Lecture 4 - Communication Theory

‘ Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect’


7 Traditions of Communication theory


> Cybernetic/Information Theory
> Semiotics
> Phenomenological Tradition
> Rhetorical
> Socio-psychological
> Socio-cultural
> Critical Theory
//
Cybernetic/Info Theory
>Information Source - Lecturer
>Transmitter - His voice
>Noise Source - Door, System speakers
>Receiver - Us
//
> Failure to communicate areas - bad language
Destination - You
\\world war
Communication was vital
Bell Telephone Laboratories


>communication problems


1. Technical  form of technology
Systems of encoding and decoding






2. Semantic
Precision of language
How much of the message can be lost without the meaning being lost?
What language to use
Shannon and Weavers feedback system


3. Effectiveness


Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to? What can be done to get the required effect to happen


BARB - Broadcasters Audience Research Board
> Who is the audience and does the media work in relation to them


Semiotics//


Semantics -
Synthantics
Pragmatics


‘World is a semisphere’
Trainer - Started as just a supporter for running now its seen as a social status symbol. Expensive trainers etc etc


mediate communication in order to understand


Sign for plane
Highway code




Rhetoric
//
Voice
Personification

Lecture 5 Jean Boudrillard & Hyper-reality

Jean Boudrillard & Hyper-reality




Key focus of lecture : Question of reality


'Holidays are coming' - Coca Cola advert
'Its always the real thing'


Santa - product of realisation , metaphorical illustration of representation
Late 1930's design


Wired.com - Mexican version of coca cola
'When we consume soda we taste the branding not the product'
In a study most couldn't taste the difference between Pepsi and Coca Cola
The Coca Cola brand was prefered to Pepsi - brand trumps taste








Jean Boudrillard (1929-2007)
French Philosopher
Cultural Critic
Theorist
Photographer


Pioneered the political economy,Post modernism,Popular culture,
Media theory






influences


Giles Deluze
Roland Barthes
Jacques Derrida
Helene Geas
Michel Foucalt




Structuralism


Claude Levi Strauss
Roland Barths
Jacques Laean
Louis Althiser
Andreau Gaudon
Julia Kristen








Guy Debord
> Author of the society of the spectacle (1967)


Marxist theorist who revised Marx's main concepts to analyse commodity relations, in the age of consumer culture




Karl Marx
> Pioneering philosopher economist, theorist.
> Developed critique of political in an industrial age, functions on basis on the labour theory of value
'mode of production' capitalism constitutes.


Ferdinand de Saussoue


Linguist
pioneer of semiotics
language functions on the basis of theory of value




Marcel Mavas


Anthrapologist
gifts are only given as part of a exchange is something is rewarded

The Gaze

Gaze is a relationship dialogue

Panoptic system
Under whos gaze
institution/ est.

self conscious  gaze at yourself equals in Self regulating

Men look at women and watch themselves being looked at'
>A woman is always accompanied by an image of herself'
>Taught to survey herself critically'
>How she appears to men is the success of her life'
Idea of what it is to be a woman / blueprint and idea?
> Intra-digetic - looking at herself
Voyeuristically gazing at anothers body'
Passively available sexual object
Camera & Photopresentation are palyed at a home agenda - Made persperctive
'To photograph is to appropriate the thing that is being photographed'

Lecture 3

Psychoanalysis is the analysis of the options and controls we choose in life
Ways of thinking
How we examine other objects
> Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasures & Narrative
> Hollywood films 
> Heroes - male damsels in distress
> Women exist as a sexual object


scopophilea - the pleasure of looking at other bodies as objects
- Instinctive desire to look


Narcisstic identification
- For mulvey spectators identify with the male hero in narrative films


The mirror stage
- Projected nation of ‘ideal ego’ in image reflected
- Childs own body less perfect than reflection


Contradiction
1 - Scopophilia - sexual stimulation by sigh
2- Narcissistic identification with the image seen. Cinema thrives on this contradiction


Degas : Le Viol (The rape)
Intradiagetic, character image that gazes at the subject
Extradiagetic gaze - direct address to the viewer, the gaze of a person in an image looking atw us, more affecting


Intra - Defers our guil
Extra - Enhance our guilt


Computer games often use different forms of the gaze. The hitman series enable you to choose either an intra diagetic or a suture.


