I have been reading the book "Ways of Seeing", by John Berger, after watching his series of the same name.
The method Berger uses to analyse art and advertising is very interesting and relates to how I want to write my essay: Focusing on specific characteristics of an image, he understands the meaning of those symbols and its cultural context, raising several broad questions about society. I will post here some notes and excerpts that I want to keep in mind when analysing my cultural text (I'm still not sure of exactly how to talk about the issues I'm worried about focusing on a specific object, but I'll do some more research further on). -"In no other form of society in History has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages." -"One may remember or forget these images, but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by the way of either memory or expectation". -"We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact." - the same applies to screens! -Publicity is not merely an assembly of competing messages: It is a language itself, always making the same general proposal - that we transform ourselves, our lives, by buying more. " Showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. -STATE OF BEING ENVIED = Glamour - the created reality, the illusion. IMPROVED ALTERNATIVE -The spectator/buyer is meant to envy himself as he will become if he buys the product. MARGINALLY DISSATISFIED -"The publicity images steal people's love as they are, and offers it back for the price of the product". -"Publicity is the culture of the consumer society - It propagates through images that society beliefs in". -"Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy - the choice of what we consume takes the place of significant political choices". -Publicity helps masking all that is undemocratic within society - INTERPRETS THE WORLD -The two worlds coexist. -Without publicity capitalism couldn't survive. -"Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible." FALSE STANDARD OF WHAT IS AND WHAT'S NOT DESIRABLE As someone who's interested in character design for animation, it is important to analyse how certain characteristics and types of personality are expressed visually. I decided to focus on antagonists. Are there any features which encompass most designs of evil? Signs, faces and expressions linked to villains? Which are the facial attributes that represent a malicious nature? I decided to focus on Disney animation because of how it constructs a perception of the world in a binary conceptualisation, clearly distinguishing between Good and Evil. Also, Disney's style has a very influential role in how western people imagine, our culture is embedded in its designs and vision. Looking at the picture posted above, its easy to identify resemblances in the five villains: -A prominent pointed chin, associated with hot-tempered, stubborn, fiery, sensitive and weak-minded people because of its angular look, which can convey intense emotion. -Very noticeable teeth, sign of danger, beasts. -Aquiline noses, associated with intelligent shrewd people. -Exagerated high cheekbones, representing an unsettlingly skeletal deathly appearance. -Dark eyebrows, usually curved down in the center, expressing anger. Our contemporary culture is ingrained in religious symbolism. All villains resemble the devil, and these previous analysis' characteristics are also associated with the satan's representation, from medieval to modern age. Is it possible to step out of the symbolic associations society teaches us? Are we constrained to repeat the same visual analogies, according to inherent connotations? As a creative practicioner, is innovation and originality achievable? While walking on the streets of any ‘civilised' city, its not possible to ignore the huge amount of screens that also populate it.
Screens of all shapes and sizes, in the most original places, giant, medium and small noticeboards, bus stops, shop windows, inside and outside vehicles, walls, cellphones, tablets, clocks, computers, televisions… the list goes on. We are constantly being bombarded by screens, stormed by its lights, inebriated by its power, consuming its messages. Why? Why do we perceive it as a natural inevitable activity? What is its history? What is a screen? There are many different types of screens, developed throughout History, the cathode ray tube, Flip-Flap, Light-emitting diode, Vacuum fluorescent display, LED, LCD, OLED, etc. Even though their construction and physiognomy are distinct, all screens share the same purpose: Attract attention to the message it contains. How do screens attract attention? Screens captivate human eyes in an exceptional way, and this is mostly due to its light. Unlike most objects, screens emit light, instead of reflecting it. Just like lamps, fire, or the sun, screens illuminate instead of being illuminated. This is of extreme relevance: Emitted light allures our eyes because of its power and significance - warmth, familiarity, aliveness. Just like mosquitoes, humans are intuitively attracted to light. During the night, artificial emitted light devices are a substitute to day-light. This is convenient, but also has its disadvantages - while looking at a screen the eyes get tired easily of constantly being buzzed with light, the brain acts as if it isn’t sleepy. Human nature is perturbed with these modern habits, and the long-term consequences haven’t been discovered yet. What do screens communicate? In the final part of his book and programme “Ways of Seeing” (1972), John Berger discusses advertising. His manner of critical thinking was significant and cutting-edge for his contemporaries, since he spoke about this habitual subject in a profoundly unconventional way. “In our urban world, in the streets where we walk, in the buses we take, in the magazines we read, on walls, on screens, we’re