Semiotics Cont.

Semiotics

Today we learnt about semiotics, a way of writing about something we understand visually.

Sign   =    Signifier    +    Signified
                  form              concept

- Iconic Signs        - look like the things they signify

- Indexical Signs    - refers to other knowledges such as grey clouds = rain
- Symbolic Signs    - have meaning due to convention. words + flags etc.

After discussing a number of topics such as sign systems, the really interesting pioneer plaque and the hidden meanings behind leather trousers.. we moved onto Pink's video 'Stupid Girls'.

The entire video is filled with visual data we can process and understand. The lighting hitting certain bits of her body, the fashion, from gangsta clothes to the slutty girly outfits. At the start of the video the girl is playing with barbie toys yet by the end of 'stupid girls' she favours more masculine toys and goes outside to play football. There are conscience guides at the very start of the video. Fire/hell = bad and White/heaven = good. Which is an indexical sign. We know them from cartoons and other religious referencing video present in our western culture.
The video takes a lot of signs such as big boobs, platinum blonde hair and orange tans, along with surgery to show exactly what people associate those things with, 'stupid girls'. There is also a shot of Pink with 50cent and she is dancing against him, sharing the camera space equally. However, the light is on her, but only on her curves. 50cent pays no attention to her at all, showing she is only a body. His clothes are also emanating pimp, with a fur coat and lots of jewelery. There are clips aimed at looking aged due to the tv showing black and white only, the clothing being dated, exaggerated female gestures, these all give impressions of war times, when girls looked immaculate and acted so. There is some footage of her playing football outside with a lot of guys showing that she could be doing something other than being a stupid girl and there is an indication of her being president whilst stood on a podium infront of the American flag.
Basically everything in this video from start to finish is set up to show something meaningful. The camera angles, the lighting, the clothing, the environment, the lyrics at the time. the camera space shared with others,  the direct links to other popular culture icons such as Paris Hiltons sex tape and Jessica Simpsons car washing all of it is visually symbolic of stupid girls and the idea you don't have to become one.

Fashion

Today we looked at what fashion is, the way it has developed over time and it's morality problems in greater depth. Fashion is somewhat a reflection of culture and the constant changes around us.
It can only be appreciated if others understand it. Something highly fashionable in one country may not be viewed the same in a place with a completely different culture. It also helps people to feel like they fit in. We discussed the idea of belonging to a crowd. Fashion allows us to pinpoint different categories of people. You could quite easily go around a school or college and put people into certain groups based upon what they are wearing. The judgement may not be entirely true about the person, but people definately fit into certain categories here from the popular, sporty people, the super girly girls and the goth group who all hang out in black hoodies.

Fashion is different based upon who is viewing it and again different to whoever is wearing it. Like art it is a number of signs, symbols and iconography that communicate a meaning about the person.

The reading task after this was Street Style & It's meaning in Postwar Japan - Hiroshi Narumi.
The text generally is about how the youth subcultures in both Britain and Japan are very similar in the visual language they use, although the influences as to why would be vastly different. After the war many subcultures formed within Japanese cities mainly Tokyo, with lolita, ganguro and gyaru girls to name a few. Japan very much so took to frowning upon the groups of young people wearing clothes which did not conform, they were moved along for simply wearing what they did because of the statement the clothing itself was making to people. Not only did the clothes not fit, but if worn differently to the way something was meant to be worn that was also a statement of rebellion in itself.
Not all subculture groups were simply dressing to make a statement, the bôsô-zoku were the biker gangs who actually caused trouble. The costumes worn by this group of people however, were also designed entirely to shock. Symbols from right-wing political parties and military groups were used to make them appear intimidating. This visual system of appearing shocking also showed up in Britain in the form of Punk culture.
British fashion moved on to create new meanings for people, however Japanese fashion seems to have more emphasis on the effects of other cultures.

London 2012 Olympic Logo

Is this design really that bad?

I think so.
I don't want to appear like I'm just jumping on the band wagon here but really.. It looks like it came from the 80's. It's jagged, brightly coloured, not visually appealing in the slightest and seems to have offended far away countries such as Iran. Many people even state their 9 year old could have done better.
Whoever thought it up was really on a mission to make it the most annoying, ugly logo ever and make enough people talk about it for it to get well known. This works quite a lot for advertising products, but I'm not sure what they meant to achieve here!

