OUGD501: Identity Seminar

Essentialism:

essentialist thought. 

Some sort of innate ability, born vitreous. If you’re born black, more stupid. Etc. Supporting racism.

Anti-Essentialism:

Born into the culture, not born with virtues.

If society says you have to more things then someone else, then society will be innately selfish.

You can invent your self online now, not to do with consumption. (Concerning blogs.) 

Second life identities can buy money, capitalism has bloomed there too. In the real and virtual world. 

Identity is unstable and fluid, we can reinvent ourselves endless and continuously. 

Identity and ‘the Other’ in visual representation.

• Creation of identities 
• Concepts of ‘Otherness’
• Analysis of visual example

Identity - Who were are and how others perceive who we are.

Identity Creation:

What makes you, you?

• Your parents /Family (Socialisation) - Phil larkin poem
• Your money
• Where you live (Environment)/ Era
• Your friends
• The way you dress/ Hair
• Mannerisms
• What you eat (Diet)
• Past experiences
• Deformaties/ Genetic
• Where/ How you’re educated
• Marriage/ Relationship status
• Physical/ Social - (Dialectic, inter-relate with each other.)
• The Law (Legalities) - Society limits us, we can’t be the people who we really want to be. 
• Job (Production) A job is a part of your identity, no matter how you shake it off.

Diets have become commodified. Certain health foods are used as status and identity.

Our culture is more concerned with look and appearance.

How do you express your identity?

• Mannerisms
• How you dress (A barrier to the world and a signifier of self.)
• Make-up and Hair
• Products you buy
• Diet
• Hobbies & Interests
• Attitude (Social Interactions)
• Mannerisms/ Accent (Adaptation)
• Social circles.

Our own individual subjectivity. Sense of self that is really complex and slippery. 

Circuit of Culture - Stuart Hall

Windrush generation

Britain invited people from the colonies to Britain to come and work, the people were treated very differently. Started the Birmingham school of culturuerely. Wrote a lot of books on the school and what went on about the Wind rush generation.

Started the culture framework within which our identities are formed, expressed and regulated. 

Woodward Identity and Difference. Good read.

Things you buy is limited by your production (job).

Jacques Lacan - Wrote a lot on psychoanalysis and it’s processes. 

• The ‘hommelette’ (french for men, scrambled up mix of parts) French pun.
• The ‘Mirror stage’

Initially came up with the ‘Otherness’. When you’re born, you don’t understand or have any comphrension that you are distant of separate from your mother, your symbiotic. Strongly linked, no conception as your self as a separate being.

Babies don’t realise their arm smacking them in their face because they don’t understand their arm is linked to them. They’re a scrambled up mix of parts up and till the mirror stage. Which is between 6-18 months. It’s a metaphor not something that happens, that they then start to realise their identity. (A baby crawling past a mirror, realising it’s a separate cohesive being.) 

Such as given out signals, crying: someone comes to help. From this stage, we gain a sense of who we are, by the outside reactions to us. Straight from the process of socialisation. The external world is our mirror, and it’s how we tell we aren’t isolated. After 18 months, a lot of our sense of identity is secured. 

It’s not about who we want to be, but our reception of others. 

The sense of self (subjectivity) built on:

• Illusion of wholeness
• Receiving views from others

Result = own subjectivity is fragile.

Physiologically we are always yearning for, our actions are always learning back too the security that we had in the mirror stage. This is me when the world responded. Our identity is based on the illusion we are whole. All of our attempts to act a certain way, we are constantly trying to strive for secureness for attention that we had in the mirror phrase. We are always striving because we are never those things and we are never happy because the process is so entirely sloppy.

Problems: Relies on the assumption of opposition and radical otherness.

We measure our selves on what we are not, ‘Black because I am not white’, In order to make our identities more solid. Doing this secures our sense of self.

Other’ing in brands, being able to afford something expensive to know your not poor, to secure that identity. 

Accent, in trying to have proper speech, you’re trying to make your identity to feel more secure.

Othering with subculture too. 

Lynx advert: othering, securing the identity that you’re a man, not gay, not a woman, smells manly. Stereotypes to make sense worth more believable. Woman are coming for him, Hypersexuality. It’s important for me to be that, to make sure i’m not that.

Identification:

• Shores up unstable identities through the illusion of unity.
• Shared fashions, believe systems, values.
• Subterranean values (Matza, 1961)

We are civilised because we are not barbaric like them. Creates racism, sexism, prejudice. We depend on objectifying people and subjectifiying people. We have to constantly reinvent fictions to other, other people.

