Lecture 1 - Context of Practice

Context of Practice

Lecture 1

Things we are looking at – Aesthetic, cultural, historical, technological, social, political and other contexts.

Photography - Worktown Project – Mass Observation

-à Documenting Bolton, 1937 - posh/southerners perspective on North – “Toffs’ view of working class” – misrepresentation?

--à How do we know if they’re objective or not? – Humorous or condescending?

Context;

- 1929 – Wall Street Crash

- 1930 onwards - Great Depression

- 1933 – Hitler comes to power

- 1932 – British Union of Faschists formed

Animation – Jiri Trnka, The Hand, 1965

Context

-       20 years after the end of WW2 + defeat of Nazism

-       Height of the Cold War

-       State sponsorship of arts – censorship and repression of creative practice

-       Precursor to Prague spring of 1968

-       à puppet gets strings – symbolism of oppression? – Reflection of own experiences

--à look for more “radical” non-western animation – not just plain entertainment

Advertising

Tony Kaye, Tested for the Unexpected , 1993 for Dunlop tyres. [Strange!] Pre-internet – very unique and different. Shot in B&W, edited afterwards.

Illustration

Norman Rockwell – Saturday Evening Post etc painted illustrations – very detailed – realistic style. Lots of America life kind of illustrations – much more plain and straight forwards than the animation – simpler idea + image to get across. [Era of illustration] Very good expressions! How does that still stand out when people can do everything?

Graphics

Times New Roman font – Stanley Morrison 1932 – designed for the Times newspaper

Fraktur – German – very kind of Gothic

Universal – modernists in Europe.

Very different styles.

Universal – sans serif, neutral & not associated with anywhere, no connotations – mass producibility

Trojan Column – Times New Roman – equate greatness of the British Empire with the Roman Empire – cultural superiority

-       Germanic Goth style (Fraktur)

-       - Historic influences, Germanic Superiority

-       Unification – National superiority

Contextual – look at stuff outside of culture + usual things viewed/influenced by

“The unexamined life is not worth living”