Practices of Looking: Chapter 10 - The Global Flow of Visual Culture

The Global Flow of Visual Culture

• Today two primary avenues for circulation, distribution, and consumption of images is satellite and the web
• Communication technologies allow long distance connections propose avenues for world peace
• It actually fosters the growth of multinational corporations and expansion of political influence by powerful nations
• Globalization increased the rich-poor divide
• People living in other countries than where they are born now have a connection to home through TV programs
• The web allows total circulation of products and cultures
• National borders have tightened 
• Visual culture is the key to escalated globalization

The Global Subject and the Global Gaze

• The crossing of imagery has created the idea of "global citizens"
• Space travels during the Cold War; photo's of the world were taken so it is the first time the globe has been seen in space
• NASA landed astronauts on the moon in 1968
• Earth Day was created in 1970
• In 1972, the first image of the world was released by NASA 
• The world became the icon of the peace movement symbolizing global unity and harmony
• Satellites changes our relationship with the world and how we regard ourselves with objectivity and subjectivity
• Objectivity and Subjectivity are now more intertwined with every day experiences 
• Viewing the world from the outside is omniscience and the satisfaction of locating you own small place in the world
• Photography fascination
• Remote sensing technology opened to private industry, to sell satellite imaging programs to consumers for leisure activities
• Can be used for studies like the deterioration of the glaciers
• Now adds to the understanding of mapping - people can locate themselves
• Contemporary surveillance society - for spying, and understanding location
• GPS - being able to locate yourself and more easily navigate to where someone needs to go
• Can help medical field get to where they need to go 

Cultural Imperialism and Beyond

• Cultural Imperialism - how an ideology, a politics, or a way of life is exported into other territories through cultural products
• Television can exploit political and social ideologies of larger countries over one another to promote 
• A visual way of crossing boundaries when those boundaries cannot be physically crossed
• A battle ground for control over the shaping of world news to generate foreign support
• "Facts" can be generated at a faster rate, but are highly monitored, restricted, and generated by countries
• National and global are in constant fluid tension between international opinion and global forces 

Global Brands

• increase of global marketing of american brands gave the idea of being "colonized" by American capitalism
• widely shared meanings that spread across cultural spaces
• Ex. Coca-cola, Nike, Starbucks
• With this also came the counter - resistance of the original brand and the usage of a copy
• Companies trying to promote their "global understanding" when crossing borders
• The portrayal of specific cultural and national identities under the sign of a brand
• Ex. McDonald's and China - symbol of modernity and China's new capitalism

Concepts of Globalization

• Globalization results in increased migration, the rise of multinational corporations, capital and financial networks , the development of global communications and transportation, a consequent sense of the decline of the sovereign nation-state in response to the "shrinking" of the world 
• Diaspora - ethnic communities that are separate from their country of origin
• Hybridity - the mixing of people and cultures
• deterritoralization - a separation of people from their traditional territories, often referring to a forced taking away of territory
• cosmopolitanism - subjectivities that are situated beyond the nation, identified with the global or with traveling the world
• outsourcing - of labor 
• transnationalism
• The global and the local are now interdependent
• Idea that globalization bringing neighbors "too close for comfort"
• Causes a rise in poverty and a separation between the classes
• Ethnoscapes - groups of people of similar ethnicities who move across boarders in roles such as refugees, tourists, exiles, and guest workers
• mediascapes - the movement of media texts and cultural product throughout the world
• technoscapes - the complex technological industries that circulate information
• financescapes - flow of global capital
• ideoscapes - ideologies that circulate
• analyzing this allows for critique of  exchanges between cultures
• post colonial theory - people that are in other cultures but still connected to the past cultures through Web and TV
• take into the account of the viewer and their personal experiences for circumstances of viewing

Visuality and Global Media Flow

• the genres of popular cultures travel across national boundaries
• ex. reality TV shows that are reused among different cultures like American Idol
• Franchising producers pay a fee to release the format to other cultures
• would indicate a commonality of programs, but it also changes how these shows are produced
• ex. The 007 franchise and the idea of James Bond 
• America no longer has film monopoly
• Japan - action films regarding martial arts
• India - Bollywood

Indigenous and Diasporic Media

• Immigration has become a political debate and diasporic communities have continued to grow. with homelessness looming over the US
• The geographic dispersal of people and intensified concerns about national security and autonomy
• Programming of global media environment demonstrates power of cultural products to reaffirm ethnic and local values over homogenizing forces in a communication system
• Helped link people who are geographically dispersed but preserved and reinstate cultural traditions
• "Community"television - diasporic communities - ethnic communities living in concentrations set apart from their homelands, many constitute audiences of narrowcast programing
• The Web can do the same thing television can through an illusion of "place" - a website
• ex. the Zapatista activists used global support effectively

Borders and Franchises

• had a large affect on the distribution and production of art
• The Guggenhiem being created in other countries than the US
• Post-industrialization  creates large economic contexts with economy centered on luxury, new technology and new design and new ways of doing business
• The Arab Emirates, now being a largely powerful force, started buying the luxuries such as hotels and museums for use
• Globalizing economy saw benefits of new governments and new business for cultural capital to gain importance in the world 
• marking the open boarders of trade and exchange but surveillance becomes more heavy as things cross the boarders
• Ownership and national rights still remains crucial - conflicts on legal moral rights for claims of sovereign ownership on both sides are inevitably subject to worlds view
• The material environment is crucial to understanding global view

