10 slide Presentation.
Month: April 2016
Fanzines, where do they come from?
Fanzines
“Zines or fanzines are magazines written by enthusiasts, “fans”. They have various forms but are typically self-published, designed, written or edited by a single person” (British library)
Fanzines originated from the Science Fiction and Superhero fan community. It became an official term when it was added in the oxford dictionary. In 1970 punk zines were often associated with fanzines, since their were very popular in the punk community at the time. They slowly started to become more and more popular, people begun to distribute them in pubs, bookshops, and gigs. People started to publish football related fanzines it was a major success and became mainstream. But why were people so attracted to fanzines? It allowed t0 discuss issues within their community and to express certain kinds of viewpoints. It created a nice alternative to the highly edited fashion magazines that only focused on looks and presented highly edited content. In the 1990 they reached their peak of popularity. Fanzine writers even became a proper job. When the digital age approached the culture of fanzines changed. Since Fanzines nowadays are not about the fan community at all anymore, the term was changed to just Zines. With the digital age not only the medium used to produce zines changed but also the content. Now the authors want to express themselves, show their individuality and speak out about important issues that aren’t being addressed in the mainstream media. In comparison to when fanzines first caught the eye of the public, they focussed on community much more. This might be connected to the communal feeling the internet creates, we are not anymore disconnected because of distance or class, the internet helped with accepting individuality.
Nowadays we want to show our individuality as much as possible. One could argue that the need to belong is stronger than ever since we live in a world where the internet has replaced community. On the other hand the internet creates community as well but in a very different way than what people are used to. It gives us the perfect platform to speak out against problems as individuals and makes the process of standing up for yourself easier because we don’t have to look the people in the eye that we are communicating to online. We are becoming confident internet users but that could affect our confidence in reality. We don’t come together as big communities anymore instead we unite online but that could take away from the power we once had. Instead of fighting together we find our own battles which could lead to us not having a strong voice at all.
But what is better? Having a real live object in your hands to gain information or having everything available to us by the click of a button. The idea of holding a physical copy of a magazine in your hands is much more attractive than just starring into a cold, maybe dirty screen. I have often heard that digital is going to completely replace the physical but I have a hard time believing that. Don’t we need feel the page under our fingers, to experience the object we are holding, not everything can be replaced by the digital. For example watching a movie from a foreign and beautiful place could never replace the feeling of actually hopping on a plane and visiting that place… at least I hope it will never come to that. It’s the same with computer games, they can be exciting and giving the opportunity to do things that would the gamer never do in real life but it cannot replace reality. We need to talk to other people face to face instead of chatting to them online. that is the same concept with zines, once in a while we need to hold a physical copy in our hands because it might bring across a different message than reading something online or can be more engaging.
What is a special collection?
According to the dictionary a special collection is: “a collection of materials segregated from general library collection according to form,subject, age, condition, rarity, source, or value.” (dictionary.com)
Special collections are treated differently, they are usually more valuable than normal collections and presented separately. Items from special collections are available by request and can only be borrowed for a limited amount of time.
source: amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sniffin-Other-Habits-Anything-Uproar/dp/B0088C3EM8/?qid=1386293070&s=books&sr=1-10&keywords=Sniffin+Glue&ie=UTF8&ref=sr_1_10)
Checkout this awesome fanzine tumblr: http://fanzines.tumblr.com
Bibliography
- @article {Dictionary.com2016,
title = {Dictionary.com Unabridged},
month = {Mar},
day = {10},
year = {2016},
url = {http://www.dictionary.com/browse/special-collection - http://www.zinebook.com/resource/wright1.html
- http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/counterculture/doityourself/punkfanzines/punkfanzines.html
- http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/zines(part1)/zines1.html
Zines
http://www.kathleenhanna.com/bikini-kill-girl-power-2/
Signs and how to use them
Lecturer: Ian Hague
Signs are not limited to the obvious. Most might think of signs as obvious signals like the rest room signs or the street signs but they are so much more than that. Signs are representatives of meaning, they help us to make the connection and therefore communicate. Language is part of the sign family, by language I don’t only mean the written or spoken language but also sign language, visual language and body language. We communicate through signs. For example a word that cadres a certain meaning consists of several letters, when looked at the letters individually they lose all meaning that the once carried in that combination. That principle applies to almost all signs, each part carries a meaning, if taken away from it the sign loses or changes meaning. An other aspect to consider is the background of the person reading the sign. The knowledge they have and the community they live in are very important to the way in which this person might interpret the sign.
