Study Task 5- Practical Approaches

My intention is to examine and explore the feminist, punk, zine culture of the 80's/90's, giving an overview into the history of this, and contrasting it to the way we approach feminism now. I have begun to look at texts such as Angela McRobbies "Feminism and Youth Culture" to examine what kind of impact punk had on young girls in the movement at the time, with a few to eventually understanding the relavance the women of Punk have in our modern idea of feminism.

Possible visual approaches:

• typically "feminine" crafts such as embroidery (although this would require learning and perfecting a new skill in a short amount of time)
• quilting?
• DIY making culture such as cut and paste collage and photocopying
• using bright and typically "girly" colours such as pink

Possible final product ideas:

• A zine, with manifesto and facts about third wave and current feminism

Study Task 4- Introduction

Protoquestion:
To what extent did Punk culture shape feminism today?/ Should we thank women of punk for feminism?

What have I found out so far?
- punk is/was a subculture that largely equalised men and women through its music, clothing choices and general values
- the popularisation of female punk bands like The Runaways made it more widely acceptable for women to choose and represent alternative lifestyles
- the birth of 'the teenager' in the 50's made music, clothes and hairstyles all topics of trend the teens could adopt and change to suit their progressing world views
- those who followed the punk subculture expressed their views and opinions via homemade 'fanzines' which where DIY and easy to make. They actively encouraged people to photocopy these zines themselves and pass them around to spread the message
- Riot Grrrl was just one of these zines which may have been partly responsible for shaping and creating the Riot Grrrl movement of the 90's

My core texts so far:
- Angela McRobbie- Feminism and Youth Culture
- "One of the central tenets of the women's movement has been that the personal is political"
- "The lads may get by with each other alone on the streets but they did not eat, sleep or make love there. Their peer-group consciousness and pleasure frequently seem to hinge on a collective disregard for women and the sexual exploitation of girls"

- Samantha Holland- Alternative femininities: body, age and identity
- " Punk alone was a style equally for both sexes; although Mod girls, teddy girls and other did have special ways of dressing their styles were distinct from and parasitical upon those of their boyfriends"
- "Gottlieb and Wald also point out that girls and women are less likely to participate in youth cultures (so by extension, in band rehearsals and performances) since their lives are more strictly monitored and they are kept closer to the home than their male counterparts, and that new ways have been found to participate in subcultures, which are not as visible because they are conducted in a private sphere"
- "Claudias views are problematic in that her anxiety about being seen as masculine is at odds with feminist sexual politics. Resistance to sexism, a political position, becomes embodied in the 'masculine', 'defeminised' feminist body.

Potential visual paths for this brief:
- hand embroidery: typically 'feminine' vocation, turning it on its head
- protest art, posters and flags etc
- zines and publications
- manifestos, posters

Phenomena to consider:
- The birth of the 'teenager'
- Riot Grrrls
- women of Punk in general, famous and notable women of the subculture
- the popularisation of zines

Study Task 3B- Images and Theory

Study Task 3A - Images and Theory

Important terms/ concepts:

• gender
• subcultures
• punk?
• feminism
• fanzines/zines

Relevant images:

How can these be used to interpret my theme?:

• punk clothing and lifestyle was androgynous and very inclusive of both genders, therefore making it a subculture synonymous with feminism
• pop-culture representations of alternative/punk/feminist women has helped to make it more widely socially acceptable for women to choose alternative lifestyles and express their feminist views (e.g. The Runaways, Pink, Avril Lavigne)
• zines and fanzines started by punk rockers to express their beliefs and philosophies were in turn adopted by the female members of the subculture. They used these to talk about their punk and feminist beliefs and how those coincided. They were handmade and lo-fi by members of the subcultures they explored and distributed amongst them too.
• the riot girl movement that was started after the establishment of the Riot Grrl magazine in 1991 (a predecessor of Jigsaw), was elemental in third wave feminism which helped rewrite the ageing narrative that womens primary vocation was homemakers and wives. Maybe these had such a strong influence because as before mentioned they were distributed amongst the female members of the subculture who were young and already "rebelling" against the more old fashioned ways of thinking, creating a new generation of forward thinking women

Study Task 2- Reading and Understanding texts

Author: Samantha Holland
Source: Book- Alternative Femininities; Body, Age and Identity
Publisher: Berg, 2004
About the author: research fellow at Leeds Beckett university, work focuses on gender, subcultures and ageing

