Art and the mass media - lecture notes - (week 4)

• Age of print began around 1450 with the Gutenburg press - which meant mass print.
• 1st time in history the printed word can be printed for lots of people affordably - circulation and production of knowledge on a large scale.
• Concept of literature had changed - we are now computer literate - we can "self publish". Changed how we engage with the world.
• Hypermedia - much media - pictures, sounds etc - enhance our experience of absorbing knowledge.
• Problems: "surfing" media can fragment how we absorb knowledge - hyperlinks distract and move us around the websites quickly - missing information.
  
• Mass media - modern systems of communication and distribution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large numbers of consumers - newspapers, cinema, advertising.
  

• Criticisms of mass media:
• Superficial, trivial, uncritical.
• Viewing figures measure success
• Audience is dispersed.
• Audience is disempowered.
• Encourages apathy - staticness - feeling we can't do anything to change the world.
  
• Power held by the few motivated by profit or social control (propaganda).
• Bland, escapist and standardised.
• Encourages escapism - opium of the masses.

• Positives:
• Not all mass media is low quality.
• Social problems/injustices are discussed by media.
• Creativity can be a feature.
• Transmission of high art materials reaches a broader audience (opera, classical, etc).

Artists use media in their work:

Picasso (1913)

Richard Hamilton (1956) Pop art

Lichtenstein 'Whaam' (1963)

Warhol (1962) Green Coke Bottles

Big Electric Chair (1967)

Ambulance Disaster (1963) - disseminates us - art critical of art and the mass media.

Art's meaning shifted by mass media.

Marcus Harvey - Myra - 1995 - using children's hand prints. Kept Myra in the press - was it so people didn't forget?

Conclusions:

• New media - changing the way we consume and read text and image.
  
• Theorists of mass media have different viewpoints - seeing is as either: negative and a threat, or positive - pleasurable and democratic.
• Much 20th century art has used mass media.