March 25, 2004
appropriation - response
Questions on appropriation
no answers - just more questions....
1.1 Is Garret's work [as discussed in this chapter] inherently any better than the junk mail I received from my ISP?
Garretts work is different since he was doing it in another time, meaning is stripped and then re-applied, stripped and re-contextualised, de-re-contextualised...your ISP are probably using a signifier many times removed from it's position in space/time. A bit like thoses images of "che"ñ what do they mean now? something very PoMo I guess..
1.2 Is it important that the original meaning of the 'thing' being appropriated is known by the receiver? [familiarity]
do you mean "is it right/proper/worthy"? what about the letter from the girl defending her use of the playboy bunny laser-cut on her car "because it's fun and cute" to the post-feminist critic who felt that the girl was being conned in by a patriachal commodification of gender....
1.3 Is familiarity neccessary when dealing with Saville's album covers?
many-layered meanings, many-layered responses...
1.4 Is familiarity neccessary when dealing with Parody, such as the Twin Peaks guide-book?
something about clubs here, and secret codes, ideas about how information becomes more meaningful. The social desire for difference yet togetherness - "it's important that not everyone likes the music that I like, it's important that some people I know and like, like the music that I like..." If I know TP and you know TP then we can talk and that other person doesn't understand (which is a lot of fun because they look a bit confused) and they think we're weird...which is great...
Tarantino's films....
2.1 Is appropriation more valid when it is used to bring up or develop new forms or ideas? [as opposed to simple literal pastiche. Eg: Swatch poster]
I like your fertile/infertile analogy...
more valid, less valid? "Sherrie Levine presented a photograph by Edward Weston as her own"...by doing so she certainly throws spotlight onto new ideas - I guess intention comes in here. I guess it is what Yoko is starting to talk about on her blog when she says "detaching from the output" , that the intention and "the way of doing" define the artefact more than the final form....or is this Art?
something about Jeff Koons here
2.2 Does Saville's work rely solely on ambiguity to create the "3rd idea"? Could his work be criticised as being formulaic if this is the case?
The 3rd idea - it does allow some sort of forward movement or momentum, it does encourage past/present/future awareness and connectivity - it certainly could be formulaic but it doesn't kill meaning in the same way that the Garrett work might.
2.3 Of the work illustrated in this chapter, which has the most 'added value', in terms of bringing something new to the appropriation? [or possibly that should be; getting something new out of the appropriation]
3.1 Who is more authentic: Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood? Elvis Presley or Carl Perkins? Art Chantry or Tibor Kalman?
3.2 Can anyone appropriate anything?
ummm...yes...
copying used to be seen as a fair-enough way to understand what "the masters" were doing, being able to replicate. They were always seen as learning though - not ways forward...
The idea that one has the right to appropriate something close to home over something else is strange but it does exist - I guess I was thinking about Malcolm Mclaren going to NYC, or Paul Simon going to Africa.
However, look what the European Impressionists achieved by poaching formalistic devices from totally other cultures (Japan) - actually using the other to re-define your own direction in an obviously valuable way (colour, framing, composition, etc). In many ways it seems that the appropriation of the mis-understood can be more valuable than the appropriation of the known.
3.3 Is Kalman's work with the vernacular "patronizing"?
I always thought it was him agonizing over why that work seemed to be so much more interesting to him than what his peers were doing. It starts to become patronizing when it is used as a style...but then if someone else's work throws light on your own and seems to lead a way forward...is it patronizing to see the decals on revheads cars and like them, and even want to emulate them?
3.4 Is Chantry's really any better? Does he just fake naivety better than Kalman? [note: might be worthwile looking up some more of Chantry's work]
There's something kind-of righteous going on here; "what is better, what is more worthy, what is appropriate etc". I think the "third idea" idea obviously shows a way forward. I think it's telling that Art Chantry's work leads into (becomes eaten-up by) Duffy and "Old Navy" commercialism (so it's OK if the original was not political in intent?). (Art Chantry interview)
If the work has connectivity and multiplicity, if it has some sense of possibilities and purposefulness, if it is not "thin" or veneer-like then it allows for and encourages "the on-going" - it implies questions - like the "Encyclopeadia Persona" at the end of the chapter.
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:25 PM
ch3. appropriation
re. para relating to my topic (whatever that is..):
p76 Poyner on Garrett
"What gets overlooked, when the past is treated as a quarry from which useful visual material can be extracted at will, are the changes of meaning ñ the drainage of meaning ñ that occurs when visual ideas with specific purposes are are applieds in new contexts." (ie ripping off Lissitzky's Red Wedge)
why:
why:
meaning. the transfer of meaning, the accruel of meaning and the destruction of meaning.
It's anarchic and political, it's "bear in a china shop" playful but potentially destructive, perhaps this graphic appropriation (as Poynor suggests) actually supports a conservatism, a dilution of the importance of history, perhaps designers do become the unknowing accomplices of a political "status quo" - a stagnation borne out of the rendering of everything as pastiche and meaningless. Historical events become seen as a style to be used, a style that still carries the "smell of meaning" while it's actually had to be shot and stuffed... something like the sanctity of watching Nature Documentaries from our armchairs....
part of me agrees strongly with Savage...
this graphic appropriation seems to have fed directly into more commercial GD and advertising to create the "eater of culture" which we might come to fear...
Posted by Neal Haslem at 12:09 PM
March 22, 2004
VR - whooo
I went to see/do Char davies "EphemÈre" today at ACMI - It was more affecting than I thought it would be (I thought it would be a bit hokey and mid-nineties'ish).
I was thinking about conversations, objects with discourse, open-ended meaning and layering. It (the VR) seemed to capture a lot of this, I wondered whether a graphic communication can be this, and can it still be useful being this? I wondered whether something like a VR might carry a brand, it certainly has a personality - I wondered about natural communication forms and their "open-to-intrepretation"-ness. Sounds like I was wandering around wondering a bit...
Posted by Neal Haslem at 05:35 PM
March 15, 2004
an Isreali guy...
an Isreali guy I met recommended "Pattern Recognition"...I'd given up on William Gibson but I'm into anything that critiques "Roach" marketing...I love the way the hero gets physically sick when she sees too many logo's (my sister once tried to go 40 days without any media input - it's tricky....)
Posted by Neal Haslem at 09:27 PM | Comments (5)
mechanics library window
a window with a display - I like window displays, DIY displays.
They had printed out the words "living for cheese", or something, on their laserprinter using the wackiest font they could find, one of those windowsô fonts that (sort of) match a real font (it was a bit like Peignot) - anyway there were a few bits of cut up paper and maybe a gold star or two stuck on cardboard...
why do I like this so much, why did it jump out of the other street stuff? why do I like the fact it is right next to (and to the uninitiated would seem part of) the Swinburne National Institue of Design...
Posted by Neal Haslem at 03:50 PM | Comments (1)