Concepts: 

• Older research into subcultures was male centric and biased e.g. Foote Whyte, 1943
• subcultures give women a chance to change the traditional narrative of "marriage as their true vocation"
• gives women a chance to develop a new way to be women
• old research also didn't include mixed sex subcultures, different ethnicities or sexualities
• subcultures are involved in "production and marketing for consumption"
• generally it is more acceptable for men to rebel
• subcultures give women "choice and variety"

Key Quotes:

• "Feminism had had an impact at all levels of society, including girls' magazines and television dramas, allowing space for more positive and varied portrayals of girls and women"
• "the state of flux in relation to what now constitutes feminine identity, offered girls more opportunities and choices"
• "this creates the need for subcultural styles to be constantly reinvented as 'dangerous' (challenging, shocking) since he asserts, style and appearance are central to subculture activity: the styles were a crucial element of playing the part of the unruly youth"
• "the CCCS looked at friendships, beliefs, behaviours, clothes and other material objects, and how these added up to 'maps of meaning' which shaped the subcultures and its members"

Examples of this text in real life:

• rise of Riot Grrls in the 90's
• rise in "girlgangs" and feminist opinions today
• 'black lives matter' and 'yes, all men' movements on social media
• media double standards on the policing of womens bodies vs mens 

Study Task 1- Developing A Research Question

Main Interests:

• Feminism
• Gender
• Aesthetic
• Mental health

10 Points That Stand Out:

1. Cultural expectations

2. body autonomy

3. body modification

4. subcultures

5. human nature

6. sexuality

7. feminine strength

8. gender roles

9. costume and clothing

10. social media

Possible Research Questions:

• how free are we?
• how do our beauty standards effect our freedom?
• why is porn free on the internet but female nipples banned from instagram?
• how do we perform our gender?
• how do you become a woman?
• why do we rebel against old gender norms?

Evaluation

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
The main skill I have developed is my research skills, I have learnt about many more methods such as J Stor and google scholar which give articles not just books as research sources. I think I applied these new research skills really well as I used a wide range of sources to inform my work.

2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your practical outcomes?
As mentioned before I used J stor, Google Scholar, the library and a range of websites I found myself. I found google scholar to be the most effective as it gives you more options to choose from and often gives you shorter, more concise articles to look at which personally I found easier as I find a lot of heavy reading difficult and confusing. I think this in turn has made sure my physical work in my sketchbook talks about a more narrow subject as I wasn't able to be overwhelmed with lots of less specific information.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
Although I wouldn't call it my best strength one thing thats improved for me this year has been my essay writing skills, I think that writing three small essays has made me better at getting my point across in fewer words. Also the research methods learned here are something I have already carried over into my other modules where we've had to research a topic for more physical work.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

At first I really wasn't motivated as the thought of writing essays confuses and scares me, it was also really daunting to be given a whole massive sketchbook and told we needed to fill it but given no real direction with what we needed to fill it. I filled it in the end by letting my research around Free The Nipple take me off on a tangent, but this has taught me that its a lot easier to talk a lot (physically and through my craft) about things that interest me personally.
I am also aware that I didn't really give as much thought as I should have into selecting appropriate materials and processes in my sketchbook, I tended to just use what I enjoyed using. In the future I will think more about what I am trying to convey with the work and therefore select the materials to mirror that.

5. Identify five things that you feel will benefit you during next years Context of Practice module?

1. Even more research and around a wider spectrum of things, this will lead to more well rounded findings and then I can select the thing I most enjoy talking about to discuss in an essay
   
2. More careful selection of media and being sensitive to what I am trying to convey
   
3. More time taken to write essays and then read them back to make sure I am conveying what I want to say properly
   
4. More research after the initial research and writing of my essays to support the things I am saying, I cant just be saying what I perceive to be true but rather saying things that can be supported by surveys or studies
   
5. I need to get less carried away and excited, although its good to be passionate it often makes me run away with myself and forget the point to what I was actually saying
   

Presentation Proposal For COP 2

Rationale For COP 2

My theme for COP 2 will focus on why members of society can still be so profoundly offended by nudity. Where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what needs to be censored in terms of art that features nudity. I am interested in this because of the way my COP 1 work developed, the synthesis between my research and my sketchbook meant that whilst I was looking at things that are commonly seen as offensive and exploring those through research, one of the most common things that was coming up was nudity, such as the nudity seen in Chris Ofillis Virgin Mary. This then led to me making pieces in my sketchbook that centred around the parallels that can be drawn between nude Greek sculptures and nude people that we see on the beach or in the media. Why do we view these things so differently? Why can one been seen as vulgar and the other culturally valuable? This thought process then directly led me onto the free the nipple campaign which has been gaining massive amounts of momentum in the last few years, which I was also able to make a lot of interesting pieces around as its a very visual subject. This issue also synthesises with my own interests in feminism and gender politics as its often women that are persecuted for nudity more than men.