To stablise subjectivity:

From james slides: 

One page is about aides in Africa, other page is for credit card. Secures that we are in a good stable world. We other the aides epidemic, we look away towards the credit. WE distance the effected people. Symptomatic with everything that is wrong with out society. Our society is built on othering. How can we create empathy when we other them. Also with food adverts.

FOR BLOGS:

Analyse one image from the media, newspaper stories, adverts, popular music press, subculture. Analyse one image from western media, where the image attempts to secure identity for the reader where othering is present. What the image promises you, what it secures and solidifies, who it reduces and others.

300 words task. 

With everything you choose buy, what you do is stereotyped someone else in doing it to secure our identity. 

OUGD501: Study Task 2

Using the text Berger, J. (1972) 'Ways of Seeing', write one critical analysis of an advert which, in your opinion, reflects the logic of consumerism, or the social conditions of consumerism, discussed in the lecture 'Consumerism' (17/10/13). Use at least five quotes, referenced according to the Harvard system, in support of your argument.

Lynx Legend: Spray More, Get More. 

(2010)

The advert begins with a sea of women swimming to the shore line, with more scantily clad women approaching from the cliff side and running along the beach, all heading towards a man on the beach. He’s spraying himself with two cans of Lynx Legend deodorant (The product being advertised),and, as the women approach the sense of power, self worth and glamour grows and produces a smug grin on his face as the advert ends. This is then accompanied with a shot of a Lynx can as well as the slogan: ‘Spray More, Get more’ which is a reference to the use of two cans and a consumption of Lynx deodorant.

The advert digs into the unconscious fantasy of an everyman to be desired and surrounded by women who want him, to feel powerful and desirable. The reason he is not desired or surrounded by women currently is because he doesn’t have the product and smell the man is using in the advert: Lynx Legend. 'The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not the way of life of society’. This advert is trying to make the spectator-buyer aware of this dissatisfaction, it’s his fault for not buying the product, and through buying the product the feeling of dissatisfaction will disappear. 

The deodorant is being advertised as something that will get you more women as opposed to something that masks your body odour. This is a common trait of consumerist logic. 'Publicity is about social relations, not objects.’ The advert is not about the deodorant, but what it’s going to bring to the spectator buyer: glamour and happiness.

The need it unearthed to be satiated is of being envied, wanted and power, to have that emotional security in knowing that they are all these. These are the promises given to the spectator-buyer from watching the advert and it’s only through purchasing the deodorant that they will come true. ‘If you are able to buy this product you will be loveable. If you cannot buy it, you will be less loveable.’ The reassurance of self-worth is only attainable through the purchase of Lynx Legend deodorant.

The advert features just one man for a reason, to project the spectator-buyer’s 'Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance.’ 

To know that 

'It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more.’ 

'The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him.’ 

OUGD501: Identity Lecture notes

Historical conceptions of Identity

Michel Foucaults ‘discourse’ methodology

Critique of contemporary practice

Consider ‘postmodern’ theories of identity as ‘fluid’ - ‘Constructed’

Theories of Identity 

Essentialism - Tradiional approach 

Biological make up makes us who we are 

We all have inner essence

Physiognomy

Phrenology

Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)

Notion that criminal ten dies are inherited 

Phrenology is like a fact science, Animal, Moral and Reflective are parts of the Brain, if one bit that is larger, then the rest of your brains functions are small. Eg. More animal, less moral. 

Physiognomy - Racism, A western european suggestion, Racial perfect, straight faced, blonde hair, blue eyed. The more vertical your face the more intelligent you are. A Racial reading of Identity. 

Ubermench - ‘Superman - Superhuman’ Mentions the blue eyed, blonde hair.

Physiognomy, legitimising Racism

Irish Iberian - Anglo Teutonic - Negro.

Hieronymus Bosch (1450 - 1516)

Christ carrying cross. 

1515.c

Jesus carrying a cross, all the jews are exaggerated, animalistic mentality.

Chris Ofili, Holy virgin Mary, 1996. Racist painting of Virgin Mary.

On show at Sensationalism, everyone is offended that mary isn’t the White girl they all throughout she is, outcry.

Douglas Kellner - Media Culture: 1992

Pre-mordern identity - Personal identity is stable defined by long standing roles

Modern identity - Modern societies began to offer a wider range f social roles. Possibility to start choosing your identity rather than simply being born into it.