We talked about what signs represent and how they are used. How to we recognize them and what they consist of. We have identified 3 different types: Icon, Index and Symbol. Words can gain and lose meaning overtime that means the translation of signs is strongly dependent on the time period. For example having a TV doesn’t connote wealth like it once did, a crown could mean the object or it connotes royalty, wealth, middle age, England. Signs can be found everywhere. A sign can be anything that signifies meaning.
The most obvious examples of how signs are used can be found in the visual arts. Especially graphic design in advertisement is dependent on communication of visual language. Their message needs to be expressed in a clear and easy understandable manner. It also needs to be clever so it gets people thinking about the message they are trying to convey. Graphic designers work with metaphors which help the viewer to connect vicarious images known to them to be connected. A graphic designer needs to think about how much they can take away but still communicate the meaning, everything in that design carries a purpose.
“A hand grenade-shaped bauble may not seem like the most festive of decorations for your Christmas tree – and that’s actually the point of these grenades, conceived and designed by Manchester-based Dorothy for Ctrl.Alt.Shift in association with Suck UK. Entitled Chistmas Declarations, the grenade baubles are meant to remind people that despite the joy of Christmas, all is not rosy in the world.” (Lucas,2009)
Icon: direct representation.
Index: points to the thing its talking about.
Symbol: no visual connection to the thing its presenting.
Semiotics:
- Signifier: form of the sign
- Signified: concept related to the sign
Semiology: Study of signs
Myth: Roland Barthes (connotation, denotation)
(Paul Rand for IBM, 1981)
What is very interesting to me is how sign were being used to communicate without the use of words. The language of signs is pretty much universal which is being explained in the Ted talk linked below.
Check out the History of signs.
Bibliography
Gavin Lucas, 1st December 2009 For Creative Review Mag. (http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/december/peter-saville-wrapping-paper-and-other-seasonal-creative-stuff/)
“denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed’ (Fiske 1982, 91).”
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem06.html
Semiotics:http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem01.html
Umberto Eco:”semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign’ (Eco 1976, 7)”
IBM: http://qz.com/461040/how-to-design-an-enduring-logo-lessons-from-ibm-and-paul-rand/
“We interpret things as signs largely unconsciously by relating them to familiar systems of conventions. ”
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem02.html
Key Readings
https://libsearch.arts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=228632
https://libsearch.arts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=73721
Online Resources
Lecturer: Ian Hague
Wikipedia is great, it always pops up first in your google search, its very basic and easy to understand, its basically everything you need. Thats what I thought at least. Ian made a good point, wikipedia is not reliable, it tends to publish inaccurate information. I wouldn’t necessarily cite information coming from a stranger that I met on the street without knowing his\her background, so why would I do that online? In order to find reliable sources you need to find out about the authors, what degrees they have, what their backgrounds are and so on. Don’t cite Wikipedia. Even the sources cited in wikipedia can often lead back to a different wikipedia article which displays a huge problem with finding accurate information. It is much more helpful to cite sources where information about the author can be found. This provides the opportunity to find out more information about the person that wrote the article and can therefore provide a much more reliable source. Especially online newspapers can provide a very good source because of their reputation. LCC library Catalogue or Google Scholar can also provide reliable sources and should definitely be taken in consideration when writing an essay.
House of Illustration exhibition
“Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics” was the exhibitions title.