Practices of Looking: Chapter 9 - Scientific Looking, Looking at Science

Scientific Looking, Looking at Science

• Scientific images and looking practices are dependent on cultural context and culturally informed interpretations 
• depends on social, political, and cultural meanings 
• Science images as integral to productions and meanings of images in pop culture, ads, etc
• X-rays - advances but also visually pleasing
• Origins of photography for scientific medical imaging methods
• Worldwide shift toward visual means of representing knowledge and evidence in science and growth
• the microscope and methods like dissection 
• "Seeing the Unseen" - reoccurring motif throughout science now with digital imaging involved at end of 20th century
• Ultrasound imaging - sound waves to measure the boundaries of interior soft-tissue structures translated into moving images
• Paradox - what we look at in scientific and medical imaging is not what is normally in the world of the visual
• Visualization encompass acoustic and tactile world with increased visibility of digital rendering
• Nikolas Rose - "we know life through a biomedical paradigm... experience our bodies at the scale of the molecular ... genetic code."
• life is something that can be managed and lived at this level
• understanding of diseases
• nanotechnology - life can be organized and managed on an everyday basis
• understanding the body through a network of metaphors
• The body within a framework of digital - something that can be modified, reworked, and transformed at a cellular level
• A multiplicity of tiny units in a network that can be changed through drugs
• Science and culture are always mutually engaged

The Theater of Science

• Erwin Panofsky wrote that the rise of anatomy was integral to Renaissance art
• Da Vinci - became icons of science 
• Vitruvian Man - geometry to ideal human proportions, the body is a microcosm of the universe within a the circle and the material realm the square
• Fascination with anatomy through imaging of Xray, CT scan, and MRI instead of dissection
• Anatomy Theaters - a form of spectacle through which anatomists attempted not only to educate but to entertain
• Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp in 1632 - utilizes the gaze on the book as well as the corpse; observation as pleasure
• Used composite imagery
• Wax replicas of human bodies
• Thomas Eankins's The Gross Clinic (1875) - revulsion and fascination of the body
• Visible Human Project (VHP) U.S government took 2 human bodies and sliced them, turned them into digital representations for education and mass produced it
• Body Worlds exhibition medical display of dead bodies after plastination

Images as Evidence: Cataloguing the Body

• Mechanical and electronic image-producing systems - photography, film, television, computer graphics, and digital photography bear positivism
• Positivism - belief that true and valued knowledge of the world is derived from the scientific method; advanced by Auguste Comte
• Broader ideology in thinkers questioned validity of subjective reasoning and soundless of philosophical and spiritual metaphysics as understanding the world
• Informed law, medicine, journalism, and social sciences which practitioners favor objective study 
• The camera is positivist view useful tool for mechanically observing and measuring the world that could check, balance or correct subjective human perception
• Photographic truth - camera is an objective device for capturing reality 
• photography was integrated into existing practices - documentation, preform diagnoses and see farther and better
• the body exterior is now a means of classification
• Classification 
• Linnaeus - dual system for animals that taxonomists built onto to add family, class, subspecies to the already generic and species names
• ranked according to evolution and development
• evolutionary history (phylogeny)
• could be used as a form of social organization and control or bio-power
• classification of people based on their features
• ex. prisions - fingerprinting, scanning, mugshots
• craniology - outward physical human body, the cranium mostly, could be read for signs of temperament, moral capacity, and intelligence
• claims of superiority against ethnic groups
• physiognomy - interpreting the outward appearance and configuration of the body
• used photography as a toll to refine the classification of everyday life
• modernist interpretation - pseudosciences, not true science
• post-modernist interpretation - all science, including the most advanced are no less informed by cultural ideologies
• Craniology and physiognomy is related to the science of eugenics - devoted to the practice of studying and controlling human reproduction to improve the human race
• ex. the study of criminality in people and the similar traits they were believed to share by Alphonse Bertillion
• organization of people in medical practices to compare was is normal and abnormal
• The meanings we assign to that which is visible and measurable change, but we nonetheless rely on these meanings to make claims about universal facts concerning bodies and abilities to perceive them

Imaging the Body's Interior: Biomedical Personhood

• Science promotes the concept of images seeing truths beyond the human eye giving humankind insight into the mysteries of the body
• New clinical meanings that shape the body and the understanding of it
• X-ray - relatively clear depiction of the skeleton; brings on fantasies of x-ray vision
• Ultrasound - foundation was military sonar device to record an objects location and density in a space. Also used in obstetrics and the understanding of the fetal body 
• The sonogram serves purpose beyond medicine- creates an image of the baby that adds to the social role of motherhood ex - showing others the baby as it develops
• adds to the mothers nature of wanting to protect the baby
• awards the fetus a state of personhood

Vision and Truth

• The body's interior tension between the idea that truth is self - evident in the surface appearance of things and contrast the idea that truth lies hidden in internal structures of the body that science can uncover
• looking inside to the see the "true" identity
• vision is primary avenue of knowledge and takes precedence over other senses
• ex a sonogram image is more reliable over how the woman feels
• crucially linked other activities to sight; experimenting, measuring, analyzing, and ordering
• Paradox - clinical gaze and its legacy is that vision may predominate but its nonetheless reliant on other sensory cognitive processes
• Through the imaging of the body, it is constructed through aesthetic choices
• the images of the interior evoke the idea of the sublime - think scale
• ex. colored scans of the brain

 Imaging Genetics

• The body represented in slices of imagery shows the body is transformable and malleable
• The Human Genome Project (HGP) - "map" of the human genome
• clues to the origins of everything
• paradigm through which the human body is imagined - genetics
• Genetic science isn't just about the chromosome, but identifying diseases linked genes, behavior, physical appearance etc
• now a new marker of cultural difference
• the genetic body is an accessible map 
• to identify genes but also change them is a growing field of research
• not just for diseases but for physical as well

The Digital Body

• the idea of morphing, makes it difficult to distinguish between people, collapsing boundaries between bodies
• amalgamation of race to embrace a more multicultural society, idealized
• through this stereotypes remain in place as attractive and idealized
•  Nancy Burson created portraits that can age, now used to help find missing children
• she created a series where she changed the skin color of a face that was the same 
• the growth of the idea of a cyborg
• Cyborg - an entity that is part technology and part organism
• Cybernetics - the fusion of humans with technology
• breaking down traditions of the human body - post-human
• Donna Haraway - body-technology relationship filled with potential for imagining and building new worlds both liberator and threatening

