Blog Assigment 10

Post-modernism is the remixing of previous cultural contents and forms within a given media or cultural form.  Artists/designers look at past work and reinvent the already invented.  When you hear the word "remix" it is often firstly associated with music.  Drum music has evolved and changed into the new genres of dubstep and drum and bass.  But today this new remix culture is seen in architecture, fashion, music, design and art.

An example of a remixed culture is the "Op Art" movement.  Op Art is flat, static and two-dimensional, however it often appears to the human eye to be moving due to its precise, mathematically-based composition.  This art creates a sort of visual tension, in the viewer's mind, that gives works the illusion of movement.  The name Op Art, coming from "optical illusion".  The characteristics of the style are geometrical, non-representational, perspective, juxtaposition of colour and positive and negative spaces.

Op art as might be thought is not derived from Pop Art, it is derived from the constructivist practices of the Bauhaus.  This German school, founded by Walter Gropius, taught the relationship of form and function, analysis and rationality. Students were taught to focus on the overall design, or entire composition, in order to present unified works.

The above image is by Victor Vasarely, "His experiments transformed the flat surface into a world of unending possibilities, way before the advent of computers, making an era in the history of art".  The image was created when light passes from one transparent medium to another, it bends.  Light rays change direction as they go from air into the glass, and they change direction again when they exit the glass spheres and enter air.

Dimitrov, D.  Bryce 5 Op Art Refractions Tutorial.  Retrieved from http://www.digital-graphic-art.com/page-op-art-refraction-tutorial.html on 8/10/11.

Blog Assignment 9

The "cold war" of 1945 was seen as an ideology war where the communists and the capitalists fought with ideas and design.  It was seen that ideology + design = "the good life".  "The Marshall Plan" was then started by George Marshall who wanted to contain communism through consumerism.  The plan created consumer markets and put out the idea that consumerism: fashion, wealth and mobility was freedom. 

And example of this was after the war where woman were working in factories, the men came back to their jobs, meaning the woman had to go back to the home. They were seen as the consumers therefore lots of marketing came out that put forward the idea of consumer choice.  This marketing was aimed at the woman and featured woman happily surrounded in products.  This was meant to incourage them to buy the goods and make them happy.

Today, this type of marketing still occurs, everywhere.  We are surrounded by advertising, where it be ads on the TV, on the radio, billboards and posters down streets, flyers in the mail, ads in magazines etc.  All this advertising is aimed at specific groups of people, and features them happily wearing/using the products.  It has the same idea that ideology + design = "the good life" and freedom.

The above photo is of a Glassons shop front, a shop for teenagers to young adults.  In the window you see photos of three models wearing Glassons clothes.  They are beautiful, fashionable, content and standing confidently, like they own those clothes.  There is also writing on the window saying "change as often as you like".  All this advertising is aimed at young adults and teenagers as they often care a lot about how they look, they like to be in fashion and have plenty of clothes and variety so they can "change as often as [they] like".  It's meant to pull this user group in and make them want to buy the clothes so they too can be fashionable, beautiful, content, have consumer choice and "the good life".

Blog assignment 8

Walter Gropius was the Bauhaus’ schools first director when it opened in 1919. “He supported artistic freedom and individuality rather than the imposition of typical standardized forms”. (Raizman, 2004, pg. 181) Whereas Hannes Meyer, the Swiss-born architect who took over as director in 1928, argued that “design was synonymous with man-made things and was a product of “function x economy”. His views placed design solely in the service of working-class needs based upon objective standards of economy”. (Raizman, 2004, pg. 187)


I disagree with Meyers view that design is a product of “function x economy”. I believe that design is a product of many more things that may include function and economy but don’t rely on purely those two. Design can be a product of politics, science, society and their trends and technology. I agree that there should be “a balance between the universal and the individual” (Raizman, 2004, pg. 167) and with Gropius and Johannes Ittens views of artistic freedom.

