Sunday 6 December 2009

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.

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