Desire

Freud repressed memories find they're way to the subconscious. This can lead to many mental diseases. The only way tu cure it is to deal with the repressed memories.
Freud communicated the human psychic as a diagram, at the top there is the conscious (tip if the iceber), then theres the pre conscious, and finally in the bottom is unconscious. And throught there's is the ego and super ego.
Case study of Freud- Little Hans.
Little Hans had fear of horses. Freud deduced that the root of his fear comes from the Oedipus complex, so the infant boy find inappropriate feelings for his mother and he feared that his father might castrate him, so his father becomes a rival for the attention of the mother. Symbolicly his father is represented by the horse. Because the horse were the integral part of society, and being bit by a horse meant being castrated. So in a nutshell the unconscious manifested to a fear.
Vance Packard talks about desire in his book "The Hidden Persuaders". In once chapter he discusses how shell shocked soldiers after the world war II had a craving for milk, and this tranlated as they're unconscious craving to go back to child hood and become dependant on the parent figure. And marketing took tgat idea of desire and applied it to selling products.
Jacques Lacan talkes about how unconscious is structured like a language, semiotic. By that he meant that the language speak us, language thinks us. It allows change and distortion in our representation.'desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from subtraction of the first from the second'. Desire itself is built upon the lack of other needs. As animals we have biological needs, but as humans we have emotional needs. They're two different things but they're still bound together. But the problem is that although our physical needs can be stisfied, our emotional ones can't. And desire is used to differentiate between the two.

Establishing a research question

So during our last CoP seminar we were asked to come up with a research question and what resources we would use to research it. We were handed out forms and were asked to fill them in. We were aslo told to try and come up with a topic that is relevant to us, so we would be interested in researching it. So mine did not take long, I was really inspired by the flipped classroom lecture and remembered this TED talk about how schools kill creativity. So I decided I wanted to look further into that. This topic is relevant to me because I attended an art gymnasium for 6 years and I feel like it killed my creativity instead of letting it grow. To be completely honest, after I finished school I was questioning weather arts was really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I am glad I stuck with it after all, but I am curious as to why that happened. So this is my filled out form-

OUGD501 – STUDY TASK 3 – ESTABLISHING A RESEARCH QUESTION

Suggested Research Question. This can be a topic or theme, but please try to be as precise as possible.

Do schools kill creativity?

Which Of The Module Resources Does This Question Relate To? You can find these on eStudio - Try to list at least three.

Which Academic Sources Are Available On The Topic? Include a Harvard Referenced bibliography of at least 5 sources.

Robinson, K (1982) The Arts in Schools, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London, United Kingdom Robinson, K (2011) Out Of Our Minds, Capstone Publishing, West Sussex, United Kingdom Illich I.(1971) Deschooling Society, Harper & Row, New York, USA Xiufang, W (2002) Education in China Since 1976, Mc Farland & Co, Jefferson, USA Rancière, J. (1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Stanford: Stanford UP

How Could The Research Question Be Investigated Through Practice? What Graphic Design would you make in response to this, and why?

I would make an animation exploring the structure of schools, comparing it to a factory, or follow a narrative of an individual student.

Peer Feedback – How could this topic be refined / developed? Show this form to a fellow student. They should record their feedback in the box below

After explaining my ideas for the essay, my peers seemed to find it really interesting and I was told it is a very wide and interesting topic to explore. One of my peers suggested looking into Chinese education system and compare it to the Western or Scandinavian education systems.

The Death of the Author

During the recent CoP seminar we took a look at the text called The Death of the Author, by Roland Barthes. It questions who the real author of the text is and the readers role within reading the text. Not even text specifically, it can be anything from a drawing to a play, or rather relevantly animation. Basically anything created by one person and can be read by another. "The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, offers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a father to his child" (Barthes, 1968). This means that it is often assumed that the author is to its creation as a father to a child, and can claim creation upon it. However Barthes argues that this is not true, and the idea of authorship needs to be rethought, because a creation is a mere manifestation of a conscious mind regurgitating its beliefs, surroundings, languages, ideas, cultures,philosophies. So the self proclaimed authors are just borrowing ideas from something or someone they already know.

