John Berger - Ways Of Seeing

In this book Berger talks about the changes of art over the years through modern interference and also how people perceive art.

  He points out what is involved in seeing, that what may look the same to a group carries a different message to each person, this message being defined by what the person has seen and knows. The way art is viewed has been distorted over the years through, technology, social change, academics, value and reproductions. His opinion on reproductions are that they lack the ambience of the original, the stillness, the paint in which one follows the traces of the painters gestures, the sense of timelessness in these images has been destroyed by reproductions and photography and your surroundings no longer play a true part in your reading of the image. Even the deterioration of the price can impact the importance of this image to you.

   Berger tells us that the nude in Western art objectified women, insisting that women were depicted differently to men and that the ideal spectator is thought to be a male. These images were designed to flatter 'him', the painting being all about the man even going as far as to shed the women of body hair as it symbolizes power, these women weren’t meant to have any power. The line being that men look at women and the women watch themselves being looked at, an awareness of what is happening. Pushing that women value themselves by the manner in which she is portrayed in, her, others, and men’s eyes.  

   Berger goes on to state how oil painting realism linked it to ownership, to have this object put on canvas is like buying it and placing it into your home, with the notion that you are what you have. They expressed the power of money and what you could buy with it, paintings showed status and class and owners of them wanted to benefit from the objects within them. It was as if a reality was being measured through these paintings for benefit even though the paintings mostly fictions in form.

These attributes like ownership and art develop a relationship with modern consumerist society and publicity or advertising photography, distorted by societies ‘class’. This publicity understands the link in oil painting and photography between the image and the viewer and uses it to flatter the viewer (much like early western oil paintings aimed at men), the greater the publicity the more the more the viewer is feels they are missing something.

  We are surrounded by publicity images and Berger explains that the realistic ‘highly tactile’ depicted images on oil paintings and of colour photography hold the desire to possess these items, made to seem as they will make the viewer happy and as an item of need and putting the viewer under the illusion that they will be enhanced greatly by it. It is almost selling the buyer happiness they had before they saw the image.

The Art of Mechanical Reproduction – Walter Benjamin

 In the reading Benjamin discusses the change in perception of art due to the affects of the introduction of Photography and Film. Benjamin starts out by emphasizing on the paradigm shift of our way of living, where it can be perceived as lazy in the sense of artistic perception and our process of creation.

 Benjamin goes on speaking about how modernity has affected the work of art and how it is related to history and the cult. Film and Photography relates to the modern age. 

The essay highlights and drives on the loss of “aura”, in other words the originality or authenticity, due to the introduction of mechanical and mass reproduction.

  Benjamin explains that only works of art that have not been reproduced are seen to contain a true “aura”. In a comparison of painting to photography he states that painting is seen as authentic due to its artistic process while a photograph is merely a copy of a scene that was taken in one snapshot or capture what I call a frame of someone’s time.

The “aura” that is lost in film and photography has created a shift in history and the cult process, the lost of “aura” is the lost of copyright or singular authority of the artwork.

Nevertheless, Film and Photography makes up for this because it brought a tension between new ways of perception and the “aura”.

  They both have been beneficial due to the involvement of the masses and how they have changed how one may interpret the narrative in a completely different way than a painting can. Photography and Film focus on something specific while leaving out certain parts while a painting strives to interpret something as a whole. Film is seen as an extreme new means of perception in regards to the “moving image”. Watching a moving image challenges the structure of perspective and the relevance and importance of “aura” and also introduces the notion of the viewer being subjective to the film. Photography and film focuses on the dynamics of distraction and deception as a new way of perception and challenge the viewer.

  Walter Benjamin, therefore, sees the concept of “aura” no longer relevant. Film and Photography has liberated the masses from the stigma created around art, where it was seen as reserved and cultist. Mechanical Reproduction has influenced mass consumption and now everyone can enjoy works of art in the art gallery, the cinema or the museum. It has introduced a new appreciation for art and the artistic process along with a new way of perceiving and identifying art.

Worlds Top Faked Photos

http://www.life.com/gallery/60111/most-famous-faked-photos#index/25

New Media Project Debrief

  When I got this project, the main goal for me was to do something I would enjoy and like to work on everyday, trying to be adventurous and still do something in tune with my better attributes.
  The first solid Idea was about motor-sports, its technical side and its glamourous side, I came to question what is luxury to a person, what is success, what does being famous mean and what do we do with these and how do we use or abuse these allocades leading to destruction and in the end turmoil for the bearer.
  After a while of thinking the topic through and analyzing what could work and what would be interesting about motor-sports ad the people in motor-sports I came to a point where i wanted to start experimenting with what I could do visually.

