Colin Gardner

Art 1A. Visual Literacy. Winter 2004. Paper #2.

 

The second paper will be due on Wednesday, May 26th at the beginning of the class time.

 

There are several possibilities for this paper -please choose ONE of the topics below. Once again, write 6-8 pages with a cover page, foot- or end-notes and bibliography, using examples and citations from the readings to clarify your arguments. Outside sources are both acceptable and desirable.

 

The idea behind these topics is to open up your writing and analytical powers to a wider range of interests to make your visual literacy skills even more useful and relevant to decoding contemporary culture.

 

Therefore, if you are burning to write about something not on this list (e.g. Fox News or MSNBC's tabloid coverage of Iraq/Michael Jackson/Scott Peterson/Kobe Bryant/Martha Stewart ,or the cult status of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings series, check with your TA to secure the go-ahead.

 

TOPICS:

1. Discuss the issues surrounding fictional and documentary space in film and/or TV. How do the formal aspects of the medium affect the way it presents and contextualizes information? Examine the constructions and assumptions of a specific film, using the issues raised in readings and lectures to open up the film for a closer reading. The code, signs and technique will be important issues here.

Suggested films & programs:

The Thin Blue Line                                                    Documentary

Fast, Cheap and Out of Control                                 Documentary

Roger and Me                                                             Documentary

Bowling for Columbine                                              Documentary

Capturing the Friedmans                                            Documentary

Medium Cool                                                              Fiction

The Battle of Algiers                                                  Fiction

The Alamo                                                                  Fiction

A Mighty Wind                                                          Fiction

The Osbournes                                                            Reality TV

Survivor: All Stars                                                      Reality TV

The Swan                                                                    Reality TV

The Simple Life                                                          Reality TV

 

2. Discuss issues of fiction and documentary space in photography, treating photography’s reputation as the arbiter of truth and the breakdown of that designation in the wake of digital imagery and postmodern deconstruction of the image. Discuss how the subject you choose fits into a historical continuum of the medium and how it may force us to revise the nature of that history.

 

Suggested artists:

Cindy Sherman                                    Yasumasa Morimura              Sharon Lockhart

Andres Serrano                                   Nancy Burson                         The Starn Twins

Dorothea Lange                                  Man Ray                                 Christian Boltanski

Carrie May Weems                             Robert Frank                           Thomas Struth

Nan Goldin                                         Fred Lonidier

                                   

 

3. Choose TWO commercial spaces, such as a grocery store, corporate clothing store (e.g. The Gap, Banana Republic), bookstore, etc. Observe and analyze the space using the material we have worked with in class, especially issues of mediation, signs and codes. How does the visual space of these enterprises function? What specific assumptions and considerations are used to manufacture the particular qualities of that space and therefore your experience of it? To what extent are the visual markers invisible, in the sense of their being predicated on hidden assumptions (e.g. the strategic placement of sales racks for impulsive buying while waiting in the check out line).

 

4. Find TWO (primarily visual) advertisements and link them to a historical chain of images. Discuss the signs involved and what they mean. What are the connotations and denotations? Why would corporate interests want to use these particular images and the references they engender?
Example: Jeep ads often refer to landscape painting – what does the history of the imagery bring to your perception of the role of Jeep in your life or in the creation of your desire to own one? How do art and advertising reflect and reinforce one another and what kind of spaces do they occupy in our visual field? What codes do they share? How do they work against one another?

 

5. Many cultural critics have suggested that we now live in a Culture of the Copy ruled not by authentic objects and bodies grounded in real time and space but appropriations and simulacra that lack an authentic "original." Discuss the ramifications of this assertion with specific reference to film - e.g. Metropolis, Frankenstein, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blade Runner, Robocop, Being John Malkovich, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Simone, Identity.