 For example, in animation, the animator would be considered the mastermind behind the creation, however the animator just manipulated tools or software that was already invented by someone else, and telling a story where bits and pieces are put together from all sorts of different experiences and research, creating something that might be new and unseen. So when we read into a piece of work, we tend to focus on the authors beliefs and ideas, however the truth is their ideas and beliefs belong to no one in particular. That being said, if we shouldn't be looking at the author, then were should we look?  ‘Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher the text becomes quite futile’ Barthes. R (1997) meaning that every reader interprets the text in his own way, therefore creating an author from with himself. The meaning of a creation is alive only when it is interpreted, and through the lens of every bodies different belief systems and ideas there is infinite ways to interpret everything so there for ‘ A text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination’ Barthes. R (1997). However in a capitalism driven society there has to be a figurehead for any creation in order for it to be successful, so that it can be branded and merchandised. A good example would be Pixar. Some might say that John Lasseter the chief creative officer of Pixar is the visionary who makes all these beautiful stories like Toy Story or Bugs Life to come to life and if it weren't for him they probably would have not been created. However behind every Pixar movie there is hundreds of creatives responsible, storyboard artists, animators, software engineers, scriptwriters and such. Every movie is a collaborative effort and the credit should not go to one person. But it does, because people need award ceremonies and someone to worship. And the industry needs something to sell. This subject is touched on the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, where a has-been Hollywood star decides to publish an autobiography written by a ghost writer. Basically the entertainment industry recognizes the need of the consumer and provides the solution, which in this case would be a relateble social figure who was once been worshiped and glorified but appears to be like any other human being- flawed. And since the celebrity has no talent for writing the ghostwriter does everything for him without taking any credit. So in this case when people are looking to the author for answers they could not be any further from the truth. "The figure of the author implied a totalitarian control over creative activity and seemed an essential ingredient of high art." 1996 Rock M. Which means the author overlooked the entire process and made sure that it represented his or her name exactly as envisioned and is consistent within its work. So if a person sees that there is a new Pixar movie out, they are going to buy tickets and see it because "it's by Pixar, it has to be good".
To conclude, every piece of work or creation we read comes from an author within us, and we interpret everything in our own way, there is really no need for the author, there is only the need for a reader. But nowadays in order to be successful in the industry, ones work and therefore ones name has to sell, so that there would always be readers keeping the creation alive.

Rock. M (1996, 'The Design of the Author', Eye No. 2)
Barthes. R (1968, 'The Death of the Author', London, Fontana.)

Flipped Classroom

Flipped classroom flips the hierarchy of traditional education and centers the educational process on the student. It allows the student to be very deeply embedded into what ever they're learning. We looked at this idea through the lens of Jacques Rancier,one of the latest popular French philosophers.
In May 1969 France, a revolutionary moment took place, lead by students and young people. Soon enough the movement spread to the working class. These students were revolting against the fact that the upper education was elitist, also protested the increased specialism. This education was dis-empowering, it was training people to become a machine that fits into a flawed society without trying to improve it or innovate.
The way these students gathered attention was by taking control over universities. They also took over the school of fine art and turned it into a factory for pamphlets and revolution related art. One of the most famous slogans was sous les paves, la plage, meaning under repression and pavement there is beauty. The movement did not succeed, however it did shake up a new way of thinking about education. Louis Althusser was one of the student radicals, he was a French Marxist, his most famous theory was Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus, in which he explored the reasons why society maintains the social structures and it is by two main ways- the repressive apparatus and ideological apparatus. The number one institution that keeps capitalism reproducing and living is school. It separates everyone individually and makes students superior or inferior to their fellow man. Schools introduce and adapts young people to the capitalist social structure.
Ranciere in his book The Politics of Aesthetics explains that the world is not equally available to everyone, this distribution determines who can participate in certain things, for instance galleries picking which work to put up. This separated society makes people compete with each other, teachers who take part of the classroom hierarchy imply that the lecturer is more intelligent than the student which is very negative. So that idea of May 68 runs through Ranciers work, and it challenges the established social structure and especially the educational system. Another of Ranciers books The Ignorant Schoolmaster explores the idea of taking the teacher away from the classroom and speculating what the example of Joseph Jacotot means in relation to education. The teacher is socializing students into the dependence of others, making them think that some students are better than others and cuts of any possible intellectual emancipation. He poses the question what a society would look like if it was formed by the assumption that everyone is equally intelligent. However he concluded that this would never take, but it will not perish. It must be announced to everyone. The institution closest to the Ranciere model is The School of Damned. It is based in London, and it is an autonomous art school. It is entirely student controlled, the curriculum's are decided by the students, after the year is finished they have to let go of the curriculum's and let the next year students take over. This lets the exchange of intellectual and art related labor take place. It is a model that is outside of capitalism and it shows that there is possibility for a flipped classroom to thrive.
To conclude-
SELF EDUCATION= EMANCIPATION