Pre-modern ‘Secure’ identities 

Farm-worker - Landed gentry

Soldier - State

Factory worker - Industrial Capitalism

Etc.

Charles Baudelaire - Painter of modern life

Introduces concept of the flaneur (Gentleman-stroller) 

It’s a male thing, french word form, Only men can do it.

Feminists write about this

New Identify formed

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentlemen of leisure. 

Beginnings of Consumerism. If you dress a certain way, it shows you can stay off, you’re a different class and further up the scale.

Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the Leisure class (1899)

Georg Simmel - Metropolis and mental life (1903)

• Trickle Down theory
• Emulation
• Distinctions
• ‘Mask’ fashion

Simmel was one of the first to notice the way fashion works, Trickle down theory works by Rich people dressing upper class, while the Lower class attempt to emulate the rich people to emulate them. The rich people then try to move on by Distinction and the same happens again. (still applies today)

‘Mask’ fashion the construction of your identity you hide behind.

 ‘The feeling of isolation is rarely as decisive and intense when one actually finds oneself physically alone, as when one is a stranger without relations, among many physically close persons, at a party, on the train, or in the traffic of a large city’

Post- Modern Identity

‘Discourse Analysis’ 

Identity is constructed out of the discourse culturally available to us.

Discourse is a set of recurring statements, allows you to categories and analyse them, leads towards stereotypes of people. 

You assign people identities

Possible Discourses

•Age

•Class

•Gender

•Nationality

•Race/ethnicity

•Sexual orientation

•Education

•Income

These are all things that may effect your identity and how you assign your self.

Discourses to be considered

•Class

•Nationality

•Race/ethnicity

Gender  and sexuality

Gender has a focus towards women, due to a patriarchal society/ history.

Otherness is anything that is separate to the norm, transgender. Etc.

Class:

To know where you fit in, you need to know what the other classes are. 

Mass observation - Big project to view all of Britain and the classes. Bolton. 

Stereotypical images. Comical interchanges. 

Loaded assumptions, working classes.

Martin Parr, New Brighton, Merseyside. 

'Celebration of british life.’ 

More condescending then anything else, taking cover in shadow of a JCB. 

It’s photographs for Upper class people to view lower class. A self congratulatory thing from looking at how bad these people have it. 

‘ “Society” …reminds one of a particularly shrewd,
cunning and pokerfaced player in the game of life,
cheating if given a chance, flouting rules whenever
possible’

To be viewed by the upper class, It’s the lower class emulation of the rich. Champagne Vs a Pint.

Las Vegas, American Identity, Is it a real identity, Appropriated from elsewhere, a construction. None of it is real. 

‘I didn’t like Europe as much as I liked Disney World.  At
Disney World all the countries are much closer together, and
they just show you the best of each country.  Europe is more
boring.  People talk strange languages and things are dirty.
Sometimes you don’t see anything interesting in Europe for
days, but at Disney World something different happens all the
time, and people are happy.  It’s much more fun.  It’s well designed!’

Disney land shows the best of all the whole, dumbed down into a little environment. Americans don’t need passports when they have everything in their own Country.

Perception of black people. Stereotypical. Gives a voice to black society.

Chris Offili. No superheroes that aren’t white. Captain Shit. 

Gillian Wearing, from Signs that say what you want them to say

and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, (1992 - 3)

Obviously lots of photos aren’t shown, so the images are picked to dumb down, to apply to the lowest common denominator. Applies to stereotypes. 

Alexander McQueen. 

Gingers. 

‘Hair has been a big issue throughout my life… It often felt that I was

nothing more than my hair in other peoples’ eyes’

Emily Bates, Textile Designer/Artist

Gender and Sexuality.

The fashion industry is not he work of women, but men a “gigantic unconscious hoax” perpetrated on women by the arch villains of the Cold War –male homosexuals secret hatred of women by forcing them into exaggerated, ridiculous, hideous clothes’

Wilson, E. (1985), Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, London, I.B. Tauris, page 94

The aren’t many strong female characters, they’re in it to look pretty for the consumption of men. 

Cindy Sherman.

Theres an assumption that men are artists, thats why there is a Female Artist section. Women are in a minority in what they do. 

Wonderbra. ‘I can’t cook, but I have huge breast’ or is it. ‘a women isn’t tied to the kitchen’

Objectify stereotypes. 

Gillian wearing, Lynne. 1993 - 6

Post modernity. 

•Identity is constructed through our social experience.

