Politics and Propaganda

CoP Lecture- Chronologies

 In this lecture we talked about communication and mass media. We also talked about this in the art school context like communication design, visual communication and graphic design. Mass Media is a mean of public communication which reaches a large audience. The means of communication that reaches large numbers of people in a short time, such as television, newspapers, magazines etc.

We also talked about the graphic illustrations in the opening cut scenes by Saul Bass and that how animation can also be applied in some illustrations.

CoP Lecture Pictures at Work

This lecture was more about images then words hence why I didn't take many notes because the slide show was mainly pictures. However, the lecture was about illustration and what it is, illustration is made up of context, content and an image all together for example the Frosties cereal box is illustration.

Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

In this lecture we talked about how Auteurship is the french word for author and Avant-Garde means pushing the boundaries/rebellion against an entrenched establishment.

Also how directors will change a stories original style to make the film suitable for children i.e Disney with: Alise in Wonderland, Pinocchio and Winnie the Poo.  

Print

In this lecture we talked about print, and the history of when it came about and how used it for what.

We also talked about how if something is written on print then it mush be true.

We looked over how cave paintings were the fist print, but the first actual print wasn't until the year 1000 in Asia.  

Also in the lecture we talked about how newspapers can print lies but people will still believe them. i.e the 'Daily Star'

Genre

In our CoP seminar we talked about different genres, how many there are, what they are and how they can affect your opinions about what film, book, music and TV series we watch.

We also watched a couple of videos about how if your an adult and your watching cartoons with your child you can find subliminal messages in the cartoon which the child won't understand but the parent will.

For example: the second video we watched was a section out of 'Bugs Bunny Rides Again' when Yosemite Sam walks into a bar and starts shouting at everyone and says "Mahatma Gandhi", which the parents would of got the reference but the kids won't gave. After Gandhi's death though, they took out that line and placed it with 'namby pamby' instead.

These are a couple of videos we watched as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eo0OY8GOuc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUe_Pi8NfT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1hD9imdIJE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp0KbeNgD04

Jiri Trnka created this stop motion animation called 'The Hand'. He used a puppet for his main character and I'm guessing his own hand or someone else's hand for the other character. In this video Jiri Trnka uses dark and dirty colours to create the mood of the story, but the music he uses is more of an up beat and uses a lot of crescendo's when something is about to happen. Also he uses hidden messages in the animation like the hand having more power over the puppet guy, or the hand being a symbol for the government and the puppet guy being someone rebelling against them. For example when the hand is reshaping the clay to look like a hand but the puppet guy is constantly changing it back to the pot it once was. Another example is when the hand placed the puppet guy in a cage and made him sculpted another hand but when the main hand went away the puppet guy uses his sculpture to escape and be free. But at the end of the video the puppet guy dies and the hand ends up making a coffin out of the wardrobe for the puppet guy and surrounds him with the things he love. 

This 2D animation by Ersatz called 'Zagreb Film' an oddly shaped man is at the beach, with a load of inflatable objects at his disposal. His inflatables also included women, one which he blew up but then deflated because he didn't like her appearance and another which he had to change the size of her boobs so that she looks more attractive. After he finished sorting out the woman she came to life but wasn't attracted to the man so rejected him because of his appearance, personality and physical well being. The story is mainly based around the man chasing the woman trying to get her to go out with him, but when he doesn't achieve this he decides to deflate her back to a small shape. I think that the main message behind this video is that you can't always treat things like an object and that you can't always have things go your way.     

A History of Type

9/11 Coup Cover Album

this is a music album cover from the band called the coup, but what you may not know is that this photo was produced before 9/11 even happened. There had been a lot of conspiracies about this cover and how they might have been involved in the 9/11 attack.

Visual Literacy

In the context of practice lecture we spoke about the meaning of visual literacy, and what it means internationally how we perceive visual communicative symbols and images. visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Its also based on the idea that pictures can be read by anyone internationally in general. 

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another. For example:

A red cross (+) is the cultural image for first aid, but a green cross is internationally know for first aid.
Also shifting the colours and placement will change the meaning of the symbol e.g.