Lecture: Digital Production and Distribution (OUAN401)

This lecture covered the digital revolution and how it's affected the production and distribution of media. We got on to a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, mechanisation and the impending robot uprising that will overthrow our way of life. This quote was particularly interesting to me:

"We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us"

 - Marshall Macluhan, a philosopher who lived from 1911 to 1980. What interested me most about this quote was not only the fact that this man died before computers were even invented so he has, like, crazy future knowing skills, but also how relevant it was to the fact that I too have become a slave to technology and it's something I think about often. Adobe has shaped how animation and effects work, for instance, and now because I either have to invent my own technology or be a slave to another guy's. I have to pay twelve quid a month for the full Adobe suite or be shunned by the animation community. THANKS ADOBE.

We were taught about how digital culture makes some jobs obsolete, like how robot butlers have replaced regular butlers, but also brings about perks that benefit humankind and creates jobs that would otherwise have not existed, like Apple tech support. I think that's cool, but the amount of jobs created by machine and digital work do not counteract the amount of jobs that it takes. The high profile jobs remain intact (FOR NOW), like ones in science or creative industries or politics, but mechanisation has seen the destruction of millions of menial jobs that used to keep the middle class afloat.

Robotics has always played a key role in many depictions of dystopian futures, where humans have become irrelevant and after a while all jobs in even the creative industries and politics have been sucked away and we are all in poverty. There are other, more utopian depictions of robotics in the future, like where since computers can do everything for us, we can exist purely for leisure and become a super race of artists and creators, living on a higher cultural plain while computers do the menial work and everyone gets paid a living wage. I dunno which will happen. Maybe both. Probably neither.

Digitalisation has certainly changed animation for the better, though. Some would argue that it pushes classic methods of animated filmmaking aside, but I disagree. Stop-motion is still very much beloved, as is C.G animation. All this allows for is a broader variety of art styles to exist, which is always great! It can be argued, though, that since C.G has become generally the norm for animated movies, we have become more jaded towards styles that don’t look quite as flashy or fluid, like stop motion, to the extent that stop motion films have to use so much green screen and added effects in post-production that they might as well be C.G anyway to appeal to a broad audience. I dunno.

Lecture: Print Culture and Distribution (OUAN401)

Honestly, I found it rather hard to absorb all the information in this lecture. Perhaps I was distracted by the fact that earlier that day I learned that America had elected as leader of the free world a giant, rotting peach that wants to sleep with its daughter.

Savvy political commentary from me

But that aside, here is what I pieced together of the lecture.

We were taught about how printed media went from being a luxury item for the elite to being available for the lower classes thanks to the invention of Gutenberg's printing press, the concept of having art exhibitions for all to enjoy popularised by painter John Martin and other things. This meant print media could be mass produced and in some cases, homogenised and dumbed down to the point where it loses all meaning.

What I enjoyed most was the internal debate that this lecture sparked in my head about the issue of how much distribution of print culture is too much. It's a good question. For instance, since the Mona Lisa has been parodied and put on tea towels a billion times, is can be debated that this has changed our perception of the original artwork, which it totes has. Since it's been made available for the general masses, it's lost it's artistic importance.

Ugh, you can't trust anything with the general masses. The Mona Lisa, legal fireworks, our future within Europe etc.

Scholars Frank and Queenie Leavis argued that culture should be in the hands of an educated minority, which might help to make art more important as it would be more rare, and getting into the industry would be more of a class thing for people to aspire to as art schools were once highly revered (not like now where they're all a bit crap).*

Having the means of distributing culture placed purely in the hands of the educated elite would also mean things like tacky knock offs could be avoided, but the biggest problem with this for me is that printed culture is important for moving society forward and it can start revolutions, make people aware of important global issues and unite people of all classes. I've mentioned this in previous COP blogs. Printed media covers a massive spectrum and if it's in the hands of the elite and the elite only then it can quickly become propaganda, with the elites in power using it to help them cling on to power. I think I'd happily have a million pictures of Mona Lisas smoking bongs if it also meant that everybody was free to express themselves however they pleased. For every twenty Mona Lisa bong paintings, you get one piece of revolutionary underdog art like this:

A painting celebrating the Young Turks' revolution which overthrew the absolute monarchy of the Ottoman Empire. There is a caption which reads "liberty, equality, fraternity".

Matthew Arnold, a cultural critic in the 1800s, had the opposing view to the Leavis' and said that he sought to "minister the diseased spirit of our time" that was the class divide when it came to art. I also thought during this lecture, "where can the distribution of print media go from here?" It has already evolved to the point where anybody can create art or photographs or written think-pieces and share them with the whole world instantly. While there are plenty of places where print culture is still monitored by the elite, we are living in an age of (mostly) artistic freedom. Does this mean that the print culture market will become over-saturated at some point now that everyone has this freedom?

