LECTURE 1 - PANOPTICISM

INSTITUTIONS AND INSTITUTIONAL POWER

'Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables, empowers and legitimises them. This framework must be incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of cultural goods and practices'

Randal Johnson in Walker & Chaplin (1999)

The places we are born/work/live etc determine the work we might produce; we are not truly individual in this respect.

THE PANOPTICON



Michel Foucoult (1926-1984, Madness & Civilisation, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, books that survey the rise of mental institutions and prisons) suggests that this building has the same principles of control as society does.

THE GREAT CONFINEMENT (late 1600's)

'Houses of correction' to curb unemployment and idleness.

Those who wern't useful for society were stigmatised and thrown into one of these correction houses - anyone who didn;t operate in the way society wanted them to - the insane, criminals, poor and unemployed, single mothers etc. even the lazy people, with the threat of being beaten. Basically taking the unproductive and forcing them to be productive....which was OK for a while.

Rather than making people socially productive, the houses actually corrupt these people more so. The insane would make the sane insane.

THE BIRTH OF THE ASYLUM - insane and sane separated.

A greater division - knowledge specialists, people becoming qualified to judge who's right and wrong and insane and sane.

Inside the asylum, the insane are controlled in different ways, they are treated like children (minors) and if they do well, they are given rewards.

Society begins to realise there are better ways to control people than physical punishment - the shift to mental control, which comes with the birth of the asylum.

- The emergence of forms of knowledge - biology, psychiatry, medicine etc, legitimise the practices of hospitals, doctors, psychiatrists.

Pre-modern societies - the abnormal were subjected to public humiliation as a punishment; not to correct or train, but to demonstrate to anyone else that refusal to obey will result in public humiliation and punishment.

EG GUY FAWKES - punished to show others how powerful the King is.

DISCIPLINARY SOCIETY AND DISCIPLINARY POWER

discipline is a technology aimed at how to keep someone under surveillance, how to control his conduct, his behaviour, his aptitudes, how to improve his performance, multiply his capacities, how to put........(get quote from slideshow)

BACK TO THE PANOPTICON - designed by Jeremy Bentham - 1791

a round building with a potential multitude of functions - school, hospital, asylum, prison etc.



each of the spaces is a cell, divided by a wall, with a window that would shine on the prisoner, leaving them permanently backlit. In the middle is a central tower for the observers.

The ideal mechanism for disciplanry function. Each prisoner is constantly aware that they being surveyed, but they can't see each other. Permanently on display, permanently isolated, but the central observation tower is not lit, so they can;t tell if they are being watched or not. Not being able to verify if you are being watched or not has a strange effect. Hence you always end up behaving how you think you need to behave, as you contantly believe you are being watched. Once this idea is internalised people begin to control themselves, and bars are no longer needed. People didn;t try and escape, as they mentally kept themselves disciplined. Eventually you didn't even need guards to control it. THE PERFECT CONTROL MECHANISM

Check Presidio Modelo, Cuba





'Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate......get quote from slideshow

Allows scrutiny
Allows supervisors to conduct experiments
Allows to make them productive

Reforms prisoners, treats patients, instructs school children, helps confine etc

Parallels can be drawn to the lecture theatre we are sat in.

Foucoult is describing a tranformation in Western Societies from a form of power imposed by a ruler or sovereign to A NEW MODE OF POWER CALLED 'PANOPTICISM'

the Open Plan Office is another example of this. Enables easy communication whilst constantly being monitored by the boss. Has the effect of making people work harder, the boss sat there as a reminder of institutional power.

MODIFYING your own behaviour without having to be told, just in the knowledge that you are or can be watched and observed. i.e. you correcting yourself.

PANOPTICISM is EVERYWHERE in society. CCTV, google earth, streetview. everything that we do is recorded and henceforth it starts a fear that we as individuals may get caught out, which of course causes everyone to become better citizens under their own control.

The point is not to catch people out, but to provide a visible reminder to be a regular well-behaved citizen, and that you can get caught out.

