New media and visual culture
•The term visual culture is used in theory to describe everything that is produced visually, its an egalitarian term.
1st part, defining what is new digital media and effects of us
2nd part, looking critically on the mass media,
3rd part, exploring high culture and low culture.
Marshall McLuham states we are in a late age of print, he tries to make sense of the new electronic age, figuring the effect they have on the world.
He was writing before the internet, prophesising things way before his time.
We are living in a Late age of print; The age of print began around 1450.
The Gutenberg printing press added versatility into printing, allowed writing and media to be mass produced.
Previously books had to be hand written or longed out with wood blocks, printing production was much quicker and cheaper.
People were more exposed to knowledge and literacy, the circulation of knowledge on a wide scale started here. People became literate where they couldn’t before.
Prior to the late age of print literacy meant reading and writing, today we acknowledge literate in terms of computer literacy and visual literacy.
In the mid to late 20th century computers were maily used for official information, banks, army, science. The same way literacy used to be for a disrceet population, and became world wide.
There is a suggestion that in the future, Ebooks will be the primary way of engaging with print media. Like papers being read online opposed to buying it physically. Online, people can engage with the story opposed to having a set message that is taken as fact, online newspapers are more versatile.
Traditional book vs. eBook.
Challenges concrete nature of the book, can skip around and link parts to others. New technologies are democratic, they allow us in some ways to shape and rework the information we receive.
Computer media.
Hyper text, links within websites skipping to others
Hypermedia, many media, pics sounds etc.
Almost get lost in this hyperspace, hypermedia gives this sense of control to the reader. Such engagement wth this information makes it more exciting and intriguing.
Hazards lie in getting swamped, with an overload of information. There is a sense of struggle, books force us to engage, new technologies don’t, can drift in and out.
Definition of Mass media.
Modern systems of communications and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large numbers of consumers. - Effectively a small group of people controlling the media released to a large population.
Negative crits.
•Superficial, uncritical, trivial. – because its attempting to be populist – tabloid newspapers uncritical and searching for figures.
•Viewing figures measure success – Nothing radical happens, to scared of loosing viewers or ratings.
•Audience is dispersed – Interesting because there is an illusion that you feel part of a collective when reading the sun or watching eastenders etc.
•Audience is disempowered – Phone ins give the impression that we have a say, however they still ultimately have control. TV votes are manipulated by producers.
•Encourages the status Quo (it’s conservative) – Mass media oftem reiterates or regurgitates common issues,
•Encourages apathy, makes us feel unable to change anything, powerless. No matter how much you want to change you cant.
•Powr heldby a few motivated by power and control
•Bland, escapist and standardised.
Positive crit.
•Not all midless, it allowes high culture to reach bigger audiences
•democratic potential, eg. Youtube. A series of lectures posted on youtube.
Artists use of Mass media
What happens to things like high culture in the age of mas media, how does that relationship shift?
False divisions between high and low culture challenged by the late age of print.
United colours on Benetol, This campaign traded of images if brutality, horror. Exposed issues like aids and HIV. Its doing much more, probably closer to politics opposed to advertising, its not a role of social control it has a concrete effect.
Artists need the mass media to perpetuate their career, there was a time where all education was free.
Group of fine art students, 13 of them pretended that they’d spent all their grants on a holiday and leaked it to mass media, used media to gain status. When they released it as a scam raised questions ‘what is art?’
Can Art be autonomous? (exist on its own in a vacuum)
Should art be autonomous? (for some yes – by doing so it retains
Jackson Pollock, ‘the epitome of art that is above society that is autonomous, its about aesthetic freedom, no agenda no politics. Speculation of the CIA employing him to show off the free thinking radical mind coming from the controlled environment
Picasso was deeply involved with mass media, exploited it to his advantages.
Pop art was the first genre that there was an explicit link between media and the society. Using the mass media, adverts, poop culture, ideas of new technologies, representing the new age of mass culture.
Taking something from the low sphere and presenting it as high sphere.
Have an underlying message.
There is a backlash against poop art in the same way they dismiss the mass media, that it celebrates the worst aspects of capitalist ideologies, however it challenges exactly that.
Warhol – green cola bottle, touches on repetition, exposing the way the mass media repeats and regurgitates crap repeatedly.
The mass media bombards us with ideas, Warhol depicted this through Marilyin Monroe, repeated mindlessly.
Marylin was depicted as a cheerful sex godess, really addicted to drugs and depressed, Warhol worked with these ideas.
Shocking images once repeated oose their shock value, Warhol explored this idea prolifically, desensitisation. Repetiotion casuing indifference.
Warhol – Ambulance disaster.
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