Week 3 - Culture

Culture can effect the meaning of a product. Culture can be defined as being either high or low. Philosophy, intellectual pursuits and arts are parts of high culture. Examples of low culture are everyday goods and services as well as popular activities, entertainment and sports.

Barbie

The Barbie doll is very famous and is an icon of western culture. The original Barbie from the 60s is blonde with pouty red lips, large blue eyes, very long legs and extreme proportions. With these physical characteristics, Barbie represents power and sexuality. The qualities such as large blue eyes and blonde hair are also found commonly in babies. Barbie’s physical characteristics connote innocence, unquestioning love, manipulation and sweetness. These are qualities often associated with powerless babies and small children. This idea of innocent, submission and compliance will often make the surrounding men feel powerful. Barbies extreme proportions perpetuations the idea of more is more and draws attention to the inbalance between the sexes. 


The same Barbie doll brought to Nigeria would create a different response. As she looks and acts differently to these girls growing up in Nigeria, she would be seen as just a doll instead of a role model. 

Original Barbie Doll with her blonde hair, blue
eyes and extreme proportions.

A current Bratz doll, also with Blonda hair, blue eyes and
extreme proportions. Designed to follow the
current fashion and style

Culture

Culture is the process of societies intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development. Eg philosophers, poets etc. It refers to a particular way of life of a people, period or group. (the development of literacy, the types of sports played and the celebration of festivals.) Culture also includes works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity such as novels, ballet, opera and fine art.

Popular Culture

Popular culture is a phenomenon evolving out of the consumerist and emerging youth culture of the 60s and 70s. Products of popular culture are accessible and mass produced. Popular culture is produced by industry and is consumed and popularized by word of mouth and the media. 

Week 2 - Visual Culture

The Narrative in Visual Culture

Materiality, Connotation, Denotation

Linguistics

Linguistics views communication as the production of meaning and suggests that one message is going to mean different things to different people, depending on different factors. It focuses on the receiver and the social, political and economic environment in which they live. This theoretical approach to design applies not only to graphic design but to fashion design, product design, illustration and architecture. 

2 Methods of Studying Visual Culture

Semiotics

Swiss linguist Ferninand de Saussure is considered the founder of semiotics. Semiotics is the study of systems and signs as part of social life. The term signs has a broad definition and mainly refers to something that represents something else. Signs can be in the form of words, images, objects, sounds and gestures.  Semiotics is a discipline of communication design that can almost be thought of as a scientific study of how humans communicate with one another and the devices used to achieve this. There are a number of words used to describe how a sign looks and how it communicate in a specific social context

Signifier

A signifier is what the sign looks like. This refers to the relationships between signs.

Signified

This is the meaning or concept connected to a sign and refers to the relationship of a sign to what it stands for. Semantics is another term for this

Interpreter

This is the relationship of a sign to an audience interpreting the sign. This takes into consideration the frame of reference of the reader, as well as the context of the reader in relation to the sign.

When speaking about semiotics there are 4 different types of signs. Icon, index, symbol and metasymbol.

Icon

An icon is a sign where the signifier represents the signified. For example a photo of a leaf.

Index

This type measures meaning by an inherent relationship to an object, also known as a pointing sign as the symbol points to something else.

Symbol

In this sign meaning is established from an arbitrary relationship between signifier and signfired.

Metasymbol

A metasymbol has gained meaning beyond a one to one relationship over a period of time. History, tradition and culture can also contribute to the evolution of a metasymbol.

Index

Icon

Metasymbol

Symbol

Week 1 - Non Vertbal Communication

Heirachy of Art Making

Visual Art

visual art refers to art that is to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic or intellectual content.

Commercial Art

Commercial art is used to sell or advertise something. Illustration bridges the gap between commercial art and visual art

Visual Art - Painting by Piet Mondrian

Commercial Art - Rolling Stones CD cover

Popular Culture

Popular culture is a group of ideas, perspectives, attitudes and images that are considered popular with the mainstream of a given culture, especially western culture.

Art can operate as codes within a culture that are easy to decode if you live in that culture. Subgroups have their own individual way of communicating and understanding through symbols. These make the members of these subgroups, who understand these codes feel like they belong.

Gamers

Cosplayers

Hippies

Skaters

Punks

 Analysis of Artwork

There is a 3-part method of analysis of artwork.

Materiality

This refers to the particular materials the artist has used such as different typs of paint, paper, canvas and other materials. Materiality also looks at the form of the artwork such as a painting, sculpture, print work etc. Different cultures have different materials available to them. Designers can only work with materials that are available to them. The time period the artwork was designed in also determines the types of materials available. The modern plastics we see so commonly in today’s western society would not have been as available 100 years ago.

Formalism

Formalism refers to the elements that make up the art such as line, colour, form, shape, composition and many other elements.

Content

This refers to the actual, recognizable things in an image and what meaning these things are representing.

Denotation is the literal or primary meaning of something. In art this means looking at what is in an artwork such as a chair, car, woman etc. A connotation is an idea or feeling that is connected to these things and communicated what these things represent such as a woman representing kindness.

Non Verbal Communication

We can communicate a lot about ourselves without even speaking. People communicate a lot through

• The way they wear their hair
• The car they drive
• Their choice of house furnishings and decorations
• Facial expression and body language
• Tattoos and makeup
• The amount of flesh they choose to show (where our clothes sit on us)
• The gifts we give loved ones

Our culture has produced many media forms for visual communication

• Television
• Cinema
• Magazines
• Films including special effects and animation
• Photography
• Advertising
• Road signage
• Merchandising
• Music videos
• The internet
• Computer games

Advertising

Magazines

Road signs

Cinema

Cinema
Cinema is a unique experience that works on a number of levels and can be thought of as the ultimate social media experience. Cinema delivers a strong sense of togetherness as it encourages us to share our emotions with those around us. We share the happiness or sadness of something seen in a film. Cinema and video is an extremely powerful and widespread medium, with 35 hours of video being uploaded to Youtube per minute. Cinema is the one true international language, communicating to audiences throughout the world and touching their hearts and minds. This form of media can express all of our most important experiences and can tap into our most personal and meaningful moments in our lives such as birth, death, love and family. These things can be captured by filmmakers and presented back to us through film. The actors we see in films are playing us. They portray the way we want to see ourselves and celebrate our common humanity. Film and television are very effective at creating and shaping our attitudes. They can also reinforce or undermine the wider values of society.  Filmmaker Sir David Puttnam believes that cinema can damage or reflect our sense of identify as individuals or as nations. Cinema can cause dislocation, where we start to believe in ideas and values that don’t fit with the culture and society we live in. This dislocation contributes to an environment of misfortune and misunderstanding, which as a result leads to mistrust and misdirection. A positive point about cinema is that is can educate us about things that are far beyond what see in our everyday life and in our culture and society. The movie The Killing Fields educated a large number of children from the Ukraine on the harsh reality of civil war. This film is a good example of how powerful cinema can have a lasting effect. The role of any filmmaker is to unravel the complexities of different societies and to promote tolerance, understanding and to a certain point peace.