Research and Epistemology

So we had a lecture about research and epistemology. We were briefed on the key things expected in our academic work in order to be a successful practitioner-  reflection, analysis, evaluation. Also we looked at the structure of our modules and broke them down into three main directions which we need to improve along side each other:
Context of Practice- theory, Personal Professional Practice- professionalism, Studio Practice- practice. Basically, CoP is there for integrating theory into practice. Synthesis, evaluation, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis.
You have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is research.
Research can be many things, it can be a process of finding out, of trying to do something. Research as a process is more important than the end result. It is a part of growing. It's not about clarifying, it's about exploring. Research is about brighter ideas putting them together and its okay to fail!
The main driving force of research is ideas. In order to generate ideas you have to engage into things that stimulate us. When you're working with that kind of approach, you see what is out there and use it for your own ideas. There's also a systematic approach is taking something, change and play with it to generate ideas. There is also the intuitive approach. It is a sort of eureka moment. So then, what is research? Its a process of learning facts, it is based on using what you already know and expanding on that. Its also collection of information, using a verity of sources and then analysis of the gained knowledge.  If you're not asking questions, you are not researching. Research can be broken down into 4 types:
Primary research- it doesn't exist yet, we create it for a specific problem.
Secondary research- its already existing research that we use to relate to our problem.
Quantitive research- relies on factual statistical research.
Qualitative research- its based on something that is impossible to measure. But you can gather information and weigh the probabilities.
All this poses a question: Whats is information in Relation to research?
Is results from a process. It has to be relevant and useful. It has to be competently gathered.
There is a range of methods to research;
Phase one, assimilation. It is an accumulation and ordering of general information
Phase two, general study
Phase three, development
Phase four, communication

It can also start from analysis-
What the problem is about
What am I asked to do
You might have to go back and forth on analyzing and what you are doing currently.
After research, there is evaluation, and then solution.
The key to this is STARTING ANYWHERE!!!
Research is what you do when you don't know what to do. That's the premise of research. Its about developing something new.

Visual Response: part nine

So for the North korean poster I already mentioned of creating this personality cult using false facts. So I portrayed Kim Jong un as a leader superior to other leaders, presidents, etc. This is the end result-

Visual Response: part eight

After a few sketches I decided what angle I want take on the Lithuanian themed poster. I decided to portray Venckiene as a criminal, as the law authorities want to paint her image that way, in order to regain the publics trust. This is what I came up with-

Visual Response: part seven

After looking into my research I have decided to to a poster of the president of Russia Vladimir Putin. In my opinion he stands as the guardian of the russian speaking part of Ukraine, that is how he justifies Russian forces invading the Ukrainian border and interfering with the Right Sector actions. So that is how decided to portray him.
This is the final result-

Visual Response:part six

So with the North Korea poster I decided to take a certain approach. It seems to me that North Korea is trying so hard to show the rest of the world how good they are they make up rumours to help idolise their leaders. So I decided to make up a fact about Kim Jong un to illustrate the approach of North Korean propaganda. Since Kim Jong un is "democratically" elected I decided to emphasise his personality cult and compare it to the other leaders.
Here is a rough sketch and trying out a font-

