Author: Giulia Feleppa (Page 1 of 2)

The quality of some pictures is low because they are actually gifs (the original file is a powerpoint presentation that openlab doesn’t let me upload because it is a big file). I hope I can use instead my powerpoint presentation in class.

According to Heller, “designers for mainstream advertising companies, weaned on alternative approaches, have folded the underground into the mainstream and call it “cool.”” Commercial artists constantly take what was born as “cultural resistance to mainstream power structures” (1), they “add an ornament here and there to make it palatable for the consumer class, and—voila!—instant allure and immediate sales”. A nowadays example is the new collection by Louis Vuitton which embraces the old-school streetwear. Embracing might not be the right word (they literally steal it) if you take a look at the Louis Vuitton new collection of sweatshirts, denim shirt, suits and blazers which wear oversize and perfectly resemble the hoodies, t-shirts and baggies of 90s with the only difference of the applied monogram pattern.  

As ““streetwear style” which were born as rebellious form of counterculture has been appropriated and integrated into everyday and luxury fashion”, the Constructivist style has been expropriated and applied on 2000 Franz Ferdinand album covers by Matthew Cooper. The main reason of this choice by Cooper and the band was because their music reflected Constructivism characteristics, “the geometric style really suited the sound, those sharp corners and edges”. Their goal was since the beginning to stands out from other rock bands, so they created catch songs to make the girls dance and they wanted visually to do the same. Their outfit is unique as their album covers. Matthew Cooper made sure that every cover of the band had a different logo, because the band embraces the idea of evolution, and the logo has to reflect it. In opposition to the Russian movement which wanted to give a meaning to art, Franz Ferdinand as all the commercial artists decided to use art just for an aesthetic reason.  None of the Franz Ferdinand had a background in graphic design, but they admitted being strongly influenced by art and everything that surrounds them is in their music. Their intention was of “questioning the standards and defying the norms of contemporary culture” . In some way Franz Ferdinand entered the mainstream field with an underground spirit. 

Sources:

1. Concepts and Practices of the Underground 

Christoph Lindner and Andrew Hussey 

pp. 13-20 (8 pages) 

Stable URL 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wp6td.5

2. ‘Loaded’: Indie Guitar Rock, Canonism, White Masculinities 

Matthew Bannister 

Popular Music 

Vol. 25, No. 1, Special Issue on Canonisation (Jan., 2006), pp. 77-95 (19 pages) 

Stable URL 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3877544

3. https://www.printmag.com/culturally-related-design/punk-aesthetic-graphic-design/ 

4. https://cnaluxury.channelnewsasia.com/obsessions/louis-vuitton-nigo-capsule-collection-179641 

5. https://www.bandlogojukebox.com/blog/2020/5/20/f2-franz-ferdinand 

Important words which meanings were not totally clear to me are:

Etymology

Assonance

Tautological

Italianicity

Connotation

Unclear passages:

Pag 9 (of the pdf)

Film can no longer be seen as animated photographs: the having-been-there gives way before a being-there of the thing; which omission would explain how there can be a history of the cinema, without any real break with the previous arts of fiction, whereas the photograph can in some sense elude history (despite the evolution of the techniques and ambitions of the photographic art) and represent a “flat” anthropological fact, at once absolutely new and definitively unsurpassable, humanity encountering for the first time in its his­tory messages without a code. Hence the photograph is not the last (improved) term of the great family of images; it corresponds to a decisive mutation of informational economies.

Pag11

Thus the rheto­ric of the image (that is to say, the classification of its connotators) is specific to the extent that it is subject to the physical constraints of vision (different, for example, from phonatory constraints) but general to the extent that the “figures” are never more than formal relations of elements.

(I am sorry for the late submission. I wanted to summarize my notes but I don’t think I will have to time to do it, so I am sending the handwritten notes. I am sorry for the low quality pictures and the bad calligraphy. )

In Hall’s essay media are defined “as important sites for the production, reproduction and transformation of ideologies”. As they are representation of the social world, I chose three brands that are slowing introducing a transformation of ideologies.

