CTL Appointment - Refining essay

Feedback -

I had an appointment with CTL and they gave me some valuable essay feedback. My terms have changed to identity and technology, and my key essay theme is more focused on how technology has changed and made the Mona Lisa paintings identity a cultural icon. 

This topic works well, and I have written around a third of the essay already for hand in on Friday. We have class tomorrow so my goal is to have my whole essay written for a final critique. 

Where to from here? 

I am going to develop my essay with further research and change the ideas to suit this new topic a lot better. I may need more research for this and need to use more of the set readings from class. 

Lecture Five - Week 11

Lecture -

Looking at cameras and the development of times. Looking at what types of photographs would be taken over various time periods. 

This lecture doesn't relate to what I will be writing about in my essay, the topics are surrounding photography when I am looking specifically at advertising and media. 

Tutorial -

Photographys impact on daily life - representation 

-> transformation of the 'thing' photographed 

-> perspective/framing/view

-> time/context/social/political/cultural/economic 

-> what you can do with it. Where will it appear, for who? etc. 

-> knowledge

-> Different every time

-> expect 'content'

-> vernacular 'snapchat'

Essay feedback - 

Discussion with topic - don't get hung up on the terms, they are guiding paths. The ideas and discussions that your essay topic should relate on, they aren't to be hung up on. 

There can be more emphasis on one of the terms, but you still need to include both of the terms in this essay - the two terms would be the criticality, one may be discussion, and the other the critical on the topic. 

Talking and discussing the relationships between the images and that parts that underly and make them come together. 

Why have you brought and considered these images together, why is this idea worth discussing? 

Appropriating them into a new context. Why are you transforming them?

Need research - cultural iconography in advertising 

famous cultural things transformed through advertising. 

You just say that robbed of context twice - take out negative - why is it a problem - not saying its a problem but discuss the interesting elements as well as it being negative. 

When you imply it is a problem its not an interesting point - what is actually happening here?

Why does advertising do it ? What it is adding to its product

POST MODERN - Reading Goldman and Papson - famous people in advertising - ideas that feed into it. Draw on significance. 

Different ways these are being transformed - artists take and change the images a long time ago. 

Expand in sense of early artists - could structure the whole transformations around the Mona Lisa. Just look at the transformations of the Mona Lisa. 

Planning and refining topic -

This week I have finalised my images and have a firm topic for class on Wednesday.

My written planning and research -

Images chosen for final -

Starting introduction -

With the world today having so many images the reproduction and manipulation of cultural icons is becoming an increasing problem. Widely known and famous cultural icons are being subdued to identity manipulation through advertising today. Ethically these manipulations are forcing iconic images to become detached from their original contexts and meanings.

This is the outline of what I intend to write about through my essay. 

Lecture Four - Week 10

Lecture -

Photography as a document
The power of images as a tool.
TPPA - Inside and out - analysing the different perspectives and places around the same topic but the difference between the angles and the framing of the images.

Dorothea Lange - Photography controversial, there is a mention of equality in Dorothea's statement but there wasn't any equally. Dorothea had stories and statements around the photograph which were incorrect about the imagery, the photo was said it wasn't going to be published. The photographer often promises which doesn't go through. When critiquing documentary photographs the truth behind them may be what the photographer has said but it may not be true.

This lecture doesn't specifically link to my decided topic. Small parts to but overall it isn't what I intend to write of.

Tutorial - 

James Nachtwey - War Photographer (POV Sentence) - EDIT from the original video.

Amazing video surrounding the photography taken in a war.
- > a voice over is the caption and the context.
With this video viewing you feel as though at first you're not allowed to be there, you take up film theory with the ideas that by experiencing the film that you are not allowed to see this. It is not until the voice that you understand and become more comfortable in this situation as you become more removed and instead question what is actually happening in this scenario.
Where is the respect coming from what is the respect - is this invasive? How are you shown the reactions of the people. How do you know?

When researching use words like critical critique etc.

