Contextual Practice, New Media Level 2


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Core Unit: Theoretical Studies Level 2 Programme Semester 1, 2007
Design Theory 3: Approaches to Visual Culture

"Representation is a complex business….it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way.” (Stuart Hall, Representation, (Open University/Sage Publications, 1997) p. 226

Description and Aims
This core unit helps you to understand and use a variety of approaches and ideas to explain and interpret design, the media, and visual and popular culture. Attendance is compulsory. We will be thinking about why objects and images have been designed in particular ways, and how audiences/viewers engage with them. Our questions will include:
• The conventions, codes and values (conscious and unconscious) which inform the makers’ practices
• The ways viewers, audiences (both consumers and intellectuals) see and read design, media imagery, etc.
• The social and political phenomena which affect the making, interpretation and use of design
Our immediate objective is to demonstrate the variety of perspectives and methods, particularly those used in media studies, cultural studies and art and design history, through which visual culture and design can be analysed. Our wider aims are to build your confidence in the ways you research and interpret the designed world and to enhance the research and critical skills which can inform your practice. This in turn will prepare you for your final-year independent theoretical study.

Syllabus
(NB terms in bold are concepts we want to consider in depth in your seminar portfolio)
The lectures and seminars in semester 1 will explore approaches to the study of design and the media through case-studies through which we can explore representations of identity. For example, we begin with national identity. Many people think British-ness is now too diffuse or slippery to identify – for Britons at least. What visual symbols have been used to convey a sense of British national identity? How have we represented other cultures in order to establish our sense of our own? What cultural forms have been most associated with Britain eg in the States. What cultural forms help us to get a sense of what it means to be British?

Hollywood productions, and indeed many popular genres, have had a major influence in representing an idealised sense of American national identity through celebrating individualism (the ‘American Dream’). Maybe many nations try to project a sense of their own culture’s individualism? Representations of national identities are often closely tied to gender identities. Genres are targeted at specific audience groups, including genre groups are can help us to understand perceptions of gender and how these have changed. For example, the classic Hollywood Western typically celebrates the order imposed on communities through the ultra-individualistic stance of its male heroes, and their command of iconic landscapes. Gender is represented in relatively consistent ways through particular genres, since one of genre’s functions has been to work within formats which can audiences can predict, and in the mass media, to deliver particular audience groups to advertisers. Soaps, for example, typically demonstrate women as forging harmony and order within a local or regional community. Innovations in popular genres such as soaps can be viewed as significant historical shifts eg in audiences, their expectations, and the ways these relate to contemporary social developments, which we can try to explain, and perhaps predict. The western will be our example of the ways through which different signs, codes and conventions come together to signify genre, national and gender identity.
Representations of identity can also be viewed as a form of politics: ways through which we think about our relationship to and differences from groups of people conceived as ‘other’. Some of the most vivid portrayals of people as ‘other’, both positively and negatively have been those of people conceived of as ‘primitive’, ‘savage’, ‘exotic’, ‘barbarous’, ‘monstrous’, or as innocent victims. This theme of representation also figures in the study of horror. We identify ourselves partly through the ways we identify with what we see in cultural productions, the cultural choices we make and, at a less conscious level, the pleasures and emotions we experience in our reception of cultural forms. Why are some images powerful? Why would the scary, or even the repellent also fascinate? To analyse some of these questions, psychology and psycho-analysis can be very productive. They are also frequently used to understand gender in representations.

The seminars are for you to explore and discuss the concepts and to develop them according to your interests.

Key concepts will include:
Culture and communication as processes eg audience, consumption, semiotics, discourse, meanings, narrative, and myths
Representations and power eg ideology, spectacle, the gaze
Culture and identity eg gender, class, national, regional and post-colonial identities, identities framed as ‘other’ to the viewer
Culture and spaces of identity eg landscape

Session titles/Timetable
Oct 16 Introduction to theme of culture and identity (All tutors)
Oct 23 National identities – Myths and Mythmaking in Scandinavian Design (FB)
Oct 30 Gender and Genre – Action Movies and TV genres (AR)
6 Nov The West, the Cowboy, the Landscape (GL)
13 Nov The Pleasures (?) of Horror Narratives (AR)
20 Nov Showing off the Nation: the Display of Ethnic Peoples in World Exhibitions (FB)
27 Nov The Ideal Body: idealised representations of the body and their social and psychological functions (AR)
4 Dec The Horrors of War: representations of war in photography, art and film (GL)
11 Dec What is a Design Classic? The principles behind the formation of a ‘classic’ (FB)
18 Dec Christmas - Baa Humbug! Sentiment and bad Taste? (All tutors))
BREAK
8 Jan Satire, comedy and counter voices (AR) Essay Tutorials
15 Jan Essay Tutorials
22 Jan Essay Tutorials

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit you will be able to:
• Demonstrate a more confident and informed relationship with the designs you produce and encounter
• Analyse designs by drawing selectively on perspectives and concepts in cultural and media studies, and articulating these through structured arguments
• Show an awareness of the historical, social, economic and political contexts and effects of designs

Assessed Work
Portfolio of digested response to lecture and seminar programme (30 percent)
Illustrated Essay of 2500 words (70 per cent)

Portfolio
Provide a series of ordered, tightly edited and sign-posted notes and images under the thematic headings for each week’s lecture/seminar. (Please refer to the list of session titles.)
Your notes should include: a brief summary of lecture and seminar discussion, plus notes on any associated reading set by tutors or pursued by you.

What we are looking for:
1. Comprehensive engagement with the themes of the unit
2. Understanding and use of key concepts highlighted in the sessions (ie national identity, gender, genre, the other, etc)
3. Research and discussion ie responding to lectures and texts, doing further research and applying ideas to further examples
4. Clear and interesting presentation format. (We want to see your engagement and find our way round your notes easily as well as – obviously – be able to read them!)

Essay
Choose your own example of a representation, series of representations, design, etc.

Analyse and interpret it in relation to the aims of the unit, ie:
• The conventions, codes and values (conscious and unconscious) which are used in the representation of identity. (Focus mainly here on one type of identity eg masculinity or femininity in soaps, games, war movies, etc., etc.)

• The ways viewers (both consumers and intellectuals) see and read identities in design/media imagery – this will involve you drawing on and critically evaluating relevant textual examples of analysis, including texts we have given out or recommended

• The social and political phenomena which affect the making, interpretation and use of identities

• Write your analysis in the form of a structured series of arguments which allow you to offer a well-considered interpretation of what your example represents.

Your essay must be typed with double or 1.5 spacing on one side of A4 paper.
Each page should be headed with your name and BA programme title.
Your essay must have a title. It can be anything you like so long as you make it clear that the unit is titled Design theory: Approaches to Visual Culture. Ideally make your title as punchy as possible and make it encapsulate some of your arguments.
Your introductory paragraphs should make clear how you intend to respond to the assignments i.e. should state how your example allows you to explore an identity- theme.
Your final paragraphs should summarise the main thrust of your overall interpretation and state any major points of agreement or disagreement with the texts you have used.
Your footnotes (or endnotes) and your bibliography must be set out according to a recognised referencing style (eg Harvard, MHRA, etc.)
At the end of your essay please state your word count. You cannot go over or under the 2,500 word limit by more than 10 per cent in fairness to other students. The minimum is therefore 2250 and the maximum is 2750.

NB. Advice and guidelines on essay-writing skills and formats will be given in the course of the unit and in the tutorial session Jan 8, 15 and 22.

Hand in deadline: Before the end of week 14, ie before 3.00pm Friday January 26, 2007.