WAYS OF SEEING
This Tuesday we looked into various ‘ways of seeing’ and not just in relation to art and design itself, but life - how we process things now and how we did say 70 years ago. We were shown an image of ‘One and three chairs’ made by Joseph Kosuth which represents the ‘way of seeing’. You have the representation - a physical image or a post you could see on instagram, then you have the object - it being physical, something you can touch and hold and finally you have description - maybe the actual definition of the thing you have or a description on that instagram post. All of these can be transferred and manipulated. I mention instagram because (like we said within the lecture) were in a modern age where things are constantly developing and theres now a new way of seeing. Through platforms such like instagram and facebook we can easily access the representation and definition at hand - which gives a totally juxtaposed experience rather than seeing it for yourself.
This leads on to the discussion we had on Walter Benjamin who theorised that when you experience something first hand - specifically pieces of art in this case, you experience ‘aura’. This is a sense of a ‘strange weave of space and time’… ‘uniqueness and duration are intimately intertwined in the original’. It’s that there is no experience like the experience of seeing something so eminent in real life - in-front of your own eyes. In the modern age you can see and buy replicas of art everywhere - and now by your finger tips delivered straight to your door. Through posters, postcards, key-rings, merch, photographs on social media, catalogues , books , videos - but non can compare to the original.
My own personal experience of aura was the Van Gogh exhibit at the Tate Britain. Van Gogh is someone I have studied in great depth and have a deep admiration for his work and technique… So to eventually see his work in the flesh left me speechless. There were pieces I had seen a million times online or in books - but standing (probably half a meter away) in-front of the originals was an experience that I can’t put into words. When I visited, it was very quiet, so my excitement only grew because I could actually get up close and personal. Looking at the multiple strokes and textures, the way the colours shone vibrantly - just seeing all these new details was totally overwhelming. It was defiantly an ‘intimate’ moment where time sort of stopped for a while and I was totally engrossed in his work.
Image of a family friend at the Tate
Kandinsky - 'orange'
For an activity I paired up with Abbie where we had to create a drawing where one pair could see the image however the other could not. This image was a piece by Kandisky titled ‘orange’. My role was to describe the image and Abbie was to interpret this and draw what I described. As you can see below, our final drawing is not a copy to the original - we have similar elements but we were far off. I described things like ‘ a shank that goes through the middle’ , ‘those things that fly in space and spy on us’ , ‘rows of dinosaur teeth’ , ‘Ken’s shoe… Barbie’s boyfriend’. The easiest part was the checkerboard in the left corner - it's pretty self explanatory. What made is difficult was that everyone interprets things differently… no one person will entirely see the same thing. Also there was no real chance that Abbie actually understood what I was saying, she must of thought I was crazy! Describing the composition and placement was also tricky and whether elements overlapped or not was very hard to communicate.
A Modern Narrative - Karen's life
As a group we decided to focus on the modern element and how things are projected and interpreted in the modern day. Social media is a modern method of creating your own narrative - you have full control! You can manipulate your story and control how your viewers perceive you.
We created an instagram account of a character called Karen. Imagine your mum had instagram ... yep that's Karen! We interpreted the images into instagram posts - we gave the images new narratives that relates back to our character Karen. Each post has a caption of how we interpreted the image - so one was a post about Karen being excited for her trip to Canada or a post of an old photo of her back when she lived in New York.
We also then made other accounts to interact with Karens account to - such like her best-friends Susan, Claire and Debs.
The feedback was all very positive, people liked how we thought outside the box and took the task a bit further. I was really proud that our presentation woke everyone up and brought back the engagement!
I found the day particularly insightful - it was interesting to think about how things are represented or how we perceive/are made to perceive something. Furthermore, understanding how representations have developed due to modern technology is also interesting to think about. We are manipulated into seeing what the subject wants to portray, but likewise this can be said for most things - new or old. John Berger states, "seeing comes before words" - we perceive our own perception before we can be told how to interpret. Just like how I can manipulate what I want my followers to see and how I want them to see me. I can adjust the narrative to suit me.
This is exactly what we did for the task, we wanted to take the images and give them context. We created Karens narrative to suit and fit into a particular type of person and we used this as a tool in how we would portray her on social media. Her instagram is a page we can all relate to - we all have that mother, aunt or even grandparent who just shouldn't be on instagram, but they do it anyway to fit in with the younger crowd. We wanted Karen to have interactions too - we were able to imply how her friends and family would react to her posts. I think as an improvement maybe we wouldn't of ridiculed this type of person to that extreme... but I think it gets our message across.
I have since been looking further into John Berger's theorises and his series - 'Ways Of Seeing' and it has lead me to Rudolf Arnheim's - 'Visual Thinking'. Both point at this idea of the phycological process of interpreting something before we can even put it into words what the subject matter is. There's a whole process in the way that you think and an order in which you brain dissects something.