This is important because one thing I have learnt from rushing to pick a subject for COP 1 is that if I’m passionate about the subject it I know I can talk for longer and more enthusiastically about it.

Images For 3rd Essay

• relates to E Tappely conversation about context and looking at things with an art history brain
• free the nipple movement (feminism, interested in carrying onto next year)
• social media, easy access to support from other people who have been offended
• inequality just shown in a different way, men: acceptable, women: indecent exposure (arrested)

• relates to other image as its looking at the situation with art history brain
• relates to "cultural appropriation" book, is the Greek statue more culturally valuable than the normalisation of our own bodies
• both images deal with the hyper-sexualisation of the naked body but in particular the naked female body

FINISHING THE JOURNAL

Hallelujah god be praised today I finally finished the COP journal, and to be honest I'm so glad to have it out of the way. It was by far one of the hardest sketchbooks I've ever had to fill as it just seemed to go on for ever, but here are the last few pages from it:

Successes of the journal:

- it was quite interesting to just have to fill a journal with pieces not working towards a final piece, whilst this was hard it also meant I could go off on a bit of a tangent which I enjoyed

- it was also a place where I could investigate my use of colour, line, shape etc and see what kind of way that related to my practise. I think its interesting that the media I've used most in this is watercolour, maybe as its the fastest way to quickly record my thoughts? 

- I also think that due to the flowing nature of the concertina book the pieces have a subsequent flow to them, its relatively easy to see the development of my ideas through them

Failures of the journal:

- the amount of pages in the book was way too much and I wasn't sure I had that much to say about the theme I began with. This means as the book goes on I've kind of moulded my topic to fit something I enjoyed talking about more but hopefully was still relevant

- its possible there wasn't enough experimentation with different media in it

- I also didn't really end up picking one element to focus all my studies on 

More Journaling

Today I've been carrying on with my work in the journal, the last bit I did before this was the censored naked people paralleled with the classic nude statues. I thought a good place to carry on from this would be to paint the shapes I censored the images with as this also reminds me of all the shapes and sizes of people fitting in around each other that I talked about at the beginning of the book.

after this I simply did a magnified section of this to try and get a good background texture

Which then got me onto thinking about why we censor peoples genitals in the media and why some things are censored when others aren't such as the censoring of women's nipples but not mens on Instagram. This led to the next few paintings which mainly feature male and female nudes which were massively fun to paint free hand. I really like the style these have ended up being done in. I don't know how but suddenly this journal has turned more into a conversation about why people find nipples (particularly female) so offensive that they need to be censored, which is slightly off my original topic but I think links quite well to the discussion of offence and its different forms. This is just something that I maybe find a bit more relatable on a personal level and interesting to discuss.

COP lecture programme summary

Lecture Programme Summary

• everything we do  in terms of our work will be about making meaning
• visual lit- how to negotiate and make meaning in the form of an image
• based on the idea that pictures can be read (symbols, signs, images, photos)
• some of what we do is universal, and some of it is only culturally understood, but once we put  something out online, its out there for good and people will see it
• “work the metaphor”
• things are simple and we already know the basic principles, we just need to learn how to use them
• 90% of what we know culturally relating to our practise wont matter in the future, because everywhere is different and histories are different everywhere
• we’re referencing a language thats been used before, people that have been perceived as ground breaking are now being used for new work to formulate
• “design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has”
• where do you position yourself, is it about image or message, both?
• research is what we do, process of finding facts which lead to knowledge, done by using what you already know 

Review the information you’ve already been given and build on that/ try and make sense of it for next year. COP 5 starts in October.

Start with what you already know.

Identify what you want to know more about.

Plan how you are going to find out about it.

