Thursday, 17 November 2016
Creativity for Social Good
Lecture 8: Creative Rhetorics
-Plato didn’t like creativity as he believed it didn’t fit
with his theory of metaphysics. His theory was that this world is a mirror/copy
of a different world. Physical mimics the real and art mimics the world and
therefore, by this logic, art mimics an imitation. Plato thought mental skills
(e.g. maths, science) were harder than technical skills (art). This is an
attitude this is still prevalent with todays society, as there is still a
stigma with doing an art degree.
-Gombrich argued that art has afro-asiatic origins, and
Bernal agreed, writing that Classical Civilisation has deep roots in African
cultures but was suppressed by Eurocentric history.
-In the Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece, the sculpture
of the Goddess Nike was more naturalistic, than, for example, the Kouros from
Attica 530 BC, which looked quite wooden. In that era, it was believed that the
more realistic the sculpture looked, the better the artist was. It’s
interesting to note how this belief has changed with time, as now abstract art
is well respected. The whole way we all interpret and view art has changed
vapidly- now, we are more open-minded as a society.
-In the 19th Century, Leeds
town hall was built which boasted Britain’s large empire due its classical
architecture, e.g. the Roman domes and the Greek columns. At that time Britain
had huge economic power and they wanted to celebrate this, and so they merged
two other historically well-known empires into their architecture.
-There are nine Rhetorics of Creativity. The first one I
will discuss is about the Creative Genius, which is found in romanticism. Kant
wrote the Critique of Judgement that was all about emotions, colours and
dreams. I found the discussion on Kant quite interesting because although I had
studied Kant in philosophy, I learnt only about his view on life after death,
and so his view on art was very intriguing. Another key piece of literature
surrounding the creative genius is ‘Gender and Genius’ by Battersby.
Romanticism transformed how people thought about art and creativity. Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer rejected Plato’s belief that the arts aren’t as important as
the academics. They believed art was the most important method of generating
knowledge. Romanticism also states that creativity is dynamic and through
creating, artists create new rules.
-Another of the Nine Rhetorics is Creativity and Cognition. Csikzentmihayl wrote a book called
Flow, which discussed the psychological conditions of creativity. He said that
creativity is all about enjoyment, happiness and losing yourself. This happens
when you get set a brief that is challenging enough to experience a creative
flow. This mostly happens when you’re talking to someone.
- Another of the Nine
Rhetorics is creativity for social good e.g. Clair Tancons and her carnival
performance art piece that tackled racism.
-Lastly, there was
creativity as economic imperative. Creativity is vital for the economy as it
can encourage people to invest in things and when people consume, it is good
for businesses and it generates more jobs which then in-turn generates more
money.
Links with advertising
-The Hellenistic sculpture of the goddess Nike related to
the Nike brand which uses aspects of the goddess in its advertising, e.g. the
goddess personified victory, and the brand Nike centres on sporting victory and
being the best you can be via its products.
-The Greek idea that the more realistic a sculpture was, the
better the artist, links with advertising as it brings up the question of how
realistic are the images we use in ads? For example, the McDonalds burgers in
the ads are not realistic.
- Nietzsche and Schopenhauer believing that art was an
important method of generating knowledge links to advertising as we can
generate knowledge though advertising, which many argue is a form of art. For
example, the Tesco and St.John’s Ambulance baby grow campaign that taught
viewers how to perform CPR on a child.
-Romantics believing creativity is dynamic links to
advertising as the advertising industry is constantly changing. For example,
more women are being employed and before Bernbach came along, copywriters and
art directors didn’t work in teams.
-With the 9 Rhetorics of Creativity, advertising legend John
Hegarty fits in the Creative Genius category as he has subjective visions, is
dynamic, breaks rules and got his achievements through his own work and not
instruction.
- Csikzentmihayl and
the creative flow links to advertising as we all experience a creative flow
when we generate ideas.
-Creativity for
social good links with advertising as there are many ads that promote social
change, e.g. Kenco coffee vs. gangs campaign.
-Creativity for the
economy links with advertising as ads are meant to encourage and inspire people
to buy products, and therefore contribute to the economy.