surrounded by images of an alternative way of life. We may remember or forget these images, but briefly we take them in, and for a moment they stimulate our imagination”. His introduction is tangible, precise, and doesn’t apply only to advertising. Nowadays, this description goes beyond publicity, and integrates into games, films, the internet! We are surrounded not only by still images, but moving images. It captivates our attention, we briefly take them in and distort our perception of reality. Advertising and Propaganda is everywhere to be consumed, conscious or unconsciously. Can this be dangerous? Can we be manipulated by how it distorts our notion of reality? The world inside screens - this created reality - does it enrich and improve our physical world? This cultural text’s rationale was motivated by the themes discussed in the lecture “Mediated Culture”, such as mass produced culture, the hyperreal, how “images come to you, you do not come to them”, and how “the mass media, popular culture and media images (…) control and shape all other social interactions and dominate our sense of reality.” MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE POINT OF PAINTING: Taking notes about the essay about the relation between the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-84) and Art History, particularly painting, by Catherine M. Soussloff. -The development of Foucault’s thought, although it has references, is clearly influenced by the paradigms at his time. -Foucault saw painting as evidence and explanation for the transformation of cultures, the evolution of societies. -Serial History, his method to analyse Art History, offers a different approach to history: Instead of perceiving events and art individually, he links moments of transformation with particular paintings from its contemporaries. -Foucault’s essays on painting raise the question of how visual language communicates knowledge. -First example: Paintings by Masaccio in Florence in the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine. The paintings on the walls are visually ordered and framed for legibility, according to the biblical stories they depict. -His definition of the “Episteme” helps understanding how he perceived painting: The Episteme is the totality of relations that can be discovered between the object being analysed and its discourse at the given period. -Painting’s discursive practice is embodied in techniques and effects, and this is what gives it a theoretical analysis. In Foucault’s words: “In this sense, the painting is not a pure vision that must be transcribed into the materiality of space; nor is it a naked gesture whose silent and eternally empty meanings must be freed from subsequent interpretations. It is shot through-and independently of scientific knowledge and philosophical theme - with the positivity of a knowledge.” -Foucault diverged dramatically in his conception of painting from earlier art theorists: he made a distinction between painting as a “savoir”, and the kind of knowledge produced by science and philosophy, the “connaissance”, while the previous theorists had perceived painting as a “connaissance”. -His method is a chronologically structured comparative method. -Foucault's understanding of painting was influenced by Merleau-Ponty's essay "Indirect language and the voices of silence" : How ideas of visual representation change over time, and why oil painting is so relevant and highlighted. -Merlau-Ponty's definition of masterpiece is very interesting - He says that a masterpience is the result of an accretion of knowledge of technique over time - That a true masterpiece makes all the earlier attempts useless and stands out as a landmark in the progress of painting History. -" I can define the modern age in its singularity only by contrasting it with the seventeenth century on the one hand, and with us, on the other hand." This is a method based in contrasts, inspired by Saussure's teachings about signs. Merlau-Ponty explains Saussure's philosophy : "Signs do not signify anything (...) Each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence between itself and other signs." This means that its easier to identify an age, century or culture's aspects when contrasting it with different ages/cultures/centuries. -Foucault's vision is that it is through painting or with paintings in mind that the major concerns of the modern age may be seen and by which they are revealed. -In his four essays on painting, Foucault specialised in realist paintings. Why? 1: Realism indicated a visual and verbal verisimilitude, it is supposed to represent reality, its embbeded in techniques and skills on how to create the illusion of real. 2:It also indicated a significant relationship to historical representation and its political cultural context. As Erich Auerbach explains art's relationship with the moment it is created: "The characters, attitudes, and relationships of the dramatis personae, then are very closely connected with contemporary historical circumstances; contemporary political and social conditions are woven into the action (...)". -Foucault analyses Fromanger's painting process: The artist projected black-and-white snapshot slides or transparencies of contemporary events onto canvas, fixed it there by painting it alla prima, and added the colours later. This process combined the technologies of photography with the time-honoured techniques of oil painting. This method promises a knowledge of events and techniques, visible and known. -Foucault was also interested in how and why painting has been aknowledge, since the begginning of the Renaissance, as the medium that most appealed to the mind through its ability to give pleasure as a result of its beauty. Foucault wrote: "That which gives me pleasure in painting is that one is truly obliged to look. So, that gives me a sense of repose."
