leisure.'

Georg Simmel (1903) The Metropolis and Mental life

Establishment of the modern city. Relates a note of social anxiety and concern about who you are and how you fit within society. Trickle down theory, emulation, distinction, the 'mask of fashion'. The upper classes are seen as wearing the newest fashion which the lower classes aspire to - the only way to achieve this is to emulate and copy what they are wearing. The upper classes wanted to distinguish themselves from the lower classes so find something new to wear which initiates another cycle of emulation and distinction (much like the modern day)

'The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or int he traffic of a large city'. - The condition of identity becomes more alien and isolated. Simmel suggests that because of the speed and mutability of modernity, individuals withdraw into themselves to find peace.

Post-modern identity

'Discourse Analysis' - Michael Foucault

Identity is constructd out of the discourses culturally available to us.  '...a set of recurring statements that defined a particular cultural 'object' (e.g. madness, criminality, sexuality)'.

Possible discourses (those to be considered in bold)

• Age 
• Class
• Gender
• Nationality
• Race / ethnicity
• Sexual orientation
• Education
• Income
• ...and so on

Class

The current class system came into being with the industrial revolution when people began moving to cities and working in factories - the working class emerged. The upperclass wanted to maintain a sense of distinction with the lower class

Humphrey Spender / Mass Observation (1937) Worktown project / Worktown people

Mass observation formed by 'upper class' members of society who decided to look / observe how the lower classes lived. North and south divide - the north being observed by the south. Images have loaded suggestions in terms of culture, wealth etc. 

Martin Parr

(1983 - 86) New Brighton, Merseyside from The Last resort

He gives the impression he is documenting the world as he sees it but is seen as condescending by others. The photographs do not 'glamorise' these holiday destinations.

(2003) Ascot

'Society... reminds one of a reticular shrewd, cunning and pokerfaced player in the game of life, cheating if given a chance, flouting rules whenever possible'. Martin Parr was shrewd in capturing 'life' and social identities which people may not belong to.

(2000 - 2003) Sedlescombe from Think of England - Cliche stereotyping

Fashion

Alexandar McQueen, Highland Rape collection, Autumn / Winter (1995 - 6)

'Much of the press coverage centred around accusations of misogyny because of the imagery of semi-naked, staggering and brutalised women, in conduction with the word 'rape' in the title. But McQueen claimed that the rape was of Scotland (by the English in the 18th century), not the individual models, as the theme of he show was the Jacobite rebellion.' - Statement of national identity

Vivienne Westwood, Anglomania collection, Autumn / Winter (1993 - 4) - Taunt at Scotland and their place within English society. Uses tartan as a symbol of 'English-ness'.

Las Vegas

Fluid nature of national identity within the contemporary world. 

Many identities combined in one place - Sphinx, pyramids etc

'I didn't like Europe as much as I liked Disney World. At Disney World all the countries are much closer together, and they just show you the best of each country. Europe is more boring. People talk strange languages and things are dirty. Sometimes you don't see anything interesting in Europe for days, but at Disney World something happens al the time, and people are happy. It's much more fun. It's well designed!'

A college graduate just back from her first trip to Europe (1995), The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture, London, Thames and Hudson, page 139

Chris Ofili

No Woman, No Cry (1998)

Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (1994)

Relates to his childhood and his obsession with art and comic books. He devises his own superhero entitled 'Captain Shit' and again, uses elephant dung within his work.

Gillian Wearing

From Signs that say what you want them to say and no signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-3). He asked the public to write down their feelings on a piece of card which he subsequently photographed (Volkswagen replicated this idea). Is it a perception of race or is what they are really saying?

Emily Bates

Emily Bates is a Scottish textile designer and artist. 'Hair has been a big issue through my life... it often felt that I was nothing more than my hair in other peoples' eyes'. She uses the image of Mary Magdalane (Titian, 1532) as an inspiration for her work - Magdalane was referred to as a promiscuous prostitute. She created a dress out of her own red hair - used as an installation piece as opposed to a piece of clothing.

Gender and sexuality

Wilson, E. (1985) Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity

'...the fashion industry is the work not of women, but of men. Its monstrosities, he argued, were a 'gigantic unconscious hoax' perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War - male homosexuals'. He made a mass assumption that many fashion designers are male homosexuals who had a hatred for women. 

Masquerade and the mask of femininity

Cindy Sherman (1977 - 80) Untitled Film Stills

Plays with societies perception of women in the media. She tries to emulate this perception by placing herself, as the subject, in difference scenarios. 

Female artists

Women breaking into a world which is typically viewed as male dominated. 

Sam Taylor-Wood, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin

The Postmodern condition

Liquie modernity and liquid love (Zygmunt Bauman)

Identity is constructed through out social experience

Erving Goffman - precursor of these ideas 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life' - life is like a theatre where each act you decide what to wear, how to act etc

Andy Hargreaves (2003)

'In airports and other public spaces, people with mobile-hone headset attachment walk around, talking aloud and alone, like paranoid schizophrenics, oblivious to their immediate surroundings. Introspection s a disappearing act.'

Theodore Levitt (1970)

'We use art, architecture, literature, and the rest, and advertising as well, to shield ourselves, in advance of experience, from the stark and plain reality in which were are fated to live'.

Postmodern identity

Rene Descartes - 'I think therefore I am' - justifying your existence by the thoughts you have

Barbara Kruger - 'I shop there I am' - contemporary, we are defined by what we buy

Darley (2000)

'The typical cultural spectator of postmodernity is viewed as a largely home centred and increasingly solitary player who via various forms of telemediation, revels in a domesticated 'world at a distance'

Sherry Turkle (1994) - 'The notion 'you are who you pretend to be' has a mythic resonance'

Essay structure

Introduction

• Introduction to semiotics - meaning, basis, theory
• Saussure and Peirce - where the contemporary definition of 'semiology' originated
• Begin to introduce Roland Barthes and how he interpreted the previous theorists views

Middle

• Barthes theory on the 'myth' and how this applies to the previous theory of semiotics
• How semiotics is applied to the world of graphic design and how what we see affects what we interpret
• Introduce two newspapers, their stance in the media, their political view and their target demographic
• Apply Barthes theory and semiotics in general to the two newspaper front covers
• Analyse and deconstruct these newspaper covers - what do the images, text, headlines, size, price etc connote?

Conclusion

• Conclude Barthes theory on the myth
• Summarise semiotics and how everything we see we deconstruct subconsciously