Portfolio Task 6 - Theory Into Practice

Look at the CTS blog that Garry Barker has been writing to complement the lecture programme this year. Write a short response to one of the posts on the blog. Use the ideas that Garry is discussing to mount a short critical evaluation of one piece of Graphic design that you have produced on Level 5.

After reading Garry Barker's blog, I was interested in some of the ideas he brought up about sterotyping, and could see how it related to this particular piece of graphic design. I created this logo design for the YCN M&S Plan A brief, to be recogniseable as being the identity for their Plan A products and services. Plan A is M&S contribution to making chnages to help the environment and they want to encourage and offer advice on how people can do their own bit, so this logo had to reach environmentally conscious people.

 

Graphic design can help to form social and cultural identities, but from this stereotyping can occur. In the logo the colour green has been used to signify the environment and the 'green' way of life. The logo itself is based upon the Helvetica Bold 'A', and within its counter is a simplistic image of a tree, which is also stereotypically represents the environment. The docile body would see this and make the connection between the colour green and the tree, and the environment. This could be closely linked to the points raised by Adorno in his piece on 'Popular Music' about cultural standardization. Due to the colour and image previously being used within graphic design, they are recogniseable as being related to the environment, which means the information is pre-digestive. When designing the logo I knew this was the case, and therefore have unfortunately reinforced this idea of standardization.


http://graphicdesigncontextualstudies.blogspot.com/2010/11/reflections-on-first-lecture.html

Portfolio Task 5- Sustainability & Capitalism

Write a 500 word critical summary of the text which explicitly adresses the following questions
1. How is sustainability defined in the text?
2. What are the main characteristics or tendencies of Capitalism
3. Define a 'crisis of Capitalism'. Offer an example.
4. What solutions have been offered to the sustainability question? Are these successful or realistic? - If not why are they flawed?
5. Is the concept of sustainability compatible with Capitalism?


Within the text, sustainability is defined as an inter- and intra- generational equality in the social, environmental, economic, moral and political spheres of society. This means that the needs of the present generation are met, without affecting future generations. It also states that sustainability is a concept that needs everyone to buy into.
 
According to the text, the main characteristics of Capitalism are that it is constantly looking for new things to commodify, therefore is never-ending, and is constantly expanding. Capitalism thrives on creating new businesses, however it is not a linear system and can reach crisis, without the constant expansion of these businesses.
 
Capitalism can reach crisis when it's limitations are reached. However, to ensure this doesn't happen, capitalization is reinvented. An example of this could be the the greenwashing of companies, this is when they change their image to show how eco-aware they are, even if they aren't. This way of reinventing themselves creates a new consumer market, ensuring customers keep on buying into them, under the illusion they are helping the environment.
 
Bio-diesel is becoming an increasingly popular alternative to traditional diesel fuel. using bio-diesel makes customers feel good about the product they are purchasing as it has lower emissions. Biox Corporation is one of the largest proponents of bio-diesel. In 'The Ecology of Commerce', Hawken's outlines four points to follow in order of becoming environmentally responsible, including 'radically increasing the productivity of resource use', 'shifting to biologically inspired production', 'shifting the business model away from  the making and selling of ''things to providing the service that the ''thing'' delivers', and 'reinvesting in natural and human capital'. However there are flaws because the cycle of capitalism is perpetuated.

Sustainability discourse simultaneously blames capitalism for the current environmental problems whilst looking to it for solutions. However they are comaptible together, since the world is becoming more enivironmentally conscious and aware, sustainability is becoming a main factor in our everyday lives.
 
 
 Balser, E (2008) 'Capital Accumulation, Sustainability & Hamilton Ontario'

Portfolio Task 4 - Communication theory

Use Shannon & Weaver's model of the communication process to write a 300-400 word analysis of a work of Graphic Design. Comment on the ways in which the piece of Graphic Design attempts to communicate to a specific audience, using techniques of redundancy, entropy or noise.

The Shannon-Weaver mathematical model was based on telephone and radio communication. It does not work perfectly for Graphic design as it focuses on message to audience, but does not have a feedback loop to the client to ensure the message is recieved correctly. This linear communication means that the message will only be successful if the reciever at the destination responds in the way that the 'information souce' intends them to.

