QUAN401 : Context of practice - study task 2 : Triangulating form

Triangulation & Referencing Task Worksheet

Theme: Society

Focus: Glamour and social envy

Book reference (author, year of publish) e.g. “Jones, 2015”	Relevant key points in summary (use bullet points)	Additional notes (e.g. for or against)
Berger,J. (1979)	. Publicity make the spectator dissatisfied with their present way of life and suggest that those who have more are better . Publicity are essential products for day-dream , hence why it remains credible despite deferred realities . Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy  which compounds with his sense of powerlessness  dissolves into recurrent day-dreams . The interminable present of meaningless worki.g hours is balanced" by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. I. h~s or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self. “Publicity both promises and threatens. It plays upon fear, often the fear of not being desirable, of being unenviable. It suggests that you are inadequate as you are, but it consoles you with the promise of a dream… But the highest value of this civilization is the individual ego… one can only say this culture is mad.” - Berger	Personal opinion : although generally correct , Berger’s views can be extreme and  , as influenced by his background and political views “Individual happiness is a universal right … he lives in the contradiction of what he is and what he would like to be” If what he would like to be is a step to pursuit his own individual happiness and being  and their for is his right by Berger’s own term, should he not be justified to be envious and to admire glamour ? Has Berger’s phrase inadvertently condemn people for having ambitions and desire ?
Gundle ,S. Castelli, CT   (2006)	.Glamour was not an intrinsic allure or a mode of being of a given thing but a  commodified aura bestowed upon a variety of subjects. . Glamour maintain the dominance of the wealthy in the capitalist system . Glamour requires in order to exist , some sense of equality and citizenship ( but not necessary democracy ) => generate social envy	Leaning toward support but not obvious
Postrel V (2013)	. a “glamorous” object cannot produce glamour unless it appeal to the audience’s personal aspiration and unless the audience is willing to entertain the illusion . Glamour does not always connect to social envy , as many of the resentments and hostilities of true envy are missing from glamour .Glamour does not based only from the lure of material pleasure, but that we can fit into the setting of which they belong. However illusory it is , Glamour is emotionally authentic	Generally opposed to Berger .Personal opinion support this idea of separating and identify the different sides of Berger’s social envy, simplified as being either jealousy or admiration
Hughes, C (2007)	-Although envy is commonly understood as a vice (and as one of the seven deadly sins), it is, of course, a site where concerns over inequalities and exploitation are articulated -Unpalatable as it is , individual and personal envy will always occurred ,and there’s nothing we can do about it “The upper class is despised, although their wealth and lifestyle is envied; the working class ‘battler’ is glorified, although no one wants to be one; the middle class is considered boring, but most belong to it” => a justification for social system and the idea of glamour and social envy ( connect to the individual contradiction of what you are and what you want to be )
Gundle S , (2008)	-Glamour is full of oxymoronic qualities and fuel the illusion and deceive people of social realities, its function ties in with the expansion of media and publicity - Glamour simply cannot exist without mass involvement . Glamorous personalities perform in front of an audience that turn them into public curiosities and fantasies, and without their envy/admiration, he/she cannot exist	Generally support

OUAN 401: Context of practice- lecture 3 : History of type ( Part 1 )

During this lecture , Fred introduced us to brief history of type spanning from 3200 BC to 1999 AD, which began with redefining what type is. Typography according to the dictionary can be translate as an organisation of letter forms. Type , for a more broader term , can be seen in 3 very close but distinctive way , first of which is what language looks like, second is speech made visible and the third and what I can relate more to in a designer mindset , is the craft of endowing language with a visual form. Ironically enough , before this lecture I'd always view typography as a form of producing images using letter forms ( which is what I did for my A-level typography project ) , not the other way around. When you think about it though , typography and letters truly are visualisations of a language and how they sound. As in my case , Vietnamese uses a Latin alphabet , but with the additional phonetic markings , for example ,  a has  Á, À , Ả , Ã ,Ạ. This might be a bit tricky to get across , but when you say it , the marking really makes sense , Á being a raised pitch so it leans forward while À is lower pitch. So it was really interesting to think about how other languages makes sense in the minds of the people who speak to them and to see for effective a visualisation the type of that language is .

After that came a brief history . We learned that trade played a huge part in developing and studying languages , this was demonstrated through the Rosetta Stone ( which I swear , I though it was a made-up thing for Final Fantasy before this ! )

                

That size difference !