Conclusion: - different forms of the gaze evoke different structures of power
> We can objectify and identify
> Visual culture employs different forms of the gaze, to evoke structures of partriarchy

Panopticism

The Panopticon:


Designed by Jeremy Bentham - 1791
Metaphor fro hierarchy in contemporary culture
> Hosptials
> Schools
> Army




Michael Foucalt (1926-1984)




The Greed Confident (late 1600's)


'Houses of correction' to curb unemployment & idleness




> Made to work in the houses, improving their moral fibre. Teaching how to be a moral member of society
> Hides away deviance, shut away from society. Represses deviance




Eventually, seen to be a gross error. Various would corrupt each other, degeneration of moral fibre.
Segregation was brought in.
> Invention of asylum
> Shift from physical control to mental control
> Started the rise to 'superhuman' status in doctors and psychiatrists




The pillary
Public humiliation, physical co-ersion




Disciplinary Society and Disciplinary Power


Discipline was seen as a technology not just a punishment
> The idea that we change, under surveillance - controlling
> Modern sense of discipline




1791 - Jeremy Bentham design 'The Panoptican' proposed


> Circular prison, guard tower in the middle
> Institutional gaze
> Exact opposite of a dungeon
Different psychological effect - always observed


Interactives - the individual, the conscious state
That they are 'always being watched'


Self regulation - Regulating behaviour, limiting chance for collusion
Psychological torture




> Reforms people
> Helps treat patients
> Helps instruct school children
> Helps confinement to study the insane
> Helps supervise workers
> Helps put beggars and idlers to work




Faucalt is describing:


> Change our behaviour to what an invisible power is making us do


Modern bars - Open plan
People self regulate
Panopticism is everywhere


Being surveyed changes how we act
Disciplinary society produces what Faulcalt calls 'Docile body' - easily controlled


> Self monitoring
> Self correcting
> Obedient tolerances




Men watch women. Women watch men watching them




Facebook - Panoptic
Adverts target people and the things they like // marketing

level 05

Semiotics

This text is for London vision clinic which is the UK's leading practice for laser eye surgery, Specialists in treating eye prescription strength and refractive eye conditions that exceed the capabilities of the everyday National Health Care system. The circular designs denote the delicate and the intricate procedure that the surgery provide. The circles are a guilloche engraving pattern, each formed from the repetition of a single icon to signify the shape of an eye. The number of symbols intelligently connotes that there are four stages in the procedure and each symbol denoting a separate quality of that procedure. The four stages being screening, the simplest of the stages which is denoted by being the most minimal of the four. Service, treatment and results being the other three. The turquoise used to colour the circular guilloches denotes a sense of health, medicine and recovery, implying a sense of security and comfort to the patient. The clean cut graphics signify accuracy and clear vision along with the use of white space which connotes clear sight and health. The typography applied is a sans serif typeface coloured grey and turquoise, again turquoise to denote health and healing and grey to imply formality and professionalism. The light stroked typeface connotes again formality and a proficient practice. Four smaller symbols have been placed aside each of the guilloche engravings, a heart, a cross, a flower and an eye each is the icon of which each larger symbol is formed from, this connotes the meanings of the four procedures.

Post Modernism

Modernism
Experimentation, Innovation, individualism, Progress. Originiality

Post Modern
Exhaustion, Purisism, Pessimism, Disillusionment with idea of absolute knowledge

Overlapping.
Expression of modern life - Modernity.
Reaction to modern life - Postmodernism

Origins
1917 - German writer Rudolph Pannwitz spoke of 'post modern' men
1964- Leslie Fields - post culture rejected elitist values of modern culture
1960's- Beginning
1970's- Established as a term
1980's- Recognisable style
1990's- Dominant theory
naughties - Tired and simmering



Architecture.
Buildings knocked down in 60's and 70's to make way for new ones

Post modernist aesthetics
Complexity
Mixing materials and styles and re-using images

Las Vegas -Post modern city
TRON - Film set in two worlds (still a pretty bad film)
Culture of retro styles
Advertising is/was the greatest art form of the 20th century - Marshal Mcluan
High art - Low art
Mix of all styles
Crisis in confidence but also freedom

Neo TV.
Big brother
Quiz Shows
Shows on TV about TV

Reality


Summary of Postmodernism
A vague and disputed term
Questioned conventions
Multiplicity of styles and approaches
Crisis in confidence
Rejection of technological determinism

The Document

Joseph Nicephore Niepce took what is considered the first ever photograph. 'View From a Window at La Gras'.

James Nachtwey is a documentary photographer who is noted for documenting war. he is quoted saying - "I have been a witness and these virtues are my testimony. The events I have recorded must not be forgotten and must not be repeated."