Semiotics

Semiotics Lecture

• aims: 
• understand the basics of semiotic theory
• have an idea how to apply the theory
• understand the importance of meaning in the study of art, design and culture
• understand: code, sign, signifier, signified, arbitrary, denotation, connotation, myth
• the investigation of signs

• semiotics: the science of studying signs
• MEANING
• Ferdinand de Saussure (Swiss linguist) trying to figure out exactly how language operates
• how things attain the meaning that they do

• STRUCTURALISM: 
• very popular in France, approach to humanities, philosophy, that thought that everything in the world had some kind of underlying logic or order, a system of rules
• modernist approach

• SIGN: individual communicative gestures, anything that conveys meaning, a colour, a technique of drawing
• all of communication works through signs working in conjunction with each other
• TWO aspects to a sign: 
• the signifier- the thing that invokes meaning
• the signified- the thing that it creates in the heads of the receiver 
• theres no inherent meaning behind things, its created by social means, the relationship between all these things is ARBITRARY
• e.g. traffic lights: red doesn't literally mean stop in any circumstance, its socially conditioned into us that in this instance it means stop
• destroys the idea that anything essentially means anything, its all arbitrary 

• CODE: the way signs interact together 
• signs act on two different levels, conscious and unconscious
• DENOTATION: literal meaning
• CONNOTATION: cultural association 
• a code is a system of symbols or signs
• we operate in terms of a code, like with our clothes we communicate something about our personality or interests
• CODES: are found in all forms of cultural practise
• in order to make sense of cultural artefacts we need to learn and understand their codes
• we need to acknowledge that codes rely on a shared knowledge 

PARADIGMS & SYNTAGMS:

• Saussure defined two ways in which signs are organised into codes
• PARADIGM: a set of signs from which one is to be chosen (choice)
• SYNTAGM: the message into which the chosen signs are the be combined (relationship)
• all messages involve selection (from a PARADIGM) and combination (into a SYNTAGM)
• all of these operate within CODES
• CODE is the overarching system

• CODES: signifying systems
• PARADIGM: the alphabet, we arrange the letters together SYTAGMATICALLY to make words
• doesn't mean the same thing in Africa, culturally specific to us, just as they way we dress means something different here to in Japan or elsewhere
• other types of PARADIGM: 
• changing shot in TV
• typefaces
• headgear: trilby, cap, beret, stetson
• types of cars we drive
• colours of front doors
• swear words
• where there is a choice there is a meaning
• these PARADIGMS are arranged SYNTAGMATICALLY to form a meaning
• once a unit has been chosen from a PARADIGM it is combined with other units. This combination is called a SYNTAGM
• our clothes are a SYNTAGM of paradigmatic choices of hats, gloves etc

SYNTAGMATIC analysis:

• synatagmatic analysis seeks to establish the surface structure of a text and the relationships between its parts
• the study of syntagmatic relations reveals the rules underlying the production and interpretation of texts

PARADIGMATIC analysis:

• structural technique which seeks to identify the various paradigms which underlie the surface structure of a text
• this aspect of structural analysis involves a consideration of the positive or negative connotations of each signifier (revealed through the use of one signifier rather than another)

SYNCHRONIC VS DIACHRONIC:

• synchronic: in the moment
• diachronic: how things develop over time

- We can accept, reject or negotiate the meaning of a text. 

- Accept: no thought, meaning transferred, no argument

- Negotiate: i understand but I don't agree

- Counter-hedgememonic: oppositional

Post Modernism

Post Modernism Lecture 

Modernism:

• initially born out of optimism, aspirational section to ww1, with a view to harnessing technology to improve peoples lives
• ends up doctrine, almost blind obedience to rules above all
• form follows function
• does modernism and modernist design wipe away any influence of humans and personality? 

• MODERNISM associated with: 
• experimentation
• innovation
• individualism
• progress
• purity
• originality
• seriousness

Postmodernism characterised by:

• exhaustion
• pluralism
• pessimism
• dissillusion with the idea of absolute knowledge 
• can be seen as a reaction against modernity

• Jean Tinguely “homage to New York” 1960- commentary on the destructibility of technology 
• 1960’s: beginnings
• 1970’s: established as a term (Jencks)
• 1980’s: recognisable style
• 1980’s & 90’s: dominant theoretical discourse
• Today: tired phrase, people talk about it but its been and gone, really no more post-modern artists etc

Uses of the term “postmodern”:

• after modernism
• the historical era following the modern
• contra modernism (actively against modernism)
• equivalent to ‘late capitalism’
• artistic and stylistic eclecticism, mixing the new and old, serious and jovial
• global village internet age, globalisation of cultures, races, images , capital, products 

“modernism dies” the demolition of the Pruitt- Igoe development, St Louis 15 July 1972, 3:32pm according to Charles Jencks

• maybe modernism died because it was too grand an idea from the start?

