On Thursday before class, I'd like you to post a short analysis of a podcast that you have listened to. See the side-bar for links to "This American Life" or "The Moth," but feel free to peruse other podcasts as well.
150-200 words. Tell us what you listened to and what elements you noticed that went into the composition.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Berger and McCloud
McCloud: Your thoughts.
Why is this relevant to what we are doing for the project?
Berger:
On the use of perspective in painting:
"The convention of perspective... centers everything on the ey of the beholder."
"The conventions call those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity." "The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God." (p. 16)
How the camera shook things up. "I, the machine, show you a world the way only I see it":
"The camera isolated momentary appearances and in do doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless." (p. 17)
"[T]he camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the expereince of the visual (except in painting). What you say depended on where you were when. What you saw was relative to you position in time and space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as a vanishing point of infinity."
"The invention of the camera changed the way men (sic.) saw." (p. 18)
"Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is." (p. 31)
Vermeer's Woman Pouring Milk
Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows
This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.
Why is this relevant to what we are doing for the project?
Berger:
On the use of perspective in painting:
"The convention of perspective... centers everything on the ey of the beholder."
"The conventions call those appearances reality. Perspective makes the single eye the center of the visible world. Everything converges on to the eye as to the vanishing point of infinity." "The visible world is arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God." (p. 16)
How the camera shook things up. "I, the machine, show you a world the way only I see it":
"The camera isolated momentary appearances and in do doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless." (p. 17)
"[T]he camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the expereince of the visual (except in painting). What you say depended on where you were when. What you saw was relative to you position in time and space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as a vanishing point of infinity."
"The invention of the camera changed the way men (sic.) saw." (p. 18)
"Original paintings are silent and still in a sense that information never is." (p. 31)
Vermeer's Woman Pouring Milk
Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows
This is the last picture that Van Gogh painted before he killed himself.
Arguing with Images (assignment sheet)
WAM! (I don't think they use a fake cat in this--like, the whole time)
Great job on the stencil projects, all.
Arguing With Images
For this assignment you will draw from what we have studied about the persuasive power of imagery and create a series of images that exemplify the rhetorical principles explored in our readings. Your images will be self-created or appropriated and compiled from external sources, but each project will have a clear message to communicate. This insistence on clarity is meant to be tricky. You may find it difficult to "speak" explicitly let alone persuasively using only image as your communicative discourse. But, in the end, that is really the fun of this assignment.
You will be creating a photo essay as found in the Berger’s Ways of Seeing containing at least 20 images. This essay should, like Berger’s, have some sort of guiding principle or thread that holds the images together. Your images might tell a story, make a rhetorical argument, or create a more nebulous collage around a single theme or idea. Please use the online photo site of your choice to display these images and put a link to it on your blog.
For this project, consider the impact that text may have in changing the audience’s perception of your message. Use text very sparingly, if at all.
As before (but with a slight tweak), you will be required to write a reflection on the process of creating your piece (a bit different than a rational). Tell me about the difficulties and break-troughs you experienced as you went about the “writing” process. What was your original vision and how did that change as you went about creating your image series. Also please consider and include how our readings thus far have informed your work and how. Also, keep in mind the more "academic" tone of this reflection. I would like you to both post on your blog this response AND email me a Word document with your response in "essay" form. Again, due to a bit of syllabus confusion in this the quick-summer format, I am extending the due date of this project one day to Wednesday July 1st at 1pm when class begins.
This reflection should be approximately 500 words.
Please see me if you do not have easy access to a digital camera or if your phone does not have a camera on it.
Great job on the stencil projects, all.
Arguing With Images
For this assignment you will draw from what we have studied about the persuasive power of imagery and create a series of images that exemplify the rhetorical principles explored in our readings. Your images will be self-created or appropriated and compiled from external sources, but each project will have a clear message to communicate. This insistence on clarity is meant to be tricky. You may find it difficult to "speak" explicitly let alone persuasively using only image as your communicative discourse. But, in the end, that is really the fun of this assignment.
You will be creating a photo essay as found in the Berger’s Ways of Seeing containing at least 20 images. This essay should, like Berger’s, have some sort of guiding principle or thread that holds the images together. Your images might tell a story, make a rhetorical argument, or create a more nebulous collage around a single theme or idea. Please use the online photo site of your choice to display these images and put a link to it on your blog.
For this project, consider the impact that text may have in changing the audience’s perception of your message. Use text very sparingly, if at all.
As before (but with a slight tweak), you will be required to write a reflection on the process of creating your piece (a bit different than a rational). Tell me about the difficulties and break-troughs you experienced as you went about the “writing” process. What was your original vision and how did that change as you went about creating your image series. Also please consider and include how our readings thus far have informed your work and how. Also, keep in mind the more "academic" tone of this reflection. I would like you to both post on your blog this response AND email me a Word document with your response in "essay" form. Again, due to a bit of syllabus confusion in this the quick-summer format, I am extending the due date of this project one day to Wednesday July 1st at 1pm when class begins.