Visual Response:part five

Research into North Korea:
The politics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea take place within the framework of the official state philosophy, Juche, a concept created by Hwang Chang-yŏp and later attributed to Kim Il-sung.In practice, North Korea functions as a single-party state under a totalitarian family dictatorship,described even as an absolute monarchy with Kim Il-sung and his heirs.
Economist Intelligence Unit, while admitting that "there is no consensus on how to measure democracy" and that "definitions of democracy are contested," lists North Korea in last place as the most authoritarian regime in its index of democracy assessing 167 countries.
North Korea's political system is built upon the principle of centralization. While the constitution guarantees the protection of human rights, in practice there are severe limits on freedom of expression, and the government supervises the lives of the people closely. The constitution defines the DPRK as "a dictatorship of the people's democracy" under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, which is given legal supremacy over other parties. Despite the constitution's provisions for democracy, in practice, the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un (grandson of the state's founder, Kim Il-sung), exercises absolute control over the government and the country.
The ruling party, the Workers' Party (WPK), is thought to allow some slight inner-party democracy (see Democratic centralism). The WPK has ruled since its creation in 1948. Two minor political parties exist but are legally bound to accept the ruling role of the WPK. Elections occur only in single-candidate races[clarification needed] where the candidate has been selected by the WPK beforehand. Kim Il-sung served as General Secretary of the WPK from 1948 until his death in July 1994, simultaneously holding the office of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and the office of President from 1972 to 1994. After his son won full power in 1998, the presidential post was written out of the constitution, and Kim Il-sung was designated the country's "Eternal President." Most analysts believe the title to be a product of the cult of personality he cultivated during his life.
The Western world generally views North Korea as a dictatorship; the government has formally replaced all references to Marxism-Leninism in its constitution with the locally developed concept of Juche, or self-reliance. In recent years, there has been great emphasis on the Songun or "military-first" philosophy. All references to communism were removed from the North Korean constitution in 2009.The status of the military has been enhanced and it appears to occupy the center of the North Korean political system; all the social sectors are forced to follow the military spirit and adopt military methods. Kim Jong-il's public activity focused heavily on on-the-spot guidance of places and events related to the military. The enhanced status of the military and military-centered political system was confirmed at the first session of the 10th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) by the promotion of National Defense Commission (NDC) members in the official power hierarchy. All ten NDC members were ranked within the top twenty on September 5, and all but one occupied the top twenty at the fiftieth anniversary of National Foundation Day on September 9.
North Korea's nuclear ambitions have exacerbated its rigidly maintained isolation from the rest of the world.The country emerged in 1948 amid the chaos following the end of World War II. Its history is dominated by its Great Leader, Kim Il-sung, who shaped political affairs for almost half a century.
Official stands beside a mural in a Pyongyang metro
Artwork in the capital Pyongyang glamorises life in North Korea
After the Korean War, Kim Il-sung introduced the personal philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance, which became a guiding light for North Korea's development. Kim Il-sung died in 1994, but the post of president has been assigned "eternally" to him.
Politics: A family dynasty heads a secretive, communist regime which tolerates no dissent
Economy: North Korea's command economy is dilapidated, hit by natural disasters, poor planning and a failure to modernise
International: The armistice of 1953 ended armed conflict on the Korean peninsula, but the two Koreas are technically still at war; tensions have been exacerbated in recent decades by North Korea's nuclear ambitions
Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring
Decades of this rigid state-controlled system have led to stagnation and a leadership dependent on the cult of personality.
Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid-1990s because of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement. The country relies on foreign aid to feed millions of its people.
The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses. Reports of torture, public executions, slave labour, and forced abortions and infanticides in prison camps have emerged. Amnesty International estimates that hundreds of thousands of people are held in detention facilities, in which it says that torture is rampant and execution commonplace.
Pyongyang has accused successive South Korean governments of being US "puppets", but South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's visit in 2000 signalled a thaw in relations. Seoul's "sunshine policy" towards the North aimed to encourage change through dialogue and aid.

Visual Response: part four

Reasearch into events in Ukraine:

A prolonged crisis in Ukraine began on 21 November 2013, when then president Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union. This decision resulted in mass protests by its opponents, known as the "Euromaidan". After months of such protests, Yanukovych was ousted by the protesters on 22 February 2014, when he fled the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev. Following his ousting, unrest enveloped the largely Russophone eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, from where he had drawn most of his support. An ensuing political crisis in Ukrainian autonomous region of Crimea resulted in the annexation of Crimea by Russia on 18 March. Subsequently, unrest in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine evolved into a war between the post-revolutionary Ukrainian government and pro-Russian insurgents.Ukraine became gripped by unrest when President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union on 21 November 2013. An organised political movement known as 'Euromaidan' demanded closer ties with the European Union, and the ousting of Yanukovych.[2] This movement was ultimately successful, culminating in the February 2014 revolution, which removed Yanukovych and his government. Right Sector (Ukrainian: Правий сектор, Pravy/Pravyi Sektor) is a far-right Ukrainian nationalist political party that originated in November 2013 as a paramilitary confederation at the Euromaidan protests in Kiev, where its street fighters fought against riot police.The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014, at which time it was estimated to have perhaps 10,000 members.Right Sector became one of the main actors in the January 2014 Hrushevskoho Street riots, a part of the Euromaidan protests, in their later and more violent stages.On 19 January 2014 the organization encouraged its members to bring bottles to the protests in order to produce Molotov cocktails and bombs.The Yanukovich government classified it as an extremist movement and threatened its members with imprisonment.

Right Sector has been described as the most organized and most effective of the Euromaidan forces when it came to confronting police. Right Sector claims that it was the main organizer of violent resistance against armed attacks by the state at Euromaidan. Yarosh stated that the group had amassed a sizable arsenal of weapons;these include guns taken from police stations in Western Ukraine. The Associated Press has reported that it found no evidence of hate crimes by the group.

On 4 March 2014, the organization called on readers of its Vkontakte social-media page to edit the English- and Russian-language versions of the "Right Sector" entry in Wikipedia. It said that the encyclopedia's representations of its views as fascist and neo-Nazi were having consequences.[43]

According to political science professor Olexiy Haran, Right Sector's role in Ukrainian politics was "extremely exaggerated" by Ukrainians associated with Yanukovich.