Postmodernism:

• postmodernism has an attitude of questioning conventions (especially those set out by Modernism) 
• postmodern aesthetic= multiplicity of styles and approaches
• space for ‘new voices’
• when you embrace diversity, old patriachal systems of society crumble and new wave ideas take hold
• a reaction to all these rules
• only rules is that there are no rules
• celebrates what might otherwise have been termed ‘kitsch’
• celebrates things like advertising, television, film and all the things that weren't deemed ‘high art’

- AT & T building, Phillip Johnson, NYC, 1982

• building looks a bit like a grandfather clock, but also a grid and a roman temple, why not?
• Frank Gehry, Guggenheim museum, Bilbao, 1997- a bunch of skyscraper looking buildings, different cultures, but letting the material rule how it looks still, creative new and kooky
• James Striling, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart Germany, mixes all old and new styles, plastic, marble, iron girders, makes us laugh but not because its offensive or awful
• The ‘Leeds look’ Magistrates court, university, mix of red and yellow brick
• Quinlan Terry, builds in a classic style, and hates the new, rejects the modern. The maitland library at Cambridge University

• JF Lyotard 
• The postmodern condition 1979
• incredulity towards meta narratives
• meta narratives= totalising belief systems such as religion or marxism
• result- crisis in confidence 
• modernism is a meta narrative
• were in an age where we don't believe in those meta narratives anymore, people are less effected by politics and grand social movements
• instead we make our own micro narratives, 20 rival and competing ways of organising our ideas and lives, feeding and affecting off each other
• instead of minimal aesthetic and utopian ideals and truth to materials we have MODERN AESTHETICS: complexity, chaos, bricolage a mix of materials, parodies of old styles
• LICHTENSTEIN: took old comics and made them into massive screen prints and put them into galleries to be enjoyed as high art, laughing at modern art, charging a lot of money for it
• division between high and low art beginning to CRUMBLE
• in 1972 the embodiment of postmodern was Las Vegas, lots of attractions blended together in once place, but not for culture. Hybrids, mucking things up, being ambitious and vague rather than precise, perversion

• Andy Warhol, ultimate figure of post modernity
• exact opposite of modernist idols
• “I’m famous but so can anyone be for 15 minutes”
• he didn't make his work, it was made in the factory, factory chosen to say that theres no creativity, theres always flaws cause they were always high
• art as anti-art
• ridicules anything that was important about art
• Marilyn Monroe Diptych, 1962, portrait of modern mechanical productions of fame, being churned out in the media
• THERES NO DEEPER MEANING TO THEM THAT WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE
• exact opposite to Pollock, record of himself straight from the soul onto the canvas
• Lichensteins Red brushstroke painting, pastiche of this
• Piero Manzoni- Artists shit, 1961, canned signed and sold his own shit by hand, playing games with those that dictate culture, if anything can be art can my own shit be art, and will you pay for it?

• Memphis group founded 1981- new international style, kooky, friendly, weird 
• become a bit of a trend again
• working and laughing with the world, nothing pretentious
• David Carson RAY GUN magazine 1992- found an interview boring so he set it all to wingdings so no one could read it anyway
• questioning the old critically and coming up with something more human, freedom and possibilities 

Modernity And Modernism 2/2

Design and Modernism- 2/2:

• Modernism: can be about embracing modern techniques of making images, responding to sensations of modern times, a particular sense of self gained from a technological world. They way in which the modern world makes us understand ourselves in a new way

• Modernism in design: criteria
• anti-historicism- inventing new things, being progressive, implies making things better and pushing things forward
• truth to materials- looking to the ways of making and celebrating them in their very materiality, particularly new ways of making, such as steel, concrete, new cameras. Celebrates using these materials and the way this makes something look, the effect it gives. The material dictates the outcome
• form follows function- places the rational before the pretty and romantic, you design something to work and its beauty comes from how well it functions. Concepts similar to minimalism 
• technology
• internationalism- natural visual language to bring the world together, where one style of making and representing would be common across the planet, social and utopian. Styles don’t look like they belong to one specific country or culture