'power relations have an immediate hold upon it (the body); they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs

'DOCILE BODIES'

self monitoring, self correcting, obedient bodies.

Television is a great example.

THE EXERCISE OF POWER RELIES ON THERE BEING THE CAPACITY FOR POWER TO BE RESISTED.

'WHERE THERE IS POWER THERE IS RESISTANCE'

SECOND YEAR CTS

Starts here.

Deconstruction in Graphic Design

Lupton, E, 2008, 'Thinking With Type'

http://www.papress.com/other/thinkingwithtype/resources/TextEssay.pdf


'A classic typographic page emphasizes the completeness and
closure of a work, its authority as a finished product.'

Although it would be logical to say that good typography exists for the purpose of enhancing readability, Lupton observed that in fact the opposite was indeed true, that typography serves to help readers avoid reading. Designers work with typography and layout in order to allow the reader to clearly identify entrance and exit points, as well as clearly navigating the reader through the text in the correct and most efficient way.

A sense of completeness as a piece of work is also delivered by the designer, particularly when regarding printed texts and screen-based text. With printed texts, typography becomes a major concern, and due to this a lot more time and care is put into the process of completing and finishing the work. This in itself generates a certain series of voices for the work, not only that of the author, but also of the designer who arranged the layout, but also of the typographer who designed the typeface(s) used. It is possible to say that one of the main roles of the designer is to give a voice to the text that is characteristic of the author, to represent him or her in the correct way. As a result of this, however, is that there results in very few possible interpretations of the text - the completeness and correctness of it lead to the conclusion of only one possible meaning.

Typography also serves a number of other very useful purposes. The most logical spacing and sizing of a block of text allows the reader to absorb the information at their own pace, and perhaps take in the information in the order that they choose. This can once again be interpreted in one of two ways, on once hand it could be argued that this allows the reader to influence their own interpretation on the text, but on the other, it can also be argued that once again the typographic decisions made only add another voice to the author's text, reducing the possible interpretations to that of the author's own and the designer's input.




Hori, A, 1989, Typography as Discourse

As a piece of typographic design, it is possible to argue that theories of Deconstruction apply heavily to this poster. It certainly conforms to the most common of interpretations of Deconstruction in graphic design, if it were meant to be looked at as a labeling of style or attitude - which in fact it is not - the text is chopped up, layered and transformed in such a way to question typographical norms and standards. It was argued by the philosopher Jacques Derrida that the Western world is governed by opposites, and one of these opposites that he was particularly concerned with was the opposition between speech and writing, stressing the point that writing was in fact an inferior use of language compared to that of speech. This poster seems to be a challenge to that idea, the design decisions made seem to be influenced by such a statement. The arrangement of the type is massively abstracted; it becomes very unclear as to where the eye should be reading first, perhaps leaving room for more interpretation by the reader, something which Derrida argued was missing from normalized typographic styling.

Avant-Garde in Graphic Design.

Translated in English as "Vanguard" or "Advance Guard", applying the term Avant-Garde to Art and Design implies innovative, radical and original work considered to be at the forefront of progression. The movement is very often described as to have begun in the 1850's, yet however the term is usually accredited to Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the forerunners of Socialism, some time earlier on in 1925.

"The notion of the avant-garde enshrines the idea that art should be judged primarily on the quality and originality of the artists vision and ideas."

http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=38

In some ways I very much consider this playing card design by Si Scott to be quite Avant-Garde. It is very progressive in terms of challenging common perceptions of what a playing card should look like, and transforms a very typical household object into something innately valuable and beautiful. It fulfills many of the supposed criteria to become a piece of Avant-Garde design, particularly due to its originality and the seemingly painstaking process that has been undertaken to create what is essentially just a playing card. 

This bit of typography (reading 'Hudson Mohawke) I feel is Avant-Garde in the sense of originality and radicalness. It's legibility and readability are somewhat slightly compromised for the purpose of aesthetics, for the need to implement original and progressive ideas. The notion of using hands and fingers for typography is perhaps nothing new, yet arranging it in the way that is shown is far out of the ordinary, reflective of the music created by Hudson Mohawke.