Mr Putin said that its implementation was the right path to let eastern Ukraine “gradually stabilise”.

“Europe is just as interested in that as Russia,” he said. “No one wants conflict on the edge of Europe, especially armed conflict.”

The EU’s foreign policy chief has responded to Mr Putin’s comments, saying he is wrong because war is already the state of affairs in the country.

Visual Response: part three

Okay, so I have researched the North Korean and Ukrainian events. But first of all I would like to talk about the third one. The pedophilia scandal in Lithuanian took place from 2008- 2012. It was a high-profile criminal case in Lithuania centring around allegations of sexual molestation of the then four-year-old Lithuanian girl and a double homicide. In November 2008, Drąsius Kedys accused Laimutė Stankūnaitė of allowing Andrius Ūsas to sexually molest their underage daughter. Frustrated by lack of progress in the investigation, Kedys took the case public. He published a video with his daughter's testimony, sent out DVDs to politicians, and appeared in the media. Still no case was brought before trail. In October 2009, Jonas Furmanavičius, a district judge and accused pedophile, and Violeta Naruševičienė, aunt of his daughter and accused procurer, were found dead and Kedys became the main murder suspect.While Kedys went into hiding, Lithuanian public sided with him portraying Kedys as a desperate father trying to protect his daughter against pedophiles. His body was found in April 2010 near Kaunas Reservoir. On 17 May 2012, following a court order, Kedys' daughter, who was previously living with Kedys' relatives in Garliava, was reunited with her mother Stankūnaitė. Due to continuous presence of protesters disagreeing with the 5-month old court decision, the operation was carried out with the assistance of riot police, with 39 protesters detained. Previously, Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) changed a law in order to allow the use of riot police in taking away the child. 

First I have to point out that there are many opinions about this and people are taking sides, so this project is just my personal response to these events, it is subjective as it is jus my opinion. But the reason I am doing this is to (if possible) raise awareness of the situation.

I believe, in a nutshell, that Kedys uncovered a clan of pedophilia among law authorities, making everyone realise that the people who should be protecting us are actually the most dangerous ones. As the distrust  and awareness grew among the lithuanian public, the authorities tried to put out this scandal by getting rid of the key witnesses, one of which was the victim. When the girl was reunited with her mother, (after a forceful invasion into the Venckienes property) they were never heard of again. Police lied about not using force, when photographs and videos from the witnesses states otherwise. Allegations and prosecutions were aimed to Kedys sister Neringa Venckiene to frame her as the villain in the whole situation. She fled the country and was never hear from since. When the actual perpetrators eventually covered their tracks, the case was closed and the press stopped talking about it, as if it never happened. I want to express my discontent towards this scandals outcome and the idea that the protectors of our rights are actually criminals abusing their power.

(Drasius Kedys, holding his daughter)

(people guarding the house of Venckiene from the police)

Visual Response: part two

So based on my idea to satirise some of the current events I picked three- Ukraine crisis, North Korean politics and the pedophilia scandal in Lithuania.  I picked Ukraine and Lithuania because those events are are very relevant to me, they can directly affect me, my family and my friends. As for North Korea, I picked it because when I was researching North Korean-U.S. relations for my essay I became very interested, also when I was looking into North Koreas social media accounts I found them very amusing and they got me thinking if anyone actually believed them.

I also decided I wanted to do a series of satiric propaganda themed posters instead of an animation, because I think that to make my point I would have to create a long narrative otherwise it would be hard to understand. Also I would find it difficult tie these three themes together. This is sort of what I would be going for-

Visual Response: part one

So we were asked to do a visual response based on the essay we wrote. I wrote about how successfully has animation been used as vehicle for propaganda, political or social cause. I explored the topics of soviet propaganda animation and North Korean propaganda animation, how ever I did consider that animation can be used for a nobel cause. But I was really tempted to expand on the propaganda part. It made me think that maybe propaganda is still in effective use as it was during the wartime. There are many political events taking place all over the world and it is only fair that there would be subjective dissemination of information. I decided that I wanted to satirise some of the current events in the world by making propaganda posters. I want do something provocative and project some of my opinions on the set events.