 I feel the previous olympic logos leaned towards showing off their own style or something about their country. I would have preferred something more boring, classic looking. I like how the designers tried to say it was to include everyone, before aiming it at young people. I'm sure most of the older generations will not enjoy the insanely bright colour choices here. So does this even work? Growing up I haven't ever followed the olympics, not without soon flicking around to find something better. The only people I know who watch it are older. Personally, I feel a lot of this makes no sense. Who is this aimed at?
I don't feel like everything has to be plain and boring when appealing to a larger audience. Everything at once though? I'm not liking it. I just feel the logo says nothing about the country it's held in other than we make terrible logos. It is mostly just a date in horrible colours.

If I'm honest the branding in black and white actually looks quite nice. It's a memorable shape overall. But it's still ugly..

Sally Mann

I actually really enjoyed looking into the work of Sally Mann. I feel like she is a very well rounded individual and it's nice to see someone speak so openly over death and the photographic documentation of it. She's quite inspiring as an artist.

The work she did using her own children, showing their everyday lives, whilst looking at different cultural perceptions of bigger topics such as death and sexuality is a little questionable overall. I personally do not feel her work really falls under anything morally wrong though, as the way she uses her children here does not seem to harm them whatsoever.
The Body Farm work is quite amazing to look at for me. I suppose in some sense the questions about taking photos of dead people is again questionable. From what I understood the bodies were already given for scientific purposes, something these people had selected for themselves. In this case there would probably be pictures taken anyway and I feel she is subjecting society on the whole to look at something completely natural. The pictures are quite eerie with the way she takes them, but I really can appreciate what she is showing here.
People should be subjected to more taboo subjects that are completely natural, things we do not see that are everyday parts of life such as death.

It was nice to be able to find something so indepth online. :) She says some very interesting things and is very straight up about the art she creates. I really like that she is particular about taking general pictures of the things around her.

Controversies

Upon reading the post provided to us about specific instances of photography use I find it interesting to see what sort of perceptions different people have and how they as an overall group of people, directly influence the way the law changes over time. Photographs once shown in galleries can be taken down at a moments notice regarding the current law changes.

I read about the case where Brooke Shields had pictures taken at 10 years old in the bath. The topic that Gross chose seems a little risqué, but I would say more has come to light recently regarding the topic of the sexualisation of young girls. The difference between a naked image of a girl in a bath, being simply a girl in the bath is very different once they adopt makeup. I do not feel the photographer himself was doing anything pornographic here. I think it was an unfortunate case though, as Brooke herself didn't even sign away those rights to her pictures then. I don't feel parents should be able to do that, at least the contract should be limited to when she is old enough to realise she doesn't want them in a public domain.
Photographers and companies now have to be really careful with showing any child nudity. I understand in some respects, considering the children themselves can't understand that people will see this work of them however, I feel in a sense that limiting that sort of innocent picture taking will always be a slippery slope.

The story of Omayra Sánchez was more shocking to me than most. Similar to the pictures of the man stealing grain from a starving boy, Fournier's image shocked many people. No one really wants to see technology capturing the moments of a young girl's death, yet being unable to save her. The photographer could do nothing but watch and capture, as he spoke with her during her time left. I really find these sort of photographers astounding. To me it never shows a lack of help with them standing back and observing. They are making a much bigger statement through the documentation of incidents, to the entire world.
I feel the pictures of Omayra do not really serve any purpose other than to show humanity very plainly. The people around her trying to help and the people in government who did not. I feel that in this sort of case I would want to show the world what was going on, the girl does not seem phased by any of it. She speaks on camera quite openly. I think in this case the image did an amazing job to illustrate an amazing girl who stayed calm throughout her ordeal. It shows certain aspects of humanity in a very positive light.

Toscani's image of 'Kissing-nun' doesn't really shock me all that much. The only thing I see from this image is that he's portraying the fact that although things are forbidden in these lifestyles, the people are still human beings. This goes against anything traditional but they're still shown in a very nice light overall. Toscani's work seems to be all about the shock value, making people think. I suppose if I was more religious I might feel differently but as it stands he's simply making people look at traditional contraints within society today.

Ethical Issues

Wednesdays lecture was all about ethical issues surrounding design and photography. There is a pretty wide ranging amount of problems within these industries.