•Erving Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959)

•Goffman saw life as ‘theatre’, made up of ‘encounters’ and ‘performances’

•For Goffman the self is a series of facades

We take on multiple different personalities to apply to different situations/ contexts/ scenarios and perform in different ways. 

Zygmunt Bauman

Identity (2004)

Liquid Modernity (2000)

‘Yes, indeed, “identity” is revealed to us only as something to be invented rather than discovered; as a target of an effort, “an objective”’

You work towards you identity to contextualise your self.

Introspection, people are no longer thinking about their thoughts, they’re absorbed in mobile phone messages incase someone needs us. 

‘We use art, architecture, literature, and the rest, and advertising as well, to

shield ourselves, in advance of experience, from the stark and plain reality in

which we are fated to live’.

Theodore Levitt, The Morality (?) of Advertising,1970

We celebrate how bad someone else’s life is to make us feel better. Solace is found in those less fortunate. 

Post Modern Identify. 

I think therefore I am.

‘I shop therefore I am’ - Barabara Kruger.

Called out for been a sell out. Is it the perfect place to view it while it’s critiquing it. 

Religion today is consumerism. It’s where we now get our solace and peace.

“If I put up a flattering picture of myself with a list of my
favourite things, I can construct an artificial representation
of who I am in order to get sex or approval.  (‘I like
Facebook,’ said another friend.  ‘I got a shag out of it’)”

Tom Hodgkinson (2008), ‘With friends like these …’, Guardian, 14/01/08

Constructed Identity to get approval through the internet. 

Second life, Real and Virtual collide. Man and Women divorce in game and real life over online happening. Has an affair with a online DJ. 

OUGD504: Website Design task

http://www.hasbro.com/games/en_GB/

Children - Board games - Turquoise - Boring

What is it's Purpose? 
To sell/play games, toys and related items.
 
Who is the Target audience?
Adults/ Parents, It's a bit too bland for children.

What do they Need?
Not have a broken menu in the middle of the page, navigate to find and discover/ learn of games, easy purchasing methods, find local stores where they're sold.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Cluttered - Adverts - Royals - Bombardment - Black & White

What is it's Purpose? 
To inform

Who is the Target audience?
Adults, 30+

What do they Need?
Up to date News, lots of articles, subjects they're interesting in to cater all needs.

http://www.scribd.com/

Relaxed - Books - Modern - Interesting

What is it's Purpose? 
Sell Books, get people reading

Who is the Target audience?
Young adults

What do they Need?
To pick up the concept quickly, it seems different so I think that should be explained first, then it be easy to do, no fuss.

http://www.underconsideration.com/quipsologies/

Modern - Autumn/Dull palette - Clean - Design

What is it's Purpose? 
Inform/ Publicise Design

Who is the Target audience?
Designers (20-30+)

What do they Need?
Easily digestible and plenty of content to keep them scrolling.

http://www.typographicposters.com/

Clean - Crude - Modern - Design - Rectangles

What is it's Purpose? 
Showcasing design, inspiration

Who is the Target audience?
Designers

What do they Need?
Easy format to find the work, easy to discover more.

OUGD501: Consumerism Seminar

Consumerism/capitalism culture can't function without false need, manufacturing Desire to create false needs for commodities. - Stratification created for those items, inequality, disguises the inequality.

 Social Control VS. Freedom

Everyone is satisfied in the short term which fuels the illusionary idea of being free. The illusion of choice.

Members of the bottom of the social class believe they aren't through owning a big TV. This stops any revolutionary consciences because they believe they have it all and everything is gonna be alright. It's palliative, like a drug. 

What do we actually need, not what we think we need, Real needs Vs False needs. None of any which are actually met by the Consumerism culture.

'Everything's all alright' 

The rise of Mass production is intrinsically linked to Consumerism, it allowed for more and more things to be created. Byproduct of this is lots of meaningless stuff is created in the world. Out of this emerges a consumerist way of thinking which now has a stranglehold on society and it's conscience.

From this advertising is born, it makes you think the next big thing is what you need through publicity and branding. Advertising isn't the bad thing, great design comes from advertising, but what it's created, false desires is. It's the wider system which is to fault.

Freud, came up with the ideas that we suppress violence, sex and animal instincts with false need for items. To Freud we are totally irrational beings. As a species we are very animal, very destructive. To Freud the idea of civil society, is incompatible with our base desires because we can't ever be happy or freely act on our instincts.