Lasswell Maxim ''Who says what in what channel to whom with what effect'' relates to analysing the communication theory behind this McDonald billboard advertisement. The information source would be the designers and the message they want to send, which is then transmitted through their choice of type, image and composition. The advertisement in the form of a billboard is the channel of which it works in to get the message to the reciever. In this case the reciever would be the audience and the way in which the message is viewed, and the destination would be the audience being able to understand the message.

There are possibilities for noise at any stage of this model, which could reduce the effectiveness of this billboard. The designer needs to consider the simplicity of the design, to clearly portray the message. Only half of the burger has been used so it can fit the full height of the billboard without taking up too much room. Also, the white background and space used around the type and image, gives clarity to the design. The billboard could be in an environment with many surrounding advertisements, so it must stand out and make an impression on the viewer. Since the main type only says 'Gherkin or gherout?', it is short and readable in a short amount of time. The target audience for this particular billboard is people who already like McDonald's food, they would have to have the knowledge that the burger have gherkin's on them, and they would have to recognise the McDonald's logo, and know what it stands for. The destiantion means the audience would then answer the question on wether they have a gherkin preference, and possibly make them want to go and buy a burger.

Lecture 6 - The Media & Globalization & Sustainability

Media has a role in structuring how we think about the world.


Definitions of Globalisation:
Capitalist- The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result.
- global
- system of production and exchange - profit
- positive - business
Socialist- The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
- working together with common interests
- communism
- spread worldwide


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- like a dictionary
- definitions


McDonaldization

 Marshall McLuhan
- we can see the effect of other people's action therefore we become more conscious of our own actions
- society becomes closer - supportive of eachother


Wikileaks (Internet)
Sensory - empathy
- however, seeing the Iraq war as if we are 'participating' becomes de-sensitised - so is in fact the opposite of how we feel in a society
- the idea of the 'global village' hasn't happened in terms of equality
- 3rd world have no access to technology


Cultural Imperialsm
- global village
- certain values of a community
- a dominant country spreading ideas to other countries


Rigging the 'Free Market'
- media conglomerates operate as oligopolies
Media
- owned by companies
- companies have to all answer to one company - control
- making it easy for single people to control the thoughts of a vast community


US media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism
- forces their ideas/beliefs through broadcasting to their audience


India
- increase of consumers buying into skin whitening creams
- white seen as cultural and dominant - due to mediaChomsky & Herman (1958)
- Propaganda model - 5 basic filters
1. Ownership
 - Rupert Murdoch - control over news we get
- 'The Sun' - determines outcome of general elections
- controls what certain audience think
- whoever cuts him a deal - he will support
- reporters (news)
2. Funding
- payments - ads - companys control over were the ads are seen, and what they don't want them seen next to.
3. Sourcing
4. Flak
- US-based global climate coalition (GCC)
5. Anti Communist Ideology
- our way of life - better than everyone else's
-oppose their way of life - ridicule it


Al Gore (2006) An inconvenient Truth' (film)
- America have caused the most damage, however we are the solution

Global warming - global emissions
Making things 'Green'
- to be more environmentally friendly
- so you will buy into it
- bulbs, hybrid cars
- creates a new market


Sustainability:
'Sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’


Brundtland Commission, (1987) ‘Our Common Future’


'Sustainable development, sustainable growth, and sustainable use have been used interchangeably, as if their meanings were the same. They are not. Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely. Sustainable use, is only applicable to renewable resources. Sustainable development is used in this context to mean: improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems.'
 
Greenwashing
- McDonald's change from red and yellow to green and yellow - to show how eco aware they are, however they aren't, they just seem to be.
 
'Most things are not designed for the needs of the people but for the needs of the manufacturers to sell to people.'
Papanek.V, 1983, p46

Seminar Notes - Communication Theory

-Rhetoric
-Semiotics
-Critical Communication
-Cybernetic
-Phenomenological

The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model, 1949
-based on telephone and radio communication
-doesn't work perfeectly for GD as it focuses on message to audience, but does not have a feedback loop to the client to ensure the message recieved is correct
-linear communication (A to B)
-it is only successful is B responds in the way A wants it to.

Communication problems
-level A - technical problems - accuracy of message
-level B - semantic problems - how precisely conveyed
-level C - effectiveness problems - how effectively does the recieved message affect behaviour.

