Flying Kite

Flying Kite from Maria Lynam on Vimeo.

Working with Illustrator and After Effects to create an animate object or animal that lives in the sky, I chose to stick with a simple approach but may continue to develop another video, looking at the animation of a dragon...

Telling Tales: Iconography & Authenticity

Iconography is from the Greek words 'Image' and 'to write'. It is the identification and description of the content of images, the study of symbols depicted in a work or art design. Traditionally, these symbols derive from a readily recognisable, common currency of cultural experience.

WJT Mitchell, Art Historian: 'Iconography is about the rhetoric of images,' that is, it helps us to know 'what images say and what to say about images.'

All these symbols have a meaning and they all determine peace:
Dove - depicts something in a real world, it is instantly recognisable as opposed to abstract
Peace - colourful and abstract
White Flag - relies on colour to show a message, peace.

Peter Burke, Historian: Images 'speak', they are 'designed to communicate'. 'To interpret the message it is necessary to be familiar with the cultural codes'. We all share an understanding of context.

Richard Howells, Visual Culture, 2003: 'Paintings have meanings that the artist would expect the viewer to understand. Successful communication of these meaning, however, it depends upon shared cultural conventions between painter and viewer'.

Byzantine Portraiture: We are able to trace iconography through history. Symbols within the painting depicted an idea and it is no longer about representing reality, it was an idea through symbols, making connections through earthy material. The lamb around his neck suggests that he might be a shepherd OR he is possibly Jesus, who was seen as a good shepherd - using our knowledge of the context.

Iconology: 

• The study of meaning contained within these iconographic symbols, i.e. the interpretation of the content of the images
• The branch of art history that addresses the description, analysis and interpretation of images
• Iconology looks at more than the face value of the symbol, taking into account its context - both historical and cultural, as well as in relation to the artist or designers broader oeuvre of work

Importance of 'historical and theoretical context' - Erwin Panofsky - iconologist - Studies in Iconology (1939). Using visual evidence to 'unlock' meaning. Looking as opposed to just seeing. 

Take a painting for example:

• The first stage of analysis: What do we see at face value? What genre is it? What is it a painting of? Is there any text?
• Second stage: What do we see when we read between the lines? What else can we say about it? What details are evident?
• The effective communication of meanings through visual devices requires shared cultural conventions between viewer and reader and an understanding of context (the circumstances that form the setting for an even, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood).

Van Gogh, The Card Players, 1894-5
It is a painting that we can start to develop a recognised abstract idea of, using light and colour it is not super realistic. People are sat around a table, we can also read into the title to make an assumption of what the two men are doing. We don't know their relationship, where they are or who is winning the game of cards. There are a lot of other questions that the viewer has.

Metaphor

A type of analogy where meaning is derived through association, comparison or resemblance. It equates two things in order to make an impact, for example: this image is a s sense that they are trying to tell us that the car is strong. The rhino is where the engine would be, it triggers ideas and is an example of a visual metaphor.

Two images:
One shows an apple growing into a tree with typography displaying the idea of the seed growing into ideas and creativity. We are then left to interpret the other image without type. The viewer can make decisions about what the image means: a pair of glasses that also appear as an egg timer, it shows associations around time, patience and could also suggest a sense of emergency (time runs out) The glasses suggest intelligence, suggesting to the viewer that with patience comes wisdom.

Symphony in Slang, Tex Avery, 1951
He uses an idea of a metaphor and makes it come first, a metaphor is all of the meaning, he has inverted the way of using a metaphor.

The Creative Act, Marcel Duchamp, 1957
'All in all, the Creative Act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications'.
The audience is just as crucial, it is about visual understanding.

Desperate Housewives, Title Sequence 
It introduces famous works of art, all that have iconographic meaning. Hidden meanings, to show how we interpret the characters in desperate housewives.

The Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, Jan Van, Eyck 1434
Decode the image and ask questions, every element of the painting has a story to tell. Whilst taking a glance at the painting we don't notice key elements like we would when we look into the painting - Is the woman in the painting pregnant? Is it actually a wedding portrait? It shows a mirror in the background that reflects the room, opposing questions about where the artist stands as he isn't in the mirror.

The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein, 1533
The painting shows religious and scientific symbols, it is a detailed portrait but we can also see a distorted skull - it is distorted to the viewer and communicates messages, an interpretation of death.

Erwin Panofsky - Three levels or 'strata; of iconological meaning:

• Primary - see colour, shape, read text
• Conventional - relies on common understanding and shared knowledge 
• Intrinsic - what does it all mean? start to make assumptions, right or wrong - for example the image is a man that is lifting his hat, a good gesture and considered polite and friendly

Authentic

• Unique
• Common
• Copy
• True/False
• Real
• Imitation
• Genuine
• Counterfeit
• Original 

What does it mean to be authentic?

