Celebrity Culture

Julia Margaret Cameron – celebrity photographer late 19^th centaury early 20^th

Soft focus, enhancement of beauty – acting mythical scenes

Photographed – beautiful, educated, cultured women

Men where photographed differently

Louis aime augustin – inventor of the moving picture

1988 – first moving image

The artist – 2011 film created in the first moving picture style, a silent movie with over played sounds

Josephine baker – dancer – muse for art deco / contemporary painters

Influences – celebrities, glamour, music, fashion

Beyonce costume in reference to Josephine baker

Golden age for Hollywood – 1927-1960

The jazz singer- feature length moving picture with synchronised dialogue

Clarke Gable – ‘king of Hollywood’

Bette David – played unlikable characters

Marilyn Monroe - actress, singer – sex symbol – known for relationship with the Kennedy’s – image preserved by a young death

-       Andy Warhol endless repeat print

Andy Warhol factory – developing pop art using icons of the time

JFK president – pop

Advent of television – 1926 demonstration of televised moving images

‘Golden age’ begins late 40s

jacksons – brand

Own cartoon in which they would play themselves

Michael Jackson – appearance alteration – reaction to childhood abuse from his father – didn’t want to resemble him

Lady gaga - post post modern – reinvention of herself – looks/personalities?

Meat dress- fashion/feminist

You tube – allow regular people to become ‘famous’

Barac obama – pop president – hired Shepard fairey to create election posters – appeal to pop culture

Celebrity deaths – televised ceremonies – mass mourning

Parody photographs – shame celebrities – enhance their status – god like?

Social media – enable the following of celebrity – people can relate to and feel close to

Creative Rhetorics

Talking about creativity

'different artists often have quite divergent conceptions of what they are doing'
Harrison-Barbet

The blank sheet project

Renzo Rosso creative rhetoric –practise to begin, best idea is always your next one, make mistake and be stupid, collaboration
 
Mimesis – platos problem - critique of democracy
Art mimics - sensory world – denyed that creativity was knowledge producing

Westwern civilisation has roots in east and eygypt, which the geeks took influence…It did not begin with the greeks
classicism – roman greek
 
Academics - banaji (2006) 9 'rhetorics of creativity'
18^th C – romanticism – artist role became creators – no immitation
 
First art academy C14th  italy

Online collaboration/research
FutureEverything 2012
'people can collaborate...across networks to create...or participate in social revolutions'

Estudio is to create a space that mimis a professional studio

Study
75% agree media has given rise to collaboration
81% agree discussion/chat rooms support idea generation

87%/93% agree working online through teams is valuable experience

Communities of practice

'Little c' creativiy
VCOP eg. Websites, Blogs, Social Networks.
VCOP lifecycle - interest is built and then lost

SHOWstudio - Nick Knight – media visuals over all formats of creative

CSR-Corporate Social Responsibility

Flow - Psychological condition of being creative

Identity

Essentialism – who we are/biology

Relates to racism –

Post-modern theorists disagree

Historical phases of identity

•Pre modern identity – personal identity is stable – defined by long standing roles

•Modern identity – modern societies begin to offer a wider range of social roles. Possibility to start ‘choosing’ your identity, rather than simply being born into it. People start to ‘worry’ about who they are

•Post-modern identity – accepts a ‘fragmented ‘self’. Identity is constructed

Phrenology
Quack science - shape of the head can indicate what you may be like personality wise
Based on European people
Hitler used this as justification -(blonde hair, blue eyes)

Physiognomy - Intelligence - facial features.

Hieronymous Bosch

Chris Ofili – black Virgin Mary depiction

Pre modern identity - defined
Modern identity - choice
postmodern identity – you construct

Douglas Kellner:

Pre-Modern – marriage, church – depicts your identity

Modern -  'flaneur' (gentleman-stroller)

Leisure class - Rich enough to not work – displays of wealth openly to others – to flaunt

Fashion - Upper class use clothing – in turn the lower class follow using like for like items but cheaper

Simmel - being alone in a crowd - Alienation

Post-modern identity discourse

Foucault – identity is formed through age class gender – discourses – ‘otherness’

Humphrey Spender, Worktown project 1937
Martin Parr - The Last Resort 1983-86

Nationality
Alexander McQueen - highland rape – suggestive and about the taking of Scotland or ‘rape’  - Vivienne Westwood - Anglomania

Las Vegas – imitation of the world, in one city. Dream like.
 
Race/ethnicity
Chris Ofili - artists are white Europeans – assumption – uses his ethnicity in artworks - Captain shit - His response to a lack of black superheroes.

 
 Femininity  - Tracy Emin - Everyone I have ever slept with – names of people she had ever slept next to, people judge as sexual

wonderbra – hello boys, objectification of women, sex sells?

Post-modern condition – your Identity formed through social experiences throughout early life and throughout the rest
Geoffman - Life is a 'theatre' we act and put on performances as it where, we can choose who we want to be each day.