Noise
-static - technical
-what work is amongst/up against
-not intended - but then can become the message

Redundancy Vs Entropy
-Entropy - strengths of message fades - seaps out
-Redundancy - nothing is lost - message is not changed in any way
-aim to maximise redundancy in erms of audience, audience decoding, message encoding of ideas
-simplify message increases redundancy
-makes message more predictable/conventional

LOW INFORMATION - HIGH PREDICTABILITY

Phatic Communication
-communication at a base level - without knowing its happening
-e.g. a handshake with someone saying hello, you already know how to respond, by shaking there hand and saying hello.
-if a person shook your hand with an electric buzzer you wouldn't know what they are tying to communicate.

Redundancy relies on convention
Entropy is radical/shocking

Tracy Emin
-some would understand and get alot from it
-some others wouldn't class her work as art

Hawaii
- sterotype - grass skirts - cocktails - cocunut bra's

Book - 'Introduction to Communication Studies - John Fisk

Portfolio Task 3 - Essay Ideas

I have chosen to focus my essay on the idea of the passive female, and how the idea of this has been constructed throught he use of female orientated advertising/marketing.

I will focus on:
-The Gaze, specifically the male gaze and how men percieve women - and the power it gives them
-Active male/Passive female
-Objectification of women - sex objects
-Consumerism - 'you are what you have' (Berger)

The advertisements that I will discuss:

Lynx TV Ad:
-the man is shown to have power over women
-it invites the spectator to want to be like him
-the way in which the girls are percieve, at first they are shown as sexy, aggressive in competition with eachother, but when it is shown that they are running towards a man it makes them look needy and dependent.

Tom Ford Fragrance Ad:
-woman is objectified and dehumanised
-spectator has the power and can envisage himself were the perfume bottle has been placed
-'lf you do not measure up, you won't be loved',
-the beauty myth
-women allow themselves to be passive, because when they make themselves look beautiful they are allowing/wanting, others to look at them and be attracted to them.

Key text:

Books -

Berger, J (1972) Ways of Seeing, London, British Broadcasting Corporation
Coward, R (1984) The Look, London, Patadin
Lupton, E (1993) Mechanical Brides, New York, Cooper-Hewitt
Wolf, N (1991) The Beauty Myth, London, Vintage
Loeb, L.A (1994) Consuming Angels, New York, Oxford University Press
Tillotson, K (2004) retro Housewife, Singapore, Collectors Press

Internet -

Chandler, D (2000) Notes on 'The Gaze',
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze01.html

Seminar Notes - Jean Baudrillard and Hyperreality

What we kow Santa as was determined by an ad company at a certain moment in time - becomes the reality.

Plato's allegory of the cave
-prisoners in the cave - shadows on wall is all they know of reality
-more comfortable with a naive ignorance rather than facing the truth
-what people tell us about life are pale imitations of what life can be

Pepsi Challenge
-unconcious brain signals telling if you you have a preference to Pepsi or Coke
-brands have a physical/memorable effect on you
-when you cannot tell the difference between the two brands, when you don't know what they are

Guy Debord - ''Society of the Spectacle'' 1967

Baudrillard
- the systems of objects
-buying into the sign value of a product
-positive/negative symbolic value
-e.g. Ferrari/Larda

Simulacra
-copy of reality
-e.g. The Holy Sacrament - reflection of profound reality
-Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland Park - imitation of Bhoemian architecture - not a functioning castle, just the idea
-approaching reality through a representation of reality - describing a castle as a 'Fairytale Castle' becomes the reality

Reality TV -construction
Documentaries and news - specific persons take on the world - editorial decisions

'The Gulf War did not take place'

Love - are you in love, having feelings or love, or are you just feeling what you think you should, through watching love movies and child programmes

Sex - hyperreal
-need images of fantasy

Lecture 5 - Reality, Virtuality, Hyperreality (Jean Baudrillard)

Jean Baudrillard - french philosopher, critic, social and cultural theorist, photographer, pionering theorist: semiotics, politcal economy, post modernism, post strucuralism

Coca Cola - illusion, tast the brand, tastes better in your mind

Post Structuralism:
-Gilles Deleuze
-Roland Barthes
-Jean B
-Jacques Dernda
-Helene Cixous
-Michael Foucalt
(Meanings of Signs)

Structuralism:
-Claude Levi-Strauss
-Roland Barthes
-Jacques lacan
-Louis Althusser
-Andre Leroi-Gourham
-Julia Kristeva

Guy Debord - ''Society of the Spectacle'' 1967

Karl Marx - pionering philosopher and political and economical theorist
-developed the 'critique of political economy'
-'labour theory of value'
-argues - capitalism constitutes one kind of 'mode of production' and that it would eventually be replaced by another one

