For our very first Context in Practice lecture, a very quick overview of all the areas taught at our college was given along with surprisingly interesting and deep insights to go with the examples given.
Photography: Bolton Worktown Project (Mass Observation)
I had honestly never thought much about Photography, and so this was a very different look into what simply seemed like a documentation of the working class' daily lives in the late 1930s. To the naked eye, it could simply be said that this was merely photographic proof of how the lower working class lived at the time and nothing more.
But what if we considered a few things? Is it truly authentic? Who took this photo? Does it truly represent the daily lives of the entire working class?
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| Is that man waving? No, he is telling that man to get that camera off his face. |
Members of the Mass Observation movement tended to be very well off people at the time, why else would they have had the time to take photographs for a living instead of struggling to make end's meet like the people they are photographing in the first place? There is also a possibility that these photographers had only taken photos of really badly conditioned areas, and were not actually doing a proper documentation of the entire working class, hence making future viewers to believe, that all lower class citizens at the time lived in such a state.
Even with photographs, things are not what they appear to be. And sometimes, even the photographers themselves can lie to you, making you believe in what they want you to see in the first place.
Animation: Ruka/The Hand (Jiří Trnka)
Created by Jiří Trnka in 1965 shortly before his dead, Jiří was a Czech puppet maker, illustrator, motion-picture animator and film director, he has worked on a variety of works aimed at different audiences, though most of them tend to be for adults with mature, meaningful themes. He has especially been known for his extensive work of children literature and has been awarded the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustrators in 1968 for it.
The film for starters does not have any dialogue but is still able to tell a pretty clear story to the audience, it tells the story of a contented craftsman living most of his life in a one room apartment, making pots for his flowers as the days go by. One day however a Hand visits the craftsman, using various tactics (Such as praise, money, indoctrination, force and even seduction) in trying to get the man to create glorified statues of the hand itself.
Once captured and forced to do just that, after completing the giant statue in a cage, the man escapes, running back to his home (Now completely deteriorated) and barricading up the entire place. Sadly however, it is one of his flower pots that kills him in his desperation to keep the Hand out.
I honestly found this type of animation (Puppet stop motion) creepy, but it definitely does evoke strong messages about the protest against communism, it makes sense why this film was banned in communist Czechoslovakia at the time as the message is incredibly strong, there were no attempts at all in blanketing it.
The Hand supposedly symbolizes the repressive regime of the ones that label themselves as the high power, forcefully seeking to take complete control over the man (Who symbolizes society itself) and making him do as they say.
While the puppet only has one expression throughout the entire film, we can still clearly fill his breaking spirit as the story advances, his deteriorating form and home also adds to his physical display of his suffering and struggle against the higher power.
And the final straw is when the Hand decides to officiate itself during the poor man's funeral, still practically making him a part of the higher power's system despite how hard he had tried to escape.
It is overall a powerful, melancholy, symbolic short film that continues represent those that work in an oppressive regime up to this day.
Advertising: Dunlop Tyres - Tested for the Unexpected (Tony Kaye)
This advertisement was either trying to sell something, or were just used for something else entirely... Apparently Tony Kaye might have been aiming for a lot more than simply getting this company to sell more tyres.
This psychadelic style of filming might have been used as some form of creative identity that Tony wanted to create for himself, it was all filmed in black and white with colors put in later on. Considering all the strange elements in the video, it is needless to say that there is a larger message in there that most of us have yet to figure out...
It is pretty difficult figuring out what is the concept behind this advertisement aside from the fact that "Maybe these tyres are meant to hold well against weird stuff like this on the road". But I can say for certain that it is strange, crazy, and considerably different for its time and most definitely did its job in catching people's attention, be they the target audience or not.
Illustration: Normal Rockwell
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| "The Moon" |
Norman Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator in the forties and fifties, known for his well drawn, realistically done and down-to-earth illustrations of the American life. It is the positivity and comforting feeling that these illustrations tended to give off that made Norman one of the most popular artists at the time, especially seeing that his style was the complete opposite of the rising radical art movement.
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| "The Four Freedoms" |
Norman's work was also seen as a manner of creating a positive outlook of things, by portraying the American life and culture in a positive light, especially during the Great Depression and during World War II, his illustrations as always focusing on small town values and morals. Rockwell has also received his fair share of critics, and has been told that most of his works appeared overly sweet (As expected), especially in the eyes of modern critics.
Sadly, he was perhaps one of the last few illustrators of the golden age, as the rise of modern and conceptual art soon took hold, the previously treasured skills of an illustrator was no longer needed as other methods such as photo montage could be used instead by those that lacked drawing skills.
It does bring to question about whether disciplinary art skills still exist today as it did back then when Normal Rockwell and other illustrators were so highly treasured by the media.
Graphics Design: Typography
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| Times New Roman by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent |
A font commissioned and supervised by Stanley Morison in 1931 after he had criticized how badly printed and typographically inadequate
The Times was, the font was drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of
The Times. Named after the newspaper it was created for, this font was considered representative of the British.
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| Fraktur |
A blackletter typeface, the font's distinctive style was meant to represent the Germans in their superiority, and was meant to be used for signage, documents and posters. It is based on the style of the Goths (East Germanic people).
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| Rejected Universal Font by Herber Bayer |
As the name suggests, this was meant to be a font that could be used universally, a neutral font that was not meant to represent any part of the world (Unlike the previous examples) and could be used by all, it was however never accepted. It was a font consisting only of lower cases letters and was constructed with circles and straight lines, making it geometrically perfect. Presently, a remake of the rejected font is in development by Noah Rothschild.
Too conclude, the aim of Contextual Study should be about subjects that you do not normally see outside the cultural paradigm, subjects that will allow you to think a lot more than you normally do as well make you examine your own life further.
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