Although probably the most interesting part was seeing the evolution of letters and the introduction of some of the classic fonts that we take for granted now, moving from the straight forward pictograms of ancient Egypt to the modern Latin alphabet.I still don't understand how an ox head was turned into a Roman A , but hey , it made visual sense , and if that was good enough for the ancients , then who am I to argue 

Seeing how the materials that are used to create type can also influence the visual form of the type is also interesting , such as how cuneiform was engrave on clay tablets and stones , so its has a harder form , while Arabic and Chinese being written using paper and brushes are softer and more curvy . Then there was the Latin alphabet and the printing press with its uniformity and standardisation , all very fascinating 

QUAN 401 - Study task 1 : Sources

BA (hons ) Animation

Context of Practice 1

Finding research sources

CoP Theme: Soicety 

Glamour cannot exist without persona| social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such an emotion. The pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. Yet the existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless, He lives in the contradiction between what he is and whet he would like to be.'

Search terms/key words: GLAMOUR, ENVY, ADVERTISING, ALIENATION, CAPITALISM, COMMODITY SELF, COMMODITY CULTURE, DEMOCRACY, HAPPINESS.

LCA Library	1: Work,Consumerism and the new poor – Mauman Zygmunt (2005)-Open University Press – 301.35 2: Alienation : Marx’s conception of man in a capitalist society Ollman Bertell (1971) – Cambridge University Press - 302 3: The conquest of Happiness – Russell Bertrand (1930) George Allen & Unwin ltd
Google Books (preview)	1:The power of Glamour : Longing and the art of visual persuasion (2013) – Simon & Schuster (NY) 2: Art for social change and cultural awakening : An anthropology of residence in Taiwan (2013) – Wei Hsiu Tung – Lexington books (Maryland) 3:Aesthetic & Alienation – Gary Tedman (2012) – Zero books (UK)
Google Scholar	1. The cultural contradiction of capitalism : 20th century edition – Daniel Bell – Basic Books 2: Artist at work, proximity of art and capitalism – Bojana Kunst (2015) – Zero books (UK) 3:  The Glamour system – Stephen Gundle , Clino T. Castell – Palgrave Macmillan(US)
Websites	1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2013/01/22/jealous-of-your-facebook-friends-why-social-media-makes-us-bitter/#3baa33d74c0d  Why social media makes us bitter – Alice G Walton 2: Pastimespace.blogspot.co.uk http://pastimespace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/consumerism-and-powerlessness-in-modern.html “Consumerism and Powerlessness in the modern world” 3: Wikipedia – “social alienation”
JStor	1: “The equality of social envies” – “Sociology” Vol 41 No.2 – Christina Hughes (2007) – British sociology association   2:”Social Inequality and the Arts” (Journal) 1985 – Iudith R. Blau, Peter M. Blau , Reid M.Golden – University of Chicago press 3:The  concept of alienation in modern sociology – “Social research” Vol 34 No.3 (1967) – Igor Skon – The new school

QUAN401-Context of practice : Animation analysis

Animation analysis : A  Short vision by  Peter and Joan Foldes (1956)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkhNED3-mnI 

A animation produce during the cold war, A Short vision depicts a apocalyptic future of nuclear warfare and the horrors of its destructiveness not only on humans but the world. Being aired on national television ,this piece of animation left a huge impact  on audience , especially the Western audience, who at the time was already terrified by the “Red scare” that the media had been playing up til’ then. This certainly would have only increased that feeling and caused massive social paranoia among the masses.

Theoretically, within the different genres of animation , the Short vision would fit into to many genres. In terms of the formal genre, the animation explores a sort of more abstract and gritty style, focusing on the use of chalk/pastels as a medium to further enhance the general theme of video. After that , this depicts the threat of nuclear warfare, so there a political statement which would put this in the political genre as well. Moreover, its also very primal at its core, depicting and exploring how people react ( and perish ) when the missiles hit in a gruesomely descriptive way. But above all , this animation fits best with the paradigmatic genre, as it continuously plays with the viewer’s expectation , starting out just like another children’s cartoon , having the missile changing shape and ended up looking like more an UFO ( which again, really change the expectations of the story) and when the moment comes revealing its true purpose. When the first deaths come (the intellectuals and wise men), we expect something different for the people who were sleeping, which is illogical so as it turns out , it would be the same for them . Then it was the animal , then the landscape until their was only a spark left. And at the end bit , just when you see the moth flying in expecting some kind of revelation , for something to at lease survive, the moth dies and the fire goes out , truly depicting that nothing will escape the destruction. Indeed this short animation is extremely adult-oriented very political and reflect the political and social situation and views at the time very well. Maybe this was only a simple view of how the world would end from it’s creator, but then could this have been used as a weapon to cause paranoia as to rally the masses to stand against the impending threat of destruction from the other side.