Bernays, P.R was initially was an attempt to link the irrational desires, the ideas of Freud. Bernays had an amazing career and worked a lot with the CIA in South America, to orchestrate ideas on mass destabilisation of socialist countries was Bernays idea: Guatemala, Chile.

Because of P.R we are given the illusion of free choice, the free choice between a standard set of options which look as if they're an infinite array. It pacifies us momentarily. It's what Freud calls the 'Pleasure Principle'. 

It satiated me momentarily.

In the task in the Seminar, in groups of 5 we had to analyse a section from John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' - My group was given Pages 132 to 135, we were given 30 minutes to make notes and then when we got back, 10 minutes to present our findings.

1:

'We are so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact' You can't escape publicity, its everywhere and it builds within your sub-conscience. Publicity always speaks of the future self and in the future tense, it's never of the present, yet publicity belongs to the moment, in the sense it is continually renewed. 

You can never be happy, today. You'll always want the next best thing, and this is what publicity does. It's continuous cycle. False competition to drive sales we are given multiple choices but they are all the same in the end. 'Within publicity, choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this card, but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal.' 

This perpetuates the idea of that we are free, as a people by buying these products we are given the promise of transformation into a better person. 'It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more.' A more powerful, more envied and richer. Yet in reality we will be poorer having spent the money and still unhappy. We are shown people who have bought it and it has changed their lives, as a result we envy them, the idea of being envied is what drives us to consume the amount we do.

2: 

Publicity in it's self cannot be too directly about the product, doing this gives the prospective buyer the feeling it is out of their grasp. 'The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him.'  

'It is this which explains the absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. They look out over the looks of envy which sustain them'

'Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance.'

'The happiness of being envied is glamour.'

'Publicity is about social relations, not objects.'

3:

'The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not the way of life of society'

'The power to spend is the power to live.'

'Those who have the power to become loveable.'

'Working class tends to promise a personal transformation through the function of the particular product it is selling (Cinderella); middle class publicity promises a transformation of relationships through a general atmosphere created by an ensemble of products (The enchanted palace.)

4:

'The process is reinforced by working conditions.'

'Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society which has moved towards democracy and then stopped half way is the ideal society for generating such emotion.'

'The gap between what the publicity actually offers and the future it promises, corresponds with the gap between what the spectator-buyer feels himself to be and what he would like to be.'

OUGD501: Applying Shannon & Weaver's communication model

Apply Shannon & weaver's model (diagram) to an example of communication. How widely is this applicable? How useful do you find this sort of exercise? 

What are the main communicative functions of redundancy? What do we mean by saying the english language is 50% redundant?

The Duracell Bunny Adverts

 I've chosen to analyse the Duracell bunny adverts because it's one of my favourites since I was little, I enjoyed seeing the new Duracell bunny racing.

 The Duracell bunny has become common metaphor for something that is long lasting and anything that continues indefinitely, which began with the original Duracell advert from 1975. It was so effective that Duracell still uses the bunny in its ad campaigns now, which shows that it works and has continued to last, just as advertised.

'Duracell lasts 6x longer over any other battery.'  

 It's a simple, yet cliched redundant message. It is redundant because it was a safe choice for them to go with: toys running out of power is something all audiences can understand, young and old. 

 The compare the Duracell bunny adverts with the Shannon & Weaver Communicative model it would be hard to find many faults where communication could break down with this advert because of how safe and clearly communicated the message is in the adverts, especially in the original advert. 

 Duracell (Information source) has communicated what they wanted to the advertisers (Encoders) very specifically with the following: 'No other battery looks like it' and 'It lasts up to 6x times longer.' These two messages are brought across by the image and the voice over in all the adverts which hasn't changed in over 30 years, making the message even more redundant due to the lack of innovation. The message has effectively communicated well to the Audience (Decoder) and has been understood (Destination).

 It is clear that this message has been working otherwise they wouldn't still be communicating it. Duracell has become prominent as a brand and product because of their ad campaigns.

 Redundancy as the Duracell advert proves is an effective way to communicate to an audience who already has a common understanding of the message that is being communicated. For example: a toy running out of power. This is what the main communicative functions of redundancy is, communicating with already established understanding. 

 The English language contains lots of words that have the same meaning, they're redundant words: descend and down, up and ascend. 50% of the English language is made up of words such as these.

 In the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, there exists a fictional language which disposes of such redundant words and through this creates a much simplified version of the English language called 'Newspeak' which is used to stop people from thinking outside of the modes of thought the English Socialist party allows. 