Ferdinand de Saussure
-signified-signifier
-signifier-signified

Marcel Mauss - anthropologist - renowned for his analysis of the 'economy of the gif' in different societies

Georges Batille - renowned for his writings or transgression, death and general economy (gift economies, economies based on 'expenditure without return, e.g. the 'Potlatch')

Jean baudrillard
-Simulacra and Simulation 1981
-theory of simulacra - he developed since the 1970's
-according to him, simulacra are copies either of the thing they are intended to represent and stand in for or in recent history - are merely copies of other copies
-for a long time a controversial concept, the simulacrum as described by Baudrillard has become key

The Matrix - 'the desert of the real itself'

Simulacra:
-reflection of a profound reality
-religion - Catholic Church - body and blood of Christ - not actually as it is bread and wine
-masks and denatures a profound reality
-masks the absence of a profound reality
-sourcery - witchcraft, mythos, evil
-has no relation to any reality whatsoever, it is its own pure imulacrum
-Sleeping Beauty's castle (Disneyland Park, California) - exists and can be visited but is a recreation of the film

Coca Cola
-post modern image of Father Christmas
-neither Coke nor Santa are real

Another representation of Simulation
-Christmas markets (German)
-Father Christmas - used to wear green clothing
-1970's - The Loud Family - first reality TV show in America
-1990's - The Real World - reality TV
Charlie Brooker
-highlight bits that they want - to create meanings
Hence TV is not really real because it is hyperreal

Symbolic Exchange and Death (1976)
-Baudrillard - articulated the '3 orders of the Simulacra'
1. The Counterfeit - dominant schema of the classical period
2. Production - dominant schema of the industrial era
3. Simulation - dominant schema in the current code - governed phase

Kool Killer or the Insurrection of Signs
-spring 1972 New York - graffiti
-content neither political nor pornographic

Jean Baudrillard - 'The Gulf War did not take place'
-In the aftermath of the first conflict in the Persian Gulf between America and Iraq in the early 1990's, Baudrillard controversially claimed 'it did not take place'
-not intended to suggest it didn't happen...

Seminar Notes - The Gaze

-Manifestations
-Power of looking
-Gender

John Berger
-men look at women
-women look at themselves being looked at
-glance - judgement - reminding them of how they should look
-the nudes
  -naked - yourself
  -nude - object, fugure, someboday else's idea
  -(the distinction between the two)

Hans Memling 'Vanity' 1485

-mans idea of woman
-painting for a man by a man
-the dog represents fidelity - loyalty towards woman
-title - 'vanity' - she likes to look at herself - objectifying her - attaack
-allows you to laugh at her for being vain - aggressive
-religion - harder on women than men

Page 3
-designed for men to look at
-'News in brief' - women quotes and their opinions on what is going on in the world - allows men to oggle women but laugh as well as she can't be sexy and intellectual at the same time - sexist joke

Alexandre Cabanel 'Birth of Venus' 1863

-inviting gaze

-passive female

Ingres 'Le Grand Odalisque' 1814

-2 gazes - power and objectification

-men gazing at woman

-West gazing at East

-oriental, sexual fantasy

-less sophisticated - more available

-patronising

Manet 'Bar at the Folies Bergenes' 1882

-put into the position of a man looking at a woman

-close proximity

-woman not meeting/challenging gaze

Jeff Wall 'Picture for Women' 1979

-still male dominated

-photograph (paintings are lies)

Portfolio Task 2 - On Popular Music

Quickly read Adorno's (1941) article 'On Popular Music'. In no more than a few paragraphs, summarise his ideas on pop music, concentrating on key points such as 'standardisation', 'psuedo-individualisation' etc.
Post a link to a YouTube pop video that, in your opinion, epitomises Adorno's sentiments. Explain why, trying to emphasise the links to the wider 'culture industry' in general.


Adorno claimed that the fundamental characteristic of popular music is 'standardization'. He also compares pop music in an inferior way to 'serious music'. He believes that pop music is predictable and pre-digestive, that if you like the style of a song then you will like other songs with that same style. This means the consumers decision has already been for them. Adorno says that ''Structural Standardization Aims at Standard Reactions'' (Adorno, p76), which therefore reduces the effort on the part of those working in the music industry, as they know how people will react. He explains that the whole structure of pop music standardized, even when an artist tries to be different, because they are still conforming to a set of rules, for example; the breakdown of a song consists of a chorus and verse pattern, and therefore the consumer has ''the same familiar experience''(Adorno, p74).