As far as I can tell, the term 'Avant-Garde' has perhaps been applied to so many styles and ideas that it becomes difficult to pinpoint one particular image as being particularly so. These two images I felt were Avant-Garde in the sense they explore radical, innovative techniques to resolve a particular project, yet then again they have been produced over 150 years since the term arrived, so the influence of digital media (or a rebellion to this) means they may have no ties with the term whatsoever, and perhaps they are simply Art and Design in the Digital age.

Lecture notes...Post Modernism

Characterised by:

- Exhaustion
- Pluralism
- Pessimism
- Disillusionment with the idea of absolute knowledge

The term 'Postmodern' has been used since the 1970's, in order to describe the changes seen to be established in Western society and cultures from 1960's onwards.

'These changes arose from anti-authoritarian challenges to the prevailing orthodoxies across the board.'


http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=230

Post-modernism is particularly seen as a reaction to Modernism as a movement, and may be considered to have begun with the arrival of pop art, and certainly embraced much from other movements such as Conceptual art, Neo-expressionism and Feminism. The designers of the Postmodern movement appear to take themselves far less seriously in reaction to the Modern designers, with far less regard for logical graphic elements such as grids, conforming type, and legible lettering. An element of playfulness is apparent throughout, again seemingly juxtaposing Modernism's strict 'form follows function' attitude.



http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2007/01/20/barney-bubbles-artist-and-designer/

I feel that this design (The Damned, Music for Pleasure, Barney Bubbles, 1977) is a prime example of post-modernism in practice. The spaced out typography at the top of the image is so deliberately abstracted and illegible, in a rebellious sort of way it's as if you had to know exactly what you were searching for. Very anti-authoritarian and underground. A complete disregard for any use of the Modern, logical graphic ideas is perfectly demonstrated as well.



http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2007/01/20/barney-bubbles-artist-and-designer/
(Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Imperial Bedroom - 1982. Also designed by Barney Bubbles)

Another useful example by Barney Bubbles. Again, it is possible to view this as a reaction against Modernism. The type is far more legible this time, but the elements of abstraction and surrealism are still present. There are so many different forms and and colours visible, effectively displaying the playfulness and rebelliousness of Post-modern artists and designers.



i-D magazine cover, Terry Jones, 1980. http://shanny12.wordpress.com/modernism-vs-postmodernism/

This magazine rapidly became an iconic representation of the new-wave and post-modern graphic design aesthetic upon its publication in 1980. The experimental typography and use of heightened, striking colour is symbolic of the expressive design and rebellion against strict constraints that is characteristic of post-modern designers.



Jeffery Keedy - Emigre Type Specimen Series. 2002.

http://shanny12.wordpress.com/modernism-vs-postmodernism/

Another challenging piece of postmodern graphic design. This however seems much more of a direct challenge, as opposed to the last pieces examined; there is slight evidence of a grid structure, yet the illogical aesthetics of the type would suggest a deliberate rebellion against this.

Lecture notes...Modernity and Modernism

Modernism was concerned with pushing boundaries, along the lines of thinking that 'new' is much better than old. This is an obvious result of various large-scale changes and revolutions happening in the world at the beginning of the 20th century and is often considered the birth of the term 'Graphic Design'.

Urbanisation: A shift in society, more and more people begin to up sticks and move from the countryside into the towns and cities with the promise of work and a higher quality of life (trains, shopping facilities, entertainment etc), resulting from industrial and technological advances.

Enlightenment: period in the late eighteenth century when scientific and philosophical thinking experienced massive advancements....electricity, constant water supplies, the invention of psychology as a practise...

One of the earliest stages of this would be the state of Paris at the time of 1850's onwards, a period known as 'Haussmanisation' - new architecture, new fashions, a new way of life, suppose a time when a city really became a city.

Modernism in graphic design was a response to these changes, and was perhaps required to accommodate these changes.