Our group came up with quite a lot of ideas:

- Permission & law issues

  Anything from copyright to taking pictures of children without guardian consent. We discussed that in public places you could actually take pictures of whatever you want, however it would then become an issue of morality. Paparazzi comes in here somewhere too. The right to privacy is big debate. Some countries completely ban photography of people without consent. Here in the UK, law is pretty relaxed with regards to that. Things progressively seem to get more violent though, especially when big money is at stake to get the best picture for a celebrity/gossip magazine.

- Size & health of models

   Are catwalk models too thin? We know a lot of designers like the clothes to hang off of the models in a certain way, but this draws in to an unrealistic view of people. Is it really meant to be for general people though? High fashion is generally more so art, than the things churned out for casual wearers. I suppose it's not a very good advert for the industry either way. Size Zero cannot be good for anyone.

- Fur trade

  I do not feel in this day and age that the use of fur, as clothing can be justified to general western society. A lot of the problem with it, is it's still used as a way of portraying a high class of people. Using animal skin just so that you can look nice doesn't sit too well with me.

I suppose I don't mind the use of fur/skin if it had it come as a byproduct of an animal. But the sad thing is that most real fur comes from animals which are bred purely for their skin and a lot of the time they are mistreated. I really do not agree with that. Living conditions and the way the animal is killed has always been a hot topic for debate.

I also would stop and think about what I buy, if it was made clear that the animal had died just to make shoes for people.. As it stands, me included, people like to be somewhat ignorant.

- Labour costs of fashion/ Globalisation

   Another point that always seems to be on tv or in the news, with programmes exploring sweatshops and the backgrounds of people in developing countries. The world is generally in a mess with this. The people with high paid jobs such as business people, engineers, scientists can go wherever they want in the world to work. However, the people with very little to no skills who are willing to work the lowest wage, or have to work the lowest wage will always be offered the job. This is why so many companies have everything made in china or developing countries as they pay less to get the product out in the first place. This has knock on effects for actual resources used also.

- Airbrushing
    Touch ups to make women look younger, have bigger boobs, smaller waists, longer lashes. If you can name it, you can fix it. I assume there are also male versions to make muscles look bigger etc. I just think overall the market is insane for women. People who buy celebrity magazines, home magazines.. so much has been messed with, colourwise or anything else. Unrealistic views to sell products is a big business.

- Content itself
   I saw in the paper the other week some articles surrounding the death of Michael Jackson. Some people on various feeds I saw were outraged that newspapers had chosen to show photographs of the star, dead. I personally do not really understand why this is such a big deal. I don't really like the idea of censorship, but morally I also am not entirely sure I could pick to run a story with pictures like that. We were also shown an image of Stoddart's where a man stole grain from a young starving boy. We then discussed emotional imagery and people using imagery in the wrong way.

Quite a lot to think about.. I suppose I will add to this the more I learn about it.

After this discussion we went through some photography history and discussed the fact that photography is often used to portray a fact. If you take a picture of something, it is there at that time. No questions asked. But is what you see infront of the camera always right? No person can see the staging gone into it before the shot. I find this idea quite interesting.

Set up a blog -

So at least I have that one down. 

This was the image I felt represented me in some way.
And it isn't just because I love them.

This was found over at http://beta.twistedsifter.com/2009/12/stormtrooper-inspired-art-and-design/

The trailer for Sin city. A very interesting piece to me for it's use of contrast
and silhouetting, along with picking up specific colours for impact.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/13/100-years-of-propaganda-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
This isn't a post related to one artist, but many artists involved in propaganda artwork over 100 years.
There are a few iconic images along with many new artists using this style to push beliefs and ideas now. I came across the artist Brian Lane Winfield Moore and enjoyed his take on things, using modern social networking sites and things people can relate to, whilst still using an old style.

During our first session we discussed what design is. What it is to me now, and what it is to many different people. Upon looking around online it is clear that many people cannot name it. I believe this is because everything around us is designed. Someone designed the way the website I'm typing from now is setup. The icon for Blogger itself. The chairs we sit on for lectures. Most things have passed through design stages based around looks. People themselves are all about aesthetics.

Our group came up with words such as communication, development, change, narrative, understanding, emotions, construction, individuality and inspiration.
Visual communication is what a graphic designer is all about.