For many the search for authentic provides a powerful source of meaning in a secular age, allowing a person a unique personal identity in a world that seems alienating and conformist. This demand for authenticity - the honest or the real - is one of the most powerful movements in contemporary life, influencing our moral outlook, political views and consumer behaviour. 

'Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake'. Richard Sennett

In seeking to make objects which avoided the appearance of fine art, the Minimalists attempted to remove the appearance of composition from their work. To that end, they tried to expunge all signs of the artists guiding hand or thought processes - all aesthetic decisions - from the fabrication of the object. For Donald Judd, this was part of a Minimalism's attack on the tradition of 'relational composition' in European art, one which he saw as an out-moded rationalism. Rather than parts of an artwork being carefully, hierarchically ordered and balanced, he said that they should be 'just one thing after another'. 

The idea of removing them from the thought processes, creating a distance and how that might effect how authentic something might be.

Seminar - Meme

Meme, 'an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means'

Looking at satire 'a critique or attack, driven by a desire to make a social commentary or to challenge the status quo but which employs humour as its weapon to do this. It asks the viewers to think about the artwork' we were asked to create our own meme for a chosen picture, the group looked at Donald Trump and created a meme about his relationship with his wife and his thoughts about building a wall, relating to Mexican people.

Postmodernism & Appropriation Part 2

Pastiche, Parody, Satire & Authenticity

Appropriation - MOMA definition...
The intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of pre-existing images and objects. It is a strategy that has been used by artists for millennia, but took on new significance in mid - 20th-century America and Britain with the rise of consumerism and the proliferation of popular images through mass media outlets from magazines to televisions.

Andy Warhol, Orange Disaster, 1963

• Electric chair with final execution
• The image shows a metaphor for death with repetitive designs 
• Reducing it to meaningless
• When we view an image over and over again it loses it effect

Repeating something over and over tells the audience that it is less effective it loses its meaning.

Marcel Duchamp, LHOOQ, 1919

• Readymade - a commonplace prefabricated object isolated from its functional context and elevated to the status of art by the mere act of an artists selection
• Assisted Readymade - where slight interventions have been made to such an object  

God save the Queen (the Sex Pistols), Album cover by James Reid

• Appropriation of the Queen
• Appropriation of newspaper, like a ransom note - making her vulnerable 

Sherrie Levine, Fountain, (After Marcel Duchamp) 1991 

Commenting on the status of the readymade, she makes new versions of the art and gives them new meaning. Used making bronze, its valuable and has been transformed to unique object. It is the opposite of Marcel Duchamp's original piece, in a way she is showing the way we appropriate past forms we use them to carry on interesting discussions, dialogues before them.
'I try to make art which celebrate doubt and uncertainty...'



Satire
A critique or attack, driven by a desire to make a social commentary or to challenge the status quo but which employs humour as its weapon to do this. It asks the viewers to think about the artwork

'Cartoon'
1670s a drawing on strong paper from French carton, and from Italian cartoon 'strong heavy paper, pasteboard,' thus 'preliminary

Punch Magazine, John Leech, Cheap Clothing, 1845
Represents inequality between men and women

John Holcroft, c.2007
Makes stylised illustrations...


Jeff Rankin after Shepherd Fairey, and re-appropriated version, 2008-17
Idea of a dialogue, a conversation between the designers and audiences that they are presenting them too. It enhances the impact of the other for each different one.

Parody
or visual punning, is a form of visual satire the practice of copying

'Rango' (film) consistently aimless

Pastiche
is a form of 'homage' Like a parody it copies or mimics...

Daniel Eatock, Everything Heinz, 2009

The Guerrilla Girls, 1989
Promoting an idea, delivering a subversive message
Sexual and racial discrimination
Protect their identities in public by wearing gorilla masks
1985 poster campaign that targeted museum and artists that excluded women from exhibitions
They took on board using the image to make a social commentary
Appropriation, nude figure being used

Culture Jamming, Shepherd Fairey 1989
Hijacking of media was common, became a popular activity among Graphic Designers and Artists

Adbusters campaigns
Canadian based non profit company, found in 1989. Anti-advertising

Cinema4D

Spin from Maria Lynam on Vimeo.

Cinema4D Workshop

Today was an introduction to the Cinema4D programme and learning about basic tools to use in the future and throughout this workshop. We looked at...

• Creating different shapes and moving them 
• Lighting 
• Shadows 
• Texture Mapping
• Typography
• Animation

This is a short clip that has been modified and rendered to show how 3D effects work using shapes, lighting, shadows, pace and cloning.