-The term "pleasure" is also used by Foucault in his book "The History of Sexuality" (1984). "He explains the history of sexuality as an exploration of the 'arts of existence' by which men 'seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre (job, work, profession, task) that carries certain aesthethic values and meets certain stylistic criteria'". -According to Megill, Foucault's work is underrated and minor because it is anti-disciplinary, his approaches could not be assimilated into the disciplinary canons and approaches of academic history. This is why Foucault's thoughts on painting haven't receive as much acclamation as it should. I came across the subject of society’s relationship with Authority while reading Frank Furedi’s article “Celebrity Culture”.
According to the author, celebrities are empowered by our culture’s uneasy affiliation with Authority. He advocates that celebrities are endowed with moral influence, fulfilling a few of the authoritative solutions that our twenty-first century society demands: “(…) one of the ways that communities respond to the erosion of customs, traditions and formally authoritative institutions is through the charisma and personal atributes of unique individuals. (…) Celebrities may not possess heroic qualities but as highly visible role models they have become the object of imitation.” Furedi reflects on the celebrity phenomenon, questioning if those admired well-known people are always the correct choices to receive influential power, and how technologies have turned celebrities into objects of mass consumption. Whereas, I would like to focus on the following questions: Do we really need role models and authoritative figures? How can society demand and simultaneously hate Authority? Frank Furedi assures that society needs some form of authority to survive, stating: “One thing that is certain is that we cannot live without some form of authority. Those who reject some form of authority as illegitimate usually embrace others as acceptable”. In “Anarchism: Arguments for and against”, Albert Meltzer presents the reasoning against those, like Furedi, who assume authority as an essential element for society’s operation. For anarchists, freedom is the basis of our existence. Mankind is born free, with no duties, ideals, obligations,worships, submissions, etc. Therefore, those imposed creations are only lies. “All present systems of ownership mean that some are deprived of the fruits of their labour.”, explains Meltzer, while defending how anarchists abolish property, perceive work’s organization method as slavery and government as tyranny. It’s not difficult to understand the anarchists logic. Humanity has inherent value in itself, and in theory everyone should be able to work and receive what their efforts were worth, without the requirement of control or surveillance. In theory, Authority would not be necessary, because everyone could understand their role in society and human intrinsic ethics would maintain order. This view of the world is evaluated as unfeasible or utopian by general critics. “How can workers run a factory without direction and guidance i.e. without authority?” That’s the Marxists perspective on Authority, which can be associated with Paul H.Rubin’s concept of Productive Hierarchy. (http://beatrizbagulho.weebly.com/critical-perspectives/hierarchy) Everyone having the same power and importance, all opinions affecting the process and the outcome, might seem ideal in theoretical terms. But practically the picture changes. Managing projects and communities with the abolishment of hierarchies or working methods, becomes a very confusing and demanding task. Without some amount of control, production and organization is less efficient. Understanding and reflecting on the role of Authority in modern society is of extreme relevance. How can Authority be so essential and simultaneously hated? Why does society have an uneasy relationship with Authority? “(…) authority has a very bad press (…).” - asserts Furedi - “(…) That the term authority is associated so readily with the act of abuse is symptomatic of western society’s disenchantment with the so-called authority figure.” What may be the origin for this lack of trust in authority and hierarchy? History presents us the answer for this interrogation. Since the introduction of organized human communities, authoritarian figures and elites have abused their privileges over the rest of their nation. Why does this happen and how can we control it? People need to be aware of how much power is put into specific hands, and how that power should be surveilled and dosed. But firstly, its important to recognize Authority’s importance in the management of our social, political, cultural and economical systems. “We have become far more able to demonise authority than to affirm it.”, says Frank Furedi. Without accepting Authority, is it possible to regulate it? What is History?
