portfolio task 3

The signifiers in this visual is the title 'GOTCHA', 'Our lads' in the sub-heading and the photos. 'GOTCHA' denotes the term 'got you' and connotes recognition as a friendly term and is insinuating that the writer / story and the reader are similar and unformal. 'Our lads' in the sub-heading denotes lads that belong to us, and connotes 'our mates', bring it to a personal level even though technicly it is very unlikely that all the soldiers are our friends. The pictures denote two boats, one that has been sunk and the other that has been hit. They connote that the soldiers at war are successfully attacking the enemy.

The syntagmatic structure of the visual is important to the viewers opinions. By using friendly terminology that catches the readers eye initially and then again in the sub-heading, by the time you get to the pictures you are feeling possitive at the events shown because it is writen in a personal way rather than telling the story in a way that disconnects from the reader.

Portfolio task 7

This is an example of the type of covers the magazine 'Nuts' uses. The cor audience is young teenage boys. construction of such an 'other' secures and stabilises the identity, and sense of self because the women in the magazine are portrayed as sexy, avaliable and in need of lust from boys. It make the reader feel better about himself because he feels as though the girl is in need of acceptance buy him so he feels more important when he lusts for them.

Portfolio task 5

Lefbvre had a theory on the space around is. He communicated this theory through a diagram called the Spatial Triad. This includes 3 parts; the first made up of ideals, imagination, theory and visions which makes Representational Space. The second is Representations of Space which is made up of maps, plans, models and designs. The third and final componant to Lefbvres theory diagram is Practice. Practice is made of daily routine and urban reality.

Example:
Leeds College of Art.
Planners and architects, when designing Leeds college of Art had a vision of constructing a place of learning where students can develop their higher education and then use their newly developed skills to improve and make their mark on the world. The plan was also to produce a more educated and submissive poulation, and to gain money from the students and hopefully creating a profit for the government. Looking at the 'representations of space' in the College of Art, the visions and ideals have been lived up to. The space is producing a profit and students are coming out with a higher education. Conditions of behaviour are already set out in the space before anyone enters. The ideal behaviour is to be submissive to the higherarchy of the college and  to cooporate. The space that was created before students walked in is predominently accepted, however there are always the few that negate the space and rebel against it. They are usually promptly removed to bring the space back to clarity. This is part of the 'practice' part of Lefebvre's 'triad'. The fact that people can chose to rebel puts any social space in jepedy, although the 'representational space' appears to be predominant.

Lecture 5 - Social spaces- Sight/sound

- Single point perspective - visually representing space. No perspective outside the wester culture.

Berger:
"there is no need for god to situate himself in relation to others. He is himself the situation".

Understanding is limited and inhibited by our vision. Third world doesn't get a say and is encouraged to act as the first world wants.

Vision is active, Potentially reciprocal, multifacted and therefore the site of a diologue of power.

Jemima stehli - 'strip'
Connection to the Gaze. Awkward feeling wen the art critic is sat looking at the woman naked - objectifying, Making you aware that there is someone looking back.
-illustions that we understand the world

Henri Lefebure (1905 - 1991)
-French Intellectual, Marxist sociologist
- Revolution via everyday life
- Influenced the situationists in 1950s and 60s.
- Influenced student leaders of 1968 Paris uprising.
- A theorist of radical movements.
- A creation and function of space: SPATIALISATION

"illusion of transparency"
- The illustion that:
Understanding is possible
The objective viewpoint exists and somehow enables understanding
No 'total' picture
'View from above is flawed'

Social space is continually shifting and is built on history, memory and imagination.

Vito Acconci (1969) - Following piece.
-Following one person around the city not letting him know hes being followed.
-illustion that you control a social space - you know what to expect on a journey but all the time there are things happening that change the social space around you. Illustion of control.

Transgression as a result of space: response to its limits
-Rebelion
-Spaces are controlled so people use those spaces to rebel eg. London queens square rather than a small town.

Maze prison - Belfast
Dirty protest 1977-8
(De-humanising the individual) Steve McQueen made a hunger video.

Sir Robbert Pere statue in Hyde PArk. (tory and inventer of the police).
-Vandalised, attempt to challange the space.

-Vision informs thought
-Western traditions incorporate the narrowness of single point perspective
-Lefebvre's 'Illusion of transparency'.
-Important 'social space' = Multiplicity of meanings and experiences.
-Controlled spaces provoke reations.
-Reciprocal vision allows inversion or transgression of power.

Lecture 6 - Globalisation, sustainability and the media

Definitions of Globalisation:
Socialist - The process of transformations of local or regional phonomena into global ones
Capitalist - The elimination of state - enforced resrictions on exchanges accross the border and the increasingly intergrated and clomplex global system.

George Ritzer coined together the term "mcDonaldization" to describe the wide-ranging sociocultural process.