Subculture and Style

Subculture – separate from style it is reaction to environment

 Dogtown and z-boys (2001) zephyr skateboard scene, Vans sponsor the film. Creating cult images e.g. abandoned swimming pool as skate bowl

Ian Boarden - 'performing the city' – way to break barriers on city
Parcour/Freerunning – urban ‘escapist’ activities

Graffiti is a defining of space – owner ship claims – no discrimination McDonald - Female

Girl subcultures come second to male – male association is greater

Girls are seen as add on, not as great in the changes that a subculture is trying to create – always girlfriends or mother - accessory
 
Mod culture – women and men have similar styles – cult Quadrophenia (1979)
Hippy girl developed through 60s and 70s

Riot Grrrl – the following began from female rockers in 70s/80s – policical – making of home made zines-artwork

Brand styling to represent stereotypes of women at the time – spice girls

Self-publication of music and literature
punk begins to become commercial

Action against women in the 50s having to conform and behave in society

 
Skinheads follow on from mod culture - This is England (2006)

Popular Culture

Critically define pop culture

Contrast ideas of culture – pop culture – mass culture

What is culture?

-       Intellectual/inspirational/aesthetic development/ of a society at the time

-       A way of life

-       Intellectual and artistic works

Reality of society? – BASE

Capitalism produces culture

Base -> determines the content and form of superstructure

Base<- reflects form and legitimises superstructure

Ideologists – system of ideals/beliefs

Raymond Williams – 1983

Definitions of popular

-       Well liked by many, inferior work, culture made

E.g. graffiti when placed in an art gallery it becomes acceptable to society

Matthew Arnold – 1867 – culture and anarchy

Culture

-       Stud of perfection

-       Attained through reading/writing/thinking

-       Pursuit of culture

Cultural policies – culture is a disease

Pop culture is unreal – strive to CREATE something

Culture – substantial happening/timeless

Frankfurt school

Theodore adorno/max Herkimer

‘‘All mass culture is identical’’

‘‘The products indoctrinate and manipulate they promote false consciousness’’

Authentic culture vs. mass culture

Real, European, multi dimensional, imagination, individual creation

Culture industry – reality TV – exploits people

Pop culture – able to be a critic of all

Keep Your Email Secret

My personal email account has over 5000 emails in my inbox, and I would have an guess as to maybe 80-90% of them would be spam and a mere 47 in my 'Junk' folder. Email addresses are frequently sold on to 3rd party companies, even when sometimes the website you're signing up for states they won't pass on personal information, who sell it on again and so forth.

When I was at school, we used to sign people's emails up for, what we considered hilarious, variety of websites.

Nowadays, I receive a lot of spam of this nature...

Now, I have no idea why these companies started pursuing me or how they got my email, but an educated guess would be that somewhere among my internet activities, I have signed up for a website/newsletter and my information has been sold on.

"Your email address is a big part of your online identity. It's also a valuable source of revenue for people whose business involves supplying spammers with live addresses.
If the sites you register with aren't secure, hackers can access the database containing all the user credentials, and the email addresses are sure to be sold on.

It's also an unpleasant fact of online life that some website owners lie when they say they'll never give your email address to anyone else. This is predominantly a problem for users of adult sites. Your email address may be sold on to sites with similar themes, which then spam you as well as selling your address on to others.

When an online business folds, the owner might also decide the list of registered users is an asset worth selling."

So how can we stop this from happening?

You could simply have a separate email for when times like this are needed, as I have, but sometimes you forget and whatnot and now I have 3 email accounts with a ridiculous amount of emails in each.

The best solution I found depends on whether or not lengthy correspondence is required with whoever it was that was requesting your email. This involves signing up for a temporary email address, such as GuerillaMail which offers a 60 minute time frame, to do such business without your email account suffering.

City and Film

City modernism

Urban sociology – city a public / private

-       Postmodernism city = individual relation to the crowed

Greg Simmel – 1895-1918 - Metropolis and mental life.

The effect a built environment has on an individual

Herbert Beyer 1932

Lewis Hine photography

- Individual resistance to the city

Architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) – creator of modern skyscraper

"Form ever follows function"

Guaranty Building layout 

Skyscrapers – to represent power/the American dream and opportunity – big building big company ‘aspiration buildings’

Manhattan (1921)- Paul Strand and Charles Scheler – photograph of Ford Company at river rouge.

Fordism: - effect of factory on workers? Paid enough to buy goods?

Modern times - Charlie Chaplin (1936)

Society – his body is consumed by machine – the working age

Stock Market crash (1929) – lead to the great depression

French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer’’

A person who walks through the city to experience it - Art captivation

Walter Benjamin - adopts urban observer concept

‘Arcades project’ -1927-40

The photographer as a flaneur

-       Susan sontag – photographer – especially in street photography photographer is ‘urban observer’

flaneuse

Invisible flaneuse – women and modernity

Susan buck-Morris = the dialect of seeing – arcade project

Text is suggestive that a woman on a street is either prostitute or bag lady

albus/hopper – photographs of women sitting alone – lost/trauma

Failure – despair – feelings of failure – a lonely woman – prostitute?

Don't look now 1973 - Nicholas Roeg. 

Hiring of detective but subject reverses role to lead to poiniont places of reference

Lorca di Carcia Heads (2001) NY – illumination of individuals – setting out from the crowd – creates drama on that person

Alone in the crowd till singled out some way

A lawsuit was brought against him for exhibiting a photo of someone without his or her permission.  The judge dismissed it as protected by the First Amendment.

Surveillance city – heightened security after 9/11