Visualizing Pharmaceuticals

• Advertising is a major way for people to receive information about medicine
• DTC, direct to consumer, - marketing that speaks directly to the consumer even though they purchase medicine through a doctor
• ethics are challenged through this promotion
• most medical professionals feel the motivation is positive
• Purpose of ad's is to continue the sales of drugs for use, need of chemical modification outside of the norm
• demanding that they get access to it
• DTC images do not show images of people getting treatments, but of happy people
• medicated citizen has become the norm

Practices of Looking: Chapter 8 - Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

Postmodernism, Indie Media, and Popular Culture

1. Simulacra and Simulation (Jean Baudrillard): rise of medial technologies making models of the real, the relationship between the model and real society shifted
1. Postmodern area lost sight of the "real": the simulator "offers all the signs of the real"
1. ex. Beijing's World park - the ability to visit a different "real" places without leaving Beijing
2. We do not live in a postmodern world; a world where postmodernity is in constant tension with modernity and premodern existence; pre and post industrial
1. Speeding of time, compression of space, etc have become conditions with flow of information and technology
2. Images becoming more real than real - hyperreality
1. Images are "sites of the disappearance of meaning and representation apart from the judgement of reality" (Baudrillard)
2. Collapse between the real and the copy around digital copies
3. Attempting to analyze effects of globalization, post-industrialization, computerization and communication with the self and world views
1. Postmodern globalization and trade

Postmodern And its Visual Cultures

1. No precise origin of postmodernism, but critics say around 1968.
1. Opinions differ whether postmodernism is a period, set of styles, or broader set of ideologies / politics
1. "Postwar cultural logic of late capitalism"- Fredric Jameson
2. Postmodernism - formative role of economic and political conditions, including postwar globalization, new information technologies, breakdown of nation-state, and postmodern modes of cultural production
3. Set of styles
4. Postmodernism - a response to the conditions of late modernity liked to late capitalism, changes in social and economic conditions. Demise of nation and state, dissolution of national sovereignty, skeptical embrase of science and technology, promotion of trade liberalization, travel importance.
5. Modernity - characterized by industrialization, value of science for achieving progress, ethos of progress and freedom with Enlightenment philosophy and political theory
6. Speed up of culture in late capitalism frames the "postmodern condition" with material and economic conditions
1. Outsourcing of labor, management for production and labor, accelerated turn over for production, new production technologies
7. Postmodern and Modernism intersect and permeate 
1. Neoliberalism - classical liberalism was revived to rationalize the use of economic and trade liberalization as a means of promoting economic growth and democratic freedom
8. The concepts of postmodernism and modernism are not period specific
9. Social aspects of poster-modernity from modernism
1. modern thought - sense of knowing was forward looking and positive; was is objectively true and real. Truth can be discovered by accessing the right channels of knowledge for structural and material basis. The questioning of meta-narratives (master narratives) 
2. postmodern thought - questioning of supposed universality of structural knowledge, skepticism about modern belief and progress. There is not one, but many truths
1. Is progress a good thing?
2. Puts all assumptions under scrutiny - social institutions
3. Meta-narratives - purports to explain society, involve inevitable linear progress toward a particular goal - enlightenment, emancipation, self-knowledge etc
4. Ethos - a set of sensibilities or a politics of cultural experiences and production 
10. Styles of modernism and post-modernism
1. modernism - critique of elitism and popular culture
2. postmodern - popular with origins - relies heavily on style and image to produce its worlds. popular culture in order to criticize that culture. Dispels idea that the surface doesn't have meaning. Emphasizes irony and ones own self involvement in low or popular culture. It complicates the divisions between high and lower culture, elite and mass consciousness; consumerism is integrated into life and identity in complex ways. Sensibilities come with technology, can be political in jaded iron
1. Politically regressive - imagines new ways of creating communities, having local and global involvement; networking, viral marketing, consumer savviness

Addressing the Postmodern Subject

1. Media texts (Postmodern) speak to viewers as subjects that are in the know about codes and conventions of simulations; someone who will not be fooled by propaganda. Understands the realm of consumer products tied to characters
1. Ex. Transformers - show with marketing and toy: futuristic world with artificial life with real toys
2. Comic books - media for children and adults
1. can readily identify with apocalyptic postmodern life in ruins of modernity
1. emerged after WW2
3. Shrek; references to other movies and fairytales
1. the constant reference and quotation; doesn't refer to real life but other texts 
2. uses mass culture and popular culture
2. The modern thought was about the new, avant-garde
3. Postmodernism everything has been done before, gets noticed as ironic

Reflexivity and Postmodern Identity

1. Modernism - the process of making the viewers aware of means of production by incorporating them into the context of the cultural product. Used  by artists as a from of political critique asking viewers about structure; distancing
2. Reflexivity - the text refers to its own means of production, undermines the illusion of fantasy aspects of the narrative, encouraging the viewer to be a critical thinker about ideology in the narrative
3. Postmodern texts
1. with humor or its not present
2. self-awareness of inevitable immersion in everyday and popular culture
1. Ex. Cindy Sherman - spectatorship, identification, female body, appropriation of the gaze
2. Nikki S. Lee - cultural immersion but her identity is still relevant - imitation through disguise
4. Irony - refers to a deliberate contradiction between the literal or dominant meaning of something and its intended meaning; contexts of appearance and reality are in conflict
5. Postmodernism embraces the surface and appearance as important aspects of meaning.
1. The surface is crucially meaningful element of social life
2. The body can be easily become transformed through workout and surgery
1. infinitely malleable 

Pastiche, Parody, and the Remake

1. Richard Dyer: pastiche is an imitation that announces itself as such and involves combining elements from other sources
1. assemblage, collage, montage, capriccio (composing that combines elements of different places)
2. often pilfers from history and historical meaning; questioning of the original
3. Can also fall into the category of parody
4. The remake of something in different mediums
5. The re-evaluation of the dialogue of the past
1. Ex. Sherrie Levine - rephotographed famous images and referred to them as her own
2. Ex. The Simpsons - constantly drawing from other parts of popular culture
3. Ex. Jeff Wall - derived a photograph from a Hokusai print
4. Ex. Boltanski's work on holocaust