The Hous am Horn (in the above photo) was created by the student body of the Bauhaus after World War 1 when there were housing shortages. It looks at the average worker and analyses tasks and movements around rooms in the home, such as the kitchen, to be more rational. It added an element of “science” and design standards based on considerations of human factors. I think this “science” is a big part of design today, especially as new technology is being developed.  We cannot design without looking at human ergonomics therefore design is "science". But design shouldn't be labelled an “art” or a “science”. I believe it is both. Today we have moved into designing for mainly the “universal” to keep up with new technology but there is still an art and craft in design where we see individuality and “artistic freedom”.

Raizman, D. (2004). The First Machine Age in Europe, in History of Modern Design (pp. 166-191) New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.

Blog Assignment 7

Symbolic universes are created to provide legitimation and structure. They put everything in its right place and provide explanations for why we do things the way we do.  New Yorks World's Fair held in 1939, called "The Dawn of Tomorrow" was all about creating a symbolic universe.  America was just getting to the end of the depression and wanted to look forward.  The fair was all about how science was going to bring a utopia of tomorrow. 

Today there are many symbolic universes created through media.  Where it be through the internet, TV shows or movies.  This media allows viewers to step into a whole new world, and fantasise about what could be.  The Harry Potter series of books and movies created immense populairty over a wide range of age groups all over the world.  It is a series of seven novels and movies about the adventures of the wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story shows Harry's quest to overcome the evil dark wizard Lord Voldemort, which he eventually suceeds in doing.  This story line captures viewers/readers and pulls them into this new fantasy world.  The fact that the series lasted 10 years and many grew with the series, this made viewers feel like they were right there with Harry for the whole journey.

Media and design and the digital world is a huge part of life today and society is becoming more and more dependent on it.  It creates this ideal world or utopia where people can step out of their everyday lives and into this new reality.  It allows them to fantasize about other worlds and to step into the shoes of and follow along with these fictional characters.  No one can deny that they love to fantasize about being someone else, having a different life or being in another surreal world.  We are becoming so used to seeing all this as we are surrounded by digital media and it often affects our behaviour.  In some ways I believe this media utopia is a negative influence on society but in others it's a step towards the future and has many benefits.

Blog Assignment 6

In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, argues, “To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the authentic print makes no sense.”  By this he means art used to have authenticity and aura as back in the 18th Century only origionals were created.  As soon as reproduction of art and design, and the digital age began, the authenticity and aura was lost as art was mass produced so much that no difference was seen between the origional and the reproduced.  I agree and also disagree with Benjamin.  I agree that new digital technology has made it harder for us to come across a truly authentic piece of art or design.  Things are so widely reproduced that it's very uncommon to see the origionals of any work, yet replicas are seen everywhere. 

People also argue that no art or design is authentic, as every designer or artist got ideas for their work, from someone else's work. Art and design has been done for so long that almost everything has been done before.  Things may have been expanded on but there will always be elements that are the same.  I believe this, yet I disagree that it takes away the authenticity or aura of origionals.  To know you're standing in front of a great artists origional work gives a feeling that no replica or image on the internet can give you, no matter how much that work was reproduced. 

The opposing also argue that every piece of work is authentic, even when reproduced, as nothing is ever exactly the same.  For example when printing a single photo 10 times, some might have a slightly different colour or tone because of the printer, one might come out a slightly smaller or larger size, over time a couple might age and others kept safe and new.  Therefore every piece of art or design is origional and has it's own qualities that distinguish it from others, whether it be something as small as a rip in the page.

When origional artworks are viewed by people, they will never give off that same aura as they would've in the 18th Century when computers, photos and reproduction didn't exist.  This is understandable as when things are reproduced and photos are posted over the internet, seeing amazing art and design becomes less exciting because it's so easy to come across it.  But I don't think an origional will ever completely lose its authenticity and aura, as this is the piece of work that the designer held and worked on themselves, which will always remain uncommon and amazing to see.

