Research and Epistemology Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo) - Proposing a Research Project - Lecture 26/10/2016

Assimilation -------- General Study
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Development --------- Communication

"Research is formalised curiosity.
It is poking and prying with a purpose" - Zora Neale Hurston

FACTS (truth) + OPINIONS (beliefs) = KNOWLEDGE

We are the centre of our research and therefore have to drive it forwards.

Establishing a Research Question

Suggested Research QuestionI want to explore the different ways visual communication (on multiple levels) can be used to orchestrate, manipulate, influence and deter societal change
(something like that)

Which Theorists relate to this question?Louis Althusser
Beatrice Wade
Walter Benjamin

Which academic sources are available on this topic?

(practitioners/images)Experimental jetset

World War propaganda

Communist posters, old and modern

Resurgence of Marxist ideals in the younger generations of today

Possible links to popular culture - politically charged comics and films

How could the question be investigated through practice?

Illustrate characters

Make posters in the style of propaganda

Investigate how posters placed in certain places can have different outcomes

Start looking into typography and how I can combine it with the visual to make something more effective

Illustration and Authorship - Rebecca Sugar

Rebecca Sugar is an American storyboard artist, animator and director, who weaves messages through both the medium of visual communication and writing.
Her work contains themes of societal acceptance, gender equality and LGBT rights, all represented through metaphor, as her work appears on channels such as Cartoon Network, where broadcasting law restricts the specifics of what you can present to an audience of children.
She uses simplistic methods of character construction to convey her views that themes such as love, friendship shouldn't be overcomplicated by the media's restriction of certain ways of thinking, and how the simplicity of acceptance has almost become a fairytale. She uses fairytale conventions in her work, both visual and written, to tap into this idea and make her ideas accessible to an audience perhaps too young to be emotionally developed enough to fully understand what she is getting at.

It could be said that the message of Sugar's work is mainly dependent on the recipient. As her work is mainly seen by a young audience, and it cannot directly address the subjects it is based around (sexuality, gender roles and subversions etc), then the children interpreting it are the real creators of the message. Barthes suggests "The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination." This could be said to mean that the recipient of the message is the person that really puts the meaning into the message, rather than the creator of it.

Barthes also suggests that giving the ideas that Rebecca Sugar is conveying the title of being "hers", the message is diluted and lost, as the idea should be bigger than the author. "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing." He suggests that imposing her as an author on her own work and the concepts she is dealing with is counterproductive to those very concepts, as it makes them smaller than they are and just another piece of work in her portfolio, rather than another important idea being presented to the outside world.

One part of Barthes' interpretation of work that I agree with is the idea that work created shouldn't be forever tethered to he/she who made it, as it can grow and soar above the initial intentions of the creator. "The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it". I think this is particularly an issue with a lot of famed classical artwork and artists, such as Van Gogh and Picasso, etc. Their work is largely well regarded because it was made by them, and they are famous, rather than being valued on its own merits as a piece of work. I feel that this is when the author becomes too involved, and the message is lost. Rebecca Sugar deals with some quite big and influential topics for today's young people, but I believe that as her work is very dedicated to the continuation and communication of that message, she deserves the credit of authorship on it, as what she is doing is bigger than just herself.

Research & Epistemology - Lecture 12/10/2016

Process is more important than outcome - if outcome drives process then we will always know where we are heading
- if process drives outcome, things are less certain, we can discover new things and experiment and find out things about our own practice we wouldn't have known had we not taken a risk

"Success comes from having brighter ideas closer together"

Fail better - learn from it
Fail quicker - more time to get it right

Ideas are our currency as creatives, we can't make anything without them, like a builder can't make a wall without any bricks

Stimulated ------- Intuitive
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Intuitive ---------- Systematic

Research is the process of finding already known facts:
Primary research: Generating knowledge of stuff
Secondary research: collecting stuff that has already been generated/collected - create relationships/links with it

• Quantitive Research: facts/figures/measurements - comparing and contrasting these - objective, provable
• Qualitative Research: beliefs/experiences/attitudes/behaviour - subjective, can't prove but can discuss, evaluate and understand through methods like interviews

Quantitative: He is tall - measure their height with a tape measure - objectively provable

Qualitative: He is tall - have them stand against a wall and get people to say how tall they think he is - subjective, based on personal factors about the person being asked

Information is the collated and organised form of raw data - Information should be sufficient, competent, relevant and useful

• Phase 1: Assimilation
  Accumulation and ordering of general info that is related to the problem at hand
• Phase 2: General Study
  The investigation of the nature of the problem - possible solutions or means of solution
• Phase 3: Development
  Furthering ideas and refinement
• Phase 4: Communication
  Revealing your complete findings as a body of research

Solution = usually a compromise between your original idea and what is possible - what you want to do and what you can do

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing" - Wernher Von Braun

THEORY (CoP) = "Knowing that..."

PRACTICE (Studio) = "Knowing how..."

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Combination of the two = SYNTHESIS

Scope and scale: what do I want to know

Relevance and usefulness: what do I need to do

CoP Session - notes - Marxism/Decepticonism

Marx - ideas of social equality - unobtainable - the depressing thought that it will never happen


IDW Transformers comics - Megatron's assessment of 'Functionist' society with strong ties to pre Revolution Russia - form dictates function - you can't ascend any higher from wherever you were born - everyone has a specific place in the system - your whole life is determined before you know you have the ability to make a choice

Link 80s miner strikes to themes of miners in the characters of Megatron and Terminus
The introduction of education as a commodity - having to pay to become useful


This symbols narrative origin is a visual representation of the phrase "you are being deceived"

Advertising enforces schisms - everyone you see, you think , am I better than them? Are they better than me? - Why should there be an order?

The Institute - brainwashing centre - links to the media today brainwashing people who don't think the right way

Joseph Jacotot reversed the rules

Most of our achievements are fuelled by the feeling of incompetence society and the media enforce

The Flipped Classroom - Lecture 5/10/2016

Traditional teaching methods - embeds hierarchy, before you even start to learn you are first told that you are below someone else - teacher

• Jacques Ranciere - The Ignorant Schoolmaster - application to education

60s origins - disaffected generation that wanted a new world - student occupation of French universities May 1968 

- anti authoritarian & radical - education for all & state funded students 

Students used their creative skills to further the revolution - posters etc

Visual Communication is a WEAPON - doesn't belong in a gallery, belongs out in the world - you can actually buy these prints now, the revolution failed socially but has a legacy in cultural memory

"sous le paves,  la plage" - "under the paving stones, the beach"

We are controlled mentally as much as we are controlled by threat of punishment

Ranciere rebelled against Althusser, his tutor - who was he to tell students they needed him - telling other people how to be free - 'every theory of education is committed to preserving the power it brings to light'

System keeps you in your place - why can't a "worker" want to be more than their social definition 

- Links to The Functionist Council - http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Functionist_Council

Everything is predetermined - feelings/emotions/responses

- self stratifying - people participate and try to label and create a hierarchy that doesn't exist and doesn't need to exist

Joseph Jacotot - gave students French and Flemish copies of a book & left them to it alone - they became able to figure French out alone - it shouldn't be surprising but we expect it to be hard because we are conditioned to think it won't work if it doesn't conform. Everyone teaches themselves about language and the world.

There is no divide - we don't need them, they need us to turn up and not riot so that they get paid.

• Society of contempt - people are individualist and judgemental - The lecturer who thinks he is better is equally wrong and ignorant as the too cool for school student
• University fees = the commodification of knowledge

We are customers of our universities - our education is the equivalent of a sofa or a washing machine or a bag of haribo

Stultification - Repression 

Self Education - Emancipation