Thursday, 10 November 2016
Lecture 7 - The Still and Moving Image
Christian Metz noted that film and photography have a
technical similarity but have different relations to time, framing and
objecthood. For Metz, the photograph belongs to the past, while
film unfolds in the present as we watch. I disagree with this notion, because not all photos capture the past. For example, if you take a picture of a object every year, and that object never changes then that object isn't part of the past, and is actually part of the foreseeable future.
With film, we watch it in the dark and we watch someone
else’s life unfold. For the most part, is used for entertainment. Some may say
that films are harder to access than photography, however I dispute this claim
as illegal streaming sites now exist and we can make our own films through our
phones. Moreover, photos are also used
for entertainment because people enjoy looking back at them, and just as film
can cause emotions such as fear and excitement, photos can cause nostalgia.
This lecture also looked into whether photography can make
time tangible. Bill Morrisons work, for example, can show time as being
tangible as it shows lots of images of a day out in a fairground. Sam
Taylor Wood, in my opinion, also shows time as tangible as her work shows the
process of food decaying. I found her
pieces quite unnerving because although it seemed like it took a long time for
the food to start decomposing, once it began, the process began to quicken and
we saw how easily life and death intertwine.
I think Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photos also make time tangible as
the cameras shutter was open throughout the whole of whatever film was being
shown in each image. In the photos we can see the beauty of the American
cinemas (called theatres) which is unusual as normally when you watch a movie
you watch it in the dark and don’t appreciate the surroundings. Also, it shows
how time passes through history as cinemas used to be the only form of technological
entertainment, whilst nowadays, we have TVs and other forms of entertainment.
Etienne-Jules Marey tried to capture movement, except he did
it on one photographic sheet. It looks like lots of translucent layers on top
of each other.
Idris Khan records time in a different way. There isn’t much
portrayal of time in his actual photographs, but it is more the extent of time
Khan had spent photographing subjects/objects. He’s collapsing the time the
viewer takes viewing the original photos. For example, the original photos of
the Becher water towers take a while to look at, however Khan puts them all on
one image.
In ’24 Hour Pyscho’, Douglas Gordon slowed down the frames
of the movie ‘Pyscho’. It makes it less dramatic however now we can study each
scene in more detail that causes new meanings to come apparent.
Gillian Wearing made an hour long still portrait of a group,
and by the end of it people's poses started wearing down. This is similar to the
Victorian era where it took an hour to make photos of people, which is why the
subjects often look bad-tempered.
Links to Advertising:
-The concept that both photos and film can cause nostalgia
links to advertising as there are adverts which use film to make an emotion
campaign, for example this iPhone6 campaign. What is interesting about this
particular advert, is that both the people in the advert, and the audience
watching the advert, feel the same emotions. Moreover, the subjects are
watching what the ‘outside’ audience watch, and this feeling can seem quite
surreal.
-The link between advertising and time generally is an
interesting concept, even when we think about ads and specific time-slots. It’s
interesting to see how much of an impact time slots make to the reception of
ads. Although twenty years ago the time the advert was shown would have been
vital, e.g. if you wanted a specific audience to see the advert, we can
argue that nowadays time-slots are less important as we have 24/7 access to
adverts on YouTube and other streaming sites.
-Advertising and time is also intriguing because as time passes, society changes and therefore advertising also changes. What was acceptable fifty years ago may not be acceptable today. For example, a hundred years ago people may have turned a blind eye to sexist adverts, or just not have considered them sexist at all, whilst today sexist adverts receive more of a backlash.
-Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photos also link to advertising, as just as we can take in the beautiful cinematic surroundings, which normally we don't when we watch a movie, we can also take in the surroundings when we see ambient advertisements. Unlike TV advertisements, where you take in what the screen shows you, ambient ads require you to take notice of what surrounds the ads, as you interact with the advert.
-Douglas Gordon's '24 Hour Pyscho' also links to advertising because just as the slowed down version gives new meanings to the scenes, when we study advertising in more detail different meanings also become apparent. For example, when we analyse an advert, we can see traces of myth, or surrealism, which we wouldn't have noticed with just a glance/on face value. For example, the Skittles 'Touch' advert seems like a fun, unusual, memorable advert for skittles, but when you study it, you can see how mythology (King Midas and his Golden Touch) has actually influenced it.