After reading a selection of E.H.Carr’s book “What is History?” I was able to methodize this issue in a clearer way. What is a historical fact? Why are certain facts more relevant than others? How is the past arranged? These are a few of the questions which I had been reflecting for a long time. Now that I’ve understood Carr’s opinion and reflected on my interpretation of it, I can start to formulate an idea of how these interrogations might be oriented towards answers. The text’s excerpt starts with a reflection on what is an historical fact. “What is the criterion which distinguishes the facts of history from other facts about the past?”, asks the author. Through this simple question, one is introduced to the author’s perspective on the relation between History and the Past. The past is not History, even though the latter is based on the former. The past is everything that happened in time and space, all the events, actions, moments (nothing is excluded, the Battle of Hastings, the lady who sneezed on 13th November 1756, your last shower, etc). On the other hand, History is only a restrictive selection of those past events. Emphasizing this distinction is very important when analyzing reality: without it clearly organized, one will perceive the world in a more constrained way, only seeing a smaller fraction of how it really was/is. Which is the process that determines which past events are “historical facts” and which are “irrelevant moments”? History is simply based in stories. However, not all stories are accepted by historians as valid and significant, not every fact belongs to the elite club of historical facts. To start with, even the stories which are at the historians’ disposal are specific perspectives and selections of the past, the appraised Documents. These were “preselected and predetermined by people who were consciously and unconsciously imbued with a particular view and thought the facts which supported that view worth preserving.” Resuming, these documents that the historians have access to, and base History on, are no more than enclosed stories describing moments of the past in specific points of view. The stories have value and importance, help us shape ideas about the past, but are not entirely accurate. As the author later explains, “No document can tell us more than what the author of the document thought- what he thought had happen, what he thought ought to happen or would happen, or perhaps only what he wanted others to think he thought, or even only what he himself thought he thought.” Every document is embedded with subjectiveness, therefore believing that there are historical facts existing independently and objectively from the interpretation of its contemporaries, is a fallacy. The same applies to the post-interpretation of the documents and facts: it is the historian’s job to decide which facts to give importance to, and in what order or context, attempting to find patterns and coherence in it. This selection process is merely an interpretation, it’s not objective, depends on the current perspective of reality, what matters to society in the present time. In Carr’s words, “All History is a History of the Present”. It’s the process of consensus -The facts that are highlighted about the past depend on the position from which the past is being observed. The most effective way to construct and manipulate opinions is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts to sustain those reasonings. This happens frequently within contemporary modern-life. The media holds control of the majority of our access to facts and information, with television, journals, social media, news-reports, etc. That access is not organized randomly, it is the media’s most powerful tool, since it shapes our view of the world: the issues that we care about, the people we talk about, the nations that have value to us, etc. Wether that tool is used for our benefit or not, it’s a matter of personal opinion. But it’s impossible to deny how much this selection of facts motivates our perception of reality, influencing our values, ideas, concerns, etc. History is constructed: The past, the present, and the future. It is of extreme importance to be aware of this process, and reflect about it. (based on E.H Carr’s “What is History?” - chapter 1, pages 10-16) “Hierarchy”, an essay by Paul H. Rubin, focuses on the different types of hierarchical organization developed in human and non-human societies throughout the History of evolution.
The author’s main purpose in this paper is to point out the distinction between Dominance hierarchies and Productive hierarchies, since humans often confuse the two types and it is important to understand the difference for analytical and political concerns. Dominance (or consumption) hierarchies are common in most social species (group-living animals), including primates and humans. This form of hierarchical organization is evolutionarily old, and predates humanness. The main features of this kind of hierarchy is that the group sizes are small, there is only one hierarchy per group per gender, and the only way of leaving it is by leaving the group. All individuals benefit from group-living (even the low-ranked members of the hierarchy) because it facilitates access to resources and offers protection against predators. However, the dominant members (the high-ranked elite) have preferred access when it comes to how the resources are allocated. These Alpha members often have greater access to food and reproductive possibilities (biological success). Productive hierarchies are purely human, and have its origin in the paleolithic transition from hunter-gatherer nomads to agricultural sedentary societies. Humans based on the classic dominance form of hierarchy and adapted it to new uses, converting the mechanism that dictated social organization in order to increase productivity and efficiency in contextualized structures. These hierarchies are used to better coordinate specialization and division of labor for complex tasks, such as the activities in business firms, film studios, factories, governments, universities, etc. For example, an animation studio’s administration is grounded on hierarchical policies because of how much this production method elevates the quality of the final outcome. The division of avocations adds greatly to the project’s productivity, since each individual focuses on only one specific skill (including the management/director task) and becomes a specialist on the subject. Membership in these production hierarchies is voluntary, so individuals must be sufficiently compensated (with beneficial goods and services) if they are to take subordinate roles. Volunteering is the feature in which Government hierarchies don’t agree with the productive stance. There is only one government hierarchy per society, and everyone in a society must be subject to the government regulations, even if its not in their perceived self-interest. In certain situations it is quite difficult to distinguish between the two types of hierarchies, and this usual mistake can lead to a misunderstanding of ideals. In the writer’s words: “Productive an dominance hierarchies have many features in common. In both, bigger-ranked individuals receive more resources than, and can issue commands to, lower ranked members. Therefore, humans (…) often confuse the two uses. For example, the Communist Manifesto, a major policy document, clearly confused the two.” According to Rubin, the appeal of Marx’s belief is “based on the human opposition to dominance hierarchies, inappropriately applied to productive hierarchies”. Whereas, I think that Marx’s position was a confirmation and awareness of how dominant behavior and other features of the Consumption Hierarchy were being applied to production areas, damaging the values of productive hierarchical organization. Reading this text was fulfilling. Even though it’s quite a heavy subject, this essay lets the reader apprehend a little more about how humanity works, reflecting on the evolution of political preferences and social norms, which is of extreme relevance. After all, the only way of predicting and building the future is by understanding the past. “The Truman Show” is a film directed by Peter Weir in 1998.
