Thursday 4 March 2010

Lecture notes 2.12.09

Late age of print

Term comes from media theorist marshall mcluhan, began around 1450.

Gutenbergs printing press.

First piece of new technology that enabled mass print.

Electronic book – reader takes on role of author.

Hypertext – blue text used on web.

Hypermedia – many media, pics, sounds. Feeling of being lost in knowledge, empowering but incomplete.

Definition of mass media modern systems of communication and distibution supplied by relatively small groups of cultural producers, but directed towards large numers of consumers.

Newspapers, cinema, ads, tv etc.

Thinking critically about the mass media.

Negative critisism.

Superficial, uncritical, trivial.

Viewing figures measure success, audience is dispersed, disempowered.

Encourages the status quo (its conservative) resistant to change cos of its pandering to the viewer.

Encourages apathy.

Power held by the few motivated by profit or social control (properganda)

Bland, escapist and standardized.

Encourages escapism, seen as a drug which anaesthatises us.

Positive critism of the mass media, not all media is of low quality.

Social problems and injustices are discussed by the media.

Creativity can be a feature of mass media.

Transmission of high art material reaches a broader audience.

Democratic potential.

(knowledge can reach us, we can engage with it and have an effect on the world)

book – art in the age of mass media, john a. walker.

Can art be autonomous? (exist on its own in a vacuum)

Should art be autonomous? For some yes.

Book – Thomas crow, modern art in the common culture.

Art gets appreciated by mass media.

Sensation exhibition 1997 – royal academy.

New media are changing the way we consume and read text and image.

Theorists of the mass media have different viewpoints seeing it as either negative and a threat or pleasurable, positive and democratic.

Much 20th century art has used mass media – often to be critical of it.

There is a serious question in art theory as to whether art should be autonomous or not.

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