Indie Media and Postmodern Approaches to the Market

1. Changes that have taken place in the production, dissemination, and marketing of media forms
1. Independent film and media on the web - through redefinition of authorship and relationship to production, distribution, and consumption
1. Indie film makers in the 80's used reflexive narrative form
1. play the line between counter-culture and culture critic
2. Fragmentation of the market leads to growth of independent sector
1. Music and bypassing restrictive record labels and contracts
1. Ex. Radiohead's free release of In Rainbows
1. The ability to work within the accepted system of the free market
2. Working within the framework to achieve publicity
2. Postmodernism as politics that relies on style for its expression, runs the risk not only of reducing real social conditions to mere media effects but reducing the political expression to image

Postmodern Space, Geography and the Built Environment

1. Rise of urbanization and communication technologies creating separation of time and space and a distinction between space and place while creating new space experiences
1. Ex. Second life - online social network site based on the real experiences of the people in the site
2. "nonplace" a physical space that demands less presence of people within it
3. Space in postmodernism are sites of distraction and waiting, being en route to somewhere else, spaces in which people are connected virtually
4. Postmodernism critical of architecture 
1. clean and stripped down design - minimalism and functionalism (modernism)
2. Appropriation from past - postmodernism 
3. Contextualization of borrowing older styles - playful orientation 
1. Ex the Sony building by Philip Johnson
4. Architecture as functional; plays within modern design

Practices of looking: Chapter 7 - Advertising, Consumer Cultures, and Desire

Advertising, Consumer Cultures, and Desire

• Logos - signs, pictograms, or characters that represent a brand
• Consumers are now accustomed to looking at the imagery
• advertisers have to create new ways for consumers to look at imagery so it is absorbed
• Advertisements could be presented as art pieces
• Attempt to bridge social gaps between consumers
• Consumerism is deeply apart of daily life

CONSUMER SOCIETIES

• Consumerism grew out of capitalism
• Capitalism depends on the production and consumption of large amounts of goods, even beyond daily living
• Consumer choice
• choosing among different types of a similar object
• Consumer culture grew from late 19th and early 20th century rise of mass production in the industrial revolution
• Increased industrialization in late 19th century meant decrease in number of small entrepreneurs and large increase in manufacturers
• people traveling farther to work
• some items the workers are making they can't afford to buy
• Consumerism is tied to mobility of people and the growth of urban centers
• Constant demand for new products
• The capitalist economy is dependent on overproduction, which requires desire but not necessarily need
• can increase the image of a person to own an item 
• Consumerism and people living in proximity to one another as well as the growth of online shopping go hand in hand
• online shopping for brands like Victoria's Secret
• Stores like Walmart
• And trade sites like Craigslist
• The growth of the separation of workplace and home created a larger gender separation between man and woman.
• Man in the work place is one consumer
• Woman at home is another consumer
• In consumer societies: people gain identity and self worth from the items they purchase
• denotes a value shift
• T.J Jackson Lears "therapeutic ethos": from a work ethic, civic responsibility, self denial, saving to ideas of leisure, spending, individual fulfillment, and betterment through goods.
• Advertisements increasingly speak to problems of anxiety and identity crisis and offer a solution through their product
• The product offers "therapeutic ethos" when someone purchases the product for us to relieve some anxiety / stress
• Different societies have different consumerism holds
• Postwar Japan - loss of imperial monarchy and security
• China - self fulfillment but it conflicts with societal ideals (socialist society)
• The shopping arcades that were created in Paris, Milan and Berlin to separate the shopper from the outside world and create it as an experience helped shape the consumer experience and culture
• The rise of the "department store" late 19th century
• a designed experience for consumer shopping
• Visual codes for pleasure are born - window shopping
• Flanuer - a figure who moves through a city in an anonymous fashion and who's primary activity is looking. The female word is flaneuse, which happens later because of societal views
• The rise of panorama's, dioramas, and photography grow at this time to increase the action of looking
• Billboards increased now with the necessity of the automobile for transportation, the billboards grew beyond the urban city
• Billboards during the Great Depression were incorporated into documentary photographs
• Margaret Bourke-White - African American victims of a flood line up in front of a billboard showing a happy, white, consumerist family in a brand new car
• Catherine Gudis - the billboard was designed for the consumer on the move - quick
• Advertising grew from the industrial cities to the suburban landscapes to get the attention of people on the move
• The growth of the idea of being a good consumer, is to be a good consumer
• Lizabeth Cohen; "consumers republic" economic and social context. Consumerism is understood as the primary avenue for achieving freedom, democracy, and equality
• Consumerism is a paradox -  the needs of commodities are never truly fulfilled and the market lures us into wanting more

ENVY, DESIRE, AND BELONGING

• Advertisements speak language of transformation
• the consumers lives will change through purchasing something
• alleviate dissatisfaction
• Attachment of art can give connotation of prestige, tradition, and authenticity
• people must have cultural knowledge to understand the reference
• Cultural capital - cultural knowledge that gives you social advantages: Pierre Bourdieu
• economic capital - material well and access to goods
• social capital - whom you know
• symbolic capital - prestige, celebrity
• value is awarded in capitalist societies not through money but forms of knowledge that are apart of an elite social contexts
• Advertising relies on consumer relationships
• signifier (the product)
• signifier ( its meaning)
• using cultural significant images like the concept of America would make the person feel like a good citizen
• the idea of a happy family being held together by a product
• Ads establish norms or un-norms
• racial boundaries of skin color
• the mix of racial boundaries can bring a cultural sophistication
• Jacques Lacan - the lack 
• something missing from our lives that we seek from the moment we realize that we are separate from our mothers. 
• this lack can never be fully filled - advertisements play into the roll of consumerism and try to help us fill the "lack"

