Week 1

We are humans so we:

• Dream
• imagine
• Question
• Wonder
• Puzzle
• Searching for the right answer
• Think

Part of the answer to our puzzling mind, is art. Image is a language.

The hierarchy of art making is:

1. Fine art

2. Commercial art (graphic design)

3. Popular culture

They operate as codes with a culture and they are ready to decide if you love in that culture.

There are sub-cultures and special interested groups. Codes change and we never stop learning them

Semiotics – is the study of meaning. We use a 3 part method that includes:

• Materiality
• Formalism
• Content
• Denotation and connotation

Materiality

• Each culture has different materials available to it.
• The artist or designer chooses from them
• For example the material (also read technology) for an ipod was not available.

Formalism

We look at the formal elements

• Line
• Colour
• Form/shape
• Composition etc

Content

Denotation

Connotation

Another mode of reading images is cultural critique.

The many ways we communicate non-verbally personally,

The way we wear our hair and the clothes we wear distinguish us as belonging to a sub-culture or particular class, country or occupation to name a few.

The car we drive may say something about our income, class or attitude to life.

The way we arrange the things we have chosen for our house or room.

Facial expressions and body language

Tattoos and make up.

Where our houses start and finish or the amount of things that we reveak.

The gifts we give and loved ones

Greetings

The culture we live in has many media forms for visual communication to be “transmitted.”

TV

Cinema

Magazine

Films including special effects and animation

Photography

Advertising billboard and TV included

Road and traffic signs

David Puttnam podcast - The value of cinema in the digital age

• • Cinema can do good and damage

• Dislocation of the imagery of the world and reality

• Affect of pop culture to young girls.

• Kills individuality and conformality

• Cinema is the one true international language
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• “Killing fields” was used to spread value, especially Ukraine

• The Narrative

• Social media experience something we do altogether.

• It is easy to manipulate people due to emotion
• Themes in American movies, usually contain plot against the American man
• Power of racial intolerance
• Quest for social justice

• Lets us be aware of humanity
• Michael Jackson – Man in the mirror or Heal the world… “If you can’t change the world, change yourself.”