Cop seminar: Auteurship and avant-garde

In this seminar we talked about authorship and avant- garde. To be honest i do not remember that much from it, because it did not find it interesting and it was bit cofusing. We talked about how we can define and understand auteurship and what makes an auteur. Te Auteur Theory Developed in response to Hollywood cinema and the criticism that American films are anonymous products of the studio system and the culture industry. Truffaut – ‘A Certain Tendency in French Cinema’ (1954) – attacks French tradition in which director is seen as simply adding images to a preexisting literary scenario

Auteur = author

Film theory associated with French critic Andre Bazin and writers for Cahiers du Cinema in 1950s

Suggests that great film directors are artists in their own right on a par with great novelists

Films made by a true auteur display thematic consistency and artistic development through time.

An auteurist director was recognised as having a unique signatory imprimature across a canon of work, that marked out an aesthetic and thematic terrain, and offered a coherent view of the discourses fundamental to its understanding and “art”’ Paul Wells, Animation: Genre and Authorship.

And then we talked about avant-garde. 

‘The French term originally designated that section 

of an army which marched into battle ahead of the 

main body of troops (the ‘van’) but has come to be 

used in both French and English to describe 

pioneering or innovatory trends in the arts, and 

especially music and the visual arts.  It originates in 

the work of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon 

(1760 – 1825) who applies it to the elite of artists, 

scientists and industrialists who will be the leaders 

of the new social order’ Macey, D. (2000), The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory, London, Penguin Books. The idea of avant-gardism implies that progress is always the result of a rebellion against an entrenched establishment.

Cop seminar: Genre

In this Cop seminar we discussed about genre. Genre (/ˈʒɒnrə/ or /ˈdʒɒnrə/; from French, genre French pronunciation: ​[ʒɑ̃ʁ(ə)], "kind" or "sort", from Latin: genus (stem gener-), Greek: genos, γένος) is any category of literature or other forms of art or entertainment, e.g. music, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented and the use of old ones are discontinued. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions.

Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose and performance had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, and even actors were restricted to their genre under the assumption that a type of person could tell one type of story best. In later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a dynamic tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a social state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about, the use of genre as a tool must be able to adapt to changing meanings. In fact as far back as ancient Greece, new art forms were emerging that called for the evolution of genre, for example the tragicomedy.

Genre suffers from the same ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized, and to weigh works on their unique merit. It has been suggested that genres resonate with people because of the familiarity, the shorthand communication, as well as the tendency of genres to shift with public mores and to reflect the zeitgeist. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, admiration has grown. Proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes.

We also talked about genre in animation. We were considering if animation is mainly for children, and we agreed that not necessarily, for instance nowadays animation includes references and jokes that only an adult audience could understand, for instance Archer- it is an animated series mainly aimed at adults, because it contains sexual content and references. We also discussed about how genre has blurred lines when it comes to animation, because the animators keep mixing them.

Cop Seminar: Gender

During the CoP seminar about gender we discussed how much the image of women in animations has changed. We considered that it actually changed rather radically, for instance in the early disney movies like Snow White the female protagonist is portrayed as a damsel in distress, depandat on others, whereas in nowadays animation like Brave or Tangled the lead female is strong, confident and independent. We also discussed about the female role in the history of art and to be honest I could not think of any female artists. It is because women were not allowed to go to art school because it seemed in appropriate for them to attend life drawing session where a naked male body is displayed. Artemisia Gentileschi was the firs recognised female artist (1593 –1656). Her work was different because she did not idolise women's beauty, but rather portrayed the strong side of femininity.

Artemisia Gentileschi (self portrait)

We also discussed about how men portray women and we agreed that more often they idolise the appearance than the inner qualities of women. It also made me think that since men were dominating the art industry for a long time, they shaped the so desired stereotype of a woman's body, that is not always achievable for some women, therefore categorising them as unattractive. For instance there was Barbie doll craze where every girl wanted to be like Barbie, but the truth is that Barbie portrayed an unhealthy body image, because in reality, her thin neck would not hold her head.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism.Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.
The term postmodernism has been applied to a host of movements, mainly in art, music, and literature, that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques.
Postmodern designers were in the beginning stages of what we now refer to as "graphic design". They created works beginning in the 1970s without any set adherence to rational order and formal organization. They also seemed to entirely pay no attention to traditional conventions such as legibility. Another characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that “retro, techno, punk, grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. Each had its own sites and venues, detractors and advocates”.Yet, while postmodern design did not consist of one unified graphic style, the movement was an expressive and playful time for designers who searched for more and more ways to go against the system. Key influential postmodern graphic designers include Wolfgang Weingart, April Greiman, Tibor Kalman, and Jamie Reid.

Modernism

Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Modernism, in general, includes the activities and creations of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the stream-of-consciousness novel, atonal (or pantonal) and twelve-tone music, quantum physics, genetics, neuron networks, set theory, analytic philosophy, the moving-picture show, divisionist painting and abstract art, all had precursors in the 19th century.