COMMODITY CULTURA ND COMMODITY FETISHISM

• Consumer culture = commodity culture
• culture in which commodities are central to cultural meaning
• Commodities - things that are bought and sold in a system of exchange
• we construct our identities through consumer products
• Stuart Ewen "commodity self"
• constructed through the use of commodities
• Advertising encourages customers to think the objects show their personality 
• through branding
• Commodities are given meaning and value
• general analysis of role of economics can be understood through Marxist theory
• capitalism is a system of values that most societies understand
• Marxist theory
• Commodities have both use value - the particular use in society-  and exchange value - the cost of the item -
• capitalist society is based on the exchange value over the use value
• the ticket over the experience
• Items we can not live without - food
• mass produced loaf of bread costs less than the nice artisan bread but have the same use value
• clothes, probably created in the same place, have the same use value but different exchange values
• now the ideas of commodity self must be taken into consideration for ideological thoughts
• Commodity fetishism - emptied with the meaning of production and filled with new meanings to mystify the product to become a fetish object
• linked with logos and advertising
• Productions of goods have become increasingly outsourced to developing nations around the world
• price of shipping goods fell with the outsourcing of labor
• most of the clothing sold in the US is made in countries like China, Korea, Indonesia where working conditions are poor
• Fetishism
• a Miata ad - promotes masculine affirmation, speed, fantasy of mastery of control through commodity self
• Nike ad  for women's shoes - they will help you look good while you are working out and looking "bad"
• Nike outsourced labor to poor conditions and went against what they were as a company, caused an outcry 
• corporations have been forced to pay greater attention to consumer critiques 
• Coca-cola - created programs to help the worker
• the effects the outsourcing had on the chocolate industry and children labor laws and enslavement during 2005
• American Apparel keeps the labor in the country and paid well.
• Also known for scandals in sexual ad campaigns
• Abercrombie & Fitch has the same lawsuit issues only hiring white models
• Critics look at consumption as symbolic of pop culture
• illustrators in the industry
• Stuart Davis work Lucky Strike - comments on culture using cubist style to bring a modern aesthetic to cubism
• Andy Warhol - the Campbell's soup cans
• banality of pop culture with familiarity of the Campbell's logo
• Roy Lichtenstein - blowing up comic images

BRANDS AND THEIR MEANINGS

• Brands are product names that have meaning attached to them through naming, packaging, advertising, and marketing
• promotion under brand names - become symbolic of the companies services
• trademarking to protect companies from infringements or knock offs
• Artists can be employed by advertising agencies to promote a product and change the meaning of the product, denote high class
• A brand is a product name we know about, and can change meaning over time based off of advertising campaigns
• Logos and visual style are crucial to overall meanings of brands - can be shown through visual motifs
• ex. ipod silhouette campaign
• Consumers create deep, sometimes emotional, connections to their brands - the identity is no longer the signifier, the identity is the product we consume
• the brand is irreplaceable
• over branding so that is all we think of when using a specific item
• a kleenex

THE MARKETING OF COOLNESS

• Advertisers began to see themselves as creative professionals in the 1960's and not as scientific minds
• emerging emphasis on youth culture and the increased mobility of consumer culture
• using counter culture to help give advertisements attitude
• association with youth culture and branding to give a sense of coolness 
• creation of constant turn over of goods - blurring mainstream and marginal subcultures
• devices become dated in short periods of time so the consumer can move to the next youthful / cool item
• changing advertising - the Ketel One ad that comments on itself
• the idea of being "environmentally savvy" or being socially aware through advertising
• the person who buys these products becomes an advertisement for these ideas, makes them feel the "lack"
• Using the web as a form of advertising - most media attention comes from the internet
• Guerilla Marketing - "stealth" marketing
• Now the focus is utility over goodness - how to connect with others, how does something benefit the consumer further

ANTI ADS AND CULTURE JAMMING

• Artists can use their abilities to critique popular culture - Hans Haacke
• Culture jamming - legacy of situationist artists and writers in France in 60's - political interventions of daily life to counter the passivity of alienation of modern live
• "detournement" - rewriting messages 
• doing this on billboards

Practices of Looking: An introduction to Visual Culture; Chapter 6 - Media in Everyday Life

Chapter 6

MEDIA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

• Visual culture has an interesting way of needing to include others into the processes of technologies.
• ex. going to the movie theaters - watching a film in a large room with other people
• the feeling of a misplaced cell phone - the loss of possible communication devices 
• think about this in comparison to the past... How has this caused changed?
• How media forms have now changed our way of living

THE MASSES AND MASS MEDIA

• "the masses" - 19th century describes changes in society through industrialization and a large working class. This has influence of opinion and social practice
• Emile Durkhiem - the masses and crime
• collective evaluation and judgement of actions of people determining crimes
• the mass response shapes classification of laws, judgement, etc
• Media theory - masses was negative; people that are undifferentiated accepting and uncritical of media practices and messages from cooperations
• Modernity - the industrial of the urban environment. People becoming less inclined to interact with one another (family setting), their personal identity becomes the identity of the large company they work for
• People of members of mass society - changes the way the broadcast forms are viewed
• Monolithic mass culture - a result of television broad casts and the importance of the news paper to receive information
• Mass Media - used since the 1920's to describe medial forms that reach large audiences
• Primary forms; radio, network and cable TV, cinema, and press
• VISUAL IMAGES WERE PRIMARY SOURCE OF INFO
• The technology changes from 80's to the 00's have increased the many facets people can get their information from; altering the view of how people can consume information and shows that they are not a large group but smaller groups that have similar interests (people now seem to have say)
• Social impacts of this; literacy has changed. Originally the written word was a primary way of communication (showing only those with education could be privileged to know whats going on). Critics argue that radio and TV control this more by restricting authorship through production and consumerism
• Jean Baudrillard - cyberblitz (unpredictable media forms)
• Robert Rauschenberg - 1963 silkscreen and tension between imagery. Juxtaposition of imagery in one piece to create the tension and frame what Kennedy was doing to make his point ( Retroactive 1)
• Shepard Fairey - iconic image of Barack Obama was created with him in similar position to Kennedy in most of the imagery that was used for him. This becomes now a reference to the political party