 One example of this would the word free, which only exists in the form of something you don't have. For example: 'A field free from weeds'. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

However getting rid of the redundant words our vocabulary becomes a lot less expressive, the flip side to this is with so many redundant words, there are phrases which make use of redundant words and combines them together which if you were to take the words by definition would mean the exact same thing repeated over. Examples of this are: 

• Actual experience/fact
• Add an additional
• End result
• Enter in.
• Final Outcome.

More found at:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/50-redundant-phrases-to-avoid/

OUGD501: Consumerism: Persuasion, Society, Brand, Culture.

National cash register building, New york World's fair 1939-40

Aims: 

• Analyse the rise of the US consumerism
• Discuss the links between the consumerism and our unconscious desires 
• Sigmund Freud
• Edmund Bernays (Sigmunds nephew.)
• Consumerism as social control.

Main two sources for he lecture:

Century of Self - Adam Curtis (2002) - Documentary

No logo, Brands globalisation resistance - Naomi Klein (1999)

Sigmund Feud (1856 - 1939)

• New theory of human nature
• Physco-analysis
• Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts which need controlling
• The interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• The unconscious (1915)
• The ego and the Id (1923)
• Beyond the Pleasure and Pleasure (1920)
• Civilisations & its discontents (1930)
• - Fundamental tension between civilisation and individual.
• Argues that: Human instincts incompatible with the well being of community
• The pleasure principle.

We all have a strong desires for violence and have sex, but we can't act them out, otherwise society would be full of rapists. Society imposes laws and systems to keep law and order. What the means to a certain extent is that we will remain unsatisfied and those desires will not go away and must be released somehow in a way. Desires manifest themselves. 

Pleasure principle: If our desires are allowed, or feel like we can act them we can satiate, in a socially acceptable way, momentarily, we are docile and happy and not irrational and content.

Civilisation will make us discontent.

Believed there was repressed desires which are dangerous, animal instants, analysed people's dreams. The three of his main, believed we are desired based and society stops us acting out our fantasies.

We think all our actions are conscience, but a lot is buried beneath within our ID (wish fulfilment) the Id is where all the primitive and instincts are held and repressed and not accessed conscienceless, hidden behind.

Looking at something with a freudian view is to open up our unconscience and dicers. 

The unconscious is a hidden and dangerous place.

Freud's Model of personality structure:

First world war was expected by him, We shouldn't have been surprised by it, It destroys it's self. People will find a release. Freud in First world war, he was depressed because of it, It was the optima of morbid desire released from the unconscience.

Edward Bernays (1891-1995)

• Press agent
• Employed by the public information during WW1

After WW1 west gains a lot of wealth and becomes prosperous, the west develops and becomes affluent. 

• Post war set up 'the council on public relations'
• Birth of PR
• Based on ideas of the Freud (his uncle)
• Crystallising public opinion (1923)
• Propaganda (1928)

PR Started in America with Edward bernays, CPO uses Freuds principles

Touches of Freedom

1929 Easter day parade

If you can link a product to the hidden desires unsatiated animal instincts, or repressed unconscious you can make a false need for a product, and want, demand, desire for such product. 

People paid him a lot to market their products, he used physiological techniques to advertise. Women smoking was a taboo, employed to make women smoke, paid beautiful women to smoke (debutaunts) to advertise and erase the taboo.

 At an organised moment, tipped off to photographers they all lit up cigarettes, beautiful women smoking, fed story to the press, the women were suffragette (women to vote, etc) A political protest for women to smoke 'Torches of freedom' - Women started to smoke because they (in public conscience) became a symbol of sex appeal, free, freedom. This continues through american culture.

Attach something meaningless to something with meaning, smoking = power. 

Politicians wanted to make use of Berney's techniques. 

• Product placement
• Celebrity endorsements
• The use of pseudoscientific reports

Fake reports to give advertisements more gravitas. 

The President, Coolidge, (known as a joke, boring) employed Berney's, celebrity endorsement to promote Coolidge, Song's wrote for him (Al Johnson, popular musician transposed on the Politician) Relies on the principle of some desire to be satisfied.

Fordism

• Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)
• Transposes Taylorism to car factories of Detroit.

• Moving assembly line
• Standard production models built as they move through the factory
• Requires large investment, but increased productivity so much that relatively high wages can be paid, allowing the workers to buy the product they produce. 

(factory line = Taylorism)

From this came the importance of brands, due to mass production. 