Marshall McLuhan.
- Rapidity of communication echoes the senses
- We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale.

"abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned"

TV is an extention of our eye. Phone is an extention of our ear.

Global Village - internet - electric technology would seem to render individualism obsolute.

Centripetal forces - bringing the world together in uniform global society
Centrifugal forces - Tearing the world apart in tribal wars.
Direct responce to American globalisation??

Sovereignty - Challenges to the idea of the nation-state

Culturalimplerialism
If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an intergrated community as an assimilated one.
Key thinkers:
Schiller
Chomsky

News corporations divide the world into 'territories' of decending 'market importance'.

Panda to ideas of the west first because they can sell more there.
1. North America
2. Western Europe, Japan, Australia
3. Developing economies, India etc
4. The rest of the world.

India - Skin whitening cream. Not natural - wanting to look like westerners by 'ldeal life' in magazines, literature etc. White skin = modern, sophisticated.

Chomsky and Herman (1998)
'Manufacturing consent' - All of the media is one giant propaganda tool for western America. - Political indoctrination.

Propaganda- model- 5 basic filters (media neutral??)
- Ownership
- funding
- sourcing
- Anti communist ideology
- Flack

Ownership
Rupert Murdoch selected media interests (controling media) Owns papers, sky, fox etc.
Spreading his poitical philosophy.
Buisness interests not for the people.

Sourcing
Interviewing. If a story is made up, or guessed, their job would be lost. Wikileaks.

Funding
Advertising. Run an advert and then arange stories around advert. Cant have negotive story next to adverts.

Flack
Us-based global climate coalition (GCC).

Anti-ideologies
News is based on what we are not to re-inforce what we are. Demonising our political ideaologies.

Al Gore (2006) 'An inconvenient truth'
Jim Inhofe - 'biggest hoax'
Nigel Lawson - 'propagandist's term'
Competative enterprise institute (machine for big politing buisnesses)
-Lieing to the face of the public even after facts.
-Shows the impact of the media, when people believe this.

Portfolio task 6

How is sustaionability defined within the text?

Meadows claims sustainability is 'ofen defined as inter and intra generational equity in the social, environmental, economic, moral and political spheres of society'. This is where all generations in society work together for their own benifits. Ideal sustainability would be our generation getting what we need but not compromising resources for our next generation.

what are the main characteristics of Capitalisim?

Capitalism is like a 'diverse web'.  Capitalism finds new markets and comodifys them. it is always trying to find new ways around obsticals of society. ideas come to an end in a market niesh, it is where the 'widening sphere of circulation' comes to a close.

Try to define a 'crisis of Capitalism'. Offer an example.

'Crisis indicates a passage, which is the turning point in every systematic cyle of accumulation'. This means over production and the point where nothing more can be done in that market. It often causes disagrements. Example is the environmental crisis where they are inventing electric cars and using alternative oils to defer global warming. This is not a solution, it is a way of making money out of the inevitable and prolonging a market.

What solutions have been offered to the sustainability question? Are theses successful / realistic? If not why are they flawed?

The solutions offered to the sustainability question are: that buisnesses need to reinvest in natural and human capital, they need to use environmentally friendly methods of production with no toxicity, they need to increase the efficiency of their resources and they also need to alter the buisness model so the main focus is the service they provide.
I do not think these solutions are realistic. To make them work they need to get every buisness to cooperate which is very unlikely as there will always be a good proportion that don't want to do it. All the buisnesses would have to perchase new environmentally friendly machinery which would cost buisnesses a lot and also the machinery would be made from unenvironmentally friendly means.



Is the concept of sustainability compatible with Capitalism?

It claims in the test that sustainability is 'potential to become about individual decisions and techncological inovations to delay and reinvent the ecological limitations imposed on our current lifestyle'. It blaimes Capitalism for the current environmental problems and looks to it for solutions. There is a circle where sustainability could not cope without Capitalism but Capitalism picks sustainability apart.

Portfolio task 4

Why do advertisements with CGI animals in usually sell better than those without?

Five main points of my essay:

1. What is semiotics?
2. How Semiotics makes us subconciously acknowledge - codes
3. Personification - Making the animals more humanlike so viewer can identify with the animal
4. Applicating theories to advert
5. Why CGI over real animals?


My chosen Methodological approachs are Semiotics and Personification.
 
Eco, U (1976). A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University press

Phillips,B (1996) Advertising and the cultural meaning of animals. the University of Texas at Austin

Hall, S, 2007. This means this, This means that: A users guide to semiotics. King

2010. From Russia with brand love. Guardian. 29 April. Available at: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/digital/from-russia-with-brand-love/3012799.article. [Accessed on 28 March 2011]

 
 
 
 















I will use this image in my essay when talking about how verbal words had problems when there was someone who couldn't hear/understand, so signs were introduced (semiotics).