Adorno goes on speaking about the correlation between muscial standardization and 'pseudo-individualization', he states that ''Concentration and control in our culture hide themselves in their manifestation. Unhidden they would provoke resitance.''(Adorno, p78), meaning that if people knew they were being controlled they would resist against it, so therefore they are under the illusion of individualism, even though what they listen to is 'pre-digested'.

Adorno also believes that people who listen to popular music do so as a distraction from their everyday lives. It does not demand their attention, however it produces passivity through rhythmic repetitiveness, and emotional adjustment, that music is an escape from reality. The listeners don't realise this repetitiveness, as their thinking has been done for them.

[Adorno, T., (1941), 'On Popular Music' In 'Studies in Philosophy and Social Science', New York: Institute of Social Research]

Westlife's cover of 'Uptown Girl', epitomises Adorno's beliefs about popular music. The fact that it is cover of an original is an obvious reason for this choice, with Billy Joel first releasing the song in 1983 it reached number one in the UK charts, proving it's inital popularity. Westlife knew this in 2001 when they released their cover, which also reached number one in the UK chart, and became the band's biggest selling single in the UK. Adorno's idea of music being 'pre-digestive' is apparent here, with the band working deliberately to set out to win favour with the people, knwoing the reactio nthe first time around. The doo-wop beat and close harmonies, makes the song catchy and memorable, which is common within popular music.

Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl' -


Westlife's cover -

Seminar Notes - Popular Culture

Lecture 2:
important ------ unimportant
culture ------ popular cultures
upperclass ------ working class
classical ------ pop
Shakespear ------ Harry potter
poetry ------ advertising jingles
language ------ slang
art ------ design
power ------ politics
taste v class

Alot of people don't care for art and they don't understand, however, most people engage with graphic design in some way, yet graphic design is labelled insignificant.

Marxism:

Base-
-forces of production - worker, tools, skills, technologies, materials
-relations of productions
   -employer/employees
   -master/slave
   -ruling/exploited
   -upper class/ lower class

Superstructure-
-methods of control
-religion
-politics
-law
-police
-army
-education

Ideologies
-forms of consciousness
culture -art

The Base determines the Superstructure
The Superstructure re-inforces the Base, ligitimises it and makes it stronger

Materialism
-surround yourself with commodities
-let be judged by possessions rather than who you are as a person

Ideology
-system of beliefs/ideas that unite people
-selective system of ideas reinforces power relations
-presents the interests of a few disguised as the interests of all - false consciousness
E.g. - X Factor - Simon Cowell - contestants image is what he wants them to look like - to please the masses - gain publicity

Capitalism - pyramid of capitalist system

When you get the rise of the working class (1800's particularly) Matthew Arnold writes - 'Culture & Anarchy' - when says the 'diseased spirit' - means challenging the authority, threat to power
culture - serves the interest of few
          -civilise yourself to become like the few
          -behave like ruling class

F.R. Leavis - Leavism
-judgements directly from the base
-loosing authority

Popular

Frankfurt School - consumption of popular culture stops you from resisting against the upper class
the culture industry - homogeneity and predictability

Reference - popular music text
-standardisation - reduces effort of designers and consumers
-pre-digested
-shortcut - no effort
-summarises for you

Psuedo-individualism
e.g. Goths - think they are individual - yet they are the same as eachother - participate in standardised culture
appears new/individual - but is a sequel

Song covers - song that is already proved popular - appears new if it is done by another artist - bring their own style to it but is psuedo-individual

The more people watch X Factor, the more producers will keep making these programmes (mindless programmes)
The less you interact with the world, the more you retract from it

Punk - anti-capitalist merged from poverty
-London - 70's - Anarchy in the UK
-black/white/reggae/punk

''youth cultural styles begin by issuing symbolic challenges, but they must end by establishing new conventions, by creating new commodities, new industries,, or rejuvenating old ones'' - Hebidige, D 1979
-subculture
-not about rebelling anymore- as it becomes neutralised

50 cent looks dangerous and edgy - but his music is not - sales - popular

Lecture 4 - Communication Theory

Lasswell's Maxim - ''Who says what to whom in what channelw ith what effect''

Tradtions of Communication Theory:
-Cybernetic Theory:
Infor Source- Transmitter- Noise Source- Reciever- Destination   (Destination to Info Source)