Semiotics...

Couple of useful definitions...

DENOTATION:

indication: the act of indicating or pointing out by name
reference: The MOST direct and specific meaning of a word or expression.

CONNOTATION:

an idea, or meaning perhaps, which is implied or suggested once looking further beyond the denotation.

SIGNIFIER/SIGNIFIED:

The signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image.

A word is simply a jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star. It is in the interpretation of the signifier that meaning is created.

The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers. 

Revolutionary Design in Russia

Communism......sharing the wealth produced by a country between every person. Wildly optimistic, too good to be true.

1917. 

October revolution, led by Lenin.

led to propaganda images aimed at educating the people in the 'correct' revolutionary way of thinking.
The colour Red was particularly symbolic as being the blood of the oppressed people.






These two images are Modern in the way they are characterised by their cutting-edge, freshly original designs, a step up from Commercial artwork towards the realms of Graphic Design. A re-thinking in the way communication relates to form, assisting the Russian Revolution in offering a model for an entirely new society. Techniques similar to those used here are still widely used in today's design work.

essay.

Could it be argued that fine art ought to be assigned more ‘value’ than graphic design?

An obvious answer to such a question would be to say yes; logically, fine art should be assigned more value than graphic design, due to the very nature and intensions of the practises. However it is possible to offer countless arguments to oppose this, particularly when examining definitions of the word ‘value’. A common-sense and in some ways quite precise definition could perhaps be: ‘the amount of money/goods/services that is considered to be a fair equivalent for something else’ (wordnetweb.princeton.edu). Of course, as with many words and phrases, the aspect of opinion must be take into consideration: for example, it would also be possible to define ‘value’ as being a property of an object, representing a degree of importance. This raises further questions, as it could be argued that graphic design - often being referred to as an ‘applied’ art - is of more importance to our everyday lives than fine art, which traditionally has been regarded as a luxury enjoyed by high society. Taking into account these two definitions alone, it becomes clear that both practises enjoy positions of ‘value’ within cultures. It is important also to consider the effects of the 21^st century on art and design cultures: it is questionable, with the evolution of blogs and social networking, whether art and design cultures really hold any real monetary value anymore – it could be suggested that traditional ideas of the word ‘value’ - when dealing with art and design - are being shifted at an exponential rate to accommodate cyberspace’s visceral and anonymous judgement.

In order to provide a conveniently logical answer to the question of whether fine art should be assigned a greater value than graphic design, it is worth studying a generalised definition of ‘fine art’: ‘type of art primarily created for the purpose of providing beauty and enjoyment rather than for commercial use. It is often intended to be uplifting, thought provoking, and life-enhancing.’ (www.globaled.org). If this is the case, then graphic design (often and understandably thought of as opposing fine art) can be understood as a form of commercial artwork, created with the purpose of communicating a particular message with the aid of graphic elements. Adrian Shaughnessy describes a fundamental difference between a fine artist and a graphic designer, stating that:

 ‘A graphic designer requires a brief and needs to be given content to work with. Artists, on the other hand, write their own briefs and create their own content’ (Graphic Design: A User’s Manual, 2009, p21).

 Although a potentially disagreeable point of view, this effectively outlines the most generalised difference in intension between the two practises: on the one hand, we have a fine artist; who could spend an eternity exploring the same issues, producing work that usually becomes valued accordingly to the artist’s reputation, aesthetic qualities and the number of originals produced. On the other hand, we have a typical company of graphic designers; employed by clients as a service, of course based on their reputation as successful designers, but perhaps most importantly, their effective time management and efficient delivery skills. It becomes obvious how value is defined through the nature of the practises. With graphic design, a ‘commercial’ art, clients are seeking a product that cannot be obtained from many fine artists – rapid, reproducible, and effective material that can be replicated in a number of different mediums, to present to the majority of society on sometimes an hourly basis. This in itself can validate the argument that fine art should be assigned a greater value – the masses will not venture out of their way to see good graphic design, as it is often a disposable medium which is rarely viewed by choice. Fine art naturally opposes this in the way it is traditionally presented to society – hung or installed in quiet, pristine galleries, and, quite ironically, often advertised using graphic design as a medium.