MEDIA FORMS

• Medium - a means of mediation or communication - a neutral or intermediary form through which messages pass. Also refers to specific technologies through which the messages are transmitted
• Media - group of communications industries and technologies that together produce and spread public news, entertainment, and information. An extension of the body (a car)
• Marshall McLuhan - 1960's medium is any extension of ourselves through a technological form
• Not possible to separate info, messages, and meanings from the media technologies that convey them
• Thinking about watching a film at the movies and then watching the DVD at home
• Television - the medium of distraction
• Watching TV as a social activity that is in constant change depending on the viewer and the spaces it is located. Many people could participate in watching TV
• Judging the media based on the position the medium stands in relation to older and newer median and on cultural assumptions about reliability and whether a network or show is primarily oriented toward entertainment
• Perception of TV can be based on many cultural opinions and ideals and they affect how we see and judge the information as the viewer
• How reality TV has changed perception - what that is doing
• The change of information shift from monolithic to a more centralized form of understanding

BROADCAST, NARROWCAST, AND WEBCAST MEDIA

• Broadcast - one central source broadcasting a signal to many venues. Post WW2 era was a broadcast system
• Narrowcast - targeted audience via cable or other means. Heading into the 70's and 80's, community- based programing after 20 years of near absence; specialty cable channels
• Providing more networks isn't the same thing are more venues for different voices and opinions. There is the issue of stereotyping
• The addition of the internet turned into multidirectional communication and people are now "users" and not passive viewers
• ex. YouTube and the views a video that someone posted could accumulate
• This leads to people posting videos and large companies picking people up and hiring them to create something for their company
• Appropriated images are now common and are bending around laws
• Majority taste - your popularity or the popularity of the appropriated image can gain fame
• Developing programs for charity because of the web and media to help students learn in poorer area's have more access to knowledge/ media

THE HISTORY OF MASS MEDIA CRITIQUES

• Mass media grew with industrialization, caused growth in urban centers; causes theorists to state that identity becomes centralized through technology
• Mass media function as a tool of cultural imperialism with political ethos being advertised through the airwaves
• embrace and promote the political system through media system
• Mass broadcasting is born - same message across national boundaries
• Timothy Havens; market drives decisions about program choices to viewers globally
• John Fiske; pop culture and mass media changed the flower of information to make it more available for non-literate people. 
• Ien Ang; the media will continue to lump people into mass groups of interests but they will not fully understand the identity of the person watching
• Robert McChesney; new technologies serve as powerful tool for propaganda
• the US had the television become a private device that people enjoyed in their homes
• Most other countries, at the intro of television, had TV only in public spheres to be viewed with others
• "Hypodermic needle": direct and immediate effect the media has on audiences 
• Spectacle - an event or image that is particularly striking in the visual display to the point of inspiring awe in viewers
• spectacle as a metaphor for society - how we live is an ongoing spectacle
• "Cultural industry"is an entity that bot creates and caters to a mass public that no longer sees the difference between the real and the illusory world that media generates
• Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno critique high and low culture of mass media and fine art in contrast to each other
• the media is forcing the people to obey the dominant social order of things to allow capitalist growth
• Frankfurt School: culture is now a commodity that creates pseudo-individuality
• they also set up the high and low culture separation of media and art, claiming that even high art is low because of the mass media production
• There is no longer one mass audience but sub audiences that change change the industry

MEDIA AND DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL

• The positive side to media - communications could be used to empower the people and strengthen the idea of democracy
• public access cable television - 3 required channels set in 1972
• Challenges the idea of mass media
• Marshall McLuhan argues television and radio are just extensions of the person, allowing them to access more information 
• "the medium is the message" - listening or watching can give a sense of empowerment\
• guerilla television - showing the opposing side to popular political view
• Web 2.0 - the blog and trade sites such as eBay change information retrieving to a person-to-person interaction

MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

• The viewing public, national public, and global public, interconnected through media
• Michael Warner a "public" can be defined as " a space of discourse, which involved a relation among strangers. in which public speech is both personal and impersonal, a social space constituted in 'reflexive circulation of discourse'. 
• With the web information spreads at a much faster rate 
• The public and private market separate from the political market
• To a degree the political market is always present
• separation of gender, race, and class must be rethought
• women in the home and men in public business, commerce, political arena
• A public sphere is a space - physical social setting or media setting - where citizens can come together and debate about society
• Walter Lippman; the idea is a "phantom" people cannot keep in-tune to the political sphere with constant industrial change
• Jurgen Habermas: the ideal public sphere from bourgeois society; private persons coming together to discuss public interest that is mediated over by the state
• the public sphere is compromised by other forces within society; consumer culture, mass media rise, and intervention of state, family, and home
• public space where private interests are inadmissible
• The public sphere is not real because it is partially based on exclusion of other races, genders, and ethnicity's other than white male
• Oscar Negt and Alexander Kluge wrote critique of Habermas to include media; industries and alternative. They also focused more on the "working class"
• Contemporaries propose the idea of multiple public spheres and counter spheres
• Nancy Fraser - the feminist counter-sphere
• counter-public - subordinate in some way to the dominant public sphere but can still speak up in some way
• they can overlap one another

NATIONAL AND GLOBAL MEDIA EVENTS

• Benedict Anderson; 1983 wrote that " modern nation-state is an imagined political community - limited and sovereign
• imagined because most people wont know their fellow members
• television is central to national identity
• sense of participation in events 
• the importance of experiencing events at the same time
• the event of 9/11
• the quickness of the media knowing the information
• the connection between the passengers on the plane and the internet
• the connection between the passengers and their families
• the videographer

CONTEMPORARY MEDIA AND IMAGE FLOWS

• Newspapers, magazines, television and web are owned by major media conglomerates
• Results in direct censorship of images
• Specific stories could reflect negatively on the companies/countries
• boundaries of opinion
• Censorship of peoples faces within possible political imagery of the faces of soldiers
• Constant negotiation of power

Karl Marx Capital: A Critique on the Political Economy

Capital _ A critique of political economy

Section 1 – The two factors of a commodity: Use value – and value

A commodity – an object that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another

Objects being viewed for their quality and quantity

The amount of objects that are produced and their quality are in a relationship

So for example the commodity of iron depends on the labor required to get this object which supplies the use value.