3 leveles of potential communication problems:
-1- Technical - accuracy, systems of encoding/decoding, compatability of systems
-2- Sematic - language precision, how much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost - language used
-3- Effectiveness - does message effect behaviour the way we want it to what can be done if the required effect fails to happen

Systems Theory:
-can switch between mathematical biological, psychological
-BARB (Broadcaster's Audience research Board)
-audience categories - sub-categories/sub-demographic groups

Semiotics:
-Sematics - what does a sign stand for?
-dictionaries - semantics reference book - tell us what a sign means
-syntactics - relationships among signs
-programtics
-Semiotics and the Semiosphere -the whole semiotic space of the culture
-''Damien Hurst'' - designer
-Levi Strauss for ethnography
-Lacan for the unconcious
-Barthes
-trainer - footwear - culture, sends sign to others whilst you wear them - status
-ads use semiotics - objects create cultural value - 'buy them and you will achieve this social status'
-road signs - danger - stipulated - no language - even if it's a visual one it's self explanatory - language have to be learnt

The Phenomenological Tradition:
-is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come the understand the world.
-Phenomenon refers to the appearance of an object, event or condition in one's perception
-makes actual lived experience

The Embodied Mind:
-communication seen as an extension of the nervous sytem
-langauge is seen as part of that system existing as neuronal pathways that are linked within the brain
-the key is a psychological...

Emotions:
-what faces mean (smile means happy - frown means sad)
-interpretation - the process of interpretations is central

Rhetoric:
-Socrates
-Aristotle
-personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanze inanimate objects of ideas, such a rhetoric itself. It is a type of 'rhetoric trope' such as hyperbole - irony - personification
-hyperboel - take things to extreme - push to limit
-how you are going to achieve certain effects from the audience
-persuades us to see things differently
-pictures without context are meaningless - they need to be anchored
-The use of 'pathos' a means of persuasion in classical rhetoric that appeals to the audience's emotions

Metaphor:
-meaning transfer, is langauge that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities
-enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by creating associations, and links to something like it - memory

-Christoph Niemann

The Sociopsychological Tradition:
-the study of the individual as a social being
-expression/interaction/influence
-the act of sending a message to a reciever and assessing the feelings and thoughts to the reciever upon interpreting the message and how these will effect an understanding of the message
-useful for deep analysis of the memories of communication

Gestat Psychology:
-a type of cognitive theory
-cognitive theory
-changes in behaviour
-biological

The Sociocultural Tradition:
-in defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as father, Catholic, student,...
-identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity
-the socioculture tradition looks at how these cultural understandings, roles, and rules are worked out ineractively in communication
-context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication

Critical Communication Theory:
-synthesis of philosophy and social science
-Foucalt - how power affects how we communicate
-feminist studies - influential area within the critical tradition
-postcolonian

Portfolio Task 1 - Panopticism

Task 1: Choose an example of one aspect of contemporary culture that is, in your opinion, panoptic. Write an explanation of this, in approximately 200-300 words, employing key Foucauldian language, such as 'Docile Bodies' or 'self-regulation, and using not less than 5 quotes from the text 'Panopticism' in Thomas, J. (2000) 'Reading Images', NY, Palgrave McMillan.



A work office could be an example of a 'panoptic environment'. Each employee is situated at their own desk or cubicle to 'ensure that control over people is easily maintained,' and this total individualisation creates 'docile bodies' when 'he is the object of information, never a subject in communication', were workers are expected to automatically get on with their work with no distractions from others.

Surveillance cameras within the office enforces 'self regualtion' in the workers, as they think they are always being watched by the boss. This automatic function of power is visible by defiable as 'one is totally seen, without ever seeing' and 'must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so', therefore induced in the workers is a 'state of conscious and permant visibility', for them to then adopt their behaviour to how they think they should act. This 'panoptic mechanism' gives the boss automatic power, as it is 'unverifiable', and removes power from the individual.

Self regulation and discipline can also be seen within the office enviroment, when colleagues compete with eachother to gain the approval of the boss, who is seen to have 'omnipresent and omniscient power', therefore guaranteeing order within the office environment.