TO DO:

- Really refine the topic and the ideas, start forming argument and researching specific images
- Get solid sources and arguments
- Start outlining the essay topic
- Book a library appointment for essay help
- Print recent readings and read - refine what will work with the topics

FOR NEXT CLASS 

- Full essay framework
- Essay Introduction/some writing
- Majority of research outlined

Forming my main topic

Planning my topic imagery and researching some books etc. 

Plan page scribbled together with ideas - 

Quotes and research I have found in some of the books I have got out - 

Imagery potentially for examining in essay - 

These advertisements all take advantage of figures of power and knowledge and develop them as original artworks into something meaning something different for the advantage of their own work and series. In the book Advertising in design it looks specifically at the Mona Lisa, but once finding and researching the Mona Lisa series I found a lot of these companies and places didn't stop at just the Mona Lisa and they also took advantage of other icons and manipulated them in similar ways.

TOPIC - 

My image topic from here I am thinking will be The ethical issues surrounding the manipulation of iconic figures identities to present a different meaning or to sell a product or idea though advertising or propaganda. 

Lecture Three - Week 9

Lecture:

Recapping terms from brief - 

- Make connections
- Take a position
- Research in depth
- Learn something new
- Exhibit the depth of your understanding
- The photographic

As you're writing you have to take a position, you need to argue a significance as to why its meaningful.
In-depth researching, with course materials as well as other out of class sources.
Short time-frame, use a topic which you have existing knowledge on - but learn new things about this topic

Assignment 2 - 

Search, select, sequence 6-8 images
Visualise connections and relationships
Images should reflect the position you are arguing
Context is important, select images with substance

The images need to take a series and a position telling a story

1500 word text
Writing should take your reader on a journey though the sequence of images, meaning, context, relationship, position.

Advertising - 

Advertising wants to reach the widest possible audience, with a purpose to sell items.

History of photography in advertising - was once too expensive, but photographs in the 1920's photography became more popular in advertising.

Going through the stages of advertising from initial adverts and the development of the use of photography in these.

Changing in advertising - introduction of psychology and psychoanalysis into the field of advertising.
Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Demanding to be loved.

Lacanian Phychoanalysis - theories around helping people in advertising. The ideas and concepts of analysis applied though advertising.

Edward Bernays - propaganda as advertising, produced war propaganda. Believing in the power of images to sway consciousness.

As advertising goes on the consumer becomes the focus of the advertisement not the product itself.

Shifts of advertising - start of coke images to later on coke images. This is like the difference you could use in the selection of images for the essay, a progression of images over time, from then to now.

Gender constructions - men workers, men make money, men walk, men does this, women seen as sitting, to look as, revealing.

Advertising shift in the 80's middle class african american families in advertising, the acknowledgement of gay consumers as well. "Realism" - using documentary practices and signifiers of "unmeditated reality" images of daily life, constructed. Looking at the markets excluded typically.


There is two approaches, you can look at the development from one person, one brand etc or you can focus on the series and the topical ideas and use them as the underlying relation.

Post-modernism, a shift towards realism, awareness, advertising knows its an ad and makes you feel comfortable with it. Bringing things into advertising, through using famous people.

Tutorial - 

Semiotics - signs

Denotation - what it is

Connotation - associations with a sign 

How do images construct meanings which are not natural to things. 

Pates - sauce - parmesan advertisement 

Packeted ingredients mixed with fresh ingredients conveying that the ideas are 'real' and 'fresh' without any processing. 

Inside the sack as though freshly harvested from the garden

Red signifies food, makes you want to buy

Italianisity - making the advertisement feel as though pasta is Italian without any specific ties to pasta. 

Overflowing abundance, everything you always need. 

When reading image you can look at

- The coded iconic elements of the image

- Linguistic message (branding, words)

- Non-coded iconic message (The overall image, drawing on historically - borrowing historic structures?)

Images you choose cant be simply illustrations, need examples, you need to know where the images come from. Your image is the purpose, you are analysing the images, not they are analysing your topic. 

Art works - look online. 

The artists are doing the critical work. 

Write about the ways artists are discussing topics though their imagery. Examples critiquing and examples to be critiqued.. 

You should know things about the images - the context, artist, people, why, place etc. What the image is supporting and what the artist intended to be told. 

