Lecture 6 - Digital production and distribution.

Digital production and distribution.

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The Digital revolution was a big if not the biggest step forward mankind has ever made. We developed a whole new lifestyle, a whole new range of apparatus. There is a quote by Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) "We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us". He theorised in the 50's that there would be a global village, which unbelievable we do have a sort of an online village, a place where we can all connect.

Where we are now, from when the internet was first created will change drastically, to think in the last 25 years culture has changed so much. The creation of the web has shaped our generation so much, the thought of how the next 25 years will change time as we know It, is frankly rather terrifying.  

In 2007 the first IPhone was brought out, we've developed a lot since then, we've reached the iPhone 7, its scary to even think what the iPhone 10 will be like. Our understanding of technology as we know it is at the moment is large, but there is still a lot to learn. During the 80's the  perception of future technology where large buttons and screens, look at star trek for example they predicted how we would communicate in the future, and surprisingly they got it relatively accurate.

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The way our generation learns has changed a lot, computers are mandatory in most schools now, while there was a time when you wouldn't find a single computer in a learning environment. Students use smart phones, tablets, laptops a number of devises to take notes, research, even the ability to share there work with there tutors via the internet. Before these inventions there was paper and pen, pencil if you weren't picky.

Even the way we tell time has been digitalised, having digital clocks instead of traditional clocks that use hands to point at the hour, the digital clock will show you an image of the hour.

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We as a race, have a fascination with Robots, weather they be evil killing machines set on taking over the world, to household necessities, that will one day cook and clean for us. Either way we have a deep routed need to learn about them and to create them. In countless Si-Fi based films a robot will be incorporated into the plot, look at Star wars for example C3PO and R2D2, C3PO is  genius, able to learn languages in an instant. There's
Blade Runner a film based on incredible robots with the life span of 4 years, to reduce the chance of a robot upraising.

Lecture 5 - Print Culture and Distrubution

Lecture 6

The age of print began in around 1450 with the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg. When Art schools where first opened they focused on 5 things predominantly, these where Painting, Sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, as you can see print wasn't included. The industrial revolution came to be during 1760 and 1840. The revolution brought machinery capable of replication, which helped mass produce images. This allowed people to re-create an image in different media forms. The industrial revolution was brought about for several reasons, the working class men and the higher class richer people had been segregated, for example the richer people would have larger house higher up from the factory's above the smoke of the city. The revolution changed the way the poor and the rich interacted, the richer people no longer set the culture.
   An artist named John Martin changed the way art was bought, instead of a single man buying the image, he put his art on display and charged an entrance fee, this let any man see the art work which was revolutionary for the time. Government funded schools began to pop up everywhere, these where made to create artwork demanded for governmental purposes. In fact our college was one, but a lot of the schools branched out and became more.  
   This lecture was very informative, I learnt a lot I didn't know about the history of print and the distribution of art. The history of the distribution was extremely engaging. 

Lecture 4 - Study of type -The Sequel

Production and Distribution

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For our second instalment on type, we looked into the production side. We discussed people such as Max Miedinger a Swiss typographer and designer the creator of the typeface Helvetica, which happens to be my favourite typeface and the typeface I'm using to write this post with. Helvetica was the first clean, open to interpretation type, giving the audience a chance to focus more on the function of the type then the appearance. In 1982 the type face Arial was introduced and there was a lot of controversy about how similar Helvetica and Arial are. But I'm not going to give me view on that.

In 1990 there was a shift in the world of design, the birth of the new generation of type began, this was due to the availability of the mac computers, these aloud the public to create there own digital art work, which in turn lead to the mass production of different typefaces.  Another drastic change in the following years was the introduction of the internet. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee who earns no profit from creating such an important thing in todays culture. In turn this brought us Internet Explorer created by Bill Gates in 1995,which only had the use of 8 typefaces, which included Arial, and Comic Sans to name a few. Due to the creation of the internet there was less call to make well phone calls, and more of a demand for typefaces, due to online chat, or text messages. This lead to the creation of the emojicons, which almost a complete circle in the world, as we have returned to using symbols to communicate instead of using text.

I found this lecture to be extremely interesting, learning about something that I've used almost everyday with out knowing about its vast history was something I found to be really enjoyable.   

 

Lecture 3 - The history of type

Type And Typography

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Todays lecture focused on type. We learnt about the origin of type and language. Type being a written version of a language, it is our way of being able to document which languages exists. It is impossible for us to know every language spoken, but as type is a written from of language, that can be our form to document which languages we do know exist.  Speech made visible. 