A notable characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness, which often led to experiments with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating a painting, poem, building, etc.Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody.

Some commentators define Modernism as a mode of thinking—one or more philosophically defined characteristics, like self-consciousness or self-reference, that run across all the novelties in the arts and the disciplines.More common, especially in the West, are those who see it as a socially progressive trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve and reshape their environment with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge, or technology. From this perspective, Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new ways of reaching the same end. Others focus on Modernism as an aesthetic introspection. This facilitates consideration of specific reactions to the use of technology in the First World War, and anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of the works of diverse thinkers and artists spanning the period from Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) to Samuel Beckett (1906–1989).
For example-

Hans Hofmann, "The Gate", 1959–1960, collection: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Hofmann was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, and a modernist theorist both in his native Germany and later in the U.S. During the 1930s in New York and California he introduced Modernism and modernist theories to a new generation of American artists. Through his teaching and his lectures at his art schools in Greenwich Village and Provincetown, Massachusetts, he widened the scope of Modernism in the United States.

Animation

The CoP lecture about animation was the most interesting one, to be honest. But not because I am doing animation myself but the lecture presentation was very compelling and I did not get bored at any point. The lecture was packed with animation history and it was so informative I couldn't really manage to process it all. BasicallyAnimation is derived from the from the latin word animare, meaning “To Give Life To”.  Animation requires an individual to artificially create a series of images that give the illusion that movement has been given to an object or form. This series of images when played back fast enough fools the brain into thinking that movement is taking place, which is calle "Percistance of Vision". The lecture went back from the creations of 3000 year b.c.

to this very day-
It was a very benefitial lecture because it came in handy when we were supposed to blog about practice of animation in different periods of history, so if I would talk about the content of the lecture I would be just repeating myself.

Photography as Documentary

Photography is documentary, because photography captures real life events. For instance the firs ever photograph taken for social purposes was the Great Chartist Meeting 1848. However the photographer is never invisible, because his point of view is subjective and cannot be ignored.
In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of ‘history’ is a limited illusion.  It ignores the entire cultural and social background against which the image was taken, just as it renders the photographer neutral, passive and invisible recorder of the scene. (Clarke:1997:145)

Written and visual account /Study of the tenements of New York. Revealing cultural ideologies of ethnicity, poverty and ‘the other’. Riis used this superficially as a tool for social reform, but made a lot of money lecturing to middle classes

Less about propaganda more about the human condition:

In Lewis Hines photography Russian immigrants are portrayed as poor etc. but with a steely dignity and honour - good cases for american citizenship.

He portrays togetherness and humanity and describes himself as a sociological photographer- child labour etc and his work does bring about real changes in the law.

The one photograph tha was discussed during the lecture stuck into my mind- it was the Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange (1936)

"I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made 5 exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her her name or her history…" Lange talked about the photographs. "She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. "

This really moved me and the photograph stuck in my mind.

Another Documentary Photograph that stood out to me was the  Shell Shocked Soldier by Don McCullin 1968.

Another really schoking photograph was People About to Be Shot By Robert Haebrle (1969). 

Forty years ago, black-and-white photographs of slaughtered women, children and old men in a Vietnamese village shocked the world -- or that portion of the world willing to believe American soldiers could gun down unarmed peasants and leave them to die in streets and ditches.

The Plain Dealer, in an international exclusive, was the first news outlet to publish the images of what infamously became known as the My Lai massacre, which had taken place on March 16, 1968.

"A clump of bodies," read the description on the front page of The Plain Dealer's Nov. 20, 1969, edition. At first some people were in denial about how these South Vietnamese civilians were killed, even after seeing the pictures. 

It was a very interesting lecture and I learned a lot about photography as documentary and about the concept of decisive moment.