• criticism of modernists- if you make your work superficially stylish fashions will come and go, the style will go out of fashion and look dated really quickly
• modernists tried to strip down products to their bare essentials so products would be timeless, like cutlery inspired by Bauhaus that we still buy today
• modernism relevant to all our disciplines 
• Anti-Historicism- no need to look back to older styles “ornament is crime” Adolf Loos
• Seagram building 1958- Bauhaus architect Mies Van Der Rohe- still a modern looking building today, building up to accommodate more people, all glass to let light in, also truth to materials made of steel and glass they look like what they are, not nationalistic
• the international style: all buildings same size, all clean and new, natural world mixed with technical, clean, shiny and white (modern world doesn't always look like this, hasn't worked completely)
• Bauhaus building- concrete, cheap and efficient, whole wall filled with windows, invented a new type face to make their lettering (futura). In the spirit of reinventing the world, they started interdisciplinary learning in their institute, resulted in a fusion of ‘high art’ into everyday life. 
• these new things made using new materials like tubular steel were specifically designed with mass production in mind

• Internationalism: a language of design that could be recognised and understood on an international basis e.g. Harry Beck design for the underground map (1933), or Ikea? 
• Herbert Bayer’s sans-serif typeface, no need for serifs now were not carving words into marble with a chisel. Modernists ditch the decorative features (sans-serif), also argued that we don’t need capital letters
• -Laszlo Moholy Nagy- photography and films: how much can you do with the film camera? how far you can push it to still make images
• Reinventing EVERYTHING

-Russian revolution 1917:

• A push from un-education and no culture to development and modernism
• Malevich and Suprematism, distilling communication to the simplest form, red gets attached to the idea of revolution, the peoples flag stained with blood
• 80% of the peasants were illiterate so graphic designs etc had to be immediate and obvious using minimal words. Visual comm for those who can only understand the visual
• Sergei Eisenstein 1925- montages in film started to be used, soviet film-making
• constructivists- theres no difference between disciplines, everyone is just creative individuals collaborating, boundaries built up by society between people or jobs etc are broken down, lean towards equality, more women lecturers and influencers 
• What would once have been seen as the women’s delicate arts become respectable, textile design, art forms in themselves 
• VKhUTEMAS- progressive art school, arguably as important and radical as Bauhaus, but isn’t talked about due to Russia being (the enemy) and not wanting to be seen as that progressive by us
• non-gender specific sports and other wears developed by people like Stepanova, clothing as a collective politic, not designed to objectify in contrast to western fashions. This makes everyone equal but arguably makes everyone look very similar and reduces individuality in favour of standardisation. One thing you can feel in very modernist places is a lack of human and personality? 
• Stalin came in and said we need to stop this modernism as the people don’t understand it, brought in social realism 

• Times New Roman, Stanley Morrison, 1932: directly taken from roman pillars
• Fraktur Font, used by the Nazis as it throwback to nationalistic, gothic times (Nazis also shut down Bauhaus, effectively trying to shut down a world based on collaboration)

In conclusion:

- modern isn't a neutral term, it suggests novelty and improvement 

Rationale

The theme I am tackling in my COP work currently is the theme of offensiveness and what makes something (in particular art) offencive. Alongside of this I am also looking at the different ways we can categorise offenciveness and why these might apply to different people in different ways. So far I have looked at different pieces of art that have famously caused outrage with the public such as Myra by Marcus Harvey. I have found a few sources which have given me an idea of what different ways offense can be caused, be it religious, satirical, political, cultural etc, and I plan on looking at individual examples of this a lot closer in my visual journal. 

In my visual journal so far I have begun by looking at intersection and the different types and categories of human that inhabit the planet and how we all fit around each other in society.I've also been looking at diversity in terms of what we see in magazines e.g. different races, and religions. Most recently I have been looking at how the media tarnishes certain peoples reputations in the public eye by responding to stories about them in certain ways. For example how in the recent scandal with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, how everyone was reluctant to believe he could be capable of beating her, but instead were very quick to believe that she'd made the hole thing up and was a gold-digger. Was this the opinion because people genuinely know and understand the way in which Johnny Depp works or because of the way the media portrayed the situation and the words they carefully selected to describe them both? In addition to this I have also been looking at the way in which we as society tend to see classical art sculptures that depict nude people as 'high art' and 'cultured' where we see nudity displayed in public by celebrities etc as vulgar and pornographic. 