Frances Firth - 'Entrance to the Great Temple' where photographers go against generic documentation as the image depicts an Egyptian temple the way the Western eye would like to see it

Photographers capture reality. They do not effect the image themselves. This capture of reality records the history and events with a reason. Neutral photography capture is a myth.

The Decisive Moment

Photography achieves its highest distinction - reflecting the universality of the human condition in a never-to-be retrieved fraction of a second.

Does photography's concern with aesthetics question the validity of a photograph as a document?

JACOBS RIIS (1888) - 'Bandits Roost' is a constructed photograph which depicts people in the slum who are very much aware of the photographers presence. However, it is still a document of life back them. But is it really? Riis has set up a middle class fantasy of lower class life in the slums. This method of construction questions the validity of documentation. Riis even used to bribe his poor subjects with cigarettes and such things to pose for him.

LEWIS HINE was a sociologist in terms of photography. He had left wing beliefs and photographed the working class to glorify them. There was no personal gain involved.

ROY STRYKER helped found the program.

It was during the American depression when 11 million people were unemployed.

Mass migration of farmers. The 'Oakies' from Oklahoma and the 'Arkies' from Arkansas.

The photograph was used as both photojournalism and an emotive tool as photographers were hired to document the goings on of the time.

Photographers were given instructions of what to record. The reality of what was to be recorded had been pre-determined.

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE - 'Sharecroppers Home' (1937) is a depiction of abject poverty. However, the image has very clear compositional decisions such as the newspaper advertisements on the wall and the dog with the boy.

DOROTHEA LANGE - 'Migrant Mother' (1936) depicts a migrant mother in a contemplative mood which questions the future. However, the composition is highly referencing old fine art. The image is not objective due to its compositional nature. The photographs were meant to persuade the middle and upper classes to help these people. The composition is highly effective in terms of the subjectivity of the image.

The FSA wanted images of depression and helplessness. This is why several photographs that all the photographers took were rejected. They did not show it effectively enough.

WALKER EVANS - 'Graveyard, Houses & Steal Mill, Bethlehem Pennsylvania' communicates work, life, then death. It is just as composed as Dorothea Lange's images of the migrant mother.

Photography was developed as supposed empirical evidence such as in 1868 where JOHN LAMPREY photographed different races of people in order to prove that some races of people were less well defined than others.

Lots of pseudo-scientific photographs were taken in the past such as CESARE LOMBROSO's - 'Portrait of Melancholy' where he took photos lots of depressed people's faces and compared them to try and formulate a sole 'melancholic face'.His work was even tried out as an objective mean to prove something when he tried to prove what a criminals face looked like. His work on this was even used as evidence in genuine court cases.

WAR/CONFLICT PHOTOGRAPHY

ROBERT CAPA - 'Normandy, France' (1945)

MAGNUM GROUP - Founded in 1947 by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier Bresson.

To what extent does the staging of historically documented images question their legibility as a factual document? This is questioned in Robert Capa's 'Falling Soldier' which was supposedly captured just as Capa and a soldiers were drinking when the soldier was shot.

DON MCCULLAN (1968) - 'Shell Shocked Soldier'. McCullin was banned from the Falklands by the British government as they did not want shocking images of the Falklands war displayed to people.

ROBERT HAEBERLE (1969) captured Vietnamese people who were literally about to get massacred and gunned down by American soldiers. Why did he do this? Perhaps to suggest the notion of powerlessness to most people in controlling death in war.

WILLIAM KLEIN - 'St. Patrick's Day'. Klein used to push people and get in their way photographing them in the process. The photographer influences the photo questioning the objective truth of the image.

CONCEPTUAL ART

JEFF WALL (1992) - 'Dead Troops Talk'. A document of the Russia and Afghanistan war. It is digitally altered.

GILLIAN WEARING - 'Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say'

JEREMY DELLER (2001) - 'Battle of Orgreave' references the British civil war to communicate the severity of the miners strike as this is what it depicts. Perhaps this is more legible it terms of objective documentation.

Nowadays anyone has the power of documentation with camera phones and cameras available to all. For example, a passer by captured a photo of the man who was killed at a G8 Summit protest.

KEY FEATURES OF DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

Offers a humanitarian perspective.

portray political

Has the purpose to be objective to portray the facts of a certain situation.

People tend to form the subject matter.

Images are straightforward, to the point and not manipulated.