Thursday, 3 November 2016
Lecture Six: Remake, Remodel, Reduce
This lecture focused on storytelling, which is such an
important aspect of our lives. We are all constantly telling and listening to
stories, even if we don’t realise it. Advertising is all about storytelling-
getting a message across in an exciting and innovative way. This doesn’t have
to be as TV advert, but could be a print advert or a radio advert. Even an
advert that we don’t think is enticing, still tells a story, although it may be
a dull story.
To create a great story, brands have to dig into what makes
their brand special. Some stories use
emotion, and others use humour, to engage the listener. In the lecture, we
heard about Nicks trip to Chernobyl. To keep us interested, he used emotion,
such as the 32 deaths, and the shock factor, such as in the town of Pripyat,
the 45,000 people who lived there weren’t told about the explosion until 2 days
after. I don’t think that anyone in the lecture will forget what he said.
I think it’s interesting that you can interpret stories
differently both in advertising and in culture. For example, people can interpret
religious text differently, e.g. whether or not to take it literally, e.g.
creationism. Likewise, people may interpret adverts differently. For example, adverts
are interpreted differently depending on their context. For example, in the
1940s, this Schlitz advert may have been viewed in a more positive light, due
to the social norms of that time. However, in the 21st Century,
where we are more aware of the gender inequality that woman faced/ still do
face, there is more of an outrage over this sexist advert. However, we can
still argue that whether you view this advert in a positive or a negative
light, it still succeeded in storytelling as it did have an impact and it is
memorising.
The phrase ‘more is less’, otherwise known as reductionism,
is commonly used in storytelling and advertising. For example, one of the first
copywriting seminars we had, in Level 4, was to write a story and then condense
it into 100 words, then 50 words and finally 6 words. Billboard adverts have to
be short and condensed as people won’t take in long copy with just one glance.
Nick also showed us how he used sculpture to tell a story.
He told the story of alcoholism and addiction through a sculpture consisting of
alcohol bottles, which represent the first drink, broken bottles which
represent addiction and coasters that represent recovery. I found this sculpture interesting as it
showed how we don’t just need to make TV/print ads to get a brands message across.
We don’t need to play it safe, or be conventional, as long as we tell the story
in a memorable and effective way.
http://neatdesigns.net/35-extremely-sexist-ads-that-you-should-see/
Home Agency Visit
We were fortunate enough to get a visit from the Leeds based
‘Home’ Agency, where not only did they give us a life brief to work on, but
they also did a fun exercise with us.
We wrote down a pick up line and then went through adverts
and saw similarities between adverts and pick up lines. For example, a dull
advert, such as the generalised perfume advert, links to the generalised pick
up line of ‘Have I seen you here before?’ Both the advert and the pick up lines
are not memorable or enticing. The full options were:
1)
dull and predictable
2)
incentive based
3)
cheeky/playful/punny
4)
trying but cliché
5)
challenging/offensive
6)
the unexpected twist
7)
weird/unusual
Personally, I thought the most memorable advert from the
presentation was the 'Never say no to Panda' TV adverts for ‘Panda Cheese’, which fit under the
weird/unusual styles.
We also discussed our favourite ads and why we liked them. I
had chosen the Shanghai General Motors advert as I thought it was very powerful
and emotive.
After the seminar, I researched the advert that one of the
representatives, Dom, had spoken about, called Mr.W, and I thought it was an
extremely clever advert that was very memorable. I would place that advert in
the sixth category, of ‘The unexpected twist’. It was interesting to see where
my own course work fits in the pick up line categories. With my current brief
of the benefits of fracking, I think my idea also fits with option 6, as my
Misunderstood Monsters idea has an unexpected twist at the end.
I really enjoyed the seminar and thought it was a really
interesting way to engage and interact with us. The main message I got from the
seminar was ‘what we do is like trying to pull at a bar- we have to make it as
memorable as possible’.
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