Next I plan to look at more examples of this in the public eye, I might start with the medias treatment of women like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce on their nude photos and pregnancy's as I feel like that links quite closely to my work. I also need to work on finding some more source material linking to my subjects to give me some more visual stimuli to work off of.

Modernity & Modernism 1/2

Wednesday 22nd February 

Modernity and Modernism 1/2

• John Ruskin 1819-1900: Art historian, book called modern painting- debate between old and new paintings, he drew the conclusion that old paintings were better
• favoured pre-Raphaelites: rejecting modern art styles and moving back to earlier styles 

• Paris 1900, epicentre of modernity 
• urbanisation, people condensed in small areas rather than scattered across the country, shift from village or rural town life, social alienation 
• life not dominated by natural things like sunlight and sunset, but schedules and production rotas 
• world time also becomes standardised, people wanting to move between countries via train etc
• telephone invented, people can communicate across countries and cities
• electric light invented and popularised so people no longer have to live by the sun rising and setting
• world becomes more easy to navigate and move through, but also more confusing 
• 1750- mid 20th century (1950) = MODERNITY
• process of rationality and reason- enlightenment period in late 18th C when scientific/ philosophical thinking made leaps and bounds 
• less religious thinking, more human
• the city becomes the epicentre of life and everything else seems secondary 
• aggressively pushing out the old and bringing in the new

• HAUSSMANISATION- Paris 1850’s on A new Paris
• old Paris architecture of narrow streets and run down housing is ripped out and Haussman a city architect redesigns Paris
• large boulevards in favour of modern streets to accommodate modern life, easier for police to control, a form of social control
• centre of Paris becomes gentrified, exclusive and only for the rich
• outskirts are the for the excluded and marginalised
• Caillebotte- Jeune Homme and A Balcony- being condensed but not really knowing who you live next to, being condensed, new society shifts brings affluence but makes us less human and less connected 
• ALSO the birth of PHYSCOLOGICAL SCIENCE, Sigmund Freud a rapid change in pace of life and wanting to understand the human mind
• The FLANEUR’S- walking slowly through the city in their best clothes, with modern pets and showing off how modern and finely dressed they were, a new form of social behaviour
• Seurat- Isle de la Grande Jatte 1886- pointillisme was radical because it was removing the art form of painting from making an image, removing the personality and uniqueness and expression 
• SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS 
• Degas- Absinthe Drinker 1876- drinking away the days troubles with people in a public place but also being fundamentally alone- compositionally affected by the advent of photography, cropped at either side to show just a portion of a scene
• Manet- Bar at the Folies Bergere- new forms of leisure, less high and low art, also sexuality becomes a pass time, women sexuality becomes a commodity and form of entertainment 
• Kaiserpanorama- collective place to go and view images of sunsets or landscapes etc, semi-collective but also individualised, similar to the way we now connect on the internet? 

ANTIMODERNIST: Max Nordau- Degeneration 1892

• predicted that by the end of the 20th century we’d probably see a generation who will read dozens of square yards of newspapers a day, constantly on the phone thinking about the other continents of the world, on trains or planes for half their lives and trying to find ease in a city filled with millions of other people
• Lumiere Brothers films were so radical people were scared of them, didn't understand them
• modernist things seem a bit weird or hard to understand now but they capture the feelings of the time
• “modernism emerges out of the subjective responses to the experience of modernity”
• photography invented helps to capture the modern world more objectively, and threatens to make art redundant 
• art has to become more abstract and less representational in order to stay relevant
• can be about phycology, the mind, new black and white aesthetic, movement 
• Giacomo Balla- Girl Running on a Balcony, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash 1912 = responses to the experiences of modernity
• The last page of James Joyce ‘Ulysses’ Modernist and all only about a feeling 

Colour Theory Lecture Two

Cop Lecture- Colour Theory:

Subjective Colour- Colour and Contrast (part 2)