It became important to distinguish products from everyone else's. This is the start of modern consumerism. Personalisations are made, Mascots (friendly old women to make them seem more appealing to women to use.) 

Aunt Jermima's Pancake flour made women feel less of a housewife because it was pre-mixed, they used focus groups to discover this, so they made it so you had to crack a egg into the mix so it made the women feel like they were providing, It satisfied a desire for them. And for people who didn't know how to cook.

(1909) OLDS-MOBILE 

• Advertisement change to rely on physiological techniques, before this it was simply a description of what it was they were selling. This advert was a early example of the physiological techniques, owning a car is associated to power, in control of your wife, drive were you want. Edward Berneys was happy he was one of the first to link male sexuality that to cars, now it's the norm. 

(1919) Cadillac

• Not sold it's virtues, solids on it's status and image, chateau in background, column shows success and affluence.

Chanel, 'The most treasured name in perfume. Based on desire.

Advertisements moved from needs, to wants. Want Chanel to have to the same sexual allure as a celebrity, consumerism brings this shift.

Advertisement has been so incredibly good that no one ever feels like they have to much stuff, because there's always something else they want and 'need'

Marketing hidden needs - Vance Packard (1957)

• Selling emotional security.

Fridge freezers waste more money then you need to because freezers keep food when you don't need it. Emotional security knowing you have food, it doesn't matter if you don't use it it's the sub conscience that you have food to provide at least so you spend more.

• Selling reassurance of worth
• Selling ego-gratification

IF you can trade a sense of worth you can market to house wives successfully. 

• Eg: Marketted under the idea of a hoover making you the house wife of house wives to free up time to do what you want the rest of the day. The emotional desire of self worth

• Selling creative outlets
• Selling love objects
• Selling sense of power

Reassurance that you are powerful, and affluent. Reassurance that you are who you are.

Fashion is an illusionary of who we are.

Tipalet ' Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere.

Births a society that thinks it's happy and successful. People are given the illusion that they are happy.

1920 Public Opinion, Walter Lippmann

• A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd
• Manufacturing consent

People felt happy because all of peoples desires were satiated. They became complacent. 

Government became interested in the physiological effects of advertisement. 

IF you can feed the bewildered herd, that they're desires are taken care for, that can be taken control, you are manufacturing consent. (Walter Lippmann)

Even politicians are incapable of managing people, big companies are employed to inform on how to organise society. More and more things should be produced to keep desires satiated. 

Russian Revolution, (1917)

Peace, Land, Bread!

A peoples revolution, the oppressed, threw the rich out, replaced with a communist society. 

The sharing of wealth.

A threat to capitalism, of the back of a world war. America saw the revolution scary because it was unstable. 

Walter L employed to keep people docile to stop something like the RR happening in American, keeping he people happy and docile.

Oct 24, 1929

'Black Tuesday'

You can't keep expanding, eventually you'll have a boom and bust. In 1929 the biggest stock market crashes, stocks fell on everything and loads of people lost their jobs. Industries collapsed and formed the Great depression.

Roosevelt and the 'New Deal' (1933-36)

More security for the American family.

He came in to introduce benefits, job creation, early retirement ages, investment in industry. This was about governmental control of wealth control, unpopular with big businesses, up in arms, Roosevelt was that you were brought into line, not doing what you wanted. 

Big business were limited with profit margins due to Roosevelt. 

The World's fair in America, Berneys on the steering commute,

It was a giant piece of propaganda, futurist buildings, new modes of affluence, the whole thing was depiction of how america, the world would be like.

'Democra-city' 

It wasn't democracy, people could be only free if they kept spending. This future would be yours if you bought into the labour based socialist government. The world of tomorrow was based on consumption. Our society is free, Communism is unfree. 'They're controlled by a government, we're not' 

Are we really? Freedom is actually limited due to salaries, we are limited by affordability. 

Conclusion. 'You are not what you own' 

To what extent do our governments carry out their policies.

Our society is based on the illusion of freedom, through consumption. 

Consumerism is an ideological project. Consumerism makes your docile, the pleasure principle is momentarily pleased. It makes you happy to tick on and carry on if you're for filling our desires. 

• The consumer self.
• The legacy of Bernays / PR can be felt in all aspects of C21st society.

Our own prime-minister was a former PR man. 

• To what extent are our lives 'free' under the western consumerist system? 

The illusion of free choice. 