Seminar - Postproduction

Seminar - Postproduction

• Post-produce the text and image excerpts provided to you by changing them using processes of deconstruction, intervention, layering, concealing, revealing, repositioning, enhancement, embellishment, destruction, creation. 
• Use your phone to make a short time-lapse film of this process, and of the outcomes
• If you use Instagram, post your finished time-lapse, using the hashtag #cutups
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I really enjoyed this task, it gave us a chance (as a group) to develop ideas from work that currently exists and create a new piece of work. We then left the work for the future groups to add to and for them to create the new pieces of work. 

Postmodernism & Appropriation - Post Production

Postproduction can be defined as...

• The stage in the production of a media output, involving editing
• A set of processes applied to recorded material, e.g. montage, voiceovers
• It can be seen as taking data that has been captured, cutting it up, moving it around and filtering and shaping it into a finished piece of work

Digital Media
...something that is encoded and machine-readable which can be created, viewed, distributed, modified and preserved on digital electronic devices is contrasted with print media, such as print books, newspaper and magazines

Nicholas Bourriaud, Postproduction, 2002
How Art Reprograms the World
Artists are taking work today and interpreting, reproducing, re-exibiting or use works made by others or available cultural products to create our own.
'The activities of DJs, Web Surfers, and postproduction artists imply a similar configuration of knowledge, which is characterised by the invention of paths through culture' Cultural information is out there and its up to you as a creator to figure out a path through these things to then develop ideas.

How are cultural practitioners using postproduction...

• They create hybridised art forms emerging out of interdisciplinary media art practices
• Using new media technologies to both compose their art work as well as display it on networked place
• Repurposing or versioning their works in-process for a write array of media genres and platforms
• Using online performance of digitally constructed or fictional artistically generated identities , a more open mindedness to alternative distribution where we locate audiences via electronic media, underground club spaces, store fronts, DVD labels, social networking sites but also in combination of more traditional venues such as museums, print publications, university art centres and galleries.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917

To create is to insert an object into a new context or scenario to consider it an element of a bigger narrative. In a sense, the works journey becomes part of a dialogic process - each artistic, curatorial or interpretive decision made on its behalf might be compared to conversational turn-taking

 Bricolage...

• In art or literature construction or creation from a diverse range of available things
• Bricolage does not necessarily need to have a clear end 
• Bricolage means to engage in a dialogue with a heterogeneous collection of materials and tools, in which items are repurposed to solve a problem 
• 'The expansion of available information and exposure to diverse cultures and networks' increases the opportunities for Bricolage (Wuthnow 2010)

Mark Amerika, Remix the Book, 2011

'DIY trends in contemporary practice [...] challenge our 20th century notions of what an artist is.'

Amerika develops a model of contemporary theoretical writing that mashes up the rhetorical styles of performance art, poetry and the vernacular associated with 21st century social media and networking culture. 

'Remixes' for America might include literary cut-ups and procedural composition, image appropriation, internet art and sound art. 

3D Typography

3D Typography - 'Let There Be Love' by Oasis from Maria Lynam on Vimeo.

A motion graphic clip relating to 3D Typography - created using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects

Seminar - Abstract & Conclusion

Seminar

The seminar was a brief catchup about what we had learned the past few weeks and a conclusion to handing in the first section of the essays. We looked at the Abstract and Conclusion part of the essay as the final pieces of writing before it is completely finished. We practiced writing the abstract using a clip from the lesson and making sure that we picked out the key points:

• Where you are
• What you are doing
• How you are doing it 
• Where you will find it 

In other words, the situation, process, relations and the conclusion to what we had seen on the clip, using this method we have to apply it to our essays for the abstract. 

For next lesson I need to write up as much as the abstract as possible and also bring in my completed essay.

Self- negotiated Introduction

Today we were introduced to the final brief of the year, a self-negotiated task that relates to our essay topics, mine being 'Subcultures'. It will involve creating our own brief from scratch and writing, designing and creating a magazine in relation to the chosen topic and question that we had written for ourselves.

Jay Payne

Guest Lecture

Today we had a guest lecture from Jay Payne about bridging theory and practice together in subtle ways. We were asked to 'doodle' and make visual notes about the lecture instead of written notes. I chose key words from Jay's lecture, looking at typography - something he had mentioned that he enjoyed. I also enjoy typography so thought to try some 'doodling' with initials and also picked out the key word 'inner worlds' something that Jay mentioned. I decided to take the words quite literal and 'doodle' about going into other worlds, this could help explore new innovative ideas and help me create something different.