This reflection should be approximately 500 words.
Please see me if you do not have easy access to a digital camera or if your phone does not have a camera on it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Helvetica trailer
We don't have time to watch it in class, but it might make for a good extra-curricular movie night:
Sometime between now and Monday, watch these:
Usually I assign Berger's Ways of Seeing as a text for the class, but let's try something different.
These are clips from the program from which the book is based:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
Over the weekend, investigate flickr or picassa, photobucket--start an account with one of them and upload some pictures... you will use one of these sites to upload your next project.
These are clips from the program from which the book is based:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
Over the weekend, investigate flickr or picassa, photobucket--start an account with one of them and upload some pictures... you will use one of these sites to upload your next project.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
WAM: Wysocki
On the agenda:
1. Respond to reading questions
2. Wysocki talkie
3. Show & Tell: stencil graffiti artifacts
Analysis:
1. Name the visual elements in a text.
2. Name the designed relationships among those elements.
3. Consider how the elements and relations connect with different audi-
ences, contexts, and arguments
1. Respond to reading questions
2. Wysocki talkie
3. Show & Tell: stencil graffiti artifacts
- "the seriousness of text and the non-seriousness of images"
- "All page-and screen-based texts are (therefore) visual and their visual elements and arrangements can be analyzed."
- typeface: size, font: serif, sans serif: are there "argumentative possibilities of mixing multiple typefaces in a paper other than one about typefaces?
- Color and Culture
- composition and photography: immediacy, reality, and how that contrasts with the ease of their manipulation
- Data visualizations: IKEA instructions
- Variations of Video and Sound: how can they be rhetorical?
Analysis:
1. Name the visual elements in a text.
2. Name the designed relationships among those elements.
3. Consider how the elements and relations connect with different audi-
ences, contexts, and arguments
- One of the keys to composition? Learn to observe well p159
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday WAMing and Stencil Assignment Sheet
Welcome back--(no wammy no wammy!) Oh--stop. We have to come back sometime.
Today's agenda:
1. Readings questions/answers
2. Class discussion: Drucker/Elkins
3. Stencil assignment
4. Stencil tutorial
NYC Drips from klingatron on Vimeo.
See also, my other links to the right.
Materials needed:
Each stencil should be created for a certain, specified space, be it actual graffiti, a t-shirt aimed at a certain demographic, or national ad-campaign (and these are just a few examples of the many situated spaces you could choose from). Tell me about where or what kind of environment your design would have the most persuasive or effective/affective impact.
Each stencil can serve whatever purpose you choose, be it commercial, protest oriented, aesthetic, or whatever (I mean, maybe you're just designing the t-shirt for a local band--that would be ok too). But it has to have SOME purpose.
Each stencil should be a combination of a pictorial and textual element (it can be an actual hybrid combination of both if you choose to create a logo of some sort). You will be required to explain your choices, so choose wisely. (consider the readings from this week as a guide to these choices).
In connection with your assignment, please type a 500-word rational for your choices above. You will also need to post a picture of your completed design in a mock-up (or real--though of course, I can't condone vandalism) local. I would expect, at the least, a side-walk chalk, fabric paint on t-shirt, or a spray-paint-on-poster board rendering. Both the rational and picture of completed project are due--posted to your blog--by Wednesday at 1pm.
Today's agenda:
1. Readings questions/answers
2. Class discussion: Drucker/Elkins
3. Stencil assignment
4. Stencil tutorial
NYC Drips from klingatron on Vimeo.
See also, my other links to the right.
Materials needed:
- Exacto knife
- Thin cardboard
- Something to put your image on to
- paint/chalk (we'll talk about this)
Each stencil should be created for a certain, specified space, be it actual graffiti, a t-shirt aimed at a certain demographic, or national ad-campaign (and these are just a few examples of the many situated spaces you could choose from). Tell me about where or what kind of environment your design would have the most persuasive or effective/affective impact.
Each stencil can serve whatever purpose you choose, be it commercial, protest oriented, aesthetic, or whatever (I mean, maybe you're just designing the t-shirt for a local band--that would be ok too). But it has to have SOME purpose.
Each stencil should be a combination of a pictorial and textual element (it can be an actual hybrid combination of both if you choose to create a logo of some sort). You will be required to explain your choices, so choose wisely. (consider the readings from this week as a guide to these choices).
In connection with your assignment, please type a 500-word rational for your choices above. You will also need to post a picture of your completed design in a mock-up (or real--though of course, I can't condone vandalism) local. I would expect, at the least, a side-walk chalk, fabric paint on t-shirt, or a spray-paint-on-poster board rendering. Both the rational and picture of completed project are due--posted to your blog--by Wednesday at 1pm.
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