OUGD501 - Communication Theory

Shannon Weaver Mathematical Model, 1949

Employed by american army, bell telephone labs. Employed by AA, wanted for refining communication systems. To make them more efficient. To find where communication broke down in the chain of command, where it was breaking and how it was breaking down. Mainly radio communication and radio they looked into. Initially limited to that, but it's been taken as a model for communication in the wider and social sense, visual and applied too.

Information source: (Voice Speaking)

Transmitter (Radio)

Channel: (Frequency)

Receiver: (Radio)

Destination: (Heard)

If you're gonna understand any communication act, you need to understand the act of it and the process of communication. Communication is more complex then that, and takes place in different mediums. There's five stages and at each of these points interference may occur/ break down. 

The Shannon-weaver model for making Graphic Design, 2013:

Information source:

Client/Brief 

Transmitter:

Designer (Encodes a message into the design)

Channel:

The design 

Receiver:

Audience (Decodes the message in the design)

Destination:

Message communicated/ heard/ understood.

What if: Break down in communication in Graphic Design:

Information: Client/brief not explaining what they want clearly.

Transmitter: Designer not understanding the information/ communicates it ineffectively. 

Channel: Printing, Coding issues, anything to impact distribution.

Receiver: Not clearly understanding the message been said. It's not noticed. (Problems relating to design problems in the previous sections, not encoded with a understanding of empathy and understanding of the audience and how they decode things.)

Destination: Not interested/ Zero communication

Noise source: Something that interferes with the communicative act, noise can happen at any stage of the process. An example been: Noise on the land (In context of telephone/radio) you can't hear everything that is been said, noise is getting in the way of communication.

 In terms of design, what is Noise: Illegibility, visual noise. Distracted while designing. Too much information. Stress from above, Professional noise. 

Encoding noise: Break down of tools, programs not working. Mugged of equipment, lack of motivation. Pub, under influence.

Channel noise: Traffic, graffiti, drowned out by other designs, placement,  

Receiver noise: Actual noise, been distracted. 

Destination noise: People protesting the product/ design, word on the street. Other adverts. Desensitised.

Shannon-Weaver went even further and created levels to problem solve problems (they worked mostly only at Level A) in communication which were:

Level A - Technical problems

How accurately can the message be transmitted?

Level B - Semantic problems

How precisely is the message conveyed/ understood? 

Level C - Effectiveness problems

How effective does the received meaning affect behaviour? (how you would want behaviour to be influenced)

Levels applied to the Graphic design:

Level A - Technical problems

Coding issues.

Print difficulty

Distribution problems

Level B - Semantic problems

Client not explaining properly.

Audience not decoding the message

Brief not being understood

Design communicates ineffectively

Level C - Effectiveness problems

Audience has no interest

Redundancy VS Entropy:

Redundancy: Path of least resistance.

(Doesn't interfere in the communicative process: Redundant phone line)

Entropy: Moments of bleeding outside of communicative line/channel. Leaking gas in a gasoline is entropy.

Within Graphic Design:

Redundancy: Totally predictable, for communication to function, perfectly and accurately, has to be socially predictable, conventional, low amount of information carried. Make it very understandable. 

Eg: a hand-shake, predictable gesture, redundant, contains low information in it's message.

If on shaking hand, the shaker is electrocuted, the gesture is now entropic because it's unexpected and contains high information, more information carried within it. 

If it wasn't for low-information shortcuts, 

Going up to a fast-food counter, is a perfect example of Redundant information, toilet symbols (universally agreed symbol, contains very little information, only male and female.)

Graphic design aims for redundancy, information first. (taps into pre-agreed information) 

Fine art, stylist graphic designer aims for entropy: Style over information.

High predicability - Low Information = Redundancy.

Utterly conventional, conservative, you don't change the world by being redundant with pre-agreed conventions.

Words are redundant, Cambridge university word study.

Fine art: is a entropic gesture.

Graphic design: building redundancy within the system.

Do something entirely entropic to grab attention to stand out from all the redundancy.

TASK:

Apply Shannon & weaver's model (diagram) to an example of communication. How widely is this applicable? How useful do you find this sort of exercise? 

What are the main communicative functions redundancy? What do we mean by saying the english language is 50% redundant?

Daily Mirror, 1981:

Editor has made the message more redundant and attempted to communicate their message, rioting black people. It's framed with Confrontation, makes you not think of Police brutality. The blacks are causing trouble, it's a biased story adds to it. The reason the editor did it is a racist propagandist, news is a system of propaganda, the editor is attempting to tap into the audiences world view and frame the photograph into a context they would understand in their world view. Conventional.