Lecture 3 - Film Theory 'The Gaze' and Pscychoanalysis

Ganes (Call of Duty)
-can play in 1st of 3rd person
-1st feels liek you are there - more life like
-3rd is cinematic
-pscyhoanalysis - choices/options

Lecture aims:
-theories about power of looking through a different theoretical frame
-psychoanalysis

Psychology - behaviour
Psychiatry - mental illness

Laura Mulvey
-visual pleasures and narrative cinema (1975)
-hollywood film - sexist - represents the gaze as powerful and male
-heroes - males - drive plot
-women - sex objects

Freudian
-scopophilia - the pleasure of looking at others as objects (emerges in childhood)
-(Mulvey 162) quote
-perversion/obsession
-'Freaudian Theories of Psychoanalysis 2'
-Narcisstic Identification
-mirror stage - Jacques Lacan
-'ideal image' reflected 'ideal ego's'
-child own body less perfect than reflection
-film and art prey-
-contradiction in these 2 pleasurable structures of looking
-scopophilia - sexual stimulation by sight
-objectifying actors on screen
-narcissistic identification with the image seen
-active male, passive female
-the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification
-males are the bearer of the look of the spectator

Types of Gaze:

Suture-
-when spectators look through eyes of actors in the film
-follow their gaze - with feeling guilty
-suture broken when actor speaks out to us
-when broken - audience aware of own gaze
-'Peep' show - point of view gaze - shot entirely in suture
-spectator's gaze

Intra-diagetic Gaze-
-a gaze of one depicted person at another within image
-Degas - Le viol (The Rape) - shows the power of the male gaze

-D&G ad

Extra Diagetic Gaze
-direct address to the viewer - looking out at us
-more affective than the intra-diagetic gaze (women's aid act)
-Edouard Monet - invented to be viewed as artist
-Marcel Duchamp - Etant Donres (1946-1966) means being given

 -what is being given? - the power of gaze?
-permission to look
-power of gaze - reminds us of our own role of looking

Conclusion:
-different forms of gaze evoke different structures of power
-we can objectify (scopophilia) and identify - narcissistic identification
-visual culture emplys different forms of the gaze to evoke structures of patriarchy
-psychoanalysis seeks to evaluate and ientify the architecture and symptons of the gaze

-'Peeping Tom'

Seminar Notes - Foucalt and Panopticism

Lecture 1:
-Foucalt
-Panopticon -1791
-Panopticism - a form of discpline
   -permanently visible - self regulation of their behaviour
   -isolated - individualised

Foucaldian Terminolgy:
-docile bodies - modern discipline -aims to make us productive
-takes instruction
-e.g. soldier  -does what he is told without askign questions
-power and the body

Power is a relationship - A to B / B to A
-knowledge
-where there is power there is  possibility for resistance
-sometimes not - conforming to others ideas
-knowledge - what is classed as abnormal/normal

Task 1:
Example of panopticism
Iner-weave 5 references to 'Foucalt' text quotes
-method of discipline

Bakhtin Fete

Reference: Foucalt, Thomas, 2000, pg..)

Lecture 2 - Critical Positions on the Media and Popular Culture

Lecture aims:
-define popular culture
-contrast ideas of 'culture' with 'popular culture' and mass culture
-introduce cultural studies and critical theory
-define ideology
-interrogate the social function of the mass media

What is culture
-1 of the most complicated words in society
-process of intellectual spiritual and aesthetic development of a particular society, at a particular time
-a particular way of life
-works of intellectual and especially artistic significance

Marx's concept of Base/Superstructure
-from a base merges a superstructure
-culture emerges from the base were the initial struggle between slave/ruler, rich/poor

(Quote 1)
-culture is determined by the ideas of individuals
-their ideas are determined by the society they are brought into
-see the world through the lens of your society
(e.g. communism, capitalism)

Ideology
-system of ideas/beliefs produced by the dominant people in society, which disguises itself as the interest of us all - fasle consiousness (Quote 2)

Pyramid of Capitalist System

Yamond Williams (1983)
-4 definitions of 'popular'
   -well liked by many - defined by quantity
   -inferior kinds of work - mass production kitsh - high culture e.g. traditions
   -work deliberately setting out to win favour with the people
   -culture actually made by the people for people - traditions

Inferior of Residual Culture
2 images - one is seen as superior and one inferior, but toeh representative

Graffiti - Banksy piece exhibited in Covent Garden gallery

E.P Thompson (1963) 'The Making of The English Working Class'
-working class (excluded from high culture, so have their own culture - popular culture)
-Bourgeois