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Type is symbols used to express language 'Type is what language looks like'- Ellen Lupton. It is a way for use to communicate from distance, via letters, emails, text messages etc... It is an everyday thing. There is a lot of  history behind type, in 1799 the Rosetta stone was discovered, this was a tablet with type in three different languages inscribed onto it, each language saying the same thing. This stone was studied for years, and was used to figure out the different languages use of type.  

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Thanks to a man named William Foster (1870) the ability to read became mandatory, due to him creating the education act. Prier to this reading was only for the wealthy and the church. Reading was considered a rather womanly ability as well, due to it being something for wealthy wives to do while there husbands worked.
  

I found this lecture to be very informative, I hadn't considered how much history there would be behind type, it was very interesting to learn about where it has originated, and to how it has come to be what we know today.

Research Into my Quote.

Links of resources

Google Books -

• Fabulous Science : Fact and Fiction in the history of scientific discovery - John Waller 
• A world History of art - Hugh Honour & John Fleming.
• Historical Judgment - Johnathan Gorman
• Is History Fiction - Ann Curthoys and John Docker

Library Books -

• History Of Art. - Jacques Thuillier
•  The oxford illustrated history of britain - morgan - 942
• William Forsythe : the fact of matter. - Geansheimer, susanne & Kramer, mario
• Art History - Stokstad, Marilyn

Google Scholar - 

• Fact and Fiction: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of the Zulu - Virginia-Lee.
• History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension
  Louis O. Mink
• Generality and Singularity in Historical Judgment
  Albert Hofstadter
• Study of History - Toynbee, Arnold J

Websites -

• http://idw.idebate.org/discussions/philosophy-and-religion/history-about-facts-or-interpretation
• http://www.factmonster.com/dk/encyclopedia/history.html
• http://history-of-animation.webflow.io/

The Quote I've Chosen to study - OUAN401

My Chosen Quote :

Carr E. H. (1961)  

'The history we read [...] though based on facts, is, strictly speaking, not factual at all, but a series of accepted judgements.'

I've decided on this quote as I find it to be very interesting, I feel this quote has a lot of truth behind it, as there is no proof for somethings to be true.  A good example of this is the myth of Napoleons height, allegedly he was meant to be a very short man, and this is taken to be true. Where as in fact he was considered to be tall in his time, being 5.5 foot tall. From this, you can see that the quote obviously touches on the truth as not everything you read or hear is always the truth.  

The Second Lecture - OUAN401

History Of Image

During this lecture we learnt about the history of art through the ages. We began by discussing the pre-historic arts, large images painted onto cave walls. Image has changed drastically through out history, from basic images to extremely detailed realist images, and then returning to minimalist. As human beings we have gone through a rather immense amount of change in how we produce art. A lot of art is designed to create emotion, we discussed Rothko in the lectures, he was an artist that created large images purely black in design, and allegedly a lot of emotion is felt whilst viewing these images due to the artists tragic passing.

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Another topic we touched on, was digital art. In this day and age art can be created, modified, stolen, re-produced all digitally. We discussed that important art such as the Mona Lisa can be found on cheap plates and mugs etc..., which inevitably kills some of the magic of the art, as why bother going to see the actual art, when you can find it almost everywhere. I do and don't agree with this, to me there is a certain magic to be found going to see the original. Where as seeing a copy can be inspirational, it doesn't hold the same value as seeing the original. Our lecturer said 'It's like using art as a weapon against its self.' which I think is a very cleaver way to put it.

The First Lecture - OUAN401

Visual Literacy 

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In this lecture we discussed the principles of communicating visually. To elaborate, visual literacy is to communicate something with out the use of words. We considered as to why this form of communication is needed, and how a lot of them we take for granted. For example the use of the male and female symbols for the toilets. No matter what language you speak you will be able to recognise the symbols; even if they have either no written communication or communication in another language. 

We also discussed visual syntax and semantics. Visual Syntax is the structure and visual origination. So to simplify that, its more or less the primary foundation of the image and the way you interoperate it. Where as visual semantics is our ability to recognise a certain shape or symbol and associate it with a certain thing. For example, while driving you will see a give way sign which is an upside down triangle, which is the only sign in driving that is upside down, there for with out and written explanation you immediately associate the sign with being give way.

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I found this too be a very eye opening lecture, as thinking about it now, I've not really considered the fact that we take these sort of signs for granted in our everyday life. Associating a certain thing or activity with a symbol is key in everyday life, and we do this with out even thinking about it anymore.