Need to be discussed in more depth. 

Critique of images - 

Look at articles and informational research then find some artist models though these forms of media. 

TO DO:

READINGS 

Go to the library look at artist model books around this topic. 

Advertising ethnicity articles critical responses to advertising, sterkin and cartwright - media studies books. - Use images from these articles. United colours of Bennetton - image 

Researching Imagery - further defining essay topic

Selecting terms and imagery - 

Looking at the terms identity and collective belonging or ethics I have found a mix of imagery which could be interesting to research into further.

Looking at the original images from colours magazine -

http://www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/2014/03/26/article/24477/claudia-gordillo-the-invisible-memory-of-mixed-cultures/ - Claudia Gordillo: The Invisible Memory of Mixed Cultures, looking and documenting the cultural diversity in her country (Nicaragua). 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/06/24/cyjo_mixed_blood_is_a_series_of_portraits_of_individuals_and_families_of.html Cyjo - Series of images on mixed race/mixed blood families - a literal take to portraiture 

Articles - which may relate to my topics 

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/stout-centre/research/publications/Understanding-NZ-Cultural-Identities-2008.pdf - Understanding New Zealands cultural identities

http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/our-people-our-century-2000/series - Our people our century - looking at the people of New Zealand over the past 100 years

http://www.sociology.org.uk/pcpmod.pdf - post modernism and mass culture - could relate to the change of time and cultural acceptance

https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=xlZ6CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=New+Zealand+racial+photographers&source=bl&ots=CFgTKP8w1D&sig=5dRQLoiUklEi_n3QexVQIzy4hdQ&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=New%20Zealand%20racial%20photographers&f=false - Looking at racial photography

Lecture Two - Week 8

Lecture - 

Looking at Reading:

Recap: 'The Image World'

-The photographic
-Two attitudes
-Information space
-Mediated Authority (Bohemian dreams, "cybernetic forest", you are the product).

New Zealand as a place has been mediated and displayed: 

"This is New Zealand" - dir. Hugh MacDonald (1969) - Made by New Zealand national film network.
The nation and "the aesthetics of investment space".

Mediating Aotearoa New Zealand
-Te Papa/Weta Workshop - 'Gallipoli the Scale of our war'
The Nation: Monuments and Memory
"Anzac day is now characterised by an unchallenged, solemn acceptance, a vague bundle of motives and feelings that embrace the nationalistic desire for a founding trauma and the sufferings of our grandfathers" - Tim Corvallis, "Statues with Blind Eyeballs', 2015.

The criticism of New Zealand

Gallipoli is a way to place New Zealand in world historical events.
The GCSB powerpoint slides - the publishing scandal of these powerpoint are not intend for public eyes.
Look at Te-Papa-Spy-Exhibition-Idea-Summery (some of these things may be useful?)

In Pursuit of Venus [Infected] - Lisa Reihana (2015) - represented as a New Zealand representation - Interview with Reihana on Maori TV.

How can indigenous voices be expressed in this historical context today? How do Polynesian artists express the space of New Zealand on contrast to Te Papa or Gallipoli Exhibition?

** ON SLIDE SHOW THERE IS MANY RELEVANT QUOTES TO THESE TOPICS - COULD BE INVESTIGATED.

Questions to take away -
How is contemporary experience shaped by the screening of information?
What forms of cultural memory are being encoded in powerful institutions?
What are the implications of the blurring of boundaries between entertainment, technology, business and culture at large?
What possibilities are available today?

Thoughts and Questions to investigate in tutorial:

Are we needing to use exhibitions that already exist or are we using images that could be collated to create an exhibition? Cause from the lectures and readings they are all based around pre-existing exhibitions.

Tutorial -

Nation -
-Articulation of being a 'New Zealander' 'Kiwi' etc
What are we told over and over again that are part of who we are?
-What do you remember from school that have been told to you are part of New Zealand
-How are these displayed?
-Inclusions and exclusions


What are defining things about being New Zealander?