Although the traditional differences between the two mediums do very much still exist, it is becoming increasingly important to consider the transformations that art and design cultures have experienced as a result of the internet, along with the many branches of new platforms that have become available to its users.  The arrival of countless blogging websites, social networks and online picture albums has forced the art and design community to exponentially become more rapid in every aspect:

 ‘It has become both fashionable and necessary to monitor daily – sometimes hourly – the design discourse online...most of the design magazines have blogs, a tacit acknowledgement that most of the action has moved online, and that print media are unable to move with a fraction of the speed that is possible on the Internet’ (Graphic Design: A User’s Manual, 2009, p.33).

Of course Adrian Shaughnessy is commenting on the current state of graphic design in our world, yet it is equally valid to apply this statement to other existing art forms; after all, the internet provides us with a constantly evolving, level playing field for documenting pieces of work, many of which provide mere seconds of enjoyment, before being shared amongst others, and then consequently forgotten and lost in what would appear to be a virtual well of binary matter. This raises the obvious question of whether any sort of work created by the emerging generation of digitally fluent artists and designers is worth any sort of monetary value whatsoever. Perhaps art and design cultures are entering an era whereby work is assigned a value of one to five, determined by a large anonymous network of viewers who can simply click a button to express their judgement and opinion of a piece of art or design. Of course; if this is the case, then the borders between graphic design and fine art (particularly at an amateur or student level) have well and truly been torn down, creating a spectrum of work spanning from conceptual sculpture to sleekly designed pieces of graphic information, all assigned a translatable and in many ways valueless value.

Although it is possible to argue that the digital revolution is slowly defeating the traditional ideas of ‘value’ within both art and design cultures, it is also important to consider a slightly alternative - and slightly controversial - argument as to why fine art may no longer be exceeding the value of graphic design. There is a wealth of young artists, designers, and just plain vandals who are willing to broadcast opinions on the streets for the majority of society to see, without any permission, and most importantly, without any regard for monetary values. An old but nonetheless relevant quote from Eric Gill reads:

“...but tho’ industrialism has now won an almost complete victory, the handicrafts are not killed, & they cannot quite be killed because they meet an inherent, indestructible, permanent need in human nature. (Even if a man’s whole day is spent as a servant of an industrial concern, in his spare time he will make something, if only a window box flower garden.)” (An Essay on Typography, the theme, 1936)

If many examples street art can be interpreted as sharing similar, if not identical definitions as fine art, then it becomes a necessary aspect to consider within this argument. No matter how meaningful and aesthetically pleasing a piece of street art can be, there lies a beauty in the impossible nature of assigning a monetary value to it. However this raises the idea that perhaps ‘value’ can once again be perceived in an entirely new and differing way: maybe man’s desire to create and broadcast a particular message can be measured by his bravery and intelligence used to place a piece of artwork, or indeed graphic design, in the unsuspecting public eye. Of course this can then be photographed and uploaded to some sort of blog and have its value judged in a similar fashion mentioned earlier. Or perhaps its value can be translated to an economic sense by collecting images of these works and publishing them in a book, which in itself becomes a piece of graphic design which holds a monetary value greater than the original pieces of work.

After examining various arguments, definitions and opinions, it is ironically becoming more and more obvious that attempting to assign ‘values’ to pieces of fine art and graphic design is becoming an ever more ambiguous act; it is becoming less and less possible to categorise work into areas such as graphic design and fine art, and as a result of this, neither practises will in future receive any more value than each other, and in fact will predictably result in having a monetary value of zero, for all pieces of work. The impact of modern technologies, combined with man’s ever persisting desire to create artwork and display it in the public eye, no matter how good or bad, will inevitably result in new interpretations of the word ‘value’ within art and design cultures, for which neither practise will enjoy any more than the other.