• Johannes Itten- The Art Of Colour
• Josef Albers- Interaction Of Colour
• CAN GET THESE BOTH FROM LIBRARY
• not colour- chromatic value (hue, tone, saturation)
• the complimentary of a primary colour, is made up of the two other primary colours e.g. red is complimented by green, which is made up of blue and yellow
• series of contrasts: 
• contrast of tone- monochromatic, the colour values that come from this, the key idea of this is differentiation 
• contrast of hue- the juxtaposing of different hues, the greater the distance between hues of a colour wheel, the greater the contrast
• contrast of saturation- formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturations
• contrast of extension- formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of a colour. Also known as the contrast of proportion
• contrast of temparature- juxtaposing hues that could be considered warm or cool
• colours can optically change before our eyes when compared and set next to others
• complimentary contrast- formed by juxtaposing complementary colours from a colour wheel, opposite colours
• simultaneous contrast- when all these contrast principles work together, formed when boundaries between colours perpetually vibrate (optical dissonance) 
• this can be done so that colours appear harmonious together, or it can make the vibrating sensation
• colours placed on a neutral background can contextually alter the colour around it to appear more complimentary to it and therefore help it to stand out. e.g. yellow stripes on a grey background, the grey stripes can appear violet
• whatever you put next to a chosen colour will start to effect how both colours are read
• after image- how our eyes perceive colour and the effect this has, also the memory our eyes have for these colours (when you look at something and when you look away its still there)

Colour Theory Lecture 1

COP Lecture: Colour Theory

Systematic Colour (part 1)- An Introduction to Colour Theory

• colour is dependent on what is around it
• isolated colour is always surrounded by other things that will change how we interpret that colour
• it is changeable
• three areas: physical, physiological and phycological
• physical: 
• spectral colour is a colour that is evoked by a single wavelength of light within a visible spectrum
• a single wavelength, or narrow band of wavelengths generates monochromatic light
• every wavelength of light is perceived as a spectral colour in a continuous spectrum
• the colours of similar or sufficiently close wavelengths are often indistinguishable by the human eye
• colour is based on the principles of light
• light is white, and all light is made up of all the colours we can possibly see, the only way we can see them is when they hit our eyes and refract
• our perception of any colour is based on the eye receiving light that has been reflected from a surface or an object, it could be part of our eye but more commonly is objects around us
• even when we have a base colour, because we perceive colour throughout reflected light, the amount of light, the colour of the surface itself and how absorbent the base colour is can all affect what we perceive 
• the eye contains two kinds of receptors:
• Rods- convey shades of black, white and grey
• Cones- allow the brain to perceive colour
• There are 3 types of cones: 
• Type 1: is sensitive to red and orange light
• Type 2: sensitive to green light
• Type 3- sensitive to blue
• When a single cone is stimulated the brain receives the corresponding colour
• if both our green and red orange cones are stimulated we see yellow 
• due to physiological response, the ye can be fooled into seeing the full range of colours

Systematic colour:

• LOOK AT TERMS ON PRESENTATION
• Josef Albers and Johannes Itten - the art of colour
• colour design workbook- library
• colour - pigment- media: 
• primaries: red blue and yellow
• primaries can be mixed to make secondaries 
• primaries can be mixed to make tersharies 
• complimentary colours- the chromatic opposite of one colour 
• mixing complimentary colours makes merky greys (e.g they cancel out each others wavelengths and neutralise) THESE ARE CALLED NEUTRALS
• primary colours cant be made by mixing any other colours

Spectral Colour:

• the eye cannot differentiate between spectral yellow and some combination of red and green
• the same accounts for our perception of cyan, magenta 
• COLOUR MODES: 
• 1 colour mode is RGB: this one relates to light where primaries are red green and blue and can been seen on photoshop, TV on screen etc
• 2nd colour mode is CMYK: this one is cyan, magenta, yellow and black and is used for printed work, relates to pigment
• subtractive colour: (YMC- ink) by mixing all colours together you get a pure black or an absence of colour
• additive colour: (RGB- light) if you mix all colours together you end up with white or white light 

Dimensions of Colour:

• chromatic value= hue, tone and saturation 
• hue: the colour itself, the response we have to it, the way we describe how we recognise the colour 
• luminance or tonal values: how vivid is it, how much light does it reflect, the varying shades of a colour made by making them duller or lighter
• adding more light to something creates a tint
• saturation is how much of a colour we can see, and how vivid it is, can also be desaturated, can also be affected by moving through a hue, shade or tint

- Colour is contextual