Does this in turn mean that there will be so much stuff out there that being innovative and original will be virtually impossible? Will the trends move so fast that we won't be able to keep up? Now that EVERYBODY can make powerful political statements through print media, does that mean they cease to be powerful?

Syndrome from "The Incredbles" said it best:

Used without permission, but no one will read this anyway.

*only joking

Lecture: The History of Type PART TWO (OUAN401)

As a continuation of our last lecture, we were taught about all things type-y from the 1920s up to the bold modern era of 2011 or whatever we're at now.

Man, the Bauhaus is rad.

My favourite part of the lecture was learning more about the Bauhaus and how it brought about a whole new era of design and typography based around the philosophy that less can be more. I find it difficult to visualise the thought process that it must've taken to strip everything away that was previously accepted about good design and build it again from the ground up. It's very impressive. I can apply that lessons of the Bauhaus to all sorts of aspects of animation, be it aesthetically by using bold, simple design to best convey information on screen to an audience, or by using colour cleverly. Too much detail can be overbearing, I guess. Also, sometimes some subtle movement, like the raising of an eyebrow, can convey more than something more exaggerated.

I also learned in this lecture that Microsoft is bad. This was because Microsoft ripped off the Helvetica typeface in 1987 when it became public domain and forged the very similar "Arial" typeface which was free of copyright law because it changed JUST ENOUGHT for it to be considered a new typeface. Also, our speaker expressed his distaste for Comic Sans. It doesn't really bother me so much. As a 21st century boy I was born and bred with Arial and I enjoy Comic Sans. You have to pick and choose your battles, I suppose.

This lecture also cemented for me the idea that truly brilliant and iconic typography can bring about change in society. It sounds rather pretentious at first to say that it does, since there are other things that I think have much more of an impact. However, there are certain fonts that have become universally representative of trends, ideas and cultures and have left a historical mark.

The punk rock graphic designs by Jamie Reid are a widely recognised emblem of the subculture

And everyone associates this one with whimsy and magic. It's like a security blanket.

This lecture seemed to harken back to our earlier one on the language of design and how we are a very visually literate generation in terms of how we interpret symbols. It goes hand in hand with typography.

Lecture: The History Of Type (OUAN401)

This lecture took us through the development of typography from the Egyptian hieroglyphics of 7,000 BC through to as recently as the early 1900s. While it was interesting to see how ancient Mesopotamian writing had influenced our own alphabet via a convoluted series of links from the Pheonicians down to the Ancient Greeks down to us, what I found most interesting was the way that typed language became less of a luxury for the elite and more accessible to everybody, thanks in part to a couple of things.

Firstly, William Foster's elementary education act in 1870 made the teaching of reading compulsory for all, not only the wealthy.The biggest revolution for type and literature in my perspective was when Martin Luther brought out his "95 Theses" in 1517 which criticised the way the Catholic Church controlled the media by publishing it in a language only recognised by the elite and having a monopoly over what information was represented. It opened the world's eyes.

Social control by the elite through the media hasn't gone away, which is why this portion of the lecture interested me most. Every news organisation has a bias, so the facts always get distorted to manipulate. On the other side of the coin, everyone can read now, and everybody has access to any perspective on an issue, so people aren't being manipulated by written language in the same way that they were in the 1400's when they didn't know better. The new problem is that a lot of people use the internet to only seek out the news sources and other people that affirm their views, and block out the evidence from the other side of the argument.

Is it worse if the news is fed to us by the elite, to never be questioned or fact checked? Or is it worse if you have every single Joe Dumb-scum finding his own news sources? I honestly don't know.

Of all the lectures, I think that this one has the least impact on my area of study but it did make me realise why type is so important if you're going to create a world changing message. It can embody the spirit of what you are trying to convey.

Studio Brief One: List Of Sources (OUAN401)

Here are the sources I picked out to help broaden my perspective on this Karl Marx quote:

'The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.'

Google Books:

• Louis Patsouras, Marx in Context, 2005
• Robert. E. Gutsche Jr, Media Control: News as an institution of power and social control, 2015
• Geir Vestheim, Cultural policy and democracy, 2015

Websites:

• 99% Invisible, The Trend Forecast, Podcast, Roman Mars. (2016)
• Business Pundit, 10 Most influential media moguls in history. (2011)
• The Guardian - Neoliberalism - The ideology at the root of all our problems, George Monbiot (2016)

JStor:

• Briant, Emma Louise. Propaganda and Counter-terrorism: Strategies for Global Change. Manchester UP, 2015. Web.
• Alon, Sigal. "The Evolution of Class Inequality in Higher Education: Competition, Exclusion, and Adaptation." American Sociological Review 74.5 (2009): 731-55. Web.
• Serra, Richard. "Art and Censorship." Critical Inquiry 17.3 (1991): 574-81. Web.
• Chomsky, Noam. “Thought Control in the US: The Media and the ‘Peace Process.’” MERIP Middle East Report, no. 143, 1986, pp. 25–29. www.jstor.org/stable/3012012

