After noticing that the rest of my scanned in lecture notes haven't worked, I have typed them up...
Slide 1:
Age of print began: 1450.
Marshall Mcluhan – media theorist – ‘Late Age of Print’.
Print has changed to accommodate new technologies and new media.
Slide 2:
Electronic book (E-book).
May take over printed form
Slide 3:
Computer media
The way we read has changed due to hypertext – blue underlined links – to other pages.
Hypermedia – pictures, audio etc.
Information is constructed by the user – pick and discard information.
Slide 4:
Modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers directed towards large numbers of consumers – definition of Mass Media.
Slide 5:
Thinking critically about the media.
Slide 6:
Negative points
- Superficial, uncritical, trivial.
- Viewing figures measure success.
- Audience is dispersed.
- Audience is disempowered.
- Encourages Status Quo (if conservative).
- Encourages apathy – feeling nothing can be done to change world – just sit.
- Power held by the few motivated by profit or social control (propaganda).
- Bland, escapist and standardised.
- Encourages escapism, seen as drug which anaesthetises.
Slide 7:
Positive:
- Not all mass media is low quality.
- Social problems and injustices are discussed by the media.
- Creativity can be a feature.
- Transmission of high art material reaches a broader audience.
- Democratic potential.
Slide 8:
Art in the age of mass media -
Book by John A. Walker
Slide 9:
Advertising – Toscani’s Benetton campaigns seek to appropriate sexual/cultural politics.
‘Leeds 13’ – university students.
Slide 10:
Key Questions:
- Can Art be autonomous? (exist on its own in a vacuum)
- Should Art be autonomous?
Slide 11:
Jackson Pollock painting.
No politics – a transcendental representation.
Slide 12:
Modern Art in the Common Culture
By Thomas Crowe
Slide 13:
Picasso -1913
Used newspapers and trappings from media.
Slide 14:
Richard Hamilton – ‘Just What Is That’
Trappings from media – gender references.
Slide 15:
Roy Lichtenstein.
Slide 16:
Close-up of artistic brush stroke in comic book style.
Slide 17:
Roy Lichtenstein – ‘Drowning Girl’
Slide 19:
Andy Warhol – ‘Green Coca-cola Bottles’ (1962)
Dismissed by critics – similar to criticisms from media today.
Signifies consumerism and its existence.
Slide 20:
Andy Warhol – ‘Marilyns’ (1962)
Found publicity image – repeated.
Anti-aesthetic – soap box colours.
Mistakes left in.
Constructing a fake idea – smiling Marilyn, but ‘behind the mask’ drug addict.
Slide 21:
Andy Warhol – ‘Big Electric Chair’ (1967)
Screenprint.
No emotion.
Slide 22:
Andy Warhol – ‘Ambulance Disaster’ (1967)
Repetition of images – and in the media leads to desensitisation of the audience.
Slide 23:
Playful attack on elite and upperclass – man as Mona Lisa in American Soap advert.
Slide 24:
Stone Roses cover – like Pollock.
Slide 25:
Franz Ferdinand – style of Rodchenko.
Slide 26:
L’Oreal Motif – like James Taylor.
Slide 27:
Pears Soap – artist allowed image to be used in advertisement.
Slide 28:
H.R. Geiger – artist – alien painting like Alien film.
Slide 29:
Marcus Harvey – ‘Myra’ (1995)
Most famously exhibited in 1997 at Sensation Exhibition.
Based on 1963 mug shot.
11 x 9 foot.
Made up of children’ handprints, represents the lives taken.
The title, ‘Myra’ implies intimate relationship – this kind of relationship has been had with her through the press.
Kidscape said it was sick and distasteful’.
Not to be distasteful or glamourise, it was about photography.
Pixelated style – meditates on medium not subject.
Conclusions:
- New Media changes the way text and or image is consumed.
- Theorists see media as negative and a threat.
- Alternatively, it can be positive – pleasurable and democratic.