The plot’s spotlight is Truman Burbank, who was adopted and raised by a corporation since he was born, living inside a television show which simulated reality. Without knowing it, Truman is the main star of that show, since he is the only genuine person on it. Everything else, from his friends and family, to his neighbors and random strangers, his profession, the town he lives in, and even the weather and sky, is fake. This delusion that the main character lives in is very interesting, because what one can analyze as the film proceeds is how first Truman accepts and believes in this fake world, but then starts to deconstruct reality and begins to seek the truth. The sentence which best describes the roots of the philosophy behind this film is when Christof, the creator and director of the show, says: “We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented.” The strength of this sentence relies on how relevant and fundamental this principle is. Reality is constructed based on perception. How can one be sure that his whole life perceptions are truth? That values, people, even space and time, are real? There is no manner of being 100% sure, and this is what “The Truman Show” plays with. At the end of the film, when Truman finally is breaking the illusion of reality and discovers the set wall, climbing the stairs to the exit door, it is very intense and rewarding. As he goes up the steps towards the truth, one can relate to him and feel what he is feeling: The realization that all his doubts were real, that his life was going to start from that moment, closer to the truth. That sequence, and the whole film, has a connection with Plato’s epistemological philosophy in the Allegory of the Cave - In order to be closer to the truth and to overcome ignorance one has to free himself from preconceptions, beliefs, traditions and bias, which is a hard but gratifying quest. How can one release himself from his whole previous perception of life? Just like Truman, questioning. Doubting. Asking himself: Is this true? Is this really important? And pursuing the truth. Reading “Who’s Affraid of Visual Culture?”, a text by Johanna Drucker, made me question the identity and differences between Fine Art and Graphic Design.
When studying Art History and Design History, I was told that both disciplines were very distinctive, mainly because of their objectives and approaches in the creation process. What I realised while reading Drucker’s text is how incomplete and outmoded my previous perception of visual culture was: Fine Art and Graphic Design have much more similarities than differences, to a level in which it is difficult to clearly distinct between what is Art or what isn’t. Graphic Design has the status of “a dangerous interloper”, in the words of Drucker, because of its inherent relation to mass culture and commercial purposes. But how can this define the division between the former and Fine Art’s privileged status, when contemporary Fine Art also appropriates commercial imagery and design? In the words of Johanna Drucker: “The use of fine art imagery for commercial purposes already had an established track record, and the movement of images back and forth across the borders of fine and commercial art established a precedent for a similar migration of forms of composition, layout, and communicative rhetoric. The appropriations of commercial imagery and design that populate Pop art and then postmodern art, are simply part of a long history of such exchanges, each with its own historical character and charge.” These exchanges between fine art and commercial imagery are the main reason why it is so difficult to precisely define the border line between what is art and what is design. To exemplify this stance, Drucker introduces and analyses an exhibition, “Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age”, Merrill C. Berman's private collection of 20th-century posters, adverts, photomontages and graphic ephemera. It is through exhibitions likewise that one understands how “all the visual forms of contemporary life, fine art and commercial alike, have been shaped by the history of graphic design”. I found the text very interesting, even though I'm not so absorbed by Drucker's position on the other subject she expresses, how undervalued is American modern art history. Her perception of Visual Culture is what most captivates me, seeing all visual forms and disciplines at once and finding connections between them. |
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