It was focusing on female comic artists. Proving wrong the director international comics festival who said: “unfortunately, there are few women in the history of comics art. it’s a reality”. Each room focused on a different theme, discussing relevant issues or interesting themes. The description of the rooms were very well written and also discussing an interesting subject. The concept was very good of the whole exhibition and the selected comic artist were also very well chosen. It showed the depth of comics and that they can be relevant to todays problems, political or otherwise. Especially for someone not familiar with comics, it opens up a whole world and explains what the art comic is really about. This was an exhibition that I enjoyed a lot and would highly recommend it to anyone that is intrigued by comics.
Most comics that were exhibited were very detailed and drawn by highly skilled artist. I really enjoyed the exhibition and also liked the theme of female artists
The introductions to the room were also very helpful.
Fav Artist
sally heathcote
kate charlesworth
leila abdelrazaq
Relevant articles
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/10/women-comics-not-so-secret-history
Rear View Mirror summary
Writing a summary is annoying. Its even more annoying if you have already written a summary in class, misplaced it and now you are supposed to start again. This is exactly why I won’t be writing a summary of the wonderful article called”rear view mirror” published by Varoom. I don’t enjoy reading summaries, and I don’t enjoy writing them either thats why I have decided instead of repeating what was already said, write my own thoughts down to that particular subject… enjoy!
Why is illustration so important? Isn’t literature and photography equally as good, maybe even better? With photography you capture what is in front of you, its very much based on reality. But can’t you use photography to illustrate certain situations?! Moments that no one else would have noticed but you, it is a tool which you can use to make people see what you see not only literally also feel what you feel, make them see or notice what you notice. Would that even count as illustration? because you are taking different aspects of the world around you and you are arranging them so they make sense to you. I think it could be seen as illustration depending how you use the camera and what kind of artist you are. Literature is the expression of words. They are a help to your imagination, it basically supplies you with an imaginary pen and paper. Does that make you an illustrator? The craft itself might not be seen as tool to illustration but they might posses the power to make the viewer an illustrator and the creative director of their minds.
sense of time in illustration how illustration negotiates time significant characteristic of the field
There would be the obvious illustration of time being used in graphic novels and comics. the typical split screen 3 hours later kind of thing. Time can be communicated by seeing an artist progress of skill over time. By going through someones sketchbook you can see how they have spent their time and what they have gained by spending their time that way. A sketchbook would basically be a book of time. I think that is a very interesting idea. Because everything we do in life is an exchange of time. We don’t pay with money we pay with time. People being money hungry and horde it in an obsessive way they think because they have the representative of time they have time it self and thats where they are wrong. Money will go, its not something you can take with you, its not part of you. We need to spend time on something that will profit us, that we cannot lose easily or at all while we live. That is skill and experience maybe even yourself|\your mind.
comparison between digital and non digital illustration
We don’t live in a time where everything has to be done by hand. But we don’t yet live in one where ebrything can be done digitally and we might never will. I love to do my artwork digitally, its easy and once you have learned to use various programs it provides you with an ocean of possibilities. But its not only the execution that makes design or art great, inspiration and concept (own thought process) is just as important. We got to get inspiration from somewhere and learn from our mistakes made in a design process. But I’m asking myself how can we learn from our mistakes if they are not documented digitally, Those programs make it very hard to even make them in the first place.
identify methods temporal maneuvering may be transferable to other mediums
Sequential illustration time can be made multi-directional
By doing so, it raises questions of linearity and parallels in time, whilst eroding any preconceptions the viewer may have held about the veracity or otherwise of text, image, art, or science.
book format Horace Dorlan Both Hughes and Klimowski Andrzej Klimowski, Helene Pertl,
French philosopher Henri Bergson’s assertion in Time and Free Will (1910) confuses time with space
duration not quantity
. And yet both Hughes and Klimowski have woven together past, present and future by spatialising time
Therefore the division of time into units that concerned Bergson doesn’t seem to be an insurmountable barrier to the fluidity of time.
The issue of how we experience time
ZTKL 