Benjamin, W. (1992). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pp. 211-244 ) in Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. London: Fontana.

Blog assignment 5

The experience and experimentation of artists lead to four discoveries of colour,which influenced our understanding the most; the optical spectrum, simultaneous contrast/optical mixing, after images and expressive colour.

Issac Newton believed light was the key to understanding colour and created the optical spectrum by reflecting a light through a prism, finding that white light was made from a spectrum of colours. From this he created the colour wheel which of course has developed over the years but was the first we saw of complementary and primary colours.

Michel Eugene Chevreul invented the law of simultaneous contrast. He believed that “two adjacent colours when seen by the eye will appear as dissimilar as possible”. “There is no nuance which cannot be change into a very delicate, but also lively tint of the same hue by being placed on a ground of its complementary. You may also effect a change of tone in a given colour equally successfully by means of the neighboring colour of the ground”, (pg 191). This influenced a lot of artists to put colours next to each other on the canvas instead of mixing colours on the painting palet. It was called optical mixing.

Wolfgang von Geothe was one of the first to oppose Newton and believed “Newton’s era was trusting math over the eye”. He instead was interested in after images, an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in your vision after the exposure to the original image has ceased. He believed colour was unscientific.

The development of the colour sphere was created by Phillip Otto Runge. “He used a set of three primaries – red, yellow and blue – arranged in a complementary scheme around the equator … he shared a belief … with the poets Schiller and Goethe who related the polarities of colour to the traditional four temperaments.” He believed colour was an interaction of light and shadow and that it was symbolic, each having a meaning. Lairesse also had this opinion, “yellow for glory, red for power and love, blue for divinity, purple for authority, violet for humility and green for servitude” (pg 204) . Lairesse also made, “the observation that people naturally chose the colours of their dress according to their characters” (pg 204) which showed there was a meaning behind them that people naturally placed.

Next came the debate whether you should capture the immediate environment, which was the opinion of Gustave Courbet, or to paint with expression to show how you feel about the subject through colour. Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin believed that there’s a deeper truth beneath what we see. They used colour to represent the emotional environment and to portray how something felt rather than how it was exactly seen.

All these discoveries and experiments from these artists, poets, scientists etc. have hugely influenced the way we perceive and use colour and our understanding of colour vision. They have taught us how to mix and contrast colours, what colours go together and what opposites are. They were the start of illusions through after images and taught us how to paint with expression through the use of colour representation. All these techniques have been developed since but we still use them all in art and life today.



Gage, J. 91993). Colours of the Mind in Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (pp.191-212). New York: Thames and Hudson.

Blog assignment 4

Tattooing has been a tribal custom of the coastal people of Papua New Guinea for a long time.   When girls turned a certain age they would get certain tattoos, on different parts of their body, according to how old they were.  Many of the tattoo motifs were passed down through the generations and the above image shows a tattoo being created from the hand-tapping technique.  Unfortunately, information on most tattoo motifs was lost by the time World War 2 commenced.  Modernism and the removal of ornament was largely to blame.

In Adolf Loos essay "Ornament and Crime" he argued that "The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of daily use." He used the example of the Papuan, saying they hadn't evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man and that because they tattoo themselves that they're considered criminals or degenerates.
I disagree with him.  He may have been right that "the lack of ornament results in reduced working hours and an increased wage" which may have benefited some people.  But it also resulted in the loss of the tribal custom of the Papuan people and "robs [cobblers] of his pleasures as [Loos] had nothing else to replace them with".  I'm sure that there were several other examples of loss of tradition, designs and pleasures that were the result of this too.  Therefore I don't believe that ornamentation should have been removed from objects of daily use and that it is synonymous with the evolution of culture. Although I do believe that Loos and those who agreed with him, were entitled to their own opinions. But ornamentation should have been designed along side with form, letting the people chose, resulting in the happiness of everyone and the loss of nothing.