OUIL501- Useful Resources

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/11130492/How-has-the-internet-changed-art.html) - article about internet and social media has changed art, how we share it, how we can use it, and where it can take us.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryntully/2012/10/25/contemporary-art-too-much-of-a-good-thing/#2a9c90412589)- article about the over-saturation of art from social media

(https://www.wired.com/2015/11/jean-jullien-peace-for-paris/)- interview with Jean Jullien about the creation of the Paris Attacks symbols, why he made it, and how it affected his practice.

Michel Faucault- 'What is an Artist?'- lecture about how authorship is portrayed. In response to 'death of an author'- could give an interesting alternative view? 

OUIL501- Refining my essay

I have been looking st refining my essay. I think the essay is a bit confused in some ways at the minute, I think I'm trying to get too many ideas into an essay that isn't long enough to discuss them all. I need to start to think about refining the essay down, and eliminating Andy of the subjects that don't directly relate to the title or won't help with influencing my practical work.

I want to find the balance between discusssing social media and news, and talk about the differences between the two. Maybe a short discription of these at the start of the essay will help to outline the ideas efficiently?

OUIL501- Satire

Because of the political and social aspect of my subject, a lot of the related illustrations seem to be based around satirical themes. This also lead me to think about my initial responses in my own practice for COP, and they do have a satirical, almost sarcastic tone to them.

Satire is something I have never really worked with before, and humour is not something I generally include in my work, so I'm a little bit reserved to pursue this. However, it's a great opportunity to explore a side of my practice that I have yet to consider.

OUL501- Study Task 5- Initial Ideas

I wanted to focus my practice for my visual experimentation mainly on shape and line, mostly a blend between the two. I feel my practice has moved more towards digital now and I wanted to take the opportunity to focus on more hand-made marks.

My initial ideas for the visual journal were to move on from my essay and look at how we use social media to project opinions, sometimes as 'news'. I focused on logos as these are the most recognisable symbols of social media, and I wanted to start of my experimentation in the most 'core' part of my chosen subject.

OUIL501- New media and Social Media

In my essay, I want to explore the ideas that social media and new media (mass communication) has affected the content of the work we produce as creative practitioners. 

Potential Themes to Investigates

- How constant interaction with clients and customers has altered how types of work are demanded.

- How 'fake news' and general,news reporting has affected the work we produce and how media 'hype' can create an influx of illustrated works.

- How social media can create a new market for other rising illustrators and more specifically, a new genre of work (memes).

OUIL501- Study Task 4- Images and Theory

Reproduction
'the action or process of copying something.'

How Could this Link to my Project?
- Reproduction as a technique used in practice
- Reproduction of others' works
- Idea of reproduced art, rather than one off pieces
- No more original ideas.

Links to Visual Culture
 - Commodification of art through social media
- Reproduction of themes and ideas in advertising

Postmodernism

' A late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.'

How Could this Link to my Project?
- Changes is aesthetics caused by changes in how work is shared
- Moving on from traditional methods of sharing and creating work.

Links to Visual Culture
- Blending of aesthetics
- Moving back towards old school methods and aesthetics.

Meta communication

'metacommunication (plural metacommunications) Communication that indicates how verbal information should be interpreted; stimuli surrounding the verbal communication that also have meaning, which may or may not be congruent with that of or support the verbal talk.'

How Could this Link to my Project?
- Lack of ability to comminucate through visual cues because of people working digitally and not communicating in person.
- Expression used to communicate ideas through symbols, emojis etc.

Links to Visual Culture
- Communication through symbols
- Hidden meanings in advertising

OUIL501- Change of Direction

After cosidering following a similar path to last years essay, I have now moved onto a totally separate subject. I want to do something different to last year, and want to move away from the retail side of it as much as possible, whilst still in keeping with my interests. I wanted to look at how social media is changing how and why we make work, and how this can influence the context behind our work.

I want to start investigating why, as creatives, we make the work we do and start to find out weather social media and mass media have any significant influence over it. My initial point of research will be looking for different examples of works influenced directly by social or mass media and move from there.

OUIL501- Proposed Question

How can our exposure to new media and social media affect the context and content of the work creative practitioners produce?

With my essay I will look to explore how social media and new media is used by creative practitioners and how the use of these platforms is influencing what we create as practicing illustrators. I will look to use theorists and theories focussing on social media and spread of mass media to back up my arguments.

OUIL501- Initial Ideas for Research Question

Since I was really enjoying what I was doing towards the end of last years COP module I think I would like to carry on in a similar theme. The thing I was most interested in was how we are manipulated to move and interact with a certain object or product and if/how we are influenced to buy it.

I went with this theme last year and already found out some really interesting techniques and methods used, which should hopefully put me in good stead for this year. I really want to focus on how retail shops are designed and laid out to best influence the customer to buy. I think this way of designing retail stores in a specific 'scientific' way is quite a recent thing, so there may not be many theorists or academic papers surrounding the specific subject. So maybe I'll have to gather information from relating subject areas and try to find some that relate to retail layout and design.

'Why we Buy' by Paco Underhill, is a great place to start with this subject area. In it, he outlines basic methods and techniques that retail designers use to a) keep the customer in the store for as long as possible, and b) make them buy as much as possible.

I think this mostly relates to the cultural side of COP, and think there are numerous links that can be made to differing artist and subjects, especially within marketing and advertising.

This may however be difficult to explore practically, as a lot of the subjects I will be talking about will be design  specific, rather than responsive art or illustration, so I will need to avoid it becoming more of a design experiment (maybe?).

I think I need to start by discussing with Pete my actual subject, which hopefully will happen next week, and hopefully he could shine some light on where I should be going with this idea. And also research more. Find images.