Concept Statement
My work, “Through the Eyes of a Pessimist” aims to reflect the negative impacts of media and technology in our lives. This pessimist approach is drawn directly from studies conducted by Frederic Wertham, who observed the culture of violence and the horror genre prominent in comic books. Through a thorough analysis of this, he found that illicit messages were contained encouraging sexual activity and violence- setting in place a standard code of ethics and practices to be adopted by the industry. Consequently, this amongst other studies founded the idea that the media encouraged the ills of life through subliminal messages was etched in the minds of the general public. I chose to take the pessimistic approach as I thought that it was interesting exploring the “rebellious” view of the media and technology, where clearly in this day and age of the 21st century, other factors have been attributed to the negative behaviours or choices made an individual makes, as opposed to sole blame on media and technology. This idea is outlined thoroughly in scholar, Tony Schirato’s work, who recognises that the experience of the media is simply more than an uncritical acceptance of its content, outlining factors such as gender, race or family history as aspects to an individual’s choice of action. My work addresses the question of glitch, “The word glitch refers to an unpredictable irregularity in a system- digital and analogue alike. Explore the creative possibilities of glitch. In exploration of this, I created the impact of technology on different mediums- reality, to images to digital compositions. My composition initially drew on the work of Giacomo Carmagnola, who worked on glitches on old vintage photos. I found his work to be aesthetically pleasing, although eerie, there is something captivating about them. Traditionally using pencils and canvases, Giacomo opted to innovate digitally to an online platform. Using Photoshop, he cites the Internet as a place that “opened his mind”, a place of “image overload” that “permitted me to express my ideas”. He purely creates content for his and audiences plain viewing pleasure, with no deeper analysis attached, which I find is instilled in a lot of modern art today. In creating my work, I attempted to recreate this but felt that my methods and outcomes weren’t as successful as his, which forced me to abandon attempts of replicating his work, and instead adopt and combine different methods and approaches to create work that is too captivating. The flexibility of my work to be mounted at any given place, and at any time, whether albeit 2000 years from now or 2000 years before. The differing scenes of reality aim to convey the message that with the introduction of technology, will always augment the human life- detrimentally. Focusing on my “canvas”- the window, I have thus explored glitch analogously through the concept of time- by choosing to mount my work on a window, I depict “Reality”, as the events in everyday life are never predictable, forever changing. The images I have portrayed represent the gravitation we have towards these technological advancements, causing us to “slip” away from reality ultimately into desensitisation, as hypothesised by Professor Gary Small. He makes the claim that by exposing ourselves to shocking images on the Internet, we are ultimately becoming desensitised, and our empathetic skills diminishing. He attributes this to the human quality we all possess- a driving curiosity to look at such graphic imagery. My digital exploration, was focused on the literal exploration of digital platforms; this included different applications such as Premier Pro and Audacity. In using these, I have attempted to create the views Wertham implied over the negative effects of the media. By using the layout of a conventional glitch, it allows this message to be easily identifiable as its ubiquity in the 21st century. By further depicting them on the devices that they would usually be shown on, they further fit within the theme of technology, paired with media, being the cause of desensitisation. My final decision to document the overall experience in class as my final work is to depict my work’s relevance irrespective of time- a glitch analogously and digitally.
Bibliography:
Academic Readings:
Schirato, Tony, Angi Buettner, Thierry Jutel, & Geoff Stahl, 2010, Understanding Media Studies, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, CHAPTER FIVE: ‘Media audiences, pp. 92-109 Theory.org.uk. (2016). David Gauntlett - Ten things wrong with the media 'effects' model. [online] http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016]. O’Shaughnessy, Michael, and Jane Stadler, 2005, Media and Society: An Introduction, 3rd Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, CHAPTER TWO: ‘Media Studies’, pp. 9-30 Websites: Mosey, A. and Dazed (2015) Putting history through a Photoshop filter. Available at: http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24489/1/giacomo-carmagnola (Accessed: 19 September 2016).