Of course I'm doing my homework!

No I'm not. No excuses, it's entirely my fault. I get wrapped up in making images that have to mean something to everyone, I miss out on learning how to make them think. On that note, I'd like to apply some of Burnett's theories to my own work, since that is all I did this week.

As is my custom around this time of year, I am doing the marketing material for this year's Confutati conference. For those not in the know, and how could you not be, Confutati is the graduate conference in Languages and Literature at the U. It's pretty esoteric, but some of the stuff that comes out of it is very interesting. Happily enough, the theme this year lends itself to a hightened sense of the abstract, my specialty. What you see at the left is a rough of the poster I'm working up for them (clickie for a larger view). The them vox populi/vox politica translates to voice of the people, voice of the poet. As it was described to me by the current student director of the conference, it's a melding of the written word and the spoken word. He wanted that represented as a kind of waveform-meets-letterform imagery. Fascinating, I think doing my best Spock impression, where the verbal meets the visual. It is in essence what designers strive to do. Meld the nebulous concept with the austere use of an object. It's great because now my poster moves beyond relaying information of the "what" and "when" to portraying the concept of the conference in action. Man, I love it. Not only do I get to push myself creatively and conceptually (always a pleasure), I get to create something that people can see and really have a moment with, something Burnett talks about frequently.

Among the other not-so-cognitive projects I participated in this week were the Lyceum II lecture web material. This was very taxing because I had to make something completely new from something old and outdated. Since UCOMM (campus marketing) is producing the material, I'm essentially at their mercy for content. They miss me very occasionally (no malice on thier part, I'm sure, they are busy people) and I'm left to make gold from lead as it were.

This image that is currently on the homepage has actually been photoshopped five times already to accommodate the changing needs of the marketing materials. It leaves me with a sort of feeling of sadness for the image, because even though those looking at it would never be able to tell, it feels to me like I've taken the soul out of it to make it more functional. The image in and of itself is just so wonderful, it seems a damn shame to put words over it. Then to alter it further almost feels like a crime. Why? I can't really say. It just feels like a lie to me.

So there are two polar examples of what was consuming my time and concentration this week, if anything I was productive on that front, even if my studying suffered for it. I'll make an attempt to post again over the weekend, and expect a lengthy post on the media-savvy-but-saturated girl's take on this year's superbowl commercials. It promises to be a good year, I'm especially excited about the Eels' commerical. Novocaine for the soul indeed.

Week Three

Pablo Picasso is having tea one sunny afternoon at a corner cafe. A man walks up to him, takes a seat, and introduces himself. "I'm a big fan," the man says, "but one thing has always bothered me about your work."
"Oh?" replies Picasso, "what's that?"
"Well, why are all your works abstractions? Why not paint your subjects as they are in real life?"
Picasso replies "Because what is real? I could paint subjects as the appear to my eye, but they still wouldn't be as they are in reality. Can you think of anything that is an absolutely accurate depiction of something as it appears in real life?"
The man thinks on this a moment, then reaches into his pocket, and takes out from his wallet a photograph of his wife. Looking rather pleased with himself, he hands the photograph to Picasso. Picasso looks at it, then looks at the man and says "Awfully small, isn't she?"

Man, I love that joke. More reading this week. The next chapters in How Images Thinks are just as dense as the first few, and equally as fascinating. A couple of things that piqued my interest-

Burnett explains how he is attempting to "reverse the conventional notion (and cultural myth) that images have the power to overwhelm the viewer... I am arguing that this creative engagement with pictures begins the moment that images enter into relationship with views. I am making the claim that images are not outside of conventional perceptual activities, not the place where things happen that don't happen elsewhere. Rather, images are integral to, and are at the foundation of, visual, linguistic, and perceptual processes."

One way to think about this in not so abstract terms is that this picture of the flower would be considered by many to be beautiful. It culturally and aesthetically accepted that flowers are beautiful, but beauty is not in the photo of the flower, beauty is in the representation of the flower. Burnett argues that it's just the cultural norm that we accept images as reality. We see the flower, not really reconciling that it's just an image of a flower, and not even a true representation of the flower since it's two dimensional and it's really really small.

So Burnett is saying that the image itself isn't capable of overwhelming a person due to whatever exists in the image itself, but rather what exists in the viewer that the image is bring to the surface. "The image is not the experience, but can point to some of it's elements" Burnett says.

This thought made me a little uncomfortable, and for a really strange reason. I was greatly saddened by the loss of Heath Ledger this week, he's been one of my favorites for years. So seeing images of his body being taken out of the apartment against red carpet footage just kind of made me even sadder. But according to Burnett, I shouldn't be as emotional about seeing that kind of thing because the only experience I have with Heath Ledger is from watching him in films. I didn't know him personally and I have never known someone who died from sleeping pills, so technically, I don't have the personal experience to apply to those images to make the emotional experience of his death that much stronger.

Burnett has an explanation about that. Burnett talks about a "hybridization between the use and abuse of subject/object relations." In a nutshell, since we humans are capable of thinking the image is reality, we can then move beyond the image to create relationships that exist outside the image. It's never tangible, never fully realized, but can still feel "real" to the viewer. In my case, I established a relationship with the material that Heath Ledger produced, and in so doing, developed a kind of loyalty to the actor (people do it all the time, don't think I'm weird). By investing even a little emotion and thought into him as an actor (not as a person, that is important) a connection was made, even if it was just on my end. Hence why I feel bad he died, and the images of him in life and in death are emotional for me.

The more I read the more questions I have about the future of images, and along those lines, where our perception is going. But that is probably best saved for another post.

Theory is exhausting, but oh so much fun. This book is really straining my conceptions of how I perceive things, which is great. I just hope I can apply it to my project without making people run far far away out of sheer terror at all the theory that will be involved. More to come this weekend most likely, and I'll try to find some examples of where I want to go visually for the site.

First Post! (sort of)

I thought it might be prudent to actually use a real blog tool to keep a blog of my independent study. From now on, I'll be posting to this site, with the occasional link to the other page. COMMENT!!!

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