OUAN401-Context of practice: Lecture 2- History of the image

This week wednesday's lecture focused the history of the image , from the very beginning of human existence to the age of post-modern and contemporary art. Through it , Richard introduced us to the idea of how images permanently make lives, thoughts and feeling last forever ( sometime a more literal sense than other )and how it can both create and destroy ideas

Truly humans are amazing at creatures at depicting their surrounding and something that really interest me through this lecture was seeing the way we do it and how everything has ended up being some sort a loop : We see how the rough-edge style and spirituality of the cave paintings of Lascaux (even though there probably wasn't a sophisticated caveman who intended it) influence the free-form and design choices of modern art , (almost as a way to "connect" back to nature) after a long period of celebrating realism and the human form of the classical Greek and the Renaissance.

But that fact aside, what really interested me the most was seeing the power of the image , and seeing how it can affect the course of human history and human behaviour. This was presented through stories of wars , for example the Vietnam War , and how photographs like "the Napalm girl" by photographer Nick Ut changed the American public opinion on the war which eventually led to the U.S withdrawal out of Viet Nam and how I now only see the red flag and yellow star of the north as my Vietnam ( I'm Vietnamese, yes) not the one of the south. Or for a more broader view, the battle of art between the US and the Soviets during the cold war , where the CIA uses American abstract expressionist such as Jackson Pollock , Mark Rothko and their art as a weapon against the East to demonstrate the West's freedom of thinking and creativity again Soviet realism's rigidness and confinement. Funny thing is , to quote president Truman on this subject : "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot"

During the 50s and 60s , the American public actually had extremely negative views on modern art and the quote above was the sum of the popular views at the time. But as time moved on , we see an increase in such style and method, still ridiculous and mad as it is, appearing museums,exhibitions and the fashion runways, described as representing different ideas and being critiqued / praised by many which led to another interesting topic of the lecture: the authority of the institution. Being a very "practical" artist myself , I can't never get my head around how people create and enjoy modern art, especially the recent ones. And not just modern art these day, but other abstract forms as well like cubism. Yet you see people flocking galleries, the ones you would call "art hipsters" , standing in front of a black/white canvases with nothing else on it and "appreciate" it, I DON'T GET IT.



That's when Richard brought up this point , the "institution"here : the art galleries , the museums, colleges takes all these art work, which entitled them to be "important" in our eyes, and perhaps more than they should be. So when someone "feels" something in front of a piece of work like those above, are they really feeling anything ? Or is that feeling just came from what is expected of you to have. I've watch this video about an illusionist once , who tried to make people feel "hot" just by asking them " are you feeling hotter?" and he succeeded many times, so is that something that is happening within our mind in front of a piece of work ?

 Richard also suggest another very interesting example,this picture down here of people seeing the Mona Lisa.




Undoubtedly the most famous painting in the world , which sits behind a bulletproof glass and occupied a whole wall for itself, yet till this day , no one really knows why .In my personal view, Leonardo's "Last supper" and classical Greek sculpture works would be superior both in scale and in technique, yet when people get to the Lourve, (myself included ), the first instinct is to go find the Mona Lisa. So just what is it about her that made the painting so famous that wether you're an artist or historian or just the common bloke from the street, you instantly referred to it as a masterpiece( and no its not that "mysterious smile" ) .Sure, it is an extraordinary piece that demonstrate Leonardo's talent , but like I said, judging from personal views, there are others that are better.Thats exactly it ,that's the power of institution feeding you that information ! Its psychology , its the mentality of being curious at what others are seeing.Its the bulletproof glass, the giant wall, the place inside the Lourve, the countless referencing in textbooks and pop culture alike that solidify the Mona Lisa place in our minds.The same thing can be said for the image of Che Guevara, of the Napalm girl,....

    

The popularity of the image is greatly enhanced by the authority of the institution 

So can the current art forms, especially modern art have an attractive attribute and the power to explain itself , sure it can, but otherwise the general public views on art is undoubtedly driven by the authority of the institution and not by the art itself. So thinking about how the next trend/ move in the art world can address this issue is intriguing to say at least!