OUAN401- Context of practice Lecture 1

Lecture 1

Today was our first lecture on context of practice. The photography part was quite interesting. It was about the Mass Observation founded in 1937, documenting life in Britain. We learned that it was done from a Posh persons perspective, so they went to the worst places they could find and this is how the lower working class ended up being portrayed to everyone else, when in actual fact it was not all like this.

The image to the untrained eye looks like a 'carefully composed, gentle, humorous photograph' but it's actually a guy with a camera under his coat and the guy holding his hand up like he is waving, is actually objecting to the photograph being taken. I find it fascinating that things can been seen in a totally different way to what actually happened. If someone tells you its one thing then that's all you see.

The second part was on animation. We watched 'The hand' or 'Jiri Trnka'. It was quite strange and almost a little scary.

It was about a little man who was minding his own business when a giant hand decided to force him to make a statue of a hand. The giant hand make the little man into a puppet and forced him to work. When the little man tried to run away, the hand killed him. This portrays a message of how society works, how we are to conform to rules and regulations and how we are told what to do and if we don't, there are consequences. We are all puppets to the higher powered people.
We also watched 'Tested for the unexpected' by tony Kaye.

It was to advertise Dunlop tyres but it was a bit off the wall for its time. It was shot in black and white then coloured in post production. There is debate about whether it is an advertisement or a piece of art in its own right.

We then had a bit on illustration. It started off about Norman Rockwell. He illustrated small town American life which became very popular.

This art was done in a time of depression and in the rise of abstract Avant garde art. It was basically like the fairy tale version of America, but it isn't how everyone lives. It was a bit of a front. a 'mythic identity for America'. His art was very technically good and other artists like graphic designers depended on that skill to help them, but with new technical and digital processes, there was a decline in the need for illustrators.

Lastly we looked at graphic design, particularly typography. We were taught about three typefaces. Times New Roman, Fraktur and Universal. Firstly, Times New Roman which is an English typeface by Stanley Morison in 1932.

 It started as a Roman font, which the English decided to use to link the Romans great empire to Britain's great empire, showing cultural superiority.
Fraktur was a German typeface used for signage and propaganda posters in the time of the war.

 Its supposed to represent the Germans superiority of cultures and people and national superiority. I just found it difficult to read (yes I know the poster was in German).
Universal was a European typeface created at Bauhaus, proposed by Herbert Bayer but never actually created.

 It was to be a typeface that everyone can use, with no political connotations or historic content, no uppercase letters, very plain and neutral. He wanted to create it to unify people not separate them like the previously mentioned typefaces.

In conclusion these contextual studies lectures will be about seeing things we don't usually get to see from the 21st century outside of the cultural paradigm.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates