Sunday, January 17, 2010

Books I need to look at.

Adorno dealt in music as well as art, I want to look at his theories on Art and Design, so I'm going to look at Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, which deals with the relationship between art and society.

I also need to look at Hegel's triad of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. I think that theory is applicable to fine-art, consumer based design and it's synthesis into pop art, neo-pop art and the lowbrow art movement. I need to as Richard what would be best to read in order to grapple with this theory.

I want to look atpop-art, neo-pop art, low brow art and design as art in general, so a few books about these movements might be useful such as Weirdo Deluxe, EdgyCute, Highbrow-Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America that all deal with these subjects, particularly the last one that seems more like a critical thinking approach to the subject than the others, though they will be useful in terms of quotation of the artists themselves.




Saturday, January 16, 2010

Informal propsal for 2,000 word essay:

The most personally intriguing subject, from all those covered in the lectures, is Adorno's theories on pop music. I want to look at the equivelant in design and art... though that doesn't necessarily mean pop-art, however, that will most likely be covered within what I talk about. Primarily, I want to focus on the subversion of pop-culture in art,design and illustration. I'd like to explore areas such as counter-culture, DIY ethics etc. And artists such as Robert Williams from the low brow art movement.

I think after a conversation with Richard Miles, I can probably clarify this a little bit more and generate a question to be answered.

Baudrillard: Reality, Virtuality and Hyperreality.

Baudrillard's theories were based upon principles established by Marx (‘critique of political economy',‘labour theory of value’ etc.)



Theories established by Sassure (particularly his theory of the sign): etc.

Plato's Cave Allegory:
Basically it goes: If people are strapped to their seats and shown shadow puppets against the cave wall, all they know as reality is the shadows. The reality is in fact the fire and the manipulation of their of.

This becomes a metaphor for the reality we are presented with through mass media and the actual reality of a situation.
‘mundum simulacrum aeternum esse alicuius aeterni’
Cicero’s translation of The Timaeus
Plato, The Timaeus

Simulacra and Simulation

Types of Simulacra:

1. where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item.
2. Second order, associated with the industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-produced copies. The item's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version.
3. Third order, associated with the postmodern age, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation breaks down. There is only the simulacrum.-Hegarty, Paul (2004). Jean Baudrillard: live theory. London

The origins of Simulacra:

1. Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes used to create them.
4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
5. Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.

Disnification
Baudrillard argued that Disney was full simulation, i.e. The Disney castle was based on a Disney castle in a movie, there is no basis for this place in reality. There is nowhere else on earth more real, in that you know in it's entirety it's a simulation. There is no chance of mistaken simulation for reality.

The Gulf War didn't really happen
The crux of this controversial book's arguement was that the truth of the Gulf War is never really seen, it's existance to most was through Radar and images on tv screens, most of the decisions in the war were based on perceived intelligence coming from maps, images, and news, than from actual seen-with-the-eye intelligence.

'The Gaze and Psychoanalysis' notes.

The first significant thing we learned in this lecture was a Freudian approach to the mind: The mind is broken into 3 categories; the ego, which is our conscious mind. The Id, which is our desires and drives and the super-ego which acts as a filter between the two, inhibiting our desires based on a moral compass we develop. This was depicted using an iceberg as a metaphor:

Key Quote:
‘The self, for Freud, is not something which exists
independently of sexuality, libidinal enjoyment, fantasy or
the patriarchal culture of modern society.
Indeed the very distinction between subject and object, self
and world, necessarily involves a mind-shattering
repression of the unconscious imagination.
The human subject, in Freud’s opinion, only comes into
being through repression…….Selfhood is thus
fractured precariously between conscious and
unconscious.’ Elliot, A (2002)

In other words, humans are able to interact with others and the world around them by repressing our sexual and agressive desires, i.e. repressing the instinctual urge to act agressively toewards someone who is emotionally hurtful towards you.

Then we looked at why Psychoanalysis is useful in the art world, primarily it was uggested that Art looks at these desires and repressions. the first example of this is Freud's analysis of Moses by Michelangelo in 1914. He sked, did Michelangelo portray Moses abot to stand or about to sit. Frued suggested that he portrayed Moses about to stand up and act. This portrayal of Moses about to act, Freud would argue, is Michelangelo's way of visualising his own intellectual anger.



Other artists that deal with the unconscious mind and it's desires were the surrealist movement lead by Breton and Dali etc.

Object-Relations


A significant part of the lecture was object-relations. This is teh study of how we relate to objects, most signifcantly transitional objects; A transitional object is an object that allows us to move from our maternal connection to the real world by ourselves, for example a blanket, doll or teddy bear, in which we place significant emotional significance. ‘transitional objects’ (Winnicott, 1951) are precursors to our adult appreciation of art. Because we can ‘invest’ emotional energy into an inanimate object, we can also appreciate art and literature.

Advertising preys on this by replacing one feeling or desire with an object, for example we can replace or re-identify objects with sexuality or love etc. etc.

The Abject


The abject is the part of the body that repulses us, bodily-function, fluids etc. such as urine and blood. These acts are natural yet as societ and culture has progressed, there has been a sublimation of these instincts and natural 'things'. Society's progression is based on a 'renunciation of instinct' Freud (1930)

The Gaze
Laura Mulvey
‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative
Cinema’ (1975) Hollywood film is sexist in that it represents the gaze as powerful
and male. Heroes typically are male and drive the plot. Women in film exist as ‘sexual’ objects to be ‘looked at’

Scopophilia is the natural pleasure we get from looking at other's body's in an objectifying way.

‘…..at the extreme [scopohilia]
can become fixated into a
perversion, producing obsessive
voyeurs and Peeping Toms
whose only sexual satisfaction
can come from watching, in an
active controlling sense, an
objectified other.’ (Mulvey, 162)

Different types of Gaze: intra diagetic gaze – a gaze of one depicted person at another within the image. Degas' La Viol This gaze is ‘intra- diegetic’. It is a
character in the image that gazes at the subject (the young girl).

extra diagetic gaze – this is the direct address to the viewer – the gaze of a person in an image looking out at us – avoided in cinema, but common to advertising & TV newsreaders

Suture is where we're put into the eyes of a character in either a film or a videogame and we experience how they gaze upon the world. Suture can be broken when we realise that the gaze we're experiencing is constructed.