Response to Additional Reading on Gender in Animation

I have recently read a text called “Putting themselves in the picture”. It analyses women in the work of Joann Quinn, Candy Guard and Alison de Vere. Because of the technical nature of animation, there is an underlying sense of sexism which is not unlike the sexism that exists in the tech space. This is true even today, where it’s not uncommon to be one of a handful of girls within a studio setting. The lack of notable female animation professionals within history only reinforces this assumption that it is ‘boys club’ industry. As a result, the names of women who have moved the industry forward have faded. During one of our cop lectures it was mentioned that women were not allowed to go to art schools because it seemed inappropriate for them to draw naked men in life drawing, that is why there were so few female artists. However Walt Disney has said that ““If a woman can do the work as well, she is worth as much as a man. The girl artists have the right to expect the same chances for advancement as men, and I honestly believe they may eventually contribute something to this business that men never would or could.” Nowadays there are a lot more female names both in the art and animation realm. A good example would be Marjane Satrapi. I have discussed about her work in my essay, reguarding animation used for a social cause. She is a famous writer and artist and produced the critically acclaimed animated autobiography Persepolis. Nowadays women are more empowered and less settling with the stereotypical housekeeper life. As well as depicting the old stereotype in animation of a desired female figure. The standard of beauty has been always changing topic, however it is starting to change radically. The desired female figure is no longer the object of the animation world. It is more relatable for the female audience. Joann Quinns Girls Night Out (1987) does not show the protagonist female character as a unreachable beauty standard but rather an ordinary girl, doing ordinary things. But twist to the animation is her sense of humor. When the female protagonist is seduced by a male stripper, in a moment of weakness she pulls of the strippers g-string and not only does she waves it around laughing, but she looks the stripper straight into his eyes and shows no vulnerability. Another example was Candy Guards Wishful Thinking (1988). Guards style is directly similar to Quinns as it is more simple in order to focus the attention on the character and the animation focuses on the appearance issues the character encounter. Alison de Vere’s work is similar to both Quinns and Guards as it focuses on a particular female characters story. However the story and setting is contrasting from the other two.

In conclusions, I believe that female role both in the animation industry and animation itself has changed radically. There are a lot more successful female animators and more relatable animation characters. 

Illustration

I found the lecture about illustration one of the most interesting ones, because it was very engaging. It was not about chronology of illustration but rather about creating an emotional experience trough an image. The lecturer proposed that illustration is a strategic image making, used within the context of visual communication to convey meaning or concept.

So this is illustration-

 

and this isn't-

So basically illustration is not just a drawing, it is something that engages the audience, something that makes a connection with the viewer.

Print

We had a lecture about print and its chronology. We learned that the history of printing goes back to the duplication of images by means of stamps in very early times. The use of round seals for rolling an impression into clay tablets goes back to early Mesopotamian civilization before 3000 BCE, where they are the most common works of art to survive, and feature complex and beautiful images. In both China and Egypt, the use of small stamps for seals preceded the use of larger blocks. In China, India and Europe, the printing of cloth certainly preceded the printing of paper or papyrus. The process is essentially the same - in Europe special presentation impressions of prints were often printed on silk until the seventeenth century. The development of printing has made it possible for books, newspapers, magazines, and other reading materials to be produced in great numbers, and it plays an important role in promoting literacy among the masses.
Basically we were told that it seems that if it is in print is true and factual, we were the asked to pass on a message that the lecturer told one student to another, after that last one who got the message had to repeat it out loud. it basically a game of broken phone, and in the end the original message ends up changed. this meant that verbal messages are not as reliable as printed one.

Advertising

We had a lecture on advertising and how we perceive it as the audience. Advertising can usually be interpreted as the manipulation of its audience to want and buy something, or a tool of capitalism to change established views within society. The lecture pointed out the negatives of advertising- that it can be sexist in order to sell, or it can just be a tool of mass manipulation. However it has a lot of positives as well- it encourages creativity, it is essential in order to drive the economy, and it helps in shaping popular culture. However advertising is not just about making people buy something, it can also be successfully used for raising awareness campaigns or even inspire people.

Type

The second CoP lecture was about the history of type. We were also introduced with some famous type faces and their connotations. The lecture made me consider type more seriously, for instance a business card with comic sans text will not make people take me seriously. So TYPE MATTERS. It is also the art and technique of arranging type to make written language readable and beautiful. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space within letters pairs (kerning). Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. In modern times, typography has been put in film, television and online broadcasts to add emotion to communication.
Anyway, as I said earlier- type is important!
 

Visual Literacy

During our first CoP lecture we were taught about Visual Literacy, about images we see everyday and how we understand them. Also we were told about how visual language helps communicate, solve problems. So basically Visual Communication consists of process of sending and receiving messages using type and images; it is based on a level of shared understanding of images, signs, gestures, objects; it is affected by audience, media, method, distribution.
Also we were taught that visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images and type, interpreting images of past and present, range of cultures, producing images that effectively communicate a message. Basically visual literacy is based on the idea that images can be read.
Here is an example-

You do not really need a lot of (or any) text to understand what the images are indicating.
All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.

Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.’ Incomplete Manifesto for Growth - Bruce Mau.’

in the beginning of the lecture we were asked what is this

It's an apple right?

no, its a picture of an apple!

So to conclude: