Semiotics

Semiotics could be anywhere around us, short and simple definition for it can be: semiotics is the study of signs. By signs mean that images which we routinely refer to as signs in daily life such as speed limited, dangers’ sign, road signs.

 Sign are visual, can take form of words, drawings, images, paintings and photographs and also can be includes, sound, gestures, object and body language, but such things have no intrinsic meaning unless we invest them with meaning referring or standing for something other than itself individually.

“Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign, declares Peirce (Peirce 1931-58, 2.172)

Semiotics involves the study not only what we refer to as sign, but of any thing which stand for something else.

Semiotics become a major approach to cultural studies in the 1960s compare to today’s is less central within cultural and media studies.

Saussure offered a “dyadic” basically mean two part model of the sign. His definition of sign is composed of a signifier or significant, the form which the sign takes and the signified or signifie, the concept it represents.

A sign must have both a signifier and a signified. You can’t have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified (Saussure 1983, 101; Saussure 1974, 102-103)

Semiotics for Beginners

Daniel Chandler

Identity

Generational different

People how born in the first half of the twentieth century are more traditional then younger generation, Traditional attitudes is scarce among the under 30s but still with some people over 60s. You can see more unmarried couple lives together in this time than older generation. Before most of the women where housewife bout this in resent decades more women take more responsibility in society having job, more educated and leave home in younger age. People have more freedom to choose how to live, their life style, where to live, they have different role models that have an impact on their life. To compare older people are not fans of Cosmopolitan, FHM or More magazines nether today’s pop music, fashion, young people test of clothes, makeup and behaviour.

Research shows that people’s attitudes becomes less liberal as they get older, majority of media has become more liberal and obviously more challenging to traditional standards and also media become a tool to spread modernity. Post traditional Today’s young people will grow up to be more traditional and narrow minded in the future.

Media, gender and identity

An introduction- David Gauntlett

Michel Ocelot was born in 1943 in Villefranche-su-Mer on the Cote d Azur, and grown up and spend must of his childhood in Guinea in Africa and his teenage years in Anjou currently he lives in Paris.

He is a French writer, storyboard artist, director of animated films, animator, narrator, background artist, editor, cinematographer, now also worked in 3D computer animation. Character designer and former president of the Association international du film d’animation from 1994 to 2000. Michel Ocelot’s qualities are recognized throughout the world and in Japan his works are being released by none other than Studio Ghibi

Winning numerous award like a BAFTA film Award plus more than 60 wins and other nominations.

His films mostly fairy tales some of them are little known or his own imagination, and characterised by a rigid use of only side on, straight on and three quarters viewpoints, influenced by silhouette films like Lotte Reiniger.

Some example for stage productions

Princes et princesses (Princes and princesses, Jan 2005

Kirikou et karaba (Kirikou and Karaba, Sep 2007

Some example for his filmography

Le Tabac (The Three Inventors, 1979, short film proximity one min)

Les Trois Inventeures (The Three Inventors 1979, short film, 13 min)

Run Wrake is London based an award winning animator and illustrator. He studied Graphic Design at the Chelsea school of Art and after that he carried on study at the Royal College of Art to get his MA.

Rabbit is one of his best short films made in 2005, won a host of awards at film festivals across the world, best film at the British Animation Awards 2006 and the Mclaren Award for Animation at the Edinburgh film festival.

He made eight short films

1990 Anyway

1994 Jukebox

1998 Ping Batter Pong

2000 What Is That

2001 Lessons in Smoking

2001 NME Gallery

2005 Rabbit

2007 Remixing the Past

As well as making animation and design, Run works on commercials and live visuals for bands including U2 and Oasis and has worked with Howie B.

Some example of his TV graphics we can mention

In 1990 Channel X “Jonathan Ross Presents for one week only”

1993 MTV “M Stands for”

1995 MTV “M Also Stands for”

1998 M2 “Director’s Cut”

1999 MTV “European Top Twenty”

2002 Channel 4 “The Showbiz Set”

2003 BBC2 “Guess Whos Coming to Dinner

  2006 UK Film Council Website

Run currently developing an animation feature, for BBC with writer Neil Jaworski called The Way to a Whole New You.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is used to describe the society condition in general like economic, culture which is said to exist after modernity. Some such as Lyotard and Baudrillard believe that modernity ended in the late 20^th century around 1980s or early 1990s, and replaced by postmodernity, thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely post modernity. Some like Giddens and Bauman have different idea, modernity extend to cover the developments denoted by posmodernity. Others still contend that modernity, With Victorian age in the 1900s.

                

Postmodernity has gone through two relatively ways. The first beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s and ends with Cold War. The second one begins at the end of the Cold War.

The first part of postmodernity start right the end of modernity and many believes it’s part of the modern period.

The second part of postmodernity is defined by digitality, increasing the power of personal and digital means of communication in people’s life like high speed internet, fax machines, has changed the condition of postmodernity dramatically. Digital productions of information allow people to change every aspect of the media environment.

Postmodernity can be personal response with a postmodern society, the conscious adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in art, literature and society.

Paula Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was born in city of Malaga in the Andalusian region of Spain in 25 October 1881 Known as Pablo Picasso. He was a painter, ceramicist, sculptor and printmaker, one of best 20^th century artist, he is famous for the co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage.

Picasso’s work categorized into periods, the most accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901-1904)

Some paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green and warmed by other colours. La Via (1903) and The Old Guitarist (1903) are some example of this period.

 The Rose Period (1905-1907), orange and pink are the main colours which have been used and also you can see circus people, harlequins and acrobat. Example for this period: boy with a pipe (1905)

 The African influence Period (1908-1909),

Example for this period is Les Demoiselles- d Avignon

 Analytic Cubism (1909-1912),  

Three musicians which is kept in museum of Modern Art is example for this period.

And finally Synthetic Cubism (1912-1919),

In 1939-40 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, held a major and highly successful retrospective of his principal works up until that time.

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France.

Paul Rand

Paul was born on August 15 1914 in Brooklyn, New York. He is an American graphic designer, best known for his logo designs.

 He’s experience in design back to very young age when he used to paint signs for his father’s grocery store and sometime for school events at P.S.109.

He was studied at the Pratt Institute (1932)

The Parsons School of Design (1933)

Art Students League (1934)

He designed a lot of posters and corporate identities as well as logos for ABC,

 IBM (1956) which as Mark Favermann notes “was not just an identity but a basic design philosophy that permeated consciousness and public awareness.” The logo was modified in 1960, Cummins Engine, and Westinghouse, which are still in use.

He is most famous for the corporate logos he created in 1950s.

According to graphic designer Louis Danziger:

He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool.

Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. The more than anyone else made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being grahic designers largely on his merits.

Rand died of cancer in 1996.

His former client labelled him, simply, “the greatest living graphic designer.”

Martha Rosler

She is an American artist, Born in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives now.

She studied in Brooklyn College 1965 and graduated from the University of California, San Diego 1974.

She writes about art and culture and has published about sixteen books of photography, art and writing.
for example,
The Photo Books Passionate Signals (Cantz,2005)
In the Place of the Public: Airport Series (Cantz, 1997)
If You Lived Here (Free Press 1991)


 Her work is more about every day life and often on women's experience in their lives.

Decoys and Disruptions, Selected Writings, 1975_2001 is the first comprehensive collection of Roster’s writings.

Passionate Signals (2005)

Positions in the life world, in this book you can find a selection of her projects.

She also works in video, photography and performance

A Budding Gourmet

Semiotics of the Kitchen

Losing: A Conversation with the Parents

The East Is Red, the West is bending

Travelling Garage Sale

In the Place of the Public: Airport Series

Seattle: Hidden Histories

She taught art at Rutgers University and in Germany, Frankfurt,

From large number of project and art work the series of photomontages which represent women and domesticity like Body Beautiful or Beauty Knows No Pain.