  My first experiment was covering something one would see deemed as a successful object with burnt money trying to show the waste of the object, it was a start but I wasn't satisfied with it so I went trying more, I decided on a car hood which was destroyed, its in essence a privilege to own a car and  money and cars go hand-in-hand plus it was a great surface to work on and something I wanted to do for a while. What I did now was do a mock up on the computer:

  I was pretty pleased with the mock up, it wasn't the picture perfect piece but it helped me choose a direction I wanted to go and to get a greater visual of what I was working with, now i was playing with the natural effects of the car crash helping to add a deeper feeling of involvement to the piece and also being very interesting to look at these effects such as chipped an flaking paint, fading paint,rust and the bend and dents of the piece itself. Along also came were the graphic effects of the money itself which were painted onto the bonnet and the faces of the people on the bonnet, using both outdated money and some still in use, this way it shows that what the piece is saying hasn't now started but is something that has been going on for ages, he hood now took on the form of a Money bill itself with the graphics and the montage of faces. Waste of the money was now on my radar it would tie in with the natural waste also, I went back to an earlier trial and used the burn effect along with another effect I found in my researching, I now also inverted the original bill, it was to show the negative effect that this luxurious object which money had bought is going through, its gone full swing in the opposite direction. The hood took on the general practices when painting in a body shop, I sanded it down with 400, 360, 280, 220 and 180 grit sand paper and then spraying with Primer and paint both I multiple coats, a really long process without the right  tools and for which I probably have cancer from now. One pleasant surprise though was the when i burnt the money and stuck it on it didn't look stuck on, and it appeared as the the paint was crumbling away and this  money of all sorts was underneath it. 

  The second piece now was a jogger for me as I warming down, It echo's the first piece but doesn't ride on it, it was meant to be clean and compact while still being fun and engaging. What I was going to do at first was use a trophy and do a two sided effect and sprinkling a lot of coins which I would paint black and white, sort of Ying/Yang effect, the trophy though was limiting in what I could do so I moved onto a Champagne bottle which ties in to success of both motor-sport and of the rich and famous. I started to take a graphic design themed approach on this project, I designed logos for the front and back of the bottle, the front standing out for the success and the back for the unknowns of this success which the average unsuccessful person does not know and would grab for getting instead a kiss of death. I wanted to engage the viewer so instead of just the bottle I put a glass with what was thought to be a nice bit of success in it with an inviting stamp on it saying " come taste a glass of success", in drinking this it was to instantly leave a bad taste in your mouth, much like success and fame in the real world, none of them know what they are getting into and end up with a bad taste in their mouth. As said it was to be two faced piece, and it would stand in a 3D environment so I tried to present it in an appropriate fashion, art galleries have a lot of wine and champagne so I tried to use this setup, come from the front take up your glass, look at the art, sip.. and be shocked, then walk around to the back see the other labels on the bottle and the glass, Maybe that was too complicated though.

The Hyades is named after an open cluster of stars in the Taurus constellation. He asserted that he did not intend to create constellations, but saw similarities between the completed sculptures and the arrangement of stars and planets in space. In The Hyades he created the initial shape from welded wire, then gradually built up the form using drips of molten bronze.

                                                                              Daniel Rozen’s Peg Mirror

The mirror consists of a collection of rotating pegs. Each peg’s end is tapered, and when they rotate in the light, the change in shadow represents shades of light and dark. While it’s a mechanical device, it gives off a very warm and inviting feeling and not intimidating like some other pieces of its type are, certainly due to the warmth of the wood and the amazing precision it shows in reflecting the viewer.

Photographs I Came Across

[William Henry Fox Talbot, The Haystack, April 1844. Salted paper print, 19 x 22.9 cm; image: 16.4 x 21 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa]

[Henry White, The Garden Chair, 11 September 1854. Albumen silver print, 17.8 x 14 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa]


Photography was born in 1839, making the 19th century the first to be recorded in this medium. Since then, photography has evolved dramatically from the original chemical processes to today’s digital technology. But its transformation during its first decades was an equally important transition.