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McLuhan in “Understanding Media” emphasizes the importance of media in human life, how they changed and keeps changing it and invites the reader to analyze the medium as the message, not for its content. Examples of media are the bulb, the print or any new technological inventions. For McLuhan media is anything that extends our capabilities as human beings influencing our way of thinking, interacting and behaving. A medium influences our “sense ratios” (our senses) in fact it uses specific senses to transmit the message for example we read a book through eyes and mind and we watch television with our eyes and ears. McLuhan defines media as “extensions of ourselves” and the cause of positive and negative changes in human behaviors and societies. For example, the introduction of new technologies brought a change in the interaction between humans which eliminated jobs but at the same time created roles for people. Another example is the railway which doesn’t introduce only movement or transportation but increased the speed of human functions creating new cities and new activities. So society is affected not merely by the content of the medium but by its characteristics, such as the electric light which controls the form of human action and activities. It is thanks to the electric light that men can operate or play baseball in the dark. The medium in this case eliminates space and time. Another example is the impact and the role of the tv had on the society, not because of the kind of shows it showed (its content) but because of its characteristics. Furthermore, as a movie is a combination of different medias such as speech, music.. The same is Cubism, where different patterns, textures, lights were used. The final work of art was a fragmented representation of something (from the top, from the side or the bottom) that let the viewer to receive the message as an whole (“drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole”) through different media. 

McLuhan affirms that the machine technology brought fragmentation and decentralization (which is centralist and superficial) while the automation technology brought the opposite. McLuhan defines alphabet as a basic mechanical technology in which the language has been broken in twentysix characters that we can arrange to create words and express thoughts. Before the written language men had to physically communicate through spoken word. The introduction of the electric technology such as the telegraph brought a speed diffusion of the written text in few seconds instead of weeks. 

The content of any medium is another medium, for example for the telegraph is the print, for the print is the written word, for writing is the speech, for speech is a process of thought. “An abstract painting represents direct manifestation of creative thought processes as they might appear in computer designs.”   

At a certain point McLuhan introduces the analyses of Arnold Toynbee of the power of the medium and the concept of “etherialization”. He affirms that our personal opinion or perception of a medium produces a different effect. He introduces the third dimension or private point of view comparing it to the Narcissus fixation, in which the medium brings to the alienation of the man. 

As Werner Heisenberg, in The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, underlines technical changes brings changes not only in the way we behave but also in the way we think and value. One of a possible psychological effect of technologies is the demand for them. The need of constantly have the radio or tv on not for its content, but because we feel the urge of using the senses that are available. “Electric technology is directly related to our central nervous system”. The dependence of the man to technology created a kind of enslavement, but at the same time pushed the fragmentation and the rebellion as a technique of achieving security. 

McLuhan recognizes the art as immune to the technology and able to provide immunity. The artist has integral awareness and he can correct the sense ratios before the influence of new technology. 

Gropius believed that only studying would have not produced art but that instead art could have been created only by a combination of knowledge and practice. He accused the academy of schooling ordinary drawers and painters giving them false hopes and didn’t train them to succeed in the real world. He also underlined the importance of a good balance between ego, soul, mind and body to be aware of space and we can give form and meaning to it using the brain and the hands. The brain in fact can calculate the dimension of the space while the hand can craft with tools or machines. In addition, a truly creative artist must know the physical laws of statics, dynamics, acoustics to create something that express also his inner vision. A creative artwork should include the laws of physical, intellectual and spirit world. The Bauhaus at Weinmar school was founded to offer a theoretical and practical program to gifted students. The main principle of the Bauhaus teaching was the collective work of art that comes from the union of all the arts and movements. The practical and theoretical studies would have helped the student to release the creative powers and to understand the physical nature of materials. The students were pushed to break down conventional patters through observation and creation to personal discoveries and experiences to understand their own potentialities and limitations 

Moholy-Nagy introduced the idea of typophoto as the most effective way of communication. It is a combination of typography and photography in which letters and signs established a connection with the modern life. In fact he enlightened that the linear typography was the mediation between communication and the audience. Photography comes in help to the typography as an illustration behind the words or as phototext instead of words. With the use of the picture the personal interpretation would be avoided. He defines it as the new visual literature. 

Bayer focused mostly on typography and its future possible development. He recognized, as also the typographers of the 1920 affirmed, the possibility of a deeper visual experience that typographical material could bring. Infact, with the introduction of the television, film, photo and picture symbol typography wasn’t an isolated discipline anymore. However, he was surprised that since the Gutenberg invention there weren’t progresses about writing and printing. Typographical materials needed to adjust to the new technology and inventions. As the manual skill of the calligrapher had been replaced by the mechanical techniques, the typography needed a new alphabet, not only a new style that chances as fashion does. He also complained that typography was still recognized as a minor art, as commercial and not fine arts. Typographers needed to be prized for keeping the aesthetic standards from falling and because they keep the taste high even though the writing-printing methods were antiquated.  Furthermore, he underlined the importance of founding a more universal visual medium to help communication between different languages (for a universal communication) exactly as the book evolved in magazines with text and pictures. In the end, he anticipated the future evolution of the writing-printing method with the introduction of computing machines and the substitution of books with microfilms. It seems like he lost all his hopes in an evolution in the typography techniques.