And Bringing the War Home, House Beautiful, had wide influence and known nationally and internationally.

 Wikipedia

WWW.martharosler.net

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was a silhouette animator and film director.

She was born in Berlin Charlotte burg, German Empire. Second of June 1899.

She loved cinema when she was young and enrolled in the acting group Wegener belonged to the theatre of Max Reinhardt.

To attract viewer’s attention she started to make different portraits of actors around her which had positive effect and latter she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener’s film, many of which featured silhouettes.

In 1918, Lotte animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles for Wegener’s Der Rattenfanger von Hamein.

The first film she directed was Bas Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The Ornament of the Enamoured Heart 1919). During the following few years she made six short films.

In 1926 she made a length film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

Reiniger directed 44 films like

The Frog Prince (1961)

Puss in Boots (1954)

Snow White and Rose Red (1954)

The Sleeping Beauty (1954)

The Magic Horse (1953)

Sissi (1932)

Papageno (1935)

The Daughter (1937)

 I liked her style and would like to make a short piece for my animation project to reflect my interest in her work.

Barbara Kruger

She was born in Newark, New Jersey, 26 January, 1945. She is an American conceptual artist. She attended to Syracuse University; the school of visual art and studied art and design with Dian Arbus, Marvin Israel at parson’s school of Design in New York.

She obtained a design and art job at Conde Nast Publications. First she worked at Mademoiselle Magazine and after that she worked as a graphic designer, Art director, and picture editor in the art departments at House and Garden, Aperture and other publications.

She is must famous for the black and white strong images with flashing red background with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to.

The main core of part of Kruger works is containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power with in cultures. Some of her text questions the viewer about feminism desire and consumerism.

The text in her works of the 1980s includes such phrases as

“Your comfort is my silence” (1981)

“You invest in the divinity of the masterpiece” (1982)

“I shop therefore I am” (1987)

Also she has said “I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t”.

  Barbara Kruger.Circus, December 21, 2010-January 23, 2011

David Carson

An American Graphic Designer.

David Carson was born September 8, 1954 in Corpus Christi, Texas. He is best known for his innovative magazine design and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun. 

Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the 1990s. During the period 1989_2004 David Carson has won over 170 Awards for his work in graphic design. Some of them include: Best overall design, society of publication designers in New York. 

Cover of the Year, Society of publication designers in New York.

Award of best use of photography in graphic design.

In November 1995 he published his first book the End of Print, which sold over 200,000 copies in five different languages. The second book 2nd Sight was published in 1997. it is said that this book changed the public face of graphic design ( Newsweek).

Third book which won the Award of Best Use of Photography in graphic design in 1999 was Fotografiks.

The fourth book, Trek was released in 2000.

2009 when  I started my Graphic Design course at Northampton College, my first project was to do some research about some of the famous graphic designer. My first designer was David Carson and from that time I really loved his design and try to get some idea from his design.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003036610994&sk=wall

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 2156 N.Tripp Avenue in Chicago. He was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist, well known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy. O.Disney, he was co-founder of Walt Disney productions, which later became one of the best know motion picture producers in the world. The corporation is now known as The Walt Disney Company.

Mickey Mouse was created in 1928.

He used Technicolor for first time in animation during the production of his Silly Symphonies in 1932.

In 1932 animation “The Flowers and Trees” won Walt the first of his 32 personal Academy Awards.

In 1937 he released “The Old Mill” the first short subject to utilize the multiplane camera technique. Following this animation on 21 of December (the same year) “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the first full long animation premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles.  Other full length animation was made by this company we can mention Dumbo, Fantasia, Bambi, and Pinocchio.

 I enjoy watching Disney's cartoons very much, it was interesting to know where did came from and how it developed.

http://www.disney.co.uk/