Matthew Arnold (1867) (Quote 3) 'Culture and Anarchy' Book
-cultue is the best that has been and said in the world
-study of perfection
-attained through disinterested reading, writing, thinking
-the pursuit of culture
-seeks to minister the disease
-Anarchy - is what he means as popular culture
-they shouldn't set their own culture, they should strive to be like us

Leavism - F.R Leavis & Q.D Leavis (Quote 4)
-sees mass culture as a threat to culture
-says 20th century - culture hasn't developed it has declined (cultural decline)
-standardised and levelling down
-culture has always been in minority keeping

Collapse of traditional authority comes at the same time as mass media

Frankfurt School - Critical Theory
-Institute of Social Research, uni of Frankfurt 1923-33
-Uni of Collumbia New York 1933-47
-Uni of Frankfurt - 1949

Theodore Adorno
-reinterpreted Marx, for the 20th century - era of capitalism
-defined 'The Culture Industry' - 2 main products - homogeneity and predictability
-all mass culture is identical
-films - predictable (Quote 5)
   -pretend to be art - but is just a business made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.
(Quote 6)
Product of the contemproary culture industry
-buying a product - rather than striving to develop own culture - buying in capitalism
(e.g. X Factor, Big Brother)

Authentic Culture vs Mass Culture
-Adorno on popular music
   -standardisation
   -social cement
   -produces passivity through rhythmic and emotional adjustment
   -pre-digested - enjoyment of music - if you like one song as that style, you will like other songs with that style - decision already made for us
   -rhythmic
   -repetitiveness (days, dancing)
   -emotional adjustment
   -music is an escape from reality

Walter Benjamin (1936) 'The Work of Art in the Age of mechanical Reproduction' (Quote 7)
-Aura - qualities of works of high culture
-e.g. Mona Lisa - we know its improtant because society tells us it is, in the Louvre behind bullet proof glass, like a religious pilgrimage, peopel go to the Louvre to see it, and that makes it more important than what it is. The reproduction of the Mona Lisa in text books, t-shirts, democratic/revolutionary, making our own meanings of the Mona Lisa - doesn't have the same Aura
-mass culture allows for revolutionary possibilities

The Centre fro Contemprary Culture Studies - CCA (1963-2002)
=Birmingham School

Conclusion
-Culture and civilisation tradition emerges from and represents anxieties about social and cultural extension
-They outcast mass culture because it threatens cultural standard and social authority

Lecture 1 - Panopticism - Surveillance & Society

Michael Foucalt (1926-1984)

Madness and Civilisation 
   -''The Great Confinement'' (late 1600's), houses of correstion, to curb unemplyoment and idleness
   -those considered useless were confined in these and made to work
   -as a way of improvement, morals
   -ciminals, mad, tramps, single and pregnant, lazy
   -repressed deviants from society
   -didn't improve because they all corrupted eachother
   -physical/mental control - subtle

Guy Fawkes
Discipline and Punishment
-Panopticism
   -discipline - is a technology, a way of controlling conduct - surveillance
-Panoptic Prison - round prison with institutional gaze
   -Panopticon internalises in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched
      -self regulation of their behaviour
      -automatic function of power
   -laboratory to meaure behaviour - allows scrutinise
   -allows supervisors to experiment on subjects
   -places like office's have 'panotic' layouts - make workers think they are always being watched by the boss
      -adopt their behaviour to how they think they should be behaving
-Panoptisicm is everywhere
   -google maps - cameras
   -constant surveillance causes us to change how we act
   -Pentonville Prison
   -Files, registers

Relationship between power, knowledge and the body
-Disciplinary society produces what foucalt calls 'docile bodies'
   -Nazi Sport event - cult of health
   -TV causes docility - being controlled/passive
Foucalt and Power
-his definition is not a top-down model as with Marxism
-Power is not a thing or a capacity people have, it is a relation between different individual and groups, and it only exists when it is being exercised.
-the exercise of power relies on there being the capacity for power to be resisted
   -where there is power there is resistance
-Facebook - surveillance

Bruce Nauman - video corridor pieces
Chris Burden - Samson (1985)

Summary:
-Michael Foucalt
-Panopticism as a form of discipline
-Techniques of the body
-Docile bodies

Critical & Theoretical Studies Briefing

Referencing:
-Creative review
-Adbuster
-Journal Jstor
-Internet

Books (Theoretical):
-Graphic design as Communication
-Design - Writing - Research
-An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design

General Theory:
-Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
-Critical and Culture Theories