100% Pure
Kiwi Burger Song
Pineapple lumps
Rugby
Pavlova
KiwiFruit
Kiwi
Sheep
Farming
Meat
Possum Fur
Maori Culture - designs, powhiris, waiata, hungi
Gumboots
Landscape and scenery
'Friendly' perception
Flag
Tuataras
SilverFern
Hobbit - PeterJackson, Weta etc.
BBQ - This is in Aussie as well


These could be separated into materialistic and cultural

How are these displayed?
Propaganda
Media
Artworks
Advertisements
Videos
Facebook and social media

Inclusions - Things that are only New Zealand
Maori Culture
Kiwi
Hobbit - Peter Jackson
Tuataras
Silver ferns

Exclusions - (Things we choose to leave out)
Drilling
Mining
Forest industry

Further Discussion into these - 

100% Pure - Tourism industry, government, propaganda - how we want to be perceived by the rest of the world. False advertising - overreaching slogan/ideology - pure of what? What does this mean, imagery we are seeing. Tourist attracting imagery and landscapes. Colours. History of these places? Still untouched places - people haven't been there? Inclusion and Exclusion. National parks being sold off to other places and other countries are buying into our countries etc. We're nowhere near the top of the list when looking at countries with places that are actually pure. We as New Zealanders need to know its not true.

Kiwi Burger Song - Hot pools, ruby balls, chilly bins, cricket wins, jandals - tokens of Kiwiana throughout this song. Speaking to a larger ideology - Kiwi burger an american industry and cooperation with McDonalds tapping into our New Zealand identity. Kiwi-burger that is identified throughout the world with different techniques - it has one aspect (beetroot) that is seen as New Zealand.

Maori Culture - Complex due to treatment, Maori were excluded. Hungi, Haka, are dominant in New Zealand frequent media. Where does our information come from? How do we identify? A manufactured identity of the New Zealand culture. Tokenistic engagement with the Maori Culture. We are a 'young' country - Only young if colonisation never happened - chopping off of history.

Discussing terms and aspect - 

Looking at images and how they relate to the terms.

FEEDBACK -

Constructing an exhibition with different artists and people around a similar topic, which discuss the set terms and a theme which can relate to one another to be discussed.

TO DO:

Select two terms from - environment, technology, identity, collective belonging, consumerism, ethics to use and start thinking through ideas and moving forward with a topic for my essay to highlight parts.
Images from different artists which relate together to form something which could be critiqued together as a whole.
More refined for topic - images that you are going to use and write about.

Researching Images & Week 1-2 Readings

Reflection on readings - 

I have has a skim through all of the readings and am realising these are in relation specifically to exhibitions that you need to research in themselves.

Images I am starting to look at - 

Consumerism - Ethics 

Colors Magazine - I did analyse this magazine for the previous essay assignment, I feel like this would be a great topic to analyse looking at different magazines and different topics together as a series.

Quotes this relates to -
"We are surrounded today, everywhere, all the time, by arrays of multiple, simultaneous images - in the streets; at airports, shopping centres, and gyms; but also our computers and television sets...all of us [are] living in this new kind space, the space of information." (Beatriz Colomina)
"Individual experience has become an experience of the people due to the camera" (Joseph Goebbels cited in Jorge Ribalta) 

Identity - Collective Belonging 

WWII Propaganda Posters - http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/at-a-glance/propaganda-posters.html http://www.nww2m.com/category/education/ 

These would be interesting to research into for the use in an exhibition type format to write about for my visual essay. 

Quotes this relates to - 

"We are surrounded today, everywhere, all the time, by arrays of multiple, simultaneous images - in the streets; at airports, shopping centres, and gyms; but also our computers and television sets...all of us [are] living in this new kind space, the space of information." (Beatriz Colomina) 

Identity - Collective Belonging

Focusing on New Zealand - Marti Friedlander photographs - Looking at the ideas of the 'typical kiwi' the history of New Zealand and the placement of what New Zealand 'is'

Quote this relates to -

"Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers)." (Susan Sontag) 

Ethics - Environment 

What if I did an event close to me personally which would be interesting to talk about and discuss - would this work with the brief? (Pahiatua Polish Children) - as an exhibition?

Quotes this relates to? - I am unsure these images are appropriate -

"Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers)." (Susan Sontag)