Study task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts (OUAN401)

Analysis of Texts: 'First things first manifesto' 1964 & 2000.

Points made in text;

- The 1964 manifesto identifies that society has become saturated in consumer advertising.

- The 1964 manifesto states that there is a consensus of designers who think that there are things that designers/visual communicators think are more worth spending their time on, other than for advertising purposes.

- The 1964 manifesto states that designers believe they are told that advertising is the best means for using their skills.

- (2000 Manifesto) The bombardment on the public of commercial images is having a negative affect on how people in society interact with eachother.

- (2000 Manifesto) visual communicators/designers who signed the manifesto believed that at that time there were great issuses present that they should be using their skills to address and make change for the better.

Key Quotes;

- 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention'

- 'it is changing the very way citizen consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. to some extent we are helping draft a reductive and immeasureably harmful code of public discourse'

- 'the most lucrative effective desirable means of using our talents'

- 'We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on.'

- 'we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise'

Tone of voice

I  think the tone of both the 1964 and 2000 manifestos is very much a tone of frustration with how visual communicators are being sold out in the way that most of their time and effort is spent on consumerist advertising for items that are in-essential - making them feel like their efforts are in a way meaningless,like the only purpose of thier work is to sell consumer products that have no real meanigful value.

Analysis

in the first things first manifesto, 1964 it is identified that in society the general public has come to a point whereby the visual landscape of the public's surroundings has been inundated with a bombardment of consumerist advertising to the point at which it loses all true value as individual pieces of communication, as this quote suggests, ' we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise.'
the manifesto also expresses that the signatories feel that there is a need to re-focus their attention/re-direct their skills into pieces of communication that have more meaning behind them and could serve a better purpose, 'we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication'.
the signatories also stated in their manifesto that they believe designers and students are taught in a way that describes advertisement as being the epitome of employability for people with such a skillset with many individuals who hold such a midset praisingthose who have turned their cretivity towards prucing advertising for in-essential consumer products, 'we have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination.
in the updated , 2000 first things first manifesto, the signatories state that the constant bombardement of commercialism on the public has had negative effects on how the people in society intereact with one another, i quote ' to some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.'.
in the 2000 manifesto, the signatories believed that at that time these were significant issues present that they felt they should be focusing their skills on adressing, 'unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention.'

The History Of Image - CoP Lecture Summary (OUAN401)

In  this lecture it was brought to light that there is still a mysticism that surrounds visual communication, this can be traced back to the earliest forms of communication - The Lascaux caves, France are home to cave paintings that are said to be the embodiment of animal spirits, dating back approx. 17,000 years.
This mysticism and shamanic quality surrounding visual communication has transcended time, we can see this when we loo a the art of somebody like Rothko, who's paintings are said to have a depressive affect on the people looking at them - to me this is where shamanism can be said to play a part in visual communication - Rothko was able to, in my eyes, embed a part of his consciousness/psyche into his work that, for those who are more emotionally/spiritually attuned, are able to pick up on.
This mysticism can also be found shrouding one of the worlds most famous paintings- 'the mona lisa' - there is much fascination surrounding this painting, yet it is one of the most well known images in collective memory. This suggests to me that the mysticism arises from the elitism that we find in art galleries- that somehow the art is exclusive and reserved for the wealthy.
'The Mona Lisa' is a good example of how reproduction of an image can re-contextualize it, put it into public hands. Marcel Duchamp and Banksy are artists that have shown you can re-contextualize an image through reproduction.
In this lecture i have learnt that as a visual communicator you have the potential to change opinion, in society, culture, through images and image making.

CoP 1 - Study Task 1 - Comparative Analysis, 'Duck Amuck' & 'Fresh Laid Plans'

In 'duck amuck' we see that the animator/s are trying to show us that animation doesn't just focus on the character performing on screen, but the world in which the character is placed and how that character interacts with it's surroundings. In the animation the character on screen is faced with the removal of any setting/scene and so he addresses the animator in charge of providing that setting to do so accordingly, animated brushes and pencils come in and out of shot producing a chaotic series of different scenes, the character on screen asks why this is happening and asks the animator to cooperate with him in constructing the usual linear formula of story telling.
At the end of the animation it is revealed to the audience the reason why the animator was not cooperating with the character on screen, it is revealed to us that another character -who's personality gives the character tendencies to be uncooperative- is the one who was animating the different scenes.
The way Daffy Duck asks the animator what he is doing with his world makes me grasp on to connotations associated to the historical context from which the animation comes from, perhaps the animation carries with it a message to the public to question authority on what they were doing at that time in 1953, close to the beginning of the cold war, where there were many covert operations and paranoia amongst the government agencies of the US.
In 'fresh laid plans' it becomes apparent that the animation is a propaganda cartoon aimed at children, which uses the agricultural industry as an example of how having a centralized authoritarian system - such as communism- can affect the participants within that system.
The animation explains simply how having prices, wages and profits fixed with commodities rationed for the purpose of an equal society can backfire with the criminalisation of the free market which becomes 'the black market' -there is a segment in the animation where a sinister character crosses out a 'free market' sign with the words 'black market'- as businesses collapse due to illegal trading, the economy suffers and this angers the public to the point of an uprising against the oppressive regime.
The message in this anti-communist propaganda film is that through communism comes tyranny- economic tyranny whereby people are trapped/ unable to progress economically as wages are stagnated and profits are limited.
This is interesting, as if we compare this paradigm/ narrative to what is the current paradigm -that being free market fundamentalism- we see that what was thought to arise from communism has presented itself under capitalism. This is due to massive inequality caused by large corporations forcing out small businesses who are unable to compete with their higher productivity, higher prices, low production costs and immense profits. And as people are unable to compete in the market they struggle to progress economically.
When comparing the two animations I ask myself: How do the animations differ? What are the similarities between them?
'Duck Amuck' & 'Fresh Laid Plans' both share a similar aesthetic in their animations that was popular in the fifties, I think this caters more to a young audience due to the sense of playfulness and slapstick comedy within it.
The two animations differ in their subject matter, however I feel the subject matters of the two are connected by, one could say, the historical context from which they both come from(1950's, cold war era, anti-communist propaganda, covert ops, etc)
Inherently the two animations share a similarity in the way they communicate their message, you could say that the messages that these two animations are trying to communicate are communicated to the audience almost subconsciously- covertly.
Another comparison can be made between the two in regards to the techniques behind them. Both animations, I think, use the process of straight ahead animation combined with pose to pose animation. I come to this conclusion due to segments in both animations where movements are transitioning from ridgid movement to movements that have more fluidity in the way that characters/objects move.

Lecture 1 - notes on visual literacy.

In the first lecture of the programme i have learnt that we as a society- globally - share a common visual language of some form, the meanings of certain symbols and signs can change quite substantially when manipulated as this, depending on the manipulation taking place, can create many different interpretations based on cultural/contextual references.
i also learnt that while we all use visual literacy in some way, we may not be fully aware that we are using our visual literacy skills, for example - understanding a disabled parking sign or any road sign.
Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate and make meaning from information represented by an image.
Colour association also plays a big part in our understanding of visual literacy, for example, the colours blue and pink are often used for gender association.