Google Scholar:

• Prof.ssa Maria Giovanna Devetag, The Eyewear Market: Luxottica’s Leadership, Strategy and Acquisitions (2012)
• Marx, Engels, A.C. Arthur (Editor), The German Ideology Part One, Pages 1 to 16, (1970)
• Joachim J. Savelsberg, Cultures Of Control In Contemporary Societies (2002)
• Gramsci, A. 2006. Hegemony, Intellectuals and the State. In: Storey, J ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. England: Pearson Education Ltd, pp. 85-87 In-text citation: (Gramsci, 2006)

College Library:

• Introducing Marxism.  /  Zarate, Oscar ,  Appignanesi, Richard  &  Woodfin, Rupert  (2004)
• Techniques of persuasion: from propaganda to brainwashing.  /  Brown, J.A.C  (1963)

Lecture: The History Of The Image (OUAN401)

Boy, this is a difficult lecture to summarise. Firstly, it was really fascinating to learn about everything from the world's first documented images on the walls of the Lascaux caves in France twenty thousand years ago to the mystical paintings by the aboriginal artists of Australia to political Obama posters by Shepard Fairey and about a billion things in between.

What interested me most was probably the way that, despite tens of thousands of years passing, mankind still worships the image today the way they did back in aboriginal times. It was mentioned in the lecture that visual communication is like a religion. We all flock to see films and exhibitions and analyse them and argue about them and tell stories about them in the same way that protohumans did in the days of old. 

The Altamira caves in Spain, the first cave art ever discovered.

Old dead people watching Casablanca or something. The guy at the front is a bloody poor sport.

The way that we revere the stories that images tell hasn't changed a bit, because telling stories is one of the main things that humans can do better than any other species. We can't run faster than a puma or grow back limbs like a lizard. We tell dozens of stories every day, though, so visual communication as a means of doing that unites us better than anything else.

I really like the thought that every image tells a story, either by itself or in the historical context in which it was produced.


Another interesting thing that came up in the lecture was the question "what is art?". There's that age old debate about whether some modern art is really "art" or just pretentious. Does art require a certain degree of technical ability or can anybody do it? etc. Also, is something good art because it's universally accepted as being good art or is it genuinely good art from a technical perspective? The best example of this is the Mona Lisa.

A few years ago, it was very contrarian of people to dislike the Mona Lisa

But now everyone says it's overrated. It's only a cool opinion until other people start having it is what I think. I enjoy the Mona Lisa, but when people start liking the Mona Lisa again I'll go back to saying it's overrated garbage. The key to staying cool is to always say the opposite to what the majority of people are saying.

But my defence of modern art is that we, the public, are paying not for the technical skill of the work, but the thought behind it and the story it tells. In a sense, a piece of art like that is MORE of a true artwork than a technically nice looking piece of, say, war propaganda.

This is exaggerated propaganda. The story it tells has been tweaked to emphasise the positive aspects of Britain. Low art? (It still tells a story though, when looked at in its historical context)

While this Tracy Emin piece may look like anyone could have made it, it tells a true, intimate and personal story. High art?

The lecture made me think that the merit of a piece of visual communication can be judged on the story it tells, which is relevant in anything that has ever been drawn or filmed or painted.

Lecture: The Language Of Design (OUAN401)

Our very first lecture was about visual communication - how messages are conveyed through images, how a lot of us have a shared understanding of certain signs, symbols and expressions and why our generation is the most visually literate so far thanks to the rise of social media, texting and the internet which allows us to share emblems and images like memes and emojis with more people, more quickly, meaning that they permeate our entire culture faster.

The first thing that came to my mind when thinking about how our generation is very visually literate was the emoticon. A colon and a closed bracket next to each other have become a universally recognised symbol for a smiling face thanks to the way it’s been spread digitally. That in turn made me think about how emoticons exist for the sake of convenience as a quick means of expressing an emotion. I think visual communication will evolve to be simpler and sleeker to make things easier. This trend is also visible with company logos.

1995

2016

 But everyone in the universe still knows it's Microsoft.

We learnt that the reason why visual communication was important was because it transcends language barriers which is good for conveying important information like where a lavatory is, or what a command on a road sign means, or what something represents on a map. I had always taken simple things like these for granted until I was made to think about them.

I can apply this to animation because it’s important to get information across quickly. Widely recognised symbols or visual metonyms help to set the mood or location of a scene and let the audience know what’s going on. In animation, visual syntax is also crucial. The framing, texture or colour of something can communicate different things to an audience. A good example of this is how colours affect people. Universally, black is a more encroaching, cold colour whereas green is more restful. These are great aspects of visual communication that I can use in my work. For instance, if I wanted to give a setting a tranquil atmosphere I would use a lot of greens and blues. I would use good lighting and use particular pen strokes. The lecture helped to widen my perspective on what exactly visual communication is and how it is applied to every aspect of media. We are influenced by it literally all the time, both consciously and subconsciously.