Use value is based off of what the commodity is, how it was achieved, and what class in society can favor this object

Exchange value – the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort in relation to constant change of time and place ( the value of the American dollar from America to UK)

Value is relative

Intrinsic value

The use of the commodity and its exchange in relation to how it can be used by specific people geographically or financially

They are all products of labor – the jobs and effort put into the development of the commodities will always be present and adds to the value. But the labor is often forgotten because of the sheer importance of the object, not the labor

When commodities are exchanged, the exchange value becomes separate from the use-value, representing the actual value of the object

Use-value is measured by the labor put into creating the commodity

The value of a commodity would remain constant if the labor-time required for its production remained constant

THE VALUE OF THE COMMODITY LIES DIRECTLY AS THE QUANTITY AND INVERSELY AS THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF THE LABOR INCORPORATED IN IT

Section 2 – The twofold character of the labor embodied in commodities

Commodities have two-fold: use-value and exchange value

Labor – twofold: expression in value and does not possess same characteristics that belong to is as a creator of use-values

The labor put into a coat is what gives the coat the value it has as a want

The division of labor is a necessary condition for the production of commodities – there is a contained useful labor to create the commodities; there fore the use-value lies in the person that creates the object

The value system of what is considered to be good labor or poor labor ex. the blue collar job vs the white collar job

An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of material wealth

Section 4 – The Fetishism of commodities and the secret thereof

The concept of a person’s labor power transforming the original object into a different object that becomes a commodity like a table.

The commodity is the extension of the function of humans, so the intrinsic value becomes dominant and important. The action of labor and human extension turns the object into a social object, giving additional values based on human interests

The social character of the person adds the social value to the commodity

The definite social relationship between people and the objects that they own, create, trade etc leads to the fetishism of the object; how people can value the object and how its ideas change

The labor of the objects does not become important until the producer of the object places it into the market for purchase (exchange) thus the value of the object is not fully realized until that moment

The product must be not only useful, but useful for others and the social character that is particular labor has of being the equal of all other particular kinds of labor take the form that all the physically different kinds of labor that are products of labor have value – so regardless of the status of the persons exchanging or creating the object, that value still remains a constant factor and end result

Personal dependence characterizes the social relations of production – society doesn’t necessarily need someone to produce objects but they are produced and bought anyway.

The production of goods for a family themselves does not necessarily count as commodity anymore- it’s the objects that are helping them survive; they are making these items for themselves changing the purpose and value of the objects

The power of the class has taken control of the purpose of the commodity in relation to objects. The objects have value because the controlling party says so and that value is based off of what those people think the value of that specific working class has

Chapter 10, Section 1 – the limits of the working day

Labor power is bought and sold as its value and its value is determined by the working time necessary to its production

The working day is not constant but a variable quantity depending on the working day of the person creating the commodity

Capital value – the worker is the face of the capital, his soul and ideal as a person lies in that capital work. The work hours are unknown and are dependent on what the capital needs

The person buying the object is also buying the power of the person creating the object

Section 2 – The Greed for Surplus Labor – Manufacturer and Boyard

The man that works to create commodities must also take his own work effort to survive – any additional tasks the help the person run the household

The production of surplus labor – when a consumerist country needs more of a commodity, people are expected to work longer but their value of life is not always regarded

The works is nothing but personified labor time – “moments are the elements of profit”: the time that is placed into the work is where the value and money value of the object comes from

Modernism Question

How much has the conversation of collage from modernism, to post-modernism truly changed and how does this (focusing mostly on technique) challenge he separation of modernism to post-modernism?

Practices of Looking and Viewing - Chapter 5: Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction, and the Copy

Reproduce the appearance of objects, people, events

A copy of an original work

Marxist theory

The ways that cultural practices and their forms of expression reproduce the ideologies and interests of the ruling class

Technology and social constructions

Visual Technologies

Intro of the camera

Changes the way we see and how we use images

Technology does not determine social change

US military government using technology in 1971 internet would eventually be used around the world

Technologies interacting with people and social contexts resulting in changes in technologies

Visual technologies emerge out of particular social and epistemic context – possibility precedes their development

Origin of photography raises the question not who invented it, but “at what moment did photography become an occasional, isolated fantasy, to a social imperative?”

Photography emerged as a popular medium because of particular social demands of 19^th century

Modern ideas about technical progress, time, contain nature and landscape in reproducible form,

Motion and Sequence

1880’s visualize movement – cant be grasped by unaided eye

The horse and the hove experiment

Muybridge scientific studies of the movement of the human body

Development of cinema came from these studies

Projection machines – Zoetropes  - designed off of the camera obscura

Stereoscope – instrument from 19^th century offered 2 separate views from the same scene to give the illusion of depth and space

Kinescope – 1891 from Edison, stand in front of a peep hold and watch a private projection

The public space theater grew from this model

Cinema – temporality, movement and sound to photography to make a narrative for story telling

Griffth and Porter

Silent period

30’s and 40’s shots were eventually linked together through accuracy

Cinematic meaning derived not from the individual film but through the linking together of images – representing passage of time

20^th century – representation shift again with development of electronic media – television

builds on previous technologies

Image Reproduction

The copy isn’t new – Egyptians

The value of the original

Unique original object with meaning and value tied to the place it lived

Value is key for status of reproductions

Understood as a system of limited value

Print series – a limited number

William Ivins – social impact of the printing press and discovery of how to print pictures has a greater potential affect on modern life

Invention of photography with cult of originality

Daguerreotype – the negative and the positive of a photo

1800’s

The original material for reproduction in photography comes from the negative – holds great value.

Works with too strong of a reference to technology can be devalued

Roland Barthes – unique affinity with the real or “noeme”

Philosophy of sensory experience – root of being and knowledge

Conventional photo – the space the image is taken in

The light that hits the objects is what’s original

The photo is the empirical evidence of being

Photography was not originally a form of art

Cameron – photography with a painterly look

Cunningham, Adams, and Weston – photographs looked like paintings

Walter Benjamin and Mechanical Reproduction

Benjamin – German critic in the 20^th century associated with Frankfurt school

1936 – cultural shift of reproducible forms of art

photography and film – no original work to speak of but rather as series of copies that stand in place of an original work

change from centuries of emphasis on uniqueness and authenticity

could be democratizing force engaged in fluid politics

value of ownership and the artifact based on the states of the work as a commodity

became a large part of art making practices

The aura- its value is from the uniqueness and role in ritual – the reproduction lacks its presence in time and space

The authenticity of the aura cannot be reproduced

Authenticity – quality that clings to the idea of classic type of category of people or icons

Second nature in culture to alter

Meaning of the original work is changed after it is reproduced

The value of work now lies in the aesthetic, cultural and social worth

Digital images have no original

Benjamin

Reproduction of a single image  has affect on mean and value

Mechanical reproducibility changes relationship to rituals, meaning use, and value

Politics of Reproducibility

1930s – reproducibility was used for propaganda for the Nazi Party

can circulate with political meaning

photo-collage to make political statement in new way

can heighten the message

Ex socialism in Cuba and the mass reproduction of Che

Symbolizes occurs through reuse of the same imagery

Raises issues of copy right and ownership

Challenges uniqueness

the addition of text to image

Copies, Ownership, and Copyright

Ownership rights

Legal management of intellectual property

Flow of copies shape ideas that constitute legit use

Copy right means “the right to copy” – the rights to distribute, produce, copy, display, perform, create and control

Grants legale protection to the expression of an idea – not the idea itself

Ownership of the painting belongs to the creator itself unless its done for hire

The ownership its transferred when its sold, but the right to reproduce is not

The rights to the expression of the idea as well extras still remain with the artist

In photo it can be negotiated but are not normally transferred with a painting

Presence of forgeries grew

Otto Wacker – was able to mimic everything accept for the true style of Van Gogh’s work

The life of a copy is not necessarily extending the life of a work

The possibility of stealing or changing a persons identity based on the recreation of a work

Copy right laws regulate but do not rule out reproduction entirely

Does not include the ability to exploit the persona of people or group depicted by an image

What constitutes transformation versus appropriation of another images production

Changing the value of a work

92 Case of rogers v Koons – koons took an image photo by another artist and recontextualized it for his own work, a kitsch sculpture

a parody – reflection of a broader style

A trademark – a symbol, word, or phrase used to identify  a manufactures product

Ex. Nike “swoosh” logo

Reproduction and the Digital Image

Digital camera has no negative – no original only the immediate date that gets put into code and viewed quickly on the camera

The use of Photoshop and creation of photo shoot to have the ability to artificially construct realism

“What changed the digital photograph is not the ability to manipulate the image but, the wide availability and accessibility of these techniques to the middle class consumer, making not just image production but also image reproduction and alteration an everyday action of consumer experience”

Everything moving towards digital space for storage so imagery won’t be lost – but can be used by multiple sources due to wide internet access

The image could be created entirely on the computer without any photograph at all

What constitutes a visual record of something, and what counts as from

Digital images create a new kind of value – “input value”

Painting changed in response based off of the digital use of the camera and incorporates what is seen from the cameral into work

Ex. chuck close and his grid paintings based off of the camera and pixilation

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

- quote from beginning about the physical component of art no longer being treated as it used to be

1

·      basic conditions of reproduction exploit the middle class

·      Without the different levels of society there would be no point in distinguishing the classes

·      The mechanical reproduction of art is a new form of reproduction; imitation of something

·      Lithography creation: mass reproduction becomes easier through the process of wood cuts

·      The eye perceives more swiftly than it can draw; pictorial reproduction is accelerated

·      1900’s for mass production has now made way for its own ways of recreation.

2

·      reproductions lack the aura, presence and time and space

·      The idea of authenticity is born and the possibility as forgery of a work of art; for it to be replicated and lose its original touch

·      The reproduction of the work of art destroys the idea of tradition and the use of art for tradition

3

·      “The manner in which human perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.” Meaning history has play into how people will know how to look at a work of art and respond to it and the reproduction

·      Reality of something is no longer unique because it can be reproduced

4

·      The uniqueness of a work of art is still embedded in tradition of a work of art

·      Categorizing art based on its social functions, not necessarily the use for rituals

·      Mechanical reproduction removed the purpose of ritual use for art

5

·      Two planes grow: The cult following or use of an image and then how it is exhibited

o   The cult makes it a private viewing

o   The exhibition gives new coconscious functions

6

·      Rival value of photography for the use of reproduction and for personal gain or value ex a picture of family

7

·      Painting vs Photography

o   Photography is a “sterile” copy when painting still has a barrier of separation to the creation process

8

·      Film and the separation of the actor and the stage

·      The audience can now critique the work without developing personal relationships

9

·      The actor is now in front of a camera and not people, so the aura of the man is removed. The personal connection with viewer and actor is gone because of the mechanical camera

10

·      People who now able to reproduce the film, they lose connection

·      People are now experts of what they see; they can critique and become part of the film process

11

·      Film prevents one solid view or vantage point to be realized when watching. There are many more elements that go into making a film that were not present in the past

·      The film maker is now extremely close to the world and brings forth a new reality that a painter can’t achieve because of the use of the medium

12

·      The painting can be viewed by one person or a small group of people and thought about on an internal level

·      Film creates a larger scale connection between viewers and enjoyment, creating a larger space for critique

13

·      The use of film brings forth more scientific detail than that of the painter; making people look closer into the use for their lives

14

·      Dadaism is created; the destruction of aura by taking a mush of different materials to create work that looks like a reproduction

·      Through their use of collage and compiling, the Dadaists recreate what film can do; give lots of little bits of information at once

The use of technology is how the futurists refer to as war; people are not successfully incorporating the use of technology into their work and it is used as something supplemental and not vital. It changes the way that people interact with technology and how it is viewed